Last week, I wrote about the origin of my book, The Joy of Poetry. If that book-writing assignment from my publisher had gone as planned, I’d have more to say about the initial nine months I spent writing the book. In fact, if things had gone as planned, those first nine months would be the story. Instead, I see now that they were just the necessary work to discover what I was really supposed to write about.
I began drafting The Joy of Poetry by grabbing things from here and there, old and new, and trying to stitch them together in a way that didn’t work nearly as well as I thought it did. It would be like you asking me what a trout has to do with a tree: I could link them, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I should. In that first draft, I was forming unnatural connections between aquatic and arboreal species.
Then halfway through the writing process, I started contacting publishers to get permission to use their poems in the book. When I heard nothing back or learned the fee was too high, that naturally weaned the book down. Finally, I gave the manuscript to two friends to read. They helped me find places to cut and helped me know which places were strong. I revised some more, trimmed, turned it in, and waited.
The response I received from the publisher was basically, “This reads like a series of disconnected blog posts.” That feedback came in the form of a two-page detailed analysis of the manuscript. Three different readers at TS Poetry Press contributed their thoughts, and the editor synthesized them into one document, which included encouragement and suggestions to explore in revision. I’d describe the tone as gentle but crystal clear.
The best thing I did was wait a week to respond. I emailed to set up a phone call a week after that.
In the meantime, I attended a writing workshop in which one of the speakers said he usually needs to write the first draft to figure out what he’s really supposed to be writing—what the book wants to be. It’s a messy process, but according to the speaker, it’s his only way into writing a book. Then he retitles the first draft and opens a new document. Just that morning, I had already retitled my first draft “Poetry Memoir” and opened a new document called “The Joy of Poetry.”
When I finally talked with my publisher, I was ready to hear how I might go about rewriting—because I didn’t have a clue. Also, I mentioned to her a secret that I hadn’t previously shared: There was something in my life—an elephant in the room, if you will—that I didn’t want to write about. My first draft served as an attempt to write while ignoring the elephant.
“But you can write about your mom, can’t you?” my publisher asked.
“Oh, sure, ” I responded. I’d always said I could write about my mom and her cancer any day of the week, no problem.
Growing up, my mother’s cancer was never treated as an elephant we couldn’t talk about. We did talk about it—often. My parents never lied and always gave me age-appropriate information. Her cancer was more like the elephant in Kate DiCamillo’s The Magician’s Elephant, the subject of Tweetspeak’s fall book club.
In the book, everyone in town knows about the elephant. It magically appears in an opera house and accidentally breaks a noblewoman’s legs. Later, the elephant is moved to a palatial residence, where people wait in line to see her. She is both a problem and, eventually, a solution in the lives of the main characters.
The elephant I was trying not to write about in The Joy of Poetry is not hidden among our family members—it’s discussed as much as my mother’s cancer was in my childhood home. But our elephant, like the one the magician summoned, is not in its rightful home. It belongs back in the wild, and we haven’t figured out how to return it.
I didn’t write about that elephant in the book, I don’t write about it on my blog, and I won’t write about it here either. The story isn’t finished yet.
But my mom’s is. By the time I had that phone call with my publisher, my mom had been gone for five years. I’d done therapy, spiritual direction, taken a trip with my dad, visited with Mom’s friends, and, most importantly, I’d written 72 poems about her. I was ready to write about Merry Nell and her cancer.
All I had to do was figure out how to leave that other elephant in the palace and write about the one who’d already made it home.
Photo by George Alexander Ishida Newman, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome, author of The Joy of Poetry.
Read On Being Asked: Creating The Joy of Poetry – Part 1
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“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”
—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro
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Will Willingham says
Sometimes, I think, we don’t believe we can write our way around the elephants, because they take up so much room.
But we can, and you’ve shown how we can do it so deftly. (At least, we can when the elephant is not the thing we know we need to be writing about.)
I love this inside peek into your process (and that you tied to our favorite elephant here). 🙂
Megan Willome says
Well, again, a little rewriting was in order. 🙂 I’m so glad I read “The Magician’s Elephant” for the book club and was following along in the discussion to find another way to talk about this.
I will assure you and everyone that I am writing about that other elephant, especially since the book came out. That provided some space I had not anticipated.
Sandra Heska King says
It would have been so easy to give into discouragement, but no, not you. You got “nookish” and look what happened.
I, too, love that you wrote about “our” elephant. And that you’re teaching me how to write about mine.
Megan Willome says
When in doubt, get nookish. I hear that’s a saying these days. 🙂
Bethany says
“All I had to do was figure out how to leave that other elephant in the palace and write about the one who’d already made it home.” Fascinating, Megan. Do you mind if I ask, how did you start to do it? Was it by first delineating what belonged to which elephant? Or will this be in the next installment? 🙂
Megan Willome says
I started to do it when L.L. Barkat said, “But you can write about your mom, can’t you?” That was what I needed–a push in a new direction.
And no, not until that elephant has found its way home. As I said above, “I won’t write about it here either.”
L.L. Barkat says
It is always so fascinating to hear “the inside story.” 🙂
Interestingly, I’m not sure the presence of either elephant was clear to an outside reader—only in the sense that there was this book without a story (as I recall, it was a series of disparate meditations on poems that fit with certain holidays, and the whole book was broken into chapters that had a different holiday name).
And when a book comes in missing a story, that sometimes means there really are huge stories to tell that simply weren’t tackled by the author, for one reason or another. The work from that point on is so delicate, as the writer needs to ask some hard questions of him/herself, including “am I brave enough for this” and “am I ready to tell the real story” and “is the timing right in other ways, for me and those around me” and “do I even know what my story is yet, or do I need to live it more” and so on and so on—while the publisher has a whole different set of questions to tackle such as “is there actually an untold story here or is this just the best this writer can pull off because there isn’t a story or (oh, no!-cross-fingers-really-hope-not) what if the writer isn’t actually a book-length storyteller even if he/she can write isolated pieces that are satisfying thought-pieces” or “can something marketable be made of this” or “how much editorial work will it take to make this saleable” or, or, or. …All the while continuing to believe in the author and trying to conceive of a way to bring things to the needed place.
The long and short of it here? That was a pivotal phone call. And you astonished. The book you handed us at the end was a surprise—a different thing altogether, although it still contained the kind of polished writing you’d already demonstrated. I wonder… did it surprise even you?
Megan Willome says
This is so interesting to read, to hear your perspective. So helpful for me to know.
And yes, it did surprise me. I sent it in with no clue whether it would meet the criteria for publishing. I knew I had given it my best and that it did help me to write it even if it never found an audience.
L.L. Barkat says
It exceeded the criteria 😉 Such a beautiful book! 🙂
Not just in publishing stories, but in so many of our stories of just-plain-life, this is such a great reminder that people really do have different ways of looking at things, of understanding what’s going on at any given time. It does encourage one to remember to ask questions (and, Jody, to your reply below, thanks 🙂 ).
Jody Collins says
L.L. Barkat, your gift for question-asking is what makes you such a remarkable human (well, and publisher), resulting in a gift to the rest of us, wrapped in the package of remarkable stories…and poetry.
Megan Willome says
So true, Jody! I can say that knowing she was the one saying the hard words made me listen to them. I trust her.
Donna says
I’m speechless.
Donna says
Except for this: Megan, thank you for sharing all this.
And, for the elephants.
Donna says
And this- sometimes all of the elephants try to put their foot on the page, and it becomes a stampede. And they stir up so much dust I go blind.
Megan Willome says
Ah, dust. The dust in our stories, Donna, as you talked about in the TJOP book club. As Sally Clark talked about in the book.
Thanks for reading along, Donna.
Donna Falcone says
Oh my goodness, the dust. I had forgotten about the dust. Sigh.
That is interesting.
SimplyDarlene says
Oh Megan –
Somehow I missed this piece when it first posted here several months ago, but I want you to know it’s beauty – in so many ways.
My take-always:
There’s hope *in* the imperfection of a first draft.
Not all elephants are meant be eaten one bite at a time until they disappear.
Elephants can be relocated and released with a pencil.
Megan Willome says
Love your takeaways, Darlene!
I recently returned to that first draft, looking for something and found something else useful. I’m glad I kept it. Hope you figure out what your elephant–and you–need.
Donna says
I love revisiting these pieces, and so was thrilled to see it pop up on Twitter – I’m so impressed by everything about your story and process, and how you stitched and restitched the work, about elephants in rooms, and I just want to tip my hat.
Megan Willome says
Thank you, Donna!