I had another great book event Saturday!
Author Tess Clarkson and I shared our Chicken Soup for the Soul stories with readers, spreading love and faith and perspective.
I have to thank Tess a bajillion times over. She organized the event and has been a positive presence in the lives of so many people. She’s a writer to watch for as she’s preparing her first fiction novel for audiences.
Getting out and spreading the art of writing is one of the best aspects of this job. There are so many people with so many stories that we can all relate on a basic level. Plus there’s something about walking into a library you’ve never been to that makes everything more exciting.
I did bring four of my five children this time around. They were…. mostly behaved and entertained themselves with the kiddie corner.
But as you can see, no family is perfect and I don’t photoshop pictures haha I’d rather remember things as they are than pretend they’re some movie version of reality.
Life is way more fun the way it is. Flaws and all. Maybe that’s why I write nonfiction. I just love it.
I always have. I was discussing this with Tess after our reading.
She’s a nonfiction fan as well, and we both lamented the fact that so many readers overlook it. There was a time when I was working my tail off on science fiction and fantasy stories. I even dabbled in some literary fiction and it was so frustrating because it’s not my thing.
When my husband and I first moved in together we got some new bookshelves and as we were putting our books together he noted all the nonfiction I have and love. I told him I’ve always enjoyed REAL stories of people doing great things.
He asked me: Why did you ever write fiction?
It made me stop. He reminded me how naturally my nonfiction comes out and gets published. It is where I got my start. My first writing credit was nonfiction and that was after I was asked to write it and then got a column.
Sure I enjoyed fiction from Ray Bradbury and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Susan Fletcher wrote my favorite fantasy series that I read in middle school, but it was true, nonfiction had my heart.
I’ll never forget the first time I read “Born Free.” My mother noticed my love of nonfiction and told me about a woman who had raised a lion cub and wrote a book about it.
I was about nine years old when I first read the story and I was hooked. Nonfiction held so much truth. It showed the best and worst of the world. It was perfectly balanced.
I thought about my husband’s question and realized I had been trying my hand at fiction because when I first started submitting my writing I was married to my ex-husband, a fantasy geek who was deep in Neil Gaiman and Charles De Lint books. Now, I’m a very determined person and I don’t let other people tell me what to do, but I am influenced by the people around me and I deeply care what they think about my writing (a serious problem, for sure). It took me way too long to understand why my career had been so bumpy–I had been writing for someone else.
My ex tried his hand at writing a few stories and even submitted a couple. Since I had always written, I did it with him. He showed me a fantasy anthology call for stories and we both worked on something. Neither of our work got in, but he pretty much gave up.
I didn’t give up. I kept writing and submitting.
What’s worse is that I could pinpoint when and where the push to prove myself to him really happened. When my first children’s book was in the publishing process and I was anxiously awaiting release day, my ex and I (we were still married at the time) went hiking. Hiking eases my mind, it helps me process everything.
But this time I was thinking out loud a bit too much, and as I looped through all my fears about my very first book release he stopped and screamed at me: It’s just a CHILDREN’S BOOK!
Those first nonfiction credits and my first book release suddenly seemed to mean nothing. It was as if my work didn’t matter to him, because it wasn’t his genre or the genre most adults read. So it wasn’t a real book deal.
It wasn’t mainstream. I had signed with a small indie press so that added to the tension.
This was honestly when I started searching for support elsewhere. My sister always hated everything I wrote and still does. Nothing is good enough for her and never will be. My mother had a hard time with me becoming a writer at first because I had been a singer for so long and worked so hard at it that when I walked away from songwriting and performing it confused and upset her. She had seen me as a singer for so long that it took years for her to take me seriously as a writer.
I think this hit a lot of people in my life more than I thought and I just wanted one person who supported me.
I found that in my children. My daughters were my biggest fans. They loved my first children’s book and still do. My eldest is such a bookworm that she reads everything I write even though she prefers fiction.
But still, having support from a peer is also important.
And I get that from my husband, my REAL husband. The man who somehow can handle all my silliness is the one who knows when to tell me to shut up and write or to drink some tea and go play outside. But he has never once belittled my work. He has never called anything I do “just” anything.
He understands what true stories of hope and survival mean to me. He knows that I am one.
So the reading and the writing continue. And I’m so happy to be in such good company.
Jessica Marie Baumgartner 