Adulthood: Artist? Or Yuppie?
Finishing grad school at age twenty-nine, I pretty much resigned myself to being a starving writer, but I found out that a large Boston publishing company, Houghton Mifflin, was hiring proofreaders for short-term contracts. I took a proofing test, got hired, and stayed for fifteen years as an editor of elementary and college textbooks. I remained true to my vocation part time, writing and submitting short stories and participating in local writers' groups. By age forty I completed my first YA novel, called The Four Lessons. It was about a clique of popular, mean girls who try to mold a newcomer to their rules. In the end she remains true to herself. I shopped it around to a few publishers, not realizing it was a total cliché. (As a friend says, "Novels are like pancakes. You have to throw the first one away.") That disappointment caused my ambitions to wither a bit.
But one morning I woke up and heard a little voice inside telling me to quit my job and write The Opposite of Music. Over a six-month period I figured out how to do that, and I dug up the notes I had made many years before. I submitted an early chapter to PEN New England's Discovery Awards and won. That gave me validation that I was on the right track. I had a sense of rightness and inevitability about this project that had been missing from the clunky, derivative Four Lessons. I wrote a book that was exciting and not a cliché and that got favorable attention from potential publishers. There were some setbacks to publication. One editor loved my manuscript so much that she didn't want to return it once it was rejected. And once I did find a home at Atheneum Books for Young Readers, we did so much revising that the publication date got pushed back a year. But there was no feeling in the world like holding that first hardcover copy in my hands.
Finishing grad school at age twenty-nine, I pretty much resigned myself to being a starving writer, but I found out that a large Boston publishing company, Houghton Mifflin, was hiring proofreaders for short-term contracts. I took a proofing test, got hired, and stayed for fifteen years as an editor of elementary and college textbooks. I remained true to my vocation part time, writing and submitting short stories and participating in local writers' groups. By age forty I completed my first YA novel, called The Four Lessons. It was about a clique of popular, mean girls who try to mold a newcomer to their rules. In the end she remains true to herself. I shopped it around to a few publishers, not realizing it was a total cliché. (As a friend says, "Novels are like pancakes. You have to throw the first one away.") That disappointment caused my ambitions to wither a bit.
But one morning I woke up and heard a little voice inside telling me to quit my job and write The Opposite of Music. Over a six-month period I figured out how to do that, and I dug up the notes I had made many years before. I submitted an early chapter to PEN New England's Discovery Awards and won. That gave me validation that I was on the right track. I had a sense of rightness and inevitability about this project that had been missing from the clunky, derivative Four Lessons. I wrote a book that was exciting and not a cliché and that got favorable attention from potential publishers. There were some setbacks to publication. One editor loved my manuscript so much that she didn't want to return it once it was rejected. And once I did find a home at Atheneum Books for Young Readers, we did so much revising that the publication date got pushed back a year. But there was no feeling in the world like holding that first hardcover copy in my hands.
Performing with Tony as The Dorymates.
Soon afterward, Atheneum asked what else I had up my sleeve, and I found myself inking contracts for Things I Shouldn't Think and My Beautiful Failure. Now I work part time as a writer and editor, and
I've turned more attention to my secondary talent, singing. For three years I performed in the Andrews Sisters-like Hixville Swing Trio, and I sing maritime and Celtic music with my husband in a duo called The Dorymates.
(Want to know even more? Read my biographical fun facts.)
I've turned more attention to my secondary talent, singing. For three years I performed in the Andrews Sisters-like Hixville Swing Trio, and I sing maritime and Celtic music with my husband in a duo called The Dorymates.
(Want to know even more? Read my biographical fun facts.)
