"That's an ugly cover," said Claire, lovingly. Well, it used to be this:
Thanks for the consult, Jeff and Jana Parkin! It is a fact, at least for obscure authors, that the Press is pretty well in charge of a book's design. And that being said, this Press was very courteous in communicating, and responding to suggestions and requests. And in fact, the cover gives a good idea of what the book is actually about.
So there.
Background ...
... McFarland accepted the proposal for this thing in December of 2011, for heaven's sake.
Here's a fun fact. The original proposal was for a pretty expansive, dare-we-say comprehensive study about books' and films' effectively complementary coverage of the culture of childhood.
When was that proposal first written? Can't quite remember! BYU/TMA's kids' media class started way back in 2000, or so. The idea evolved and shaped itself over the following few years. I think maybe it was formed into an actual and specific outline in 2008 or so. (Other publications and initiatives, together with a rejection or two, filled the intervening years.)
A very polished proposal, that still reads really well, eventually got finished, and got sent out to quite a number of places. Penguin, and Palgrave. Harvard, Rutgers. OUP even. The record should show that Harvard rejected it really quickly!
As for the rest, the general response was that the proposal was good, and the idea sounded good, but that the subject was too specific. And that therefore the market was likely to be too small.
Can't blame them for that, can you?
After all that, McFarland said yes. Here's the original proposal, the original plan:
It was going to be called The Evolution of the Language of Childhood: the Roots and Branches of Children's Media.
The first chapter would argue that films are as good as books, and then go on to address what both have taught us about the nature of children.
The second chapter would discuss the productive tension between didactic and anarchic narrative. The words "centripetal" and "centrifugal" would appear in the title, which is something I'll bet everyone would have enjoyed.
Next came Hollywood, Adventure and Escape.
That was followed, of course, by Fairy Tales, and the Disney Monopoly.
Quit talking about adaptation all the time, humanities people! Chapter five wanted to be about the Pictorial Tradition, and a Sense of Wonder.
Modernism, he said starkly.
Not enough socialism around here. The next chapter would cover Social Activism and the Political Appropriation of Children.
Socialism continued, kind of: Children's Realism and the Return of the Fairy Tale. Did the fairy tale actually return, or had it gone anywhere? Not sure, but the title sounded distinguished-like.
Can you see the light, at the end of this tunnel? Chapter nine was fixing to cover Educational and Non-fictional publications/productions.
And finally, culminatingly, Familial Voices in Literature and Media.
That was the original idea. The eventual, actual book has an acknowledgments section, an introduction, and two distinct parts or sections with eight chapters distributed between them. It clocks out to a pretty modest but not inconsiderable 222 pages—with another 50 or so of notes and such—and is completely dedicated to what was going to be the first chapter of the initial proposal.
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| This image seems appropriate, somehow |
Much later, McFarland wanted to change the title. So we did.
Stories of Childhood was almost completely written on this device, though it was not completely or even hardly written on this chair.
As mentioned, the proposal was accepted in December of 2011. The last paragraph of the manuscript was finally finished in very early January of 2015. Sounds like four whole years! Let's say, rather, that it took a good 37 months, perhaps in honour of the elapsed time between Matt's and Claire's births.
The last paragraph that I just mentioned was written right here, in this very spot.
The last paragraph didn't actually know it was the last paragraph at the time. It was written, then it paused and thought for a while. There then broke upon the consciousness of that last paragraph the almost exultant—if it hadn't been so long in coming!—realization that it really was the last paragraph!
There was always a sense, back there, that this thing would eventually be finished. But that devoutly desired conclusion felt pretty far away sometimes!
Important locations ...
... Most enjoyably, probably, and really productively, and almost certainly more than was really or actually necessary, there were the kids' sections of our local libraries. (Also three branches in London, and two in Chicago, and the one in La Cañada, CA ...) Most of the notes had already been written, really. But it seemed like a good idea to read some more kids' books ...
There are lots of those at BYU, and in its exemplary collection. Here I spent hours and hours, days and weeks, tremendous months all the way into the fall of 2012. Lots of subsequent visits too, ostensibly to keep up on latest publications, but the real reason was probably to look busy without doing any actual work. Reading beats writing any day!
Springville now. I'm at that far table, and on that one chair:
Here are their kids' books, just to the left of that previous photographic frame:
Orem, also. Here's where the books are. That's me, on that sofa over there.
That would continue. But in the fall of 2012, and into 2013, I started thinking. Better get down to work here. Get this stuff organized. As in, I better get over to the library. I better figure out how to actually use a library!
So I got myself a faculty research room, on the 5th floor of BYU's HBLL.
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| These young ladies aren't actually involved with this story |
There's the door. There's a skewed photographic composition. There's a stretch of work that was pretty honest, but not particularly productive. Also, naps, right in there.
In addition to snoozing, I was losing. I neglected to renew, so lost my nice 5th floor slot, and was consigned in 2013 to this room in the bowels of the building.
Not too distinguished! I read mystery novels. Then I forgot my pass code. For a number of weeks I would go down there, punching in words like Rumpelstiltskin. Never did remember the original.
Now that I think of it, I could have asked, couldn't I have?
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| It's tough being a scholar, & knowing everything |
... 2012 somehow becomes 2013. Remember those nine other proposed chapters, that I never got to? Except that I sort of did. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of single-spaced pages, lots of sketched out and organized and even outright polished sections, that just didn't make the final cut. Maybe I'll get back to them, someday ...
Gotta bear down! Summer and fall of 2013, right on this very familiar couch!
Things are feeling good actually, but suddenly I'm noticing that this is really expansive! To the point that I'll probably die before I get around to finishing it. I didn't mention this earlier, but McFarland and I had kind of agreed that I'd finish the book in a year.
Ha!
At the same time that I'm feeling dwarfed by the extent of my own project, I notice that some sections feel kind of thin.
This all happens as the months go passing by. I notice that I can, I really should just jettison all of that extra stuff.
It's good, maybe, but so unwieldy! I alternate between really liking it, and nearly drowning in it.
How 'bout this? Focus on those first two chapters, which turn into something about books and films, something about childish and childlike, something about didacticism and anarchy. Quote Hans Christian Andersen at the end. Bob's your uncle!
So now I'm sitting on that sectional in the family room, going all the way through a bunch of key kids books to draw out and then further organize the various points I was trying to make. Or, in case those points don't actually add up to anything, a burgeoning series of long quoted excerpts has the potential of disguising that fact.
Also, D.W. Griffith.
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| The Female of the Species (1912) |
Progress! I think! Let's see if that's the case.
Back to the BYU library I go, for a lot of cutting and binding sessions. I wasn't liking those research rooms, and opted instead for some open spaces. Saturday mornings, at which time you get the place pretty well to yourself.
Much good work went on right here:
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| That kid is sitting in my spot! |
But not as good, not as much as in Grandma and Grandpa's upstairs family room, where I spent the entire month of May, 2014. Write, read, go for a walk, listen to some music, take a nap, see a movie, eat stuff. Repeat. A Room of One's Own!
The result of this superb excursion was a kind of leaping forward. And a thought, suddenly. I'm going to finish this thing, aren't I?
Now I'm remembering some really good writing sessions, really remembering and appreciating where they took place. I'm thinking about how stirred I was to write the part about children in the Bible, up at the University of Utah, after one of Sarah's spring soccer games.
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| Right in there! |
The section on Chaplin's The Pilgrim, sitting at John Day's kitchen table in Holladay. The part about Emile Zola at Steve and Erin's cabin near Heber, and in the conference room up on the second floor of the BYU Broadcast Building.
Other things: while I was in California, the actual Drew Duncan did an editorial pass through some of the earlier chapters, which were pretty well done. This is the summer of 2014 now, while we Spence and Claire and I were in London. This stretched into the fall. BYU's Faculty Editing Service went through the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb, and yanked out a tangle or two. It was a really cool process!
As fall 2014 closed, I got to sitting on our red couch that we'd gotten back from Sarah's house in Salt Lake City. Closer, and closer, and closer ...
We already mentioned January 2014. Over it goes! As it turns out, after you're done you're still not done. McFarland, what with the fact that it's also preparing and publishing a bunch of other manuscripts, simultaneously, took quite a while to get to and through my stuff.
They requested some eight changes in total, all of them small ones.
Then, approved. Then, a last microscopular read-through by me. Which flushed out 69 more typos, format flubs, mis-words and miscellaneous errors! You think you're done, and you're never done.
Is this infernal post long enough yet?
Never as long, or as agonizing as the actual process that it describes! And yet ...
"A woman when she is in travail hath
sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child,
she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world."
In other words, the cries and whispers fade away ...
