There is a time between completing the final manuscript of a book and the publishing of that manuscript where I traditionally enter into an author’s zone of self-doubt and anxiety. These days that zone sounds something like this.
”What if no one reads Money or Love?”
”What if they read Money or Love and hate it?”
”What if I never write another book that engages readers and earns reviews like Crown Hill or Beauty & Grace?”
That desolate territory is where I have been languishing for the last few weeks, until an email from my friend, Maureen Purcell, took me on a bit of a life review.
Maureen and I attended Mt St. Mary High School together many years ago. (That is Maureen behind the wheel and me in the backseat.) We recently reconnected via Facebook, yet our alumni friendship is not the place where the two of us most strongly intersect.
For that we have to go back to 1957 and Blessed Sacrament School, in the Town of Tonawanda. There, as a fresh-faced, uniformed, beanie-wearing third grader, I was taught by a funny, kind, and wise woman named Mrs. Dundon… Maureen’s mother.
Marion Dundon was the ultimate teacher, not because of her educational background or degree. Rather, because she was the mother of eight children, five girls and three boys. That experience provided her a full understanding that at the tender age of 6 or 7 years, each one of her third graders were in need of various levels of discipline and equally generous amounts of love.
While I cannot tell you one english, math or science principle I learned in Mrs. Dundon’s classroom, I clearly remember being treated as if I had value and learning that my little voice mattered.
That life lesson came back vividly when Maureen reached out to me after reading one of my Facebook posts on the challenges of producing an error-free book. Her reaction was a generous offer to proof read Money or Love, relying on the expertise she had developed in years of professional corporate writing/copywriting.
I was honored by her offer, but also uncomfortable about responding. There are few people I allow into my pre-publishing inner sanctum of writing and editing. Mostly it is about the amount of trust it takes to let someone read a manuscript to which I have devoted two or more years of my life and a great deal of my heart and soul. When I finally found the courage to explain to Maureen my author’s insecurity, she responded with a reply that is now indelibly inscribed in my being.
”It’s not about critiquing your work, it’s about lifting each other up. We will call it a tribute to my mom. She would be very proud of you.”
Those words took me right back to Mrs. Dundon’s third grade classroom and the lessons of self value and worth she taught me there. They also reminded me of the reasons that I write books…to tell the stories of life that I have experienced and witnessed, as only I can do.
Does that make me an Anne Lamott or an Glennon Doyle? Nope. It makes me a Christina M. Abt, of which there is only one. And, as Mrs. Dundon taught me, my voice matters.
Whether Money or Love becomes a best-seller that Hallmark turns into a movie or an unread door stop at the bottom of the pile, I love this book for the characters that define it and their stories they inspired me to create.
I based those stories on a variety of life experiences I have known or observed and told them with a passion for the telling that has defined me for as long as I can remember. At the end of the day, more than booksales or five-star reviews, that is the true measure of who I am as a storyteller and as an individual.
As I await Maureen’s copy edits, I do so wondering if she will like my latest book. And taking great comfort in the fact that, regardless, she believes her mother is proud of me.