Parenting A Book
When I was in the process of writing my memoir, Rudolph, Frosty, And Captain Kangaroo: The Musical Life of Hecky Krasnow – Producer of the World’s Most Beloved Children’s Songs, it was akin to being pregnant. This new creation that would eventually emerge into the world grew within me daily and absorbed me completely. I did other things: socialized, shopped, gave performances, and took care of family. Yet, every moment the book was in the writing process, I could feel the stirrings of its creation.
Sending the manuscript to the publisher had all the pangs of labor. I had to let this life of words that had spent nearly two years gestating come out of me and have a life of its own. Suddenly, I didn’t want to let it go, just like I’d wanted to keep my first-born child within me in a womb of a lifetime of dreams about what a child of mine would be like. In actually giving birth, imagination would become reality and responsibility. The pain of letting go was both harsh and a relief.
As with that first-born child and the three who followed, though my attentiveness and nurturing continued and does so to this day, adults that they may now be, I put my manuscript out there. As with my children who have turned out well, so has the manuscript, which is now a book advertised and sold on the Internet and soon to be in the stores. Having given birth to my memoir, I now have to parent it with nurture, attending to its development through book talks and signings. As with my children whom I hoped would bring home good report cards when they were in school, I now await reviews of my book and hope the reviews are good.
Once a parent, we are always a parent. Our children are our children: Likewise with a book. We do not relinquish our concern over it and must continue to nurture what we have written if we want the effort put into what we wanted to say through all those words to have its effect upon the readers whom our words reach. We must do so by taking it to activities – readings, signings, interviews and more just as we chauffeured our children to dance lessons, Little League, friends’ homes and more.
Caring for a child can be overwhelming, yet we go on and get pregnant and give birth to more: Likewise with a book. The next one lurks, waiting for the right moment for conception, and the whole cycle begins again.