I’m not sure how this all came to be. And I’m not just talking about the book.
Somehow, from the back of our family’s van, the coming-of-age story of an eleven-year-old girl began to materialize. It started with short passages. Thoughts came while I watched the highway scenes, as I sat with the boys at night, while waiting through doctor visits and therapy sessions, as I stole time in the garden—pretty much anywhere. Words scratched on seed bags and thoughts in my head became passages and chapters. When I would sit down to write, my characters seemed to manifest through the keyboard. I didn’t outline or make plans for my story. Goldie Bird just came from…somewhere.
I think we write what we know.
My daughter-in-law, Emily, an admirably avid reader, was among the first to give feedback for Goldie Bird. Her sole (outward) criticism at the time was that perhaps some of the vocabulary was a little much for an eleven-year-old girl, as the story is told in first-person perspective. She did ask me, though, what had happened to me when I was eleven. That’s when I realized that Goldie and I were inextricably linked.
On one of my best days every year, I meet up with my college friend, Kim, in Rockford, our landing place between our homes. She, too, had read my first draft of Goldie Bird. She told me she thought there was too much crying in the book. Then she looked up from her lunch to ask a question that has been pivotal in my reflections as a writer.
“What percent of Goldie is you?”
As I thought about what Kim had asked, I saw bits and pieces of people I have known, places I have been, and things I have done woven into Goldie’s story. Goldie, in many ways, must be me, pulling loose ends of my own story together so it makes a bit more sense in my head. Goldie is also an expression of feelings and emotions, captured in the form of a young girl who is trying to find her own way.
My dear friend’s simple question has had a profound effect on me, as a writer and as a human.
Fiction writers have the liberty of adding details and embellishments to craft characters as they hope the world will see them. I don’t see, though, how these characters cannot be part of who we are or what we have known.
I was a bit younger than Goldie when I went with my mom and sister to gather the belongings of my great grandmother, Sadie Golden, after her passing. Goldie’s story begins as she and Mama travel to Heritage, Alabama to settle her great aunt’s estate. Our stories are not the same, but as I sat to write of the overwhelm of foster care, the connections between sisters, anxiety, shame, and the search for belonging, it became clear that Goldie’s tale and my own story are very much connected. I believe that anyone who reads Goldie Bird
will find parts of themselves in the pages.
I had no idea there was such a thing as middle grade fiction. I never really thought about ratings or genres for books. Of course, I had read books with adolescent main characters such as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and even the Little House series. Goldie Bird, I figured, would fit somewhere in the literary world, wouldn’t it?
I toughened up the characters in a few scenes to get rid of some of the crying and tried to clean up some of my rambling descriptions.
Goldie Bird landed in the capable hands of Whitney (Whitney’s Book Works), an editor and author that I had found in a Facebook writer’s group, for professional editing. When she had finished her edits, I asked her for some direction. She suggested I turn to Our Galaxy Publishing, an innovative new press out of New York.
And then came Christine, the most well-read person I have ever encountered. We had a phone call nearly four years ago. Right away, I knew this was supposed to happen. Christine is similar in age to my older boys. I am awestruck at what she and her work partner Lindsay (formatting artist and excellent human) have accomplished with Our Galaxy.
Christine, too, sees her younger self in Goldie. Though the press went through many stages and much evolution through the years we have worked together, we somehow kept Goldie’s connection through many rounds of edits before sharing the work with beta readers.
And the beta readers! I’m so thankful for the feedback which ultimately polished the story into something far more reader-friendly (and about 30,000 fewer words) than what they were first given. Audre, Bernadette, Jackie, Chrissy, Barbie, Tristan, Lisa, Jamie, Amy, Tricia, and anyone else out there who may have had that early manuscript (I don’t even know for certain), please know that I am sincerely grateful for your energy, time, and feedback!
Somewhere in the middle of all the Goldie stuff, Our Galaxy published the second edition of my memoir, Isn’t That Enough?
Patricia Kirk, a magical local artist, did the cover art for both of these books.
Yesterday, I opened my mailbox to find my proof copy of Goldie Bird. It’s surreal to hold it, the culmination of so many years of emotion, change, and energy. On December 10, Goldie Bird will be officially released. I think we’re ready. I think Goldie’s ready. XO
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