Fruity fresh
This is Fruity!
She’s the protagonist in our family’s bedtime stories. She likes to camouflage with flowers. She, like all of us, is sometimes a little bit smelly.
She helped me write a book.
Y’all! I wrote a book. A cute, wee, little book that’s on Amazon, or a nifty downloadable PDF!
My how-to guide to collaborative storytelling with kids is the book I wanted to buy last Fall when I was inspired to start making up stories with my daughter at bedtime. I had read a novel (This is How it Always Is, by Laurie Frankel) that romanticized the practice of telling epic bedtime stories to kids in nightly installments over a decade, and I WAS TOTALLY HOOKED. Sign me up for this life, where I get to effortlessly entertain children without props or planning, give them tools to navigate a complicated world, and weave their ideas into a universe that develops as I speak it into being.
I looked for tools online for how to do this, but didn’t find any. I marvel whenever I find a gap on the Internet. Surely there aren’t any of those left, by now. Alas.
Nevertheless, I persisted! I dove in, awkwardly, but with full commitment, and in a few months, we were trucking along with an eclectic cast of characters and I felt a previously unimagined comfort level with spontaneously spinning tales of adventure with/for a four year old.
Enter: pandemic, isolation, woes of many kinds, and a need to distract myself with something creative. I learned from the Internet that you’re allowed to write a book if you’re an expert in something. Fruity the pig was my creation, so I was a de facto expert. My friend Kate, to whom I am indebted for many things, encouraged me when I told her I was sitting down to write a short book about the how-tos of making up stories for kids from scratch. I told other people, so that I would be embarrassed if I gave up. After all, Brene Brown has taught me about shame. I wield it in ways she probably wouldn’t approve of, but you know, fear of it can motivate. So I typed away.
I am happy that I made a thing and shared it with the world. And now it is out there and some people might read it and have thoughts about it. Maybe it will give people some fun ideas to try as they adventure through the crapshoot of parenting! Maybe I will be seen as wise and thoughtful and clever and maybe my ideas will resonate with people in some small but real way! Maybe there will be a few extra giggles in the world because I inspired someone to try something new! Maybe there will be a few parents who turn to narrative instead of lectures to explore hard things with their kids! Maybe!
Maybe.
Maybe people will think it is (I am) very silly. Maybe people will be disappointed that it’s not as creative as they hoped it would be. Maybe people will think I am making silly choices in how I spend my time and how I explore the world with my family. Maybe I will be embarrassed.
This, friends, is why I have never tried to publish anything before. On a few occasions during law school and seminary, I had advisors and professors encourage me to do a final round of edits, turn a paper into an article, and shop it around for publication. I took this as the highest possible praise (fun fact: I like praise) and left their offices on cloud nine, fully imagining myself taking on these projects.
But I never did. I spent months and months and months researching and writing - exploring some topics that actually matter - and then hid my work because I convinced myself that these papers were just academic exercises to prove to people that I know how to think and write and argue. I got the A’s. But what a waste. Writing well, learning well, making new connections and communicating those connections well sheds light on a small corner of the world in a new way. But I was too afraid of embarrassing myself to toss that light out into the ether and watch it get swept up alongside all the other bits of light that fuel the churning of ideas.
BUT NOT ANYMORE! I am actively (daily) making peace with who and where I am in my life. I believe that parenting kids is a valuable way to be spending my time. I have good ideas.
It may not be a law journal article about the intricacies of the law or a thesis about health care advocacy in the Methodist tradition, but my little book contains truth that has brought extra light to my life - as a parent and a believer in the power of stories. And I have tossed it out into the world - for you, dear reader, and also for me. Follow the Book: Tell me a story facebook page for updates on our storytelling adventures and I’ll continue to share examples of things that worked, and things that spectacularly didn’t.
Hello, vulnerability attached to public creative endeavors. Welcome to my home. There’s a pandemic on, so you might as well stay a while.
