Five Pages a Day (7 page)

In front of our motor home with Daisy
.

It took us across the country many times, visiting

schools, libraries, and bookstores where

I gave talks or did signings
.

Pete and Molly checking out the campground

from the motor home window and resting up

for the three
A.M.
“Cat Follies.”

When I arrived at schools to give talks, “Welcome” signs always pleased me
.

Carl and me at the humane society with the January 1989 Pet of the Month
.

Receiving the Young Hoosier Award (1992), my first children's choice award, from Nancy McGriff, Association of Indiana Media Educators. What a thrill!

In my study with
Small Steps
and other books
.

{ 8 }

Cheers and Tears

A
fter attending a workshop at a mental health clinic, I wrote an article on how to overcome depression and sold it to
Good Housekeeping
. I had finally accomplished one of my magazine goals. After publishing more than two hundred anonymous stories, I liked seeing my byline in
Good Housekeeping
, and I did some serious thinking about my career.

By then I was averaging one anonymous story per week and selling everything I wrote. Most of my stories were five thousand words long, so I was earning a decent amount and having fun as well.

Yet I knew it wasn't enough. I wanted to see my work in print, but I also wanted recognition. Publishing without a byline was no way to become known as a writer.

My one-act plays and skits were doing well, so I decided to try a full-length play. Two weeks of every month, I wrote stories to earn some money. The rest of the time I worked on a play with a subplot about a girl who entered contests. (Years later, I used contests again in the novel
Saving Lilly
.)

A local dinner theater produced my play before it was published, which was useful to me as I polished the script.

I wrote three more full-length plays and many short skits while I continued to do anonymous stories.

One of the plays,
Spirit!
, is about an elderly woman in a nursing home who gets in trouble for hosting poker parties and ordering pizza.
Spirit!
won the Forest Roberts Playwriting Award from Northern Michigan University. Part of the prize was a trip to Michigan to see the performance.

I flew to Michigan for three exciting days. The cast and director met me at the airport, all wearing T-shirts advertising my play. On our way to the campus, we passed a big community reader board. It said, WELCOME PEG KEHRET, WINNING PLAYWRIGHT. I had the driver stop on the side of the road so I could hop out and take a picture.

I sat in the auditorium on opening night, over whelmed as the people of my imagination walked around on stage, speaking the words I had written for them. The audience laughed at the funny lines and wiped away tears at the poignant ending.

During the curtain call, there were cries of “Author! Author!” As I went forward to take a bow, I thought, This is what it feels like to be a successful writer. Never again would I be satisfied to write anonymously.

If I stopped writing the stories, I would give up a steady source of income. But by then I wanted my name on my writing more than I wanted it on a check.

I asked myself this question: If you knew it would get published, what would you write?

My answer was, a novel. Fiction was fun to write, and I had especially enjoyed telling a story in more than one chapter. I imagined how it would feel to hold in my hands a book that I had written.

It took me a year to write an adult mystery titled
The Ransom at Blackberry Bridge
. With high hopes, I sent it to a literary agent in New York. Many writers have agents who submit their work to publishing companies for them and handle business details with publishers.

My novel came back with a letter from the agent. She said, “You write well, but your heroine seems awfully young. Have you ever considered writing for children?”

I spent another four months revising the book, turning it into a mystery for kids. I made many mistakes during this process. The biggest one was that I did not read any current young adult or middle-grade fiction; I just plowed ahead on my own. When I finished the book the second time, the agent agreed to represent me.

While I waited for her to sell my novel, I wrote another play. Soon after it was published, the agent returned my novel, along with a list of all the publishers who had turned it down.

I stood in my kitchen clutching that list while tears streamed down my cheeks. It had taken me a year to write a novel, and it was not going to be published. Maybe I should give up writing, I thought, and get a “real” job.

I had made that mistake before. Once I had gotten a real estate license. I sold two condominiums, loathed every second of it, and quit. Later I took a part-time position at City Hall, intending to work there half of each day and write the other half. By the time I got dressed up and drove to City Hall, the part-time job took most of the day, and I got little writing done. When I left that job, I felt as if I'd been released from prison.

I knew I could never be happy doing any work except writing, yet I was so discouraged over my unsold book that the next day I signed up as a temporary office worker. I was asked to type bills for an elevator company. The job lasted three days, which was two-and-a-half days too long for me. By noon on the first day, I ached to be home writing.

None of these jobs were unpleasant or difficult; they just didn't excite me. When I write, I'm challenged, wholly engaged, and have a sense of doing important work. Hours pass without my realizing it.

There is great satisfaction in imagining people, places, and situations, and then writing about them in a way that makes them seem real to others. When I write, I pour my own thoughts, feelings, fears, hopes, and ideals into the pages. Because I write about things that matter to me, my own voice speaks from my work even when I write fiction.

After three days of typing bills, I admitted that I would forever be a writer. My novel had not sold, but at least I had written it. I had done my best, and that was better than not trying. How I use my time is more crucial than how much I earn. From then on I did the work I loved and never again took a “real” job.

I was fortunate to have this choice. Carl made enough money for our family to live on, and he enthusiastically supported my writing efforts. Even in the years when I published little, he believed in my work and encouraged me.

Writers need time to experiment with ideas and words, time to concentrate on a manuscript, time to revise, time to daydream. My husband gave me the luxury of time to write.

I longed to write a second novel for children, but decided I should stick to what I did well. I didn't want to waste another year on a book that wouldn't get published.

The editor of a new magazine called
Woman's World
told me she would publish one short story in each issue and asked if I would like to submit something.

I wrote a story about a young woman who ignores her likable but ordinary boyfriend because she dreams of marrying the star player of the New York Yankees. When I saw “‘Major League Love' by Peg Kehret” in a national magazine, I bought ten copies and gave them to family and friends.

I wrote many more stories for
Woman's World
and all said “by Peg Kehret.” I also wrote stories and poems for children's magazines.

One day I got out the chart that I used to keep track of my submissions and realized that my system might help other writers. I wrote “Something in the Mail Every Friday”—and made my first sale to the
Writer
. Another of my magazine goals got checked off.

I never did sell an article to the
Reader's Digest
, but when I opened an unexpected letter from them, out dropped a check. They had reprinted one of the verses I had originally sold to the
Wall Street Journal
.

I laughed as I crossed off the third and final magazine on my list of goals. It had not happened the way I expected, but that was okay. A sale is a sale!

{ 9 }

Alzheimer's Disease

W
hen I was little, I called him Daddy. Later he was Dad. That changed to Father when I was fifteen. It started as a joke, but the joke became an affectionate nickname that stuck, and Art and I called him Father from then on.

“Father” sounds formal and old-fashioned, while my dad was easygoing and full of fun—until he was sixty-two, and diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. This horrible disease robbed him of his memory, his personality, and his ability to care for himself. It changed not only his life, but my mother's life and the lives of everyone in my family.

When Father was diagnosed, few people knew anything about Alzheimer's disease. There were no books to inform families how this devastating illness progresses, so I decided to write one.