NoJoMo 14 -- Books And Other Nonsense in The Common Room

Questions are better prompts.

I was asked about being a “published author.”

When I was about five years old, I asked my father why some books were silly and others were “good.” My father always took me seriously and answered that there was a pattern for books and that I should list the things that were alike in the “good” books and compare with the “silly” ones.

When I was done with the lists, which took sever al weeks because I was an intense child, Daddy looked at the list and we talked. I remember that the list said that the main person (or animal) needed to be interesting’ there needed to be a problem; the problem needed to be fixed; something needed to be learned.
Daddy said that I should practice by writing a story that met those conditions.

I wrote it several times before I was satisfied. The story was about a fat lady in a circus .She was really very kind and nice but no one knew it because she was different and no one talked to her or wanted to be friends with her. She couldn’t walk on stilts or swallow swords or lift heavy things like some others could. She couldn’t ride elephanats or walk a tight rope. She had nothing to do but eat chocolates.

One day the lion got out. He was very hungry because the keeper had forgotten to feed him his lunch. Wherever the lion went, people screamed and ran. Some threw things at him and tried to hurt him. Only the fat lady stayed still and thought. She put a chocolate on the ground and the hungry lion stopped to eat it. She made a trail of chocolates into the lion’s cage and stood still while the lion went in . She shut the door and no one was hurt.

The circus wanted to make a fuss over her, They were glad that she had been different.

When I first wrote the story, The ending was that the people all wanted to be friends afterward but she only talked to the lion. Who needed to be friends with people who were stupid and mean? That wouldn’t have been according to the pattern so I took that part out. I had already learned that Truth was not part of the pattern.

Daddy and I printed the story out on our press, which lived in the garage and Daddy drew some nice cartoons of circus people on the pages, in between the words, and we were through with that. Daddy was just leaving for the Navy (WW II).

He got his own story for that month ready to be mailed off to several magazines and I wanted to send mine too. Daddy printed another copy and gave me a stamp to send it. He addressed a mailer to the publisher’s address on my favorite story book and left.

It took me several days to, carefully, reproduce Daddy’s cartoons. When Mama went to the postoffice to take Daddy’s submissions, I slipped in my own . She didn’t notice because Daddy had addressed it.

When the details and dust-up were all over, the little book (under a pseudonym) enjoyed two printiungs and earned the enormous sum of $10, which I gave to the USO.

If you’re good little bloggers and eat all your veggies, I’ll tell you about the second book – a taudry romance written to prove a point

Blessed Be

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This little children’s book was printed in and sold for 1 year in the mid 1940s
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Last updated November 14, 2014