I wrote my first play when I was 6 years old. Titled “Mommy’s Hard Day,” it was taken from real-life events I had witnessed around me with my stay-at-home mother, my work-from-home commercial-artist father and the four children of which I was the eldest, back in the early 1960s.
Working my way to the person I eventually became, I produced the play myself, at 6, there on the family patio for the neighborhood to attend, cast it with my siblings and some kids from the neighborhood, and drew my own sign as the marquee. The height of the work’s arc was when the mommy character (played by me) yelled at the four children to “Shut up!” which, in the 1960s, was evidently allowed with no hurt feelings.
So, I’ve been my own producer for a long time. I continued writing through elementary school, junior high and high school, and remember my first college writing professor telling me that I wrote “great dialogue that’s held together with chewing gum and hair.” Satisfied, I resumed my theatrical chops and went back to composing “great dialogue” for the stage.
Years later, I came north and began writing for my customers when I bought and re-opened Elmer’s Store. I began a column for the Ashfield News about everything we had going in a month, and then added a weekly email called, “Notes to the Interested” that I sent out to an astonishing 1,200 people who signed up to read my stories (as well as the weekly dinner specials) that I sent out every Wednesday. Throughout that career I was my own editor, and I appreciated my own technique and humor greatly.
That work caught the attention of a real, live literary agent in 2018 who connected me with George Forcier, the editor of the Greenfield Recorder. George liked my writing, and hired me as a columnist for the paper, my first-ever paid writing gig. George didn’t rearrange much in my stories, so I was able to skip blithely along, revel in my own brilliance, and say pretty much anything I wished, in any fashion I desired.
Six months later, George retired and a new editor took over the Recorder, an editor who was a novelist and took the works of her writers as seriously and personally as she did her own.
Me, I was an animated contributor who decorated my enthusiasm with a flutter of exclamation points. The world was an exciting place and I had much to shout about it. This new editor cared a great deal about how her paper presented to the public, and declared that my relying on those little sticks and dots to make my points was lazy and, in fact, hindered the real points I was trying to make. And furthermore, I wasn’t quite as clever as I might think; much of what I danced upon could be cut and re-worked to become clearer and, in fact, more entertaining than what I had turned in. In short, she was an editor, something I hadn’t been hampered by before, and suddenly it was time for me to shut up and listen once again.
Well, of course I was offended by all of that, but I knew I had to fix this if I wanted to continue the pleasures of writing my column. I closed my eyes and thought about what she was telling me, for a good, long time. When I opened them and began to write again, I frisked my brain and found some rich words to replace all the cheap stop signs I had relied on to animate my tales. And, as annoying as it was to accept, my sentences got better, they built better structures, and I learned to write, really write, and not just entertain myself.
And now, damn it, that fine editor is leaving us. This is Joan Livingston’s last week at the Recorder as editor-in-chief and I imagine I speak for more than just myself when I say how much we will miss her. Thank you, Joan, for your sharp honesty that (and I’m not making this up) taught me to respect my editors and listen to what you knew was true. Interestingly enough, I recently ran into a newspaper editor I had sent some pieces to a few years earlier, told him this story and he said, “I tried to talk to you about your vehement use of exclamation points years ago.” That’s how stubborn I was — I disdained it all until Joan came along.
Thank you, Joan, for your friendship and your hard and honest work. I look forward to the creations that writing for yourself will give you the time to produce. But most importantly, thank you very much for taking the time to teach me, finally, how to write.
Nan Parati lives and works in Ashfield, where she found home and community following Hurricane Katrina. She can be reached at NanParati@aol.com