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Kathy Gibbons: Northern Living

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July 4, 2010

Kathy Gibbons: Kids' turn to be proud

By KATHY GIBBONS Local Columnist

An enduring memory of my childhood is the arrival, like clockwork, of big manila envelopes in the mail.

They were addressed to my mother. Over time, I realized that the handwriting was hers.

They were the stamped self-addressed envelopes aspiring writers include when they send their manuscripts to publishers via snail mail. They would come back with a form rejection letter and the manuscript. They appreciated her thinking of them — thanks, but no thanks.

Now my mother had five children by the time she was 26. She didn't start driving until I was at least 10, if not older. She didn't go to college until I was almost 17, taking classes during the day while we were in school and eventually earning a master's degree.

Through it all, she never stopped writing. Eventually those form letters gave way to personal letters — rejections still, but including praise and encouragement along with suggestions for improvement.

She joined writers groups, attended conferences, got an agent to take a chance on her, and kept writing. Finally she sold a mystery to a big publisher. It was exciting. But after that flurry of activity, nothing.

Still, she didn't give up. Turning to short stories, she found success, getting them published in magazines and literary journals. She took up freelance writing and reviewing other people's books. She taught writing seminars and workshops.

And she kept writing her own books that didn't get published. Along the way, she'd give manuscripts to me to read. I would become incensed because 1. What she'd written was so far superior to some of the formulaic fiction that can appeal to the mass market — think Danielle Steele, not that I'm above grabbing one myself from the free paperback rack at the library when going on vacation — and 2. She had a bad habit of giving me books that weren't finished. So I'd become completely engrossed in the story, anticipating reading to the end to find out what happens, unable to put it down, only to run out of book because she hadn't written the last chapter yet. I still don't know how some of them ended.

A few years ago, she switched direction and began writing a series of mysteries set in northern Michigan. Well, she's having a little success with those books. Three have been published, and with each one, the momentum builds a little more. She jokes that she's going to be the Betty White of the literary world, though she's got a lot of years to go to catch up with Betty White.

Meanwhile, she's always been right there with pride and praise when one of her kids or grandkids achieves something good. Now it's nice for all of us to sit proudly on the sidelines, taking our turn cheering her on.

Kathy Gibbons can be reached at gibbonskath@ yahoo.com. For more of Kathy's columns, log on to record-eagle.com/kathygibbons.

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