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The Autobiography of Berniece Rabe
My husband looked at me one day and said, "You were always a lot happier when you were out doing things. I think you need to get out of the house and do something interesting. Take a course at the community college. Something just for fun.'' Then he opened the college brochure and, scanning it, declared, "Here's a course in creative writing. Take that. I think you're creative.'' Having no particular objections and a mild curiosity about writers, I thought, why not? But I could not have anticipated the instructor, Marjorie Peters, who'd been a journalist in World War I. Nor the influence her assignment would have on me. She insisted we all bring in a manuscript the following meeting and I went up to her and truthfully declared, "I don't know what to write about." She pushed down her little wire spectacles to the end of her nose, looked me in the eyes, and said, "Well, why don't you write about a fight? That's always good copy." So home I went to stew and worry. What fight? I couldn't invade the privacy of people by reporting their fights! Especially not my own. But desperation always produces, and the night before the manuscript was due, inspiration hit. I saw, in my mind's eye, this great, long farm table with all my brothers and sisters seated around it. Standing at the end of that table was my stepbrother, shouting, "I hate cabbage. I will not eat cabbage! It makes me puke!"
When she finished she pushed those spectacles down on the end of her nose once more and announced to the class, "Now, you've heard an author. Where's the rest of the book?" So I wrote the rest of the book and that's how I became an author. A fluke! I was forty years old when my life took this big turn. When I'd finished the novel, I asked Ms. Peters if she'd critique it for me, for a fee. Heaven knows I needed all the help I could get. I still have trouble with commas. She told me to bring it over. She had two homes, one on the south side of Chicago, near the university, and one not so far from me in Elgin. Her housecleaners always came in her absence. Her housecleaner in Elgin, poor lady, was trying to adjust to normal life after many years in the state hospital. She was doing fine, at first, but then she thought she might do better without her medication. While off of medication, she saw my manuscript and began to read it and was certain the people were real and not just characters. She took it and strewed it up and down State Street. I did not have an extra copy. Fortunately, the police suspected it was more than just trash and collected all of it they could find, about one-third of it, and presented the muddy, wet pages to Ms. Peters. I had the choice to quit a career before it started or take those pages and fill in the gaps. First I vowed always to keep a copy of my work, and then I wrote like crazy for three weeks, producing the entire manuscript again. I mailed it to McGraw-Hill, the only publishing name I readily knew, uncorrected. They kept it for months, sent me little cards occasionally saying they were still reading, and eventually sent me a two-page rejection letter. I bawled. (My handling of rejections has not improved greatly over the years.) By this time, Ms. Peters was no longer in my vicinity, so I went to the library and got a book, Structuring Your Novel, by Robert C. Meredith and John Fitzgerald. I studied it and then I contacted Dr. Meredith and told him my sad situation. I'd had my novel rejected. I didn't know that most writers had their writings rejected repeatedly. Dr. Meredith said, "You're just green. Go to a writers' conference and be around other authors and learn a little more about the field." He told me about Indiana University's fine conference, suggested that I send a sample of my work, one chapter from the novel would be fine, and apply. He didn't specify the first chapter, so I simply reached into the manila envelope and randomly extracted chapter eight from my rejected manuscript. That chapter won me a prize from the conference and an agent, Patricia Myer of McIntosh and Otis, who had seen my work and believed in my writing ability. She kept the manuscript and sent it around for a couple of years while I went blithely back to my homemaking chores. Every six months I'd get a letter telling me who all had rejected it, but that she was still trying. It didn't hurt much, for I never saw those letters. Had I, I'm sure I'd have quit on the spot. Then one letter arrived on Christmas Eve among all the season's greetings. I told my husband not to open it, for I didn't wish to spoil our holiday with bad notice. In fact, I thought it a bit inappropriate to send such a letter during the holidays. Walter opened the letter anyway. He said in a slow and amazed voice, "Why, it says here Rass has been sold!" After that it was pure bedlam! Perfect chaos. Ecstatic screaming and yelling and hollering. Brian had just gotten home from Europe and Alan from college. Clay had just that very minute pulled up onto our frozen lawn with his old jalopy and dashed in to see what all the noise was about. Little Dara was dancing and screaming for us all to be quiet, we'd burst Daddy's eardrums. Walt had been on her case lately. But I tell you, I haven't had a better Christmas Eve in all my life. I was an author, sure enough! Imagine that! Me? Oh, it couldn't be. Someone out there liked my Missouri stories. The editor was Gloria Mosesson from Thomas Nelson and Company. She did a crazy thing, she asked me to write another book. I'd had no intention of doing any such thing. She was persistent, so I did it. I wrote Naomi. My next editor was Ann DureIl at Dutton. I wrote The Girl Who Had No Name and The Orphans. Then a special easy reader for her new project of Skinny books, Who's Afraid.
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Actually,
that's all I remembered, but it was enough to set my imagination
working. I zoomed downstairs to my ancient typewriter, a twenty-two-year-old
Royal, and began to type. What did it matter that I was the world's
worst speller? (My English teacher once threatened to flunk me if
didn't learn to spell better.) What did it matter that my grammar
and punctuation were poor? (Even a math teacher threatened to flunk
me if I didn't learn to use better grammar.) I had a story to tell!
And I had a ball doing it. However, my feet grew cold as I neared
the college with manuscript in hand. What would people think of
me writing this absurd, earthy little farm story? Never again could
I fake sophistication. Courage was with me and I handed it in and
Ms. Peters read it in front of the class.