I met fellow New Jersey writer Pam Lobley
when we were paired together on a panel at a book festival this past summer. Pam
has been a humor columnist for The Bergen
Record, one of the state’s largest newspapers, and for three years she
wrote the “Now That’s Funny” column for (now defunct) New Jersey Newsroom. She has also
written for the New
York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
Today.com, Huffington Post, BlogHer, Sammichespsychmeds.com, Carolina Parent and others.
Please welcome Pam Lobley
It was a rainy day in March. I was sifting
through a stack of signup sheets for summer activities for my kids. My two boys
were eight and ten at the time, and I
usually planned plenty of summer activities to keep them busy. But we were
already so frantic and over-scheduled that I couldn’t imagine signing them up
for anything.
I asked my friend Jane what her kids were going to do. Jane,
obviously feeling just as overwhelmed, snapped, “Nothing! We’re having a summer from
the 1950s.”
Wow! That sounded like just what we needed,
too. An old-fashioned summer with no
plans at all. We did it, I wrote a book about it (of course), and then I began
to shop the book around.
To me the most interesting aspect of my
memoir was the juxtaposition between the “ideal” 1950s image of a relaxed summer for both kids
and parents, and our current frantic,
stressed-out family lifestyle of summer days packed with tightly organized
classes and programs, and me in the car all day ferrying kids to and fro. I read
quite a bit about 1950s family life and laced the book with insights from my
research. I even had some very funny quotes from 1950’s magazine ads:
In this friendly, freedom-loving land of ours
… Beer Belongs – Enjoy It!
1955
United State Brewers Foundation
Learning about 1950s family life–the
bad and the good–gave me a huge dose of perspective on my own outlook, and in
the book, I wrote about how it changed me, and the ways it seemed my kids had
also benefited. My working title was “A Summer from the 1950s.”
I got an agent who loved the idea but
after a rewrite, the feedback from publishers was that the title sounded
like the story of my grandmother’s
summer, which appealed to no one. We needed a new title, and I knew it had to
resonate with stressed-out modern moms. After
weeks of thinking it through, Why
Can't We Just Play? What I Did When I Realized My Kids Were Way Too Busy was born.
The book sold to a publisher whose focus
is creating books that help families be happy. This thrilled me because that’s
exactly what I felt I was doing – writing a memoir that would help other moms
be happier by adopting a less frenetic family summer.
But now the agent and the publisher began
to see my story as a parenting book. Maybe
this was obvious to everyone else, but
came as a surprise to me. I thought parenting books were books by people who
were bona fide parenting experts. I was not a therapist or teacher or doctor - just
a mom who had a certain type of experience, and wanted to pass it on.
What they understood is that just because
a book is on the parenting shelf at the bookstore, it doesn’t have to be advice
from an expert; it can also be adventures in parenting: stories, personal
insights, lessons learned. Why Can’t We Just
Play? fits that description exactly. In addition, it portrays a strong viewpoint,
namely that kids simply need more time
to play without instruction, guidance, organization, or adult expectations. Free
play is vital for good childhood development, and it is getting increasingly
squeezed out of kids’ lives. That viewpoint gave us a strong marketing angle.
Treating my book as a parenting book rather
than a memoir also made it much easier to market after it was published. When I
do a podcast or write a column, I can talk about a variety of childhood issues:
overscheduling, down time, recess, screen time, signs of stress in kids, or the
ways that free play teaches kids independence. I have many different angles to discuss
– all of which can lead back to the book but stand on their own as interesting
topics apart from my personal experience. An author constantly needs to find
new ways to talk about their book as they try to sell it, so this is very
beneficial.
As I shifted my vision of my book from
memoir to parenting, I learned a bunch of things, including these:
- There must be a “take-away”. Non-fiction books need a concise
and readily accessible message. During rewrites, I had to hone in on what the
reader would take away from my book.
- The title needs to be crystal clear in
expressing the book’s message; being overly clever wouldn’t work. My original
title, “A Summer from the 1950s” did nothing to give a potential reader the
idea of my book.
- Trust the agent and publisher. They understand which aspects will appeal the most to readers. All my
favorite things -- the funny quotes, the historical insights, my sense of humor
– they knew that these were the least interesting things to readers. When I
talk to readers myself now, I see that they mostly relate to my feeling of
overwhelm, and are interested in my struggle to slow down and give my kids more
time to play. All of which I am very happy about; it’s just not how I
originally viewed my memoir. I mean … my parenting book.
Because of my experience, I have gained a keen new appreciation for non-fiction books. Which is a good
thing because my kids are older now, and
I have a lot more material. Naturally, I’m working on my next parenting book. Hopefully
I’ll get the title right the first time.
Learn more by visiting Pam’s website, or
connecting on Twitter or Facebook.
