When she was eight years old my daughter, Maya, fell ill. She stayed at home for over a year and a half. That’s a long time for anybody to be laid up, especially a child. So, at my daughter’s insistence, I began to tell her stories about the adventures of a little girl--all the adventures my daughter could not have.
“Once upon a time there was a little girl named Maya,” I began.
Maya didn’t like the fact that I had named the heroine after her. “She should have a different name,” she pronounced.
“How about Elissa?” I asked. Elise had been my name in French class.
“Fine,” said Maya. “You can tell the story now.”
“Thank you,” I said. “She had reddish brown hair and big brown eyes—“
“Not brown,” said Maya.
I could tell this was going to be a long night. “What color do you want your-- I mean Elissa’s, eyes to be?”
Maya thought for a moment. “Green.”
“She had reddish brown hair and big green eyes,” I continued. “And her best friend was a donkey named Gertrude.”
“Is Gertrude funny?” asked Maya.
“Hilarious,” I said. “Can I tell the story now?”
We didn’t get far that first night, but we did establish that Elissa was going on a long trip filled with danger (“but not too much”), magic (“there should be lots of magic”) and a camel named Ralph. Oh yes, and “nobody gets killed.”
Elissa was a healer’s apprentice, sort of a medieval Physician’s Assistant. She roamed the world over in nightly installments, each one leaving Maya dangling on the edge of a punch line. Soon my son joined us, piping in with his four-year-old contributions to Elissa’s “inventures.” The three of us would curl up in Maya’s bed, night after night, spinning the tale, which just got longer and longer and longer. I described my own experiences in Morocco and South America and Europe. Through me, Elissa/Maya went to the market at Marrakesh. She climbed the Andes; she crossed the Atlantic. She met Tuaregs, Quechuas, sailors and thieves. Maya was gloriously, wonderfully distracted. And after nineteen months, she was strong enough to go back to school. The years passed, and my children grew too old for bedtime stories.
Or so I thought.
One day Maya asked me about those “Elissa” stories. “Why don’t you write them down?” she suggested.
So, I did. It took about four months to produce twenty chapters. These were, word for word, the original bedtime stories. Proudly, I presented my 157 pages of Elissa stories to Maya.
“I wrote these for you,” I said, holding my breath expectantly.
“I’ll get back to you,” said Maya.
The next day Maya handed the pages back to me. “More,” she said.
And so I wrote more. I filled in, added onto, expanded upon. Soon, the book was too big for one volume, so I broke it into two.
“Is it OK now?” I asked, handing her 325 pages.
Maya glanced at the first few pages, skimming them quickly with her sharp eyes. “No,” she said.
So, I added more characters, more adventures. Finally, after a year, I was done! But now Maya was in 8th grade, so Elissa could no longer be eight.
“Make her thirteen,” said Maya. “And nobody says ‘verdant.’”
It was true, nobody said ‘verdant.’ Or ‘soporific.’ (Although that word stayed put.) I sent the manuscript around to different friends. They offered valuable suggestions, as well as encouragement, all of which I took to heart. Another year passed at the computer. It was the beginning of the next century.
“I’m done!” I said to Maya, handing her a ream of paper. I had written three books of Elissa’s adventures: Escape from the Khan, The Voyage of the Swamp Maiden, and World’s End. At last my work was complete!
“Now get it published,” said Maya.
Do other people have such demanding daughters? That thought crossed my mind as I typed query letters. Nobody was interested, of course. And it didn’t help that I had published another book. Or that I was an interesting and unique person. “Not what we’re looking for,” they said.
After two years I finally found an agent. She sent the 503-page manuscript around to all the publishers in New York, only to be told: “It’s not a children’s book.” “It’s not a young adult book.” “It’s going to be too hard to edit.” “Not what we’re looking for.”
I told my daughter nobody liked Elissa. She told me to stop complaining.
So, I wrote another book, a spin-off and a half dozen short stories. I wrote book reviews. I wrote letters to the editor. I wrote in my journal. I wrote "to-do" lists. I gave up and retreated to my garden.
That’s when I got the phone call.
It was fall of 2005, and I was just pulling up the last of my beets, when my agent called to say that Random House was making me an offer. Naturally, I had to call Maya, who by now was in college.
“You’re kidding,” she said.
My jaw dropped. “What do you mean, kidding?" I took a breath. "This was all your doing. You made me tell those stories. You said to write them down. You made me re-write them god-knows-how-many times. You made me take out the word ‘verdant.’
I took another breath to gather strength, and oxygen. “And ‘profusion.’”
Maya adopted that soothing tone she gets when she thinks I am going off the deep end. “Don’t freak out,” she said. “But I never took it seriously. It’s like all that other crazy stuff you do.”
Now I was offended. “Like what?”
“Oh,” she said. “Making compost. Bopping all over the hemisphere. Speaking in tongues."
"Those weren't tongues," I shrieked. "They were languages!"
Maya shrugged. "Whatever. I just figured that all that typing you were doing was just one more weird Mom thing.”
Well, I still haven’t figured out what to say to that. But when I do, I will put it in a book.
And the heroine will be named Maya.