Tales From The Self-Help Mill
I came up with "The Whining Family" in 1992. And here's Chapter 3.
In 1992, before I was a mom, before I was married, I came across an article in Newsweek Magazine called “Tales From The Self-Help Mill,” by Barbara Quick. It begins, ”Most literary writers, I have it on good authority, are required to do something else besides write deathless prose in order to keep life and limb together.” She was an acquisitions editor for a self-help publisher, and had some steam to let off. At the end of the article, she said, “I'm looking for a self-help book for editors of self-help books.”
Well, I felt the same way. I was four years out of college, creating deathless cartoons and being a deathless retro bathing beauty and doing all the epic things one can do with self-esteem. And feeling quite incongruous with my day job editing self-help books for parents.
I began to dash off a letter to her.
Barbara Quick c/o Newsweek
Dear B.Q.,
If you ever decide to write that self-help book for self-help authors, I (myself) want to help. It would help me right now, too…!
My mother left my father to go back for her Ph.D. and write a book called The Winning Family: Increasing Self-Esteem in Your Children and Yourself. Her expertise on the greatest gift has been demonstrated by the fact that my self-esteem is pretty good and so is hers. The timing of her publisher's demise coincided with my graduation from college, so my job since then has been to help her run her business teaching life skills to parents, so they can teach them to their kids. It’s called, "LifeSkills Press."
Here’s an idea for a chapter…”I know how to live, I just don't know how to get a real job. Self-Esteem, sure... I love myself, I just want to meet some new people sometimes?”
Since our business is so small, I can call myself anything I want. I can call myself Production Editor, Publisher, Graphic Designer (or, Art Department), or Vice-President. This makes me feel great, even though the dirty truth of it is that I mostly run errands to the post office and buy groceries for my high-profile lecture-circuit mother, and literally edit the same book over and over. We’re starting on the third edition, since it just got bought by yet another publisher. It just needs a stable place in the world, so the parents mom talks to on the high-profile lecture circuit can buy it!
Editing your mother's self-help book. Doesn’t that sound kind of twisted? Wouldn’t that make a great essay for an anthology? It's actually a very nice book. "Inspiring and non-guilt-provoking," says Mothering Magazine.
Someday, if I ever get to strike out on my own and publish my own deathless prose, or more likely formulaic humor books, one of them will certainly be called "The Whining Family." Because behind the scenes here, I want to whine about the difficult process of making this lovely book. The randomness of the publishing world. The awkwardness of constant promotion. The pressure to represent a way of thinking. The sidewise glances from friends. The constant simplification of ideas, when I want to expand and explore and embellish. The muddling of work and family. The wishing I was out from under Mom’s wing, testing my mettle, finding my own edges with my own generation, writing about revolution instead of the intimacies of domesticity. The hot debates over whether to use the word “codependency.” You know. The whining.
But there is a quintessential message in this book about being a philosophical parent. As this kind of a parent, you can get a message to your kids that they are responsible to themselves, including their own thoughts and feelings. If you get this message at some impressionable time, life is yours. So it’s smart to teach parents how to do this.
It’s like how you said, “I have benefited emotionally from my work in the same way that an aerobics instructor benefits physically from hers,” I get more out of this job than minimum wage. I’m not qualified as a parent to be the authority of what I know is true, so it means a lot to be able to help shape her words, to ghostwrite and re-arrange ideas and be her coach and cheerleader, her second brain and vision department, even if it sounds weird to be a vice president at my age.
So, as much as I want to whine, I really don't mind spending the best years of my life in the relative isolation of spending most of my waking hours with my mom. If it means more parents get to to be inspired by her, then it’s worth it. She really does believe she’s making the world a better place, and unlike most of my peers, who are jaded, cynical, and sarcastic, I secretly believe I am, too.
I never did send the letter, but the idea of The Whining Family has been a pressure valve for me every time I feel the irritation of working on this book. Seems like it will become a thoughtful essay collection instead of a formulaic humor book. But who knows, maybe it will inspire more cartoons.
As for Barbara, she’s written lots of books since then (even some self-help books, and historical novels about music and Venice and…well, I’m about to become a fan for real), and is now doing the daring thing of serializing a book to her paid subscribers. Just like me!
And we’re just getting started.
Chapter 3: The Greatest Gift: Self-Esteem!
You can even listen to it on Spotify.
What a wonderful adventure in the rabbit hole of readership! Thanks for the encouragement, and congratulations on your next journey! You're a terrific writer--hey readers, Italophiles and musicians especially, check out Vivaldi's Virgins, I’m in 18th century Venice right now watching the proverbial sausage get made as a reader of this fascinating novel. (Vivaldi was a redhead? And many more lush details)--and whatever is coming next is sure to be a delight. What a fun way to make your acquaintance!
Dear Kristen,
What a treat it was for me to follow the link to your post tonight! My goodness, my essay was published in Newsweek magazine when I was pregnant with my son, who is 31 years old now! I am thrilled to see it rise from the dead— and more thrilled still to learn that it reached you in such an important way. This is, after all, the amazing gift that writing gives us: a magical potential for reaching other people’s hearts and minds, people we might never have encountered otherwise. Consider yourself part of my treasured collection of randomly acquired kindred spirits! I want to encourage you to write those books you dream of writing, all of them! Write them and put them on the shelf if you have to, however, long they need to stay there before they find their passageway into the world. I am amazed at how things are blossoming for me, at this late date. I’m still trying to figure out a way to earn a living from my writing. I’ve been completely weird and shy about putting anything on my Substack behind a pay wall. (Yes, it’s all free for now.) You have really encouraged me to feel like, just maybe, I deserve to get paid and have some running away money, and money for a rainy day. My greatest treasures are my writing, my son, and the friends who have let my pathway here on this beautiful planet. To my amazement, I have a wonderful new literary agent – – and one of those novels-in-waiting, that every writer has and hopes to launch, about to be launched!