I Promise.

“Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success.”

~Author unknown

Ever since Friday, I’ve been answering emails about Promise.  

Did you really name your daughter Promise?  Is Promise a real person?  How did you write the eighth wonder of the world, and how long did it take to put together?  

The most frequently asked question:

What kind of account will yield that amount of money?  

I have to admit, I love this.  

Though Promise was born only in my mind, her birth is significant.  She is my first character to be given voice to an audience beyond the living room.  We don’t ever really see her, and we don’t know much about her, but I think anyone who reads those eleven hundred words can easily understand Promise’s quintessential truth.  

I’d like to answer some of these questions today, but since I don’t think Writer Dad’s quite ready for a list post, allow me to spin a yarn instead.  If you’re still curious when I’m finished, shoot me an email.  

The story starts last November.  I’d been writing for around two months.  I was all juiced, anxious to start collaborating with Daisy.  ”Come on Baby,” I’d beg.  ”Let’s write a book.”

“When, in our spare time?” (Note: This is not a serious question.)

….. Writer Dad hovering……

“Fine.”

All I’d written up to that point was a chapter book for Mia and my own abysmal short story, which was by then turning into a complicated novel through some kind of mysterious cell division that I seemed to be both in charge, and under the control of.

I wanted to keep tinkering with the novel, but I didn’t want to get lost in a bog.  If I was going to be a Writer instead of just a writer, I needed some good circulation.  We don’t go to the gym, only to beat on the same set of muscles, right?

In two decades of teaching, Daisy’s never refused a book as gift or purchase, and I was reading twenty to thirty children’s books out loud to a room full of children, every single day.  

I wanted to try my own.

Daisy and I have always thought that there weren’t enough children’s books about money.  This is somewhat bizarre, considering that understanding money is essential to the modern world, and something we should learn at the earliest possible age.  

Not enough parents really teach it, and the country’s children aren’t learning it in school.  

Perhaps it’s a subject that makes people feel uncomfortable, or guilty, or afraid.  

I’m not really sure why it is, but I am sure that it’s an empty shelf of possibility.  

Daisy and I agreed to gather our thoughts and meet at the same time and place (in bed after the children are asleep) the following week.

One week later….

“You have how many?”

“Five.”

“Five ideas?”

“No.  Five stories.”

“Let me see.”

The room is still, except for the rustling of papers.

I’m sitting in a perfect ninety degree angle, with my back to the bedpost.  I am, admittedly, quite pleased with myself.  Daisy has brought her page of notes; I have brought a notebook.  I did not know until that moment that what I had done was impressive, but I am drinking her expression as though it were wine at a tasting.

“Impressed?” I am beaming after five minutes of silence.

Daisy looks at me.  

I love this look.

It’s the one that says, “Thank you for making babies with me.”  

At least that’s how I would describe it.

That was the beginning of what turned into a long run of weekly exchanges.  We met every seven days, and each time I would try to get that look again.  This is long before any serious hope of publication; long before I would try to dull my voice to please the gate keepers.  

When I first started, I used the books I was reading out loud every day as a template, but soon realized that my attempts to mimic their charm and simplicity were mostly insipid.  

My solution:  Write the stories as though I was explaining things to my own children, or trying to impress Daisy.  

That night, it was the second story I read that you saw last week.  Back then, it was simply called Promise.  Though it has been heavily sanded, its structure of “The Eighth Wonder of the World” is no different then it was that evening, late last year.  

That special evening also yielded two more stories about money that I’ll share at some point in the future, along with two others that might be the clumsiest things ever committed to paper.  

Not every investment pays off, but you should never stop making them.  Promise the girl was born that night, but so was a promise I made to myself: a commitment to find my voice, and make it heard.  

Writer Dad

If you enjoyed my words, please subscribe.  I promise I’ll be back tomorrow.

If Mom and Dad never cease their contributions, an average annual return of 10% will make this work.