Writing OOGY

Perhaps it was a way to try to be heard when it seemed as though no one was listening, or a way to confirm that what I was going through was real, but as far back as I can remember, I needed to write. As the boys approached college, and I knew that I would have a vacuum to fill, although I had my doubts as to whether I would be able to do it I saw an opportunity to develop some of the writing projects that I had been carrying around for years. And then the telephone rang.

The call from an agent asking me if I’d considered writing about Oogy, like the call years before informing me that I was the father of twins, resulted in a fundamental change in my sense of self.

To sell a book, the agent explained, I needed a sample of writing from the book. That presented a small problem: there was no book. So I began writing Oogy by writing about the morning I began writing it. Months and sixty-two thousand words later, when my editor cut a quarter of the first draft, I was furious: she didn’t understand what I was trying to do; she wanted me to dumb down the experience and make the story all cutesy. And then I realized that she was challenging my self-professed ability to write: she wanted me, instead of telling the audience what conclusion to draw from a given occurrence, to write so that the readers arrived there on their own. To do so would require intense reflection and focus, a precision in articulation that I didn’t know if I could muster.

I hope Oogy reads easily. Every word has been considered countless times. The two-and-a-half years it took to complete it never for a moment felt like work, though. As with raising the boys, it was a labor of love. And, at every stage of writing Oogy, I felt: if nothing else happens, this will be more than I ever could have hoped would.

I wanted to tell Oogy’s story because he couldn’t. With the guidance and encouragement of those involved, the exploration took on even wider significance. Oogy not only increased my knowledge of how to write, the power of observation it demanded and the journey into recall it required illuminated and helped me to appreciate the intricacies of life that, on a daily basis, I took for granted. Like fatherhood, writing Oogy is something I never thought I could do; it has been an experience enjoyable and fulfilling beyond description, and I hope I have done it well. And though, just as with fatherhood, only time will tell, I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to try.