One of the things I love about teaching the Pages classes is the opportunity to read and learn right alongside my students. I am endlessly amazed at their insights. There is never a class when they don’t point out something I did not see or interpret another way. This is the same thing I loved about homeschooling, watching the light come on in my children’s eyes as they discussed a great character in a book or a line they were chewing on!
I started out this last Pages class as I usually do, discussing the author. This session we are reading, “Because of Winn-Dixie”, by Kate DiCamillo, which happens to be her first published book. Kate has led an interesting life. She was born in Philadelphia but moved to Florida when she was five due to health problems. She had chronic pneumonia as a child and was often hospitalized, which gave her plenty of time, (you got it) to read!
What I loved most about Kate’s story was the realness in her struggle to become a writer and the resilience it took to get her writing into the “right” person’s hands.
After graduating with an English degree and working lots of odd jobs, Kate ended up following a friend to Minnesota at 30-years old. She started working at a book warehouse (not her dream job). She also started waking up at 4am before her shifts to write two pages every day.—a habit that Kate has kept to this day. After four years she started submitting her books to publishers and received 473 rejection letters. Let me say that again, 473 rejection letters! That number has had me thinking and talking with my family and my students.
How would it feel to receive 473 rejection letters?
Would I personally give up?
Throw in the towel?
Would I think I don’t have anything of value to say?
And the answer I keep coming to is: I think I might. I am not sure my ego could withstand that number—473!
Resilience is simply the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. To really go deeper, what are resilience skills? This is the list of traits that appeared when I looked it up:
Self-confidence.
Optimism.
Flexibility.
Responsibility.
Patience.
Problem-Solving.
Self-awareness.
It made me think that this is the list we should hang for ourselves to remind us of what is needed to push through the hard, ego-breaking experiences and get to the other side.
I am glad that Kate picked up that list and continued to submit her writing. Because of Winn-Dixie did finally get into the right person’s hand. It made it through sitting on one of these people’s desks while they were on maternity leave, only to be found again when the person returned and was cleaning her desk.
On top of this, her story went through multiple rewrites before it was published. Kate DiCamillo’s path to success was not an easy assent but more of a difficult and sometimes brutal climb. Gone are my assumptions that writing just comes easy to some. What replaced that thought is the thought that those who get to the top of the climb embrace that list of resilience skills and are courageous in using them.
Kate DiCamillo has gone on to publish 25 novels and has sold over 37 million copies. Four of her books have been turned into films and she is one of only six authors to have won two Newbery Honor awards. She spends 12-15 hours a week writing and 35-40 hours a week reading. I don’t know about you, but I will keep my resilience list hanging, right next to my pencil and paper. I will keep a warm cup of tea right next to the book I am reading. I choose to make it courageously to the other side, one page at a time.
~Clare Bonn