Fans

In the last 24 hours my 15-year old son, Rafael,  has given me two unsolicited gifts. Yesterday, he said out of the blue that he thought one of the manuscripts I am currently circulating and trying to sell, 26 North, would be a great book for high school  curriculum. Today he is reading my current revision of another manuscript, Leah in Lights, which I’m hoping to finish and start circulating next month, and said that it was a much better book than one of the ones I’ve published.

Yes, he is biased because he is my son, but we all need fans in whatever ways we can get them. And he is a typical picky teenager, and not the type of kid who would say he liked something if he didn’t. I’ve been dissed by him big time for my lousy piano sight reading, and when I can’t hold a harmony without going flat.

When I wrote Playing Dad’s Song, I fixed Raf in my mind as my audience. He wasn’t, as many people thought, a model for Gus, even though he played the oboe. But he was the kid I was trying to please with a story that I hoped would make him laugh and hold his interest enough to turn the pages. In fact, he was one of my first guinea pigs for that book, as well as Escaping Into the Night because I could test my prose on him by reading aloud at bedtime, and note where he laughed, or seemed bored, or got confused, and listen to his questions, and hear where my own words soared off the page and when they sounded flat.

Now he’s too old to be read to any more, so this week I must have looked like an idiot muttering Leah aloud in a coffee shop as I waited for him to get through with drivers’ ed classes. Like my harmony singing–a lot of it was flat. I fixed weak verbs, cut out extra words, smoothed out transitions and even deleted whole paragraphs that went nowhere. I am an auditory person, so hearing what I write is crucial in the revision process. If the words don’t sing, the book isn’t done.

Raf has gone through the first 50 pages of Leah. He’s caught typos, drawn a few smiley faces at lines he likes, and corrected a couple of things I didn’t quite get right about goth clothes or emo. What am I going to do when he’s no longer a teenager? I’ll need to find some new consultant fans.