Maeve Binchy's Writing Career Started on a Kibbutz

Five year old Maeve Binchy with sister Joan and cousin Dan circa 1944 courtesy http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/maeve-binchy-my-thoughts-on-ireland-crpdx5tpdcz.

Maeve Binchy, the Irish author of 16 novels about small town life in Ireland, started her career as a teacher of French and Latin.  One summer, the parents of a student gave her a free trip to Israel.  She spent her days picking oranges and tugging chickens on a kibbutz, and her evening writing letters home to her parents.  Her father thought the letters were so eloquently written that he cut off the salutation and sent them to the newspaper where they were published.  These letters sparked Binchy's career as a journalist.


 
                                             


             Michele Bachmann worked on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1960's just like Maeve Binchy                        courtesy http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2012/08/downloadedfile_0.jpeg/

Binchy's first novel, Light a Penny Candle, based on a London girl who is evacuated during the Blitz to Ireland and strikes of a friendship with an Irish girl which endures for twenty years.  Binchy called the five rejections she received for the manuscript "a slap in the face...It's like if you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either."  The novel's publication in 1982 came at the right time as the author was two months behind on her mortgage.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Light-Penny-Candle-Maeve-Binchy/009949857X

Binchy went on to write a total of 24 books, 16 of which are novels.  Most of her novels dealt with the contrast between rural and urban life, between England and Ireland and between World War II Ireland versus today's Ireland.  Ironically, the author ended up marrying an Englishman, Gordon Snell, who was a BBC producer in London.  They lived in England for a time and later moved to Binchy's beloved Ireland where Snell became a children's author.

Gordon Snell & Maeve Binchy walk along the sea jetty courtesy http://www.gettyimages.ca/photos/gordon-snell.

Tickets to the Game

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I just received another rejection letter this morning for my chapter book I'm Just Daisy.  I placed it in an enveloppe called "Tickets to the Game" along with the six other tickets.  Why would I call it a ticket when it's a rejection letter?  I read a post online in which the author called her rejection letters "tickets".  Rather than seeing each letter as preventing her from getting published, she saw it as a ticket, bringing her one step closer to the game.

What a great idea!  Since rejection is part and parcel of the writing and publishing world, writers have to get used to it.  Why not see it as a step in the process?  Why not see it as an opportunity rather than a shut out?  As a beginning rather than an ending?  I used one of my rejection letters, which was very detailed and helpful, to write an improved second version of my book.

It's a talent in life to be able to see the good side of something bad.  I could have easily shredded those tickets.  But instead, they are tucked away in an 8 1/2 by 11 envelop.  It's like I'm treasuring them.  They are proof that I've written a book and that I'm getting it out there.  It's like Babe Ruth.  He was the strike out king. of baseball.  But he was also the home run king. I want to be the strike out-home run queen of writing.

So, as I carefully slide my tickets into my envelop, the way Babe Ruth slid into home plate, I am one step closer to the game.  I can actually smell the juicy hotdogs and buttery popcorn.  I can hear the crack of the bat when it hits the ball.  I can feel the rumbling of Yankee Stadium as the fans cheer. Let's play ball!

Yankee Stadium circa 1920's courtesy http://buchholtzsidoramericanstudies.wikispaces.com/The+House+that+Ruth+Built,+Babe+Ruth