Birthing a Book Part 1: Conception

I never had children, so I can only imagine how long, exciting, and challenging pregnancy can be, or how scary and painful childbirth. I never delivered a baby, but I am giving birth to my first book. This creative process has taken not nine months but nine years, and I shall be relieved and happy when Susanna and Alice: Quaker Rebels makes its way into the world.

I thought would-be writers might be interested in the rewards and frustrations of my experience as a first-time author: conceiving then writing the book, finding a publisher, working with an editor to polish and build the book, and helping the marketing department to get the book into readers’ hands and onto their Kindles. So, here’s my first blog post about the process of birthing a book. It begins with conception.

My journey as an author began when my cousin, knowing of my interest in genealogy, gave me a box of letters that he found in the attic at the estate sale of a cousin of my Grandfather Parry – Quaker spinster Susanna Parry. The old wooden box contained dusty paper bundles tied up with string that hadn’t been opened for decades – over 400 letters, postcards, engraved invitations, dance cards, and other keepsakes, dating from 1879 to 1971. It took me over a year to clean them, put them in chronological order, then read the collection from beginning to end. I was transported back in time by the letters, witnessing, as it unfolded, the saga of one branch of the Parry family and one leaf on the branch – Susanna. I had met old Susanna a few times when I was a young child, yet I never knew much about her, until now. Through the letters, she emerged as an educated, privileged, and well-travelled Quaker lady who never married yet lived a life blessed with friendship, family, and generous service to others. I also learned the untold secret – unknown to any living Parry family member -- of Susanna’s youthful rebellion, her struggle against the cultural norms of the 19th century, and her desire to break free from bondage to tradition and become a 20th century “New Woman.” Learning about Susanna’s secret was my moment of inspiration. Susanna had intentionally saved those letters, hoping perhaps that someone would find the box after her death, read the letters, and perhaps tell the story she was unable to tell. I was that someone, and I decided to give Susanna’s story a voice.

The Susanna Collection also contained letters and cards from her favorite cousin, Alice Paul, infamous suffragist and equal rights activist who was something of a pariah on my grandfather’s side of the family, rarely spoken about because of the controversy she stirred up with her suffrage protests and multiple arrests. She was a Quaker woman out of line with Quaker norms – a rebel. I had never even learned about Alice Paul in school because she, widely considered what some today would call a “nasty woman”, had been shunned by the history books. I began to read whatever I could about this American icon of feminist rebellion and activism who played a major role in the passage of the 19th Amendment and wrote the initial Equal Rights Amendment. Most people I have asked have never heard of Alice Paul, and I thought her story deserved to be told again.

In reading Susanna’s letters and many books about Alice Paul (and there are some good reads available), I learned the two Quaker cousins were both born in 1885, shared many carefree childhood memories, attended Swarthmore College together, kept in touch throughout their adult lives, and spent their final days together. Another Parry cousin, knowing I was planning to write a book about Susanna, encouraged me to chronicle the lives of both cousins simultaneously. And so, the idea of the book was conceived, the story of two Quaker rebels in the fight for women’s emancipation. The title of the book was inspired by a book my Grandfather Parry wrote about his famous Quaker ancestor: Betsy Ross: Quaker Rebel. Now his granddaughter, born on the same day in January as he, like him not an author by profession, like him fascinated by family history, is writing a book about two of his cousins.

I’ll talk about the writing of Susanna and Alice: Quaker Rebels in Part 2. Conceiving the idea was the fun part. The hard part began when I started trying to put the project to paper. But take heart if you have a story you need to tell: it can be done. I’ll share some tips I’ve learned along my way that might make your journey a bit easier than mine. In the meantime, why not ask some of the elders in your family to tell you some of their stories?