The Power of Story

BookScapes 12, July 2024

Some months ago, an email tugged me into one of those magical moments that a benevolent Universe brings us every now and then. Imagine my surprise—and delight—when I read this:

Hello, Susan Wittig Albert! I've read so many of your books over the years, but I had no idea I first enjoyed your storytelling back in 1964. A few weeks ago, while trolling the aisles in an antique store, I spotted a Calling All Girls magazine. I loved them when I was growing up and was thrilled to find it. I was flipping through and my heart jumped, literally, because I saw your story, "The Art of Christmas." That story, and even the illustrations, struck a chord in my little 11-year-old heart back in 1964 . . . I'm now 70 and re-reading "The Art of Christmas" was like finding a long, lost friend. . . Who says you can't go back in time?!

This reminder of that long-ago story came from a reader named Janine—and it amazed me. Just imagine the agents of chance and coincidence that carried that story from the kitchen of a little house in small-town Illinois, where I was typing away on my old Royal (a carpal-tunnel machine if there ever was one), with three kids under three playing under the table, found a supportive editor, and then dropped it into into the hands of a shopper in an antique store a thousand miles away and sixty years later.

If you're an American woman of a certain age, maybe you remember Calling All Girls, which began publication in 1932 and continued under one name or another until 2004. I read it as a kid, whenever I could find an issue at the library, along with Wee Wisdom, Children’s Highlights, Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, and Junior Red Cross. In elementary school, we had Weekly Reader—free subscriptions, as I remember, but we had to share.

Thinking back to those days as a young reader, I realize that those magazines were crucial sources of information about how to be a kid in a changing world and what possibilities there might be for a young girl on a small farm in the middle of a vast and fast-changing America. I’m sure they were not diverse enough (uniformly White, as I remember, and irretrievably middle class) and that there was little mention of potential careers for women in science or medicine, or business. We were all destined to be teachers or nurses and moms and homemakers. But they held my attention, gave me some reading challenges, and (especially Weekly Reader and Highlights) introduced me to current events in a wider world—important for a farm kid who wasn’t growing up with television.

Those magazines were also a welcome venue for startup writers, a kind of incubator, if you will. Beverly Cleary, Ruth Chew, E.L. Konisburg, and many others learned to practice story-building there.

And my first stories were published there, with the help of generous editors who gave this young stay-at-home mom with a growing family a chance to learn how to write and submit her work. And even to get paid for it. I still remember dancing around the room, waving the first $15 check that arrived in the mail for one of my kids’ stories. Fifteen hundred words, a penny a word. I was actually writing! And actually earning money for writing!

Fifteen dollars. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Barely two lattes, certainly not something to send anybody spinning around a room. But given inflation, that fifteen dollars in 1959 was the equivalent of $161.95 today. Yes, I danced. And then sat down and wrote an exuberant thank-you note to the editor, who had been kind enough to send the original story back to me with suggestions for revision. And who actually praised my work. I would have been happy to have done it for nothing, just to see it in print.

This is the issue—December1964—in which Janine rediscovered “The Art of Christmas.”

I no longer have my old submission records and I don't remember writing that story. But counting back from the date it was published, I know when and where it was written. It was one of those brink-years, when I was standing on a cliff's-edge of change in my life. I was 24. I’d been writing for nearly five years. I had sold several dozen short stories, mostly to the children and teen magazines. I was beginning to think of (gasp!) writing a novel, something that several of those editors were encouraging me to do.

But my then-husband was about to take a new job in a nearby university town. In a few months, my small world of children and home would radically enlarge. I would decide to enroll in couple of college English courses and end by taking time out from fiction for an undergraduate degree, then a Ph.D., and then a university teaching career. I didn't return to fiction until twenty years later, when I began to write (among other things) some of the early Nancy Drew Case Files.

Janine was kind enough to send me scans of that 60-year-old story and I've posted the first page here, for you to see. It's the story of two girls who create a friendship as they work together to create something meaningful to each—and to both. A simple story that I’m sure most teens today would find boring and badly outdated: no cell phones, no social media, no texting or sexting!

But I'm glad to be reminded of it and to reclaim it from the long-distant and barely-remembered past. I’m grateful to those magazines and those editors for giving me a place to begin. (I do wonder, though, what kinds of fiction young girls are reading these days, and what kinds of stories they’ll write when they’re grown up, on what kinds of media. I couldn’t have imagined the internet, when I began writing, or TikTok or Instagram. Or Substack. Especially Substack.)

And I’m most grateful to Janine. For me, her unexpected email was a welcome reminder that stories do connect us. That reading bridges time and space and difference. That we read and remember not just as individuals but as a community, linked by what we read.

And that we are connected through story more deeply and in more improbable ways than we can ever possibly know.

The stories we tell ourselves shape our lives.—Brené Brown

Supporting subscribers: Many thanks for your generous help—you are much appreciated! Please stick around for comments and our supporter-only July book bundle drawing. Details below.

Everyone: On Wednesday, I’ll send another entry from my herbal notebook. Next Monday, I’ll be back with LifeScapes. The Girls have been clamoring for a post, so I’ll be writing about my life with . . yes, chickens. And to celebrate the first anniversary of my Substack, I’ll soon be making an announcement of a new monthly feature. I’m excited about it!