Sandi Kahn Shelton

Do you remember when you first found out you were going to be a parent, and how suddenly the whole world seemed to have advice to throw at you? Did you have people saying, “Get ready for your life to suck” and warning you that you would never sleep again?

And did it seem to you that people were almost gleeful as they described the myriad ways in which your life was now going to be in ruins?  

You’re not alone.

In fact, that kind of unsolicited, ”helpful” advice provides the framework for a hilarious and touching new musical just written by Bill Squier and Jeffrey Lodin, two award-winning writers from Stamford. The two have taken Dana Bedford Hilmer’s book, “Blindsided by a Diaper”, which was  published last June by Three Rivers Press, and turned it into a stage show that captures the almost universal experience of panic, fear, excitement, love and confusion that comes into play when the little pink line appears on the pregnancy test stick.

The book is a collection of 30 essays written by men and women who give an unflinching portrait of how having a baby changed their relationship. Some of the essays are hilarious, some are sad, but all have a breathtaking honesty to them, as they tackle some aspect of parenthood.

And I got to see a read-through of the show on Monday night.

The show is a wonderful, amazing compilation of the essays, all framed around a young couple discovering they’re expecting a baby…and realizing through the pregnancy exactly what they’re in for. Bill and Jeff have taken many of the book’s essays and turned them into stories that other people tell to the couple, warning them about what to expect.

The result is both funny and powerful–and so universal. There’s not a single cliche in the mix, probably because the essays come from so many different people, all writing about their own powerful experience.

And, oh yeah, full disclosure here: an essay that I wrote for the book (”Dating the Hubs” about how my husband and I finally got to go on a date and had to learn all over again how to talk to each other) got turned into a skit, and even had a song written about it.

Oh my! 

May I just say that I was unprepared for what it was going to be like to sit in an audience and see somebody who was playing ME, saying my words and singing a funny song that illuminated them perfectly? I felt as though my nerve-endings were electrified. 

And although I’d been warned by my friend Beth (who is Bill’s wife) to bring along Kleenex, I wasn’t prepared for what it was going to be like when the woman playing me looked out at the audience and read the part about how going out on that date was just the first bit of learning to say goodbye to our child…and now that she was going off to college, she was the one saying goodbye to US.

I could barely breathe.

And when at the end of the skit, the cast stood up and sang in a low voice, “Go, speed racer…” which is the song my husband used to sing to our daughter during those  middle of the night walks around the dining room table…well, thank goodness for Kleenex. And waterproof mascara.

Now the show just needs a million dollars so it can turn into a real stage play and go to Broadway. That’s all. I’m saving up my quarters.

My writer friends, Alice Mattison, Leslie Connor, and I are giving an all-day writing conference together, and I couldn’t be more excited. If you’re anywhere near Fairfield, Connecticut on April 5, and you want to get a chance to talk about writing all day long…please come!

Here’s the notice about it that the organizer, Carol Dannhauser, has sent around:

Calling All Writers
You’re invited to a daylong writing conference
in Fairfield with three top authors!!
WHO: Alice Mattison, author of the New York Times Notable Book In Case We’re
Separated: Connected Stories, among other works, and an instructor at the
graduate writing program at Bennington College
Sandi Kahn Shelton, fiction and non-fiction writer whose contemporary
novel A Piece of Normal was selected as the Target book of the month
Leslie Connor, whose works include the much-acclaimed young adult
novel Waiting for Normal.

Together, the trio has published literary fiction, short stories,
contemporary fiction, non-fiction, magazine articles, essays, poetry, children’s
books and young adult books.
WHAT: The authors will share writing tips, strategies and stories in a morning
roundtable, then split up to conduct three hands-on sessions.
Lunch is provided for an additional fee for your
convenience.

WHERE: Connecticut Audubon Birdcraft Museum in Fairfield, 314
Unquowa Road. Presented by The Writers’ Workshop of
Fairfield.

WHEN: Saturday, April 5, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

WHY: Jack-up your writing. Strengthen your skills. Learn from these enthusiastic
and knowledgeable authors.
Sign up now, as the conference is limited to only 40 participants. Send a
check for $99 (or $114, if buying lunch), made out to The Writers’
Workshop, 2490 Black Rock Turnpike, # 360, Fairfield, CT 06825, or
bring payment to The Birdcraft Museum prior to March 15. Payment
postmarked after March 15 is $125, plus $15 for lunch (optional).
For information, call Carol Dannhauser at 203-374-8343
or e-mail Dannhauser@aol.com.

My friend Lynn and I have decided to embark on a new project: giving workshops to help people write their memoirs.

I have taught writing workshops before, but this one already has me jumping up and down in excitement because it’s different. Instead of being for people who already know how to write, we want to invite people who don’t already think of themselves as writers, because they have stories to tell just the same.

These are the really fun stories of our lives, the stories you tell in the car or recount over Thanksgiving dinner, or whenever you get a new close friend. In my family, they are the stories of the time my sister decided to cut off the bumps on her tongue with the scissors, and the day my brother sold his horrible-looking potty chair at the neighbor’s rummage sale. And the tale of my grandmother shooting my grandfather because he came home early from a business trip without telling her–well, that one always gets told too. It’s funny, mostly because she missed.

I think we’re all hungry for stories about where we came from and WHO we came from. We want the details about our parents’ upbringings and the story that would explain whatever made them think they belonged together, and why in the world they chose those jobs they chose, and why do they save string and keep the heat turned down to sub-livable temperatures?

And our kids want to know the same things about us!

I want to encourage people to write about the popular kids’ table in the lunchroom in middle school, and what they thought about when they looked outside their bedroom window, and who did they go to the prom with in high school, and who did they first have a crush on. The stories can go on and on and on: who was your next door neighbor, and your first pet that you truly loved, and when did you know what kind of work you really, really wanted to do, and when did somebody first make you so mad that you stood up for yourself in spite of the fact that you were scared?

See? Isn’t this going to be fun?

So anyway, if you live anywhere near Guilford, Connecticut, and you want to be in the workshop, you need to let us know. Email me right away! Today! The course starts next week.

Lynn and I are psyched about this. She’s a biographer who has written very cool biographies about Gregory Peck and Josephine Baker–the latter which was optioned for film by Diana Ross. She also used to write for the New York Times and worked for Christian Dior in Paris, and she’s gone everywhere and done everything, and is hilarious, to boot.

My contribution is that I write novels and for ten years wrote a column about my family life in the newspaper. And I LOVE LOVE LOVE the little details of people’s lives, the things they might forget. We both can help people shape the stories, get down all the details–and figure out what to write about in the first place.

And even if you don’t live close by and can’t take the workshop, take my advice and start writing these stories down for yourself. Keep a little book, and write down the funny things your kids say. You think you’ll remember them forever, but you won’t.

And like Bernie Siegel, the cancer doc says, just the act of writing down details of your life–even the painful ones–can be as therapeutic an exercise as going to therapy. Writing can heal us all.

I am packing my bags to go on a virtual book tour.

I have been on book tours before, the bricks-and-mortar kind–where you go to a bookstore and stand behind a podium and wait for people to come and sit in the metal folding chairs. You are praying that people will come. An icy drop of sweat trickles down your back.  Your mouth grows dry and parched. You realize that you are willing to give anything if there are at least TWO people unrelated to you in the audience, and if one of them does not, in fact, work for the bookstore.

That is all you ask. It is not so much to ask, is it? Okay, could there just even be ONE person? And could maybe you and that person go over to the coffee part of the store and have a cup of something together, and you will thank her for coming and ask her questions about her life and tell her she’s in the running to be your very best friend. And you will try not to feel like a failure.

It is a dicey proposition, bookstore readings. These days, what with 354 television stations and Netflix, hardly anybody wants to to out at night.

The first bookstore reading I did was for a parenthood book that I had published–You Might As Well Laugh–and it was held immediately after an appearance by some humongous creature dressed in a red fur costume and appealing to children. I believe his name was Clifford the Big Red Dog, and he was like the Beatles for the 2-year-old crowd. No, make that a combination of the Beatles and Jesus. 

The thought by the marketing person was that parents and their children would come to see Clifford the Big Red Dog, and then somehow the parents would want to stay after Clifford’s romp and hear me talk about how fun it was to muddle through parenthood. These were people who were ACTUALLY MUDDLING THROUGH PARENTHOOD RIGHT THEN, and they did not need anyone trying to make jokes about it.

Plus, they were there with their children, and it was 7:30 at night, and kids had been amped up to the extreme just by being in the presence of Clifford the Big Red Dog, who was–I can’t stress this enough–an ICON. I don’t know what the children were supposed to be doing while I was supposedly talking to their parents–the marketing people forgot that part. But let’s just say that many children were forced to leave the premises by being carried out screaming underneath their parents’ arms, begging for just thirty more seconds with Clifford the Big Red Dog…while I sat facing a row of empty metal chairs.

I had thought to bring a friend with me, so at least I didn’t look like The Most Friendless, Misguided Person in the Whole Universe. My friend even said I could read to her from my book, just in case I was still in the mood for that sort of thing.

Which I wasn’t.

But then a miracle happened. A mother who was rushing past, on her way out the door with her 2-year-old son, must have felt sorry for me standing there in front of the empty chairs, with only one friend to my name. So she very kindly came over with her toddler and plopped down to listen to my little spiel. She was very polite and sat facing forward with an attentive, encouraging look on her face. I will always be grateful to this woman. She is probably going to be canonized some day.

Unfortunately, not two minutes into my reading, her child (intoxicated, no doubt, with his earlier brush with fame) stood up on one of those metal chairs, slipped, and it folded up with him inside, and he crashed to the floor and cut his lip. He then left underneath her arm, the way all the other children had.

My reading in bookstore days was launched.

But that was in 1997. A whole new century has dawned, and now the internet is here for us to roll around in.

And with my paperback of A Piece of Normal just released, I’m going on a blog tour. I get to write guest posts on people’s blogs and also answer their questions, comment to their readers–all organized by this genius of a woman, Dorothy Thompson, who has figured out blogs that are willing to host writers and just how to do make a tour happen.

Best of all, I’ve had such fun lately writing blog posts and thinking about my book again. And just getting to talk with Dorothy and with the other bloggers she’s introduced me to has been so lovely. I’ll definitely write about where I’m going, so if you want, you can visit those other blogs with me. And if you’re a writer yourself, you may just want to contact Dorothy yourself by clicking on the link above, and see if she can arrange a tour for you as well.

The best part is: you don’t have to pack a suitcase, and Clifford the Big Red Dog will be nowhere in sight.

I’ll be appearing with poet Joyce Peseroff at the Anchor Bar’s Mermaid Room, at 272 College St., in New Haven, reading from A Piece of Normal, part of the Ordinary Evening Reading Series, which aims to bring “emerging and established writers to the Elm City.”

Seating is intimate, (just like you’d expect from a place called the Mermaid Room) and the evenings are very informal, with plenty of beer, wine and soda to drink. Best of all, there’s no cover charge. For more information about the Ordinary Evening Reading Series, go to their website at http://www.ordinaryevening.blogspot.com/.

Hey, I will be speaking about my new novel, A Piece of Normal, at the Guilford Senior Center at 12:45 p.m. on January 12, attempting to explain how a person can possibly take seventeen years to write a first novel…and then get assigned to write a second one in just twelve short months.

When you subtract the first three months during which I was in shock at my good fortune–and then the following three months when I beseeched the heavens for a plot and a character to come to me–well, let’s just say that it was a blessing when a bossy character, Lily Brown, came thundering into my head one day and announced that she was an advice columnist from Branford (a town bordering on mine), and that she had a four-year-old son and an ex-husband who was so pathetic that she had to set him up on dates before she felt comfortable finding somebody new of her own.

I could see that Lily had some issues that were going to make her very interesting to write about–and so for six months she lived in my head, entertaining me with stories about her artist mother, her lawyer father, and her flaky tambourine-player-in-a-rock-band little sister who was guarding a family secret so volatile that it tore the whole family apart. Not to mention the cast of characters at the newspaper where she worked, the man she fell in love with, and her neighbors in the beach colony where she was raised and still lives today.

Come and join me and the seniors at the Guilford Recreation Center on Church Street. We’ll chat.