Joan’s Newest Essay… THEN AND NOW

When I stood on Michigan Avenue in Chicago holding my dying ficus tree, I knew my life was going to change. The ficus tree was dying because I can’t keep those plants alive — they are too demanding. I had just quit my career in space sales that had nothing to do with NASA. I sold space in magazines where ads are placed. But the time had come — I needed my own space. I needed to write. Columns, I thought. Essays. I was newly married and newly pregnant and American Baby Magazine gave me, with no writing creds, a chance to write free-lance articles. The only piece they refused was my humorous take on potty training. “Potty training,” an editor wrote to me, “isn’t funny,” Well, okay.

Three-years of screenwriting studies. A bad car accident requiring neurosurgery. I had to re-learn a few things, like focusing and walking in a straight line. Sitting at my desk wasn’t easy but somehow I wrote a novel in short bursts. I called it Squashed, the story of a teenage girl who wants to grow the biggest pumpkin in Iowa. I sent it out to agents who said,
“Uh, it’s funny, but we’re not sure anyone wants to read about, you know, agriculture.” Eventually, the book did land, as they say, it won the Delacorte Prize for a First Young Adult Novel. It got a nice review in the New York Times and people said, “Oh, how funny — a story about agriculture.”

I got better slowly, then fully. Fourteen novels for young readers followed, eleven short stories. No one gets fan mail like children and YA writers: “Dear Mrs, Bauer, my teacher said we have to write to a living author and I’m hoping that you qualify.”

Three years ago my husband and I moved from Brooklyn NY to just outside Santa Fe NM. As always, I’ve been writing. I finished the screenplay of my novel Hope Was Here, on its way to being an indy film directed by Sundance award-winner Bertha Pan. I finished the musical adaptation of Squashed with Jeff Bouthiette of Second City, and I finished my first novel for adult readers, a story about a songwriter finding her voice again when most things around her said, don’t bother. I got up at four AM to finish it as first light crept quietly across the sky. More on that novel later.

Coyotes howl at night in New Mexico, I am learning to bake at high altitude, I am learning to not need street lights to find my way home. Big change changes you. I still miss Brooklyn, but these sunsets, these sunrises. God is surely showing off.