Reaching for the Brass Ring

By Beth Boosalis Davis, author of Mayor Helen Boosalis: My Mother’s Life in Politics

Flat on my back and sick as I’d ever been, I managed to write on the back of a nearby dental reminder card a specific timetable to do something I’d never before considered – write a book about my mother, Helen Boosalis, and her political life. Days later, after I recovered, I studied my scratchy bedside notes expecting to dismiss them as some delusional sickbed rant. Instead, I realized writing my mother’s story had not come out-of-the-blue but rather from a desire buried deep within. Perhaps my illness had knocked me into a rare state of stillness, a state where something deeper than the next to-do item on my list could command my attention.

Even with clarity of purpose I still had practical matters to consider, such as the fact that I knew nothing about what was involved in writing a book.  I may not have doubted the goal but I certainly doubted my ability to achieve it. That’s when I recalled advice my mother was given when she hesitated to jump into her first race for mayor:  “the brass ring may not come round again.”  I had my timetable, I had my parents still with me, I had my husband’s support.  Time to reach for the brass ring.

I didn’t presume to think I could just sit down and type out a book, no matter how familiar the subject.  First I converted a little-used 8 X 9 feet space to a “room of my own” for writing.  I started journaling, and on my daily walks along Lake Michigan I practiced by writing three descriptions of the lake each day. I bought several books on writing and even read a few, hoping the rest would be absorbed through osmosis. 

One of the books, published in 1937 and entitled If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and the Spirit by Brenda Ueland, admonished that writing and creativity require stillness, quiet looking, and not “willing” all of the time.  If so, my bustling, scurrying habits developed to meet life’s demands would likely pose roadblocks to my writing.  When I did manage to heed Ueland’s advice, I found those quiet times the most productive.  Once when I was attending college board meetings in Minnesota, a cancelled session left an unexpectedly free morning and I did what I never do—lay on the couch in my vintage Northfield hotel room and did absolutely nothing.  During that idle morning, the structure for my entire book came to me.

When I learned that my father had kept extensive news clippings from Mom’s years as mayor, I was shocked to find sixty-five volumes in their basement.  The clippings engaged me in months of research and organizing, but writing the narrative based on the research was daunting.  I couldn’t think of myself as a “writer,” yet that’s what I needed to be to write the book. 

So during two summers I took half-baked bits of chapters to be critiqued at writing workshops at the University of Iowa and University of Nebraska.  In my first class, I was completely intimidated until a seasoned writer from New York commented that she had dreaded being forced to read about some boring Midwestern mayor but was captivated by the suspense of Mom’s first test in appointing a new police chief.  In another workshop, I found my narrative voice as a daughter rather than as disinterested biographer. In her workshop Mary Pipher encouraged us to think of ourselves as writers, and at a reception that week I had the good fortune to meet editors from the University of Nebraska Press, which ultimately published my book.

In the nearly five years it took me to research, write and revise (and revise) the book, I was sometimes “in the zone” and sometimes in despair.  I looked forward to revising the completed manuscript, but revision on this scale proved to be far more difficult than revising a term paper or legal brief. The sheer volume of a book-length manuscript is unwieldy, and even after countless revised drafts I still couldn’t get my arms around it.  A writer friend suggested that I literally cloister myself for a few weeks in a setting of solitude and quiet at a Benedictine monastery. 

My plan was to work around the clock and speak as little as possible — an almost silent retreat with only writing allowed.  That was before I met the Sisters, a group of mostly retired nuns who had led lives of activism in social justice and teaching.  After a day or two working in solitude, I couldn’t wait to go to meals with the nuns and listen to their stories.  The third day I was having lunch with Sister Vivian, the monastery’s archivist, and told her of my frustration with revising so much material.  She offered, “When you have a large amount of material, you just have to lay it out and see how the pieces fit together.”

When I returned upstairs, I noticed that large blackboards lined two walls of the converted classroom where I’d been working.  Remembering Sister Vivian’s advice, I began at the far left blackboard and chalked in a very detailed outline of my draft manuscript.  For the next three days I sat in a chair surrounded by blackboard scribbling and studied organization and flow.  My comprehensive blackboard version afforded a low-tech solution to the limitations of my single computer screen—the ability to see the whole at once, not just the parts.  When I left the monastery at the end of the second week, I had a much revised and reorganized manuscript that bears a great resemblance to the final book.

People ask me whether I feel a sense of relief and accomplishment now that the book is published.  I do, but surprisingly I miss the journey of creating and writing, even with the accompanying agony.  It was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done and simultaneously the most satisfying.  And if another brass ring comes round, I won’t hesitate to reach for it.