Carolyn Hunter
“The T. A. Barron Podcast.”

T. A. Barron
Today we will consider the idea our own lives are a kind of story. A story that we get to write with every day, every choice, every breath. To invite you to see your own life as a story. Now that’s a pretty big idea and an empowering idea. What do I mean by that? Well, life gives us our material. So that includes parts that are about heartache, parts that are about hope, parts that can be painful, difficult, and very challenging. And also parts that can be beautiful, nurturing and lovely, as well as surprising. Probably some mixture of all of those qualities. That’s our material that we, storytellers, get to work with. Key elements of our story.

So, add to that mix just as if you’re seasoning a soup, a sprinkling of herbs and spices, like gratitude, empathy, humility, humor. [Laughter] I would say especially humor. That’s the basil in your soup that gives it that little bit of extra lift. Then, by the choices we make, the attitudes we bring to everyday, we can shape that material. We can affect how that story unfolds, always aware that this is our story, no one else’s, and we get to be the author.

So, the choices we make, small ones and large ones, really do matter. That’s because we ourselves matter. Examples of this idea are all around. In millions and millions of people’s lives. But to illustrate, I’m going to talk about just one life, my own. Not because it’s a model for anybody else, which it is certainly not, but just because it’s a life I happen to know pretty well. So, our lives as our stories. That’s the idea. And a good way to introduce it, I think, is to share one truly bizarre experience from my own life story, How I met the wise and wonderful author Madeleine L’Engle, the beloved writer of A Wrinkle in Time and many other books.

Carolyn Hunter
Let’s hear it.

T. A. Barron
It’s the best case of serendipity in my whole life. Except, of course, the ultimate best, which was the day that I met Currie, my wife now of 37 years, while we were cross country skiing in the Catskill Mountains.

Now, to set the stage of meeting Madeleine L’Engle, I should tell you that after college I had big dreams. Oh, I could so clearly visualize that I was going to become a writer. My whole life would be about writing stories, and I would live somewhere in a Rocky Mountain cabin, surrounded by wilderness. Elk would be my closest neighbors, along with the hummingbirds. That was the vision. [Laughter] So after college, I was lucky enough to win a Rhodes scholarship over to Oxford, England. And I decided to use the summer vacation after the first year of the scholarship to travel and write my very first novel. So actually, I blew every penny of summer job earnings I had ever stored up and organized the trip I had always longed to take to Africa and Asia and all manner of places.

So, somewhere between the Serengeti and the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Himalayas on a trek to Everest Base Camp, and a small village in Japan where I worked as an apprentice roof thatcher, I actually wrote the first novel. And when I got back to Oxford, I was so excited about it. That vision was crystal clear in my mind. And I knew that this was my ticket to becoming an author. So, I sent it off. And in those days, it wasn’t just pushing the send button on a computer. I packaged up 32 different boxes with physical copies of the manuscript and sent it off to every publisher I could find. Now, days and weeks went by, and then the responses started to come in, and I guess you could say I got a terrific response. Ultimately, I received 32 rejections.

Carolyn Hunter
Oh, gosh.

T. A. Barron
[Laughter] The vote was unanimous. Yeah, and it didn’t feel so good. There really is nothing warm and fuzzy about a rejection. And when you get a whole stack of them, especially leaning against your cherished dream, it was pretty hard. I was down. To make matters worse, I kept on going back and rereading those rejection letters just to make sure I hadn’t missed a positive comment someplace. [Laughter] There were none. In fact, I can still remember some of them today.

One of them, actually. I’d say one of the kinder ones, I have to repeat to you now, this letter treated me with all kinds of human dignity, you could say, really made me feel like an individual. It read, “Dear Sir/Madam.” [Laughter] And in that case, they circled the word sir. “Your work of Fiction/Nonfiction” – circle Fiction – “does not meet our publishing standards for our Spring/Fall list.” And in that case, they circled BOTH Spring and Fall just to make sure I didn’t miss the point.

Carolyn Hunter
[Laughter] Oh, torture.

T. A. Barron
So, turning the pages of the calendar forward, I was back in the USA by now. I had gotten a job in New York City, which was not really a great fit for me. It was just too much concrete and too many human noises. Now, this is not a negative comment about New York City. It’s really a comment about me. New York is a unique and spectacular city, a microcosm of the whole world. But it really wasn’t where I wanted to be living. On top of that, I still had that dream of being a writer. And yet I had no courage to try and make it real now. I was defeated.

One day I poured out my heart to a friend who happened to work in a Children’s Museum, and she had just put together an exhibit about famous people and what they had collected as children. And she said her favorite item was a teddy bear from the author Madeleine L’Engle. And Madeleine had also included a story about the bear’s life. My friend said, “Tom, you should read this story. It’s just so wonderful, and you get a lift out of it. I’m sure it’ll cheer you up.” I said, “Okay, go ahead and send it.” But I was totally not convinced it would help.

So, a couple of days went by, and then I came back to my apartment late after work and saw that a bunch of mail had been slipped through the mail slot. In there, was, in fact, an envelope from my friend, and it had the story written by Madeleine L’Engle, and Madeleine had written it on the stationary of her publisher. It was the biography of this bear, and it was hilarious and delightful. And you know what? It actually did lift my mood for at least half a second. Then I got mopey again and sifted through the rest of the mail and suddenly saw there was another unusual envelope. And then I realized this envelope was to me from someone at that publisher that publishes Madeleine’s books. Now, just to give you a sense of my mood, I then realized that that publisher was one of the very few in existence to whom I hadn’t sent my manuscript. And my first thought was, “Bummer! They are rejecting me in advance.” [Laughter] They must have heard about my terrible manuscript, and now they want to reject it before I ever send it! [Laughter] But, I was wrong. To my astonishment, that envelope actually had a letter to me from Madeleine L’Engle herself.

Carolyn Hunter
Really?

T. A. Barron
Yep. It read, “Dear Tom Barron, I have heard from our mutual friend that you would like to write books but haven’t found any success with publishers. Well, I thought you’d like to know that my book A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by 42 publishers before it finally got published.” So, of course, my immediate thought was, hey, that’s ten more tries. Then Madeleine went on to say in a soaring conclusion to her letter, “Keep writing, keep trying, and if you persevere, I promise that you, too, will find your voice.” Well, I was ecstatic. The first thing I did was to call my friend to tell her the good news, but she wasn’t home. So, I called, well, everyone else I knew in the world. [Laughter] I called my parents, my college roommate, my friends near and far. I even read the letter aloud to people who lived in the same apartment building. Finally, after a couple more days, I caught up with my friend, and I told her the news. I jabbered on and on, but strangely, she was just totally silent on the other end of the line. So, I asked, “Is something wrong?” Well, she sighed and then answered, “Hey, I just didn’t think you were that gullible.”

Carolyn Hunter
Oh, no!

T. A. Barron
Suddenly, I realized what she’d done. Yeah, that’s right. Forgery. Major forgery. She had copied the publisher letterhead and written that letter to me, as she described it, as a joke. Well, it wasn’t a very funny joke to me. And for several weeks, I walked around with an even darker cloud over my head. Then one night on the way back home from work, I realized, you know what? There’s a silver lining here. Because of this terrible hoax, I actually now know how to get in touch with one of my favorite writers. So when I got back to the apartment, I sat down and I hand-wrote a letter.

Not expecting any answer, to Madeleine L’Engle, the letter went like this. “Dear Madeleine L’Engle, this is a thank you letter. Yes. Heartfelt thanks. First, for all the wonderful books you have written, and second, for the warm and encouraging letter that you wrote me, which is attached. Now, you may not remember writing it because, in fact, you didn’t. But it sure sounded like you. And it gave me exactly the hopeful message that I needed. You see, I have always wanted to write books. But instead, I’m stuck here, in New York City, wearing a business suit, with a job that is very different from telling stories. And so if you’re ever in New York, I just want to say it would be an incredible honor to take you to lunch.”

And then I added, “P.S. If you do answer this letter, please have your signature notarized. I just can’t go through all of this again.” [Laughter] Well, like I said, never in a million years did I expect an answer to that. But it felt good to write it. A week later, though, to my shock, I received a postcard in the mail, and it read, “Dear Tom Barron, I live in New York City. Call this number and let’s have lunch.” Signed Madeleine L’Engle, stamped, signature, notarized.

Carolyn Hunter
What?!

T. A. Barron
It’s true. And I still have that postcard. So, we did have lunch, which lasted seven whole hours in this wonderful Indian restaurant on the West Side. And that began a marvelous friendship for which I am deeply, deeply grateful. So, I’m a big fan of serendipity, and also of notarized signatures.

Carolyn Hunter
[Laughter] So how did you make the change to become a full-time writer?

T. A. Barron
Well, after all of those rejections, I had pretty much set aside my dream to become a writer, maybe forever. I didn’t know. And I already had a plan B in motion, which was working for that business in the city. And it was a good job. I got busier by the month and ended up as president of the company. But, something strange started to happen. I began a daily habit of getting up really early at 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning just to sit at my kitchen table and write. Just to write about the bizarre characters I had met in my job, or about a poem I was just hoping to compose, about a moment of serenity and beauty in Central Park, whatever it was. And it began to dawn on me. This was my favorite time of the day. No matter how long my day at the office, the next morning I was always there at the kitchen table, writing away.

So, something else began to dawn in my mind, which is there is something wrong with this picture, especially if you’re as deeply aware of mortality as I have always been. Ever since childhood, I’ve always felt that life is very brief. Even if you live to be 100, it’s still very brief. And that makes life all the more beautiful, even at the same time as it makes it more poignant and fragile. My mother’s theory about why I have always had that a hyper awareness of mortality is that I almost died as a baby from some digestive problem where I couldn’t process any food. And what saved me, actually, was the combination of mashed bananas and a really loving mom. Whether or not that’s the reason, I’ve always felt highly motivated to use my life to the fullest, to really grow in all the ways I can grow, to be whatever I can be, to stretch my wings and fly and maybe crash a few times. And who knows, possibly even become a writer.

Carolyn Hunter
[Laughter] Possibly.

T. A. Barron
So, the goal is to live fully, to love well, to be kind and to feel grateful for every day.

Carolyn Hunter
So, you really took this moment in your life seriously?

T. A. Barron
Indeed, I did. It really struck me that here I was having no evidence at all that I could actually be a writer. In fact, a lot of evidence to the contrary from publishers out there. And yet every morning I was back again at 4:00 a.m. writing. So, my passion for writing here wasn’t diminished at all, even with all of those rejections, and that told me something important. This is not done. Maybe nothing more is going to happen than some early morning writing sessions. And that’s all I’m ever going to do in this realm. Or maybe there is another way.

There’s a poem by Robert Frost that came to mind in that time. It’s called Two Tramps in Mud Time. And it’s about a man who is chopping wood. He’s somewhere in New England chopping his winter wood supply, and he’s not doing the best job of it, but he’s still enjoying the work. And the poem ends with a wonderful image where the man says, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I want my work and my play to be one as my two eyes are one in sight.” And I remembered that and thought about it, and it was clear to me that that was holding life to a high standard. But I really wanted to give it a try. It might not work, but I needed to try, or something down inside of me, something important would wither up and die.

Carolyn Hunter
Hmm. So what made the change happen?

T. A. Barron
Look, I’ve been very lucky in life. Many blessings have come my way that I didn’t earn or even hope for, starting with having two devoted parents, both Jewish and both first-generation Americans. And at that crucial moment in my life, I had some money in the bank, which is a luxury that not everyone has. But, you know, the most important blessing of all is my wife, Currie. And she knew that this 4:00 a.m. ritual was saying something important. And she knew that as busy as I was, I still longed to try to see if I could write a book or two. And she believed in me. That was the miracle. And it was crucial.

Carolyn Hunter
Such a gift.

T. A. Barron
Right. Well, fortified by her belief in me and also strengthened in resolve by the fact that we were starting to have kids and wanted to raise them in a more rural, close to nature kind of place, I made a decision. A big decision. I walked into our partners meeting at the office and had the fun of shocking everybody by announcing, “Things are going just fine. But I quit.” And to say everybody was surprised is a huge understatement. In fact, one of my partners came up to me right afterwards looking sheet white like he knew I had lost my mind, and reached into his pocket and pulled out a beat up business card, put it into my hand and said, “Tom, this is my therapist. You need to call her right now.” [Laughter]

So we rather promptly packed up and we moved back to Colorado. I started my new job, and lo and behold, within a year, that first book, Heartlight, was published. And in rather quick succession, we had five wonderful kids. And that moment, that pivotal moment, was now 30 years ago. And I could add 32 books ago. And you know, in those three decades, more good things have happened than I ever could have imagined. All these wonderful things, bestsellers, and international editions, that movie in the works at Disney, plus all this marvelous fan art that fills this room where we’re talking right now. I think I probably have more wizard’s staffs than any human being on the planet. [Laughter]

But, you know, the best thing of all in this whole creative realm, has been that I’ve had a chance to tell a few stories that feel true to my soul. And I’ve had a chance to tell them with whatever passion and skill I could bring to bear. That is just an incredible, incredible blessing.

Carolyn Hunter
Yeah.

T. A. Barron
So people sometimes ask me, was it scary to make that change? And the answer is, sure it was scary. But to me, it wasn’t nearly as scary as thinking about coming to the end of my life whenever that would be, and knowing that I had this dream. But I never had the courage to really pursue it, that I had given up and let those rejections win the day. I just knew in my bones that to try and fail would be much better than to never have tried at all.

Put another way, all we have, all we have, is our time and our souls. So why not make the most of them.

Now to wrap up this episode, let me again invite you to see your life as a story. A story of which you are the author. Tell it with your own unique voice, fill it with your passions, and tell it true.

Carolyn Hunter
What a wonderful conversation today.

T. A. Barron
Next episode we will take a walk in an enchanted forest in the first of more than one episode about nature, its wonders, inspirations and challenges today in the 21st century. Plus, in those explorations of nature, we will be joined by two awesome special guests.

Carolyn Hunter
And for anyone out there who wants to dive further into what we talked about today, please check out T. A. Barron’s blog on his website. And if you look through the blog, you’ll find one entry titled See your Life as a Story.

T. A. Barron
To everyone out there. Let me just say thank you so much for joining us for “Magic & Mountains.” We’ll see you next week. And in the meantime, may you have magical days.

Carolyn Hunter
We hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of “Magic & Mountains: The T. A. Barron Podcast.” Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a five-star review, and share this podcast with your family and friends. For more information and to find all of T. A.’s books, visit TABarron.com. Have a magical week.