Archived Editorial for 07/27/03

Why I Am A Writer
by Dr. Alma Bond
A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books

Rebecca was kind enough to ask me why I am a writer.
So I asked myself, Why do I write?
My answer: When you write, you sit up there next to God, as you create the world you would like to inhabit. You are never lonely, never empty, and are sufficient unto yourself. When you like what you have written, you overflow with gladness. There is no other feeling like it on earth, better than eating Godiva chocolates, better than...well, never mind. Once I had a dream that I was a huge pen squirting ink. The dream says that a writer is who I am. To paraphrase Descartes, “I write; therefore I am.”

When I was 11 years old, I wrote a poem called Ambitions. It started with,
When all the world is sleeping sound
My pencil is writing and my head's going round.
It went on to mention all the things I would like to be when I grew up, such as a great actress, the first woman president of the United States, & a pirate on the high seas. The poem ended:
But best of all, it seems to me
Is a writer, and that I should love to be.
And if I try hard and long,
I'm sure to fulfill my ambition strong.

I guess what I'm still doing is 'fulfilling my ambition strong.'

I was a practicing psychoanalyst for 30 years, & I enjoyed the work very much, & have never regretted the detour I took, for besides helping many people, it gave me insights into human nature I never would have discovered alone. Then I was in a terrible automobile accident. Waking up from a coma, I had one thought in mind, “I've had a good life and have done everything I've wanted except to write full time. Life hangs by a thread. If I'm ever going to 'fulfill my ambition strong,' I'd better do it now.” My husband had died by then, & my children were all grown up & married. So I prepared my patients to terminate their analyses, & moved to Florida to devote full time to writing.

Writing helped me recover the use of an arm that was badly mangled in the accident. I was working on my first book, Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography & learning to use a computer. I determined that I would write the book on this computer or I wouldn't write it at all. It took me three months to learn to use it & Virginia Woolf was doing just fine. So was my arm.

In those days (1989), it was easier to get published. I sent out a query to 20 publishers, & five expressed interest. Human Sciences Press was the first to respond. I decided they answered right away because they were the most interested, so that was the publisher I chose. It was a great choice. They did a second printing before the book went out of print. Then I self-published it with ASJA/iUniverse.com, & the it still is selling nicely.

For my second book, I found myself missing my psychoanalytic practice, & wrote, Is There Life After Analysis? In it, I told how I had to go through a mourning process for my lost patients, just as in a death. The book was published by Baker Book House.

I then co–authored America's First Woman Warrior: The Courage of Deborah Sampson, with Lucy Freeman, which was published by my present publisher, Paragon House. These were followed by:
• Profiles of Key West, interviews with the town's minor celebrities
• Dream Portrait, which analyzes 19 sequential dreams that led to the termination of a patient's analysis
• On Becoming A Grandparent: A Diary of Family Discovery, the true story of what it is like to get a new baby in the family
• I Married Dr. Jekyll And Woke Up Mrs. Hyde or “What Happens to Love?”, my search to understand the divorces of 71 women I interviewed
• & my all-time favorite, The Autobiography Of Maria Callas, A Novel, about what I think it was like to be Maria Callas.
• Tales Of Psychology: Short Stories to Make You Wise, 19 short stories by the famous & not-so-famous, which offer deep insight into human nature.

Whenever I had trouble finding a publisher, rather than sit around & mope I published the book myself. I Married Dr. Jekyll And Woke Up Mrs. Hyde was published with iUniverse, & a children's picture book, The Tree That Could Fly, was recently published by Xlibris which Rebecca has reviewed, as she has most of my others.

There is an interesting story to this one. ExpertClick sent out the following PR: “We know how hard it is to get a book published, but has anybody besides Dr. Alma Bond waited 40 years (!) for publication? When her children were little, she made up a bedtime story for them called The Tree That Could Fly. They loved it, and made her tell it to them every night for a year. She tried to sell it but was unsuccessful in finding a publisher. Every now and then she dragged it out and sent it off again, to no avail. Recently, she thought “The Hell with it! I want this story published.” So she had it done as a POD by xLibris (and a very nice job they did, too.) It was picked up by David Knox, an Audio publisher and director of the radio show, Are We There Yet? He cast the story and recorded it as a play. Dr. Bond says, “I'd had no idea there was so much dialogue in the story. If I may say so myself, it is wonderful, much better than the book alone.” Mr. Knox is planning to package and sell the story and the CD together as a read-along book. Funny, the fairy in the story says to the recalcitrant tree, “Never give up wishing.” “It must have been my unconscious talking,” says Dr. Bond.”

So where do I go from here? I recently finished writing The Autobiography of Camille Claudel, a Novel. She was the great French turn-of-the century (1800 to 1900) sculptor who was the lover & colleague of Rodin. I never have had an agent, except for Is There Life After Analysis? & the Deborah Sampson book. I sold all the rest of my books myself. Recently, I decided that perhaps an agent could help me move up from the mid-list, & incidentally, get me more money. So I am looking for an agent for the Claudel book. If I don't find one to my liking, I suppose I'll have to revert to the wretched route of finding a publisher myself.

I currently am researching the life of the great psychoanalyst & researcher, Dr. Margaret Mahler. It is very exciting, as I am interviewing all the great minds of psychoanalysis, & spending much time researching the 187 boxes of the Margaret Mahler collection deep in the archives of Yale University. Some people play bridge for recreation, others do bird watching: For me there is no greater pleasure than scavenging around in the dusty debris of a memorable person's life, unless it is packing it all together again & bringing her back from the dead.

What do I want for myself in the future? In my family, they say it is “Publish or perish!” My late husband, the actor Rudy Bond, wrote I Rode A Streetcar Named Desire, which my children & I published posthumously. My oldest son, Zane, recently published his first book, A Prophet Operating at a Loss, beautifully reviewed by RebecasReads. A few years ago, Jonathan, the C.E.O. & co-founder of the hip advertising agency, Kirshenbaum, Bond, & Partners, wrote & published Under the Radar: Talking to Today's Cynical Consumer. Both sons are now working on their second books. Janet Bond Brill, Jon's twin, is a nutritionist & her first important paper, “The effect of walking exercise on weight loss. How much is enough?” is in publication by the prestigious International Journal of Obesity. She presently is working on a screenplay. Not surprisingly, my five grandchildren all want to be writers. I'd like to see my writing family continue to be productive down through the ages, maybe establish a writing dynasty. As far as I myself? I want to go on writing &, (hopefully) publishing “till death do us part.”

Dr. Alma Bond
2003©Alma Bond
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer
A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books

Reviewer's Bio:
Dr. Alma Halbert Bond is the author of nine published books, including:
Tales Of Psychology (2004);
I Married Dr. Jekyll And Woke Up Mrs. Hyde (2000);
The Autobiography Of Maria Callas, A Novel (1998);
On Becoming A Grandparent: A Diary of Family Discovery (1994);
Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography (1998);
Profiles of Key West (1996).

She recently recorded her new manuscript, Old Age Is A Terminal Illness, as an audio book.

Dr. Bond is a much appreciated Senior Associate Reviewer -- you can find her reviews by entering her name, Alma Bond, in our Home Page Search Box.

Alma Bond, born in Philadelphia, now lives in Key West, Florida. She has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Columbus University. During her career as a psycho-analyst, she was widely published in the Journal of the American Society of Psychoanalysis, the Journal of Contemporary Psycho-therapy, & other professional journals. Dr. Bond has two sons, one daughter, & five grandchildren. Dr. Bond teaches Psychology & Writing online at WriterSchool.