Learning from a Famous Namesake

I’ve always liked my last name. It’s short, clocking in at only four letters. There’s only one syllable. It’s easy to spell, although it’s possible to misspell if you happen to be the phone company. It’s easy to pronounce, whether you understand German or not, and I answer to both—whether the Americanized way, which is like the weapon of war, or if you throw an “ow” in between the “B” and the “m,” which is the way it’s supposed to be pronounced auf Deutsch. With the Americanized pronunciation, my wife and kids and I have a creative way of labeling ourselves: we proudly call ourselves the Baum Squad, and our house is the Baum Shelter.

Another thing I like about my last name is that it’s the same last name of a famous author who once created an iconic, bestselling children’s story that launched a baker’s dozen sequels and a timeless movie.

While I have yet to find the bloodline connection between me and the true Wizard of Oz, Lyman Frank Baum has been on my mind the last few days, especially with the journey I’ve been taking in my writing. As I’ve begun breaching the surface into his life, I’ve found enough parallels in my own life to reignite the smoldering coals underneath my cooling novel manuscripts.

Born in 1856 in upstate New York, L. Frank Baum developed a love of writing early in life, fed by the cheap printing press his father purchased for him. Baum published two amateur journals and a pamphlet before he turned 18. In his early adult years, Baum developed a lifelong infatuation with theatre, writing scripts and producing (and occasionally starring in) musicals with mixed financial success.

In 1888, he and his wife moved to the Dakota Territory, where he opened a Bazaar. It eventually went bankrupt because of his generosity in extending credit to customers. He subsequently began editing the local newspaper, which flopped in 1891. As a result, he and his family moved to Chicago, where he became a reporter for the Evening Post as well as a door-to-door salesman. It was here in Chicago that he found success publishing stories. In October of 1899, at the age of 43, Baum finished a manuscript he called The Emerald City, which was retitled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz upon its publication in 1900. The rest is an integral part of American pop culture.

As I write this blog post, I’m less than two months shy of turning 38. In my career, which has lasted almost thirteen years, I’ve been a newspaper reporter and magazine editor. I wasn’t given a printing press as a kid, I’m sorry to say, but I would tear open paper grocery bags and make mock-up newspapers out of them. While my love of theater has waned recently, I caught the theater bug in the eighth-grade, becoming the lead in the school play twice in high school and participating in a summer-stock theater, among other small community plays. Regrettably, I’ve only dabbled in writing scripts.

My efforts to take over a magazine company failed when I realized the debt-to-income ratio was too great. Since December 2014, I’ve been working on my publishing company, specializing in freelance writing, editing, transcribing, personal histories, and publishing. It’s been a rocky road these past thirteen-plus months, but at this point I’m putting my publishing company on the part-time back-burner to find full-time employment.

Inspired by Baum’s example of not giving up, I look in my Writing Projects folder on my laptop, seeing how many novels and nonfiction books I’ve started but haven’t finished. Those farthest in my queue include an e-book on journal writing that was mercilessly (but necessarily) ripped to shreds by a talented editor. I’ve licked my wounds, and now I’m plugging forward with rewriting it. There’s also a rough second draft of a fantasy novel that takes places on a fictional planet where winter lasts for an entire year and is unhospitable. I almost finished the first draft of Part II during NaNoWriMo in November.

Tuesday of this week, as I started creating an invoice for a personal history customer of mine, I cringed when I calculated reasonable fees for the hours and services I’ve rendered so far. If she was a corporation, I wouldn’t even flinch, but because she’s a Baby Boomer/farmer’s wife I’ve come to know as a friend, I can’t help but throw in discounts. I understand why Baum’s Bazaar flopped.

But I’m not giving up. If it’s possible for a man in his forties at the close of the nineteenth century to create a new world in a best-selling children’s story that would spawn a successful series, then it’s possible for a man in his late thirties—with the same last name—in the twenty-first century to create a new world in a self-published novel trilogy and find success.

Here’s to 2016.