BRATTLEBORO — Keeping up a blog, or even a private diary, is not always an easy task. Some people feel they have nothing worth writing about, others can't commit to a daily routine of writing.
Suzanne Kingsbury, local author and founder of the writing workshop “Where the Wild Things Are,” does not have either of these difficulties with her own blog at suzannekingsbury.net. Neither did her maternal grandmother, Maggie, who lived a glamorous and extremely social life in Manhattan in the 1930s.
Kingsbury combined the best of both their worlds when she decided to incorporate her grandmother's three-year diary from 1937 and her own life in 2010 into one blog, with a weekly entry detailing the events of her own life in comparison to the events of Maggie's.
“I was watching Julie & Julia, and what inspired me was the idea that there are people in the world that affect us but have no idea. Somehow they inspire you to make a turn in your life, do something very creative,” says Kingsbury about how she was inspired to start this project. “Their lives inspire you. Creativity creates more creativity.”
The first person to come to mind when she thought of who inspired her was her mother's mother, Maggie, who had died when Kingsbury was nine. Kingsbury still had letters and journals from her, as well as a trunk full of clothes and costumes from her grandmother's days as a dancer.
“My grandmother traveled in Europe as a flapper girl. She wrote a newspaper column called 'A Flapper Girl Goes to Europe.' She was in acting and dance troupes, and her mother was a philanthropist and was very politically and socially active. It was interesting that she allowed her daughter to dance, because it was considered lowbrow back then. I didn't have a sense of her in her prime as a glamorous, beautiful dancer. She was very ill and cranky when she died.”
Kingsbury started the blog on New Year's Day of 2010, but she recalls having felt her grandmother's presence strongly in her life 10 years ago, when she quit her job at SIT to pursue writing full time.
“Everyone was telling me that writers never make any money,“ she said. “I remember she was very much there somehow. Her essence was so clearly with me that summer I was trying to make the plunge and getting a lot of negative feedback.
“Once I made the leap and became a novelist, it worked out really well, and then she was gone,” Kingsbury added. “She did her work and then she left. She's always been a real inspiration as her younger self. I was thinking about her journals, and her voice is so funny and unique, and she's living before the Second World War, in all this innocence. We can have a sort of relationship that we could never have, writing together.”
Maggie was born in Detroit to a pharmacist father and a mother who was a social and political activist. Her father paid the bills, and Lena, Maggie's mother, took her daughter all over Europe, dancing, singing and acting in many of the major cities on the continent.
“She was very talented and beautiful,” Kingsbury relates. “She got engaged to a family friend's son, whose father was a minister, and her mother was very happy. Then Maggie moved to New York to pursue acting and got a day job as a secretary for the Herald Tribune, and fell in love with my grandfather, who was her boss. Grandfather was from California, and he was not someone her family supported.”
After their marriage, Maggie and her husband moved to St. Mark's Place in Manhattan, and he worked as a journalist. In the 1930s, this provided them with a much more opulent lifestyle than is typical of a one-income household today.
“The economy is really different,” Kingsbury notes when comparing her own lifestyle to that of her grandmother's.
“Her husband was the world affairs reporter for the Herald Tribune, in their 20s, living in Manhattan in a very hip neighborhood,” says Kingsbury. “They had no family money, but they are entertaining and going out every night, going to dance halls and restaurants. They have a maid and a cook. She doesn't work and he's bringing her home taffeta housecoats. Today in your 20s, you usually don't have a maid or go out every night in Manhattan on one journalist's salary.”
Despite their lifestyle differences, Kingsbury identifies with her grandmother in terms of her personality and writing style at the age of 26.
“Between her and me, the difference would be that she's very emotionally detached (or at least the journal is). We don't know if she's sad, happy or frustrated. My writing is very emotion-based, all 'What is the meaning of life?' I find that interesting. I wonder if it was a liability for her in terms of her life. I don't know if that's a sign of the times to not talk about emotional content of your life, but I find it fascinating and, in a way, refreshing.”
Besides the detachment, Kingsbury said their writing styles are very similar.
“Life is fun and an adventure. She's very open to people and would rather have them around. She's got a lot of spunk. When I was in my 20s, I was just exactly like her. I did a lot of partying and hobnobbing with artists in Manhattan. I almost see myself. I feel a complete kinship with her. She loved words, ideas, was interested in current events, and she loved a good story. I think she was not a conformist. She wanted to be out in the world.”
Maggie chronicles the last month of her first pregnancy, as well as the birth of her son Ted, Kingsbury's uncle, in her diary. Kingsbury describes reading about her uncle as a newborn was “transcendental,” given how she knew him as an adult.
“My uncle was a really complex person,” she said. “It's fascinating to think of someone as a baby. He had a tremendous, quiet power and a really bad temper as an adult. He had a huge affinity for drink and he was very wealthy. I think it's great to see someone like that as a screaming baby. Through my grandmother's journals, I saw that everyone starts out as a helpless, vulnerable infant.”
Although some people would struggle to write what is essentially two blogs - one detailing Kingsbury's life and the other detailing her grandmother's - Kingsbury says it is actually a very rewarding experience that isn't as lonely as writing one blog.
“I never feel like I'm reaching, I always feel very comfortable with it. It's easier because you don't feel as alone with just your blog. She's ratcheting it up a notch. Her entries resonate. I'm in my 40s now, married, and my life is about simplicity. I've gotten away from that social party-girl stuff. There's a contemplative part of the blog and a very social part of the blog. It's sort of a yin-yang thing.”
Kingsbury's project of integrating her blog and her grandmother's diary is likely to continue for years.
“She wrote in it every single day. My readers were like 'Please put more space between entries' when I tried to write daily. Now I do one entry a week. It will go on for a lot longer than I originally thought. I think she kept it for three years, so it'll be at least four or five years. Guest bloggers write about their grandmothers whenever she (Maggie) has breaks in her diary.”
Kingsbury also offers encouragement to all who are writing for themselves, or have doubts about whether their writing is going to profit them in any way.
“Some people ask 'Why am I writing this if it can't get published?' You never know when you're writing. The power of journal writing should never be put down, even if you're not writing for publication. We don't know where that urge comes from, or who it's going to touch. So many people have been inspired by this blog. That is the biggest affirmation.”