Here We Go Again

First of all, there was no blog post last week. Normally, I’m written a year ahead, but I’ve been so busy with my latest book, I just don’t have any new content. This is the first time this has happened since the inception of the blog in 2016. I’m just too busy, and out of gas at the moment. But I assure you, once the new book is published, I’ll get back on the horse and provide the original content you’ve all come to love. I have so many stories I want to tell, and I’ll write them here, once my new book is published. A lot has happened in the last year! I can’t wait to share them with you!

I’m looking forward to getting back to my simple, uncluttered life this summer. Just writing my blog and playing guitar!

But… while all of this has been happening, (and there has been plenty) Phicklephilly has hit a new milestone. 400,000 page views and over 5,000 subscribers! I’m so grateful to everyone around the world who’s taken the time to read and follow my little blog since 2016. It’s grown so much and I’m happy it’s been a platform for me to write and publish all of my books.

Last year, the Lawndale book came out in August. I had been writing a few stories about my past growing up in Philly in the 60s and 70s. This was during the pandemic when my daughter and I were out of commission for a year and a half. She worked on her music, and I started publishing a few nostalgic pieces on my blog, Phicklephilly.

You can find Lawndale here.

I posted links to these stories in some Facebook Groups about Philadelphia and my old neighborhood. They were met with great enthusiasm. At the time, I didn’t realize how much people came together and loved the nostalgia of growing up during that period. So, I figured if I could write a nice collection of stories about growing up in the old neighborhood, maybe I could publish it as a book.

It turned out to be a pretty good idea. I’m grateful to everyone who bought the book and enjoyed it. But in the back of my mind, I couldn’t escape the fact that there were more stories to tell.

Every summer since 1971, my family spent the summer at our little house on 8th Street in North Wildwood. I knew I had to write those stories and create a follow-up book for Lawndale.

I was on the phone with my sister Jane a month ago, and we were discussing the release of this book. I expressed to her that I was really struggling with this one. Even though Lawndale was my most successful book to date, it was my shortest, coming in at around 312 pages. The odd thing about that is… 312 was our address on Magee Street! Pretty weird!

I told Jane I was hoping for a Memorial Day release of the Wildwood book, but it just wasn’t happening. The Wildwood book is so much bigger than the Lawndale book. My sister told me not to worry, and just release the book when I felt it was finished and ready for publication. But as a former sales guy, I always put pressure on myself to reach my personal goals. I like deadlines and work well under pressure. I did it for 30 years in the corporate world. She assured me I would be fine, and I’d get it done. She reminded me that I had just released the Lawndale book last summer, and now here I was 9 months later trying to get another book out before summer. She likened it to giving birth to a baby. I was trying to get this baby out by Memorial Day, but the baby will be born when it wants to come out.

Jane’s always given me good advice. She’s the one who told me when I wrote my first piece about my dad a few years ago, that those kinds of stories were my superpower. That was a great compliment, but she was right. I have an acute memory for events, and she felt that writing stories like that may be worth pursuing.

I took her advice and Lawndale was born last year. But here I was trying to replicate that success less than a year later. Writing an even bigger, and more expansive book in 9 months seemed daunting. But that’s not entirely true. I started writing stories about Wildwood in 2018. So, I already had a few tales to start to cobble together for a book. But it just seemed like such a monumental task. Probably the biggest of my life. In reality, I’ve been working on this book for over 5 years!

Lawndale is a little neighborhood way up in Northeast Philadelphia. Back in the 60s and 70s, it had a small-town feel. We knew everybody on our street and the surrounding blocks. We walked to school and shopped on Rising Sun Avenue.

But Wildwood is a resort destination where we spent every summer through the 70s. There was no school to attend, we ran free and grew up over those summers. When you returned from spending the summer in Wildwood, you were always a little different. A little taller and a little wiser. Most people didn’t get to experience what we had each season.

How could I write a whole book about a place like that? Not my little neighborhood in Philly, but a place where thousands of people flocked each summer from everywhere. It just seemed like an impossible task. How could I capture the feeling of growing up each summer in an island paradise?

I didn’t want to write a book full of facts and historical bits about Wildwood. That’s already been done by many other writers. I wanted to write something that captured what it felt like to be there, and what I saw and experienced. I had to include some historical facts to give relevance to what I was writing, but I wanted it to be driven by my story.

So that’s what I’ve tried to do with this book.

But there’s so much material. How am I going to put it all together in some sort of linear story that progresses through the 70s, but is still concise? It’s been a rough trip trying to put this book together. We’re going back half a century here. I can’t just drop a bunch of stories in a book from my blog. It has to be more. It has to capture the spirit of the island, but still be personal. My sister Jane told me not to lose sight of that.

I spoke with my friend Jim about my struggles and the process in general. I told him I loved writing stories and creating content but hated editing. He said he loves editing. He’s a professional artist. What artist likes to edit? Editing is having to go back over something you’ve already created and clean it up, adding things and deleting others. To me, it’s the worst part of the creative process.

Jim explained to me that he likes editing because he’s a painter. He said that painting is editing. As he creates a painting, he’s constantly editing the work with every brush stroke. Creation and editing work together while he’s making a new piece. I never looked at my writing that way. Like my music, I just bang out some lyrics, and chords and make a song. Someone else can do all the refinements to the theme if they want when I record it. I just like having the idea and the feeling I get when I make something new. Not all of the work that goes into refining and perfecting it later.

Maybe that’s why none of my romantic relationships have ever lasted.

But he was right. Editing is part of the creative process. They have to work together to create a finished product the artist can live with.

But then I said to him, “What if I forget some detail or leave something out, or miss something?”

He told me the following: “Someone will look at my paintings and say something like, Wow you really have a lot of detail in your work. You really captured that image perfectly. The detail is amazing.”

But what he tells them is, his artwork isn’t about detail. That’s not why he paints. The details aren’t important. It’s in making the work and capturing what he felt when he looked upon whatever it was he was painting. It never has to be perfect. If someone looks at his work and feels something, whether it’s good or bad, he’s done his job as an artist.

First and foremost, to please himself by creating something. But the details don’t matter. It’s his voice and you can take from that what you will. It doesn’t matter. It’s his story and that’s the way he chose to tell it.

That really hit home with me and I’m glad I spoke with him about this dilemma. That made me feel better about the whole project. I can’t worry if it’s imperfect or if I’ve forgotten some minor detail. It’s my story and I’m here to tell it to the world. My sister Jane has given me the reassurance and support I needed to get through it, and Jim gave me peace of mind.

So, the book is coming.

Down the Shore will publish soon. (Yea, that’s the title) The baby’s been kicking me a lot lately and wants to come out.

Just like the Golden Nugget Mine ride on Hunt’s Pier: You can’t stop that train once it starts rolling out of the station.

I can tell you this… Down the Shore is finished. There’s nothing else I want to say in this book. It’s going to be bigger than the Lawndale book, but only because there are so many stories to tell about this place. I’ve done my best to tell as much as I remember and invoke what we were all feeling through the 70s.

I’m going to go through the whole book from top to bottom… ONE MORE TIME… and then that’s it. I’ll publish it. I just want to make sure it’s ready to go when the time comes.

That time is rapidly approaching. I appreciate everyone who has been patient while waiting for my latest work. You won’t be disappointed!

Thank you for reading my blog. Please like, comment, share, and most of all, follow Phicklephilly. 

You can check out my books here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=charles+wiedenmann&ref=nb_sb_noss_1