The Conception and Birth of "Button"

[Cole Matthews]

The Conception and Birth of Button

 

The story of Button began with a single tweet.  A closeted college student I followed on Twitter sent out an impulsive, plaintive message.  @TheCrazyArkie – “I just want a little guy I can pick up and kiss, or throw over my shoulder and carry around.”  This was posted sometime in January.  I immediately asked him if I could use his quote as a prompt for a story for 1550 Loring Lane.  He readily agreed.

 

I imagined a short, slim man.   There is a big, goofy blonde guy pining over him.  The more I reread the quote, the more I thought how it could mean a cute boyfriend or a child.  That got me thinking.  What if he asked for a boyfriend and got one, but a baby as well?  The premise would be ‘be careful what you wish for’ because you might end up with more than what you asked for.

 

Would the little guy have a baby?  No.  I realized Craig, the main character in my head, was bisexual and had certain attributes.  Craig was the kind of hale and hearty fellow women would swoon over but gay men would overlook.  He’s sweet and a little gruff but his pendulum swings toward men and it frustrates him that other guys don’t like him too much…not like that.

 

Craig’s character took over my brain for a couple of days and an encounter with a woman with a blue Mohawk joined him.  I figured they’d meet at a coffee house, a coffee house with a guy Craig had been lusting over.  The guy, Jose, would be oblivious to Craig’s attentions.  Jose is an artist, a little delicate and naïve.  Craig’s liaison with the blue Mohawk woman would bear a child.  I wasn’t sure where it would go from there.

 

How do I arrange Craig and Button’s meeting?  And why?

 

The story of Moses floating in the bulrushes kept coming into my head.  It’s not often Biblical stories pop into my imagination so I figured something was eating at me.  That’s when Button appeared on Craig’s doorstep and his mother Sandy’s reaction and his revelation the child was his responsibility came about.  I wrote the story and the quick meeting between Craig and Jose and gave it to Randy to read.

 

Randy hated it.  He thought the story was too commonplace and besides, he complained, it has no ‘supernatural element’ to it.  Randy was right.  Button was rather a plain, ordinary story and it didn’t fit in with the ‘can be explained but isn’t the supernatural explanation more fun’ theme of 1550 Loring Lane stories.

 

Button was left on my computer’s hard drive.

 

In the meantime, I was contemplating my next book.  I wanted something about the families we create.  I didn’t have a vehicle to tell the tale.  I was stymied.  I think Button was sitting there in the back of my brain and poking at me.  He wouldn’t be ignored.

 

The guy whose quote I used asked me about the story.  He wanted to know when it would come out.  I decided to tweak the original story and include a squirrel with a blue streak on its head, as suggested by Daithi who beta read the original.  I figured that would add the necessary otherworldly element and made Jose’s coworker Graham the love interest.  Graham was the coffee house manager and a bit more aggressive and passionate.  I finished the story but still didn’t post it.  Something was nagging at me.  But, it was done, right?

 

Nope.  The day after I finished revising Button I got a notice my teaching license needed renewal.  I’d gone back to college and got that license five years ago but had never found a teaching job so I wasn’t sure it was worth paying the money.  It bugged me though.  I’d spent a considerate amount of money learning pedagogy and yet here I was doing nothing with that education.

 

The following day I was on my lunch break and thinking about the stages of development in children and the delightful kids I’d worked with in the special education classroom.  I missed those students and was enjoying my thoughts of how they struggled and the little achievements that made them so happy.  It always struck me while student teaching how children don’t really follow the stages of development as they are laid out while I could see they kind of do.  It’s not an exact science.  There is a great deal of subjectivity especially in assessing the needs and strengths of children with emotional and behavioral issues.  In fact, that was true with all students I’d come in contact with.

 

I had tutored a couple of kids with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and they would show surprising proficiency in one area and complete disaster in another.  The story of how these children struggle, fail, and succeed isn’t a tale that’s often told.

 

Then one night I watched the movie “Sixteen Candles” on a basic cable channel and kept wondering what Button would be like at age sixteen, with two gay dads, living in south Minneapolis.  How would he have navigated the waters of life after being abandoned by his birth mother?  What if he had a birth defect, like FASD or delayed development due to some biological factor?

 

How do I even portray such a character?  It would be quite the epic novel if I detailed each and every major event during the life of this child.  Are all such events really that important?  The phrases ‘terrible twos’, ‘sixteen candles’, ‘five for fighting’, and ‘six feet under’ kept coming to me.  What if I did each chapter as a vignette of Button’s life for that year?  Instead of becoming lost in the weeds with day to day events, what if I could write these characters dealing with something major, a life altering idea each year of Button’s life?  That seemed more doable. 

 

It would be a challenge to write about the other characters without letting them fall off the page in each chapter.  I didn’t know if I could do it, but I was already planning the novel Button.  It would begin with Craig flat broke and Graham buying birthday decorations.  Craig was not happy about it.

 

I posted the short story ‘Button’ on March 1^st, 2014 and LadyDe and CharlieOcho both commented the story could be expanded into something bigger.  Readers and commenters, your voices really do matter to writers.  I hadn’t started writing yet, but that gave me the courage to consider it.  Joann414 thought it could be something special and her opinion pushed me over the edge.  The next weekend, I started writing.

 

Onesie was written before I even thought of the name.  I went back and added Leroy’s contribution of a sport team onesie as an explanation for the title of the first chapter.  It all came together, in fits and starts, from there.  I had a story, characters, and a basic plotline.  I even had an ending I would work towards.  Like the beginning of the story, it would end with a child.   Button’s child would be born and Button’s grandmother would lovingly tease him with the nickname ‘peanut.’

 

This exercise is to remember and digest how I got here with this story.  I wrote something similar after ‘Porcupines’ because I needed to figure out how I navigated the labyrinth of my own mind to write it.  This account is shared because we all have our own processes and ways of creating stories.  It’s useful to see how others do so.  You may get stuck and burn out your gears trying so hard to get past some writing problem.  Then, you remember why you started writing your story, who the characters are, and what you are trying to convey.  It can be a useful way to get around obstacles and even figure out what you want to write in the first place.  I hope this helps someone.

 

Thanks for reading my scribbles and my memories.  This story is pretty special to me, and I dedicate it to the kids who inspired it.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Cole Matthews

[Suvitar]

As a reader I sometimes wonder how and where an author gets their ideas for a story. It was nice to read your "scribbles" about Button. I would have loved to read more about Button and his dads but you did good with the idea of one important thing of each year. 

[mickey1952]

Some stories can't help but tug at your heartstrings; Button is one of them. Some stories take a chapter or two to really grab your attention, others get you in the first couple of paragraphs; again, that's Button. You captured real life and eloquently put it to paper. You hadn't yet started posting Button when I wrote to Cia requesting that you be considered for Promising Author status. Others must have felt the same way since you now enjoy the title you so richly deserve.

 

But if anyone had any doubts as to whether you deserved the elevation, Button surely banished those thoughts. I really enjoyed watching our protagonist, his friends, and his family grow and grow up with each passing year. It was a nice way to present the story. And now you've set the stage for the sequel "The Barbed Wire Heart". I can't wait to catch up with some of my favorite characters again and see how Brent and Brody's lives come together. Thanks for sharing your talents with us, Cole! Always a pleasure!

[Cole Matthews]

Thank you Mickey! I really appreciate all the kind words and moral support you've given me. Believe me, we authors soak it up like parched earth and we try to give back stories for readers to enjoy. Chapter 1 is coming along nicely, btw!

[joann414]

Sounds like you took a lot of time and effort and put tons of thought into this great story.  I was so proud to be a part of it.

[Rigel]

I just saw Richard LInklater's new film "Boyhood"--and it has a lot in common with your story "Button." The film has a series of 10-15 minute vignettes (shot over a week or two each year for 13 years) that follow a boy Mason as he grows from first grade to college freshman. It's a cinematic treatment very similar to what you've done in your story.

 

--Rigel

Edited August 11, 2014 by Rigel