Cowan Pottery book beginnings - Do You Have the Passion?

(The following post was originally printed in Tom Bird's Author's Roundtable. I thought Cowan fanatics would enjoy hearing how the Encyclopedia of Cowan Pottery was born.)


Do You Have the Passion? - Jamie Saloff - November 20, 2000

I came across a simple sentence that caused a spark, "Do you have the passion?"

I used to wonder. I used to look at my talent with skeptical eyes and wonder if anyone would find it to be of any worth. When I first started working with Tom Bird years ago, I knew nothing about the business of writing or about compiling a proposal package, heck, I still hadn't mastered basic grammar or spelling. I had a lot to learn, but I had one thing many others forgot. Passion.

While I worked on the process of entwining words and played with them like a child with dolls, dressing them in different styles and moods, my husband, Tim, spent time researching pottery finds at the local library. He'd found one piece in particular that truly intrigued him and he even so much as traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, to view a public collection in hopes of learning more about its creator.

Though each of us pursued our passion privately, eventually the two came to meet. After my eight months of sessions with Tom, and Tim's months of dead-end searching, I looked Tim straight in the eye and said, "We could write this book ourselves, after all, it's just pictures and words and I know how to contact the publisher and you know how to take pictures...how hard could it be?" (HA!)

So I sat down at my computer and put together a six-page proposal. In our one-page, generously spaced, bio I carefully avoided the fact that we'd never done this before or that our experiential knowledge consisted of a little more than a year's worth of collecting. We used Kinko's-style color copies (this was 1991!) that distorted our photographs so much that orange pottery turned red and purple crackle became blue. We'd been fortunate to gain permission from the Rocky River Public Library to photograph their extensive collection and mentioned this in our proposal letting prospective publishers know we'd also photograph the collections of private collectors, as well. Only I forgot to mention we didn't know who those people would be. We hadn't met them yet nor did we know where we'd find them. Instead, I highlighted our passion for the project and the enthusiasm we hoped to bring.

We sent it off to four publishers, the only companies we knew who were doing collecting books at the time, and one-by-one they showed back up in our mailbox. Each one felt like a knife in my heart. I'd see my own handwriting scrawled on the front, a part of me would die. It wasn't just my writing they were rejecting, but my passion.

When the fourth one showed up, I threw it on the counter unopened. I felt like a failure. I knew I wasn't qualified. I knew I wasn't experienced. But I knew I could bring something extra to this book...passion for the pottery, passion for its creator...passion for the other people who'd been collecting it for years from house sales and yard sale finds.

Tim saw the envelope on the counter and insisted I open it. He was always the optimist, always reassuring. But I could feel my proposal envelope inside and I didn't want the final disappointment. Opening that envelope was no harder than getting back on a horse after having been thrown. I've since done both.

Something else fell out of the envelope with my folder. It seemed like a foreign object to me. The paper was thinner than most, longer, with lots of fine print. At the top in very small bold print it said, 'contract.' My eyes examined it as if it might burst into flames. I kept looking for the words, "we regret" but they just weren't there. I kept looking at the strange paper knowing it just couldn't be what it said. Surely it was a mistake. And then, in a sudden instant, something exploded inside of me.

Realization hit like an atom bomb. I began screaming and the words tumbling from my mouth poured out in incomprehendible jumbles. I started hoping and jumping around the room, flailing my arms, kicking my feet, screeching, shrieking. How could this be? How could this be!

In the end, what sold this book was passion, not talent. I met an agent a few years later who began her welcoming speech talking about passion. She knew, as did this editor, that passion propels a writer to add a little something extra to a project. When Collector Books accepted our signed contract, they didn't just get words and some pictures. They got three years of dedicated research, countless photographs from a wide range of collectors, my diligent search for the truth, Tim's knack for detail. Passion. The book now sells for over the cover price on E-bay and collectors world-wide use our book as the definitive guide.

Today, whenever I see my book, I smile. It represents a visible acknowledgement of the passion my husband and I spent to bring it to life as well as the passion of the artists who created the pottery inside. Tom Bird once said he believed anyone could write and sell a book. I believed his words because he taught them with passion.

Do you have the passion?