The acknowledgments conundrum
You'd think after writing a 300-page book, half a page more of acknowledgments would be trivial. I'm not likely to write many--this story gestated for forty years, in handwritten notes, typewriters, and across generations of computers--so I want to get it right.
I started a list of who I wanted to thank, and added names to it impressionistically. The obvious family, friends, readers. Then less obvious people who'd been kind. I made it a point to include as many of those people as I could remember, even strangers in random moments. The guy in our building who had a car at 16, and made time to take us younger kids to the community pool. A girl whose name I didn't even know, who saw me crying on the schoolyard one day and came over to make sure I was okay. Musicians and writers who inspired me. Why not?
The list got to two hundred entries and I wasn't nearly done. I know acknowledgments are personal and can take many forms, but I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to be a list of the bands and books I think are cool, plus everyone in my life who was ever nice to me.
I tried to whittle the list with selection criteria, but trying to enumerate and rank people’s tangible and intangible contributions across so many years just felt wrong. I'm now leaning against including acknowledgments at all, and instead just leave the reader with the story's final lines.
But whether acknowledgments make it into the book or not, this experience did help me figure out the essence of what I want to say:
If you’ve been kind, to me or around me, in large ways or small, personally or professionally, for years or moments. Thank you. It mattered. You matter. You’re probably in here somewhere.