With two books under her belt, Nancy Goodman Driver confirms the adage made famous by other writers.
“Writing is 99 percent revision and 1 percent inspiration,” says Driver, an ESL teacher for the Franklin Public Schools who spent last summer editing her new book, “Coast to Coast: Arrivals and Departures.”
The book is a collection of Driver’s travel / coming-of-age stories from trips taken over the past 25 years. It includes pieces about Barcelona, the Caribbean, New Jersey and the Midwest.
Driver collaborated with her brother, Steve Goodman, to create the cover. "We used old slides from my father’s collection of pictures of a family trip to California back in the '60s," she says.
The book is self-published via Microsoft Publisher and Clark Graphics, 2915 N. Oakland Ave., and will be for sale at Schwartz Bookshops and Woodland Pattern in Riverwest at the end of April. It costs $15 dollars, with $3 from each sale going to the Next Door Foundation (NDR), which Driver learned about from Schwartz’s “Gives Back” program.
“I chose NDF because as a student, teacher, reader and writer, I know what a significant role books play in our lives, and I know there are many Milwaukee households that don’t have books in them,” says Driver.
Driver, a recipient of a Wisconsin Arts Board grant for short fiction, finished her first book, a memoir called “Beverly Arlene: Saving the Stories,” in 2006. The book chronicles three generations of family stories based on transcribed conversations taped in the weeks before her mother’s death. "Beverly Arlene" took Driver five summers to complete.
Driver plans to pen two more books in the future, one potentially called “Bits and Pieces,” a reflection on aging, and the other a book about teachers, colleagues and students who inspired her over the years called “Learning to Teach and Teaching to Learn.”
Driver attended college in Stockton State in New Jersey and the University of Wisconsin -- Green Bay. She received her master’s degree from Aurora University, and took writing classes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“My only advice to someone who wants to write a book is it is never too late, and once you have one burning inside you that needs to be on the page, you’ll find the time to give it life,” says Driver.
Molly Snyder started writing and publishing her work at the age 10, when her community newspaper printed her poem, "The Unicorn.” Since then, she's expanded beyond the subject of mythical creatures and written in many different mediums but, nearest and dearest to her heart, thousands of articles for OnMilwaukee.
Molly is a regular contributor to FOX6 News and numerous radio stations as well as the co-host of "Dandelions: A Podcast For Women.” She's received five Milwaukee Press Club Awards, served as the Pfister Narrator and is the Wisconsin State Fair’s Celebrity Cream Puff Eating Champion of 2019.
