Susan’s Inside Writing: Traditions

Traditions are best when they evolve, when they are organic. When they just happen. When someone wakes up one day and realizes that the event didn’t happen and they now miss it.

Or are they?

Two years ago, I created the Musical Hanukkah Celebration for my fictional band ShapeShifter as a way to be different. My readers thought it was a great idea.

Last year, I introduced a character, Springer, who’s shown up a few times since then. The celebration definitely grew, but I was missing one thing I really wanted: a real-life t-shirt. I wanted to raise some funds that I could donate to the real-life charity my fictional characters are claiming to support. I’ve been known to blur the line between reality and fiction here on my blog and this is one way in which I really wanted to do that.

So I’ve added a t-shirt for 2008. Along with the sales of my first book, The Demo Tapes, I’m hoping to have enough of a profit to make a donation to the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, the real-life charity my fictional band is supporting.

This is a tradition that I created because it’s important to me. I may have been a lousy musician, but without the chance to try an instrument or two (or three… or, for that matter, an entire percussion section), I never would have known that. I would have always had the black hole of “I wonder what it would have been like…” or “I wonder if I could…”

Kids all across America deserve the chance to find out. Hopefully we can grow the annual Musical Hanukkah Celebration to include an international focus because it’s not just kids across America who deserve the chance to make music. Every child deserves that, no matter income, no matter location.

So I ask you to join me. Stop back for this year’s posts, which are already shaping up to be a lot of fun. Pick up a t-shirt or a copy of The Demo Tapes. (At this moment, I have copies here if you’d like an autographed one; they make great gifts!) Make a donation on your own. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the music we listen to on the radio, over the Internet, or blaring through our TVs via Guitar Hero and Rock Band continue to inspire children … children who find ways to make music, themselves.

I can’t think of many better traditions to be involved with.

This was inspired by this week’s Sunday Scribblings theme: tradition. But it needed to be said, anyway.