The Making of Dubbly: How Dubbly Was Born

Who is Dubbly? Dubbly is the star of my children’s story: a dishwasher who loves to sing but can’t wash dishes.  And when I say dishwasher, I mean a literal mechanical dishwasher, because in the world of imagination, dishwashers can have a passion for music, and washing machines a love for tapdancing (but we’ll save the washing machine for another day).

As I wrote this children’s story, there were two groups of people in the back of my mind: first, children with learning disabilities. So often, they have beautiful, creative gifts that are overlooked because they struggle with the things society thinks they should be good at, like math and reading. Second, I was thinking about all of us, and our inability to perfectly live out our purpose because we all have a brokenness inside of us that holds us back.

I don’t mean to say that I set out to write an allegory. My brother and sister-in-law had just purchased a new dishwasher, and when it finished its cycle, it did a little song, and the idea of a singing dishwasher was born. I thought it would be a cute children’s story and decided to write it down. But storytelling is a funny thing. When I’m done writing a story or a poem, I often find all sorts of things in there that I hadn’t set out to put in, and sometimes the ending is just as surprising to me as it would be to anyone else. It’s as if my subconscious writes the story just as much as my conscious mind, and things that are in the back of my mind get woven in. Dubbly surprised me.

I’ve grown to love Dubbly, even though he is just a character out of my imagination. He has been with me a long time, and I’ve written him and re-written him until he’s become real to me. I hope you’ll love him, too. If you’d be interested in being a beta reader, I could use all the input I can get. Just let me know and I’ll send my story to you.