For decades, friends of longtime Wichita Eagle columnist Bonnie Bing suggested she publish a book of her work.
One person, Lisa Corbin, was rather insistent.
“She was on it like a bonnet,” Bing said. “She would not shut up.”
Corbin, a close friend whom Bing has known since Corbin was a child, said she “felt like we needed to capture her gifts in a book that could be acquired and kept by everyone who is her fan and loves her.”
When the two started going through some past columns — Bing still was just kicking around the idea of a book — Corbin read one about a gift a child had given Bing when she was a teacher.
The column was about how that gift turned into a treasure, and it touched Corbin so much she cried.
“That’s it,” she declared. “We’re doing the book.”
“Wait . . . Now What?” is the 240-page result.
“How hard could it be?” friends asked as Bing worked on the book. “You’ve already written everything.”
Not quite, she said.
“There’s a lot more to it.”
First came rereading all those old columns. She and a cadre of helpers stacked columns in piles of definite yes entries, maybes and absolutely nots.
“I thought, oh, my goodness,” Bing said. “Some of those shouldn’t have been written.”
She made herself feel better by remembering the words of another dear friend, late Eagle editor Fran Kentling.
“You can’t hit it out of the park every time.”
Bing admitted enjoying taking the trip down memory lane, but it was difficult for her to choose which columns to include.
“Finally, I just got so, I don’t know, ‘Lisa, you choose.’ ”
One column they decided to include is the story of Bing shocking the city by playing Gumby and tackling the San Diego Chicken at a Wranglers baseball game. She wasn’t revealed as the person behind the costume until an article in The Eagle the next day.
Bing said she about killed the chicken, or at least broke his wing.
“You don’t tell a PE teacher to tackle somebody unless you mean it.”
There was the time she rode an elephant from Valley Center to the Kansas Coliseum while wearing a safari outfit complete with a pith helmet because, as Bing — a longtime fashion writer in addition to general columnist — pointed out, it’s important to always dress the part.
Then, of course, there are her swimsuit columns about how it felt shopping for the often-dreaded things. Bing said people — clearly the ones who identified with her — used to tell her that those tales of her shopping woes were a riot.
That’s how she chose a number of the columns. Bing thought back to what kind of responses they had.
“I remember all the nice things, and I really remember the bad things people would e-mail me,” she said. “It would just bother me for days.”
Fortunately, there weren’t many of those.
Bing said her favorite compliments were from people who said they cut out her columns to put them on their refrigerators or send to friends or family members.
Her columns date back to the early 1980s.
Bing worked at the publication for 37 years and still writes columns for it.
She said working on the book with Corbin was not a further bonding experience for the two.
“No, I think she wanted to kill me.”
Occasionally, it was the other way around.
“Don’t make me come over there,” Bing would threaten Corbin.
“She would just laugh. So she’s not very intimidated by me.”
They spent six weeks in Bing’s basement working on the book. Corbin, whom Bing called a marketing genius, also has her scheduled for signings at just about every library in the city.
There will be a signing from 6 to 7 p.m. on Nov. 20 at Watermark Books & Cafe. The event is free, but anyone interested should get tickets at watermarkbooks.com to make sure to have a seat.
Blue Cedar Press is publishing “Wait . . . Now What?”, which retails for $24.99.
Illustrations in the book are by Bing’s longtime friend and Eagle colleague Richard Crowson.
Corbin said she loves that Wichitans and others now can have Bing’s writing at their fingertips instead of on microfilm.
One of Bing’s greatest strengths as a writer is her ability to connect with readers in a conversational style.
“I feel like you’re just talking to me,” is something she often used to hear.
“That was always a real pleasure.”
