Banging Out A Picture Book

This week’s task – take four colors of construction paper and retell a fairy tale with five pages.

Deceptively simple. 

I’ve taken on Rapunzel, and enjoyed every minute of it.  I used only scissors, but if I could have found my exacto knife, it could have been even better.  But never mind the detail work, it was a fun activity and a good reminder that stories can be distilled into five scenes.  

But now I have to write a process paper to explain myself.  But before that?  The Sunday night glass of wine…

The Bird and the Cage

In writing historical fiction, I have learned a new layer of writing skills – levels of responsibility to a world I have never known, to people I will never meet, and to a truth I can’t create as I can with my other fiction.  

In his book on the sinking of the Titanic, Allan Wolf articulates it this way.

 

“In order to write The Watch that Ends the Night, I’ve allowed fancy to play within the confines of fact.  When it comes to historical fiction, history is the birdcage; fiction is the bird.”

This metaphor resonates with me, because I see that creating fiction (story that exists within our head without observable corroboration of fact) is very much like creating a bird – something that can fly and sing and actively participate in the world.   The history is far from being as static as a bird cage, but it is the container for the thing that we want to fly.  And because there is something containing it, the story is different than it would be if I wrote a story about a world that wasn’t restrained by the artifacts of the past.

I also like this bit:

“Writing a historical novel is like making soup.  You spend a lot of time gathering the ingredients, but eventually you’ve got to start cooking, even if you are missing one of two spices.”

Another metaphor that fits for me, on this day when so many of my research books can not be renewed by the library.  At some point I have to return those books, sidle up to the computer, and get down to revisions, even if I can’t imagine exactly the right turbine that the silk mill used, or whether the boots Catherine wears have buttons or laces.  Since my last draft went off to the editor, I’ve been gathering more ingredients, more ingredients, just a few more ingredients.  Now I need to dip back into the soup pot, have a taste, and start seasoning.

A Poet’s Concerns

Because I am writing about a flood in 1874, and because there is flood outside my friend’s door, I think of this quote:

“The Poet turns to the natural world, pays close attention, and is rewarded with instruction.”

-Mark Doty, The Art of Description (p.16)

Indeed.  May the waters here and Boulder, Colorado, teach us to pay attention and reward us with new knowledge.

 

Great Swaths of Time!

Today I am at home waiting for my partner and twin 4 year olds to come home to have lunch with me.  It’s been quiet and I’ve been writing since 9:30 am.  That’s about two and a half hours.  Wow.  That’s one of the longest stretches of not talking to another person I’ve had in, well, nine years. 

Of course, I didn’t “get everything done” that I’d hoped to accomplish.  Of course, there is still a giant stack of books to go through on my other writing desk (the desk where writing never happens because it is covered in research books).  Of course, I want to add another 2,000 words (in edit, not in substance) before this draft goes out on Tuesday.  Of course, there are about fifteen different writing projects that have a first of the month deadline, so those are still looming.  

But get this!  I read 50 pages of primary research for my historical piece.  Important, juicy pages that added a good 250 words to my manuscript because I was so moved about one little detail from 1874.  And get this!  I finally realized that a bunch of writing books that I don’t need to read but looked really interesting can go back to the library.  I love writing books.  I love blogs about writing.  I love thinking about writing and revising what I’m going to cover in my writing workshops this month.  But those books can go back, too.  I know how to do the writing thing, now I’ve earned myself some time to do it.

So, today I’ve learned that great swaths of time are even more precious than small swaths of time.  I might as well do more of what really needs to get done, and that’s blending the research with the writing, and getting even more words to page than usual.  

That’s starting new habits, like doing core exercises as a break when my bum goes numb.  Wow – my bum went numb!  When was the last time I had that happen?!?!?

Back to School Rocks!

Three kids in school today, and then soccer.  When they aren’t around, I sure get words to paper.  I have really made progress today, and though there are a hundred other things left undone, I can stop.

Yet stopping is never comfortable.  I always want to keep going, keep finding new ways of saying what’s on my mind.

But maybe, just maybe, I will start living instead of racing between productive activities.  I’m looking forward to that little benefit of becoming self-employed.  Now, if I can just get to the making money part of the self-employed writing life, that’d be good.

Back to School

My three oldest kids are back to school today.  Today would have been the first day I taught a full day of students at the high school.

But I am not teaching this year.  Or at least, not teaching high schoolers.  

So, today is the day that I really have to become accountable for my own writing.  Today is the day I sent an email to the editor who is running my independent mentorship this semester.  By Monday my first draft (and a rough one, for sure) is off.  To an editor at a well-respected, well-known publishing company.  In the real world.  With real-world, tough-love feedback expected.

But for some reason, I am okay with it.  I know that my goal this semester is to improve my manuscript, but I also know that it may not be agent-submission ready by December. 

And that’s okay.  So here I go.  Ready to write!

The End of August

As summer winds down and I try to cram in any amount of time possible on my writing, I realize how lucky I am to have such a busy life.  

Every moment I have to make something must be used so carefully, so thoughtfully.  I used to resist this, but now I embrace it.  I cannot squander a minute, cannot waste an afternoon. There will never be a time where I am so pressured to produce as when I have no time, and that might be the best motivator around.

And the side effect is a constant tug toward my work.  Every time I close my computer, I feel a little bit sad, and I yearn to open it again.  

Imagine that – wishing you could go back to work before you’ve even stopped for the day.

Yes, indeed, having a busy life makes the writing life that much better.

 

Doing Research

My work in progress is a historical fiction piece, and I am currently moving from character development into research.

An excellent teacher and author of historical novels told me once: don’t do research until after 3pm.  This was a wise and helpful statement, underlining the (obvious) notion that one could get so lost in the history that she cannot get words written on the story.

It’s true that sometimes that happens, but with my five children I have found that my research must be crowded into certain days where I can leave home, settle into a library, and find out new tidbits about life.

That’s exactly what I did this week, and I did it before lunch.  I went down to the library, sat by the very river that flooded in 1874, and tried to imagine what the little town looked like so many years ago. This, as lovely as it was, wasn’t extraordinarily helpful.  Instead, gathering the books that map the town, the diary that outlines the experiences of a teenager, the video of a play in the church that was the temporary morgue – these things are more helpful for providing inspiration and images to my story.

While writing historical fiction, the accuracy of the details is key but the power of the narrative is the frame.  If I am to give my readers an experience to help them remember these people who perished, I must give them a mix of the two.  

So I go back and forth, flip-flop, writing poetry, taking notes, listening to the rhythms of the songs written in honor of the flood.  And sooner or later, I will have enough to share, to have answered those whispers that filter up through the dust:

“Tell my story.  Don’t let them forget.”

Almost August

Such beautiful reassurance that cultivating quiet is one task of a writer…

Views from a Window Seat

The bee is not the enemy of the flower.

And on a summer day, neither

is the hammock a writer’s foe.

photograph by Bruce Laird.

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Write Your Story

Three words.  Write your story.

This weekend I spent three days with a gathering of people who care deeply about children’s literature – writers, editors, teachers, librarians, scholars, artists – at the Simmons Summer Institute in Boston.  I am inspired, indeed.

I have so much to think about, to interpret, to consider, and I will journal for a while before I head back to fiction and start catching some story.

But this I do want to share, this nugget that I felt ready to hear again:

Write the story only you can tell.  Write the story for which you are the only one, the best one to tell that story.  Catch the story that only you can catch.

I am going to write a letter to my own stories, to tell them why I am the best one to tell that story.