A Writer in Love with Words and Life

Here's another flea market find from this summer, a 1943 War Economy Standard edition of A.A. Milne's Autobiography. I had no idea that he wrote so much other stuff: humorous essays and verse for Punch Magazine (he aspired to be editor), and plays (he was friends Barrie). I remember that my grandparents took Punch and also the London Illustrated News. I guess being New Englanders, they thought they should be a little English, but my grandfather did travel there to sell lumber, so maybe he read and liked those publications. I was disappointed that Milne spoke so little about the writing he is most famous for: Winnie the Pooh. He did talk about writing When We Were Very Young as a sort of obsessive test of himself, in a summerhouse, when feeling oppressed by too much company, after saying he couldn't write such stuff. The childhood memories of his relationship with his brothers and parents are delightful. I'm curious to learn more about his wife (and "collaborator," Daphne). Christopher Robin was more often called by the name he gave himself at an early age, "Billy Moon." Milne came across as charming, brilliant, funny, self-deprecating, and a tad egotistical at the same time.

Wrap-up for Chautauqua East 2014: What will you wrap up in your radish leaf?

When Larry Rosler, editor of Boyd's Mills Press, asked me to contribute a few words for the wrap-up session Friday afternoon, my busy, obsessive brain went into over-drive. Images popped into my head: holiday gifts wrapped up in beautiful paper; fish 'n chips wrapped up in newspaper; pharaohs wrapped  up in endless yards of crumbling linen; silk moths wrapped up in delicate strands of their own making; Cruella de Vil yearning to be wrapped up in Dalmatian puppy fur; the Christ child wrapped up in swaddling clothes; wrapping a child against the cold; Bob Cratchit's scarf; the Big Game wrap-up of plays and scores; a director shouting, "It's a wrap!" after filming a perfect scene; a swagman's meager possessions wrapped up in a handkerchief tied to a stick; Charlotte dropping swiftly to wrap up a fly entangled in her web . . .

And then oddly, I thought of Chibi, the hero of Taro Yashima's exquisite 1956 Caldecott Honor book, Crow Boy, bringing his simple lunch to school day after day: a rice ball wrapped up in a radish leaf.
(Sorry folks, I remembered it as a cabbage leaf and Amazon wouldn't let me refer to that page to confirm it.)

Over all, the concept means to keep and protect something precious. (With the exception perhaps of of Cruella de Vil!)

A lot happened during our week at The Barn in Honesdale, experiencing the offerings of the faculty of Chautauqua East 2014 (see www.highlightsfoundation.org). So I asked those who attended to consider what they would wrap in their radish leaf, what morsels of writing wisdom would they take home to place by their desk? What might sustain them later on their long, sometimes difficult and lonely writing journey? What might help us spin SOME words, SOME HUMBLE words, SOME HUMBLE, RADIANT words? Here's what we came up with:

I started with Patti Gauch's mention in her opening keynote of the concept of Ley Lines which invisibly connect places of inspiration and sanctity, of letting one such line connect us, like Charlotte's silken thread, to this children's writer's haven: The Barn at Honesdale. Here are the others:
Be outrageous
Don't be afraid of breaking rules
Jump with heart into your characters
Find a writing community
Availability--make it understandable
Bravery
Short, punchy sentences (when appropriate!)
The hero's journey
Discovery of craft and self
Solid core of inner strength
Make time
Honesty
Try doing the hard part first
Poetry is not impulse, it requires study and craft
Read it aloud
Use concrete images

What's wrapped in your radish leaf?
  

 

Why do I Write for Children?

     There's an interesting blog post going around this morning by Marion Dane Bauer, Why Write for Children. Occasionally I ask myself the same question. Did I get stuck in some sort of developmental Never Land? Am I not a good enough writer to write for adults? Is juvenile literature somehow less valuable?
     Those who think it's easy or trivial, have probably never tried it or written anything memorable. I can't say exactly why, but the books I love best to read--and to write--are mostly intended for young people. Once, a writer I truly respect and admire, actually told me that my writing was being wasted on kids. I felt cut to the bone. It was all I ever wanted to do--my personal Olympic quest.
     "Did you like to read when you were a boy?" I asked him.
     "Oh yes, I was a passionate reader!" he assured me. He went on to tell in great detail how much he had enjoyed the works of Twain, Ernest Thompson Seton, Jean Craighead George, and E. B. White. He could recite long verses of Kipling.
     "And do you think your reading as a child had anything to do with the person and the writer you are today?" I asked.
     He paused. "Well, yes. Absolutely."
     "I rest my case." But I couldn't help adding, "You wouldn't have story, language, and the means for putting it together if you hadn't grown up on great literature. What if, like a diet of white bread and sugar, you had grown up on junk? Do our children deserve anything less than the best?"
     I was a shy, sometimes lonely kid. For the most part, my childhood was safe and wonderful, but there were undercurrents of unhappiness, anger, even some bullying. Books meant everything to me, not just as an escape, but as a parallel world every bit as true as this one. I know there are kids out there who feel the same way.
     Maybe, like James Barrie, children's writers are really children who never entirely lost the magic--who never quite grew up. I love to stop and listen to kids and to look at the world as much as I am able to through their eyes: the newness, the moment-to-moment discovery, the joys and tragedies big and small, the funny stuff, the spurts and bumps and metamorphosis of growth! How I loved the man who took time from my parents' cocktail party to teach Cathy and me the dot and line game and tell us a story. Maybe he was one who never quite grew up.
     On rare summer afternoons, our big brother, Ted, who now writes for Audubon and Fly Rod & Reel, told us "badjagerag" stories evolved from Hugh Lofting's Dr. Doolittle tales. There was magic! How I believed in Ted and Dave's adventures in Africa and those glowing green eyes in the hot jungle night!
     These days, Ted's five, grandchildren cozy up next to him at the camp in New Hampshire or call "Pop" on the phone for Crackling Geese, Young "Sloppy," and a fountain of other stories that he has never thought worth writing down. A loss to the world. Ted Williams is an award-winning, fine and respected environmental journalist. He cooks sunfish fillets for the kids, calling then "children's perch" to stretch out a family fish-fry. But actually, the sunfish are entirely delicious too, just a different species. Maybe one day he'll write some of his stories down. It would be a great contribution to the world of literature--juvenile and adult.    


  

House of a Writers Dreams

I'm glowing with joy. Yesterday I signed a contract with a brilliant agent, Brianne Johnson at Writers House, to represent my new novel, Wolfboy (working title). Writing for kids is a tough business. Not that it's cut-throat--on the contrary, in my line of work, I've encountered some of the kindest, wisest, most honest humans I know. It's just incredibly competitive. Editors are overwhelmed. And they have to be able to sell your quirky, blood-and-tear soaked work of heart. Half the battle is just getting a manuscript read. The other half is writing something worth reading.

Bri can do the rest. She can get my work read, find the right publisher, and help me make the story better if need be. Plus, she's an artist herself--a potter, invites puppies over to play and snooze, reads with a cat on her lap, adores The Clan of the Cave Bear, and passionately loves a good book. What more could I ask?

    When I was little, on hot summer nights, we slept out on the porch of our lakeside summer cottage in New Hampshire. Mum read us an eclectic mix: Thoreau, The Hardy Boys, Charlotte's Web, while we watched the great gray orb weaver trapping mosquitos over our own doorway. Ted and Dave told Cathy and me that the shabby old mounted deer head sometimes winked if you looked carefully. There weren't enough cots, so Cathy and I would each pull two of the rattan armchairs with the squeaky turquoise cushions together and make ourselves cozy "boat-beds." From the swamp across the lake, came the booming of bullfrogs and the rhythmic chanting of whip-poor-wills. The air was fishy and piney, laden with the perfume of the sweet pepper bushes that line the shore. Once in a while, as we were dropping off to sleep, a Luna moth would flutter fairy-like to the screen and settle between the fireflies for an ethereal visit. In seventh grade I wrote a story called, Annie's Fairy, which later became The Kingfisher's Gift, published by Philomel Books in 2002 and awarded a Junior Library Guild Honor.

This was meant to be a caption for this photo illustrating the glow I am feeling today. Sorry, I couldn't stop!

Cave of a Writer's dreams

This is one of the few images I have from our trip to France a year ago, as our camera was stolen in Marseilles, but it's a favorite. I had happened to post a few shots on Facebook and was able to retrieve them. Fred and I visited Pont Vallon d'Arc in the Ardeche River gorge where the incredible Grotte Chauvet was discovered in 1994. The cave is filled with stunning paintings that may be the oldest art in the world, and which rival anything painted anywhere since. Who knew that wooly rhinos once roamed the area? But there they are on the walls, almost snorting and twitching their ratty tails, along with horses, bison, bears, lions, and many other creatures from thirty thousand years ago--but curiously these people seldom or never depicted humans or dogs.

For the past year, I'd been reading everything I could get my hands on about dogs, from old kids' books to Mark Derr's How the Dog Became the Dog, in preparation for writing my novel, Wolfboy (working title). In the cavern, they found the footprint of a boy and a canine, apparently walking side by side. Wolf? Dog? Chills up my spine! Wolf tracking boy? Early dog and boy walking together as friends the same day--or unrelated footprints ten thousand years apart? There are also depressions in the cave floor left by hibernating cave bears, along with the bones of many of those bears. Oh the rich material for imagination!

Chauvet was never opened to the public for fear of the molds which have damaged Lascaux. Fred and I knew we would not be able to enter the cave, but I had read books, studied photographs, and watched the documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, several times. I had come here to see the area and try to absorb the aura of this sacred place. We hiked up the winding trail under soaring cliffs to the entrance which was sealed off like some sort of James Bond stronghold. Conscious of the surveillance cameras trained on us, we peered through the barred gate into the area where researchers don protective clothing before entering. Then we scuttled along the steep, wooded slope a few yards further and found this little hollow in the rock. It was big enough for a person to shelter. Perhaps someone long ago spent a rainy night there.  

It's the second day of 2014. 7:35. Eight degrees out, a little snow falling. I'm still cuddled in bed with a cup of good coffee and my little dog, George, curled up between my feet. At nine o'clock, Wiz and I plan to cross-country ski with our friend Marsha Van Vlack and her daughter, Marian. But for now, I can get in some writing time when my brain is closest to the dreamworld. My morning routine makes the frustration of flying days filled with necessary tasks and distractions that suck away my work time a little calmer. And it's delicious.

My new MG novel, Wolfboy, is just starting going out to agents. I am filled with hope. It's a good story, and one that hasn't been told much, I think--how the first dog might have been brought home to become part of a human family. I've only found a few other authors who have done it, and mostly they have the wolf just a side character, or are writing for younger audiences.

As I look at the coming months, I need to get some of my unsold work out there. Submit! (How I hate that word!) But I also need to start a new project. I think there is more to Kai and Uff's story, I'm hoping a trilogy. Plotting is very hard for me. I'm trying to look at it from the angle of what would I as a kid like to read? Writing in prehistory has its challenges, to say the least. But I love my characters and I know that more happens to them. Once I get engaged and know where I'm going, it's addictive. But the in-between time it always very difficult.

I can hear my husband clanking around the kitchen, filling the plastic water bucket for the chickens, getting ready to do the morning feeding of birds and horses. Time to go be part of the day, with part of my mind open to inspiration.

    

A Big Day Birding

Sunday afternoon, April 18, Fred and I drove first to Brubaker’s pond at the top of the hill west of Whitesville on Rt. 248, where I had been seeing three swans hanging out with a snow goose and a gang of Canadas for the last few days. They first time I’d spotted the huge white birds with my slightly aged eyes, I’d thought perhaps they were sheep. Then I’d opened the new issue of the Conservationist that morning to read that the state had released Trumpeter swans at Montezuma refuge in 2011 and I had to have a closer look. The Trumpeters were supposed to have highly visible green tags on the wings and have legs bands as well. I consulted my Sibley’s Guide carefully on the slight differences between Tundra and Trumpeter swans (Trumpeters have more evenly rounded backs, a longer, straighter bill with never any yellow on lores, and the yearlings tend to be grayer). There they were—still contentedly grazing. Fred stayed back while I moved as close as I could, pausing to study them through my binoculars, until they finally got uneasy and lifted up to circle the fields. The snow goose was the leader and it was stunning to watch the four big birds flying low, the hazy late afternoon sun illuminating their white feathers. We saw no green tags on the swans, though their bills were very black and their necks quite gray. In any case, I haven’t seen many Tundras and it was the best view of a snow goose I’ve had.



Next, we went to Brown’s marsh and were treated to a loon, a small flock of female hooded mergansers, a lesser scaup (?), a kingfisher, and a handsome great egret fresh from the sunny south. Another big, white bird! In the ditches I saw many painted turtles and frogs peering out of the muck, and in the shallows near the parking lot a huge snapping turtle was hanging out sideways, its shell looking like a discarded tire. Fred was sure it was dead, but I saw the head come up once and a foot thrash a couple of times. (The next day it was still there and I thought I could see another shell of similar size under it—a lengthy interlude of springtime snapping turtle bliss?)



Even without driving down towards Genesee to see the new eagles’ nest again, it had been a good outing. Then coming home over the hill from Independence, we spotted a big bird in the middle of the road. A very large, brown bird. An eagle? A turkey? AN ENORMOUS BIRD! What the . . .?



Suddenly we realized it was the escaped emu which has been wandering the country side this spring. It wasn’t very shy. In fact, it allowed us to slowly draw abreast of it, much to the consternation of our little Jack Russell, Georgie. I could have tossed her out the window onto the giant bird’s back, but I held tight—I’m told they pack a powerful kick! It was fascinating to watch the huge, leathery feet as they flattened and contracted with each step, the vast, meaty (and delicious, I’m told) thighs and drumsticks working as it paced slowly along, the heavy, shifting mass of grayish feathers rustling on its back, and its enormous, brown dinosaur-like eyes with their incongruous fringe of eyelashes—wary and reptilian, staring back at us. Dye it yellow, give it a sweeter disposition, and it could have been a visitor from Sesame Street.



A very big bird day indeed!