Jeannine Atkins's Blog, page 22

Falling in Love with an Unwritten Book

Falling in love means swooning, but also falls and hesitations. I’d forgotten the shakiness and second thoughts, being giddy one moment, then the next wishing that someone was around who could tell me if the new book I’m working on is as good as it seems one moment, or when my confidence shifts, as awful. What is going on?

Intimacy seems not so far from loneliness as I get to know these layers of stories, a process which must happen in one quiet room. Before I’m certain of whether this is flirtation or true love, it’s way too soon to introduce even a chapter to my critique group or inquisitive relatives. We have to work things out ourselves through the getting-to-know-you stage. It’s usually best to even avoid confessions over drinks. While friends may tolerate tales of flesh-and-blood romance for their drama, there’s not much to say about a new relationship with pages, especially since many of us are superstitious, perhaps another word for anxious, and don’t like to reveal details that may turn on us tomorrow. We might just grunt,  “Eh, chapter one. Erghh, chapter two,” and our friends with their own creative trials may nod and say, “I know.”

Writing a brand new novel is exciting, but when it’s not, doubts prickle my skin. I set down ideas and clipped scenes wishing for guides who could tell me if a single one is good. I try to skip past scales and just record the middle hunks of dialogue, blurry action, and a bit of fairy tale dust in the haphazard ways these come. Trying to never mind whether any of this will stay for the long haul, some mornings I manage to revel in the brand new shine of each detail. But by noon, I may find it just plain hard to pay attention to the vast unknown, where new ideas enter slowly and without signs of any kind. Are my ideas upscale, or do they belong in the bargain bin or worse?

We may yearn to spend all our time with a new beau, but this is where I have to break my human-book analogy. Spending time with a fresh off the fingertips manuscript makes the rest of the world seem so very attractive. I wish the phone would ring, consider organizing my files, and wonder if it’s time to check on the status of old work. Sometimes the last isn’t entirely procrastination. Most of us aren’t starting from a vacuum. Other manuscripts and books came before, and as they make their way into or out of the world our dismay or pleasure about this can color our feelings about the new. Counselors advise taking plenty of time between an old and  new relationship, but. I like to start a new book when the last isn’t entirely finished, winking at chapters which will be there to greet me instead of a silence between old and new. But this does mean we have to be careful that judgments on the old don’t spill over to the new.

So I’m back to asking if what I’m writing is perfect enough for me? Can it be worth spending the next year or two or three with, when I’m so riddled with doubt? Wait. Those hesitations are familiar. This is writing, something I know from every day, and not just part that’s starting out. Maybe this is a book after all.

A Little Love and Courage

As a child, I associated bravery with commanding lone deeds, sacrifice, or being part of a swaggering team. None of this looked anything like me. Even when I played games like Robin Hood, I was aware that the sticks I used for arrows were more apt to dribble to my feet than soar toward an imagined foe. Maybe I could be Dorothy at the moment of truth in Oz, accidentally spilling a bucket of water on the witch. But I never thought I could be Gretel, deliberately pushing a murder-minded lady into an oven. Even to save my own life.

As I grew up, I learned that some people act truly brave while feeling fear, and some manage derring-do that masquerades deep insecurity. Now I can give myself some credit for pushing past my own fears, which aren’t the kind that will be featured in any films. I was scared to post my new year’s theme of loudness, to risk stating that I want something that I might not be able to achieve. I don’t want to jinx even luck I don’t entirely believe in, don’t want to annoy any listening spirits, who might mock me for sounding greedy. It’s embarrassing to display hopes and make them look big and fabulous and like we mean it. No one wants to be laughed at. One of the first signs of a child leaving childhood is when they’re spotted flubbing up, and instead of moving on, they say, “I meant to do that.” Kids no taller than tables start wanting to look always in control, which may take many more years to learn is a mythical state.

I wanted to commit myself to taking a bolder stance to getting more of my words into the world, so made that vow public, thinking I’d then be less likely to turn back. I got even more. Generous cheers from friends made me not only less afraid of stopping in my tracks, but aware of how much I don’t want to. I’m going to move more of my words from my room, which means doing some self publishing and checking in on work that’s idled for months with no response. I’m going to tone down calculating vacations and problems and all the things that might get in a reader’s way, calling this being patient and polite, but is more truthfully being scared to be called a bother, a mask for a lack of self respect.

I believe I’m on the right path, which I didn’t clear alone. Courage is a form of love. I feel a little bit brave now not with that stomach-twisting sensation of stating a goal for all to hear, but with the affirmation of listeners. Naming our dreams for candy houses, a good mother, or a book we can hand to others makes us more apt to find the good people along the way who lend their sturdy enthusiasm. I’ll keep writing, which is always a bit like dropping bread crumbs, making a path that shows a way out of all the forests we enter. One true story is that if a an orphan, a princess, a boy named Hansel, a girl named Gretel, or anyone at all can find a way out, so can we.

 

You Mean to Intrude? Be my Guest.

When I sit to write, I’m hardly ever welcomed by a voice rising from the page. My characters haven’t been waiting patiently as dolls shoved in a closet, ready for a girl to come back and make them chat. Instead I’m greeted at my computer with the voices that have been in my head all along. There’s that list of chores, the emails owed, fragments of thoughts from the book I want to write someday but not now. I hear calls about all the other things I should be doing instead of what I planned.

I let these voices in, but not too far. Slamming the door shuts out everyone. The smack of the door is that unpleasant. Chores can be simple: there’s a notepad beside me where I can add to the list of things to get done. Some of those emails do get written. And those voices that tell me I’m off topic, that this scene doesn’t belong? I often put them right on the page. Who do you think you are to write this? You’re going to have to throw out the entire morning’s work. This isn’t pleasant to see, but it’s better than having such thoughts drift between my ears. Giving them their due seems to dim their power. And when the spoil-sporty words come back, sometimes they echo the old ding of a typewriter hitting the end of a line. A simple chime, to which I can say: You’re wrong. And move along.

Theme for the New Year: Louder

Some of my friends have a lovely tradition of reporting not resolutions but a theme that might shape their year, and without much thought I know what mine must be. I feel a need to speak more loudly. Perhaps not in my poetry or prose, which I prefer not to blare. But in my writing career, I want to come into 2013 wearing bigger, louder boots. My lack of patience may be as imperceptible as a sigh, but I mean to move a few tables, if not let the dinnerware crash.

As many of you know, it’s a tricky time for writers, with the number of publishers and bookstores shrinking. I’ve spent much of the past two years hunkered over a novel avoiding the fact that other manuscripts have been sitting in mailboxes. I’ve been quiet because I know editors, like writers, are having a hard time, and I can tell myself it’s considerate to wait. But handing over work to people who practice “if you don’t hear, we don’t want it” means long silences, which too easily shapes into a sense that my work isn’t good enough. This year, I don’t mean to harass, but I intend to steel myself to enquire perhaps after six to eight weeks instead of as many months. I don’t want to look greedy, wanting my work to be published, or unpopular, making it known that editors aren’t rushing to snag my work. I don’t want to be Anna Karenina in her theater box, with people raising their eyebrows behind their opera glasses. But I’ve got to take some things into my own hands.

A few months ago, Michael Dooling, who beautfully illustrated two picture books I wrote, Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon and Anne Hutchinson’s Way, joined forces to reprint these books which Farrar, Straus and Giroux let go out of print. We won’t make much money, but we both want the books available to children who want to know about these important women. I feel energized by my first small venture into independent publishing, partly because it is small. Mike and I aren’t overwhelming ourselves with big plans, and we don’t have to, since print-on-demand means we don’t have stock to store and sell. Next, I want to reprint a novel, Becoming Little Women, whose rights were granted back from Putnam.

I’ve also decided to publish a collection of some of my blog posts about writing. I’ve been treating my work like an engaged editor, free with knife and pen, and one of the pleasures is that I don’t have to wonder about who will publish Views from the Window Seat. I will, using some of what I’ve learned by writing and selling eleven books. And if a dozen people are willing to pay for it, I’ll be happy.

Peter has encouraged me re self-publishing for years, but I still hope to work with an editor who isn’t me and to publish books that may find smoother paths to libraries and stores. I’m also more open to changing the plan, feeling perhaps like an athlete who swapped teams, and found herself sitting on the bench. That player might start her own team, though she’s not thrilled to hunt down teammates, locate equipment, and keep all the balls and fences in shape. But she’d rather play on a field whose borders aren’t well-marked than not play at all.

I want to use a louder voice for what seems worthwhile for me to say and simply see what happens. And you, who took the time to read this: thank you. You matter more than you may know.

Anna Karenina: Without the Showy Curtains

I started rereading Anna Karenina in November, knowing I’d want to see the new movie, and knowing it couldn’t convey the kinds of reflections Tolstoy gives us with his omniscient point of view and a focus on three couples. But I was excited to have snow for the outing, and I made Emily wear her faux fur hat while I got out a big black coat. I was happily sitting between my daughter and husband, when only a few minutes into the movie my heart sank.

Because I’d been reading the word “rounded” to describe Anna’s beauty, I hadn’t expected much of Kiera Knightly, but I was won over by her grace and sparkle that came off as both charming and fragile. The screenplay seemed thin, but I’d known it couldn’t cover the novel’s hundreds of pages and I wouldn’t get enough of Levin and Kitty. But I was dismayed by the broken fourth wall, the showy curtains and signage, way that the characters stepped across ladders or sandbags to new scenes, the cameras backed off to reveal frames, being reminded that the parlor, skating rink, or opera house were only stage sets. These had been characters that I loved, but this approach made me feel such a distance that I’d felt more in the hedgehog scene in The Hobbit than in the crucial train station scene. Driving home, when I asked Peter and Em if the movie made them want to read the book, I wasn’t surprised they said no. The movie kept to the plot, but rather than hinting at the reflections and feelings under the surface, the stagy presentation turned everything into a soap opera.

Almost everything I loved was missing, and there’s so much I love in this novel. Not every single page — there were skimmable ones about various bureaucracies, though even then, or when Tolystoy’s most cynical in court houses, there’s something: I liked Anna’s husband consulting a lawyer who tried to look serious, but couldn’t help trying to catch moths during their conversation. There’s not a character here you can’t help liking to some degree, for Tolstoy shines light onto all angles of their souls – a word he uses often. The point of view of Anna’s son is heartbreaking, as the little boy tries to understand Count Vronsky, who his mother clearly likes, while no one else in the house does. When Anna leaves with Vronsky, the little boy is told she’s dead, but can’t believe that. Nevertheless, we see him struggle with trying to reconcile what he’s told with what he sees, a schism that’s a theme throughout the novel, along with varieties of love, faith, and forgiveness.

The drama comes from moments such as being given layers of thoughts, then, often because of chance and circumstance, an invisible curtain, if there’s any curtain at all,  pulls back for the speech, and people say the opposite of what they planned. But the movie gives us scenes like Anna returning to her old house to see her son, striding, glaring, while the music booms. In the novel, we see her lack of confidence in how she’ll be met, and the servants fret, too, as they remind each other it’s the boy’s birthday and Anna was always kind to them.

The actors did their best. The costumes were charming, with particularly excellent hats, and the scenery would have been good if we hadn’t been continually reminded, Hey, this is just a set. But I’m going to catch up on books I set aside while I was reading Anna Karenina, and maybe later this year, crack open War and Peace.

Old Quilts

While wandering through an antique shop some years back, I found a small stack of great old patches for a quilt that someone had painstakingly sewn, but never put together. I bought these, then some new fabric for borders and a backing, and stitched away. As I worked, I noticed that the old fabric pulled. As I kept on, full-fledged rips appeared.

I mentioned this to a friend who’s a seamstress and had given me some advice. Now she said, “Oh, yeah, that would happen. The old and new cloth won’t really go together, and the fresh stitching will stress the old. But anyway, it’s about the process.”

Um, no, I thought. I wanted a quilt. Something to put on a bed. But sometimes the process is what we get. Sore hands, soft curses over the sewing machine, and a quilt that’s sort of pretty though it’s left folded and untouched. Or stories we thought might astonish, but that stay mostly in our rooms.

As a writing instructor, my job is to encourage people to write more and vividly and deep. Maybe something of theirs will be found between covers down the line. None of us know. I’m also friends with writers who watch each other’s backs. Sometimes there are celebrations. Often there are disappointments. Always, I’m grateful for our conversations, and the ways we help each other to look more carefully at what’s under our hands or in rich and complicated pasts.

These include childhoods in which we played a lot of games that had finishing lines, or winners and losers. We couldn’t help taking these in as metaphors for life. But looking back, it’s the playing, friends, and family I remember, not when I crossed the lines or who won what.  And when I look at my life as a writer, the people are what matter, too. Most of us keep setting goals of books to finish and publish if we can. But getting there means trying to see more steadily and widely, which is a good in itself, one that usually happens on paths that don’t lead in a straight line to glory. We’re not the grownups we thought grownups were back when we were children. We’re more confused. We keep making mistakes. We learn that some things we thought were possible aren’t, and that some things we believed were impossible are possible after all.

Maybe we don’t belt out songs in the grocery store, as I heard a child tucked in a shopping cart do yesterday. I’m not going to wear red ornament-sized earrings like a woman in another aisle, bells jingling under her gray curls. The most I could manage was to take a breath when another shopper nearly tripped me in a dash to the dairy case. Hey, we all want butter. But if we’re lucky, the sense of hope and mystery we had when we were little doesn’t entirely fade away.

Writers work by ourselves, but we draw from each other’s courage. No matter whether we write science fiction, edgy novels, nostalgic essays, picture books, anything at all, when we’re facing the page we’re at least sometimes facing ourselves, and that’s never easy. Some of us are hugely ambitious, and some of us are happy for a small audience. All of us strive to balance a drive to keep going with the ability to cherish where we are.

Stitching those old quilt squares, I was trying to finish something beautiful that someone else had started, then put away, for reasons I’ll never know. I’m sorry that my work didn’t turn out as I’d hoped, giving an unknown woman a space her work deserved. I’m not looking for neglected projects under any more tables at antique shops, but I won’t stop looking for unfinished stories.  Like people who’ve been sewing through the centuries, almost always without their names attached to their work, we can’t know what part of what we leave is going to matter. Some of us will keep pricking our fingers, making stitches whether or not they hold. Some of us will keep blowing on candles, watching flames waver.

The National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry

The National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry is one of my favorite poetry collections of the year, rightly billed as being both an introduction to poetry as well as a family classic. The big book is packed with poems from contemporary writers including Janet Wong (mountain gorilla), Kelly Ramsdell Fineman (sea jelly), Jane Yolen (spoonbill), and Joyce Sidman (porcupette) along with poems written by greats from the past such as Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. They were compiled by J. Patrick Lewis, the U.S.Children’s Poet Laureate, who’s published more than fifty collections of poetry. Animals are often a theme, including two books about the First Dog, but he also writes about famous people from history, particularly artists, and important places. The introduction shows his down-to-earth joy in the form, as he suggests ears should have as much fun as mouths. At the end of the book, he suggests ways for children to write their own animal poems, with swift instructions for shape poems, haiku, limericks, and free verse.

The stunning photographs (hey, this is National Geographic) of a wide variety of animals will pull in readers. Their seeing is sure to be sharpened, and engagement deepened, by the mostly short poems that appear on the same page. It’s like being outside with a friend who’s attentive, witty, and kind. One sees and hears more in good company. The poems are arranged in sections including the big ones, the little ones, the winged ones, the water ones, the strange ones, the noisy ones, and the quiet ones: not your traditional classifications, but the order makes sense, with poems about the same animal grouped together. Many photographs are close-ups of animals we’d never get to see so eye to eye, and enlargements make both what’s peculiar and beautiful more visible. The poems sing along.

For more Poetry Friday posts, please visit Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard

In her introduction to this historical novel in verse, Lesléa Newman writes about visiting the campus of the University of Wyoming as a keynote speaker for Gay Awareness Week just days after the murder of twenty-one-year-old Matthew Shepard. She details both the circumstances of his death and the reaction of herself and many, and explains that October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard is her personal and poetic interpretation of what happened the night he was kidnapped, beaten, and left to die, and in the following days, including the trial. In the afterward, she writes more about her personal connection to the hate crime and the need for imagination on everyone’s part, something she exercises mightily in the sixty-eight poems between.

These are told from many points of view, beginning with that of the fence Matthew Shepard died on. The collection ends with a poem called “Pilgrimage,” a hopeful, prayerful poem set at the place where a new fence was put up near where the old one was taken down. In between the poet imagines deep fear, tremendous hate, and great love, taking the points of view of the victim, the murderers, Matthew’s parents and friends, the stars in the sky, and more, in haikus, villanelles, free verse, rhymed couplets and other forms. Some poems seem like very short stories, showing the way a friend, a policeman, someone in a hospital, and others change after hearing what happened. Reactions range from compassion to anti-gay protestors at the funeral – and the people dressed as angels with seven-foot wings to block them from view. Some poems begin with brief quotes from people, with sources noted in the back, which  expand on the context. There are plenty of suggestions for further reading.

The poems will touch all readers with their power, and give a glimpse of history to readers too young to have heard about the crime. And as someone who’s old enough to have heard this as news, there was much that was new. Not only the voices, but moments built from lots of research about those involved, the time, and place, distilled into poems such as “What Twenty Bucks Could Get You in 1998,” which references the stolen wallet. The variety of voices make it clear how all people in many times and places are connected.

For more Poetry Friday, please visit sweet, smart Amy at The Poem Farm.

Conversations with an Outline

When I teach writing, I try to keep in mind that everyone has a different method. Just because I’ve plunged into work without a clear idea of where I’m going doesn’t mean that other people won’t write something great by beginning with a structure. So I offer exercises that focus on developing scenes, wherever they’ll end up, and exercises that ask writers to turn their eyes from particular moments to glance toward beginnings, middles, ends, and back again. A painter has to be very careful about the spot where her brush touches canvas, but often steps back to see how one color looks against another, how a particular shape looks within the frame.

As we near the end of the semester, I asked students to write one through ten, starting with their character’s birth, which is probably going to be outside the narrative frame, and use ten for the last scene of their novels. The other numbers should be key points of action or insight, and again, some may not appear within the story. They had ten minutes. I’m never very generous with time, as we have so much to do. Most found it helpful to take this long view with a rough outline, before going back to early chapters.

Recently, Amy Greenfield wrote a great post called How to Write Fast(er) about picking up speed (noting that speed is relative) while writing the sequel to her novel, Chantress. Her method includes outlining, and breaking away from it.  I’m in the very early stages of the first novel I’ve begun with an outline, albeit one that’s so saggy it flutters in the slightest breeze. I’ve got index cards and maps, but no push pins — I’m willing to let everything slip-slide around as the characters develop, or change from minor to major, or disappear. I’m inviting a sense of structure earlier in my process, but also spending relaxed time with my characters to get to know them, and let them change before my eyes. A sloppy process, and when I’ve tidied some dialog, sometimes I go back to check my sketchy maps. Letting the outline speak to the paragraphs under my fingers, and letting them talk back.

I still write out of order, collecting parts of scenes that don’t belong. I won’t let myself stop until I’ve found them a place. And now my smudgy outline also gives me a sense of safety, like the stack of books at my elbow. People have made their way through. There’s something ahead to keep reaching for.

 

 

Growing a Book

Those first ideas are as small as seeds, which gardeners can scatter, while writers seem bound to dive after them into the ground. It’s not particularly pleasant under the earth, though with the right clothing, one can get along. Murk, muck, mud, lots of m words come to mind. But ideas grow in the dark, and that’s where I’ve been, hoeing, roughing up the dirt, letting the seeds spread, get lost, or nestle. Gardeners don’t expect all the seeds to grow. I never liked thinning out carrots, but this meant I got a lot of scrawny and twisted vegetables. It’s better to be brutal. And add manure.

At last I can get to my knees and watch something sprout, before hacking it down not long after the first glimmers of light. I’m still coming up with bad ideas and even okay ones that I’m going to pull out to make room for the best. So I wait, watch, and after some vigorous weeding, it’s starting to look like a garden. I mean a book. I just started a file called Chapter Four, along with a title I might change tomorrow, and will surely change before I’m ready to taste anything, never mind consider a basket for friends. Between pages, I change point of view, and not in a meta-fiction but just messy way. Images flash and burn out. Characters come and go and evolve, trying out and losing all kinds of traits. But I’m starting to fall in love with some, though I can’t forget to push them into hard places. After a bunch of ideas that didn’t sprout, there’s a sentence that I scribbled Ta da beside and haven’t deleted it yet. There’s still enough murk in these drafts that anything could happen, and I try to let that be good news.

In the manuscript garden business, we have to not just conjure the seeds, but the dirt and water and sunlight, so there’s bound to be a lot of words, and we’re bound to take most out. I’m practicing the gardener’s faith. The plot of ground doesn’t look like much. But things have grown from patches of dirt before, and they will grow again.