Jeannine Atkins's Blog, page 41

Where Does Confidence Come From?

A week or so ago, I wrote about keeping company with fidgety Doubt at my elbow, so it's only fair that I should report that yesterday I spent some time with her sister Confidence. She doesn't appear at the heady but fraught beginning of a project, and rarely near the nerve-wracking end, but sometimes slips in during the middle. I stuck to milky tea, while she slugged back black tongue-burning coffee. We both threw up our feet onto the table and laughed loudly. And when I got back to my manuscript I seemed to write more words than I crossed out, which is something.

So where did this raucous companion sweep in from? Maybe it's best not to ask too many questions, but it's kind of my trade. I trace the knock at the door to a few things. One was just tolerating Doubt's messy ways for a while. Shoving her back when she hunkered too close, but never booting her out of the room. Keeping my eyes on my own paper, as the teachers say, as much as possible. Once in a while sticking my fingers in my ears. Confidence comes from trying a new direction after turning back on a wrong path, and from seeing a solid if sloping stack of pages stack up behind me.

But of course one doesn't ever write alone, or even with the apparitions that like to sit themselves by writer's tables. Confidence can come from applause, but perhaps she sticks around longer when she comes in on a whisper from friends who murmur and smile when we complain, and pour more tea. And when we're lucky, we also get the blessings of strangers. When I was recently at Birchbark Books http://birchbarkbooks.com/, the woman at the counter picked up one of my small stack and said, "This is an unusual choice for a girl from Massachusetts. I don't mean that as a bad thing. It's good. Ojibwe is a beautiful language."

Her articulation that it's not bad for me to be pushing borders, trying to make my world bigger and more beautiful, though the process may be tough: those words make me feel, at the moment, as if someone has my back. And keep me moving forward.

And I'm sending Confidence out to see you. Make the coffee strong, and know she won't turn down a scone.

Art Meets Science

On Saturday my husband and I went to the Berkshire Museum http://berkshiremuseum.org in Pittsfield, MA. Peter is fond of this museum as it has the triceratops models used for a television production of perhaps his favorite childhood book, The Enormous Egg, and we both like the way they include art and science in one museum. We saw a show on ancient Egypt, with a row of plaster casts of heads found in mummies: science has figured out a way to use what's found to suggest face features. A smaller show featured Nancy Graves's depictions of camels in two dimensions, three dimensions, and film. I loved the artist's statement (click to enlarge):



What do you think? Maybe Beatrix Potter would have nodded. She studied animals and plants long before using them in stories. Here's something from the sketchbook she kept when she was ten years old. http://www.peterrabbit.com/potters-world-potters-art-childhood.asp



And I was introduced to the work of Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) http://www.jeannineatkins.com/books/girls.htm in the National Museum of Women in the Arts http://www.nmwa.org/, but what I love is not only her gorgeous paintings, but how she drew as a way to explore science, studying and breaking new ground into knowledge of metamorphosis and the interdependency of plants and animals.

Writing Retreat

Today has twenty-four hours in it. Yes, clocks and calendars have told me this before, but I get to spend two days in Vermont with friends where we're writing in mostly silence until supper. I look up from my manuscript and out the window and watch yellow leaves fall. I work on one poem, then shift to another, then look at everything backwards. Or at least move things around in the big space of a day. My characters relax and tell the kind of tales you get when there's no buses to catch, no bells that might ring, when they know they've got my attention. They stutter less and speak whole sentences at a time.



When the day is devoted to writing, time moves as slowly as the sun. One does run low on energy, which is why it's nice that one friend left out banana cake and another promises to run us through some yoga tonight. I miss my husband, miss my dogs, miss choosing between twelve kinds of tea: I packed just black for the morning and peppermint for after noon. But I'm surviving and writing and everything will be mine again tomorrow, when I return having carved a bigger space into my paper landscape.

Kidlit Con 2010 and Friends in Minneapolis

What a great weekend in a friendly city! On Friday I met Sam, who seems happy in her first semester at Macalester. She gave me a tour of the pretty campus.



I'd see more of Sam later, after time at Kidlitcon 2010 http://kidlitcon2010.blogspot.com which was held in the Loft Literary Center http://www.loft.org/. I got inspired, tripped over new questions I should ask myself about my life online, and picked up tips such as this from librarian Camille Powell http://www.bookmoot.com/ She says that when speaking in schools it's often a good idea to tell kids to put down their hands. But to be careful about posting pictures of students on our blogs because of privacy issues. And Maggie Steifvater m_stiefvater , made us laugh and talked about choosing boundaries when writing about her private life, saying she skirts names and numbers of things like children, choosing not to avoid or fib but to stylize sections of her life.

The best part was getting to meet in person wonderful people I've known online. Laura Salas took this picture of me and Toby Speed http://www.tobyspeed.com. Susan Taylor Brown, susanwrites , who I was so happy to hug, was on my right, but in all the handing back and forth of cameras, mine didn't pick up a picture of her.



Here's the fabulous Poetry Friday panel From left to right: Amy Ludwig VanDerwater http://www.poemfarm.blogspot.com/, Toby Speed http://www.tobyspeed.blogspot.com//, Mary Lee Hahn http://readingyear.blogspot.com/, Laura Purdie Salas laurasalas , and Mary Ann Scheuer http://greatkidbooks.blogspot.com.



Mary Lee talked about Poetry Friday's history as a warm community begun by Kelly Herold http://kidslitinformation.blogspot.com/ a little over four years ago. Some participants put up poems they write themselves, or poems they love, make book recommendations or link to events and contests. Some share ways teachers inspire interest in poems or highlight events like National Poetry Month or Poem in Your Pocket Day. Amy talked about poetry as a nourishing genre, offering children with fast-paced lives a chance to slow down and perhaps make thoughtful engagement with words and connection to other people.

I missed dinner with poet, teacher, librarian, and blogger friends, but Sam and I got to see The Master Butchers Singing Club at the Guthrie Theater. The play, based on a novel by Louise Erdrich, was adapted for stage by Marsha Norman, who turned The Secret Garden into a musical I love as much as the book. I admire Louise Erdrich's poems, children's books, and novels – Love Medicine may be my favorite -- but don't think I'd like seeing one turned into a movie because of the high body count in her work. The violence handled in theater worked perfectly, and the themes of finding oneself in a history of varied cultures and those singing voices: wonderful.



On Sunday Sam studied for a midterm while I wrote, then we traveled past Lake of the Isles to Birchbark Books http://birchbarkbooks.com/ which is owned by Louise. We were warmly greeted by a person who didn't give me her name, but told me the sweet black dog was named Dharma, and that the store dogs keep their own blogs. There is a Hobbit Hole where children can curl up and read, a rescued confessional which they say Louise is collaging with images of her sins, a handmade canoe hung from the ceiling, birchbark bird houses and other art in every direction, but best of all the books are chosen with care. I loved the sections on Native American language, history, and literature, the wide selection of books about nature, the gorgeous picture books, but for a small shop, there was a wonderful selection in just about every genre. It was hard to leave, but also the best place to leave from, with my bags a bit heavier, before heading to the airport.

Thankful Thursday

1. Thank you, Joyce, for a thoughtful review of Borrowed Names at Musings http://joyceray.blogspot.com/
I love the quilt reference at the end.

2. I'm looking forward to seeing and meeting friends at Kidlit Con 2010 http://kidlitcon2010.blogspot.com/ in Minneapolis! Tomorrow!

3. And spending some time with my friend Sam, who's in her first year at Macalester College! I'll get the tour.

4. Thankful to have finished one manuscript and to feel involved in another, and not to have to obsess about every single word and punctuation mark. Yet.

5. Of course thankful for New England in October, when we cheer for each warm day and enjoy the colors while adding on a layer of fleece, winding the scarf an extra wind, getting out the thick socks. Here's a picture my husband took when we bicycled in Keene, New Hampshire on Sunday.

My Sort-of-friend Doubt

I like a sentence that looks sturdy, bold, impossible to imagine in any other words. But most don't come to mind that way. Each good phrase or sentence I write comes from having written lots of crummy ones. Every sentence, paragraph, or stanza is a choice, and making a choice means there was damage, destruction, a slew of crossed out or deleted words along the way.

And doubt.

I'd love to often sit around with the confidence I try to project in my writing, but the truth is I'm a lot more familiar with doubt. She trips and snags with her smelly tattered dresses, claws with broken fingernails for my attention. But as I work on new poems, I remember what a friend she can be. Choice – terrible because we have to leave things behind – can also be an open door as I look for the right sounds and meanings. On these early drafts I get to write several varieties of lines and leave pages riddled with question marks.

Later I'm going to have to choose. And I hope, when I do, that I'll remember how benign doubt felt by my elbow (her ragged fingernails curled out of sight) while I drafted. Uncertainty means some things get left behind, and it's hard to know if they're the right ones. But the doubt is about what's on the page. It's not about me – or you. It doesn't mean we shouldn't be writing.

In Between

Last week Peter and I enjoyed a few days on Cape Cod. We bicycled through the dunes near Provincetown, seeing lots of sand, sea grasses, scrub spruce and the occasional breath-taking glimpse of sea. We climbed Pilgrim Tower, which gives a great view over the peninsula. The next day we welcomed flatter grounds to bike on in Harwich and Barnstable, past cranberry bogs and woods. We walked by the ocean in Monomoy wildlife refuge, where we sadly didn't see seals, but happily didn't get caught in the tide.



And I wrote a little. Taking baby steps into a new book, while looking over my laptop to the ocean, was a great way to celebrate finishing, (or what I like to call finishing, though I know there's more work ahead), one manuscript and moving into another. Starting a new place to call home.

Of course this home isn't entirely new. Once again, I'm tearing apart an old novel to find the poetry within, though now I'm working from a manuscript that spent about ten years in a drawer, so the demolition part is fairly painless. I have a deep connection to the story, but when I put the manuscript away I understood the work hadn't yet found its right form. Many pages feel flat. A few offer gems. Here's a house with a frame that can be used.

Now let the sledge hammers swing, even while I keep an eye out for strong pine planks under the dust, corners that look inviting, maybe an amazing beyond belief fireplace that can restored. After a lot of fuss, peering ever so carefully at my last work, I enjoy straightening my back and walking straight ahead into mistakes, striding right on by, although I occasionally bend to mend and tidy.

Inspiration

My husband and I just spent a few days on Cape Cod. Walking on the beach, he asked if the ocean inspired me. Yes, in that it brings me peace and often a wider frame of mind. No, in that I don't go back to the room and write about seagulls, plovers, horseshow crabs, or curling, frothy waves.



Inspiration rarely comes directly as something in a carefully taped box. Probably most poets who wrote about nature, such as Robert Frost and Edna St. Vincent Millay, whom I've been reading this past week, often saw a wall being mended or irises unfurling and went home to write about these. Frost, we know, wrote Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening on a hot day when lilacs bloomed. Visiting Edna St. Vincent Millay's home at Steepletop, I was gladdened, in that me-too way, to see all the crossed out words in one draft of a poem. Scholars say she spent twenty years on some poems, which is a lot longer than an iris blooms.

Nature does give inspiration, but much of it is through reminders of the curious ways beauty may greet us. And for me it's small things rather than grand landscapes that tend to stir my imagination. Sometimes a broken seashell, holding the light. A stone put in a pocket: why? Yesterday a bit of white down floating past the window, as a feather might have drifted thousands of years ago. And for a moment, in a flash, an old goose woman kind of whispered in my ear.

For more Poetry Friday posts, please visit: http://liz-scanlon.livejournal.com/159972.html

Transitions

Writing reminds me that most of life doesn't have beginnings and ends, but circles. Sending off a manuscript is a thrill (riddled with terror), but about five minutes after I hit the lovely send button, I was humming, checking out Facebook, wiping crumbs off the counter, taking a breath, then opening up the manuscript I'd set aside when I'd plunged into the one I just "finished" after a long summer (I'm trying to ignore the wide edges of spring and fall) of a major revision. Through September I could feel myself getting closer to what I like to call the end, peering down hard at the paper. My manuscript was riddled with signs I'd posted to myself: Fix! Make stronger! besides all the cross-outs, a hallmark of every go through. I kind of welcomed those signs marking "Bad!" like a child approaching a puddle. Here's where I could jump and play. I liked reading lines I thought were good, but the places that called for repair let me be careless and carefree for a bit again, less of a person with a blue pencil, on the alert for errors.

It's good to look up and find the trees showing off colors, pumpkins on porch steps, and colorful candy on store shelves. Yesterday I bought some gummy bats sprinkled with sugar. For a friend, ahem. And I'm glad to have a manuscript to work out where there are lots of vague and messy places, lots of spots where I can play. So much that's off that I haven't yet written notes to myself re here's a place to fix. Because that's true of every phrase. Let the rollicking begin. And maybe a bit of candy corn with my tea.

October and Pink Leaf Hats

On Friday I hit the Send button – joy, terror -- then since have gone on two bicycle rides with my husband. I framed foliage photos in my mind, but kept the camera in my pocket, knowing I'd never get the wonder of the red, yellow, and orange, or that other photographers have done it better. But believe me, there was pleasure. I know others find the season less than amazing. A friend finds the colors gaudy. Another sees right past the brilliance to bare branches, so fall is only a harbinger of winter. And sometimes terrible things happen on a beautiful day, and it's hard to know just what to do with ourselves.

I'm not sure why October, which in Massachusetts usually starts out bright and ends up kind of bitter, is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but I'm celebrating friends who are getting their first mammograms and those who've been doing it so long they're practically pulling off their shirts in the hallway. It's not a big deal, and early detection has done a lot to turn this disease from one that was terrifying when I was growing up to one that of course still has its horrors, but that has a pretty decent rate of going into remission. Science has made strides, and I'm glad for organizations like Stand Up to Cancer http://www.standup2cancer.org/ that help fund research into cures and causes: is it what we eat or breathe, where we live, bad luck, or combinations that have made too many people we love sick?

I'm proud that my daughter works for a company that wonders how what we wear, particularly what touches the sensitive skin of babies and children, may affect our lifelong health. I'm passing on the following from Emily and making an order. Presents? And maybe it's time I retire the Red Sox cap she left in the mudroom, or save it for the garden.



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