Nancy Springer's Blog: Last Seen Wandering Vaguely, page 3
December 5, 2013
LEARNING TO CRY
When I was fifteen, I started daydreaming so thoroughly and compulsively that I sometimes worried about myself. The dreams involved a brave and darkly handsome hero trudging on bare bloody feet across a desert of endless deprivation with the cruel marks of an enemy’s whip on his bare, muscular back. Then another hero, almost equally handsome, finds him and rescues him and they cling to each other, sobbing. I had this or some similar home movie going in my head in school one day when a nice girl stopped by my desk and exclaimed, “My God, Nancy, what’s the matter?” Nothing, nothing at all, I told her, stricken with embarrassment. I hadn’t realized how my mind movies showed in my thin face and wide eyes. From then on I tried to limit them to bedtime, when I would choose one (I had numerous variations) and then lie awake half the night suffused in emotion.
My bed was usually the motel’s rollaway cot, unless it was rented out. Then I slept on a sketchier folding contraption, a lounge chair, often in the basement during tourist season. In the wintertime I slept in one of the motel rooms, sometimes so cold that frost formed on the inside of the windows. I had no room of my own. Let’s not fault my parents; their financial struggle might have been partially imaginary, but they could not help being old and shortsighted. Working with them to make a go of the motel gave me the satisfaction of a good job well done. But socially, my teen years were pretty bleak. No fashionable clothes, no friends, no boys. The main source of love and joy in my daytime life was my lop-eared, oversized Sheltie dog, Betsy, who would sleep under my cot as I fantasized the nights away.
When, thanks to my thrifty parents, I went away to college, I assumed they would keep Betsy for me. Meanwhile, I did my best to make up for lost time, and succeeded: clothes, dates, friends instead of daydreams. Things had changed. I had changed, or so I thought until one day in my junior year I got a phone call from my mother – and in my family, phone calls meant bad news.
She told me she had given Betsy away.
What? Betsy was my dog; Mom couldn’t give her away, and I, now a changed person, was not going to let her. I would insist she had to get Betsy back. I was opening my mouth to do so as Mom hurriedly spoke on.
“...to a nice, nice lady, and she tied her out to a picnic table and Betsy jumped up on the table and down the other side and the chain was too short and she strangled to death.”
Oh, Betsy. I pictured my stupid dog, white fluff of her underbelly exposed, hanging dead. Of course she was dead. Mom would not have told me she gave my dog away if she hadn’t died. She would have waited until I came home for a holiday. Where’s Betsy? Oh, we gave her away, sweetie.
Every inflection of my mother’s telephone voice begged me not to react. Not to be angry and not to cry. We didn’t do emotions in my family. For years I had been the de facto mother and Mom the little girl I was not supposed to hurt, but never so much as at that moment.
I went along. Rather woodenly said it was okay. I hung up the phone and pretended nothing terrible had happened. I did not cry.
I hadn’t changed much after all.
While still in college I married a man very much like my parents, and after I graduated, my life became rather bleak and, just as before, I daydreamed compulsively. Eventually I tried to offload the daydreams by writing them down. I wrote THE SILVER SUN, then THE SABLE MOON, then a prequel called THE WHITE HART.
I scored my first publishing contract when I was twenty-five years old. My father had recently died of congestive heart failure. (I did not cry.) At the time when I became “Authorized,” my mother was sixty-five years old.
Now I am sixty-five.
I did not think about any of this until after I started re-reading THE SILVER SUN. Did my sixty-fifth birthday trigger the impulse that made me pick up the post-adolescent “starter” book I had not bothered with for decades?
I expected to be judgmental about the writing. What actually happened I did not expect at all:
Re-reading THE SILVER SUN, I underwent a breathtaking shift in viewpoint. I felt as if I was my own mother reading my first novel for the first time and finding out. . .enormities. To heck with the imperfect prose; the sheer vehemence of the emotions blew me away. Who was the changeling child who had written these mythic fantasies so deeply textured with generation after generation of magical princes questing for wholeness? The tortures I inflicted on my characters, the intensity of their suffering, the heroism of their sacrifices, the extremes I put them through... I seemed to be saying, indeed I seemed to believe, that one must become godlike in perfection to find love. Or even to deserve it.
Good Lord, what had been going on in the young woman who wrote that book?
Even armored as she always was in Buddha-like serenity, I think Mom must have felt something of this sort, sensed something disturbing. While giving me placid credit for having written and published, she did, back in 1977, have one hesitant question. “Nancy, how. . .why. . .what made you think of those awful punishments?”
Punishments? Ordeals, I would have said, or tortures, or torments, but punishments? It was a term one would apply to a child, and maybe that was what set me off. Quite spontaneously and untruthfully I told her, “They were what I thought you and Dad were going to do to me if I misbehaved.”
She showed no sign of being shocked or hurt, but I’m sure I did hurt her. Well, good. That was what she got for giving my dog away to some dumb woman who killed her.
The pity of it is, Mom and I never had a chance to talk things out in any other way. By the time my writing finally revealed my selfhood to me, helping me to become whole and take ownership of my anger, Mom had developed senile dementia. She sat and smiled but she was gone. I cried for her many times during the twenty-some years before she finally died.
My bed was usually the motel’s rollaway cot, unless it was rented out. Then I slept on a sketchier folding contraption, a lounge chair, often in the basement during tourist season. In the wintertime I slept in one of the motel rooms, sometimes so cold that frost formed on the inside of the windows. I had no room of my own. Let’s not fault my parents; their financial struggle might have been partially imaginary, but they could not help being old and shortsighted. Working with them to make a go of the motel gave me the satisfaction of a good job well done. But socially, my teen years were pretty bleak. No fashionable clothes, no friends, no boys. The main source of love and joy in my daytime life was my lop-eared, oversized Sheltie dog, Betsy, who would sleep under my cot as I fantasized the nights away.
When, thanks to my thrifty parents, I went away to college, I assumed they would keep Betsy for me. Meanwhile, I did my best to make up for lost time, and succeeded: clothes, dates, friends instead of daydreams. Things had changed. I had changed, or so I thought until one day in my junior year I got a phone call from my mother – and in my family, phone calls meant bad news.
She told me she had given Betsy away.
What? Betsy was my dog; Mom couldn’t give her away, and I, now a changed person, was not going to let her. I would insist she had to get Betsy back. I was opening my mouth to do so as Mom hurriedly spoke on.
“...to a nice, nice lady, and she tied her out to a picnic table and Betsy jumped up on the table and down the other side and the chain was too short and she strangled to death.”
Oh, Betsy. I pictured my stupid dog, white fluff of her underbelly exposed, hanging dead. Of course she was dead. Mom would not have told me she gave my dog away if she hadn’t died. She would have waited until I came home for a holiday. Where’s Betsy? Oh, we gave her away, sweetie.
Every inflection of my mother’s telephone voice begged me not to react. Not to be angry and not to cry. We didn’t do emotions in my family. For years I had been the de facto mother and Mom the little girl I was not supposed to hurt, but never so much as at that moment.
I went along. Rather woodenly said it was okay. I hung up the phone and pretended nothing terrible had happened. I did not cry.
I hadn’t changed much after all.
While still in college I married a man very much like my parents, and after I graduated, my life became rather bleak and, just as before, I daydreamed compulsively. Eventually I tried to offload the daydreams by writing them down. I wrote THE SILVER SUN, then THE SABLE MOON, then a prequel called THE WHITE HART.
I scored my first publishing contract when I was twenty-five years old. My father had recently died of congestive heart failure. (I did not cry.) At the time when I became “Authorized,” my mother was sixty-five years old.
Now I am sixty-five.
I did not think about any of this until after I started re-reading THE SILVER SUN. Did my sixty-fifth birthday trigger the impulse that made me pick up the post-adolescent “starter” book I had not bothered with for decades?
I expected to be judgmental about the writing. What actually happened I did not expect at all:
Re-reading THE SILVER SUN, I underwent a breathtaking shift in viewpoint. I felt as if I was my own mother reading my first novel for the first time and finding out. . .enormities. To heck with the imperfect prose; the sheer vehemence of the emotions blew me away. Who was the changeling child who had written these mythic fantasies so deeply textured with generation after generation of magical princes questing for wholeness? The tortures I inflicted on my characters, the intensity of their suffering, the heroism of their sacrifices, the extremes I put them through... I seemed to be saying, indeed I seemed to believe, that one must become godlike in perfection to find love. Or even to deserve it.
Good Lord, what had been going on in the young woman who wrote that book?
Even armored as she always was in Buddha-like serenity, I think Mom must have felt something of this sort, sensed something disturbing. While giving me placid credit for having written and published, she did, back in 1977, have one hesitant question. “Nancy, how. . .why. . .what made you think of those awful punishments?”
Punishments? Ordeals, I would have said, or tortures, or torments, but punishments? It was a term one would apply to a child, and maybe that was what set me off. Quite spontaneously and untruthfully I told her, “They were what I thought you and Dad were going to do to me if I misbehaved.”
She showed no sign of being shocked or hurt, but I’m sure I did hurt her. Well, good. That was what she got for giving my dog away to some dumb woman who killed her.
The pity of it is, Mom and I never had a chance to talk things out in any other way. By the time my writing finally revealed my selfhood to me, helping me to become whole and take ownership of my anger, Mom had developed senile dementia. She sat and smiled but she was gone. I cried for her many times during the twenty-some years before she finally died.
November 21, 2013
HOW I GOT STARTED
Warning: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.
How I got started is not necessarily how anybody else should.
When I graduated from college in 1970, age twenty-one going on sixteen, I was already married, not knowing what else to do with me because I was an English Literature major. (“Would you like fries with that?”) By 1972 my husband was serving a year-long internship and I was unemployed for the duration. I was bored, directionless (barring housework; ugh), vegging in bed until noon and daydreaming about cowboys, outlaws, gypsies et al. But while giving an appearance of uselessness, I did have a deeply hidden, never-admitted ambition: to write the Great American Novel. However, nothing in my experience, my education or my reveries seemed to give me a handle on it.
Not until decades later, when I read the trenchant essays of Joanna Russ, did I understand what had been my problem. Here is how she begins her sardonic list of possible topics for women writers based on the English Literature canon:
1. Two strong women battle for supremacy in the early West.
2. A young girl in Minnesota finds her womanhood by killing a bear.
3. An English noblewoman, vacationing in Arcadia, falls in love with a beautiful, modest young shepherd. But duty calls; she must return to the court of Elizabeth I to wage war on Spain. Just in time the shepherd lad is revealed as the long-lost son of the Queen of a neighboring country; the lovers are united and our heroine carries off her husband-to-be-lad-in-waiting to the King of England.
And several more. I particularly like the one about a young man who unwisely puts success in business before personal fulfillment and ends up a neurotic, lonely eunuch, having neglected his masculinity. But satire aside, this list helped me understand, in retrospect, why I couldn’t figure out what to write: My college courses had given me nothing I could use, as a woman, except Jane Austen.
Really. She was the only female author we studied.
Again let me emphasize that this insight came later. At the time I muddled in mental murk with only instinct to guide me. I happened to read FORTUNE MADE HIS SWORD by Martha Rofheart, and it set me daydreaming about a prince named Hal. But my Hal bore no resemblance to the historical Henry V. He was a numinous (and luminous) imaginary being on horseback; I just wanted to write his adventures. But where. . .when. . . how. . . .
By creating an imaginary world for him, that was how. So no one could say I got it all wrong.
The first sentence I penned into my new spiral-bound notebook in August, 1972, as I recall: “A young man rode through the forest.” This is to show you how lame I was as a writer, starting out. We all are.
I did not intend to write Tolkienesque fantasy, just heroism set in an invented world. I wasn’t trying to be a real writer, I told myself; this was just a hobby, like crocheting. But as I scribbled during every possible stolen moment in the next couple of years, and as the book well and truly cozened me into its enchanting spell, somehow magic crept in like vines, and subplots flourished like kudzu. I filled seven notebooks with bad handwriting. Not until I had started typing a final draft, however, did I admit I intended to submit THE BOOK OF SUNS for publication.
Clueless, I sent a dozen letters at random to publishers whose addresses I found in the front matter of volumes on my bookshelf:
To whom it may concern:
Like a hen that has hatched a duck’s egg, I have produced something I have no idea what to do with. How does one go about having a book published?
This is utterly, totally the wrong way to start a query letter, but I didn’t know it WAS a query letter as I described the novel I didn’t know was a fantasy. Nor did I know how nearly miraculous it was when one editor responded, very informally, scrawling on my own letter and returning it to say she would have a look.
A few months later, back came the manuscript, rejected but including a three- page letter explaining why. My book was a bit too long. Actually, it was twice the length it should have been. It was inconsistent in style, and none of the styles were good, especially not the one using “thee” instead of “you.” It needed more action and tighter prose. Plus a great deal more. But the characters were appealing.
Now here is where I did something right. I phoned the editor and thanked her for her letter. I managed a few intelligent questions to clarify what I needed to do. I asked her whether she would be willing to look at a rewrite. She said yes.
Then I rewrote as fast I could.
Even though I did not yet know how editors tend to come and go like diet fads, I still sensed that I should waste no time. I rooted out out the kudzu subplots but had the sense to save them for use in future books. I cut away fatty descriptions and added muscle to the action, using oldish English throughout – dreadful stuff, in hindsight, methinks, I dare say, alas and alack.
Then back to the typewriter I went, hitting each letter very hard to make two carbons. I developed exceptionally strong fingers, and somewhat stronger prose as finger fatigue encouraged me to leave out unnecessary words. Finally, I headed back to the post office to send another brown-paper bundle to Pocket Books.
This time, instead of a rejection letter, I got a phone call from my editor. The book was accepted! I was to be published! I was so excited that I didn’t even negotiate my advance – a big mistake, but I did not yet know or care. I was an author!
The book was still so bad that it came back to me for rewrites. And again, and again. The editor and her staff actually rewrote parts of it themselves to show me what a scene in a novel should resemble, and even in my ignorance I sensed that this was exceptional effort on their part. That very first editor of mine, whose name I shamefully cannot remember, went way above and beyond the call of duty in my case, then dropped out of publishing never to be heard from again. Maybe I was the death of her.
THE BOOK OF SUNS was published in 1977, but Pocket Books released it as general fiction, not fantasy. It sold 35,000 copies. Not bad, but not good. A few years later, I re-re-re-re-rewrote it – THAT is when I focused on the mythic fantasy element – and it was republished as THE SILVER SUN, the title change being necessary because, as my new editor told me, “We don’t want booksellers saying, ‘Oh, no, not that turkey again.’”
Wise editor. With the rewrite, a different title and a wonderful Carl Lundgren cover, the erstwhile turkey sold over 200,000 copies. So I wrote another one, trying to make it better.
And that was how I got started.
How I got started is not necessarily how anybody else should.
When I graduated from college in 1970, age twenty-one going on sixteen, I was already married, not knowing what else to do with me because I was an English Literature major. (“Would you like fries with that?”) By 1972 my husband was serving a year-long internship and I was unemployed for the duration. I was bored, directionless (barring housework; ugh), vegging in bed until noon and daydreaming about cowboys, outlaws, gypsies et al. But while giving an appearance of uselessness, I did have a deeply hidden, never-admitted ambition: to write the Great American Novel. However, nothing in my experience, my education or my reveries seemed to give me a handle on it.
Not until decades later, when I read the trenchant essays of Joanna Russ, did I understand what had been my problem. Here is how she begins her sardonic list of possible topics for women writers based on the English Literature canon:
1. Two strong women battle for supremacy in the early West.
2. A young girl in Minnesota finds her womanhood by killing a bear.
3. An English noblewoman, vacationing in Arcadia, falls in love with a beautiful, modest young shepherd. But duty calls; she must return to the court of Elizabeth I to wage war on Spain. Just in time the shepherd lad is revealed as the long-lost son of the Queen of a neighboring country; the lovers are united and our heroine carries off her husband-to-be-lad-in-waiting to the King of England.
And several more. I particularly like the one about a young man who unwisely puts success in business before personal fulfillment and ends up a neurotic, lonely eunuch, having neglected his masculinity. But satire aside, this list helped me understand, in retrospect, why I couldn’t figure out what to write: My college courses had given me nothing I could use, as a woman, except Jane Austen.
Really. She was the only female author we studied.
Again let me emphasize that this insight came later. At the time I muddled in mental murk with only instinct to guide me. I happened to read FORTUNE MADE HIS SWORD by Martha Rofheart, and it set me daydreaming about a prince named Hal. But my Hal bore no resemblance to the historical Henry V. He was a numinous (and luminous) imaginary being on horseback; I just wanted to write his adventures. But where. . .when. . . how. . . .
By creating an imaginary world for him, that was how. So no one could say I got it all wrong.
The first sentence I penned into my new spiral-bound notebook in August, 1972, as I recall: “A young man rode through the forest.” This is to show you how lame I was as a writer, starting out. We all are.
I did not intend to write Tolkienesque fantasy, just heroism set in an invented world. I wasn’t trying to be a real writer, I told myself; this was just a hobby, like crocheting. But as I scribbled during every possible stolen moment in the next couple of years, and as the book well and truly cozened me into its enchanting spell, somehow magic crept in like vines, and subplots flourished like kudzu. I filled seven notebooks with bad handwriting. Not until I had started typing a final draft, however, did I admit I intended to submit THE BOOK OF SUNS for publication.
Clueless, I sent a dozen letters at random to publishers whose addresses I found in the front matter of volumes on my bookshelf:
To whom it may concern:
Like a hen that has hatched a duck’s egg, I have produced something I have no idea what to do with. How does one go about having a book published?
This is utterly, totally the wrong way to start a query letter, but I didn’t know it WAS a query letter as I described the novel I didn’t know was a fantasy. Nor did I know how nearly miraculous it was when one editor responded, very informally, scrawling on my own letter and returning it to say she would have a look.
A few months later, back came the manuscript, rejected but including a three- page letter explaining why. My book was a bit too long. Actually, it was twice the length it should have been. It was inconsistent in style, and none of the styles were good, especially not the one using “thee” instead of “you.” It needed more action and tighter prose. Plus a great deal more. But the characters were appealing.
Now here is where I did something right. I phoned the editor and thanked her for her letter. I managed a few intelligent questions to clarify what I needed to do. I asked her whether she would be willing to look at a rewrite. She said yes.
Then I rewrote as fast I could.
Even though I did not yet know how editors tend to come and go like diet fads, I still sensed that I should waste no time. I rooted out out the kudzu subplots but had the sense to save them for use in future books. I cut away fatty descriptions and added muscle to the action, using oldish English throughout – dreadful stuff, in hindsight, methinks, I dare say, alas and alack.
Then back to the typewriter I went, hitting each letter very hard to make two carbons. I developed exceptionally strong fingers, and somewhat stronger prose as finger fatigue encouraged me to leave out unnecessary words. Finally, I headed back to the post office to send another brown-paper bundle to Pocket Books.
This time, instead of a rejection letter, I got a phone call from my editor. The book was accepted! I was to be published! I was so excited that I didn’t even negotiate my advance – a big mistake, but I did not yet know or care. I was an author!
The book was still so bad that it came back to me for rewrites. And again, and again. The editor and her staff actually rewrote parts of it themselves to show me what a scene in a novel should resemble, and even in my ignorance I sensed that this was exceptional effort on their part. That very first editor of mine, whose name I shamefully cannot remember, went way above and beyond the call of duty in my case, then dropped out of publishing never to be heard from again. Maybe I was the death of her.
THE BOOK OF SUNS was published in 1977, but Pocket Books released it as general fiction, not fantasy. It sold 35,000 copies. Not bad, but not good. A few years later, I re-re-re-re-rewrote it – THAT is when I focused on the mythic fantasy element – and it was republished as THE SILVER SUN, the title change being necessary because, as my new editor told me, “We don’t want booksellers saying, ‘Oh, no, not that turkey again.’”
Wise editor. With the rewrite, a different title and a wonderful Carl Lundgren cover, the erstwhile turkey sold over 200,000 copies. So I wrote another one, trying to make it better.
And that was how I got started.
November 6, 2013
AUTHORS ALONG THE WAY
The best thing about blogging is that I get to talk about myself. The worst thing about blogging is that I have to talk about myself. (This PR paradox has obtained throughout my career.) My “out” is talking about other writers and how wonderful they have been to me.
Andre Norton, back in 1977, shortly after my first book was published. I do not remember how I became aware of her, or learned that she lived in Florida not far from my mother. But I do recall that, on one of my trips south from Pennsylvania, I brazenly invited myself to her home, with nary a thought in my newbie mind except to shake hands. Andre had different ideas. She sat me down and answered dozens of questions I did not yet know enough to ask, giving me a concise two-hour seminar on being a professional writer: organizations to join, publications to read, pitfalls to beware, how to keep records, which were the best publishers, how to choose a good agent, and on and on. . . I left with an armload of exciting material to read and a dazed, if not dazzled, mind. I followed her advice for decades, and we corresponded, but she was getting too old to travel, and I never saw her again.
Anne McCaffrey. She provided quote after glowing quote for my fantasy novels. Also, we shared the same excellent literary agent, who provided a go-between, arranging for me to visit her when my family and I were in Ireland. My father’s brother, with whom we were staying, agreed to drive me to the bus stop in Dublin, whence I was to take a bus to the vicinity of Dragonhold. The whole day was quite an adventure. The first bus never arrived. The second bus was late. When I got to the small town (the name of which I have repressed) there was no sign of anyone from Dragonhold awaiting me. I went into a pub (patrons, exclusively male, stared as if I were a space alien) and asked whether I could use the phone. The bartender directed me to a public phone on a side street. It didn’t work. But within a few moments a motherly woman in a large sedan pulled up, introduced herself as Anne McCaffrey, said she figured the bus was late and the phone wasn’t working, and off we went. I fixated on her paddock full of Anglo-Arabian horses. She explained that they served as a kind of bank account, as good as cash in Ireland. She showed me into her office and gave me a Pern T-shirt. She had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Yakking, we lunched on sandwiches in the kitchen, and then she let me ride one of her horses. (!!!) She helped me onto a placid Irish heavy hunter, sent me off for a trail ride in the green, green countryside with one of the teenagers who hung around her house, and, I remember vividly, she ran after me with a sweater lest I get cold. This was my very first experience of trail riding, and what a way to start! We rode past the ruins of an 8th-century Norman castle in one of the fields. Back at the house, I remember gazing starry-eyed at the Hugo and Nebula awards in Anne’s small, cluttered living room, and I remember she gave me a huge good-bye hug. We tried to keep in touch, but mostly she kept on writing wonderful blurbs for my books.
Jean Auel. I met her only once, at a convention on the west coast. Before I could open my mouth to present myself, she squealed, “Nancy Springer! I love your books!” Talk about wind beneath my wings. . . .
Ellen Kushner. She has known me since I was a “baby author.” By a freak of phase early in her career, she was my editor for THE SILVER SUN, and her dedication to the task was wholehearted and compassionate. I particularly remember her phoning to tell me she needed a new name for the novel for a meeting due to start in five minutes. One remembers such traumatic moments. It was like giving a new name to a child due to start kindergarten. But Ellen coached me through the problem with her usual gentle merriment. Later, when she wrote her wonderful first novel, SWORDSPOINT, she asked me for a cover quote, and I dismally failed her, but she never held this against me; I was just a baby author, after all. She continued to include me in irrepressible high jinks at many a convention. I sometimes wish she’d written more, but then she wouldn’t have had so much fun.
Peter Beagle. I was always shy around him, I admired him so, but when he came back to his Pittsburgh, PA alma mater to speak, I went to pay homage, and was astounded to find very few other people there. I was the only one who stayed afterward. I had brought along all of his books for him to sign, and we talked about editors we had in common, and I showed him my new book. He sighed and said, “I wish I had a new book coming out.” He made me feel as if I were the one who had written THE LAST UNICORN.
Evangeline Walton. I worshipped her writing style for years before I had the good fortune to meet her at a conference in Arizona, where she was the “local author.” I invited her to breakfast and told her how much I admired her books, which were based on the Mabinogian, the Welsh national epic. She replied, “But you write your own plots. I never could do that.”
Madeleine L’Engle. She was sitting all by herself, a silent, dignified presence, at a Mythcon, I think it was, in Washington, DC. I had no idea who she was when I said hi in an effort to include her. That same day she bought one of my books and the next morning told me it had kept her up half the night and asked me to sign it. Then we were on a panel together. Seated at my elbow was Guest of Honor Madeleine L’Engle. I was the moderator. One of the other panelists seemed unaware that I was the moderator or, indeed, of what a moderator does, or even what moderation is. Nothing I said or did could quell her. It was the terrible horrible no good very bad worst panel ever in the history of braying jackasses needing to be knocked on the head. Madeleine L’Engle sat serene and silent (as should NOT happen to a GoH) throughout the fiasco. Afterward she gave me a slip of paper upon which she had written her mailing address so that we could correspond. Correspond! When I was so frustrated and embarrassed I thought she’d never speak to me again. Thank you, Madeleine L’Engle.
Thank you, all the wonderful writers who have encouraged and befriended me. There are many whose names I have not been able to include. You know who you are. I have not forgotten you. I will never forget.
Andre Norton, back in 1977, shortly after my first book was published. I do not remember how I became aware of her, or learned that she lived in Florida not far from my mother. But I do recall that, on one of my trips south from Pennsylvania, I brazenly invited myself to her home, with nary a thought in my newbie mind except to shake hands. Andre had different ideas. She sat me down and answered dozens of questions I did not yet know enough to ask, giving me a concise two-hour seminar on being a professional writer: organizations to join, publications to read, pitfalls to beware, how to keep records, which were the best publishers, how to choose a good agent, and on and on. . . I left with an armload of exciting material to read and a dazed, if not dazzled, mind. I followed her advice for decades, and we corresponded, but she was getting too old to travel, and I never saw her again.
Anne McCaffrey. She provided quote after glowing quote for my fantasy novels. Also, we shared the same excellent literary agent, who provided a go-between, arranging for me to visit her when my family and I were in Ireland. My father’s brother, with whom we were staying, agreed to drive me to the bus stop in Dublin, whence I was to take a bus to the vicinity of Dragonhold. The whole day was quite an adventure. The first bus never arrived. The second bus was late. When I got to the small town (the name of which I have repressed) there was no sign of anyone from Dragonhold awaiting me. I went into a pub (patrons, exclusively male, stared as if I were a space alien) and asked whether I could use the phone. The bartender directed me to a public phone on a side street. It didn’t work. But within a few moments a motherly woman in a large sedan pulled up, introduced herself as Anne McCaffrey, said she figured the bus was late and the phone wasn’t working, and off we went. I fixated on her paddock full of Anglo-Arabian horses. She explained that they served as a kind of bank account, as good as cash in Ireland. She showed me into her office and gave me a Pern T-shirt. She had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Yakking, we lunched on sandwiches in the kitchen, and then she let me ride one of her horses. (!!!) She helped me onto a placid Irish heavy hunter, sent me off for a trail ride in the green, green countryside with one of the teenagers who hung around her house, and, I remember vividly, she ran after me with a sweater lest I get cold. This was my very first experience of trail riding, and what a way to start! We rode past the ruins of an 8th-century Norman castle in one of the fields. Back at the house, I remember gazing starry-eyed at the Hugo and Nebula awards in Anne’s small, cluttered living room, and I remember she gave me a huge good-bye hug. We tried to keep in touch, but mostly she kept on writing wonderful blurbs for my books.
Jean Auel. I met her only once, at a convention on the west coast. Before I could open my mouth to present myself, she squealed, “Nancy Springer! I love your books!” Talk about wind beneath my wings. . . .
Ellen Kushner. She has known me since I was a “baby author.” By a freak of phase early in her career, she was my editor for THE SILVER SUN, and her dedication to the task was wholehearted and compassionate. I particularly remember her phoning to tell me she needed a new name for the novel for a meeting due to start in five minutes. One remembers such traumatic moments. It was like giving a new name to a child due to start kindergarten. But Ellen coached me through the problem with her usual gentle merriment. Later, when she wrote her wonderful first novel, SWORDSPOINT, she asked me for a cover quote, and I dismally failed her, but she never held this against me; I was just a baby author, after all. She continued to include me in irrepressible high jinks at many a convention. I sometimes wish she’d written more, but then she wouldn’t have had so much fun.
Peter Beagle. I was always shy around him, I admired him so, but when he came back to his Pittsburgh, PA alma mater to speak, I went to pay homage, and was astounded to find very few other people there. I was the only one who stayed afterward. I had brought along all of his books for him to sign, and we talked about editors we had in common, and I showed him my new book. He sighed and said, “I wish I had a new book coming out.” He made me feel as if I were the one who had written THE LAST UNICORN.
Evangeline Walton. I worshipped her writing style for years before I had the good fortune to meet her at a conference in Arizona, where she was the “local author.” I invited her to breakfast and told her how much I admired her books, which were based on the Mabinogian, the Welsh national epic. She replied, “But you write your own plots. I never could do that.”
Madeleine L’Engle. She was sitting all by herself, a silent, dignified presence, at a Mythcon, I think it was, in Washington, DC. I had no idea who she was when I said hi in an effort to include her. That same day she bought one of my books and the next morning told me it had kept her up half the night and asked me to sign it. Then we were on a panel together. Seated at my elbow was Guest of Honor Madeleine L’Engle. I was the moderator. One of the other panelists seemed unaware that I was the moderator or, indeed, of what a moderator does, or even what moderation is. Nothing I said or did could quell her. It was the terrible horrible no good very bad worst panel ever in the history of braying jackasses needing to be knocked on the head. Madeleine L’Engle sat serene and silent (as should NOT happen to a GoH) throughout the fiasco. Afterward she gave me a slip of paper upon which she had written her mailing address so that we could correspond. Correspond! When I was so frustrated and embarrassed I thought she’d never speak to me again. Thank you, Madeleine L’Engle.
Thank you, all the wonderful writers who have encouraged and befriended me. There are many whose names I have not been able to include. You know who you are. I have not forgotten you. I will never forget.
October 22, 2013
DRAWN INTO DARKNESS: SECOND BOOK BLUES
The first book: it’s every aspiring writer’s dream, and when it happens – the professionally designed cover, the first good reviews, sub rights sales, honors, money – when it all happens, then the newly anointed author’s heart sings a paean of joy, love, and triumph over epic adversity.
And if the first sales figures should chance to be sweet, from the new author’s editor comes ringing a bugle call for the second book.
Then the music changes for the writer, who starts to sing the Second Book Blues.
Oh noooo, oh noooo, what am I going to dooooo?
I must complete this ms in six months or less,
when the first one took a decade or two!
It might be okay if I could disobey,
But they want another one just like the other
Only more so and in a different color, thank you,
And I got the second book blues.
I assure you this is a real phenomenon. Astute readers call it the sophomore jinx, and the more gleeful reviewers wait to pounce on a book that almost certainly will not be as good as the first. Luckily, the second book comes only once in a writer’s career. . . .
Or so I thought until I signed a two-book contract.
Hoo boy. The first book, DARK LIE, had been written and rewritten during a number of years. Then, with coaching from an excellent editor, I rewrote it once more before publication. Somehow during its lengthy gestation period it became better in a different way than any other book I had yet written. A lot of people like it very much.
Perversely, this scared me, because I had no idea how I had managed to write DARK LIE. Yet, to complete my contract, I needed to write, within a year, another book very much like it.
So I applied Brain. The contract called for psychological suspense. I had the “suspense” part pretty much under control – an abducted child -- but I needed psychology, so I gave one of my characters a psychological problem that affected whether the victim could be re-united with his family. This character (please allow me my veil of secrecy) was a challenge to write, and I tried my hardest to make her “sympathetic.”
When my agent read the manuscript, however, she told me that I had succeeded only in making the character pathetic with no sym. In fact, my manuscript sounded as if I did not even like this character.
True, but I was not yet ready to admit it. I rewrote the entire 90,000 word manuscript as if trying to save a bad marriage, forcing the screwed-up character to get likeable.
By now it was time for the editor to look at the book. Indeed, it was time to choose a title, create a cover illustration, and go into production.
I was of course at home in the Florida panhandle at the time, but I understand that my editor’s screams could be heard across several blocks of Manhattan. Certainly my agent heard them. My editor (with my wholehearted sympathy) wanted to drop the book over a cliff. My agent talked her down and assured her I would rewrite Very Fast.
I rewrote. On this, my third time through the book’s four hundred some pages, I no longer cared whether it resembled DARK LIE or whether it met the definition of psychological suspense. I just wanted to put together something publishable. I tore out the offending character, gender-reversed the roles of the victim’s parents, threw out a kid sister’s journal and turned her into twins, brought in two new characters, and completely replaced I don’t know how many pages, more than half the manuscript. But I had no time to sing the second book blues because I was working on my rescue mission morning, afternoon and night to get it back to the publisher in time. The publishing date – November 5, 2013 -- was already set and the title already decided upon: DRAWN INTO DARKNESS.
To my great relief, my editor agreed that the third go-round was much stronger and more entertaining. However, we were not finished yet. In a detailed, seven-page revision letter she clarified what remained to be done before Frankenbook could come to life. One big problem was that I had sometimes messed up the chronological order in which the pieces should be put together.
So I rewrote the book for the fourth time. By the time I was finished (I thought), DRAWN INTO DARKNESS bore almost no resemblance to its original self, although it had begun to resemble DARK LIE just a little. Anyway, it had finally come together.
Or had it? Sending the manuscript back in its ready-to-publish electronic format, my editor gave me a heads-up that I still had a chronological problem. She had told me before, but in one of those disturbing episodes of brain slippage that occur too often as I get older, I had not been able to see it. I still couldn’t see it until she spelled it out for me. Then, in a blinding flash of the obvious, I realized I had to add one whole day to one character’s storyline.
Aak!
I wrote it in the form of several paragraphs of Track Changes and did a 24-hour Rip Van Winkle on the character. He had every reason to need a nap; he had been up all night for two nights in a row. And once I had him tucked in, naturally he overslept into the next night and couldn’t get going again until daylight.
Whew.
I turned DRAWN INTO DARKNESS around in a few days and e-mailed it back with the tentative topic heading, “final?”
It was. Finally. Final. But I didn’t feel really great about it, because I didn’t know whether I was the author who submitted a disastrous second book or the author who pulled off an amazing save. I didn’t know whether I was a hero or a goat.
I still don’t.
But when the time came for me to read the proofs, it didn’t matter. Some time had passed. I found myself drawn into the book as I read, finding it – lo and behold – suspenseful! My wacked-out writing process didn’t matter. DRAWN INTO DARKNESS ended up alive, all right, but not a Frankenbook. I enjoyed reading it. It was good!
So finally I can start singing a happy song. No more second book blues. My new suspense novel is the very first DRAWN INTO DARKNESS I ever wrote.
And if the first sales figures should chance to be sweet, from the new author’s editor comes ringing a bugle call for the second book.
Then the music changes for the writer, who starts to sing the Second Book Blues.
Oh noooo, oh noooo, what am I going to dooooo?
I must complete this ms in six months or less,
when the first one took a decade or two!
It might be okay if I could disobey,
But they want another one just like the other
Only more so and in a different color, thank you,
And I got the second book blues.
I assure you this is a real phenomenon. Astute readers call it the sophomore jinx, and the more gleeful reviewers wait to pounce on a book that almost certainly will not be as good as the first. Luckily, the second book comes only once in a writer’s career. . . .
Or so I thought until I signed a two-book contract.
Hoo boy. The first book, DARK LIE, had been written and rewritten during a number of years. Then, with coaching from an excellent editor, I rewrote it once more before publication. Somehow during its lengthy gestation period it became better in a different way than any other book I had yet written. A lot of people like it very much.
Perversely, this scared me, because I had no idea how I had managed to write DARK LIE. Yet, to complete my contract, I needed to write, within a year, another book very much like it.
So I applied Brain. The contract called for psychological suspense. I had the “suspense” part pretty much under control – an abducted child -- but I needed psychology, so I gave one of my characters a psychological problem that affected whether the victim could be re-united with his family. This character (please allow me my veil of secrecy) was a challenge to write, and I tried my hardest to make her “sympathetic.”
When my agent read the manuscript, however, she told me that I had succeeded only in making the character pathetic with no sym. In fact, my manuscript sounded as if I did not even like this character.
True, but I was not yet ready to admit it. I rewrote the entire 90,000 word manuscript as if trying to save a bad marriage, forcing the screwed-up character to get likeable.
By now it was time for the editor to look at the book. Indeed, it was time to choose a title, create a cover illustration, and go into production.
I was of course at home in the Florida panhandle at the time, but I understand that my editor’s screams could be heard across several blocks of Manhattan. Certainly my agent heard them. My editor (with my wholehearted sympathy) wanted to drop the book over a cliff. My agent talked her down and assured her I would rewrite Very Fast.
I rewrote. On this, my third time through the book’s four hundred some pages, I no longer cared whether it resembled DARK LIE or whether it met the definition of psychological suspense. I just wanted to put together something publishable. I tore out the offending character, gender-reversed the roles of the victim’s parents, threw out a kid sister’s journal and turned her into twins, brought in two new characters, and completely replaced I don’t know how many pages, more than half the manuscript. But I had no time to sing the second book blues because I was working on my rescue mission morning, afternoon and night to get it back to the publisher in time. The publishing date – November 5, 2013 -- was already set and the title already decided upon: DRAWN INTO DARKNESS.
To my great relief, my editor agreed that the third go-round was much stronger and more entertaining. However, we were not finished yet. In a detailed, seven-page revision letter she clarified what remained to be done before Frankenbook could come to life. One big problem was that I had sometimes messed up the chronological order in which the pieces should be put together.
So I rewrote the book for the fourth time. By the time I was finished (I thought), DRAWN INTO DARKNESS bore almost no resemblance to its original self, although it had begun to resemble DARK LIE just a little. Anyway, it had finally come together.
Or had it? Sending the manuscript back in its ready-to-publish electronic format, my editor gave me a heads-up that I still had a chronological problem. She had told me before, but in one of those disturbing episodes of brain slippage that occur too often as I get older, I had not been able to see it. I still couldn’t see it until she spelled it out for me. Then, in a blinding flash of the obvious, I realized I had to add one whole day to one character’s storyline.
Aak!
I wrote it in the form of several paragraphs of Track Changes and did a 24-hour Rip Van Winkle on the character. He had every reason to need a nap; he had been up all night for two nights in a row. And once I had him tucked in, naturally he overslept into the next night and couldn’t get going again until daylight.
Whew.
I turned DRAWN INTO DARKNESS around in a few days and e-mailed it back with the tentative topic heading, “final?”
It was. Finally. Final. But I didn’t feel really great about it, because I didn’t know whether I was the author who submitted a disastrous second book or the author who pulled off an amazing save. I didn’t know whether I was a hero or a goat.
I still don’t.
But when the time came for me to read the proofs, it didn’t matter. Some time had passed. I found myself drawn into the book as I read, finding it – lo and behold – suspenseful! My wacked-out writing process didn’t matter. DRAWN INTO DARKNESS ended up alive, all right, but not a Frankenbook. I enjoyed reading it. It was good!
So finally I can start singing a happy song. No more second book blues. My new suspense novel is the very first DRAWN INTO DARKNESS I ever wrote.
October 10, 2013
INSTEAD OF
When I first started scribbling for real, when I was in my early twenties, I wanted to write a novel about how wretchedly I had been tormented in the New Jersey public schools. I had never spoken more than two sentences about this misery before being dismissively interrupted, whether by parents, siblings, or college friends. This was long before anyone took bullying seriousIy; they said it was just life. I quite desperately wanted to tell my story and be heard.
So I scribbled. (Back then, it was for-real scribbling, with a Bic pen in a spiral-bound notebook.) But I hadn’t written more than a few pages before I realized how profoundly depressing, boring, and whiney was my plaint, all mimsy like a borogove (“Jabberwocky” jargon). Nobody would ever want to read what the mome rath outgrabe. Not even me.
So instead of that, I wrote –
No, actually, it wasn’t that simple. An unconscious, daydreaming process intervened for several months, maybe even a year. But eventually I wrote a fantasy novel about an evil king and his cruel minions and how two princes became blood brothers, endured tortures, rallied followers, and defeated the bad guys. Both of my heroes were me, although I didn’t realize it at the time. The golden one was my public, steady self and the dark, scarred one was my hidden, moody, messed-up self. It was about time we got acquainted, if only on paper.
The next novel was the same, except different. Indeed, I wrote fantasy novels of paired heroes for a decade before I put myself together as one person able to be, get this, female. But all that time I had written about being bullied and I was read and heard. I had done it. So I wrote fantasy instead of strict fact; so what?
And then I went on to write many more different sorts of novels. . . .
Caveat: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes – actually, most of the time after that first spate of fantasies – sometimes my novels are just novels, period. But occasionally they’re more. At least four of my YA novels were written in order to exorcise from my heart the horror of murder – various different real-life murders. And one of my children’s books was written in a three-week rage after I’d heard a racist comment from a neighbor. And then there were my problems with my mother, never resolved because she became dotty in her final decades, so they ended up in several novels, including the Enola Holmes mystery series.
But perhaps the freakiest book I’ve ever written “instead of” strict fact was FAIR PERIL, magical realism that many readers find hilarious. I began writing it when my husband fell in love with another woman, although he so earnestly denied having an affair that I believed him – consciously. But the smarter part of me prepared for divorce by creating a wacked-out narrative that starts like this:
“Once upon a time there was a middle-aged woman,” storyteller Buffy Murphy declaimed to the trees, “whose bung hole of a husband dumped her the month after their twentieth wedding anniversary. After she skipped having a life to raise three kids with him, he gives her the old heave-ho and off he goes with his bimbo.”
There’s much more, of course, concerning Buffy’s adventures with a talking frog in the Mall Tifarious, but what’s freaky is this: FAIR PERIL was written so far ahead of time that it was actually published the same month my marriage hit the fan, and my first copy arrived shortly before the splat. My then-husband picked up my brand-new book and carried it into the bathroom with him. When he came out a few minutes later, his face had gone frog-belly white. He said, “I can’t read this.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t answer me at that time, but before that October was over he finally told me the truth and moved out. “I hadn’t intended to leave you until spring,” he said. (!?!**#!)
I suppose I ought to thank myself for writing FAIR PERIL. It ends with my protagonist talking to the trees again, but making a new story. In writing my dress rehearsal for divorce, although I had thoroughly disguised the material with a wicked queen and a magical librarian, I had included my own healing process.
Whoa.
Instances like that make me look back and shake my head. I write books for a living; I write them one after another because otherwise I don’t know what to do with myself; but sometimes a book is more than just a book. It’s instead of. It’s a way to turn suffering into the write stuff. Luckily for me.
So I scribbled. (Back then, it was for-real scribbling, with a Bic pen in a spiral-bound notebook.) But I hadn’t written more than a few pages before I realized how profoundly depressing, boring, and whiney was my plaint, all mimsy like a borogove (“Jabberwocky” jargon). Nobody would ever want to read what the mome rath outgrabe. Not even me.
So instead of that, I wrote –
No, actually, it wasn’t that simple. An unconscious, daydreaming process intervened for several months, maybe even a year. But eventually I wrote a fantasy novel about an evil king and his cruel minions and how two princes became blood brothers, endured tortures, rallied followers, and defeated the bad guys. Both of my heroes were me, although I didn’t realize it at the time. The golden one was my public, steady self and the dark, scarred one was my hidden, moody, messed-up self. It was about time we got acquainted, if only on paper.
The next novel was the same, except different. Indeed, I wrote fantasy novels of paired heroes for a decade before I put myself together as one person able to be, get this, female. But all that time I had written about being bullied and I was read and heard. I had done it. So I wrote fantasy instead of strict fact; so what?
And then I went on to write many more different sorts of novels. . . .
Caveat: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes – actually, most of the time after that first spate of fantasies – sometimes my novels are just novels, period. But occasionally they’re more. At least four of my YA novels were written in order to exorcise from my heart the horror of murder – various different real-life murders. And one of my children’s books was written in a three-week rage after I’d heard a racist comment from a neighbor. And then there were my problems with my mother, never resolved because she became dotty in her final decades, so they ended up in several novels, including the Enola Holmes mystery series.
But perhaps the freakiest book I’ve ever written “instead of” strict fact was FAIR PERIL, magical realism that many readers find hilarious. I began writing it when my husband fell in love with another woman, although he so earnestly denied having an affair that I believed him – consciously. But the smarter part of me prepared for divorce by creating a wacked-out narrative that starts like this:
“Once upon a time there was a middle-aged woman,” storyteller Buffy Murphy declaimed to the trees, “whose bung hole of a husband dumped her the month after their twentieth wedding anniversary. After she skipped having a life to raise three kids with him, he gives her the old heave-ho and off he goes with his bimbo.”
There’s much more, of course, concerning Buffy’s adventures with a talking frog in the Mall Tifarious, but what’s freaky is this: FAIR PERIL was written so far ahead of time that it was actually published the same month my marriage hit the fan, and my first copy arrived shortly before the splat. My then-husband picked up my brand-new book and carried it into the bathroom with him. When he came out a few minutes later, his face had gone frog-belly white. He said, “I can’t read this.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t answer me at that time, but before that October was over he finally told me the truth and moved out. “I hadn’t intended to leave you until spring,” he said. (!?!**#!)
I suppose I ought to thank myself for writing FAIR PERIL. It ends with my protagonist talking to the trees again, but making a new story. In writing my dress rehearsal for divorce, although I had thoroughly disguised the material with a wicked queen and a magical librarian, I had included my own healing process.
Whoa.
Instances like that make me look back and shake my head. I write books for a living; I write them one after another because otherwise I don’t know what to do with myself; but sometimes a book is more than just a book. It’s instead of. It’s a way to turn suffering into the write stuff. Luckily for me.
September 27, 2013
WHAT DO NOTEBOOKS REVEAL?
Years ago, I lived next door to an elderly widow who sat on her porch a lot. I used to go sit with her out of compassion combined with a lust for material. She told good stories. She also told me her arthritis was too bad to let her crochet anymore, but she had made sixty-three afghans in her time. She knew this because she had kept a notebook in which she had recorded the colors and amounts of yarn used in each afghan, the number of hours spent crocheting it, and to whom she gave it. She kept another notebook in which she recorded the titles and authors of books she read and what she had thought of them. And in another notebook she kept track of coupons she redeemed at supermarkets, so that at the end of each year she could add up how much money she had saved. In a small notebook that she hid inside her library book as she sat on the porch, she documented the comings and goings in the neighborhood, including license numbers of cars, in case any crimes were being committed and the police might want to know. As a keeper of notebooks myself, I found her exemplary.
In due time she died, an event for which she was fully prepared. She had tagged all her belongings for distribution to her heirs and assembled her burial outfit right down to clean new underwear. At her viewing, as I contemplated her mortal remains laid out just as she had instructed, her daughter stood beside me at the casket and asked me in a low voice, “Did you know Mom kept a notebook of her bowel movements?”
No, I hadn’t known. But although I was so amused it was hard for me to maintain a funereal demeanor, I was not surprised. I already knew she was, uh, retentive. The notebooks a person keeps reveal a lot.
What would mine reveal about me? I still have a childhood notebook in which I listed bird sightings, horses I saw from the school bus, books I read, and new words I liked. Now I keep a separate vocabulary tome that is far more than just a word list; it reflects my peculiar personal taste. (Eructation: the fancy word for “burp.”) Bird sightings are now less important to me than the hubby journals I keep almost as obsessively as I kept baby books when my children were small. Kids say the cutest things, and so does Jaime, for instance with a Chilean description of dumbidity: “We leave him to guard the turtles and they all run away.” Or, of humiliation: “I swallow the frog.”
I have notebooks researching books I’ve written – the “bible” for Enola Holmes is massive. Then there are notebooks in which I collect lists of things -- bumper stickers, bad jokes, awful lawn ornaments, euphemisms for mental incompetence, some of the more bizarre insults of menopause. And I have notebooks detailing places I’ve lived or visited. For instance, where I live now, the mailboxes are backwards, facing away from the road. And a lot of the souped up pickup trucks have whip antennas with balls on them – tennis balls. And a vehicle’s rear window is likely to bear a formal dedication to some deceased person, every bit as serious as a gravestone. The actual graves, in the cemeteries, are covered with slabs to keep varmints out, and the slabs function like coffee tables for the display of doodads in honor of whoever’s underneath.
I keep so many notebooks that sometimes I forget them and rediscover them, as I recently found a journal dedicated to dreams, which reveals mostly how much I can’t remember after I wake up. Also I found a forgotten notebook for wishes. (“I wish I had a kayak!”) And my old poetry journals. For some quirky reason, when I complete a poem, I must inscribe it longhand, preferably in some oddball color of ink. Heck, I scribble rainbows in all my notebooks.
I think my favorite poetry notebook is the Poetry in Motion one. Some way, someday, I’m going to have a blocky car with a poetic license on which I will paint all my favorite quotes. “Turning and turning in the widening gyres” will be depicted as a spiral on the roof, and amid many serious snippets from Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Tennyson, Whitman and others, I will include “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater is trochaic tetrameter.” But until I get the car, my plans are in the notebook.
I recently stocked up on some irresistible mini-notebooks from doverpublications.com, specifically the ones with Van Gogh or Monet covers. I don’t need them. I have accumulated enough unused and partially-used notebooks to last me for the rest of my natural existence. Yet I bought more. Go figure.
So what do my myriad notebooks and journals reveal about me? Honestly, I can’t tell. I’m too close; all those colorful pages prevent me from seeing the plot line. But I’m pretty sure that, after I’m gone, mine will make better reading than my elderly neighbor’s did.
In due time she died, an event for which she was fully prepared. She had tagged all her belongings for distribution to her heirs and assembled her burial outfit right down to clean new underwear. At her viewing, as I contemplated her mortal remains laid out just as she had instructed, her daughter stood beside me at the casket and asked me in a low voice, “Did you know Mom kept a notebook of her bowel movements?”
No, I hadn’t known. But although I was so amused it was hard for me to maintain a funereal demeanor, I was not surprised. I already knew she was, uh, retentive. The notebooks a person keeps reveal a lot.
What would mine reveal about me? I still have a childhood notebook in which I listed bird sightings, horses I saw from the school bus, books I read, and new words I liked. Now I keep a separate vocabulary tome that is far more than just a word list; it reflects my peculiar personal taste. (Eructation: the fancy word for “burp.”) Bird sightings are now less important to me than the hubby journals I keep almost as obsessively as I kept baby books when my children were small. Kids say the cutest things, and so does Jaime, for instance with a Chilean description of dumbidity: “We leave him to guard the turtles and they all run away.” Or, of humiliation: “I swallow the frog.”
I have notebooks researching books I’ve written – the “bible” for Enola Holmes is massive. Then there are notebooks in which I collect lists of things -- bumper stickers, bad jokes, awful lawn ornaments, euphemisms for mental incompetence, some of the more bizarre insults of menopause. And I have notebooks detailing places I’ve lived or visited. For instance, where I live now, the mailboxes are backwards, facing away from the road. And a lot of the souped up pickup trucks have whip antennas with balls on them – tennis balls. And a vehicle’s rear window is likely to bear a formal dedication to some deceased person, every bit as serious as a gravestone. The actual graves, in the cemeteries, are covered with slabs to keep varmints out, and the slabs function like coffee tables for the display of doodads in honor of whoever’s underneath.
I keep so many notebooks that sometimes I forget them and rediscover them, as I recently found a journal dedicated to dreams, which reveals mostly how much I can’t remember after I wake up. Also I found a forgotten notebook for wishes. (“I wish I had a kayak!”) And my old poetry journals. For some quirky reason, when I complete a poem, I must inscribe it longhand, preferably in some oddball color of ink. Heck, I scribble rainbows in all my notebooks.
I think my favorite poetry notebook is the Poetry in Motion one. Some way, someday, I’m going to have a blocky car with a poetic license on which I will paint all my favorite quotes. “Turning and turning in the widening gyres” will be depicted as a spiral on the roof, and amid many serious snippets from Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Tennyson, Whitman and others, I will include “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater is trochaic tetrameter.” But until I get the car, my plans are in the notebook.
I recently stocked up on some irresistible mini-notebooks from doverpublications.com, specifically the ones with Van Gogh or Monet covers. I don’t need them. I have accumulated enough unused and partially-used notebooks to last me for the rest of my natural existence. Yet I bought more. Go figure.
So what do my myriad notebooks and journals reveal about me? Honestly, I can’t tell. I’m too close; all those colorful pages prevent me from seeing the plot line. But I’m pretty sure that, after I’m gone, mine will make better reading than my elderly neighbor’s did.
September 16, 2013
HOW MY MOTHER RAISED A WRITER
My mother put two priorities ahead of all else: her artwork – among other things, she painted pet portraits -- and what my father called her “damn dogs.” Under the kennel name “Banba” she raised Shelties aka Shetland sheep dogs aka miniature collies. These were simultaneously my playmates and her show dogs. Due to the dogs, quite early in my life I learned what Ursula Le Guin later called “The Rule of Names,” because for days on end my mother pondered aloud the naming of pedigreed puppies. Her demeanor impressed upon me that the bestowing of names was a serious, mystical, even fateful process. Each puppy needed its very own exact, condign name in order to be all it could be.
The magic of naming didn’t stop there. Unless it was heavily raining (cold and snow didn’t count), I was expected to spend daylight hours outside, roaming from the Passaic river swamp through the farm fields and woodlots and along the brook up into the forest on Riker’s hill. From those expeditions, I generally brought home something for Mom to admire and, with the assistance of a twelve-volume nature encyclopedia, name. Spring beauty, cardinal flower, deadly nightshade, praying mantis, puffball mushroom, scarlet tanager, Dutchman’s breeches, lady’s slipper; there was no end to the romance of names. A garter snake was named after the striped thing that held up a man’s stockings in the old days. “Daisy” meant “day’s eye.” A painted turtle was not a tortoise but a box turtle was. Bloodroot was used to make red dye. A trout lily’s petals were speckled like the fish; look inside. See?
I saw. “Look!” must have been Mom’s favorite word. No wonder she was a visual artist. About a dozen times a day she’d cry, “Nancy, look! Look at the chickadees!” Or the mockingbird, or the wild phlox, or the sunset, or the frost on the window, or how green the grass was. She gifted me with her joy of seeing; I could find something to look at anywhere: sunshine on rust, a rainbow in an oil slick. Given that the root word of “imagination” is “image,” and fiction writing is primarily visual, my mother raised a writer without knowing it.
She achieved the same unforeseen end by being a role model of priorities. First and foremost, she did not give a flying rat’s hind end about housework. Dirty dishes could sit for days; her art came first. She was also indifferent to material acquisitions, especially for kids. I had few clothes and even fewer toys. Instead of indulging in retail therapy, Mom painted, drew, pampered her dogs, looked at the birds, and sang. She made a great act for me to follow later on later on when, between book sales, I needed to live on air and dreams.
Child care was not any higher than housework in Mom’s priorities. It was enough if my brothers and I had something with which to cover our nakedness and food-like substances to eat; ketchup counted as a vegetable. Yet, although our greasy hair, hand-me-down clothes and the holes in our underwear were perfectly okay with our mother, the least hint of shabby grammar caused her visible distress, and she would fix it immediately. Both she and my father spoke correct English naturally and fluently; “ain’t” was unheard of. I remember showing off a school report, A+, in which Mom found an error the teacher had missed; I had used “it’s” instead of “its” throughout. She also found a grammar error in my first published novel, and did not hesitate to point it out to me.
To become a writer, of course I had to be a reader first. But, while the house was full of books, and while Mom and Dad were readers, they did not feel it necessary to encourage their children to read; rather the opposite. Reading was only for rainy days and nighttime; otherwise we were supposed to be outside, getting fresh air and exercise. Thus, reading became a restricted pleasure, highly to be desired.
Somehow amid all that exercise, Mom and Dad found time to play Scrabble, and I played with them. We explored the improbabilities of English spelling. In hindsight, their patience amazes me, because they were not, in general, easygoing parents. They were quite stern.
Which leads me to one more thing Mom did that helped me become a writer: she gave me a great deal of benign neglect. Despite being an enthusiastic teacher, she was not at all a good listener, especially not when she was painting. Also, children were to be seen (greasy hair and all) but not heard. So I developed an intense emotional need to express myself, to tell my stories to anyone who would listen, or write them for anyone who would read them.
Please do not consider any of this as guidelines for raising a writer. Other circumstances contributed; otherwise my upbringing might have resulted in nothing more than a normal, garden-variety neurotic. By modern standards, Mom was far from being a perfect parent. But in some unconventional ways, she was a very good parent. As a role model, she was purely and simply who she was. And consequently, so am I.
The magic of naming didn’t stop there. Unless it was heavily raining (cold and snow didn’t count), I was expected to spend daylight hours outside, roaming from the Passaic river swamp through the farm fields and woodlots and along the brook up into the forest on Riker’s hill. From those expeditions, I generally brought home something for Mom to admire and, with the assistance of a twelve-volume nature encyclopedia, name. Spring beauty, cardinal flower, deadly nightshade, praying mantis, puffball mushroom, scarlet tanager, Dutchman’s breeches, lady’s slipper; there was no end to the romance of names. A garter snake was named after the striped thing that held up a man’s stockings in the old days. “Daisy” meant “day’s eye.” A painted turtle was not a tortoise but a box turtle was. Bloodroot was used to make red dye. A trout lily’s petals were speckled like the fish; look inside. See?
I saw. “Look!” must have been Mom’s favorite word. No wonder she was a visual artist. About a dozen times a day she’d cry, “Nancy, look! Look at the chickadees!” Or the mockingbird, or the wild phlox, or the sunset, or the frost on the window, or how green the grass was. She gifted me with her joy of seeing; I could find something to look at anywhere: sunshine on rust, a rainbow in an oil slick. Given that the root word of “imagination” is “image,” and fiction writing is primarily visual, my mother raised a writer without knowing it.
She achieved the same unforeseen end by being a role model of priorities. First and foremost, she did not give a flying rat’s hind end about housework. Dirty dishes could sit for days; her art came first. She was also indifferent to material acquisitions, especially for kids. I had few clothes and even fewer toys. Instead of indulging in retail therapy, Mom painted, drew, pampered her dogs, looked at the birds, and sang. She made a great act for me to follow later on later on when, between book sales, I needed to live on air and dreams.
Child care was not any higher than housework in Mom’s priorities. It was enough if my brothers and I had something with which to cover our nakedness and food-like substances to eat; ketchup counted as a vegetable. Yet, although our greasy hair, hand-me-down clothes and the holes in our underwear were perfectly okay with our mother, the least hint of shabby grammar caused her visible distress, and she would fix it immediately. Both she and my father spoke correct English naturally and fluently; “ain’t” was unheard of. I remember showing off a school report, A+, in which Mom found an error the teacher had missed; I had used “it’s” instead of “its” throughout. She also found a grammar error in my first published novel, and did not hesitate to point it out to me.
To become a writer, of course I had to be a reader first. But, while the house was full of books, and while Mom and Dad were readers, they did not feel it necessary to encourage their children to read; rather the opposite. Reading was only for rainy days and nighttime; otherwise we were supposed to be outside, getting fresh air and exercise. Thus, reading became a restricted pleasure, highly to be desired.
Somehow amid all that exercise, Mom and Dad found time to play Scrabble, and I played with them. We explored the improbabilities of English spelling. In hindsight, their patience amazes me, because they were not, in general, easygoing parents. They were quite stern.
Which leads me to one more thing Mom did that helped me become a writer: she gave me a great deal of benign neglect. Despite being an enthusiastic teacher, she was not at all a good listener, especially not when she was painting. Also, children were to be seen (greasy hair and all) but not heard. So I developed an intense emotional need to express myself, to tell my stories to anyone who would listen, or write them for anyone who would read them.
Please do not consider any of this as guidelines for raising a writer. Other circumstances contributed; otherwise my upbringing might have resulted in nothing more than a normal, garden-variety neurotic. By modern standards, Mom was far from being a perfect parent. But in some unconventional ways, she was a very good parent. As a role model, she was purely and simply who she was. And consequently, so am I.
September 4, 2013
MEETING MAURICE SENDAK
It must have been around 1980, because I held a new copy of THE WHITE HART, my first published fantasy novel, as I waited in a line that snaked clear out of the art center door and left me shivering in the cold. I also carried an old copy of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, its pages rubbed soft by my children’s affection. New copies of Sendak books were available for sale, but I couldn’t afford to buy one.
Once I finally got inside the door, I could see Maurice Sendak seated behind a long barrier of tables. At his right-hand side stood an art center lady who took books from the person at the head of the line, opened them to the title page, and laid them in front of Mr. Sendak. At his other side stood another art-center lady who whisked the books away as soon as he signed them, closed them and returned them to the owner. So efficient was this arrangement that Mr. Sendak did not have to interact with the public at all. He did not even look up. No one spoke. The people in line shuffled forward amid a reverent hush as if we were all going up to take communion.
A bit daunted, as I had expected a more chatty atmosphere, I considered fleeing. In Keds and blue jeans, I compared myself with the art center women, who had turned out in full pantyhose mode, heels, jewels, the works, and I knew myself to be a buttinski from the wrong side of the tracks. Even the other people waiting in line looked smug and wealthy compared to me. I knew I was contemplating a disaster, and only my inborn perversity made me stay. That, and true love for Maurice Sendak’s books. And a half-conscious storybook need of my own.
When at last I reached the head of the line, the art center lady took my dirty, dog-eared paperback copy of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE with raised eyebrows and a hint of a sneer. She smoothed it out as best she could and laid it in front of Maurice Sendak, who signed it.
I placed my brand new copy of my own book, THE WHITE HART, on the table in front of him. “Mr. Sendak, “ I said none too strongly, “this is for you. I wrote it.”
A bomb of silence imploded; unbelievably, the quiet room became even more hushed, a vacuum of sound. I was Oliver Twist and I had asked for more. The shock seemed to suck the air away. I could feel people all around me staring if not glaring. Maurice Sendak, however, merely looked up at me, blinking, as if I had interrupted his nap.
The guardian woman to his right hissed to him, “Ah, yess, Mr. Sendak, thiss is our local authoressss.”
If I didn’t wince visibly, certainly I did inwardly.
“You?” Maurice Sendak peered up at me, wide awake, bright-eyed. He looked at THE WHITE HART. He looked at me again. “You wrote this?” He laid his forefinger impressively on my book. “But this is from Pocket Books in New York City! This is internationally distributed!” He picked up my book with both hands. “You wrote this and you’re giving it to me? Thank you! Thank you so much! Nobody ever gives me a book at one of these things.”
It felt so nearly miraculous, the way that classy man came to my rescue, that the rest is a blur. I think I thanked Maurice Sendak for his wonderful books and told him how my children had loved WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE to tatters. I remember his smile, but I don’t remember walking away and driving home.
Even so, I exited with no delusions. I knew Maurice Sendak was unlikely to read my book; I figured he would leave it in his hotel room rather than weigh down his luggage with it. And that was fine. I hadn’t driven miles and then stood in a long, cold line for the sake of PR. I had just wanted to say hi to Maurice Sendak.
And I had.
And he had said hi right back to me.
I was a velveteen author and he had made me real.
Once I finally got inside the door, I could see Maurice Sendak seated behind a long barrier of tables. At his right-hand side stood an art center lady who took books from the person at the head of the line, opened them to the title page, and laid them in front of Mr. Sendak. At his other side stood another art-center lady who whisked the books away as soon as he signed them, closed them and returned them to the owner. So efficient was this arrangement that Mr. Sendak did not have to interact with the public at all. He did not even look up. No one spoke. The people in line shuffled forward amid a reverent hush as if we were all going up to take communion.
A bit daunted, as I had expected a more chatty atmosphere, I considered fleeing. In Keds and blue jeans, I compared myself with the art center women, who had turned out in full pantyhose mode, heels, jewels, the works, and I knew myself to be a buttinski from the wrong side of the tracks. Even the other people waiting in line looked smug and wealthy compared to me. I knew I was contemplating a disaster, and only my inborn perversity made me stay. That, and true love for Maurice Sendak’s books. And a half-conscious storybook need of my own.
When at last I reached the head of the line, the art center lady took my dirty, dog-eared paperback copy of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE with raised eyebrows and a hint of a sneer. She smoothed it out as best she could and laid it in front of Maurice Sendak, who signed it.
I placed my brand new copy of my own book, THE WHITE HART, on the table in front of him. “Mr. Sendak, “ I said none too strongly, “this is for you. I wrote it.”
A bomb of silence imploded; unbelievably, the quiet room became even more hushed, a vacuum of sound. I was Oliver Twist and I had asked for more. The shock seemed to suck the air away. I could feel people all around me staring if not glaring. Maurice Sendak, however, merely looked up at me, blinking, as if I had interrupted his nap.
The guardian woman to his right hissed to him, “Ah, yess, Mr. Sendak, thiss is our local authoressss.”
If I didn’t wince visibly, certainly I did inwardly.
“You?” Maurice Sendak peered up at me, wide awake, bright-eyed. He looked at THE WHITE HART. He looked at me again. “You wrote this?” He laid his forefinger impressively on my book. “But this is from Pocket Books in New York City! This is internationally distributed!” He picked up my book with both hands. “You wrote this and you’re giving it to me? Thank you! Thank you so much! Nobody ever gives me a book at one of these things.”
It felt so nearly miraculous, the way that classy man came to my rescue, that the rest is a blur. I think I thanked Maurice Sendak for his wonderful books and told him how my children had loved WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE to tatters. I remember his smile, but I don’t remember walking away and driving home.
Even so, I exited with no delusions. I knew Maurice Sendak was unlikely to read my book; I figured he would leave it in his hotel room rather than weigh down his luggage with it. And that was fine. I hadn’t driven miles and then stood in a long, cold line for the sake of PR. I had just wanted to say hi to Maurice Sendak.
And I had.
And he had said hi right back to me.
I was a velveteen author and he had made me real.
August 23, 2013
SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT
“This will give you something to write about.” That is what friends and acquaintances say to me when life has just egregiously insulted me: when I buy brand new tires to drive to the airport but have a flat on the Interstate and miss my flight; when I take the dog to do her business first thing in the morning and sleepily lock myself out of my house, barefoot, wearing my skimpiest nightie; when a cat projectile-pukes directly into the paper feed of my printer and nobody, but nobody, will fix it. Or when the septic system backs up, or the water heater quits in the middle of my shower, or I back my car into a tree – again. Or when I slop scrambled eggs down my neck during brunch. “You can use that in your writing,” people say.
Because they mean well, I smile and nod and refrain from shrieking at them, Noooo! No! When crap happens, it’s generally not plot material. Quite the opposite: it is life interfering with my writing.
William Wordsworth once said poetry originates in emotion recollected in tranquility. For “poetry” substitute “my next novel.” Emotion? I have freightloads of emotion left over from childhood and adolescence, enough to last me for a lifetime of writing, and I think this is true of most novelists. What I really need at this point is the tranquility part of the dynamic.
In this regard, crabgrass on the lawn of mature life is generally not a help. “You can write about this” might be true of living in an airplane hangar for a year, but definitely not of most of my adulthood’s mundane urgencies such as needing a new roof on the house, menopausal visits to the gynecologist, getting mixed up in a lawsuit, automotive breakdowns or, for that matter, nervous ones – no, just kidding. But I truly could use more breathing room to get more and better writing done. Mostly, daily life gets in the way of writing.
I don’t mean to give the impression that adulthood is a total bust as far as creative material is concerned. I’m only trying to explain that when people say, “That’ll give you something to write about,” they are under a serious misapprehension. What you’re far more likely to write about is them. People. Many of whom are doozies. For example, there’s the guitar man. Every day he walks around town carrying two or three colorful toy guitars, never the same twice; he must have quite a collection. He is friendly, if vague. I would love to know, or imagine, how he lives and why he hikes around with both fists full of plastic guitars.
And he’s just one person. I’ve met lots of people who give me something to write about. The hoarder next door who lost a package of ground beef in the kitchen until the stink and the flies led her to it. The man down the street who put cow skulls painted school-bus yellow on top of all his fence posts. The neighbor woman who ate so many carrots she became orange. And many, many more with larger stories in them.
Adult life also offers useful new settings. My forthcoming suspense novel, DRAWN INTO DARKNESS, takes place largely in the Florida swamps with which I became acquainted as an adult. I had my first experience of small town living as an adult, and my first experience of a gated community, which would have been a wonderful place for a murderer to hide a body. In winter the level of the lake water was lowered to prevent ice from damaging the docks, and in the spring it was brought back up. A clandestine grave at the edge of the lake the night before refilling would have been covered with water by morning. Nobody ever pointed this out to me as something to write about, however.
What friends do tell me is that a broken ankle “will give me something to write about.” Well, it’s true that every visit to a hospital emergency room is an opportunity to take mental notes. But I don’t need any more data at this point, thank you very much, guys. I’d just like a good long spell of recollecting emotion in tranquility. I already have plenty to write about.
Because they mean well, I smile and nod and refrain from shrieking at them, Noooo! No! When crap happens, it’s generally not plot material. Quite the opposite: it is life interfering with my writing.
William Wordsworth once said poetry originates in emotion recollected in tranquility. For “poetry” substitute “my next novel.” Emotion? I have freightloads of emotion left over from childhood and adolescence, enough to last me for a lifetime of writing, and I think this is true of most novelists. What I really need at this point is the tranquility part of the dynamic.
In this regard, crabgrass on the lawn of mature life is generally not a help. “You can write about this” might be true of living in an airplane hangar for a year, but definitely not of most of my adulthood’s mundane urgencies such as needing a new roof on the house, menopausal visits to the gynecologist, getting mixed up in a lawsuit, automotive breakdowns or, for that matter, nervous ones – no, just kidding. But I truly could use more breathing room to get more and better writing done. Mostly, daily life gets in the way of writing.
I don’t mean to give the impression that adulthood is a total bust as far as creative material is concerned. I’m only trying to explain that when people say, “That’ll give you something to write about,” they are under a serious misapprehension. What you’re far more likely to write about is them. People. Many of whom are doozies. For example, there’s the guitar man. Every day he walks around town carrying two or three colorful toy guitars, never the same twice; he must have quite a collection. He is friendly, if vague. I would love to know, or imagine, how he lives and why he hikes around with both fists full of plastic guitars.
And he’s just one person. I’ve met lots of people who give me something to write about. The hoarder next door who lost a package of ground beef in the kitchen until the stink and the flies led her to it. The man down the street who put cow skulls painted school-bus yellow on top of all his fence posts. The neighbor woman who ate so many carrots she became orange. And many, many more with larger stories in them.
Adult life also offers useful new settings. My forthcoming suspense novel, DRAWN INTO DARKNESS, takes place largely in the Florida swamps with which I became acquainted as an adult. I had my first experience of small town living as an adult, and my first experience of a gated community, which would have been a wonderful place for a murderer to hide a body. In winter the level of the lake water was lowered to prevent ice from damaging the docks, and in the spring it was brought back up. A clandestine grave at the edge of the lake the night before refilling would have been covered with water by morning. Nobody ever pointed this out to me as something to write about, however.
What friends do tell me is that a broken ankle “will give me something to write about.” Well, it’s true that every visit to a hospital emergency room is an opportunity to take mental notes. But I don’t need any more data at this point, thank you very much, guys. I’d just like a good long spell of recollecting emotion in tranquility. I already have plenty to write about.
August 12, 2013
WANDERING THROUGH GENRES
My self-description “Last seen wandering vaguely” applies many times over to my career as a fiction writer. Indeed, more than careering, I have careened, the literary equivalent of a runaway banana truck, through publishers and genres. Sure, a lot of authors change genres from time to time, but usually as a business decision, or at least that’s what they tell me.
I can speak only for myself in saying business had very little to do with it.
Mythic fantasy, for instance. That’s how I started, as a youngster, writing one heroic fantasy novel after another. Selling the books was very nice indeed, but I was writing because I desperately needed to do it, unconsciously striving to pull myself out of depression and put myself together as a viable person. My paired heroes, such as Hal and Alan in THE SILVER SUN, were me and me, not yet one integrated person. The imaginary landscape where they battled with evil was my psyche, and their quest, ultimately, was to heal me.
Given the way I started, my wonderful agent, the late, great Virginia Kidd, fully expected me to continue writing one successful fantasy after another until I nailed a Lifetime Achievement award. But after the first decade or so, I felt better and wanted to turn my vision outward, toward the real world. Also, I had realized that, duh, I was female, not Hal plus Alan. (You can see me struggling toward this epiphany of the obvious in WINGS OF FLAME.) Trying for a compromise with Virginia, I continued to write fantasy, but made it contemporary fantasy (set in the real world) with female protagonists. Examples: LARQUE ON THE WING, FAIR PERIL, THE HEX WITCH OF SELDOM.
These novels of “magical realism” got rave reviews, honors and awards, but not much by way of sales.
Fine with me. I felt more than ready to move on.
I was, in fact, ready to have a happy childhood. (It’s never too late.) I bought a horse and started writing horse books for kids. These took place in the real world, as realistic as I could possibly make it. I ended up writing horse books that were more than just “horse books.” Within a few years they started getting older in tone, turning into YA and neglecting to include a horse. Instead, they more often dealt with problems of identity, deception, and crime.
One of these YA novels, TOUGHING IT, startled me very much by winning an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America.
I did not believe I wrote mystery or ever could.
The next year, LOOKING FOR JAMIE BRIDGER won another Edgar in the juvenile category.
The sensible career move for me, at this point, would have been to start writing mystery, yes?
No, ma’am. That would have been way too logical. Instead, I reverted to literary fantasy via two Arthurian novels, I AM MORDRED and I AM MORGAN LE FAY.
See what I mean about the careening career? The wacky truth seemed to be that, at any given time, I could write something, but not always what would seem called for. Even I couldn’t predict what was going to blort out of me next. Some perverse personal daemon seemed to dictate my course far more than the marketplace did. Several books and several years passed before I finally achieved mystery with the help of Conan Doyle via the Enola Holmes series. Two of the Enolas were nominated for Edgars. Neither won. But they’ve been a worldwide success, whereas my earlier Edgar winners faded into obscurity. Go figure.
Over the past few years, any number of people have urged me to write more Enola Holmes novels, and I wish I could, but I can’t. Not anymore. That particular genie is out of the bottle.
Instead, I am writing psychological suspense spotlighting middle-aged women rescuing abducted children. DARK LIE, a humdinger if I do say so myself, is already out there, and DRAWN INTO DARKNESS is to be released in November, 2013. I have no idea why I wrote them or what’s coming next.
In other words, I’m a wordcrafter on wheels careening along just fine. See ya later.
I can speak only for myself in saying business had very little to do with it.
Mythic fantasy, for instance. That’s how I started, as a youngster, writing one heroic fantasy novel after another. Selling the books was very nice indeed, but I was writing because I desperately needed to do it, unconsciously striving to pull myself out of depression and put myself together as a viable person. My paired heroes, such as Hal and Alan in THE SILVER SUN, were me and me, not yet one integrated person. The imaginary landscape where they battled with evil was my psyche, and their quest, ultimately, was to heal me.
Given the way I started, my wonderful agent, the late, great Virginia Kidd, fully expected me to continue writing one successful fantasy after another until I nailed a Lifetime Achievement award. But after the first decade or so, I felt better and wanted to turn my vision outward, toward the real world. Also, I had realized that, duh, I was female, not Hal plus Alan. (You can see me struggling toward this epiphany of the obvious in WINGS OF FLAME.) Trying for a compromise with Virginia, I continued to write fantasy, but made it contemporary fantasy (set in the real world) with female protagonists. Examples: LARQUE ON THE WING, FAIR PERIL, THE HEX WITCH OF SELDOM.
These novels of “magical realism” got rave reviews, honors and awards, but not much by way of sales.
Fine with me. I felt more than ready to move on.
I was, in fact, ready to have a happy childhood. (It’s never too late.) I bought a horse and started writing horse books for kids. These took place in the real world, as realistic as I could possibly make it. I ended up writing horse books that were more than just “horse books.” Within a few years they started getting older in tone, turning into YA and neglecting to include a horse. Instead, they more often dealt with problems of identity, deception, and crime.
One of these YA novels, TOUGHING IT, startled me very much by winning an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America.
I did not believe I wrote mystery or ever could.
The next year, LOOKING FOR JAMIE BRIDGER won another Edgar in the juvenile category.
The sensible career move for me, at this point, would have been to start writing mystery, yes?
No, ma’am. That would have been way too logical. Instead, I reverted to literary fantasy via two Arthurian novels, I AM MORDRED and I AM MORGAN LE FAY.
See what I mean about the careening career? The wacky truth seemed to be that, at any given time, I could write something, but not always what would seem called for. Even I couldn’t predict what was going to blort out of me next. Some perverse personal daemon seemed to dictate my course far more than the marketplace did. Several books and several years passed before I finally achieved mystery with the help of Conan Doyle via the Enola Holmes series. Two of the Enolas were nominated for Edgars. Neither won. But they’ve been a worldwide success, whereas my earlier Edgar winners faded into obscurity. Go figure.
Over the past few years, any number of people have urged me to write more Enola Holmes novels, and I wish I could, but I can’t. Not anymore. That particular genie is out of the bottle.
Instead, I am writing psychological suspense spotlighting middle-aged women rescuing abducted children. DARK LIE, a humdinger if I do say so myself, is already out there, and DRAWN INTO DARKNESS is to be released in November, 2013. I have no idea why I wrote them or what’s coming next.
In other words, I’m a wordcrafter on wheels careening along just fine. See ya later.
Last Seen Wandering Vaguely
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