Lyn Miller-Lachmann's Blog, page 3

Seeing an Old Friend

My husband and I just returned from three days in New Orleans visiting our daughter, Maddy, as well as our friend Rachel Burk, who we got to know in Lisbon last fall. It's always fun to see people who you met and with whom you became friends in a place that you loved. Rachel seems to miss Lisbon as much as Richard and I do, even though her Fulbright teaching fellowship worked her a lot harder than Richard's. We shared our impressions of university students in Portugal versus university students in the U.S., both at Tulane where Rachel taught and where Maddy is now a junior, and at the University at Albany, where Richard teaches and where I am now one of the students, at least for second-semester Portuguese. 

Rachel talked about a film she showed her students at the University of Lisbon, about the indigenous Guaraní people of Brazil and Paraguay. At the end of the film, well-armed colonial troops massacred dozens of Guaraní, took their land, and ended  their centuries-old way of life. At the end of the class, several students came up to her and told her, "this is the story of our lives too." They explained that, although their families had always lived in Portugal, the oligarchy that ruled the country from the Middle Ages onward controlled their lives as well. If a noble or other oligarch wanted something that their families had--land, animals, handicrafts, even family members--that powerful person simply took it away, and the family had no recourse.

Blog for Bridget

Yesterday morning, I met with my brilliant editor, Nancy Paulsen, and my wonderful agent, Ellen Geiger, to discuss the marketing of my forthcoming novel, Rogue. Nancy signed me up for Twitter and walked me through the process of getting on, uploading an image of Rogue, and following others. She also became my first follower, which also means she may be the first person to let me know if I tweet something really stupid.

As someone who has struggled throughout life with social interactions and social cues, I appreciate the efforts people have made to help me navigate the world. I appreciate the accommodations I have received that have allowed me to experience success and contribute my talents and unique perspective. I appreciate the patience people have shown as I've labored to master lessons and situations that others may pick up more readily.

Because the days of the lone author writing in the garret are long gone, and authors have to handle so much of their own marketing, the help others have given me in this area is doubly essential--and doubly appreciated. Without it, I know that my efforts would be nonexistent, ineffective, or even counterproductive. And that brings me to the Blog for Bridget.

What Is Your Lego Cinema Showing?

Readers of this blog may recall that I bought the new Lego modular Palace Cinema on the day it became available to VIP members. I've been working on the model on and off for the past week or two and now have two of the three levels built. That has also given me the opportunity to customize some of the features of the building.

Lego purists tend not to like stickers, which often go on crooked, peel off, turn yellow, or in the case of the ones on my camper, crumble to dust because I parked the camper on the radiator. I generally put my stickers on, especially the ones for the vehicles that bear the initials of the set designers because it's a way of honoring the designers' hard work and creativity. I made an exception for the Palace Cinema, though, because the stickers didn't fit in with my vision of the cinema's place in Little Brick Township, and they didn't allow for new films to come to town and old films leave.

Thus, I made my own. I replaced the stickers for the three movies with images of posters I downloaded and then shrunk to the size of the plastic windows. I went with three edgy international films, the Italian gangster film Gomorra, the Brazilian thriller City of God, and the Argentine police procedural The Secret in Their Eyes. City of God and The Secret in Their Eyes are some of the finest films I've seen, and while Gomorra had its flaws, its dystopian portrayal of Naples is as powerful an evocation of setting as I've seen in any film. I printed two postage-stamp-size images of each poster, cut them out, and used clear packing tape to wrap the miniature posters around each window. The glossy surface of the packing tape makes it look like the posters are behind glass. Here's what it looks like.

Passive Protagonist Syndrome

I'm in an online discussion group for writers that's run by the lovely and brilliant author of the just-published middle-grade fantasy Jinx. Last week her topic was "Passive Protagonist Syndrome," a well-timed subject for me because of some problems I've been having with my middle grade work-in-progress. I'm about seven chapters into a novel with the working title LIKE A HURRICANE, about a hurricane-obsessed seventh grader whose imaginings of nature's death and destruction obscure major changes in his own life and the potential breakup of his large family at the hands of Children & Family Services.

The problem is that in these chapters, a lot has happened TO my protagonist, but he hasn't actually done anything himself. Except maybe fret about a hurricane and a mysterious letter that his alcoholic mother is ignoring. In fact, when other kids try to push him around--he is frequently the target of bullies--siblings or friends of siblings stand up for him.

Basically, I started this novel because people liked this secondary character in my just-completed YA novel with title of ANTS GO MARCHING. But I'm discovering that the kind of passivity that's acceptable in a secondary character doesn't work when the character is the star of the whole show. The protagonist of ANTS GO MARCHING fought battles on behalf of this younger boy, and I'm glad that beta readers of the earlier manuscript believed he was worth the fight, but that doesn't make this secondary character a worthy protagonist. The protagonist, I've realized, drives the action, not just witness it.

Writing Prompts

I'm nearing the halfway mark in my Portuguese class. We've had one test so far, another next week, and the two-day midterm exam the first week in April. We also received our assignment for the story that's supposed to be our final project.

I think the professor was nervous about having me in the class, because the guidelines for the story are quite strict. We have to include present, preterite, and imperfect verb tenses now (because that's all we've gotten to) and later add commands and the subjunctive. We also have to include vocabulary for a house, weather, clothing, sports, celebrations, and professions, and later on, we'll have to add a party. (And I'm guessing someone will eat or drink too much at the party, because the textbook chapter after that is on health and medicine.) And we have to use certain characters, though the way we use them is more flexible. In other words, we can kill some or all of them off.

I explained to her--in English because my Portuguese still isn't that good--that what she offered was a "writing prompt." Writers like writing prompts because it's hard to come up with good ideas and reducing the universe of ideas--and challenging us to take advantage of what we're allowed--actually sparks creativity.

The Next Big Thing: Rogue Edition

Back in November, when I was in Portugal minding my own business, some authors in Australia created a blog hop called The Next Big Thing. Each author answered ten questions about his or her work in progress and "tagged" from one to five other authors to be The Next Big Thing. And so it went.

This tour has now circulated around the globe many times, and when I found out my friend Zetta Elliott had been tagged, I asked her to consider tagging me next--which is kind of like asking one of the popular girls to let you sit at her table. Fortunately, Zetta didn't push my tray to the floor--which is what happened to me when I actually did try to sit at the popular girls' table in seventh grade, and what happens to my protagonist, Kiara, in my forthcoming novel for older middle grade readers.

What is the working title of your book?

Rogue. It had quite a few titles before then, but I really like this one the best.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

This is the most autobiographical of my novels. A good part of the story happened in one form or another to me, from the lunchtray episode in the opening chapter on. All through school, I wanted nothing more than to have a friend, but I really didn't know how to make or keep friends. In adulthood, I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism that manifests itself in delays and deficiencies in social skills. Like me, Kiara will do anything to have a friend, including things that are wrong or dangerous. When I was in high school, I connected classmates to drug dealers at the community radio station where I volunteered, but I was so clueless that I didn't know drugs were involved. I just thought these popular kids finally wanted to be my friends because I was cool.

The Lesson of "NO"

My friend and VCFA classmate Linda Washington just started her blog with a review of the film The Artist, and it inspired me to write about a film I saw last weekend that also sheds light on the creative process. The Chilean film No, directed by Pablo Larraín, is one of the five finalists for the Academy Award this year in the Best Foreign Film category. 

Even if it weren't one of the best pictures of the year, I would have seen it because it covers the period in which my YA novel Gringolandia takes place. Many of my friends were involved in the 1988 plebiscite that decided whether Chile's dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, would remain in power for another ten years. I remember vividly watching videos of the 15-minute NO advertisements, crowded into our tiny bedroom in Madison, Wisconsin--the only room in our house that had a TV--along with my husband, our then-one-year-old son Derrick, Nelson Schwenke and Marcelo Nilo of the "Canto Nuevo" band Schwenke & Nilo (they had brought the video and composed/performed some of the music on it), their U.S. manager, and several Chilean friends who lived in Madison.

The Fix Is In at Little Brick Township

In the two  months between graduating from Vermont College with my Masters in Fine Arts and my departure for Portugal, I created four chapters of a graphic novel set in the town I built from the Lego modular buildings, Little Brick Township. I have collected these sets since their debut in 2007 and now have the Cafe Corner, the Green Market, Market Street, the Fire Brigade, the Grand Emporium, two of the Pet Shop set (to evoke a block of identical townhouses), and the Town Hall. These are some pictures of Little Brick Township as it currently stands.

My graphic novel follows eight characters who come together through their participation on a women's softball team from the Little Brick Township suburbs, not unlike a team for which I played when I lived in New Haven, Connecticut when I was in graduate school. Except that my team wasn't very good, and this team won the championship. However, a variety of crises have threatened this team's ability to reunite for the following season. These are the players and significant others, who were photographed partying all night at the Cafe Corner after winning the championship. From left to right: Elvis, his girlfriend Fiona, Ife, her girlfriend Annelise, Nate, his girlfriend Lindsay, Patricio, and his girlfriend Karlijn.

Fado de Intervenção

Since 2007 I have served as the assistant host of "Los Vientos del Pueblo," a program of Latin American and Spanish music, poetry, and history that airs every Sunday afternoon from 2-6 pm on WRPI 91.5, the radio station of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. For the most part, my service to the show consists of driving the host, Mario, to the station, bringing him ice water from Dunkin' Donuts, and reading the English translations of the featured artists. Occasionally, I've put together segments for poets and musicians who I know personally. My audition, in May 2007, was a presentation I put together on Chilean-American poet and essayist Marjorie Agosín. Since then, I have expanded several of Mario's features and in August present the tribute to the Chilean duo Schwenke & Nilo. (More on that in a later post.)

On my last full day in Lisbon, my husband, two children, and I visited the home of friends, Lígia and Jorge, who worked with Richard at the university. (Or at least Lígia worked with Richard; Jorge works in information technology and had a lot to talk about with Derrick.) Even though Jorge is a fan of electronic music, they played the kind of music that sounded familiar to me from my years with "Los Vientos del Pueblo", and my many years even before as a fan of Latin American Nueva Canción (or New Song, the name given to folk music that reflects the daily lives and struggles of the region's indigenous and disenfranchised peoples). Except that this music was in Portuguese and was rooted in Portugal's struggle against the dictatorship that ended in 1974, as well as against the wealthy elites that have sought to maintain their political and economic power ever since.

A New Semester for Language Lessons

Last Wednesday was a lucky day for me. After an e-mail back-and-forth, I decided that the Elementary Portuguese II class at the University at Albany (where my husband teaches) was the right class for me despite its designation as Portuguese 101. (The beginning class is Portuguese 100.) So I showed up to the basement classroom with my certificate from my class in Lisbon--you know, the one where I got a grade of 19 out of 20--cued up on my iPhone so I could get the permission number to register officially.

The class began with 23 students. The professor introduced herself and the class in Brazilian Portuguese, which took some getting used to, but I could more or less follow. Six students could not and left right away. She was quite serious about the prerequisite. After an ice-breaker activity, she talked about her way of teaching the class. She said the major assignment will be a story that we write in serialized form, in Portuguese, based on a writing prompt.

Ever since leaving Lisbon, I've had this idea of going back one day and teaching English through creative writing, maybe starting a language school and a bookstore-cafe. So when this professor described the creative project as her major assignment, I realized that I'll have a chance to see how an idea like mine works. She said she has gotten positive results from the students in the past; whether or not they mastered the language, they seemed more engaged and she enjoyed reading the stories they wrote.