Tanya Sousa's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

I worked with Desiree (name changed) in my school counseling room once a week. We brought together paints and canvases and created, simultaneously sorting through the challenges of her twelve-year-old life. She discussed problems, and I sometimes helped her decide what to do by sharing my own past situations and offering different solutions that worked for me. Sometimes she would stop speaking and hold the paintbrush still in her hand because something on her canvas didn’t look right. I pushed my own brush against the palette and showed her new techniques to make it work.
Sometimes Desiree read me her poems and asked for critique. She wants to be a writer someday, and maybe an artist, and maybe a teacher, and maybe a veterinarian, and maybe a hairdresser. “You don’t have to decide on one thing,” I told her, and pulled out copies of magazines colorful with words and photographs. I point out my paintings on the wall and gesture around to the school counselor’s office. I show her by example there are no walls that can contain her, and she can blend the things she loves.
The most community benefit anyone can offer is providing examples for our youth of how to live fully and with joy and health. Authors have used words to share ideas for countless generations, but I think it takes a writer’s art to a higher level when s/he steps out from behind the words and is also an example. When we are gone, our written words will continue to speak for us if we are lucky. However, the impact we make on the world not just by what we write but by what we do will influence generations even if our words have not become classics and are lost in mounds of dust.
Even if I don’t become famous or widely read, benefit has already begun through the very ideas of writing I share. My students know I write feverishly when I’m not with them and what my stories or novels are about. I’ve shared some in draft form and show them the finished product later. They’re aware when a dear project is sent away and have witnessed some of my successes and rejections.
Having the thoughts, assertively seeking resources and taking the risk of rejection is my living example. Desiree’s eyes were wide when she first realized how much work my writing takes. “What if you’re turned down,” she asked. “Won’t it kill you to have done all that work for nothing?”
I explain it’s never “for nothing”. I tell her about the benefit from the mental exercise of writing, about the importance of reaching for dreams, and the beauty of believing in something passionately enough to share it, and now Desiree seems to work harder when she paints or writes her poetry. She’s beginning to see. Her face shines like a light at moments when she realizes anything is possible. I live for that look on children’s faces the same way I live for telling a story.

I am fascinated and alarmed by the way my species attempts to control the world. When I was a child, I would catch frogs or snakes or other small living things and release them again after I, a scientist as I fancied myself, had watched them awhile. What I noticed about them most was the look in their eyes – the fear when I caught them, and the relief when I let them go. There was mutual curiosity sometimes. This made it clear to me then that we are somehow all the same. I decided later that I needed to make others understand that too.
To do this, I realized I had much work ahead of me. I’ve written essays and article and short stories, but I felt my next project couldn’t be a quick essay that people read and forget in an instant like a lighter flashing on and off. It had to be long and meaningful enough to ignite people’s brains and to send ideas in many different ways until permanent neurological paths are formed. I felt my words couldn’t be a straight lecture or many people will tune it out and never give the words the oxygen of their interest. It had to be a story because everyone of every age loves stories, and it will hopefully guide them in with less judgment. It can’t be from the human point of view because, as our existing frame of reference, it may not show people that other living things have eyes too; it must be from the point of view of creatures we control. It must be about a species that we generally admire, as well, because sadly, we do count some creatures more lovable than others, and lovable means somehow worth more. To get people to listen, they’ll have to first take the baby step of admiring my characters.
As a literary scientist, I realized I had to take the leap from fact to fiction, and from fiction to fantasy to create such a project. Some scientists might scoff at my imaging how other creatures feel, but Einstein would not have. “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” He said. He knew that excavations of the imagination are often how facts are uncovered. It can be a flame that shines on what we were not able to see before in the dark.
Therefore, my next project is a novel, “The Starling God, fact blended with fantasy. It will be literally from a bird’s eye view. The story, I hope, will lead readers’ minds to fresh air and open doors and realizations, to empathy and understanding. Being the informal and literary scientist I am, I hope my findings and the retelling of them laced with imagination will alter readers forever as the story will surely continue to alter me in ways I’m not expecting.

The funding from the Kickstarter campaign came through and work on the book trailer for my novel "The Starling God" has begun.

I always step off cliffs with faith that something will be there to step on even if it doesn't SEEM to show yet, so I already began work recording the bird (and whale) character voice-overs with John and Janet Heartson of Barnet, Vermont in John's recording studio before the funding was secured. Here's what I said about the recording experience on the Kickstarter update:

"Yesterday I worked with John and Janet Heartson of Barnet, Vermont, to create the character voice-overs for the book trailer. I can't describe how exciting this process was for me. I have lived intimately with these characters for more than five years now. I see them and hear them in my mind. I've written their thoughts and actions until they seemed to write themselves.

And then I wrote the script for the trailer.

Not every character could be represented there, but a number of key birds are -- and one very wise and joyful whale.

The process of sitting at the table over tea with the script -- the three of us hashing out what kind of beings each is and how they might sound, and then hearing John and Janet try different voices and tones until it was just right -- was nothing short of magical. Then when we were ready, we moved to the studio and I watched the husband and wife breathe life into the characters who had until now only existed in my head and on a flat piece of paper. They had VOICES so true to what I imagined!

I had shivers listening to it and was almost brought to tears at the end when I heard the whale song blend into understandable language as that wondrous whale's voice rang out for the first time. I wish I could bottle what I felt and give a sample to each one of you!"

Hello all!

My environmental novel, "The Starling God", is available now for preorder through Forestry Press. The book will be in print by late January.

Why preorder when you can wait for the book to be in print?

Publishers love preorders because they help assuage the hefty cost of production. Forestry Press is a brand new company with a noble purpose. Preorders will help them get off the ground.

Here's the link: Feel free to share!!!
http://www.forestrypressproducts.com/environmental-fiction-books/