QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD

So I'm going to commit bloggage. Okay. So this is the first time I've done anything like this and I have no idea what I'm doing. Okay again. Such is the story of my life as a fiction writer.

I quite identify with the mother in A.A. Milne's poem about a preposterously named boy, James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree, except that I would never put on a golden gown. I'm more likely to put on a T-shirt, jeans and Chucks, but I remain convinced I can get right down to the end of the town. I envision King John's notice as my epitaph: "LAST SEEN WANDERING VAGUELY: QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD." In shocked capital letters, of course.

Wandering vaguely? Not just wandering, mind you, but VAGUELY? That's me. I maunder, mystified and bewildered, from new experiences (such as this blog!) to story ideas to weirder story ideas to accidental genres to other genres I haven't tried. "Accidental genre" describes how I started writing novels, lo these forty-two years ago. I felt I had no right or authority to any material except my own daydreams, and I did not even vaguely know that what I produced was called fantasy, and my marketing was as random as it gets. Just as witlessly I later stumbled into magical realism, children's literature, YA and -- mystery? I was not even aware that I wrote mystery until I won my first Edgar! Now I'm fumbling around with psychological suspense. My angelic editor can attest to the extent of my fumbling.

Quite of her own accord? Too true of me. While I don't act out much, in my own mindful way I am contrary to the max and have been so, proudly marching to the beat of a different kettle of fish, since I was a child. Only during my hippie phase did I ever wear what everybody was wearing, and even then I wouldn't do what everybody was doing. Now I won't read what everybody's reading. My family used to say of my mother that if she drowned in the river, one would have to look for the body upstream. I'm the same way. My husband, a mechanically-minded man, says I screw to the left. He's a Chilean, so of course there's sexual innuendo implied. but being a thoroughgoing feminist, I discard that in favor of the larger implications: My mind cycles widdershins.

Since joining Goodreads, I've found that I really want to talk about reading in ways that don't fit the format. In this blog I hope to do that, and maybe give some insight into the "wandering vaguely" aspect of reading, writing, and heck, life. I hope to manage some insights into the cockeyed alchemy of writing, the magical process of turning random nothingness into symbolism and story. I even hope to make some sense of my wayward self.

I'll try to do so once a week or thereabouts. Thanks for reading!

Write on!
Nancy Springer

DARK LIE
Forthcoming: DRAWN INTO DARKNESS