Waiting for the Dawn

Has anyone else ever considered the odd fact that James Michener's Center for Writers is at home in J. Frank Dobie's lovely little white cottage along Waller Creek in downtown Austin, Texas? Could two writers have been more strikingly different in both their choices of subject and their styles? Is this a display of honoring two, or of merely preserving one? Only UT knows, I suppose.

I think, as I fight the guilt of not writing my daily dozen pages, of the enormous number of contradictions I have encountered since I picked up my fingers and sent them across the keyboard.

I can write from the heart, but it's only one point of view and shallow. I can tell a totally fictitious story with no basis in fact at all, and it reads like a personal diary.

The characters of my dreams do indeed, bring me stories that are better than my own. On the other hand, I commit to my own and set aside such ethereal plot lines--perhaps, in case I cannot find the way from side to side without more help from the other world? Indeed, what do I know of voodoo in Chicago? Or teenaged killers in Fort Worth?

And yet, I cannot write FANTASY - all my stories are rooted in the earth herself. How can this be when all I read from ages 12-30 were fantasy and science fiction and the trials of journeymen searching with dragon and wizard, fighting troops and monsters, stretching the bonds of human law and the strength of human religion?

Is there any wonder I am so easily distracted?

What turns you on as a writer, or an artist, or a photographer, or a ??? Do you, like me, wander around in fog and streams of light that doesn't fall from a simple sun until a deadline traps you?
My very curiosity is both a bane and a salve.

A First Impression

Once in awhile I am struck by a guilty conscience. I am having so much fun learning to be a WRITER that it seems illegal. And I haven't even had a nibble for publishing yet. Perhaps that's the secret, that the HEAVEN of writing stories is in the details of the stories themselves. Will publishing be a greater thrill? Maybe it doesn't really matter. I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam. (Popeye)

The trigger to this self-appreciation was the advent of my 30 year with 9th graders. I played the Toreador's March from Carmen as the classes wandered in with glassy eyes Wednesday. They couldn't have named it in a million years, but it got their attention. I won Wednesday.

Thursday they knew my name, and there was Willie and Lobo playing water music - gypsy boogaloo - Spanish guitar and viola. Again, I could see them giving themselves a mental shake.
I think it was a draw.

Today they will write and identify the thinking skills that make us scientists as we communicate.
And then we will design and identify how we are scientists in art.
And Monday we will PUBLISH, present our newspaper article reviews for all the world to see, lalalal. They'll fill a whole wall of illustrated manuscripts and be able to babble about analysis, collaboration, design, revision, rank ordering, and explanation.

Seriously, just like writing with my two groups of pen and ink artists, I believe this surely must be the most perfect example of a WIN-WIN situation.

Heaven.

Between a Rock and the Next Chapter

What a thrill it is using Twitter and Facebook to peak into the lives of people around me, my family and critique groups. Today I am waiting to hear the announcement of Roz's new little Zane, have shared the excitement of Dave's finishing the first draft of his third novel, and I am thrilled that every single other person has submitted readings for the Kidstuff Saturday morning meeting-- but me.

Summer was too calm, too sweet, too cool, and too short. Somehow the garage is cleaner, the carpet is scrubbed, and the hall is painted a fine medium khaki. But the stories are sitting on the dining room table getting no more than a few minutes a day......and damn few pages built of those minutes.

I am hereby taking the best advice I could find in the last two minutes: "Begin at the beginning," the King said, and go on until you come to the ending, and stop." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

I have set Suzzanne's story in motion--now to go back and tell the beginning as I am commanded.

If you are also starting over, starting again, or starting in a new doorway, write me and we'll share hugs and pats on the back. That's what Facebook is good for!

My Brain is Full

I apologize for borrowing from Far Side cartoons with my lead line, but when the can not get past the JDC door into the real world without spilling either blood or ink struck this month, I had no choice. I began to read and reread: Gordon Korman, Juvie Three, and Chris Crutcher everything all over again, and Elaine Marie Alphin, selected scenes, and Thick by Colin Neenan...and a bagload of adult mysteries.

Finally I turned to the wonderful stories of Fiona the Photosensitive Flamingo, and Henry, the child who plays with food, to Tala and her trees, and Rossi and her lost diamond witchstone, flanked by Kari and the voodoo she do so well, Adis and the rooftops of Maddingbrew, and Agony Illyria and her illusion-wielding sidekicks.

Here is my inspiration: Mandy Silberstein, Kristin Gray, Karen Akins, Wild Silas Johnson, Tim Whirled Peas Koch and Justin "Mr. Minkle" Blatherbrain.

No writer is an island and when I am stranded, these fine characters pull me back to the mainland.

Thank you all.

North of the Border, down Mexico Way, la la la la

The first thing a writer has to do is be able to take the heat. Down in McAllen, it's hot enough to fry a brain -- any place, let alone on the sidewalks. So now that the family is on the road and the dogs have all been properly medicated and walked in the opposite direction of the distracting boxer in the yard next door, I have all the time I want to produce my planned 50 pages in 15 days. Not a bad goal, 3 pages a day plus a few extra now and then.
But have you ever noticed that when you're southern born and bred, the AC in an empty house puts you to sleep mentally? It's cool, it's a little dark in the house, the dogs are sprawled out on the tile floors and snoring....I have to get out of this place!! I'm packing the laptop and running for the car.

6 of one.....

Oh the irony! The humbling recognition that writing a story is the same task as cleaning the garage. The garage that is filled with a Moose Beer plaque and favorites gismos left by Chris, with Great Books of the Western World, with 1000 alphabetized Science Fiction paperbacks nobody will buy, with four coffee tables from Rosie's apartments, three bedframes, two student desks, and one beautiful wooden marimba that only Adrian can play, all sprinkled with the debris of my mother's ins and outs and dying dreams.

Writing a story, no matter how long demands that we (a) begin and (b) finish.

I haven't finished dividing the inhabitants of my garage into trash and treasures, really finished, for the last 21 years. We moved in with no one but three 8th graders to carry for us over a Thanksgiving that rained without ceasing. Everything was damp, so most boxes and trash bags of last minutes items were left in the garage while we scuttled in with mattresses that went onto the floors, with dishes cramped into whichever cabinet was open, and clothes that went right into closets. Then we closed the big double door and didn't open it until summer. So in 1986, I cleaned the garage, created a shady place for a little girl to play, a safe haven for a daschund and a couple of cats. When winter came and icy rains slithered in from the north, we closed the big door again. Everytime it opened after that, something new was added, older residents were slid this way and that, stacked and restacked. Garage sale after garage sale only skimmed the immediate surface. In 2002 I closed the big door for the last time.

Today I need to write.........today I am cleaning the garage instead. It consumes me, the decision to select the protagonists who will remain and the antagonists who will be defeated, thrown away, or sold. I can only pray at the end there is a car-sized path when the story is revealed.

perhaps, growing old

Today Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson both passed away. Surely other writers, actors, composers, singers, illustrators, musicians.......artists of all genres, of all talents, have also been lost, whether or not I know of them. My mother, quiet and cheerful, lived to 92. I'm not at all sure what that will take in the way of clean living, dynamic planning, or healthy behaviors.
What makes one person seek longer survival and the next person succumb? I've always heard that mean agressive women outlive the meek. Hmmm. I am becoming more determined to finish what I start, this second novel for example--I find that telling the story is not satisfying me. I want to explore Suzzanne's being, how she came to be that girl with so much anger and so little street sense. Well, I'm writing and certainly this will keep me healthy for another year or two!

Writer's Rule: The more layers you weave, the healthier the story.

Writing Camp

Just spent two wonderful days with ESOL kids in the Springdale Writing Camp. Short stories about sports and family and career dreams. Poetry about the Marshall Islands and hungers and loneliness. Brave words, common themes, no fear. What a terrific group of students are coming to my junior high next year. I can hardly wait!

Writing - a little like marriage!

Yesterday was a real eye-opener. I suppose we all think we have a "new" story. But last night I read Elaine Marie Alphin's Counterfeit Son and found another boy battling a predator. Thank goodness for cheery critique groups. They reminded me that we share something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue--in marriage, in business, among friends, and in the world of storytelling!

Now, on to Resurrection where Suzzanne is suspected of murdering a highschool rival. More as she appears on the small screen, one page at a time.

whoops!!

Kristin Gray, besides being an expert of Fiona the Flamingo, is a first-class web trawler. She's found a new book with the same title! Haven, Beverly Patt. Just being released.

http://www.classof2k9.com/ You'll find it mentioned, but they haven't filled in the jacket cover yet. I've read her bio and she has more energy than a chihuahua. Congratulations to her!!

*%*#*@*^*** That's my little grey cells thinking of a new Title!

I'm open to suggestions!