Today I Am Stealing...

but at least I'm going to cite my sources.  I am posting the introduction to Naomi Shihab Nye's book A Maze Me: Poems for Girls.  I have often given this crowbar for my students to pry open their own souls and take a look at  the little scraps they don't want to slip through their lives' sieves.  To go along with some of my recent posts about mining for memories and focusing on detail, I offer an expert's insights, since my opinion doesn't hold much sway.

At twelve, I worried about a skinny road between two precipices.  Every day my mother drove on such a road, or so I imagined, to her job teaching school.  I feared her car would slide off one side, into a ditch, or off the other edge, into a murky gray river.  But I never told her what I was scared of.  I worried day after day without mentioning my fear to anyone, till there was a fist in my stomach, punching me back again and again to check the clock.  Wasn’t she late?  I was a nervous wreck in secret. 

I did not want to be thirteen, which cast me as something of an oddity among my friends, who were practicing with lipstick and the ratting hair comb deep into the belly of the night.  Mary couldn’t wait to be thirteen.  She stuffed her bra, packed away her dolls.  Susie had been pretending she was thirteen for two years already.  Kelly said thirteen was a lot more fun than anything that preceded it.

But I did not feel finished with childhood.  I was hanging on like a desperado, traveling my own skinny road.  The world of adults seemed grim to me.  Chores and complicated relationships, checkbooks that needed balancing, oppressive daily schedules, and the worrisome car that always needed to have its oil or its tires changed (“bald tires” sounded so ominous)… Couldn’t I stay where I was a bit longer?

 I stared at tiny children with envy and a sense of loss.  They still had cozy, comfortable days ahead of them.  I was plummeting into the dark void of adulthood against my will.  I stared into the faces of all fretful, workaholic parents, thinking condescendingly, You have traveled too far from the source.  Can’t you remember what it felt like to be fresh, waking up to the world, discovering new surprises every day?  Adulthood is cluttered and pathetic.  I will never forget. 

I scribbled details in small notebooks-crumbs to help me find my way back, like Gretel in the darkening forest.  Squirrels, silly friends, snoozing cats, violins, blue bicycles with wire baskets, pint boxes of blackberries, and random thoughts I had while weaving 199 multicolored potholders on a little read loom.  I sold the potholders door to door for twenty-five cents each, stomping around the neighborhood, feeling absolutely and stubbornly as if I owned it.  No one else had ever loved that neighborhood as much as I did. 

If I wrote things down, I had a better chance of saving them.

Recently a friend sent me an exquisite wreath in the mail.  A tag was attached to it: A SMALL AMOUNT OF DEBRIS IS TO BE EXPECTED FROM THE VIBRATION OF SHIPPING. 

Well, of course.

But who tells us this when we are twelve?  Who mentions that he passage from on era into another can make us feel as if we are being shaken up, as if our contents are shifting and sifting into new alignments?

Earliest childhood: skillets and a fat soup pot and two cake pans and a funny double boiler with lots of little holes in one pan,  lids and a muffin tin and two blue enamel spoons and an aluminum sifter with a small wooden knob on its handle, all living together in the low cupboard next to the stove.

A trove of wonders!  Daily I was amazed and happy to take them out, stack them on the floor, bang them together a little, make a loud noise.  Then I could put them back.  There were ways they fit and ways they didn’t.  The door to the cabinet never shut perfectly.  I can close my eyes even today and feel its crooked wood, its metal latch, and the lovely mystery of the implements living in silence inside.

My mother worked at the sink nearby, peeling potatoes, running water over their smooth, naked bodies.  I felt safe.  My whole job was looking around.

It strikes me as odd: I cannot remember the name of a single junior high school teacher.  I cannot remember any of their faces either.  Yet I recall all my elementary and most of my high school teachers very clearly.  What happened in between?

In junior high, I stood proudly in the percussion section in the school band, smooth wooden drumsticks in my hands.  I clearly recall he snappy beats we played to warm up.  I still feel my cheeks flaming when I was forced to sit down, runner-up in the spelling bee, because they gave me a military word.  I remember the smooth shiny hair on the back of the head of the girl in front of me in Spanish class better than the subjunctive tense in Spanish.  Some things stayed, during those rough years of transition, but not the things I might have dreamed. 

What do you want to be? People always ask.  They don’t ask who or how do you want to be?

I might have said, amazed forever.  I wanted to be curious, interested, interesting, hopeful-and a little bit odd was okay too.  I did not know if I wanted to run a bakery, be a postal worker, play a violin or the timpani drum in an orchestra.  That part was unknown.

Thankfully, after turning seventeen I started feeling as if my soul fit my age again, or my body had grown to fit my brain.  But things felt a little rugged in between.

In college I met Nelle Lucas, who wore billowing bright cotton skirts and lavish turquoise-and-silver Native American jewelry.  She taught ceramics (favoring hand-building techniques-coiling rolling, smoothing) and showed us how to prepare our own basic hand-mixed glazes.  I think I took her class three times.

Nelle and her husband had built some modest, rounded Navajo-style hogans out in the Texas hills, and on weekends, they shepherded little flocks of art students to the country.  We dug a big hole in the ground to fire our pots and sang songs while the pots baked under the earth.  Sometimes the pots disappointed us-blowing up, or cracking.  One person’s pot might compromise someone else’s-after exploding, fragments stuck to your own precious glaze.  Or someone’s glaze would drip strange configurations onto your perfect iron oxide surface.  It was a tricky operation.  Nelle sneaked wisdoms into every line of art instruction.  She wasn’t terribly impressed with anyone’s pots, but she loved the process and she loved us all.  Also, she made us laugh.  She experimented.  We slept in a circle, head to toe.  We patted whole-wheat chapatis, cooking them over an open fire for our breakfast.  Nelle loved freshly mixed granola, wild deer, and patience.  She urged us to slow down and pay better attention to everything.  She was radiant, enthusiastic, unpredictable.  And she was older than all our parents.

Somehow, knowing Nelle when I was in college gave me all the faith about “growing up” I needed.  At every age, a person could still be whimsical, eccentric.  A person could do and think whatever she wanted.  She could be as spontaneous at seventy as at seven.  I felt incredibly relieved.

Midway between Brady and Mason, Texas-two wonderful hill-country towns-there’s a mysterious general store called Camp Air.  A small red stagecoach sits out front, and a little sign says the store is closed on Fridays and Saturdays, but I have never seen it open.  Some cows with very short legs are penned up nearby, next to a “watermelon shed.”  There’s a larger sign: HEY IF YOU NEVER STOP YOU’LL NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU MISSED.  I always stop.  And I still don’t know.  But I like it.  I like it a lot.  “Camp Air” has a good ring to it.  That’s where I want to live, every day, inside my timeless brain.

If you have a voice, and aren’t afraid to spend it...

               

If you have many voices and let them speak to one another in a friendly fashion…

If you’re not too proud to talk to yourself out loud…

               

If you will ask the questions pressing against your forehead from the inside…

you’ll be okay.

If you write three lines down in a notebook every day (they don’t have to be great or important, they don’t have to relate to one another, you don’t have to show them to anyone)…

you will find out what you notice.  Uncanny connections will be made visible to you.  That’s what I started learning when I was twelve, and I never stopped learning it.

Every year unfolds like a petal inside all the years that preceded it.  You will feel your thinking springing up and layering inside your huge mind a little differently.  Your thinking will befriend you.  Words will befriend you.  You will be given more than you could ever dream.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

San Antonio, Texas, 2004

Some Musing Advice

My wonderful wife pointed out an article in the Winter 2013 Humanities at BYU magazine that she thought I would be interested in.  She was write, I mean, right.  "Coaxing the Muse: Thoughts on the Creative Process" intrigued me so much that I had my 9th graders read it, annotate it, write personal reflections about Larsen's advice, their own creative processes, and how they, as students and writers and human beings are developing.  Lance E. Larsen, BYU English Professor and Poet Laureate of Utah, adapted this article from a speech he gave during a university devotional talk he gave in May of 2007.  I wish could have heard it in person.  However, I just happened to be in my classroom.  But after reading it and digesting his written version, I found the next best thing: a link to the actual speech.  Listen to it.  It's good.  However, if you don't have the time, here is the penultimate paragraph from the article:

In finishing up I want to make clear that I have merely scratched the surface of today's topic.  Creativity remains a messy, recalcitrant, but invigorating process that resists--thank goodness--my attempts to explain it.  Still, the principles we've talked about can easily be applied to our various circumstances.  First, reading widely and deeply will allow you to immerse yourself in a given field and gain expertise.  Second, establishing a daily habit of writing or similar engagement will take you into the heart of nearly any discipline.  Third, letting the writing lead you, or having faith in the mysterious process of creation, will let you tap sources beyond your own limitations.  Fourth, revising, regardless of the field, gives you the chance to revisit and improve upon early efforts, and in the process take full advantage of the perspectives of others.  Fifth, falling in love with the world and taking notes can help cultivate powers of observation otherwise left dormant.  And finally, sixth, gathering insights from other disciplines will help you see more clearly through your own lens.

I like that.  Now I just need to put it into practice more effectively.

Plug for WIFYR

I know I haven't written since my self-imposed penance lapsed. So what? I promise to post more later. I just need to put in a plug for the upcoming Writing & Illustrating For Young Readers conference. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend--something about residence hours up in Logan or something like that. I've heard that grad professors actually prefer that you show up to class. Who knew?

But as my homey Nacho says, "anywhays"...I'm including a few tips for critiquing that I stole straight from the WIFYR site. Enjoy. Also, check out the website. I went several years ago, and (Yes, this is a testimonial.) I loved it. I took a class run by Chris Crowe and Carol Lynch Williams. Plus I was able to rub shoulders with several authors and editors. I even got to revert back to the goggle-eye-popping-hero-worshiping-autograph-seeking fan when I met and actually held several meaningful conversations with one of my favorite authors, John H. Ritter. Not since I was an elementary lad had I found myself speechless--a blubbering idiot--in front of an adult. In short, it was an awesome writing experience. So...register and take your writing to another level.

Getting the Most from the Conference:
Eleven Thoughts to a Better Critique

1. Listen. When you receive a critique in your writer's group, this is a time to listen and not speak. Just write down all the comments that have been given. You can think about these later and choose what to use in your rewrite.
2. Don't argue. You've paid a good amount of money to be here. This time you have with other writers-and especially ones who know about good writing-is valuable. Squeeze every penny from your payment by not wasting time during critique. Listen carefully to comments and do not argue your point.
3. You are not the boss of the four-hour morning sessions. The faculty leader is. Keep your comments to the point. Do not monopolize conversation. Do not interrupt. Remember this: Each person has paid to hear from the collective group and especially from the instructor-not from just one individual.
4. Do not beat a point into the ground: Once a point is made (Your character doesn't seem realistic in his conversation)-there is no reason to hash and rehash that statement for a writer. Give a strong example of how this bit of the story is not working, then move on.
5. Pay attention when others are being critiqued. Don't use time when others are being critiqued to write letters, excuse yourself from the room, or drift off into La-la land. Pay attention. What mistake are you making that someone else is? Can you use what you are hearing to improve your own writing? Some of the best help I have received on a manuscript is listening to my peers discuss the novel I'm working on-and then listening to them discuss what fellow members of the group are working on.
6. Give an example of how something might be improved. Like: "You could use a stronger verb here. Pummeled is a much stronger verb. Try that."
Grammatical errors do not need to be pointed out in class. Instead, mark these on the author's paper. In fact, writing comments on the page is excellent for the author.
7. Don't focus only on the negative. We want people to have hope about their stories. Say what works in the piece and what doesn't work. There is no need to say, "This is the stinky-est piece I have ever read." Even if it is the stinky-est piece you have read. There are nicer ways to show how to help one improve his or her writing. And I have seen people I never thought would publish make a huge amount of money from their writing. Be kind, but be honest.
8. But don't only sing praises for an author either. Everyone here should want to have a publishable manuscript underway by the time they leave this conference.
9. Only saying the good, and ignoring what is not working, is not effective.
10. Please remember we all like different things. Just because I don't write fantasy doesn't mean I don't enjoy a well-told fantasy tale. Do not let your personal opinion color your professional opinion.
11. And whatever you do-don't try to incorporate every single person's comment in your story. This is your work. Yours. So pick and choose. What will really help your manuscript succeed?

Endorsement

In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday yesterday, my classes read ALL DAY LONG! And I read with them. I finished Penny Kittle's Write Beside Them: Risk, Voice, and Clarity in High School Writing. Honestly, it is the best book on writing workshops that I have read. Not only is it positive and optimistic, it's practical: there's a DVD that actually shows how her strategies and procedures work.

It's not perfect, but then again, nothing is. However, I would strongly encourage all those interested in the teaching of writing to search out this book and devour the contents, taking time to digest each page thoroughly as you would a post-Thanksgiving-dinner-belt-undone-belly-scratchin'-football-watchin' knock of pumpkin pie. It's too much to handler at once, but in order to feel the full impact, you just have to dive in.

Here's a sample:

Reading Like a Writer
• What do you notice about how this text was written?
• Underline repeating phrases or repeating ideas or images.
• Notice how examples that support ideas are written. Underline evidence to support a position.
• Where does the writer show not tell?
• Why do you think the author close to organize the piece this way?
• Why did the piece open the way it did? How would you define the lead?
• What do you think the writer left out of this piece—or cut in revision?
• What did you notice might try in your writing?

I Stole This But I Like It Anyway

On Janette Rallison's web page she provides her Top 10 Reasons to be a Writer:

1. Librarians think you're cool.
2. You have an excuse to be cluttered: you have no time for cleaning; you're creating ART.
3. You get a collection of stories you'll always enjoy reading because you wrote them.
4. If you publish, you don't have to think about what you'll get your friends and family for Christmas—they're all getting your book!
5. You can name your characters all the things your husband wouldn't let you name your children.
6. You can work in your pajamas.
7. You get to network with other writers.
8. Money and fame. Ha! Ha! But I just had to throw that one in.
9. You can pattern your villains after the guys who dumped you in high school, and
10. You don't have bad days; you just have more writing material to draw from!

A Few Tips from a Psycho Genius

Unfortunately, Stephen King's language in On Writing isn't really appropriate for school. It's an excellent book for writers--a memoir on the craft. Here are a few notes that I pull out for my student writers:

Notes from Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

(page 37) There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

(page 57) When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story…When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

(page 74) Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

(page 77) …The writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader’s.

(page 77) …Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea.

Toolbox: It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.
1. Common tools go on top. The commonest of all, the bread of writing, is vocabulary.
2. You’ll also want grammar on the top shelf of your toolbox.
3. Avoid the passive tense.
4. The adverb is not your friend.
5. Fear is at the root of most bad writing.

(page 142) …Good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style)…It is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.

(page 145) If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.

(page 147) You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so.

(page 150) If there’s no joy in it, it’s just no good.

(page 153) Writing is at its best—always, always, always—when it is a kind of inspired play for the writer.

(page 163) In my view, stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, which moves the story from point A to point B and finally to point Z; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech.

(page 173) Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can only learn by doing.

(page 174) Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

(page 178) When it’s on target, a simile delights us in much the same way meeting an old friend in a crowd of strangers does.

(page 200) Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create a sense of artificial profundity.

(page 208) Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme.

Kurt Vonnegut's Rules for Writing Short Stories

I found these online and sent them to some teaching friends. I've had a few requests in different formats, so I thought why not post them here--they're about writing, so why not? Perhaps, from time to time, I'll post tips about writing as well as continuing to post my own crap.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Just a side note, Vonnegut was quoted saying that great authors will often break all of these rules except for the first.