Two things happen in early June.

#1 - the painted turtles move up out of the lake, across my backyard, sometimes up the driveway and all the way across the road.  Suddenly, they are everywhere. 

#2 - I begin packing my truck with 3 months' worth of living/camping gear, for my annual sojourn across The Big Lake to Michigan, place of my birth, my Mother Country.  I start in an office and then move on-site where I live in a tent.  No electronics.  Just the woods, physical work, and community. 

These two events have linked symbolically in my head over the years - carrying our homes on our backs, making an annual journey, crossing water and sands to congregate under the full moon, blah blah, woo woo, mystical magic.

But this morning, coming back in from my run, I got smacked upside the head with the reality of my impact on the turtle world - and not in the nice parallel-universe-symbolic-species way.  Apparently last night, as I was driving in after a day of running errands and buying last-minute stuff...I ran over a turtle.  Didn't even notice.

I am sick about this.  I love the turtles.  I love the little baby ones, no bigger than a quarter, on the lily pads in late June.  I love the adults crawling across my yard to lay eggs.  I love watching them dive into the mud as I pass over in a canoe, or bake in the afternoon sun.  And there one turtle lies, with its cracked shell.  I did the damage.

This walk through the world is so random and unintentional and unpredictable.  While I'm busy paying attention to X, I run over Y.  Or while I'm making the wrong move in situation B, I completely unknowingly help A.  So, while my stomach turns over the consequences of my careless action and my brain busily makes up excuses and justifications amidst the self-condemnation and general motor-vehicle-condemnation, it's time to reach for my very favorite quote:  "You don't know what's going on."

I really don't.
But I feel super bad about the turtle.

Today I had lunch with Mrs. McQueen. 

When I was in seventh or eighth grade in my very small rural Wisconsin town, they were just starting a gifted and talented program.  Mrs. McQueen was the advisor.  I told her I wanted to be a writer.  Either she was the only person I told that to, or she was the only one who took me seriously.  She gave me a notebook, and said "Write in there every single day."  I did.

The novel I recently finished has a teacher who is a seriously good guy.  His name, in her honor, is "Mr. McQueen."   I named him that way back in the early drafts, several years ago.

I hadn't seen or heard from Mrs. McQueen since, um, 1976?  Or thereabouts?  A few weeks ago, I had a message on my answering machine, asking if I knew Pat Schmatz or where she might be.  Seems Mrs. McQueen had a letter that I wrote her back in 1976 (77?) when she left the program, thanking her for her help.  She looked up Schmatz in the phone book, hoping to find my mother and send it to her.  Of course, I was thrilled to hear from her and I was practically jumping up and down when I called her back and said, "Guess what guess what?  I really DID become a writer!  I have books!"

So today we had lunch.  She doesn't remember me wanting to be a writer, or giving me a notebook.  She says she was doing mostly administrative work and it would have been a red-headed woman named Rachel who worked with me individually.

huh?  I have no memory of a Rachel with any color of hair.  Am I going to have to turn Mr. McQueen into a redhead named Rachel?

It was a fabulous talk over lunch.  I gave her copies of my books.  She gave me stories about developing the first GT-type program in rural Wisconsin, and the kids she worked with, and her struggles with the schools, and her various adventures in education.  My favorite was a story about using a book about Helen Keller to teach a 30-year-old woman to read.   

My character will remain Mr. McQueen, and whether Mrs. McQueen ever actually gave me that notebook or not, I'm going to keep my memory exactly the way it is.  

I started to write Art vs. Commerce.

Like a battle.
Like Zero-Sum.
Winner/Loser.

That's wrong, in this as in all things.

I have to write the story I know, the one that seizes me and compels me to work alone for hours with no guaranteed return on my labor. But once that story is formed and has substance and durability, it can be shaped, honed, and tuned.  This is where art and commerce come together.  Commerce forces(?) (leads?) art into a particular form.

Art, at its best, is shared.  Art in a vacuum means nothing.  [is that true?]

I'm involved in the business of creating books for teens.  My audience is first myself, both me now and a younger me.  I have to write something that will hold my intellectual and emotional attention (okay, yes, spiritual too) firmly enough that I'm willing to work and rework and keep working for a long, long time.  The younger me has a lot of friends, some who are now grown and some who aren't, and she demands that I write for them and hold them always in mind.  That younger me embodies my ultimate target audience. 

But first, I have an adult audience - my critique group, a few friends, other writers.  They tell me where I'm on target, where I've lost them, where communication and the shared experience is and isn't happening.  If it's not happening, then I'm just walking circles in my own private Omaha, and what's the point?

After that audience, I turn to the  commerce folks - agent, editor - and here's where my mind-shift has to happen.  I have to remember that this is not an adversarial relationship.  These commerce folks understand the interweaving of art and commerce in a way that I do not.  That understanding is its own art, and I need it.  Without it, these characters that I've worked so long and hard to bring to life are, basically, stuck in a thick-walled prison of silence.  Their story will reach nobody, older or younger.

It's easy, but not helpful, to think of Art and Commerce in competition.  The Zero-Sum concept lends itself to ideas of Loser and Victim.  That concept is not conducive to art, and it doesn't get my characters out of their prison of silence.

My fourth novel, Bluefish, is moving right now through that scary void between Art and Commerce.  I have brought the characters to the page, and they have spoken their stories.  They can't speak to a wider audience unless and until the art/commerce folks can and will help me move them through the walls and into the light.  My job is to stay open, be the adult writer (the younger me is, frankly, done.  The fun of the story has happened, she likes it, she's on to other things), and move from working alone to working as part of a team.  Maybe it's like letting your kid go to school. I don't know, I'm not a parent.   

I'm finding it difficult to focus on anything.

The other morning I watched a blackish fox meander across my backyard.  I'm pretty sure it has kits nearby.  The sandhill cranes keep hollering, the goslings are swimming on the lake, the deer are up in my front yard, and the sun lures me outside.  The trees have finally started talking again after their six-month silence.  Their new leaves whisper and hiss in the wind, and create a green shifting shield between my house and the road.  The sky is ever-changing, dramatic reds in the morning and evening.  Birds, cicadas and frogs carry on all day long, and plants are popping out of the ground.  My new baby spruce trees have candled, and asparagus leaps up every time I turn my back.

With all of this going on, how am I supposed to stick in front of a computer screen?

What do

The Brady Bunch

and

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

have in common?

I've been triple-timing the work on my latest novel, Bluefish, over the past few weeks.  My agent, Andrea Cascardi, is also an excellent editor, and so I go through an entire revision process with her before she starts shopping it around.

What that has meant for me is, total immersion in the world of the book.  Characters waking me up in the night - one time to yell at me for a plot decision I'd made.  This character was so mad, I finally had to agree to give her something unexpected in return for what I'd taken away before she'd let me go back to sleep.  I've been grabbing for a pen first thing when I wake up to scribble notes.  I've been spacing appointments and obligations and I've been basically unable to show up emotionally for anything. 

Now, this morning, I had a note from Andrea saying the manuscript is good to go. 

Peace!  

Once more, I can think about my own life, obsess about my own problems, meander down my own mental paths without constant interruption and obligation.  Don't get me wrong - I love my characters and I'm grateful when they talk to (and badger, harangue, and nag) me.  But when they finally have their full say and we all decide they can quiet down and relax for a while, it's an incredible relief.  For me, for sure.  Maybe for them too.

Saturday, I drove to Milwaukee to receive my award from the Council of Wisconsin Writers http://www.wisconsinwriters.org/.  I really knew nothing about this organization, except they were giving me $500 and a week at Edenfred http://www.edenfred.org/.  because Mousetraps was chosen as for the 2009 best children's book by a Wisconsin writer.

Okay, so this is a fabulous group.  Very Wisconsinish, very writerly, with plenty of dry self-deprecating humor and appreciation of others.  My favorite part was when the Young Writers Award winner read her essay.  It was a knockout.  This was the first year for the award and the entry field was small, but the winner is a gorgeous writer.  Jennifer Heup from Shawano.  Keep an eye out for that name!

I'm jumping on board with the CWW, and I'm going to see if I can't drum up more statewide interest in the young writers' award - both entries and prize money.  Nothing better than the next generation of story tellers.  Jennifer's work was inspiring, to say the least.

Suddenly, I have a reason to hurry up and finish the novel I'm working on.  I'm on the 8th overall revision so I've definitely been meandering a bit and trying to Get It Right this time...but now I need to wrap up the last few chapters over the next two days.

So I'm back to the question - as a writer, how do I induce the fictive dream in myself?  How do I find that world and stay there, long enough to get the essentials on paper?  Once I do that, I have to make sure the dream is encoded in such a way as to not wake the reader - but to me, that's the easier part, because it requires mostly hard focused work rather than the mysterious slippery elements of the initial invention.

Plus, I always have trouble with endings.  I can clip along in that Other World for a long time, but drawing it all together and stepping out enough to wrap it up at the same time as staying in enough to make it real - I find that hard.

But that's what is on the plate today and tomorrow.  I've done it before, so why does it always seem so hard to do it again?  The essential elements are getting out of my own way, letting go of the outcome, and enjoying the ride.  My friend Alice told me to write/draw reminders all over my arm with a sharpie so my left arm is now covered with cartoon figures and acronyms.  And I need to not wash it off till I'm done. 

My arm says to go for a walk so I'm going to go do that now before I start this morning's work.

I've received several "Happy Administrative Professionals Day" emails this morning.  Why do I find this so irritating?  Is it because the name of the holiday is too long?  Is it because it's a syllable-full dress-up of a simple "Happy Secretary's Day"?  Or something deeper?

I'm not unhappy about being an "administrative professional" (PLEASE, can we just call me a secretary?).  It's a perfectly good way to earn an income, and it slots nicely with writing.  This job in particular is terrific - flexible, on-line, working for something I believe in with good people and interesting tasks.  I really don't need a special day to be happy about it.  I'm happy about it pretty much every day.

Maybe I just don't like to be happy about it at someone else's command.
Maybe I'm simply resistant to social niceties in the office world.

I'd love to hear anyone else's opinion on this holiday. 

Should I be happier today?  Is administrative professionals day good cause for happiness?  Why am I resisting the happiness wishes? 

When I was a kid, I read under the covers with a flashlight all the time.  So did most people I know. 

When I was talking with the sixth-graders this week, one girl said she reads by TV light when she's supposed to be asleep.  She turns the volume down so her parents won't hear and uses the light to read.  This blew my mind. 

I've been thinking about the shadows and light of the story on TV moving across the story on the page and how freaky and multi-layered that is.  I've been thinking how the whole concept of reading by TV is so scary and 21st century.  Don't kids have flashlights anymore?  

I've been thinking about kids alone in the dark who not only choose the book over the TV, but use the TV to access the book.

Next school visit, I am going to do a poll and find out how many kids read by the light of the television.

I had such a blast with the sixth graders in Marion, Wisconsin, this afternoon!

Sometimes when I walk into a classroom, it just clicks from the start.  With this group, almost every kid smiled or waved at me as they walked into the room from lunch.  I started off as I usually do, with my dog poop story.  At one point, most of the students in the room were chanting "DOG POOP DOG POOP DOG POOP."  I'm sure that's not anywhere on the sxith grade curriculum, but it was funny.

When I asked them, "What is a book?" one kid said, "it's a magical journey."  He said it with this delightfully mild-sarcastic tone, which made me immediately like him very much, because I could tell he meant it no matter how far his tongue was in his cheek.  I talked about the concept of The Fictive Dream, which I wasn't sure would fly with sixth graders, but some of them really picked up on it, and talked about how they forget about words or ink or paper, and completely step into the story and live there.

One student asked, "Is that bad?  That I forget it's a book?" and I went completely off the hook about how amazing that is, how it means the author has done his/her job, how it's now a private exchange of images and ideas between reader and writer, and how it is nothing less than pure magic.

I waved around the book THE LONG WINTER by Laura Ingalls Wilder - since we had such a long winter this year in Wisconsin - and rambled about the magic of a book written twenty years before I was born (and I'm old!), and how scenes and images that Ingalls Wilder wrote now live in my head like I'd actually been there.  Most of the students didn't know the book, but I think some may read it now.

I got such a buzz from that group.  They were so fresh, and awake, and ALIVE and willing to go from dog poop to sensory detail to fictive dream and back again.  They gave me permission to fully jump into the conversation with them - their humor, their questions, their curiosity.  Makes me think a lot about how much of that we lose each year in school.  By the time they hit Grade 12, they're so busy being polite or cautious or cool or downright afraid, it's hard to get that kind of connection.  And by the time we're adults...forget it. 

I've been thinking a lot about this.  Partly because I'm writing a novel about a 13-year-old boy who can't read, so I'm imagining what it feels like to live outside of the written word.  Partly because next week I'm talking to sixth-graders about "why reading is important."

To me, it's beyond magic.  I sit here, in my house, at my desk, and I experience a world filled with emotions, action, comfort, conflict, heartbreak, breakthrough...and sometime, somewhere, (hopefully) someone else picks up the book.  The book on its own is just black marks on white paper.  Nothing.  But once you've learned to decode, those black marks move through your eyes and into your  brain.  Then electro-chemical impulses move through your brain matter and form a world...emotions, action, comfort, conflict, heartbreak, breakthrough...all of it.  

Accessing the code has given me everything from Atticus Finch to Caddie Woodlawn to Neville Longbottom.  Those worlds.  Those experiences.  Those emotions.  Is my Neville Longbottom the same as yours?  I like him so very much - is that because I decode him differently than you do?  Or do we look at the same Neville, and have different levels of liking for him, as we would for a flesh and blood person?

All I know for sure is that when I write and read, I feel like a link in a long chain of magic coding and decoding.  I like that.

Okay, so the Where the Wild Things Are performance was every bit as much fun as I'd anticipated.  When we ROARED our terrible ROARS, the kidlets (especially the little ones in the front rows) actually scooted backwards.  And backwards again when we showed our terrible claws.  I found this very satisfying.  I'd say they reacted with a mixture of shock and bemusement - great expressions to see on second graders.

In my excited preparation, I'd forgotten about the line:  LET THE WILD RUMPUS START!   But when we practiced in the basement before showtime, I realized that was the best part of all.  It's not every day you go to a library and see six adult bookish women suddenly rumpusing on cue.  [for pictures, check out Narrator Julie Bowe's LJ:  http://juliebowe.livejournal.com/]

After the big performance, I got to hang out with fifth graders and talk about the magic of story, and every kid went home with a book.  I went home with a very cool scarf, made by the middle school kids, that has books flying out of a treasure chest.

I love libraries.

Tomorrow I'm driving to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, for their Literacy Celebration.  I am participating in a readers theatre with 4 other authors because we're using one of my Class A #1 all-time favorite books:   WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE!!!! 

I have the part of Child 4.  I get to say "WILD THING!"!!  and "And gnashed their terrible teeth!"  and "Without their supper!"  and "Oh please don't go!" and "Where he found his supper waiting for him."

I am absurdly excited about this.  Like I've got a ticket for a magic carpet ride to the World of Maurice Sendak.  I feel a little like I did when I was a Brownie and they told me about "flying up" into Girl Scouts via a powerful and mystical secret ceremony.  I imagined and looked forward to that ceremony for months.  Would we really fly?  Would there be a helicopter?  A seance?  Wings?  

When the big day finally came, they put a blindfold on me in the school library and had me walk up two steps, say the Girl Scout oath, and walk down two steps.  Crushing disappointment.  I quit scouts the next day.  BUT!  This is not Brownies.  This is Sendak.  I get to be Child 4, and I am completely wire-fired. 

Um, okay.  I know there will be children there.  We are doing this for their benefit - but secretly, I'm not.  I'm heading through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year, and if they want to come for the ride, that's just fine by me.  Maybe we can all dip into some time in Sendak-Land.  I can think of a lot worse ways to spend a Thursday evening.

On my trip to B.C., I spent a weekend with Frances and Marguerite on the Sunshine Coast, north and west of Vancouver.  They live about a half mile from an amazing provincial park, and I went for a long hike there on a Saturday afternoon.  Once I got past the park entrance, I didn't see another person the whole time.

I did see soft green moss, running burbly water, big tall trees and flat black water, which are my very favorite things on a hike.  I got to thinking about how many places in the world you can go and see these four things.  I've encountered them in Japan and New Zealand and many places in the U.S.  Different trees, sure, and different mosses, but same basic elements.  What a gorgeous planet we get to walk around on. 

The special extra on this hike included snow on cedars, which made me want to go back and read that book again. 

If you're ever looking for a place to stay in the Vancouver area, you couldn't go wrong at Frances and Marguerite's cottage:  http://honeysucklerosecottage.com/

My third book, Mousetraps, is shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award.  An award for children's books.  I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this concept.  The idea that writing for children and a queer theme and positive recognition can co-exist...I know, it's been true for a while...but i'm still catching up.

I'm also pleased and honored and flattered and sort of dazed by the whole idea.

It brings me to another layer of sorting out the internal author/writer conflict.  Those two things have an odd and mostly uncomfortable coexistence inside of me.  I've been traveling, being "author" on school visits, and now I can't wait to get home and go back to being quietly "writer."

Meanwhile, Author and Writer are very, very happy and surprised about the Lambda news.

I leave tomorrow for this year's spring adventure.

I'll have a week in the Vancouver area.  First I'm going to Victoria, where I'll stay with Robin and Cheryl (formerly of Truck/Oasis crews).  Robin is also a YA writer http://www.robinstevenson.com/wordpress/- the author of Big Guy, Impossible Things, Out of Order, and more.   She and I have been exchanging manuscripts for several years but I haven't seen her since - um - 2005 maybe?

She lined up a school visit to a Grade 12 English class, so that should be fun. 

I'll also see Mary Stocks ("Wingspan"), hopefully for dinner and a meeting.  Then I'll have a couple of days with Frances and Marguerite http://honeysucklerosecottage.com/ at their B&B in Half Moon Bay, B.C., which sounds perfectly perfect.

Then back to Minneapolis for a week of work and fun and book club and the like...

Laura Salas has an entry on a Peace project - spreading Peace one poem at a time.  For more info, or if you want to contribute, check it out:  http://laurasalas.livejournal.com/135219.html

Fortunately for the wordier among us, the organizer includes "prose pictures" on the list of possible ways to contribute.  So here's my Peace Piece:

In the summer of 1970, war raged in my cousin’s Illinois barnyard. I ran across the dirt driveway and rolled under the parked car, gravel biting my elbows, the shade hiding me from the glaring sunlight.  I scanned the terrain, and then scrambled to my feet and broke for the hay elevator, slinking up the metal runway to the high square window of the barn, my heart hammering triple-time as I dropped to the bales in the lower loft. The cows watched me belly-crawl across the scratchy hay floor, giving me away with their soupy eyes. Blood pounded in my ears and I tried to quiet my shaky breath as I pulled myself to the edge and looked down. My cousin, who is now an insurance salesman, was waiting. When I looked over the edge, he sprang up and rattled a blast from his plastic machine gun directly in my face.

 

I lost my taste for Army Games that day. 

 

The rest of the summer, you could find me at the crick, wading upstream with the soft cool water licking at my ankles. Or in the back shed searching for the nest of new kittens beneath the rusted machinery, or reading comics, or scratching the hogs’ backs with a stick. Or lying on my back watching the sky go purple and the fireflies blink, wondering about what was and how it got to be that way.

 

I still wonder.

I just finished The Lottery by Beth Goobie, thanks to a recommendation from librarian Lisa Chellman  http://lisachellman.com/. 

It's a YA novel by a Canadian author, and it's one of the best books on fear I have ever read...social fear, fear of oneself, fear of facing what is true, fear of breaking free, fear of actually being free.

Fear overtakes the life of the protagonist, step by step.  Circumstances increase her already-existing fear, escalate it exponentially, until it surrounds her with no reprieve, no protection, no glimmer of safety anywhere.  She succumbs to the fear, falls down into it, writhes in it, and almost self-destructs there.  And then, slowly, one tiny brick at a time, she punches holes in the wall of fear.  One hole leads to another, and another, until she can see an entirely different perspective (different world, even) on the other side.  As an extra bonus, The Wall by Pink Floyd is referenced throughout the book.  I'll never hear that song the same again.

Reading it made me think about how much our culture depends upon fear, and how easily fear is manipulated to maintain power.  Freedom from that fear turns the power structure upside down.   Even benevolent power benefits from the occasional inversion.

 

I've been thinking about the power of stories.  Specifically, some of the particular stories I've read, or heard, or watched...I take them, absorb them, and extract and create meaning.   They become as real and as influential (maybe more) as things I've actually experienced.

A Wrinkle in Time, Charlotte's Web, Buffy the Vampire Slayer ... The Stand, The Outsiders, The Brady Bunch ... Knock on Any Door, Henry 3, Stand by Me, Empire of the Sun, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Book Thief ... each of these stories has been an enormous gift to me, personally, in one way or another.

The creators of these stories had no idea what I was going to do with them, how I would use them to make sense of the world, how they would impact me.  They simply put the stories in their heads out in the world  and let them go.  The internal story that I have created from those stories...that is not the original creator's business.

This is a comfort to me as I try to articulate the stories in my head.  I need to do the best I can and release them.  What happens after that -- it's up to the story itself, and to whoever reads it.