I wasn’t crazy about writing when I was a kid, but I did like it when the teacher gave us a picture as a starting point, especially if the picture inspired questions. Who? What? Where? And the best one: Why?
What would I have written if she’d given us this photo (which she couldn’t have because I shot it just this weekend)?
What’s the story here? What do YOU think?
The last excerpt from my PYI keynote in a series that started in December 2011…
I rather like it that the last installment of this ‘spectacular’ and ‘inspiring’ Packaging Your Imagination’ keynote is landing at the start of the new year. I hope it will inspire you in whatever your undertakings may be this year…
When Karen called me last week, about today, she asked of me only that I “be inspiring”. My first thought was to share with you one of my favourite quotes about writing, one that I go back to time and again, when the rough and tumble of the writing life tosses all my sock fluff and whatever fluff I might be writing together in one dull, grey lump in the lint trap of my heart.
This is E.L. Doctorow. He speaks of writing a novel, but what he says applies to lots of life.
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can’t see any farther ahead than your headlights shine, but you can make the whole trip that way.
What Doctorow says reassures me that indeed I can keep on with this troublesome project, I can go on with whatever challenging journey I happen to be on, if today, I don’t worry about what might be beyond where my headlights are shining.
The morning after Karen called me about taking on today’s keynote, I woke in the wee hours with another idea – about the inspiring nature of Sock Fluff. I got up and made some notes, then, at 6:30 or so, I went back to bed with a cup of tea, to read a chapter of the book I was caught up in then.
Here is one paragraph of that chapter. This is narrator Marion Stone, telling readers about another road. It’s the kind of prose that, for me, begs to be read aloud.
I pushed out the wooden shutters of my bedroom window and climbed onto the ledge. Sunshine flooded the room. By noon the temperature would reach seventy-five degrees, but for the moment I shivered in my bare feet. From my perch, I could see beyond Missing’s east wall onto a quiet meandering road which descended and then disappeared, the hills rising just beyond, as if the road had gone underground before it emerged in the distance as a mere thread. It wasn’t a road we traveled or even one that I knew how to get to, and yet it was a view I felt I owned. On the left side, a fortresslike wall flanked the road, receding with it, struggling to stay vertical. Giant clusters of bougainvillea spilled over, brushing the white shamas of the few pedestrians. There was a quality to this pellucid first light and the vivid colors that made it impossible to imagine trouble.
If you’ve read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, you know that the road will feature in Marion’s life again later in the story. Even if you haven’t, you can probably guess that it will, because of the weight he gives it in his description. And as you can likely guess, there will be trouble. Amazon.ca affiliate link
I read that paragraph from Chapter 23 of the book and I came to this thought:
There is nothing more inspiring, if you’re an artist – or more instructive – than exposure to the work of other artists. It’s not a very playful thought. Besides, just as I love symmetry on my odometer, so I do, to some extent, in my writing, whether a picture book story, a biography, a short story or novel-length work of fiction – or a speech. So, let’s get back to where we began.
I doubt there’s another poem about sock fluff to be found anywhere, but surely we can get back to where sock fluff is most often found? Indeed. Another of my childhood favourites fits the bill perfectly. And so, to close, “Mud” by Polly Chase Boyden:
Thanks, everyone, for hanging in for my Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff.
Photo: The road down Saxa Vord at night (Mike Pennington) / CC BY-SA 2.0
This month Amazon added a “new feature” to “make it easy for readers to discover the best-selling authors”. Excuse me, but is there a literate person on Earth who needs Amazon to tell them that the Twilight series sells more books than the Our Canadian Girl series, or that R.L. Stine sells more books than Kathy Stinson. “Kathy Who? #10,995? Why would I bother reading her books?”
By the way, I make no apology for not providing links to the more popular books and authors referred to here. They don’t need my help! Clearly, ranking at 10,995, I do! 10,995 of how many, I can’t help wondering. 11,000?
This ranking, even if the total number is much higher than 10,995, could be pretty depressing. Except (frankly amazon) I don’t care. Sure I’d enjoy seeing my books earn the kind of income that comes with being a “Top 100”; I bet even “Top 1000” would be nice. But with What Happened to Ivy now on bookshelves and with a wonderful illustrator hard at work on my next picture book, scheduled for publication next year, I’m launched into a new project. And that means all the fun of discovering new characters, figuring out what makes them tick, how they’re linked, the dynamics between and among them, where their stories will begin, and where they’ll end. Way more fun than worrying about how I rank in relation to other authors.
On a recent drive into Toronto, I listened to a podcast of Ideas: Writing from the Rock. At one point in the conversation, the Newfoundland writers got onto the subject of competition among writers, a good thing or a bad thing? I had to agree with the writer who thinks it’s more harmful than destructive. (I’ll leave it to you to listen, to see who that was, and who thought otherwise, and why.) I know that times during my career when I couldn’t resist comparing my achievements to others have inevitably proven to be among my most unhappy times as a writer.
I’ve used a number of strategies over the years to keep myself from slipping into the comparison game, when something like an award announcement or an email from Amazon about a new feature threatens to invite me back into it. One of them is recalling a poster I read in a school library I was visiting that said something like:
“How quiet the woods would be, if no bird sang except the best.”
Writing this blog post, I searched online, to see if I could find that poster. I didn’t find it, but I found another quote to add to my resist-the-comparisons arsenal:
“Who you are isn’t up to them.”
Right. Who I am is up to me. Who you are is up to you. I’m a writer, a good one. Are you a good writer, too? Good. Let’s go write.
The next excerpt from my PYI keynote in a series that started in December 2011…
I feel like the ground in winter,
Hard, cold, dark, dead, unyielding.Then hope pokes through me
Like a crocus.
This poem by Jean Little called simply “Surprise” expresses how I feel when a story isn’t working. “I feel like the ground in winter, Hard, cold, dark, dead, unyielding.” And how that breakthrough moment feels, when I know there’s still hope that the story will sing. “Then hope pokes through me Like a crocus.”
Of course, the poem isn’t just about writing, so one year I typed it up several times, on tiny pieces of paper, and tucked them inside small tree ornaments, to give as gifts to members of my family. Don’t tell Jean, okay. Some writers would take what I did as a compliment. Jean would see it as infringement of copyright. She might even demand a royalty. And I can’t blame her. It’s hard to make a living at this writing business, no matter how many years we’re at it. It’s a good thing it has its other rewards.
Like having the flexibility in my day-to-day life and a kind enough boss (that’s me) that I can usually, if I feel like it, choose to go play in the garden or take a long walk in the woods near my home, on the first sunny day after a week of rain.
Like meeting a teenage fan at her parents’ home in New Brunswick after exchanging letters with her for some years, starting when she’d read the first Marie-Claire book. And now that she’s almost finished high school, having her confide in me, as we walked the Tantramar Marsh, stuff about her boyfriend and how she’s dealing with being bullied.
And, of course . . .
Do you think you know the other reward I would almost have to mention? If you’re not a subscriber to my blog, be sure to come back here the first week of next month for the next installment of my Packaging Your Imagination keynote.
As promised during the first week of December – the second installment of my Packaging Your Imagination keynote . . .
Matilda Martin and Edna Bauman,
Mam and Lucinda and me –
my first time quilting with the women.Noisy greetings as we settle in around the quilt frame,
then silence as each begins.
Only the pop of needles through sky-blue cotton,
the creak of the wooden frame,
horses clopping snow from their hooves
against the icy laneway outside.And then it starts again,
the clatter and chatter of women, the laughter, the talk –
Lucinda cautioning me to keep my stitches even,
while hungry needles scoop up fabric
in tiny, equal bites.That night, I crawl into bed beneath another quilt –
from another winter, other chatter –
wondering what stories this quilt has heard,
and who will be warmed by the one we’re making.I press my cold feet against my sister’s legs;
she grumbles and rolls away.
Back to back, heavy with dreaming,
I tuck my toes beneath her legs,
and run my fingers over rows of stitches,
counting them to sleep.
That was “January: The Quilting Bee” – from Winterberries and Apple Blossoms: Reflections and Flavors of a Mennonite Year by Nan Forler. Just out, this season, it’s Nan’s second book, following a beautiful picture book about bullying called Bird Child, two years ago.
Nan Forler represents for me all the writing workshop participants I have worked with over the years, people who have inspired me with their perseverance in the face of apparent odds against their ever being published, or even finding time to write, and despite frequent crises of confidence. No matter where we are in our careers or our artistic development, we can become discouraged (Why did I ever think this was a good idea? Who am I kidding? I can’t write this story and even if I could, who’d want to read it anyway? What? Another publisher going under, I was just about to submit something there. Why can’t my husband / kids / boss / lover understand why I have to have quiet time, alone, to write?)
Nan first came to me in 1994, her satchel full of stories and ideas and optimism. As years rolled by, rejection letters piled up. Teaching elementary school and raising her own children took its toll on her energy. But she kept on smiling – her smile is genuine, infectious, (it’s radiant) – and she kept on writing. She kept meeting with other writers, when she could, and attending conferences and workshops. Because Nan Forler loves writing, and even though she was already good at it when I first met her, she also loves getting better at it, as she continues to write. So do Jenn Ryan and Kim O’Gorman and Rob Morphy and countless others I could name whose writing, though largely unpublished, is more powerful than much that sits on bookstore shelves.
Even with a body of published work behind me, I have often enough felt like giving up writing and going back to selling Tupperware or waiting tables at Steak & Burger, because no writing career is without its bumps, its setbacks. But then I think of Nan and her smile, and I think: if all these writers without the validation that being published represents can keep at it, what is wrong with me? And back to my writing I go.
Lena Coakley is another writer whose perseverance I’ve witnessed and been inspired by over many years. She’s now had starred reviews from Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly on her first published novel, Witchlanders. And Cheryl Rainfield, after years of self-doubt and hard work, personally and artistically, had her book, Scars, nominated for a GG last year. Their examples should be heartening to all of us. But please don’t make the mistake of comparing where you are with your writing with where anyone else is. It may well lead to professional envy (I know), which is a terrible waste of time and emotional energy that can better be spent living with one’s characters and playing with words.
Want to catch up with parts of this talk you missed?
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“Spectacular!” “Inspiring!” Two words people used to describe my keynote speech at CANSCAIP’s Packaging Your Imagination conference last month. Pretty gratifying feedback!
You missed it? Fear not! I’m going to post the whole speech here at “Turning the Pages”, a little at a time, on the first Wednesday of each month, starting today . . .
“Sock Fluff” was my introduction to Loris Lesynski, back in the early 90s, before it was published by Annick Press, in Dirty Dog Boogie. A participant in a workshop led by my partner, Peter Carver, she had given him some of her work to read and he couldn’t resist showing it to me.
In recognition of whose shoes I would be stepping into today, I decided to call my talk “An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff”. I am not a poet and I am not funny, so this will be a very different talk from what you would have enjoyed with Loris at the podium, but it’s my sincere hope that we’ll be treated to that experience at another Packaging Your Imagination conference in the not too distant future.
Sock fluff, as Loris’s poem suggests, is precious. It’s personal. And it’s revealing of character. Writers and illustrators are concerned, often, with character, along with other matters such as setting, plot, and so on. But when is the last time you examined your characters’ socks, or the fluff they produced?
Thick socks leave more fluff than thin ones. What do thick, multi-bright-coloured socks say about a person? Or thin pastel one with lace around the edges? Are your character’s socks arranged neatly in pairs in their drawer or thrown in helter-skelter?
I digress. This talk is about sock fluff. And today I plan to pull some out from between my toes, and let it reveal to you what it may, or may not, about what’s important to me, as a writer, what inspires me. Rest assured: the brown fuzzy stuff currently nestled between my toes will remain firmly tucked in. Today’s sock fluff will come through poems that have spoken to me at different points in my life.
Loris’s “Sock Fluff” – no matter that she works very hard at her craft – is a great reminder to me to be playful. Most of us come to writing (or illustrating) initially, because it’s fun. Some of us, in the face of the trials that the business of writing lays before us, lose sight, from time to time, of the fun of what we do. I hope today’s “intimate examination of sock fluff” through a dozen or so poems will help remind us of the fun to be had in what we do.
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Sock Fluff image from Dirty Dog Boogie by Loris Lesynski, Annick Press 1999
Ideas are everywhere and anyone can catch them if they practice watching and listening to what’s going on around them.
Sometimes ideas come to me from my own experiences, sometimes from other people’s. Sometimes they come to me when I’m reading a book someone else has written, sometimes when I’m in the middle of writing one of my own!
