Irish Treasure

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”  

-- W.B. Yeats

St. Patrick’s Day is a bittersweet day for me. I’m a Kelley, with roots in County Cork, and I’ve always enjoyed the wearin’ o’ the green. But since my sister passed away in the early morning hours of March 18^th twelve years ago, St. Patrick’s Day and the first weeks of spring which follow have always been something of a tough time for me. If you’ve followed this blog at all, you’ll know what that means: it’s writing time--less expensive than therapy! And, as Sigmund Freud said of the Irish, “This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.” Glad I found an alternative.

The Yeats quote I opened with makes me laugh, in part because I recognize myself in it, despite the fact that I strive to overcome my sense of tragedy with gratitude. I’ve always known that life is unfair—how else to explain the fact that I, as the middle child, was the only kid in the family who escaped the genetic mutation that limited my siblings’ physical and mental abilities and shortened their lives? But I’ve also always believed that life is what we make of it—that we can find the good that’s ours for the taking, if we just look hard enough. Another Irish saying expresses the dark optimism to which I ascribe when I’m feeling low: No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse.

So, today, I am trying to buoy my sense of tragedy with a bit of joy. I am sad as I remember how much I miss my little sister, my big brother, and my friend, Fal. But remembering how lucky I was to have them in my life—well, that’s a joy that I’ll always have. I can mine for happiness just as easily as I can mine for despair. So here’s a little gem from my childhood years with Jeannette.

Olive Oyl—A Slippery Tale

Jeannette’s shriek had me out of bed before I was even awake.

I was about twelve years old, and Jeannette (aged 9) and I shared a bedroom. Our twin beds were pushed together, which allowed me to soothe her and pull up her blankets if she needed help in the middle of the night. It also decreased her odds of falling out of bed by half. Had she fallen out the far side?

“Wha’s wrong? Jeannette, what’s wrong?” I fumbled for my glasses, then turned on the light. By that time, Mom and Dad had appeared in the doorway.

Jeannette was sitting up in her bed, tears streaming down her face. “Ah-ee oy! Ah-ee oy!” she wailed.  

“Jeannette, are you hurt? Does something hurt?” She shook her head and began pulling at the covers.

“Was it a bad dream, do you think?” Mom and Dad and I checked her over as she continued to sob. We pulled back the blankets to check her legs. A bendable plastic doll, the kind with an inner wire frame, fell from the covers, and Jeannette gasped.

“Ah-ee oy!” Jeannette grabbed the small doll and clutched it to her chest.

My parents and I groaned. “Olive Oyl!”

It was a dime-store present. We’d purchased a bendable Popeye doll for Bobby, and another doll, Olive Oyl (Popeye’s girlfriend), for Jeannette. For some reason, Jeannette was enthralled with the gawky doll with the painted red dress. She carried her everywhere, setting the doll next to her plate at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, engaging in conversations that no one could understand, giggling at something that we could only guess was a joke . . . made by Olive Oyl?

“She must have taken her to bed instead of letting Mrs. Beasley hold her,” I decided. The bespectacled Mrs. Beasley doll with the blue polka dot body and the yellow plastic hair was still in her place near the bed, grinning amiably. “Did you bring Olive Oyl to bed with you, Jeannette?”

She nodded yes. Her shoulders heaved as little gasps pulled them forward.

“No wonder you lost her. Now let’s give Olive Oyl to Mrs. Beasley so we can all go back to sleep.” Dad headed back to bed.

“No!” Jeannette looked up in alarm and pulled Olive Oyl away from Mom’s reach.

“Yes, Jeannette. You can have her in the morning.” Mom reached again for Olive Oyl.

Jeannette began to cry. Mom looked at me helplessly.

“Oh, let her keep Olive Oyl,” I said. “I’ll find her if she loses it again.” I helped Jeannette lie back down in the bed. “Look, Jay, put her here, under your pillow. That way she won’t move around when you sleep. And you can put your hand up to see if she’s still there when you wake up, okay?”  Jeannette nodded happily, her eyes already closing as she tucked one hand under her pillow.

Mom turned off the lights and we all went to sleep. Problem solved. Or so we thought. At least we knew what the screeches were about when Jeannette woke in the middle of the night after that. Good ol’ Olive Oyl. It wasn’t too hard to find her in the dark, now that we knew what to look for.

But Olive Oyl, like all things well-loved, would not stay the same forever.

One day her head fall off.

“Ahhhhh!!!!!!!” Jeannette’s wail brought us running to the living room, where she sat on the rug, looking in horror from one hand to the other, a red-dressed torso clutched in the left, a smiling round head the size of a large marble in the right. She held out both hands to us imploringly. “Fix Ah-ee Oy?”

Sometimes we could work miracles, but this time we couldn’t. A small part of me—the tired part, the part which had spent numerous nights since Olive Oyl’s first escape searching for the renegade doll among Jeannette’s blankets—breathed a little sigh of relief. Maybe now we could find a suitable replacement for the wire doll—something bigger. Much bigger, and harder to lose in the middle of the night.

“We can’t fix her, Jay. I’m sorry.” I braced myself for tears.

Jeannette regarded the contents of both her hands solemnly. “Okay,” she said, handing me Olive Oyl’s torso. “You frow away?”

I looked back at her. “Um . . . yeah. I can throw her away.” Really? She’s just gonna let me toss her in the garbage? I was surprised, but not about to question her equanimity. I reached for her other hand. “You want me to throw that away, too?”

Jeannette pulled away in horror. “No frow! No frow Ah-ee Oy away!” If she could have added “you monster!” I’m sure she would have. She pulled Olive Oyl’s head close to her face and whispered something as she turned her body away from me. A protective spell, perhaps.  

“Uh . . . Jay? We can’t fix her, you know.” Jeannette ignored me stonily.

“Maybe we can get her a new one,” Mom offered.

“Oh, Mom!” I started, shooting her daggers.

“What?” said Mom.

“That doll’s too small! Every night she loses it in the blankets, and I have to find it.”

“Yes, but she loves it,” said Mom, watching Jeannette examine the dismembered head. “Let’s get her a new one.”

“But, Mom—“

“No new Ah-ee Oy!” said Jeannette, interrupting us. “DIS Ah-ee Oy.”

“But—“ began Mom.

“DIS ONE!”

And that was that.

Olive Oyl’s head went everywhere Jeannette went. The macabre, grinning, pebble-eyed pate sat at the breakfast table, the lunch table, the dinner table. Jeannette clutched Olive Oyl’s head on trips to the grocery store. Olive Oyl’s head floated in the bathtub among the bubbles. And, of course, Olive Oyl’s head came to bed with Jeannette.

Thunk! Taptaptap thunk! tap tap . . .

The sound of Olive Oyl’s head slipping beneath our two beds and bouncing crookedly away between our shoes and toys would wake me moments before Jeannette’s wail of alarm. I’d swim beneath the bed like a pearl-diver seeking treasure, hoping I could surface before Jay was out of breath from her sobbing. The constant interruption to my sleep began to take its toll on me. At night, I’d yell at Jeannette. “Not again! Can’t you let Mrs. Beasley watch her, Jay?” and worse, “Why don’t you try looking for her sometime?” Then I’d feel guilty and dive back under the bed until I found the hated head. By day, I’d imagine all the strange misfortunes that could befall Olive Oyl. An unfortunate nose-dive into a pot of spaghetti sauce? She was about the right size for a small meatball. Or maybe a trip to a driving range could set her (and me) free. Fore!

Mom must have seen how the lack of sleep was affecting my sanity--or, at least, my mood. One day I came home from school, and she held up a pretty little drawstring sack that she had crocheted. It was purple, Jeannette’s favorite color. “I think this may work,” she said. At the time, I had no clue what she meant. Did she think the sack could replace Olive Oyl? "Sure," I mumbled. "Whatever you say."

That night, Mom hung the little purple bag from Jeannette’s bedpost. “I made a special bed for Olive Oyl,” she told Jeannette. “She can sleep right up here, between you and Frances. And she’ll be here in the morning when you wake up. What do you think?”

We watched for her reaction. “Bed? For Ah-ee Oy?”

“It’s purple. Like the bedspread.”

“Puh-pah bed for Ah-ee Oy?” Jeannette whispered something to Olive Oyl. She nodded. Then she put her in the sack. “N’nite, Ah-ee Oy,” she said, patting the bag. And Jeannette went to sleep with her hand clutching Olive Oyl’s head through the corner of the hanging purple ‘bed.’

She woke up several times that week in a panic, but she learned to reach up and find Olive Oyl sleeping in her ‘bed’, and I found myself looking much more kindly at the silly plastic head by day, since I was sleeping so much better each night. I grew to appreciate the comfort and companionship she seemed to offer my sister. And I learned not to underestimate my Mom's good ideas.

Olive Oyl’s features wore off in time, and she was gradually replaced by a much bigger and brighter companion—a Big Bird hand puppet, who, wisely, never roamed from his place on Jeannette’s pillow each night.

---

In her three decades of life, Jeannette never gave up her need for “lovies.” She learned not to carry them to school—they waited for her at the top of the stairs each school day, and, later, they waited for her to return home from work at Seabird Enterprises. She grew a small collection of favorites. In addition to Big Bird, Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog became part of her circle of friends. Even when they were not with her, she carried their voices in her head. Like our brother, Bobby, Jeannette had schizophrenia as part of her list of disabilities—a very benign form which generally served to keep her happy and laughing at the goings-on of her favorite friends.  She whispered to them, she doubled over with laughter at some funny joke one or another had played, and she occasionally scolded and yelled at them for misbehaving. But mostly she just enjoyed their company.

Now that she’s gone, when I think of her, I sometimes wish I had that silly Olive Oyl head to hold onto. I wonder where it went. And then I laugh at myself a little.

A “lovey” or a token won’t ever replace Jeannette for me. “Lovies” get lost. Tokens break. Although my sister’s passing left a hole in my heart that won’t ever be filled, time helps heal the jagged edges of loss. And if I listen hard enough, I realize that her voice is still with me. It doesn’t intrude on my thoughts the way the voices of schizophrenia intruded on hers and Bobby’s—but it is there, nevertheless. I hear her laugh; I hear my brother’s; I hear Fal's. On the twelfth anniversary of Jeannette’s passing, I still remember the feel of her small hand as I pressed Olive Oyl’s head into her palm, and the feel of her arms wrapped around my neck in a sleepy hug.

Memory is something to be grateful for.

And a memory that brings a smile—that’s a treasure, indeed. 

Rest in Peace, Jeannette Irene Kelley

July 15, 1966 – March 18, 2001

May the road rise up to meet you,

May the wind be always at your back,

May the sun shine on your face,

The rains fall soft upon your fields.

Until we meet again, may God hold you

In the palm of his hand.

Choices

You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world . . . but you do have some say in who hurts you.                                John Green

I finished reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green this week. A few pages into it, I thought, “Maybe this was not such a good idea.” Since I just lost a close friend to lung disease which had no known cause, reading a book in which a main character had terminal cancer in her lungs seemed to have been a questionable decision on my part.

But I kept reading anyway.

And—wow. As I said in my last blog post, I knew that the young adult genre was the right place for me to turn when I was hurting. Young adult novelists face problems head on—no candy coating, no pretensions. Is this a world full of pain? Uh-huh. Do bad things happen to good people? You betcha. But young adult writers don’t leave you in existential nihilistic emptiness. A message of hopelessness and meaninglessness is not part of the unspoken contract between reader and writer. In fact, the opposite is true. Some small seed of hope is expected, despite the painful truths explored in a young adult novel. And I believe that John Green truly delivered on this promise in this work of art.

He hit on the truth. There is a layer of fear that the chronically and terminally ill face each day—the impact of their conditions, and especially of their deaths, on those who love them. It’s a fear born of love. We all face it—there is always a risk in loving someone: risk of disappointment, risk of rejection, risk of loss, risk of hurting those we love ourselves. But most of us choose to love others anyway—accepting that risk is our choice. We may not like the risk, but we choose love anyway.

Shortly after a hospitalization in which the critical nature of my friend Fal’s illness became evident, we were sitting on her couch talking. Her husband came in, and she spoke to both of us. “You know, I yelled at Rudi for calling you. I said, ‘Hasn’t this woman already gone through enough already without having to deal with all this?’”  Then Fal paused and looked at me. “I don’t want people taking on more than they can handle to help me,” she said. “It’s . . . too much to ask.” She knew what was coming—the risks involved. And she wanted to protect us. She wanted to give her friends an out, in case we couldn’t handle the pain.

But we have a choice. We can choose to toughen up, to turn away, to distract ourselves or distance ourselves from others. Sometimes we do it for our own good—we know that getting too attached will lead to heartache. Sometimes it seems the wisest course. And sometimes we choose to love despite the terrible risks.

It doesn’t always seem like a choice. I could not help loving my friend, any more than I could help loving my own family. But, in truth, it is a choice. And that’s what Fal needed to know. That we, her friends, were walking into this situation with our eyes wide open. With a full understanding that we were taking on a big risk in sticking with her. And she wanted us to know that she’d forgive us if we couldn’t take that risk. She didn’t want us to get hurt.

I told Fal to let it go—she didn’t have any choice over whether we decided to hang tight or distance ourselves. We’d each do what we needed to do—she’d have to rely on each of us to make the right choices for ourselves. We knew she wouldn’t love us any less no matter what we chose. We’d promise to take care of ourselves and our needs, if she’d promise to take care of her own, and let go of ours. She reluctantly agreed. But she never stopped worrying about us.

Fal worried about her family above all else. When the kids are older, I’ll probably recommend The Fault in Our Stars to them. Because the other thing we want for our loved ones is the opportunity for each one of them to lead fulfilling lives, to be whole and to truly live and find happiness if we should pass before them. That’s what Fal wanted. John Green got that right, too.

The Fault in Our Stars doesn’t make the pain go away. But it reminds me that I had the choice to love Fal. I even had the choice to love my brother and sister.  And my choices have left me richer, despite the losses.

Thanks, John Green (and Augustus Waters).

Thank you, Fal.

Words

I loved my friend.

He went away from me

There’s nothing more to say

The poem ends,

Soft as it began--

I loved my friend.

                       by Langston Hughes

This week, I lost my friend. In the darkness of grief, when reality has become unreal, when tears don’t heal and the future seems like a long road of emptiness, where do I go? What do I do? I turn to words. And sometimes they fail me. “There’s nothing more to say.” There is more grief expressed in those words written by poet Langston Hughes than in anything I’ve ever read.

Words heal us. As writers, the words that flow can surprise us. W.H. Auden said, “I look at what I write so that I may see what I think.” It’s a primal kind of therapy for some of us, a way to pull from the jumbled brain something that has shape, or order, or meaning.

As readers, words connect us. Whether they make us smile—hey, I’m not the only one who thinks that’s funny!—or bring us to tears, it’s all about the human connection.

Writers for children must honor this need for connection in their work. Books like Each Little Bird that Sings by Deborah Wiles for middle graders, and The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork for young adults deal with life and death, and living in the midst of death, in ways that acknowledge and honor all of our mixed emotions about moving forward in a world that can be filled with heartache. The fact that sometimes we don’t really want to face up to our fears and losses, while somewhere deep inside we are aching to come to terms with them—these are themes and threads that run throughout our lives, and that run through all good literature. Each Little Bird and Death Warriors both fit the bill here beautifully.

So where do I turn when my own words fail me? When I can’t write my way out of my own hurt? To the words of others. To books, of course. Young adult, preferably—tightly written, emotionally true. And for one other reason which I’ll get to in a minute.

Next to me is a copy of The Fault in our Stars by John Green. A novel of life and death and the people caught in between, says Markus Zusak’s review on the back cover. Because I need that connection right now—to feel a little less alone in my head with all these difficult feelings. Because I know that it will help me think about my own loss and view it in a different light. Because, despite all the crying I’ve been doing in the past few days, I need another good cry—the kind which connects me with people I’ve never met, all feeling some of the same sort of feelings that those of us who knew and loved my friend are feeling right now. A connection to the great ocean of the world’s sorrows, but at the same time, a connection to the world’s light. Because young adult books may leave us sad, but they will never just dump you into the middle of despair and leave you without a life vest. If John Green’s book is true to the tradition of young adult work, I’ll find what I’m looking for by the end. That glimmer of hope. That life vest I need so desperately right now.

As for my own words, I offer up a poem I wrote out of gratitude for having had my dear friend in my life. I include it here as a connection to the greater world. If you didn’t know my friend, at least you may get a sense of who she was—who she’ll always be. May she bring a little light to your life, as she has done for so many others. May she always be remembered.

   

Drawing a Lotus

with gratitude for Fal

From the dark paste,

like a seedling lifting

itself from the mud,

a flower emerged

and raised its head

to the light of the world.

From her warm hands

she gave the lotus life.

She blessed the skin,

she blessed the heart

of its bearer.

Mehndi maker,

on our souls

you drew a

life

so beautiful,

a pattern

so pure,

a love

so real

that it

could

never

fade.

Within the heavy

darkness of our hearts

a lotus stirs:

your love for us.

F. Prescott

1/13/13

Pursuing a Dream Deferrred

I’m not a jealous person by nature—it’s just not part of my make-up, I’m happy to say. But when I took my daughter to visit Emerson College last week and listened to a young woman on the student panel talk about how fortunate she was to be able to pursue her BFA in writing there, I will admit, the green-eyed monster reared its head for a little while.

If only I had chosen to go to school for writing, where might I be now?

Next week I will be forty-nine years old. I have been writing seriously for only a few years. I have completed two novels, both currently in revision, several picture books, still tentatively being sent out to publishers, and I’ve had a few poems published, but haven’t really pursued that aspect of my writing. And I took no writing classes in all my years of college, way back when. I didn't believe in my ability to tell a story that other people would want to hear. I kept my dream tucked away inside my heart.

So, as I sat and listened to the young woman at Emerson enthusiastically describing her passion for her major, those two ugly words kept popping into my head. If only. . . if only. . . if only. . .

Which finally woke me up to my own reality.

I have lived a full and varied life. I have traveled, had a family, lived on an island, run a marathon, learned to sing. I’ve seen otters slipping through the woods from pond to pond. I have seen how many of my friends’ and loved ones’ real life stories have ended. I’ve known and loved children who have left this world too soon.

And I realize that coming into the world of writers in mid-life is not so terrible a thing, after all.

Because when I write now, I bring to the table the fullness of my life. It is a life I love, despite the challenges. Or, perhaps, because of the challenges. Because where would we be without those challenges? How would we grow? How would we appreciate how good life can be without understanding, also, how hard it can be?

Becoming a serious writer can happen at any age. Although I didn't take writing classes in college, I have been devouring books on the craft of writing, reading and studying the works of authors in and outside my genre, attending workshops and conferences. . . and writing and revising, writing and revising ad infinitum.

And I love it.

I have things to say in my writing that I couldn’t have said in my teens, or my twenties. Heck, not even in my thirties. I know things about myself that I couldn’t have guessed at twenty years ago. And I think that informs my writing in a way that no books on craft of workshops could ever do.

So the green-eyed monster has slipped away as I realize that I have been training as a writer all my life. I am happy for those who know at a younger age that this is their dream. The world is a better place because of these young artists, pursuing their craft and maturing into it. But as I head to the New England SCBWI writing conference today, excited about the many different sessions on craft and publishing I've signed up for, and ready to apply what I learn to my work as a writer, I realize how very lucky I am to be pursuing my own dream deferred. Because this is a dream which has grown richer with age. And I am ready to savor every last bit of it.

Acorns, Bunkers, and Inspiration

Like a squirrel whose forgotten acorns sprout and become trees, I once tucked an idea away in the depths of my twenty-three-year-old mind, only to discover that it had grown into an oak while I wasn’t watching.

The idea dropped in my lap about twenty-five years ago, during my first year as a teacher out on Fishers Island. One of my students decided to take me exploring.  We crossed over the old Fort Wright parade grounds, encountering the skeletal remains of rabbits, raccoons, and possibly even sheep, heading through the grass and brush to a small hill in the relatively flat landscape.  Vines grew over scrap metal and old, rusted out cars. 

“You’re gonna love this,” Kevin said to me, looking back over his shoulder with a grin.  And was he ever right!

It was the remains of the enormous gun pits and bunkers of the hundred-year-old Fort Wright.  Small lime stalactites clung to dank corridor ceilings, leached from the cement by a century of rainwater.  Crumbled stairways led down to dark rooms filled with damp leaves and dirt.  Steel ladders led from level to level, with no rails around the openings in the floors and ceilings—just gaping holes. 

It was like a visit to another time and place.  And it got me thinking.

Wouldn’t this be an amazing setting for a children’s book?

I loved it.  I was mesmerized by it.  I visited it many times during my years on the island, and each time I felt transported from the everyday world to another place altogether.  And each time I said to myself:  this would be a great setting for a story.

I messed around with the idea a little, but I wasn’t really serious about my writing back then.  I was just playing around.  And then life got busy, and I had two kids, and we moved off of Fishers and got even busier.

But that little acorn was planted in my brain, lying forgotten in the dark. . . just waiting. . .

Until this fall, when I put aside the young adult novel I’d been revising to write something which would honor my brother. 

And suddenly that seed burst to life, like it had just been waiting for the right conditions to shoot up and throw itself into full leaf.  Here I am!  Your portal to a new world!  Betcha forgot you’d planted me, huh?

I felt like I’d smacked right into the trunk of that tree and fallen back on my rear, looking up in wonder.

Story ideas are like that.  Seeds planted ages ago, from bits of overheard conversation, scraps of family history, old hopes and dreams.  Any of them can sprout at any time—if the conditions are right.  And one of the ways to improve conditions for a writer is to keep a journal.

I’ve kept journals since I was in fifth grade.  I can peek through them and find a whole forest of acorns raining down on me.  So when I had an opportunity to meet with Eileen Robinson, editor of Move books and a former executive editor at Scholastic, I loved her suggestion that I write a journal from Cara’s point of view as I completed my Sepia revision. 

With that in mind, I decided today that Cara needed to write about a visit to Fort Mansfield, at the very end of Napatree Point.  Fort Mansfield was built at the same time as Fort Wright, but much of the fort was washed away by the Hurricane of 1938.  The combination of Fort Wright and Fort Mansfield create the opening images of Sepia.

I walked the mile-long beach out to the point, pushed through the brambles, and climbed onto a gun emplacement.  Well, I got Cara’s fear of falling down all right, I thought as I edged my way over and around the bunkers.  But what a view! 

I’m posting several pics of this morning’s field trip here.  You’ll find some of the gaping holes, the crumbling stairs, and the drop-offs that Cara worries about in these photos.  But I hope that you’ll also find acorns here.  Maybe the vistas remind you of something you’d like to write about, or the overgrowth of vines sparks a different memory.  Maybe it’s a fear, or a dream.  Write it down!  Go out on a field trip of your own!  The more acorns we plant, the bigger our forests grow, full of ideas. . . full of stories.

Seeking Gold

When my brother passed away, we made arrangements for his service with minister Carolyn Patierno, the mother of one of my former students.  After my father and I met with her, Carolyn pulled me aside to ask how I was doing. 

“Okay,” I told her.  “I’m trying to get out for a walk now and then, and it helps.”

Carolyn was glad that I was walking.  “It’s so important to move,” she told me.  She had studied with a professor at seminary who emphasized this as well, because “grief settles in your joints” and movement allows us to circulate it—to process it. 

I loved that analogy.  “Grief settles in your joints.”

I come from a family of “movers.”  My father, who coached cross-country and track for his entire teaching career, took up tennis in his retirement.  He is a formidable opponent, ranking fifth in New England in his age group not long ago.  His younger sister, Ellen, bikes, swims, runs, kick-boxes, and does yoga.  She is in her mid-seventies.  Their brother, John, won the Boston Marathon in 1957, won the Pan American Games marathon in 1959, went to the Olympics twice, and was an icon of the runners’ movement which began in the 1970’s.

I’m overweight and plagued by back, hip, and knee problems.  But I am still compelled to be active—it’s in my blood.  After my sister passed away in March 2001, I ran and sobbed through the spring and summer.  9/11 followed, so I continued to run through the pain and questions.  I have branched out to swimming, biking, and walking, but the need to move (outdoors) is deeply ingrained.

For the past few weeks, I haven’t had much opportunity to get out, however.  I attended the SCBWI (Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) conference in NYC this weekend, and arrived home all fired up to write.  But my schedule since coming home has allowed for nothing but work, meetings, and volunteer-related work—no opportunity for movement or for writing.  Last night I sat down for a few minutes at the computer, and—nothing.  No inspiration.  No thoughts.  I stared at the screen.

My brain was a jumbled mess of nada. What was wrong?

And then I realized—I haven’t been able to get out and really move since Friday in New York, when I took the opportunity to do plenty of walking around the city. 

Not only does grief settle in your joints, creativity does, too. 

So today I am going to take myself out for a walk.  It’s the one day this week that I’m not working, although I’m still catching up an a million errands.  But I know that a few miles in the fresh air will get my thoughts flowing. 

And I’m reminded of how the old timers used to pan for gold by allowing running water to wash away the silt which hid those valuable flakes and nuggets of gold.  When I move, the circulating blood somehow manages to float away all of the extraneous thoughts from my mind. 

When we are dealing with loss, some of those extraneous thoughts may be the painful aspects of grief—the memories which focus on the loss itself and the anguish it caused.  What’s left behind for me is the essence of my loved ones’ lives.  The truth of why they lived, rather than why they died. 

When we are talking about creativity, movement acts like an opened sluice, helping to float away the extraneous, the unnecessary, the stuff that gets in the way of what’s important.  It clears away the silt which settles in our brains, and it allows us to see what’s real, what’s important.  Again, it allows us to see the truth.

And truth is what we, as writers, need to work with whenever we write.  Sure, we’re making up stories.  Sure, the work is “fiction.”  But fiction without truth is a hollow thing.  Just as life without truth is merely delusional.

Writers find many ways to improve their creativity.  Some are movers—biking, walking, and running their way through life.  Others are listeners, playing or performing music that suits their needs and tastes.  Some are observers, sketchers, painters.  But all of us are miners, moving through this world and swirling away the silt of everyday life, looking for that bright speck of gold.  Looking for the truth.

Villains as Heroes

Are you a hero?  How about your cat?  What about your grouchy neighbor—the one who gives your kids the evil eye when they’re playing kickball in the back yard?

 

Of course you are.  And so is Fluff-ems.  And mean old Mr. Wilson.  Each of you is the hero of your own story.  You are the protagonist in your own life’s journey.

As I work on my revision of Sepia, I’ve been thinking about the hero of my story, Cara, but I've also been spending a lot of time examining the antagonists and the minor characters in my work.  Although some of them do not play large roles in this particular book, each of them has his/her own story arc—they have their own lives, with their own goals and hopes and dreams.  They are heroes, too, if we follow them through their lives.  They are the most important characters in their own stories.

My writing becomes much stronger when I remember this:  none of these characters exists solely to inhabit my novel.  They are only included because they have a role to play in Sepia—but when they are offstage, they are pursuing their goals as if the spotlight never left them.  This makes them much more vibrant and three-dimensional when they cross paths with my main characters.

I am having the most fun thinking about the antagonists of my story—my villains.  Surely, they don’t see themselves as villains!  They aren’t running around doing evil for evil’s sake.  As a matter of fact, my main villain is pretty sure she is doing a good thing for the world of Sepia—it’s just that she believes the other characters are too ignorant to understand her.  This makes the scenes between Cara and the Magistrina much more interesting to write (and, I hope, to read!)

So, how does this translate to real life?  To my days growing up with Bobby and Jeannette?  Well, when I think about the “villains” in my life, the ones I really wanted to disintegrate with one well-aimed blast of my laser-beam eyes, I realize that those villains were other kids, just like me.  They just happened to be other kids who were staring at my brother or sister. 

Did they think of themselves as “the bad guys?”  I doubt it.  They were just busy living their own lives, suddenly being confronted with the unknown.  They stared at my sibs to examine something they’d never seen before.  Some of them laughed—they had their own set of issues which I might examine in greater depth in another post—but most just stared.  And I hated them for it. 

Now that I have some perspective, I can see that they weren’t evil.  Maybe ignorant.  Maybe rude.  But not evil.  They were the heroes of their own lives, seeking out new information.  I certainly don’t agree that staring was the way to do it, but most children don’t really know any better. 

So the next time I’m confronted with a “villain” in real life, maybe I’ll try to get into their heads the way I explored my characters’ motivations in my novel.  Maybe I’ll try to figure out what their perspective is, and why they might believe that they are right to act the way they do.  Maybe Mr. Wilson the neighbor has a sick grandchild visiting, and he's worried the kickball game will disturb her.  Maybe the cat who just ripped up a new set of curtains was valiantly hunting a mosquito which snuck into the house. 

I might not agree with their approach . . . but maybe if I look at things from their perspective, I’ll understand them enough to find new ways to improve our interactions. 

Although these days, I might be tempted to pull out my laptop and plot out an interesting scene which escalates the confrontation and results in a dramatic and exciting conclusion, completely vindicating our hero, yours truly!  (Isn’t writing wonderfully therapeutic?)

Carry on, friends.  You are all heroes.