A New Poetry Form ~ IN ONE WORD

Howdy, Campers ~ Happy Poetry Friday! (my poems and the link to today's host are below)

But first: May 29th is the last day to enter to win an author-and-illustrator-autographed copy of Amy Alznauer's book, THE BOY WHO DREAMED OF INFINITY, which has gotten starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus and Publishers Weekly! Go to Esther's post and scroll to the end for directions on how to enter.

We TeachingAuthors generally post Writing Workouts on Wednesdays, but we figure you're blurry-eyed and zoomhausted. Some of you may be desperately looking for a ready-to-go writing exercise for yourself, your kids or your classroom.

Or, you've had two cups of strong coffee, read the whole newspaper including the real estate ads, weeded your entire yard, vacuumed, run 10 miles, made two loaves of sourdough, finished the 1000-piece puzzle and are now looking for something fun to do.

Either way, this round we're offering you GRAB 'N GO WRITING EXERCISES

And today, we're going to learn a new poetry form.

drawing (c) 2020 April Halprin Wayland all rights reserved

Or maybe it's a form I hadn't heard of before...so if you're familiar with it, I'm all ears!

First I'll show you my poem, using this form, then I'll tell you its backstory.

The poem:

IN ONE WORD

by April Halprin Wayland
."I feel we've been duped,"

he began, "our world's been upended,

you crept

into our lives so deep

we must prune

you, denude

you. And though we've been reduced,

we have also endured.

But I can no longer pretend.

This is unprecedented."

poem © 2020 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

==========================

The backstory:

The word UNPRECEDENTED is in almost every sentence of every answer, every op-ed, every comment, every excuse right now. And frankly, I'm freaking tired of it.

And in the poem above, every word at the end of each line can be found in the word unprecedented.

The site Wordmaker finds all the words hidden within a longer word. It found 321 words in Unprecedented. 321! Of those, I choose 31 one to play with. And of the 31, I used 10 in the final poem.

How to write an IN ONE WORD poem:

1) Think of a word. Any word--one you've always loved, one that enrages you, that peaks your interest, or speaks to you.

2) Look it up in Wordmaker (to make it more challenging, don't look it up...find the words yourself)

3) Choose some words on that list...then use or toss them, one by one.

4) Write the poem as prose--in one paragraph.

5) Break the paragraph up into a poem so that each line ends with one of the words from your list.
6) NOTE: in 2021 I began to break rule #5 in one of two ways:

a) These days, the lines of my IN ONE WORD poems do NOT end with the words from my list. I bury the words within the poem so it makes more sense and reads better.

b) OR: I simply scoop up a bucket of words from those within my word. Not more than 20, usually less. I let myself play with those words any way I want to, in any order. SO MUCH FUN!

========================================

Okay, here's one more...it's today's very rough draft:
.

POEM-MAKING (title is from the book of the same name by Myra Cohn Livingston)

by April Halprin Wayland
.

It's a kind of art—

lit by air

and light. Kept in a vault,

it can only chase it's own tail.

So blow on it, gently—this is vital.

It's yours; invent your own ritual.

poem © 2020 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved==========================

The backstory:

For this poem, I choose another word that's used so often it's driving me bonkers: VIRTUAL.

Below are the 18 words I decided to play with from the 65 words offered by Wordmaker.
I used the six that I've crossed out: 

it, lit, air, art, rut, rail, tail, liar, vial, vail, rival, trial, vault, viral, vital, trail, ultra, ritual

One of the wonders of this form is that I can take a word that makes me sick and come up with a poem that's kind or glowing. 

I think I've invented a new poetry form! An IN ONE WORD poem.  What do you think?

update: Mary Lee, from the A Year of Reading blog, wrote a wonderful IN ONE WORD poem to "do the internal work of anti-racism"...and here it is...WOW! 

drawing (c) 2020 April Halprin Wayland all rights reserved

It sure is fun to play with. Try it!  And if you're feeling brave, share it with us!

Thank you, Carol, for hosting Poetry Friday today at Beyond Literary!

posted by April Halprin Wayland with a hug she wishes weren't virtual or unprecedented

drawing (c) 2020 April Halprin Wayland all rights reserved

"Just the Facts, M'am"--fiction vs non-fiction on Poetry Friday

.
Howdy, Campers, and Happy Poetry Friday! (the link to this week's PF host is below.)

First: welcome, welcome to our newest TeachingAuthor, Carla!  I am in awe of your writer's journey, Carla, because when I learned that we would be discussing non-fiction, my legs trembled and my palms grew cold and damp.  Unlike you and Mary Ann, in her wonderful first salvo on this topic, I am not, by nature, a researcher.  I am NOT a "Just the facts, M'am."

Jack Webb as Joe Friday in Dragnet, from Wikipedia

But... is this really true?

Well...I DO tell my students that real details bring fiction to life, and have them listen to the following short audioclip from StoryCorps.  Talk about bringing a subject to life! The details Laura Greenberg shares with her daughter are priceless--not to mention hilarious.

Still, I struggled to write poems for The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science (Pomelo Books).  By "struggled" I mean I read science articles and wrote tons of stinky poems about rocks, astronauts, materials science, the expiration dates on seed packages,electricity, science experiments...and on and on and on.

But...I dread gettting facts wrong--my worst nightmare. (Confession: writing these blog posts scares the bejeebers out of me.)

In fiction, I can fly my fairy-self to Planet Bodiddley and make up all the materials science by myself.  But if I have to convey facts?  And then somehow bake them into a tasty poetry pie?  I get tied up in knots.  My writing becomes stiff as a board.  I'm afraid of...

But finally I stumbled on this fascinating fact, in a review of The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman:"The water coming out of your kitchen tap is four billion years old and might well have been sipped by a Tyrannosaurus rex."

Wow. Think of the water you drink.  Think of the water you take a BATH in!!!! Ten versions of "Space Bathtub" later (with considerable coaching from the ever-patient anthologists, Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell) this fact became a poem for kindergartners:

OLD WATER
by April Halprin Wayland

I am having a soak in the tub.
Mom is giving my neck a strong scrub.

Water sloshes against the sides.
H2O's seeping into my eyes.

The wet stuff running down my face?
She says it came from outer space!

The water washing between my toes
was born a billion years ago.

from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science
(c) 2014 April Halprin Wayland, all rights reserved

If you're a K-5th grade teacher, this science/poetry anthology is so immediately useful, you'll cry with relief when you open it. Trust me. For details, and to watch under-two minute videos of poets (Bobbi Katz, Kristy Dempsey, Mary Lee Hahn, Susan Blackaby, Buffy Silverman, Linda Sue Park and me) reciting our science poems from this anthology, go to Renee LaTulippe's No Water River.  Again, trust me. (A little foreshadowing: Pomelo Books' newest anthology, Celebrations! comes just in time for Poetry Month this year--stay tuned!)

Here's a terrific vimeo of "Old Water" produced by Christopher Alello:

And thank you, Linda Baie, fabulous friend of TeachingAuthors, for hosting Poetry Friday today!

posted safely and scientifically by April Halprin Wayland wearing safety goggles

Guest Teaching Author! Book Giveaway!

Happy Friday! As I promised on Wednesday, today I'm bringing you an author who turned a close encounter with nature into a joyful and educational picture book. That author is Lisa Morlock.

Lisa works as a writer and educator in Urbandale, Iowa. She has taught middle school through college language arts classes, worked as a secondary administrator, and written and edited for Perfection Learning Corporation and Meredith Corporation. She has led writing workshops with TAG students and teacher workshops on the nature-literacy connection, as well as guesting for whole-school visiting author programs. In addition, Lisa currently serves as the Assistant Regional Advisor for SCBWI-Iowa.

Lisa's picture book, her first, is Track that Scat! (Sleeping Bear Press, 2012). From the publisher:

When Finn and her dog Skeeter set out on a hike to cure their restless feet, they literally take a step into nature. A big gooey step...right into scat (also known as poop). And just like the animal it comes from, scat comes in all shapes and sizes. Scat, along with foot or paw tracks, can tell a lot about the creature who produced it.

As Finn's hike takes her further into the woods, she happens along some scat and tracks from a variety of woodland creatures.

Pairing punchy rhyme with science writing, Lisa Morlock has created the perfect nature guide, providing detailed descriptions of the prints, diets, and behaviors of the animals that Finn and Skeeter encounter along their hike. Watch your step!

School Library Journal said about the book:  "If the need arises to teach children how to identify wild animal scat, start with this picture book . . . The large spreads are inviting, and the dog, a basset hound, is cute, cute, cute, and the gross factor is likely to draw kids in." IndieBound.org included the book on their Spring 2012 Kids' Indie Next List.

Track that Scat! is like two books in one. Younger readers/listeners will giggle through the bouncy rhyming story, and older ones will enjoy the nonfiction info in Lisa's conversational sidebars. A winning combination! Speaking of winning, YOU can win a signed copy of the book! Details at the end of this post.

Lisa was kind enough to answer a few questions for us. (Added bonus:  art by the book's illustrator, Carrie Anne Bradshaw)

What made you want to write a nature story, and Track that Scat! in particular?

As a family we spend a lot of time outdoors. Children love exploring and getting dirty and being free – all the things that happen outside.

I wrote Track that Scat! after my son and his friend managed to find a big flock of geese sitting on a pond. Once the geese saw two boys running their way, they took flight. Geese poop up to a third of their body weight per day, so guess what was left behind....

The boys' shoes were covered in green goose scat. That's when I realized it:  kids love poop talk and aninals. There's so much to learn from tracks and scat.

Also, more and more research supports a nature-literacy-mental health connection, so I do like to see kids get outdoors. 

From the book:

          Finn lands upon a hollow log

          And yells, "Come on!" to that old dog.

        

          Five-toed tracks, like handprints–see?

          A messy pile beneath the tree.

          A den! Her hound plays show-and-smell–

          dry leaves, fish bones, a walnut shell.

          With one tromp-stomp

          Finn's foot goes splat.

          Oh no!

          Right into ... 

          ... raccoon scat!

What made you decide to write the story in rhyme?

I love rhyming stories. And good rhyming stories make great read-alouds! They're fun, kids anticipate words, and the repetition allows for participation.

As a past teacher, I look for stories that combine factual tidbits in a fun, fictional storyline. The characters pull kids in, but there's an added educational benefit that stays with them.

Where there any challenges between acceptance and publication?

After the story was accepted and edited, the publisher wanted to hear it in 3rd person rather than 1st person. At first, I didn't see how it could work, but changing the point of view made it much stronger. I'm so glad for the suggestion.

Another surprise was a character change. My son, Will, and his buddy, Jaden, were muses for the story. When the artwork came back, the main character was a girl. They were nine at the time and quite disappointed with the pigtails.

What are you working on now?

I am working on another Finn and Skeeter story, a biography, a middle grade novel, and scads of other tales.

--------------------

Something to look forward to! Thanks for the interview, Lisa, and THANKS, too, for donating a signed copy of Track that Scat!

Jill Esbaum

To win Track that Scat!, enter our contest below through Rafflecopter. If you aren't sure how it works, read this. And click here to learn the difference between signing in with Facebook vs. signing in with your e-mail address.

Choose one option for entering, or more (if you want to increase your odds of winning). The giveaway will run through Friday, September 6th. Good luck!

(After you've entered, head on over to Tara's A Teaching Life blog for today's Poetry Friday round-up.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hasta La Vista

I've enjoyed reading my fellow Teaching Authors' current series of posts about turning "life into art."  Of course, as Mary Ann indicates, nearly all of us get our ideas from some event we've experienced in life, even though some of us (not I) might be more inclined to use them in the context of a dystopian novel set on Mars in the year 3013.   

I recently attended a writing conference where author Erica Bauermeister was the inspiring keynote speaker.  She told us that her first manuscript was a memoir.  It received positive feedback from editors but was not, ultimately, published because (to paraphrase) no one wants to read the non-dysfunctional real-life story of someone who's not famous.  However, an editor asked her to pitch something else, and she ultimately embarked on a project that became two books: 500 Great Books for Women and Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.  Reading hundreds of novels for those projects was a terrific education, Bauermeister says.  However, by the time she had completed this gargantuan task, she was nearly 50 when she wrote her first novel -- which was promptly published and became a bestseller.  She said that she is convinced that she was not ready to write fiction until she had done a certain amount of living -- in her case, raising children, moving to Italy -- and that bits of those stories were scattered throughout her fictional characters' lives.

I have done a ton of "living" in this last decade since marrying and having children.  It has also, not coincidentally been the least productive writing decade of my life.  Juggling three jobs and two kids is getting easier as they are now entering first and third grade (and I just sent them off a few mintues ago for day #1).  I remember when we were at Vermont College and JoAnn Early Macken's children were young.  The constant theme of her writing then was time (or the lack thereof).  Ah, how I can relate! 

And so I have determined that it's time to take back a little time for myself so that I can write about the experiences I've now had the privilege of seeing through my children's eyes.  Instead of writing ABOUT writing, I'm going to just write. 

This isn't exactly a "goodbye post" (for one thing, I have one more blog post to write), but more like a "see you soon."  It has been great getting to know all of you through Teaching Authors over these past four years. 

I wish everyone a wonderful school year and a happy, productive writing year, too!  --Jeanne Marie 

***
Also, don't forget--time is running out to enter our giveaway for a chance to win one of two copies of Esther's terrific new board book, Txtng Mama Txtng Baby. See her blog post for details. 

Finding Inspiration from Life

Last week, when Esther introduced her brand new baby board book, Txtng Mama Txtng Baby (which you can still enter our drawing to win!), she explained how the book was inspired by her yet-to-be born grandson. As a follow-up, the other TeachingAuthors are sharing our own examples of how real life has inspired our stories. On Monday, Mary Ann talked about how the ideas for several of her books came from things that happened to her, her daughter, or family friends.

I've blogged before about how my novel, Rosa, Sola, was based on personal experiences, experiences I'd never considered writing about until I was working on my MFA at Vermont College. I don't want to bore our long-time readers by repeating that story. (If don't know it, you can read this blog post from 2010.) Instead, I'd like to share a bit about the inspiration for the first children's short story I ever had published, which appeared in the August 1999 issue of Pockets magazine.

I've talked before about why I think Pockets is a great market. One of the reasons is that their theme list is posted online, along with submission deadlines. That theme list inspired me to write a story specifically for them.

The theme I chose to address was discrimination. On reading that word, the first ideas that came to mind had to do with discrimination based on race or some other physical trait. But the magazine's theme description encouraged writers to think beyond the obvious forms of discrimination. That's when I turned to real life for inspiration.

At that time, my husband helped out with a ministry at our church that picked up surplus items from a local Hostess Foods thrift store to share with the needy. My husband's assignment was to bring the extra bread, fruit pies, and Twinkies to a nearby youth home/correctional facility. One day, the box of surplus food he picked up consisted almost entirely of Twinkies. When he carried the Twinkies into the youth home, one of the kids said, "Hey, look. It's the Twinkie Man!" That soon became my husband's nickname at the facility.

The children there began to look forward to my husband's visits. One day, as he dropped off another box of goodies, one of the boys in the home asked my husband to pray for him. When my husband came home and told me that, my heart went out to the boy. Before that request, I hadn't thought much about what it was like for the children in the facility. Part of me assumed that the kids sent there had to be "bad kids." For the first time, I realized that they were simply kids that had made bad choices. They were no different from my own son, who was around 10 years old at the time.

My son occasionally went with my husband to the Hostess thrift store to help him load up the food. Because of the correctional facility's rules, my son wasn't allowed to go into the facility with my husband. But I began to wonder: What if he was allowed inside? What if he looked down on (in other words, discriminated against) the kids there and thought he was "better than they were." And what if a boy incarcerated there had surprised my son by asking him for prayers?

The answers to those questions became the inspiration for my short story, which I called "The Twinkie Man." It's about a boy who helps his father make deliveries to a youth home and learns that the kids there are really no different than he is. I was happy and honored to have Pockets magazine accept the story for publication. However, I was a bit disappointed when they changed the title to "The Cupcake Man." That just doesn't have the same ring to it. J

The first paragraph of the published story reads:

They call my dad the Cupcake Man. It's not because he likes cupcakes. I've never even seen him eat one. He got the name because of his volunteer work.

(See what I mean about the title change--the third sentence would be more believable--and entertaining--if it was referring to Twinkies and not cupcakes!)

I want to emphasize that, even though I based this story on real-life events, I never would have written it at all if not for the theme idea and deadline set by Pockets magazine. So I'm as grateful to the magazine editors as I am to my husband, the original "Twinkie Man," for inspiring my story. And, like Mary Ann, I continue to take note of interesting and unusual dialogue, characters, and settings I encounter that may help shape and inspire my fiction.

Don't forget--time is running out to enter our giveaway for a chance to win one of two copies of Esther's terrific new board book, Txtng Mama Txtng Baby. See her blog post for details.

And when you're finished entering the giveaway, head over to check out the terrific Poetry Friday round-up at Steps and Staircases.

Happy writing!
Carmela

Real Life Fiction

     I am a thoroughly unimaginative writer. I had this pointed out to me by a second grader (!!), during the Q & A part of a school visit.

     "Where do you get your ideas?" is always a favorite question.  This particular day I was explaining the origins of My Best Friend and First Grade Stinks (my daughter, Lily), Yankee Girl (my own childhood) and Jimmy's Stars, (my mother's family).  When I finished another little hand waved from the back of the pack,

    "So you just write about your own family?" said the student.

     I had to take a beat before I answered "yes."

     It had never occurred to me before,  All of my stories up to that point did have their origins in family stories.  I come from a family of storytellers, and I grew up always looking for stories of my own to add to the family collection.

     Since then, I have broadened my scope a little.  A Tree for Emmy is based on Lily's best and oldest friend. The Roller Coaster Kid came from the father of my next-door-neighbor.  I am currently working on a short story based on two of Lily's friends,  But try as I may, my stories always seem to begin with a character or situation that I have encountered in my own life.

However, starting off with something that happened in "real life" does not mean that I am merely narrating an actual occurrence.  Life is not so tidy as fiction. Life does not have opening scenes, exposition, a climax and a denouement.  Sometimes life does have those elements, but it also has a lot of extraneous stuff as well.  Fiction has filters.  Fiction has to be shaped.

    Yankee Girl is the book that hews closest to the events of my life.  The first draft was around 400 pages.  I included every detail and incident that happened when I moved to Mississippi as a fifth grader.  While I wrestled to get this sprawling mess into something that resembled a story, I learned a cardinal rule of fiction writing:  Just because something happened, doesn't mean it is important to the story.  For example, your Irish setter may have been in the room when you had a monumental fight with your best friend.  You may have been wearing a pink sweatshirt and matching high tops.  Unless your dog plays an active part in the scene (she jumps on your friend to break up the fight) or what you wear is essential to the character,  these are details that can be cut. They clutter your story.

     Or, as one of my mentors at Vermont College told me over and over, "Because it 'really happened that way' is not a good enough reason to include it in your story."

     She usually followed this admonition with "How does (this detail, character, plot point) move the story along?"  The answer was usually "It doesn't."  And another page of perfectly good but pointless prose would disappear into the "Delete and Save" file.

   I have yet to write a story beginning with a character totally imaginary. I have edged a bit away from the side of the pool, venturing deeper into the wholly fictional end of writing. My current work-in-progress is based on an event that happened to someone my daughter knows.  She doesn't know him well, or any of the details of what "really" happened.  It doesn't matter.  My mind is creating characters, envisioning scenes and hearing conversations. All of this from the offhand remark "Mom, there's this guy at school who..."

    To celebrate the arrival of Esther's new book, TXTNG MAMA TXTNG BABY, in the warehouse, we are extending our giveaway of the book through August 20, 2013. Click here for details.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

The True Where and What of My Truthful Fiction

So, where do I weigh in on the value of research when writing fiction?

Well, for starters, I disagree with Sherman Alexie, a writer I greatly admire who so generously offered his Top 10 Pieces of Advice for Writers in a recent writersdigest.com blog:  I don’t think research is overrated.

In fact, I’d say it’s under-rated.

I know first-hand: digging up the concrete details relevant to each of my imagined stories - for example, the people, the times and places, the weather and daily living of lives, allowed me to grow my characters and puzzle out their plotlines, all while uncovering my story’s Truths.

We all know 3 is the magic number when supporting an opinion, so I’ll gladly share 3 instances when research enhanced and enriched my stories, making the fictive details incredibly credible.

I could not have written my first picture book There Goes Lowell’s Party! (Holiday House) without traveling the Ozarks courtesy of a host of books I met while reading my way through the 910 Section of the Wilmette Public Library. (That’s right! I wrote a book set in the Ozarks in May without ever setting foot there myself!)  Shelves of books offered me maps to read, photographs to study, land forms and water ways that could work their way into my text.  As for the rain proverbs (Section 398) that kept my plotline going – the skies growing red, the birds flying low, the leaves tickling Lowell’s cheeks, I came to know them thanks to Ozark folklorist Vance Randolph.  My book’s illustrator Jacqueline Rogers’ first request was for me to send on my primary and secondary research.  I also found a slew of place and character names printed on maps of Missouri and Arkansas.  By the time Lowell’s kin made it to his party, despite rain and floods and mud slides and twisters, my readers knew the wonder of familial love.

As for my delicious picture book CHICKEN SOUP BY HEART?

Well, believe it or not, I read and cooked chicken soup recipes (Section 641) from around the world.  In fact, in its first iteration, Rudie Dinkins was one of many multi-cultural characters who, so loved by their afterschool babysitter, Mrs. Gittel, wanted to cook her chicken soup when she came down with the flu.  And to counter my editor’s doubt that chicken soup could be sweet, as Mrs. Gittel liked her chicken soup, I was forced to keep digging through cook books until I came upon a Hungarian recipe that utilized sugar.   Readers came to see the crucial ingredient – the reciprocity of love.

My picture book FANCY THAT demanded time-travel, back to 1841and Berks County, Pennsylvania (Section 900).  Once again, my Wilmette Public Library served as the World’s Best Travel Agent.  Pippin Biddle, my story’s orphaned young limner, who set his heart on earning his keep traveling about painting people’s portraits, all to get his three sisters out of the Poorhouse, was a unique combination of every single limner I read about in Jean Lipman’s comprehensive book (Section 750).  Fortunately, I was earnest in my research; otherwise Pip would have returned at Thanksgiving, only there wasn’t a Thanksgiving yet; Pip’s dog would have been a breed (Jack Russell Terrier) yet created.  A Christmas return directed me to Sections 248 and 249 of the Library, so I could read about the Germans who’d brought Christmas to America in the late 1830’s, and Pip’s sisters could then save the day with their wreath-making business!  To my surprise, I’d written a book about hidden talents and how they reside in each of us.

“Fiction is a lie that tells the truth,” Stephen King wrote.  IMHO, research helps the writer tell the best lie possible.

Happy Writing and Researching!

Esther Hershenhorn

P.S.
Don’t forget to celebrate NCTE’s Fourth Annual National Day on Writing Friday October 19 and Saturday, October 20.
This year’s theme is What I Write.
Come Friday and Saturday, tweet out your compositions of all sorts and post them to Twitter using the hashtag #WhatIWrite, and if space allows, #dayonwriting.

Since the National Gallery of Writing opened on October 20, 2009, more than 3,300 galleries were created and nearly 33,000 writing contributions were submitted. While the Gallery is now closed for submissions, it is a searchable archive and is a great resource for you to use when involving others in writing.

P.P.S.
Don’t forget to enter our Guest TeachingAuthor Book Giveaway to win an autographed copy of Eileen Meyer’s Who’s Faster? Animals on the Move.

Celebrating Children's Book Week with a Reading Recommendation

Before I share what's on my to-read stack and a bit about my latest read, I want to remind you that time is running out to enter our current giveaway contests:

• to win an autographed copy of Guest TeachingAuthor Karen Schreck’s newest YA novel, While He Was Away (Sourcebooks Fire), you must enter by 11 p.m. Monday, May 14, 2012 (Central Standard Time). Read my interview with Karen for all the details; and 
• for our TeachingAuthors Third Blogiversary Giveaway Contest prize of one of THREE $30 gift certificates to Biblio.com (where you can purchase new and used books from independent booksellers around the world, often with free shipping!) you must enter by 11 pm (CST) Monday, May 21, 2012. See April's post for more information.

And now, for our current TeachingAuthors' topic: Children's Book Week and what we're currently reading: I'm lucky to live in the same town as the wonderful independent bookstore, Anderson's Bookshop, which hosts the monthly Not for Kids Only Book Club "for adults who like to read books for children and teens." At our next meeting, on Sunday, May 20, we'll be discussing Dead End in Norvelt (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Jack Gantos, this year's Newbery Award Winner. I just picked up the book, so I can't comment on it yet. However, I can comment on, and heartily recommend, last month's book, Between Shades of Gray (Philomel) by Ruta Sepetys. The book was a finalist for the American Library Association's 2012 William C. Morris Award, which "honors a book written for young adults by a previously unpublished author."

Here's a description of the book from the official Between Shades of Gray website:

In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina is preparing for art school, first dates, and all that summer has to offer. But one night, the Soviet secret police barge violently into her home, deporting her along with her mother and younger brother. They are being sent to Siberia. Lina's father has been separated from the family and sentenced to death in a prison camp. All is lost.

Lina fights for her life, fearless, vowing that if she survives she will honor her family, and the thousands like hers, by documenting their experience in her art and writing. She risks everything to use her art as messages, hoping they will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive.

It is a long and harrowing journey, and it is only their incredible strength, love, and hope that pull Lina and her family through each day. But will love be enough to keep them alive? 

I found Between Shades of Gray to be a powerful and moving story. Before reading this book, I knew nothing of Stalin's atrocities during World War II, which it so vividly depicts. I recommend the novel not only as a terrific read for ages 12 and up, but also as a wonderful contribution to World War II-related literature.

I met Ruta Sepetys a few weeks ago when she visited the Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville to celebrate the paperback release of Between Shades of Gray. She spoke then about the connections between her own family history and her novel. Her words reminded me of stories my mother told of her childhood in Italy, when German troops occupied her small mountain village. And that leads me to today's Writing Workout.

Writing Workout:

Researching Our Family Stories

Are there stories your relatives have told that could make interesting seeds for a story? Did any of them live through unusual or difficult circumstances, such as war, economic hardship, or natural disaster? Don't know? Then ask! Schedule time to sit down with a family member and really listen to his or her stories. Take notes. Then write a short story that captures part of his or her experience. If you need some inspiration for how powerful this process can be, go to the official Between Shades of Gray website and watch the video about how Ruta Sepetys researched her novel. And for another Writing Workout about writing family stories, see this post by April. 

Happy writing!
Carmela

A Story I Never Expected to Tell

I never planned to write Rosa, Sola. And I never would have if I hadn't gone to graduate school.

You see, Rosa, Sola is based on events from my life that I never expected to share in a published story.  I originally enrolled in the Vermont College MFA program to complete a YA novel based on something from someone else's life--a story my sister, a medical intensive care nurse at the time, had told me. But not long into the program, I realized that I didn’t yet have all the writing skills I needed to make that particular story work.

"Plan B" was a middle grade novel about a 12-year-old boy whose best friend moves away. When my advisor, Marion Dane Bauer, critiqued the opening chapters of that novel, she said it lacked “emotional core.” I was devastated. I knew what my character was feeling, but apparently those feelings weren’t coming across on the page. Marion suggested a writing assignment: she asked me to write a short story about an event from my childhood that still aroused emotion in me. It could be any emotion, so long as it was something I could still feel in my gut. I chose to write about fear—the fear I’d experienced at age ten, after my mother nearly died in childbirth.

Me, in fourth grade

That short story, “Rosa’s Prayer,” was about losing and regaining faith. It focused on only a few weeks in the life of Rosa Bernardi, an Italian-American girl growing up as an only child in 1960s Chicago. (There are many parallels between Rosa's life and mine, but I am not an only child. See the photo of me with my siblings on my website.) At the beginning of the story, Rosa's mother is in the hospital. Like my own mother, Rosa's mother nearly bled to death due to complications from delivering a stillborn baby. Ten-year-old Rosa had prayed fervently for that baby. As "Rosa's Prayer" opens, Rosa is angry at God for letting her baby brother die, and she refuses to pray. The pivotal scene occurs the day Ma comes home. She is still so weak that she can barely walk. The sight of Ma frightens Rosa--she fears her mother will die. Rosa's only recourse is prayer. The story ends with Rosa on her knees, praying for her mother.

The scene of Ma's return from the hospital is very much like what actually happened to me. However, when I sat down to write the story, I found I couldn't remember many of the details. For example, I couldn't recall what happened either right before my mother's arrival, or right after. So I made up scenes and dialogue to create a story arc. After revising the story several times, I submitted it for critique at the next residency workshop. My workshop group provided terrific feedback for improving the story. They also encouraged me to expand “Rosa’s Prayer” into a novel--they wanted to know what happened to the fictional family I had created. Did they ever recover from their loss? How were their relationships affected by it?  Would Rosa always be an only child--sola?

Over the next 18 months, as I expanded the short story into a novel, the story's time span went from a few weeks to a full year. The novel became a story about facing grief head-on instead of trying to hide from it. Although the novel was truly fiction, I found I could not tell Rosa's story without reliving some painful parts of my own childhood. As I reexamined those memories, I made an important discovery: in their attempt to protect me, the adults around me had never allowed me to mourn the loss of my own brother. Thirty years later, I was finally able to forgive them.

As I worked to find a way to bring Rosa's story to a healing conclusion, the floodgates opened. I sat at the keyboard with tears streaming down my face. I was surprised at how much grief I still carried within me. At times, the writing process was so emotionally exhausting that I had to take a nap after finishing a scene. But there were fun times too, as I added touches of humor to counteract the sadness. In the end, guiding my character through the stages of grief finally allowed me to resolve my own feelings.

While I never intended to write Rosa, Sola, I am so glad I did. And I will be forever grateful to Marion Dane Bauer for assigning that initial writing exercise. It not only helped me learn to portray emotion on the page, but it gave me a tool I can use over and over to find story ideas. It's a tool I've shared with students of all ages, as you'll see from the Writing Workout below.

Reminder: for those of you who are teachers or homeschoolers: there's still time to enter our contest! The prize is your choice of one of the six TeachingAuthor books we've been discussing. Entry deadline is Saturday, January 30. Read all about it here.

Writing Workout:
Mining our Memories for Story Ideas

I regularly teach workshops in "Transforming Life into Fiction" for students in grades 3 through adults. The first step in the process is "mining for memories." The key to powerful writing is to choose memories that arouse strong emotion in you--that emotion will help the story feel authentic to the reader no matter how much you eventually change the actual facts of the story.

Note: if you're doing this exercise with children, you may want to first talk about emotions in general and brainstorm a list of a variety of emotions.

Steps:

1. Prepare a notebook and pen/pencil. (I recommend you do this exercise by hand and not at a computer, but you can try both ways.)
2. Set a timer for ten minutes.
3. As quickly as you can, brainstorm a list of events from your childhood that still arouse emotion in you. It can be any emotion: anger, fear, joy, jealousy, etc. Note: If you're using this with younger students, you may want to "assign" a specific emotion. For example: "Make a list of times you felt scared." 
4. Write just enough about a specific event to identify it, then go on to the next event.
5. Try to list as many events as possible before the time is up.

Using the timer and writing quickly helps to quiet your inner critic. When you're done, you should have a whole list of possible story ideas. I suggest repeating the process periodically because the list you generate may vary greatly according to your mood and where you are in your life.

Happy writing!

Carmela

Serendipity and the Art of Life

My novel, Mind Games, began, in its way, when I was in eighth grade. It began with my quest to prove for the sake of science (and my grade -- like Benjamin D. Lloyd, I was all about grades) that ESP does, in fact, exist. My project was successful to the extent that it won (I think) an honorable mention at the state science fair. But in the end, I neither proved nor disproved my hypothesis -- that life is too full of "coincidence" for there not to be a guiding hand behind it all.

In life, I call that hand God's. In art, of course, that hand belongs to the writer.

Eighth grade was the beginning of a long agnostic period for me that ended shortly before I began writing Mind Games. An all-powerful, ever-loving, omniscient God is, after all, the ultimate in terms of Supernatural. And so that favorite writerly question -- what if? -- began to needle me. What if a group of students undertook a project similar to mine and actually got an answer?

At Vermont College, I remember being advised that it was helpful to mentally "cast" characters when writing fiction. Since I always have an actor in mind when penning a line of (ever-sparkling) soap dialogue, this advice was tremendously helpful to me. True, my casting was a little unorthodox, as once I imagined my grandmother in the role of a ten-year-old sibling. And there's always a little (maybe a big) part of me in every character I create. Mine is the only skin I've lived in, so I find that I need to grab on to something familiar in order to believably assume someone else's made-up life.

My ultimate casting coup in my writing thus far would have to be Bonnie. Bonnie is a friend from church, an adult in her fifties with special needs, and the basis of Kathleen in Mind Games. Since "twin ESP" is a subject of interest to me and since I'd had identical twins in my original eighth grade project testing group, it seemed natural to have twins appear in my novel. Then I started to think about the interesting story possibilities of making Kathleen a twin. Thus Claire was born. (Ironically, the last character to show up in the novel, she is probably the one most like me.)

The real-life Bonnie has two siblings. She'd told me that her older brother also had special needs and was institutionalized; and that she and her sister were "about the same age." I assumed that this meant that her sister was slightly younger but habitually took on a caregiving role, so Bonnie was no longer sure which of them was older. One day, many months after I'd begun writing Mind Games, we celebrated Bonnie's birthday at church and I discovered that it was also her sister's birthday. Indeed, they were "about the same age" -- they were twins! But because they were not as close as Bonnie felt twins were typically thought to be, she did not freely share this information.

Serendipity, indeed! In a book about interconnectedness and the lack of true coincidence in life, the existence of a real-life Claire was the ultimate validation.

I don't steal plots from life, but I do steal incidents, details, the things I see and hear and wish and dream that make me the person and the writer I am. In writing for soap operas, where the ideas are not mine and the words I write are spoken by actors who may not say what is written on the page, my sole contribution (for what it's worth) is usually in those details -- my daughter who said "laloo" instead of "I love you" when she first began to talk; the sound of my grandmother snoring in the bed beside mine; the feeling in my heart on that perfect day on which I married my husband.

Mr. Ford is a middle school teacher, so he brings home LOTS of stories about students, which I feel free to use (and which I cheerfully tell them when I come in for class visits). Of course, these are snippets, anecdotes -- I don't actually know the kids, so the heart of their stories becomes fiction easily and by necessity.

My next writing project is set in the Civil War era and partly based on the diaries and letters of a girl from Maryland. I already have a complete draft of the manuscript, in which I managed to turn an intriguing story into a plodding one. Back to the drawing board, my first order of business will be to get to know the characters all over again -- this time, inside my own head.


WRITING WORKOUT
"Method" Writing
by Jeanne Marie Grunwell Ford

Years ago, I decided to take an acting class so that I might have some sense as to what occurs in the creative process after I turn in a script. I was living in LA at the time, so I enrolled at UCLA Extension (shout-out to April), and my teacher, Barbara Tarbuck, is a wonderful and very busy working actress. We delved into the basics of Stanislavski's teaching, aka "The Method." In a nutshell, Stanislavski developed a number of exercises to help actors inhabit their characters more fully.

The very same process is, perhaps obviously, just as applicable to writers. I might not typically do "morning pages" or other writerly exercises (see my next post for more on time management); but, in germinating a novel in its earliest stages, I have found a variation of these exercises invaluable in helping with character development.

For the classroom:

1) Practice people-watching (a favorite activity of most actors and writer I know). Pay attention to the details of conversation and action you observe. Use what you see to extrapolate and build a believable character biography. (Though we usually think of biographies as non-fiction, what you are doing here is turning life into fiction in its most basic form.)

For writers:

2) Create a biography of each of your novel's major characters. Where do they come from, and what incidents have been most important in shaping them into who they are today? What are their likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, quirks, fears? And of course, the most important question you must answer for every character: WHAT DO THEY WANT?

Family Stories into Fiction

As my very smart husband says to me with a twinkle in his eye, “You don’t have to try to turn your life into fiction—it already is fiction.”

It takes a certain distancing to create a fictional character that is not literally you. One way to separate you from your character? Join a critique group.

Our group of four writers meets twice monthly. My group tells me when to cut an entire thread from my novel (even when I whine, "But I really did pretend I had wings when I was a teen") and when to cut a character.

Cutting can be EXTREMELY painful.

For example, in my real life, my sister plays a major role. So when my critique group suggested deep-sixing the sister in my current novel-in-poems-in-progress—aargh!

I don’t take every suggestion they make...but after weeks of reflection, I decided they were right—the story works better without her.

Looking for story ideas? Start with the non-fiction at your family dinner table.

My family’s long and painful quest for a dog turned into THE GREAT DOG SEARCH (which is on my CD/MP3). I tell this story when I speak in schools, beginning with the dogs we had before we found Rosie (including Magic, the huge black lab who was a “career change dog”—he flunked out of Seeing Eye Dog School—and Luke, the white puppy who was killed by a car.)

“I knew you were going to laugh when I talked about Magic, and I knew you were going to gasp when Luke died,” I say to the students at the end, “because this is one of our family stories.”

After dozens of tellings at the dinner table, I’ve cut the unnecessary parts and figured out how to get a laugh, how long to pause when the car speeds around the corner, and how to describe Rosie, with her Cleopatra eyes.

* * * * *

A family story
is a piece of shattered glass

tossed and washed

by waves

its fierce edges

softened

so I can hold
its ache

its grace
its laughter

here

in my hand

(c) April Halprin Wayland

We all have family stories. Looking for story ideas? Try the WRITING WORKOUT below.

WRITING WORKOUT

FAMILY STORIES-- Stories You Didn't Know You Knew

by April Halprin Wayland

You know the stories your family tells again and again whenever someone new comes over? Like the time you added salt instead of sugar into the cake mix or the fact that your brother is accident prone (is the family joke that he has a frequent flyer card in the emergency room?)

You tell these stories over and over because they work—perhaps they get a laugh or they explain something (so that’s why Joey has the scar on his arm). They bring people around the table closer together, too. These stories have stood the test of time.

Try one of the following:

1. Invite someone over for dinner. Or go to someone's house for a meal. Listen for the stories. Take notes.
2. Interview someone in your house. Ask them to tell you a story about you when you were little. Take notes.
3. Look at family photos or videos with a relative and ask them about family stories. Take notes.
4. With a notebook and pen, walk slowly through each room of your home. Does any object remind you of a family story? Perhaps a rocking chair was brought by your grandfather from the "old country"; maybe you remember the day your mother brought home that blue bowl—and redecorated the whole kitchen to match it. Take notes.
5. Pair off with a classmate and interview each other, sharing your family dinner table stories.

Now, choose one of the stories you've jotted down. Write it as if you are telling it at the dinner table. Include as many of the five senses as possible (his hair smelled of lemons, her apron felt stiff and starchy, the air was freezing cold).

Read your story to a relative or friend...or at the family dinner table!

Have fun!

image credits:
http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/original/fathers-day-dinner-lg.jpg

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/thumb/9/96/Jean-Luc_Picard_stabbed.jpg/300px-Jean-Luc_Picard_stabbed.jpg

http://www.naturalseaglass.com/tropicalseaglass.jpg

http://www.clusterballoon.org/index/index_01.jpg