WHEN THEY SAY I HAVE A STORY IDEA FOR YOU

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Howdy, Campers ~ and Happy Poetry Friday! (original poem and PF link below).

2019's first topic rumbling around our TeachingAuthors' treehouse, is How Do I Start a New Writing Project? Bobbi launched our new year asking What is your first line?; Mary Ann followed by blowing my socks off with her poetic description of beginning a new story.

You know the feeling when you read something and it's so good, there's nothing left to say on a topic? That's how I felt after reading these posts. I simply wanted to bow to my fellow TeachingAuthors and tackle some other topic...

Me, curtsying to Bobbi and Mary Ann

 I lied. It's Cissy Fitzgerald, curtsying. 

Photo by W.M. Morrison, 1895 

from the Library of Congress

...until I remembered my Hot Idea Files, which, like Mary Ann's journals, are filled with lines of dialogue, quotes that at some point stirred my insides, a misheard word, an item from my gratitude list, ideas that flew across the room and hit me like a rock, a remembered dream, a word or definition from Wordsmith.org's A.Word.A.Day ..like borborygmus (...look it up).

Here's a random jot (as Mary Ann calls them) from February, 2014:
Teaching feels as if I'm careening down on of those Olympic ski racing courses--you know, that 1½ mile downhill course where they hit speeds of 85+ mph? Yeah, that feeling. Like I'm going to hit a bump and skid off the course and die any minute. And then...the three hours of class are over and I had them. Cowabunga! GOLD MEDAL!

And here's one from June, 2017:
I think my sleep is deeper...I'm having lots of dreams. It feels as if I'm catching up on dreams that have been stacking up.

Speaking of stacking up...have you ever had someone say, "Heck, I can write a picture book on my coffee break!"?

When I hear that, I think about the process of choosing an idea for a poem, a picture book or a novel and decide that the person who just said this...
is an alien.

So—what do I do to start a new writing project? I open the door and listen to my stacks of ideas calling, "Pick me, pick me!"...choose one, and simply begin.

WHEN SOMEONE SAYS,“I HAVE A STORY IDEA FOR YOU!”

by April Halprin Wayland

I say, “How nice. 

Would you like to come inside?”
Then I walk her up the concrete steps of my brain,

open the door and move ten heavy boxes,

walk around letters stacked to the ceiling,

shove aside bulging brown bags with string.

We make our way to the back bedroom

past piles of Federal Express packages

where I stick a butterfly net

out the bedroom balcony doors

and catch a few more ideas

as they fly past.

In the kitchen, cases of canned ideas

line the worn wood floor,

unpacked sacks of fresh-picked ones

are piled on the counter.

We hold onto the paint-chipped banister

and walk down the wobbly stairs

to the cold, cement basement.

The sulfur smell surprises as I strike a match.

“Where is there room for your idea

between the wooden tennis rackets,

the rusty bird cage,

the folded music stands

and trunks of family stories?” I ask.

Crouching behind a trunk

is the one that creeps upstairs at night

to slink along the hall near my bedroom.

It's almost too heavy to pull to its feet.

This is the one I am working on now.

“Would you be kind enough to take your idea

to my storage locker downtown, near the pier?”

I say, handing her a small tin key.

“Perhaps you'll find room there.

Best to stand back as you roll up the aluminum door.”

drawing & poem (c)2019 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.

What's in your Hot Idea File?  C'mon...tell us one thing. We are dying to know.

Thank you, Tara, for hosting Poetry Friday today!

posted with hope for this brand new year by April Halprin Wayland, Eli-the-dog, and Snot-the-aging-cat.

The Scariest Thing on Earth--Your WIP (Work in Progress)

     I have been writing the same book for over 10 years.

     No, I haven't been staring at a blank screen for 10 years. In fact, I've written and published another middle grade novel, five picture books and had two short stories in YA anthologies. However, with all that activity going on, My Big Novel bubbled away on the back burner. While I was writing and revising the other works, I was writing and researching MBN. This is a story based on my father's family and their survival of a major natural disaster. (I'm not going to describe it any further, because the more you write or talk about your WIP, the less you actually work on the story itself.)

Some of the characters of MBN--the Rodman family, from left,  Great Aunt Beulah, my grandparents Mabel and George Rodman (the dude with the titled hat) and great-grandfather, Sam.

    Life hummed along until one day, I realized there was nothing on the front burner of my writing stove. Time to move MBN to the big front burner.

    I panicked. When I was worked on MBN along with something else, I wasn't aware of what a huge story I was trying to tell. It's written in free verse (something I'd never attempted before), from multiple points of view (ditto.)  While my usual first readers had been enthusiastic about what they shad read, I made the mistake of showing it to an agent at a conference. He was less than enthused about it's "marketability" ("historical fiction doesn't sell.") That was enough to stop me dead in my writing tracks. Suddenly, I saw a million flaws in the story I'd been so passionate about for years. Worse, I realized the enormity of what I was trying to do.  I scared myself into a big fat writer's block.

    I've been blocked before. I would work on something else for awhile, and when I came back to the original book, I could blast that block to kingdom come.

    Not this time. Soon after my disastrous conversation with the agent, my mother died. This was the beginning of a years long string of family tragedies, emergencies and dramas that fell to me to handle.  This pretty well zapped my creative energy.  Add to that, the economy was circling the drain just as five of my books were published. Library budgets were circling the drain as well. Three of the five went out of print within 18 months. In addition to blocked, frazzled and depressed, I was now demoralized. No way I could write MBN. Besides, as the agent had said "Who would want to read this?"

    My lovely editors were all leaving the business for one reason or another. Any submissions I made now would be like starting all over again. So I taught my Young Author's Camps, thinking that my publishing days were over.

    That's where I made my mistake. All I thought about was publishing MBN.  I had forgotten about writing a story I thought was compelling (despite what that agent said). I was losing family members who had been looking forward to their story being told. They didn't care if it was published...they would've been happy with a printed copy in a three-ring binder. Worst of all, I was now teaching the siblings of my first Young Authors.  Siblings who had been told the story of MBN (back when I still talked about it) and were disappointed that it wasn't published yet. I couldn't tell them it wasn't even sort of finished. Not when I spend a week (six times a summer) telling these kids they can do anything, to not listen to their inner negative critic, etc. Oh yeah, Ms Rodman, I can imagine them saying, well then how come you didn't finish your story?

At right, Sharon Rodman Blazek, one of my most important literary cheerleaders. The other person is me. We are celebrating out 18th birthdays (10 days apart.)

     So with two of my most favorite people in the world (who also happen to be Rodman cousins) cheering me on, I am back at it. MBN lives. Two adult non-fiction accounts of this event haven been published in the past couple of years so I have new material to be excited about. (And I have to admit, I am now afraid someone else may beat me to the punch with this same story.) I am no longer obsessed with whether it is published traditionally or not. So many of my friends are self-publishing, that for the first time, I am allowing myself to think of that as an option.

   As for the enormity of the story itself...I remind myself of Anne Lamott's book, Bird by Bird.  The title comes from one of her family's stories.  Anne's little brother found himself trying to write a huge report on bird life, due the next day. A  report he had had three months to write. As he moaned aloud how could he possibly write this enormous assignment in one night, his father (a writer himself) answered "Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird."

    And so I am.  And so I will. Event by event, character by character.

   Don't forget to enter our Blogiversary Giveaway for the new-and-improved edition of Carmela's MG historical fiction, Rosa, Sola.  For details, see last Friday's post.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman