Middle-Grade Me

I write from the middle-grade me.  I can't help it.  There's a twelve-year-old lodged in the writing portion of my soul.  That's exactly where I go to mine for hidden gems when I need the start of a new story, or just inspiration for a work already in progress.

Listening to songs from that time in my life are perfect for getting the emotional memories flowing.  Often from the very first note, my mind will go back to an exact place, a situation, maybe even a heartbreak or injustice--or happiness experienced by my twelve-year-old self.  Feeling and emotion are everything in story, and airing them out again can spark something worth writing.

If you live near your old stomping grounds, try taking a walking tour with your notebook.  Or if you are far away, try a virtual walk using Google maps.  You may be surprised at what you see around your old neighborhood.  I once looked up my old house on Zillow.  Just the sight of my front yard where I used to sit in the shade of a giant fir tree for hours with my stack of library books brought up so many hidden gems of emotions.

When was the last time you dusted off your old middle school yearbooks?
There can be a wealth of emotions and angst, hopes and fears, scrawled in the purple and pink comments of the endpapers.  (Caution:  Don't get caught up in the time suck of tallying up the number of times it says, "Have fun this summer."  ... or .... "I hope I get you in some classes next year."  There's also the classic, "Don't ever change.")

Give it a try.  Go back to the pages and sounds and streets of your middle-grade self.  You may end up with the perfect detail you'd been searching for.  Maybe you'll end up with an entire story . . .

A Trail of Stories By Ann Haywood Leal

The woman was at the very end of the trail, trimming the tangled ivy from the fence behind her house.  She was blocking the path, but as soon as she struck up a conversation, I was happy I had stopped.  Only weeks into her retirement, she was struggling to figure out what to do with her time.   She loved books and stories, and told me about two of her favorite authors who had lived just up the trail, just steps from her house.  Some of the stories she had weren't on her bookshelves.  They were waiting around inside her head, but had never made themselves out onto paper.  I wish I'd had the wisdom of Ursula Le Guin at my fingertips as a stood next to a tangle of clipped ivy.  

At the risk of sounding like a Nike ad, I told her to "just do it".  Just a paragraph.  Don't worry about what your words look like, or even if you can't read your own handwriting.  Get the words onto the paper.  Natalie Goldberg says, "Write down who you were, who you are, and what you want to remember."  I agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Goldberg, because if you write down who you were and who you are, you have just created a character's journey of growing and changing in a story.  

I am going to keep jogging on that path until I see the ivy trimmer again.  Because I want her to tell me she's done it.  She's written some words.  She's a writer.  

Make it Real by Ann Haywood Leal

It's so easy.  You are on the treadmill at the gym . . . on social media . . .  in the shower . . . and just like that (!) you have a goal.  But as a wise blogger once said:

So definitely do that.  Write.  It.  Down. 
 I will ________.
For some reason, seeing it on paper in front of you or on your computer screen makes it real.  It becomes a thing.  

And thank you, Kaye Dacus, for this next one:  Give it a set timeline. 
 I will ______ by _______.   


 

Then you've got to . . . 

phone a friend.  Speak your goal OUT LOUD to a real live person.  Do this even before you write down one word, because now it's not just "a thing", it's a real thing.  You have put it out in the universe and you are now holding yourself accountable, and so is your friend.

And maybe the most important thing of all, is something that was embedded in my brain in my teacher life:  Make it attainable.  Sure, I'd like to write 10,000 words today, but it is probably not going to happen. 

What I like to do is to make it two-pronged.  I set what I call my "lofty goal", which is something that is still attainable, but something that is more long-term.  For example, I will finish my first draft by (date) .  Then I'll choose a short-term goal, such as:  I will write two scenes and/or one chapter by . . .

Now GO!  And STICK TO IT, PEOPLE!

HAPPY NEW WRITING YEAR!

Waiting for Wednesday by Ann Haywood Leal

She took us every Wednesday without fail.  After dinner, Mom would get behind the wheel of our white Chevy station wagon, and my brother and I would scoot into the back seat with our teetering stacks of library books and head to the Auburn Public Library.

It was a tricky balance, checking out just the right amount of books to last until the next week.  You all know that feeling:  that horrible, disjointed, queasiness of being without a book.  Possibly the only worse feeling would be if you had only a few pages of the last chapter left and you had to bring it back! Sure, you could renew it, but what-if-someone-had-put-it-on-reserve-and-Mrs.-Barnhart-the-Children's-Librarian-kindly-asked-you-to-hand-it-over! Okay, there was something worse.  What if it was a Nancy Drew book and Nancy had yet to tie things up with The Clue of the Tapping Heels??  


I can still smell the scent of the library foyer.  Even now, my heart still speeds up when I think about taking a right through those double doors and run-walking over to the Nancy Drew section.  I had already pored over the list of titles on the yellow back cover, memorizing the ones I had yet to get my hands on.  And would they be on the shelf today?  Would someone have finally returned the copy of Nancy's Mysterious Letter?!

But the true holy grail was two book shelves over to the left.  You probably already know what I'm going to say . . . . . . THE JUDY BLUME SECTION.  (You might be asking me:  Ann, did that really require all caps?  And of course I'd have to respond, yes.  Yes, it did, because I'm not sure if I can even continue our FB friendship, if you think otherwise.  :) )  And what if . . . . . . the library's only copy of ARE YOU THERE GOD?  IT'S ME, MARGARET. was right there on the shelf?!  Sometimes it could be a decoy book that fooled you.  The cover might have been a slightly brighter yellow than the real thing, and for a brief moment you would have felt cheated.  But when you had the real thing in your sweaty hands, it made Wednesday truly worth waiting for.


Have a great week, because guess what?  Only two more days until Wednesday!

I See You By Ann Haywood Leal

Mrs. Rinear.  I've written about her before, but she was so important to me that I'm going to make everyone hear about her again.  She was the one.  The teacher who made me sit up straight and stand tall -- but not in the literal sense.  From the first day of sixth grade, she didn't say it out loud, but she beamed it right into my mind:  I see you.

I had stop-sign-shaped glasses and braces with headgear.  Does anyone still have to wear headgear?  The good kind had two thick wires that attached to a strap around the back of the neck and were inserted into your braces in front.  But I had the other kind.  Mine sat very visibly on the top of my head like the inside straps of a bike helmet.  I didn't have to wear it all twenty-four hours of the day, but I may as well have, because it left lovely imprints in my not-so-thick hair in back.

But I loved Mrs. Rinear and I loved school. I loved learning about the solar system and fractions.  I loved art and music and  of course, reading -- couldn't Judy Blume put out her books any faster?  I had perfect attendance and I couldn't wait to see what Mrs. Rinear was going to bring out next.  Most of all, I loved creative writing.  When I would sneak out the latest story I was working on, she'd quietly come by my desk.  "It looks like you're done with your math," she'd say.  "Why don't you take that story over there to the table in the back where it's nice and quiet?"

She was always giving me extra time to write.  As the year went on, she'd ask about the stories I'd written at home.  She'd ask to see them and she'd take them home and read them to her family.  I can still see her handwriting on my blue notebook paper: Very nice.

Sadly, she moved away after my sixth grade year and I never got to see her again.

After my first book, ALSO KNOWN AS HARPER came out, I went back to my home town to do a writing workshop for teens at my old library--the magical place where I got my first library card.  As can happen to both new and seasoned authors, it was ten minutes before the workshop was to begin and only one teen showed up. But then they all started filing in . . . my first grade teacher, my brother's kindergarten teacher, my junior high English teacher, the principal of my old elementary school, my second grade teacher . . .
"We tried to get hold of Mrs. Rinear," the principal said.  "But we couldn't."

But they were all there, and I was overwhelmed.  I went to the front of the room and got ready to read from my book, but it was difficult to turn the pages, because my hands were shaking.  I realized that I was about to read the story I'd written to the people who taught me how to read and write.  I went on and did it anyway, because their proud smiles and their steady eyes were saying, I see you.

  Two days later I went to the University Bookstore in Seattle to do a reading.  One of my friends couldn't come so she sent her mother, Bev, in her place.  I walked up to Bev to thank her for coming, and she said, "I'm not Bev."  Mrs. Rinear had driven over two hours to be there.  I told her that I couldn't believe she had traveled so far.
"Oh, I would have driven four," she said.

It Might be Right in Front of You

Every time Spring peeks into New England and starts to uncover itself, I get this overwhelming feeling of possibility--of what could happen . . . what might happen. 

As I was slogging through a weekend run, (I shouldn't really call it an actual run, since my friend's ninety-something mother could beat me in a race, but I'm taking artistic license here, people!), I began noticing  a whole slew of story possibilities.

Don't worry, I won't regale you with a couple dozen blooming crocus pictures, because where's the story in that?

But I will throw in a few settings with definite story possibilities.








What could happen here, for example?

                                                                                Or here?

What about under here?

And the snow just uncovered this story possibility:

So . . . get out there and dig up a brand new beginning!

Again??

It's that time of the year when I just want to march forward into Spring.  I want Spring.  I need Spring.  But even in my beloved home area of Seattle, where it almost never snows, it's refusing to be Spring.

So goes it with writing.  You just want your draft to be done.  You want it to be finished and perfect and wonderful.  But you have to make yourself march forward.  Stomp right through that mess of first, second, and (yes, really!) third drafts and make it even better.  

But how in the world do you do that?  I've got other books to write, you might say.  I can't spend my precious writing time revising! 

And my answer to that would be, Yes.  Yes, you can. You can and should do both.  As difficult as it may be, put that second draft away for a couple of weeks.  And let it sit and simmer while you work on a new book.  Believe me, I know it's hard to do that.  Once you are done with that second draft, you are ready to turn it in.  After all, you've sunk some blood and guts into that draft.  It should be finished.  

But those of you who know me, know that I love a good challenge.  So I challenge you to wait a couple weeks . . .  then do that third draft.  I guarantee you that you will see your book with a fresh perspective, and your third draft will be sure to have a hint of Spring in it.

Claudia, Amira, and a Little Bit of Langston

January.  A new beginning.  I am holding onto that feeling of hope that my writerly and book loving friends are putting out into the world.  Because we all need that right now, don't we?  We all need to feel as if we are okay--that we are going to be okay.  We need to feel as if the world is round again, and we will not drop off a sharp curb into a scary abyss.  We need to drag ourselves up and over that ledge and band together with the extra sticky glue made of kindness and inclusiveness.  Because that's what a middle-grade novel is about, isn't it?  Hope.  Kindness.  Empathy.

So I'm offering up some of my favorite beginnings to begin 2017.



"Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly . . . "
--Langston Hughes  (Okay, I cheated with this first one.  Langston Hughes didn't write middle grade novels, but he was, Langston Hughes, so I get to.)

"Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away.  That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her back.  She didn't like discomfort, even picnics were untidy and inconvenient:  all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes.  Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere . . . "
--E. L. Konigsburg (From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler)

"We moved on the Tuesday before Labor Day.  I knew what the weather was like the second I got up. I knew because I caught my mother sniffing under her arms.  She always does that when it's hot and humid, to make sure her deodorant's working.  I don't use deodorant yet.  I don't think people start to smell bad until they're at least twelve.  So I've still got a few months to go."
--Judy Blume (Are You There God?  It's Me, Margaret.)

"Finally, I am twelve.
Old enough to wear a toob.
As soon as I wake, Muma whispers a birthday wish.
Blessings for all the years to come, Amira.
--Andrea Davis Pinkney (The Red Pencil)

"Lily Mollahan's bedroom was at the top of the stairs, the only one on the second floor.  The top of the house, Gram always told her, the top of the world.
     Lily sank back on her heels to look around at the blue walls and ceiling, and the gold stars pasted on here and there.  Then she stretched up again, working with Poppy's paint scraper, to peel off a star that was almost beyond her reach."
--Patricia Reilly Giff (Lily's Crossing)

"Today is Tet,
the first day
of the lunar calendar.
Every Tet
we eat sugary lotus seeds
and glutinous rice cakes.
We wear all new clothes
even underneath.
Mother warns
how we act today
foretells the whole year.
Everyone must smile
no matter how we feel.
No one can sweep,
for why sweep away hope?
No one can splash water,
for why splash away joy?"
--Thanhha Lai (Inside Out & Back Again)




I had to stop myself, because there are so many beautiful beginnings out there.  Go grab your own memorable beginning.  Open a middle grade novel, or let the words of Langston wash over you with drizzles of hope.

Saying No to No

I have to admit, I enjoy a challenge.  After all, what's the fun in something if you don't have to sweat a little?  Especially with your writing.  If others say no to your work or to parts of your story, treat it as a personal challenge.  I mean do make it personal.  Don't ignore the "no"; pay close attention to it. 

Dig deep.  Fight for your story.  Really look at the comments you are getting from the literary world, including your critique partners.  Ask yourself, Is there a general thread or commonality there?  If so, try incorporating those comments and suggestions into your work.  Then sit back and ask yourself, Is my story now stronger and/or better? 

Making a story work takes work.  Which means that you have to be prepared to say no yourself.  You have to say no to the outside distractions that are fighting to get in . . . like that Netflix series that is beckoning to you to binge watch.  Or that closet that suddenly has to be organized.  But once you have your story all clean, shiny and new,  it will all be worth it.

What Was That Noise??

My mom couldn't stand the suspense of an unopened gift or an unknown resolution in a novel.  She'd try very hard to resist the impulse, but she'd almost always give in and read the end of that book.

My aunt made the most delicious fudge from a secret recipe that she refused to divulge, and she'd only make it at Christmas.  My mom knew that fudge was arriving at our house around December 20, or so, and she adored and craved that fudge like the rest of us.  We were all shocked one year when the box still lay unopened under the tree on December 25 . . . until my brother opened it and found an entire corner of fudge cut out and missing.

Annie Dillard once said, "Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now."  It's one of my favorite writing quotes.  My mom would have loved that quote, but I'm quite sure Ms. Dillard wasn't referring to suspense.


Suspense has to be stretched out until the rubber band is just about to snap.

What's inside the box?

What's behind the door?

What's around the corner?

Didn't you hear that?

You wake up in the darkness of your room . . . Did you just dream that voice? . . . Or did it come from downstairs?


We have to give it away a trickle at a time, but do give a glimpse to keep the reader wondering and turning those pages.  Give a quick flash of what is around that corner.  Make them want to sneak into that box of fudge.

I leave you with another quote and a challenge from the incomparable Stephen King:

Going Over to the Dark Side . . . Sort Of

Character flaws.  We all have them.  And so should your characters.

Like our children, we want our characters to be perfect, so we naturally want to give them streamlined, worry-free lives where they do no wrong.  But really, where’s the fun in that?  We have to have growth and change in our characters, otherwise, there is no story.  It’s a great big yawner from the first page.

A long time ago I got a handwritten note on my returned manuscript from an editor.  I can still remember it, word for word:  “Your character has no redeeming qualities.”  

Wow.  I guess I went completely to the dark side.  Basically this editor was saying she hated my main character, and not necessarily in a Voldemort Darth Vader love-to-hate sort of way.  

So . . . we need to be somewhere in the middle.  The only way we can do that is to really know our characters.  I used to think I could get to know my character as I schlepped through my story.  But that can get me in a whole world of trouble, sending my character every which way in a confusing story world.  

I will now defer to the late great Ray Bradbury who once said, “Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.” –THEN start your story.  Some of that information about your character will never make its way into your book.  It will stay inside your head, simmering there as you write.  It will, in fact, affect all of your writing, because what you know about your character will come out in bits and pieces with their dialogue, with the way they walk across the room, the way they interact with the other characters, etc.

I am going to leave you with a writing prompt to get you started:  Darth Vader and Pollyanna had a baby . . . Go!

The Summer I Tempted Fate

It was forbidden, which meant it beckoned to us all the more that summer between fourth and fifth grade.

So far, we'd made it to the very edge a few times, but none of that counted.

Sure, there were stories of kids who had made it, unscathed, but then there were the stories that might be considered in the urban legend category . . . kids from some other neighborhood who had been swallowed up by the mere dirt of the embankment, or who had fallen all the way to the berry fields at the bottom, torn apart by sticker bushes, both arms and legs broken.

But this was our summer.  We were prepared to be a little battered and bruised, but we were going to make it.  We rode our ten-speeds and Stingrays over the fir needled streets of Forest Knoll and past the ranch houses of Forest Villa, with confidence that can only be possessed by a pack of unencumbered ten and eleven-year-olds in the heat of summer.

We stashed  our bikes in the safety of some thick rhododendron bushes and headed to where the grass stopped and the cliff began.

From our points of view, the cliff looked like this:

 Or actually like this:

With Pixie Stix as our own form of Clif bar energy, we edged our way down sideways at times, and sometimes backwards.  But we made it.  We made it all the way down to the valley at the bottom and back up again, neighborhood victors.

We told our story to all who would listen, pausing dramatically as we described the rusty car without wheels and doors (quite possibly haunted) that had somehow made it halfway down.  We described the treacherous sinkholes toward the bottom (most definitely filled with quicksand) that we had all somehow managed to avoid.  And we made the solemn vow to never go back down again -- at least not without each other.  Fate couldn't be tempted twice, could it?


Only later on in my life did I see the cliff and the valley in a different way:

  But no picture or adult point of view can do anything to change or spoil that victorious summer of my eleventh year.

" . . . Are You Telling Me You Built a Time Machine . . . Out of a DeLorean?. . ."

Many of my writer and creative-type friends have just drifted into their REM states when I get up in the morning.  The sun hasn’t even opened one eye, but I stumble down the stairs to feed my cats and open my laptop.

It’s for a pretty simple reason, really.  Time.  

I’ve been doing this for several years now.  I guess I’m trying to stomp on the popular refrain of busy people:  There are only 24 hours in each day.  Here’s my trick.  Getting up before everyone except my cats adds minutes and hours to my day.  No, I don’t have a plutonium-filled DeLorean in my garage (unfortunately!), but I am adding minutes and hours to my writing day.  

It’s the way I have to do it.  I teach first grade, and there’s something  I learned forever ago from my mom who taught six and seven-year-olds before me:  they take more energy than you thought existed in your mind and body.  It’s a wonderful, satisfying type of exhaustion, but it leaves very little for the end of my day.

But if I didn’t carve out that writing time, I’d be a different kind of exhausted – the cranky, shuffle-around-mumbling kind.  

And it’s true, unless you are meeting Dr. Emmett Brown and Marty McFly in the parking lot of the Twin Pines Mall, you’re going to have to give up something to create your own writing minutes and hours.  It might be sleep or a kind-of-favorite TV show.  It could be your surfing time (and I don’t mean on the beaches of sunny California).  

It might be a little uncomfortable at first, like a little pinch or a scrape-your-knee-and-need-your-mother-to-blow-on-it way, but you can push through it.  You should push through it.  

Because when you do, you are left with a book . . . or a poem . . .  or a song.  And that’s worth every bit of it.   

Are You Listening?

“Oh, it is interesting, the creative process.  Where was this story before I wrote it down?  I don’t know.  It certainly wasn’t in my head.”  --Gore Vidal

I think the idea process is the part of writing that I love most.  

I like to go to a worn, well-traveled area and sit still with my notebook.  Train stations can be perfect for this kind of brainstorming and idea-mining, because of the combinations and variety of people.  There will be those who are actually going somewhere, and those who are biding their time, wishing for a destination.  

Then I listen -- I mean really listen – to voice inflections and accents, to tones and volume.  What is that woman in the corner  worried about?  What is that young man on the steps so excited about? What is making that couple on the bench so angry?  And that woman with the cell phone imbedded in her cheek . . . what is the person on the other end saying?  

I’ll try to notice quirks and facial expressions, body language and eye rolling.  Then I’ll ask myself, How can I use this?  

 

How do I know if that person or that line is worthy of a story?  It hangs around in my head for a good while….it’s that phrase I can’t stop thinking about.  It makes me wonder, or smile, or cringe, and I have to write it down. 

  

One thing that is important for me is to keep myself open to new ideas –not just at the brewing, beginning stages of a story or book, but throughout my writing.  This is what starts to round out my characters as I go, and what fills up my story, as a whole.  Even after I have that initial motivating idea, I try to keep the brainstorming going. 

We take notes on what we see and hear and audition them on the page.  Trying out new ideas takes risk and guts, because you can’t leave them floating around in your head. You have to be willing to take it one step further and put them down on the page.

Slow Down and Enjoy the Ride

I know next to nothing about basketball, but when March Madness hits, I see people scrambling to predict who will win.  They even put down money to back their frenzied calculations. 

It can be like that with that first idea when you are writing.  It explodes in a mad frenzy of possibilities.  All we want is that big win at the end.  And we want to get to the end.  As soon as possible.  Now.  Do not pass Go.  Do not pause to collect the two hundred dollars.

When we are first getting our story down on paper, it may be fragmented.  As my writer friends know, I am a fan of working in coffee shops, and I use coffee shop analogies freely and often.  So . . . imagine a  busy coffee shop—in a big city.  You have just moved to the neighborhood and you are visiting it for the first time. 

There is a lot going on, but a great deal of it is just a thin surface layer.  You go into the coffee shop and the customers are all your characters, major and minor.  You see them—you might see what they are wearing, but you really don’t know anything about them yet. 

You hear bits and pieces of conversations, but you aren’t interacting with anyone but the barista or the guy at the counter. 

You are seated in a corner by yourself, trying to make sense of all that is going on around you.   People are on their laptops, not paying any attention to you.  People are in pairs and groups, having their own conversations.  You are excited about being in this new place, but you really aren’t comfortable yet.

The next day, things get a little more familiar.  You notice some people from the day before.  Someone gives you a recognizing nod.  You start to notice how the customers are interacting with each other.  You sense the tension between the couple by the window.  You notice the woman off to the side appears to have slept in her clothes.  You start to wonder about their stories.

Each day, each revision, you add another layer. 

You may think you have your story down pat—especially if you are an extensive note taker or an outliner.  I heard about a writer, who wrote her entire novel in her head while she was gardening.  Finished the entire thing.  Then she went home and put the words down on paper. 
We all want to be done.  It’s human nature to want to see a job through to the end.  It is the best feeling in the world to type THE END.  But for a writer, the first time you type those words, it usually just means the beginning.  It’s the beginning of your layering process.  The beginning of your revision. 

I used to hate it.  But I look forward to it now.  It means my words are turning into a real story.  So don’t get sucked in by the March Madness.  Slow down and enjoy the ride.