Summers past

I'm not sure why, but summer seems to be the most nostalgic season. Perhaps because I wasn't in school, where the routine days just meld into one another and only bad memories tend to stick out. Summers for me meant haying season and a lot of work, but they also meant visiting cousins and of course, my birthday. As a child, aren't birthdays just the most important day? Well, that certianly changes as we age, but some things don't. I still love getting books for presents, although nowadays, more often as not, they come in the form of a giftcard so I can pick my own. ( Better yet, I say.) But I still own most of the books I got as a child. Here's a sampling, do you recognize any?

The Places We'll Go

One of the great things about doing school and library visits is that it takes me to places I have never been. Yesterday I was in the small town of Colfax, Wisconsin, exactly halfway between the North Pole and the equator.

The library was housed in this great old building, along with the police department and other city service departments.

There was not a lot of spare room inside the library, so my presentation to the summer reading program kids was outside at the tiny park alongside the building. Although I had to compete with the traffic noise on Main Street, it was a beautiful setting to tell stories and draw pictures. I also think it was the first time that I had someone show up to my library presentation on roller blades!

It was a unique and memorable experience for me. Thanks Jenny and Lisa for inviting me to your library!

Ancillary Benefits of Writing

A "writing" life is what most of us writers hope to attain--the freedom of not having to work a "day job" in order to make ends meet with only short spurts of time to squeeze in writing. When I say "writing" life, I also mean engaging in "writerly" activities, such as attending writers' conferences or retreats, taking or teaching writing workshops, belonging to a critique group, promoting your published work, reading as a writer, researching new ideas, etc., all of which take much time away from actual writing. I can finally say I have attained the writing life, including not always getting much writing done.

And then there are the ancillary benefits of the writing life--the chance to follow one of those little obsessions you have for the purpose of better understanding your characters or making your writing more accurate without feeling as if you're wasting your time. My current ancillary interest (or should I say obsession?) is learning to play the mountain dulcimer.

Four years ago, when browsing through a craft shop, I came across a beautiful instrument. I was drawn to it initially because one of my characters in ROAD TO TATER HILL plays the mountain dulcimer. But I think it was the craftsmanship and the lovely honey-colored, curly maple with its intricate swirls of wood grain and texture that made me want to hold it, strum the strings, and listen to its musical tones. I splurged with money from a school visit, bought the dulcimer, and found the perfect place on my bedroom wall to hang it. I did not learn to play it until two years later. My editor wanted more of the "hog fiddle" worked into my novel, and in order to do that I decided I needed to do more than just read about it. I already had enough of a musical background to read music, understand the theory of major and minor keys and chords, time signatures, and rhythm, but I had never played a string instrument.

I signed up for a one-week series of classes and learned just enough to pique my interest and strum out a few simple tunes while singing along. Throughout the year, I kept in touch with a classmate, and we met to practice every few months. I also gave my husband a dulcimer for Christmas and drew him into this obsession. Recently we both attended the Dulcimer Week at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC, where we took classes throughout the days and attended amazing concerts each night, followed by jam sessions of all levels of ability in the dormitory lobbies. We lived and breathed dulcimer music (folk, spiritual, blues, rock, and classical) for that entire week and are hooked! No, we aren't experts and don't plan to become performers, but we can play some recognizable tunes, some of which I plan to perfect well enough to be comfortable playing during my school visits to promote my book. In the process, I've also added depth to my characters and setting for ROAD TO TATER HILL (and perhaps future books with an Appalachian setting) and have gained a whole new set of friends and potential readers.

My dulcimer still hangs on my bedroom wall (alongside my husband's) when I'm not playing it. But on a regular basis we take them down, tune them, and make music!

Summer Memories

How can it be that we are already nearing the halfway point of summer? It seems like it was just yesterday when the ice finally left White Bear Lake.

While I am happy to be making lots of good summer memories this year, I'm also thinking about some of my favorite summer memories from when I was growing up. They include:

* putting on paper bag puppet shows with my neighbor LuAnn

*decorating my bike for the Park and Rec's "Wheels Day" celebration

*winning first place in the neighborhood turtle racing tournament (even though I was too scared to pick up my turtle)

*eating green apples from our backyard apple tree and softening the sour taste with picnic-sized mini salt shakers

*playing "school" with the leftover worksheets my teacher gave me just before summer vacation

What do any of these memories have to do with writing? Nothing really. Other than that someday one of these scenes, in an altered form, might find itself in one of my stories. The middle grade novel that I'm working on now takes place during the last week of summer, and as I fill in the details, I'm harvesting my own summer memories of sleeping late, chasing the neighborhood ice cream truck, and constructing a homemade miniature golf course.

So, what is one of your favorite summer memories?

A Working Summer

Some of you are having vacation and enjoying the summer. I am enjoying my summer too, researching and writing. It is my pleasure to say that I am working on a biography of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I'm sure many other writers are doing the same, but it doesn't matter. Each book brings a new flavor to the table, and we should celebrate good books.

I have found plenty of material about the judge in the Internet. Yet, never satisfied I want more. Judge Sotomayor's brother has a list with my questions, but he can't answer them without her permission and, as we all know, she's too busy.

So, if anybody out there knows her or her family, I will like to hear. My questions are not political. I just want to know the names of her cousins and aunts, details of her father's burial, if she asks her mother for her blessing. Anything authentic.

I will be at the ALA conference in Chicago. From there, I'll fly to Puerto Rico. I hope to visit Lajas and Mayaguez, where Judge Sotomayor's family lives. Even if they can't answer my questions, I'll be able to feel the place, smell the smells of the towns that the judge visits twice a year.

I studied in Mayaguez, but we authors use our five senses better when we need to write about a place. I am looking forward to this experience.

I pray Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed. In any case, her story needs to reach children.

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah

I've just returned from camp in Michigan: "Jonathan Rand's Author Quest: the definitive writer's camp for serious young authors." There were ghost stories and campfires and basketball and silly songs, but mostly there was writing. I taught sessions on poetry and book-making. There were also sessions on character development, nonfiction, finding the right word, and being creative. When it came time for these young people to write on their own, it was impressive to look across the campgrounds and see fifty-seven 10 to 12-year-olds, sitting on picnic tables, stretched out beneath trees, perched on the rocks along the lake, all writing intently with only the sound of the wind in the pines and the call of a few passing birds. These were serious writers indeed, and good inspiration for me, when I feel stuck and unable to write.

As we say at Camp Ocqueoc, "Write On!"

This Is My Father's World

Many of our blog group members have scheduling conflicts this summer. I usually blog on Tuesdays, but since Stephanie is under both the weather and a mound of edits, and today is Father's Day, I thought I'd jump in early and celebrate a memory of my dad.

A tiny beam circled the dark corner of our cellar in West Peabody. No Tinker Bell flitting fairy, this was Daddy’s magic—a whole world in HO scale made just for us. Coal cars, flat cars, freight cars, hoppers—climbing, crossing, looping, stopping. My tank car was coupled behind Dave’s diesel locomotive. Next came Jeff’s boxcar and then little John’s caboose. Chug-a-chug-a-choo choo!

Hour upon hour Daddy had bent over a waist-high plywood board large as a bed; working and playing were always the same for him. The four of us watched in wonder, helping whenever possible. At one end of the board Daddy molded plaster mountains covering them with grass, rocks, shrubs, and trees. Using fine tools, model glue, and mighty patience he assembled a farmhouse, barn, water tank, and freight yard. With the addition of a schoolhouse, church, fire station, homes and businesses a small town grew. This was our Main Street with names in decals on the buildings to prove it—Dave’s Auto Parts, Chris’s Gas Station, Jeff’s Diner, and John’s Five and Dime. We were learning our importance.

Eight busy little hands arranged miniature accessories and figures. We positioned stoplights, cars, telephone poles, post boxes, fire hydrants, fences, and crossing gates. There were horses and cows to roam and graze the hills, tractors to plow fields, children to play in the schoolyard, and pedestrians to wander in shops. And railroad station personnel and travelers with suitcases always awaited the next arriving train. All aboard!

The straight tracks along the sides of the board had occasional turnouts or switches. Tracks ran up hills, over bridges and through tunnels then curved around at the ends. Hitched together in age descending order our cars moved as a unit. Daddy pushed the lever and we hummed along, the headlight from Dave’s engine leading the way as we circled our corner of the world.