Journals: A Personal Resource of Ideas, Experiences, and Emotions

The pile of journals pictured to the left is only part of my archive of ideas and experiences gathered over the years. I began journaling at age fourteen when my parents took me out of school for six weeks to travel around Europe. Because my father was a flight engineer for Pan American Airways, we could fly for free if there were empty seats on the plane. The journal I faithfully wrote in every night of that trip is now a priceless account of my teenage emotions and excitement about that memorable trip through Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, England, Scotland, and Ireland. When I first dug it out of the bottom of a desk drawer years later, I laughed at some of my childish words, but I was also amazed at the details I had included. Memories of that wonderful family trip flooded back. Since then I’ve used bits and pieces from that journal as well as many later journals whenever I find I need specific details about setting, emotions, characters, or images. Some of the same details have been used more than once in my poems and stories. Since they are my own words, I don’t have to worry about plagiarism.

When I keep a journal, I feel a sense of freedom. I don’t have to worry about plot or character or theme. I simply write what comes to mind or strikes my fancy. I use it as therapy when going through a difficult time. I use it to describe places I visit and people I meet and don’t want to forget. I use it for phrases, words, snatches of dialogue I’ve overheard and may want to use in future stories. I often have more than one journal going at once.

For me, a journal is akin to an artist’s sketchbook. It hones my writing skills and acts as a supplement to my imagination. It has a certain random quality—sometimes a place to store things that have caught my attention and started my imagination rolling, sometimes a place to experiment or to try out first lines. Often it is an account of my day-to-day existence and is essentially private. Above all, it is a resource I can return to time and again.

Resource Books

Pictured above are two of my all-time favorite books relating to children's literature. CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND THEIR CREATORS, edited by Anita Silvey, is a wonderful encyclopedia of children's authors, illustrators, and their work. If I'm looking for the author of a particular book, and I want more information than I'd find at Amazon.com, this handy resource gives me interesting facts about the author or illustrator along with other works she/he has created. There are also many short essays by the authors and artists themselves, telling about what led them to create books for children. This is a wonderful book to browse, revisiting favorite books and authors and discovering new ones. The book was published in 1995 and I hope that Ms. Silvey will produce an updated version to include recent titles; I'd definitely buy it for my bookshelf.
The second book, DEAR GENIUS:THE LETTERS OF URSULA NORDSTROM, collected and edited by Leonard S.Marcus, is a fascinating look into the life of the woman who edited such luminaries as Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Margaret Wise Brown, and Garth Williams. I suppose it's not really a resource book, but I'd recommend it to any writer who hasn't read it yet. How lucky these authors were to have an editor who cared so deeply for them and their work.

New discovery

Reference materials for illustration are completely different than those used for writing, but for either task I look at everything I can get my hands on. I examine both online and library sources. When possible I go to relevant locations and exhibitions. I talk to people with first hand knowledge. The specifics vary.

A constant companion for all writing is my old thesaurus. In contrast to Stephanie’s college roommate, I look for short, clean words. Brevity excites me. Mem Fox said, “One-syllable words, like a good man, are hard to find.” I use my rhyming dictionary often too, finding inspiration on those dog-eared pages! Recently I offered to lend these books to my daughter as she worked on a poetry assignment, but she just smirked. The same tools are available to her on line. I decided to try her approach while I was working on a poem for my Stanford class. I stumbled on an interactive word map/visual thesaurus.
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/howitworks
I love the free association, intuitive dynamic. Language is rich with nuance. Try this out!

Resources

Our topic this week is resources. What do we rely on for writing advice or information? This got me thinking about what absolute lasting information I have in my head about writing, and where it came from. Yes, I have my standby books, like Stephen King's On Writing, which I recommend all the time to students and fellow writers. But a few of my writing "commandments" got burned in my head way before I read that book, and even before I became a writer.

One of my first classes in college was English 110. My instructor, Dr. T., was tall, with silver hair, and he terrified me. But he knew the subject. And many of the things he taught us are still with me today.

The first thing he taught us? Obfuscatory Scrivenry. Foggy writing. Don't do it.
My freshman roommate was a perfect example of this. When she had a paper to write, she sat down with her typewriter and her thesaurus. Every other word in her paper had at least four syllables, usually more. Dr. T. told us to use words we knew. If it wasn't a word we used, then it shouldn't go in our paper.
But, he also was a big fan of expanding our vocabulary so we had more words to choose from. We had a vocab quiz every Friday. And I remember a word from the first quiz, which I flunked, big time.
Jingoistic. (If you know it, good for you. If not, I'd love you to put your guess below.)

I learned my lesson, and I got an A on every subsequent vocabulary quiz. Which leads me to a word of advice I got from my high school teacher Mrs. Laverty. She told us that if you use a new word three times on the day you first learn it, the word will be yours forever.

Near the end of that first quarter, Dr. T. called me up after class with a "Miss Stuve." ( He addressed all of us with our last name and a Mr. or Miss) Then he said, "I don't think you are capable of this, but I'm required to inform you anyway."
He then handed me a form that said I'd qualified to test out of the next quarter of English.

(I never said he was a nice guy.) Determined to show him, I tested out. And I imagine Dr. T. would be rolling over in his grave if he knew I ended up to be an award-winning writer...

Alone and Together

As a writer I spend most of my time working alone. In spite of this, or maybe because os this, I love the process of collaboration. Working with another person on words, images, or sounds is a deep pleasure for me.

One of my favorite collaborations was with the American composer Libby Larsen, The Science Museum of Minnesota, The Minnesota Orchestra, and students from four different public schools. We worked with students to identify how they heard sound and came up with three categories for our piece: quiet, beauty, and din.

We gave students tape recorders and asked them to record sounds in each of these categories. Quiet and din were easy, but beauty was trickier. What is the sound of beauty? Libby and I listened to all of these tapes and I recall the beauty ones the strongest: a baby sister talking, the wind whispering gently in trees, pages of a book turning.

With these ideas, I wrote text and Libby wrote music and then we revised and revised until the piece was premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra with students participating with their sounds.

Here's a link for sounds and pictures:

http://www.smm.org/sound/perform/top.html

Working with Libby was exciting and engaging and I became much more aware of sound. I wrote the sound picture book, Vroomaloom Zoom, because of this and include more sounds in all of my work now. Thanks to Libby and thanks to collaboration.

Not Always a Solitary Life

I have experienced two instance of collaboration with editors in my writing life. First, years ago when my second short story (adult literary fiction) was accepted for publication, the editor, in his acceptance letter, suggested I use a different title for the story. At first I thought he was wrong, but, since titles have always been a struggle for me, I soon realized he had a point – and, perhaps more importantly, I needed a new title if I wanted the story published!! After a few weeks of agonizing and brainstorming, I finally came up with a more acceptable title.

Then, just over a year ago, as a break from working on middle grade novels, I submitted a humorous essay to a magazine regarding an anchor-dragging mishap in Pirate’s Cove. The essay was accepted for publication, but the editor wanted me to add a little “what did I learn from my misadventure” paragraph to the end of the piece. Though I thought the “lesson” of the piece was already clear, I added the requested paragraph and received clearance from the editor.

In both of the above instances, I initially shared the sense of resistance alluded to in some of the other posts on this topic. In both cases, however, I came to appreciate the value of an objective person’s input and perspective.

Which brings me to the two methods of collaboration I value, and use, the most: critiquing and brainstorming. Belonging to a critique group, as others have pointed out, is a form of collaboration. Group members give praise and encouragement but also point out issues ranging from typos to plot/character inconsistencies, all of which ultimately improves the story. Still, the most exciting form of collaboration, for me, comes when I am brainstorming story/character/plot ideas with friends. Bouncing ideas off others seems so much more effective than sitting alone in my shack, watching the weather and hoping inspiration strikes. Even when I do most of the talking (which is most of the time!) just the process of voicing my ideas and/or frustrations out loud seems to result in finding the “answers” more quickly, after which I can return to the shack and resume the solitary aspects of this life I have chosen . . . .

Collaboration in the Truest Sense of the Word

This ongoing discussion of collaboration with its many nuances has been very interesting to me. I think I may be the only one of our “potatoes” who has collaborated in the truest sense of the word by co-authoring two historical novels for children back in the 1990s.

The question my co-author Jacqueline Shields and I have been asked most frequently is “How do you manage to write together?” The answer is not simple. Writing together can be both easy and difficult.

It was easier in that…
1. During the entire process, we constantly edited our writing. We edited and revised so much that when we finally had a publisher, we were not asked to do any revisions on the first book and very few on the second. (On looking back now, I see many passages I think we should have revised. But what author doesn’t do that, even years later?)
2. We traveled together to do our research and to visit all the locations in both our books. We had two imaginative minds coming up with ideas. Working together was not so lonely!
3. We had each other for encouragement and to keep us at the grindstone. When one would get discouraged, the other would get us back on track.

It was more difficult in that…
4. Collaborating is almost like a marriage. Sharing a book is like sharing a child.
5. We had to learn to be completely honest with each other and that took time. When we first started BROKEN DRUM, I think we had different visions of what we wanted the book to be, and neither of us wanted to hurt the other’s feelings. After a month or so, I said to Jackie, “You finish the book on your own. I don’t think I can do this.” But several months later she called me up, not having gone any further on her own, and said, “Let’s try it again.” I agreed, but only if we were honest. Obviously there were some disagreements, but we became experts at compromise, we spurred each other on, we grew thicker skins, we learned to laugh at ourselves, and we are still friends.
6. We couldn’t write whenever the mood hit us—first thing in the morning, the middle of the night, or during those extra 15 minutes on a lunch hour. We had to arrange times to meet around our busy schedules, mostly on Saturday mornings. It took us 5 years to write BROKEN DRUM.
7. We have to split the income!

Our process took time to work out...

We learned to recognize each other’s weaknesses and to take advantage of each other’s strengths. Most importantly we got to know our characters thoroughly. We started with an outline so that we both knew the direction we wanted to go—what historical dates, events, and battles to include—which areas we needed to round out with fictional characters and events. When we wrote, we actually sat down together and each wrote in longhand, a paragraph or two at a time. Then we read both passages aloud, used what we liked from each, and meshed it together. It’s amazing how often we wrote almost the same thing. At the end, the manuscript was such a good blend that neither of us could say, “I wrote this” or “she wrote that.” I know some collaborating authors can manage to alternate chapters, especially when writing nonfiction, and then email the work back and forth for editing. But for us in our need to find a single voice for our character, literally working together in old-fashioned longhand worked best.

At the end of each writing session, I typed the blended work into the computer and printed out two copies. At our next meeting, we started with what we had written the last time—reading it aloud, listening to the flow, making changes, getting back into the right frame of mind, and moving on.

Collaboration proved to be a good way for us to break into the publishing world, and it’s something that some new writers might like to attempt—but only if you find the right collaborator. After our second book, it became important to me to move on with writing on my own. I had to be able to prove to myself that I had the ability and perseverance to write my own novel by myself. I will continue writing on my own, but I do still collaborate in many of those nuances already mentioned—with my critiquing friends, with my fellow writers, with my students, and with my editor.

Before I end this post, here’s some exciting news about Jackie’s and my coauthored books, BROKEN DRUM and REBEL HART: We have signed film options for both books and are hopeful that BROKEN DRUM will be produced either as a mini-series or feature film within the timeframe of the 150th anniversary (2011 – 2015) of the Civil War!