ADDENDUM: A Closer Examination of Dialogue in Ann Patchett’s TOM LAKE, Pt. 2

November 30, 2024 / / One comment

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In a previous post, I explored one scene from Ann Patchett’s novel, Tom Lake. I omitted all of the spoken dialogue from a kitchen table scene in order to highlight all the other written aspects that bolster such a scene: the attribution, the descriptions, the interior thoughts, the stage directions, and so forth. 

Now in retrospect, I realize that I should have included the dialogue, too, as a footnote. That will follow here. To me, it’s another interesting way to appreciate what a “real” writer does to make a talky scene come alive in the mind of the reader. 

Typing out the dialogue now, I find myself really missing those little stage directions throughout. Emily draining the wine glass. Emily balancing the fork. Lara’s interior musing. Joe stepping outside to look at the cherry trees. In fact, it could be argued that it’s not so much about the details to support the dialogue, but that the primary work is in all the stage directions — for lack of a better term — while the dialogue itself is the secondary character. 

More might be said by what is unsaid. 

To me, that’s a profound lesson for a writer. Because that’s life, isn’t it? We don’t always have the words. 

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Here’s the dialogue only, from pages 142-144:

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EMILY

“Or not.”

JOE

“Or not what? Not enough time? Is this going to be a very long engagement?”

BENNY

“We’re not having children.”

JOE

“You don’t know that.”

EMILY

“I know that.”

LARA

“You don’t want children?”

EMILY

“I don’t know if I want them but I’m sure i”m not going to have them.”

[pause]

EMILY

“I know this isn’t the way you planned things. I know it’s not what you want.”

LARA

“It isn’t about what we want.”

BENNY

“Crops used to fail once every fifty years. The crops have failed twice since I was born. The winters are milder, the lake is warmer, the trees aren’t staying dormant long enough. They bloom too early, the freeze kills the buds.”

JOE

“Why are you saying this? What do you think we don’t already know?”

BENNY

“Sooner or later we’re going to have to stop putting in cherry trees.”

JOE

“No.”

MAISIE

“I really cannot stand this.”

BENNY

“It’s not going to be cold enough for them anymore. We’re going to have to start thinking about wine grapes, strawberries, asparagus.

JOE

“So plant the grapes. It doesn’t mean you don’t have children.”

NELL

“It sort of does. Once you think about it.”

JOE

“You, too? Have the three of you signed a pact?”

NELL

“I have no idea what I’m going to do. But I’ll tell you, I think about it.”

MAISIE

“Who doesn’t think about it?”

EMILY

“I can eat vegetables and ride my bike and stop using plastic bags but I know I’m just doing it to keep myself from going crazy. The planet is fucked. There’s nothing I can do about that. But I’ll tell you what, I’m going to spend my life trying to save this farm. If anybody ever wonders what I’m here for, that’s it.”

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Category: the writing process / Tags: , , ,

CULTIVATING CREATIVITY, Part 5: Nick Bruel, Suzy Levinson, and Nancy Castaldo

November 26, 2024 / / No comments

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Since this is the 5th post in this award-winning series (not really), you probably don’t need an introduction.

Here’s some links:

Part 1: The Letter

Part 2: Travis Jonker, Paul Acampora, Michelle Knudsen

Part 3: Diana Murray, London Ladd, Jeff Mack

Part 4: Vikram Madan, Lizzy Rockwell, Matthew McElligott

 

NICK BRUEL

 

I feel like the hardest part of cultivating ideas is respecting that they exist.  Let me explain… I had a teacher in college who posited that ‘writer’s block’ did not exist.  Instead, what we called ‘writer’s block’ was, in fact ‘pride’.  As creators, we are often guilty of imagining our ideas but self editing and not making them real because we’ve decided that they are simply not good enough to meet our standards.  I have come to believe this is true.  Here is how I combat this.  I have a disorganized mind and a disorganized office to accompany it, so when it’s time for me to contemplate a project I will simply take sheets of printer paper and write down every idea that comes to mind, good or bad, and not worry for a moment about the order in which they come.  When this happens, two things are possible… 1) Maybe it’s a lousy idea.  That’s okay.  I can either move on to the next or develop it into what I want.  It doesn’t matter, because I’ve made my idea real by writing it down and giving myself the opportunity to go back to it later, assuming I do.  2) Maybe it’s a pretty good idea; I just needed to make it real in order to recognize it.  This can happen more often when we think.  I will then stuff all of my idea sheets into a manila envelope that I label with a marker, and this only serves to keep my ideas collected together.  In the long run, all I’m doing is exercising a loosely organized form of daydreaming.

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For 20 years now, Nick Bruel has been herding Bad Kitty into one enormously popular sack, er, book, after another. And if you know anything about herding cats, you know it couldn’t have been easy. Nick keeps the series fresh and energetic and timely, and somehow manages to keep Bad Kitty under control. Well, not exactly control, but you get the idea. A remarkable achievement, still rolling along. Congratulations, Nick!

 

SUZY LEVINSON

 

In recent years I’ve noticed that my creative practice feels less like a practice, and more like a series of random, haphazard events. I’ll have a good idea, lightbulb-style! I’ll write fast, revise even faster, put the story out into the universe like some kind of speed demon! Then I’ll go utterly brain-dead for about a month, twiddling my thumbs until the next idea presents itself.

This doesn’t feel like the most productive use of my time.

In an effort to cultivate a more reliable creative practice and combat Brain-Dead Month, I’ve been mindfully gathering tricks that will shake me up and make stories fall out. I think my favorite’s the “fun title” trick, which works as follows: I’ll come up with a title, usually incorporating some kind of wordplay, the kind of title I can imagine popping on a bookstore shelf. I’ll go online to make sure the title’s not taken already. I’ll type the title at the top of a blank Word doc, type “by Suzy Levinson,” paginate into fourteen and a half sections, write the flap copy, and then all I have to do is write the story. Yes, it feels like working backwards, but it’s surprisingly effective.

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Readers will have to wait for Suzy Levinson’s next poetry collection, Dinos That Drive (coming in 2025!), but until then, don’t miss the book that turned this reader into a huge fan, Animals in Pants. Brilliant and hysterical. Animals in pants? What kind of twisted, demented mind comes up with this stuff?! And where can I get more??!!

 

NANCY CASTALDO

 

That’s easy. My creativity and my curiosity are sparked when I travel. I always carry a notebook or my phone so that I can easily jot down an idea when it arrives. An idea can arrive when I might be visiting a farm in Italy or just taking the train along the Hudson River near my home— which brings me to the second way I keep my home fires burning. I don’t stop thinking about what I already know and how that knowledge connects to everything else in the world. Sometimes you just have to be curious about the things that are familiar and see where that rabbit hole takes you.

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Nancy Castaldo has written award-winning books about our planet for over 25 years. She writes to inform, inspire, and empower readers about the world around them. She’s interested in wolves and whales, farms and seeds, rivers and dogs and astronauts and . . . the list goes on (seemingly) forever. And when Nancy is interested in a topic, a book often follows.

 

 

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Category: Cultivating Creativity, the writing process / Tags: , , , , ,

Spotted at NCTE

November 25, 2024 / / No comments

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I had two friends send photos of SHAKEN, as displayed at NCTE.

Which was really kind of them. 

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Category: Shaken / Tags: ,

Just What To Do: Some Thoughts on Grief

November 18, 2024 / / One comment

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I loved this gentle picture book about grief and how we struggle to offer comfort in sad times. The text is spare and simple; the illustrations clear and poignant without being sentimental.

It’s pretty perfect.

As a teacher and writer, I’ve spent time lately thinking about the practices and strategies we have to cultivate our own creativity. I’ve even reached out to my peers for their tips and suggestions, which you can easily find on my blog with a little scrolling. 

Here’s one thing I do: 

When I go to the library, around once a week, I try to grab 10 new picture books from the shelves that feature “what’s new.” I find that I really like 1-2 of them, actively dislike a couple, and shrug at the rest. It’s hard to create a really great book and that percentage seems about right.

Anyway, this is the book I found last week and immediately shared with my class. For many reasons. One of those reasons was to remind these aspiring writers to keep the text short, to hone down to the bone, to seek the essence. I struggle with that myself. 

These days, picture books are getting younger and younger. The text is shorter. Conventional wisdom now says that a manuscript should not be longer than 500 words. So, of course, people keep coming in with 600-750 word stories. Ha. Maybe it’s time to work harder at writing 150-200 words manuscripts. Leaning hard in the other direction. See if you can stay very spare, direct, and allow the (imagined) illustrations to carry some of that load. 

Don’t try to do too much in one 32-page picture book.

On a personal note, my oldest, Nick, is a two-time childhood cancer survivor. He’s 31 today and imperfectly healthy. Back then, friends and neighbors felt it and cared. A two-year-old with cancer. How could they not? But they struggled, I’m sure, to say and do the right thing. This book is about that. What I came to believe was that it was important to say something. Recognize the moment. Simply, directly. It doesn’t have to be a lot.

Don’t say, “What can I do?” Don’t say, “Just ask if you need anything.”

Don’t put the work on them. 

Just drop off the lasagna. The gift card to the coffee shop. Think about what you can do . . . and do it. The small gesture means so much. 

The one thing I hated — despised — was when someone would say, “I’m sure he’s going to be okay.”

It made me furious. Such complete and utter bullshit. You don’t know. No one knows. The core of the experience is the unknowing. Children die. Terrible things happen. Don’t you dare squeeze my hand and promise something you can’t possibly deliver, just so you can feel good. You are sure of nothing. You don’t know. Nobody knows. That’s why each day is so hard. 

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Category: Interviews & Appreciations, the writing process / Tags: , , , ,

CULTIVATING CREATIVITY, Part 4: Tips & Strategies Featuring Vikram Madan, Lizzy Rockwell, and Matthew McElligott

November 12, 2024 / / No comments

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Welcome to Part 4 on my award-winning series (not really) about creativity (really!), where we learn from some of the most outstanding voices in children’s literature to hear what they do to cultivate their own creative process. Think of it as priming the pump.

For many of us who attempt to do this for a living, being creative is not simply a matter of sitting back and waiting for the magic to happen. It’s a way of being that can be cultivated, nurtured. But how? There’s the rub. We are all different in the way we live and the way we work. “Being creative” might feel entirely natural for most of our participants — but still, there are strategies that help bring us to that creative ground.

Today we’ll look at the terrific answers I received from Vikram Madan, Lizzy Rockwell, and Matthew McElligott.

In Part 3, we heard from Diana Murray, London Ladd, and Jeff Mack; while Part 2 featured responses from Travis Jonker, Paul Acampora, and Michelle Knudsen. Those links’ll bring you there.

 

VIKRAM MADAN

There’s a rule of thumb in painting that if you see a scene and you think “That scene would make a great painting”, then that’s very likely true –- that scene is probably worthy of turning into a painting. I apply that to writing too — mostly, whenever an idea or thought strikes me as a possible book, and often it is nothing more than a title or phrase, I try to capture that by making a list, or making an empty folder for it on my computer -– and then over time keep adding thoughts and reference material into that folder. Most folders remain empty, but eventually one or two will reach a critical mass where I feel I have something I can try to develop more intentionally. Sometimes I can go back to these mostly-empty folders and mine them for ideas for other projects I have. It’s a very organic, chaotic approach.

 

Vikram Madan is one of those rare people who stepped away from a successful career in order to pursue the wild dream of writing and illustrating children’s books. Today he lives in a sodden cardboard box. No, just kidding! Vikram lives in the Seattle area where he’s still dreaming — of dragons and nozzlewocks, owls and penguins, Bobos and Zoonis. Some dreams, it seems, have a way of coming true. 

 

 

 

 

LIZZY ROCKWELL

For most of my 40 year career, I have been a freelance illustrator who thrived by solving other people’s problems. I like collaboration. I like knowing trim size dimensions and target audience

For many artists, limitations are stifling. For me they are inspiring. But now I only illustrate children’s books that I write. I create my own problems to solve.

Once I have a concept (often handed to me by Muse, while I’m walking, sleeping, gardening…) I need to create some structure. I conceive each spread as a scene in a picture book, typically 15 of them. I usually write by hand in a spiral notebook, noting which page will hold which words. Or I write directly into a thumbnail-sized handmade book dummy, writing and sketching in pencil as I go. Sometimes it goes well. Sometimes it does not. But I have posed a good problem to solve. 

Here are the images, plus an interior spread from IT IS TIME: THE LIFE OF A CATERPILLAR. 

This one was a first attempt at my insect book.  It ended up completely differently as I LOVE INSECTS. I came to hate the “coaxing know-it-all parent” tone of this original stab. The finished book is written as a debate between two kids, one who loves insects and her friend who hates insects. Along the way they tell us a lot of cool things about insects. Such as, “Insects help plants.” And “Some insects hurt plants.” (The illustrations do the heavy lifting.) It was written as a leveled reader, which upped the limitations ante in a challenging and fun way. 

Below shows rough dummy writing and illustrating at the same time. Working at about 50% scale. You can see the erased words of earlier attempts. Grace M. and I had a whole back and forth about the pronoun of the caterpillar. I felt “It” did not make the protagonist as relatable to the reader. Grace thought genderless was less troublesome in these complex times.  In the end we used “she”. Though the black swallowtail caterpillar is not visually distinct by gender, the female butterfly who reveals herself at the end is. 

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Lizzy Rockwell is the extremely proud daughter of acclaimed children’s book author, Anne Rockwell. Clearly, Lizzy is one acorn that did not roll far from the family tree. Lizzy lives in Bridgeport, CT, where she loves to quilt, cook, hike, paddle, and grow things in her garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

MATTHEW McELLIGOTT

For me, keeping a notebook is critical. Interesting thoughts pop up at the strangest time, but I’ve found that if I don’t capture them immediately, they disappear, never to be seen again.

The other thing I’ve learned (and this will come as no surprise to you) is that having a community of other authors and artists to talk with, share a coffee or a beer with, and bounce ideas off of does more to keep my momentum going than anything else I know. One good conversation with an interesting, thoughtful person can inspire me for the week. Being part of a community — even if it’s a community of loners who all work by ourselves — gives me the energy to push through those creative dry spells.

And coffee. Strategic, targeted application of caffeine works wonders.

 

Matthew McElligott has been drawing and making up stories all his life. Some involve math, some involve monsters, all encourage laughter. When Matt’s not working on illustration and children’s books, or drinking coffee with his pals, he spends his time teaching as a professor at Russell Sage College in Albany, NY.

 

 

 

 

 

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Category: Cultivating Creativity, Interviews & Appreciations, the writing process / Tags: , , , , , ,
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