Archive for Readings

Upon Wanting “The Third Thing”

February 13, 2025 / / No comments

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If I’m honest, I think I’ve always wanted the third thing.

And now here in the gloaming of my career, I’ve come to understand that that wanting, that longing, has been at the core of my discomfort as an artist, a writer. Of course, it applies to every aspect of life. 

I first heard it explained in this way via a brief video, which I believe featured Ryan Holiday, the philosopher and writer. Some months later, I tracked down his book, The Daily Stoic, co-authored by Stephen Hanselman.

A week ago I Googled “the third thing” and found this entry from a 2020 Daily Stoic email:

You want it, don’t you?

That “I told you so.” That “Thank You.” That recognition for being first, or being better, or being different. You want credit. You want gratitude. You want the acknowledgement for the good you’ve done, for the weight that you carry.

What you want is what Marcus Aurelius has called “the third thing,” because you’re not content enough with the doing. “When you’ve done well and another has benefited by it,” he writes, “why like a fool do you look for a third thing on top—credit for the good deed or a favor in return?”

Now, “fool” is a strong word, but the point stands. Why can’t the deed be enough? Was a pat on the back really the reason you decided to value the truth? Is that why you helped someone? Did you leave a big tip to that waitress or driver who was clearly struggling so they’d run out and thank you—or did you do it because you knew that it was right? Do you take your lonely stand because it will look cool, or because it was unconscionable to you to throw in with the mob?

You don’t need a favor back. You don’t need to be repaid. You don’t need to be acknowledged. You don’t need the third thing. That’s not why you do what you do. You’re good because it’s good to be good, and that’s all you need.

 

Aurelius and Holiday are focused here on daily life. Holding a door open for someone. Shoveling a neighbor’s driveway. Pausing to let a car enter into a busy traffic lane. The little things one does or does not do in the course of a day. 

Why do we do it? For the applause?

And isn’t the applause, when we stop to think about it, irrelevant?

But professionally, I confess that deep down I’ve always hungered after it. The acclaim, the attention, the invitations & engagements. We all want to be seen, I think. And for a writer, that means to be read. Plus, of course, to be praised by those same readers.

While I’ve had a long career, in which I’ve enjoyed many rewarding experiences — fan mail, school visits, awards — I’ve never achieved that highest level of success. By and large, the third thing has been elusive. Maybe the lesson here is that there is always a third thing, no matter what you achieve? So many artists experience that nagging dissatisfaction. That great Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?” I could listen to it and nod all day long.

I realize that I have nothing to complain about — there are so very many aspiring writers who would love to enjoy my success — but I’m trying to share a little nugget of wisdom I’ve learned along the way, or at least something I am trying to learn. 

I’ve always wrestled with it. Ego is the enemy. The wanting is the thing to distrust. Despite being an actively published author for 39 years, I don’t feel like a success. However, I tell myself, that can’t be the measure of my happiness, or my worth. Wishing for the dubious third thing.

That’s the outside stuff. The part that I have no control over. The awards and accolades and articles and interviews that don’t come. All the stuff that isn’t me, isn’t in my domain: that’s not why I do what I do. 

I am trying to let go of that third thing.

Trying to get my mind & heart right.

Trying to do the work in front of me. Be my best. Write as well as I can. Control what I can control. Feel peace and contentment and gratitude.

And let go.

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To sign up for the Daily Stoic email, click here. 

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ON WRITING: A Closer Look at the Dialogue in TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett — But Absent the Spoken Words

November 10, 2024 / / No comments

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The other night, in a Level 1 writing class for adults that I guide for Gotham Writers, we were talking about dialogue. I asked the students to try an exercise where they wrote only the spoken words, nothing else. No attribution, no exterior description, no stage directions, no interior thoughts.

Focus entirely on what’s said out loud.

Later I asked them to go back and include those missing features, a strategy that builds awareness of the available tools, turning that spoken conversation into a fully rendered scene that readers can picture in their imaginations. And also, hopefully, help my students notice the power of all the unspoken messages that are delivered outside of, and beyond, what’s (merely) said out loud. 

Coincidentally, after that class I came across a sweet little stage direction while reading Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake. I underlined it, as is my habit. I put a star in the margin. It’s the bit about Emily and the fork (below), which struck me as brilliant. And I thought: that’s it, that’s some of what I was trying to convey. 

What follows represents one way of looking at a scene from Chapter 10, omitting all the spoken words.

I want your focus to be on all the small ways that Patchett brings this conversation to life. The attribution, of course. The way the narrator offers a deft but significant touch on the entire scene: she is clearly telling us this story, coloring it in for us. There’s the stage directions: Maisie’s arms tightening across her chest, Benny’s hands on Emily’s shoulders, Joe holding up his hand, etc.  Additionally, there’s that one key passage where our narrator, Lara, muses on the dresses and quilts (interior), and the closing paragraph (exterior) that’s pretty much straight description. 

You can also locate a conversation on a miniature golf course — or move it to a coffee shop — or shift that same conversation to a walk along the shore. One thing is clear: we don’t want to have an entire book of two people talking at the kitchen table.  A different setting can make all the difference.

NOTE: This particular conversation is set in Joe and Lara’s farmhouse kitchen, involving their three adult daughters, Nell, Maisie, and Emily, along with Benny, a neighbor who is Emily’s fiance. Hazel is the dog. 

The three dots represent any spoken passage, of any length, contained within quotation marks. 

 

TOM LAKE, pages 142-144: Dialogue without Words

“* * *,” Emily says.

“* * *,” Joe asks, teasing her. “* * *.”

Everyone is waiting now. Hazel is waiting. Emily opens her mouth but nothing comes out.

“* * *,” Benny says

Joe shakes his head. “* * *.”

“* * *,” Emily says.

We should have one night that is not about the future or the past, one night to celebrate these two people and nothing else but we’ve blown it. “* * *,” I ask her.

Emily tips back her wineglass. She drains it. “* * *.”

I am making our three daughters quilts from my grandmother’s dresses, from their grandmother’s dresses and my dresses and the dresses they wore when they were children. I started collecting the fabric when I was a child because even then I knew I would have daughters one day and I would make them quilts. My daughters will give these quilts to their daughters and those daughters will sleep beneath them. One day they will wrap their own children in these quilts, and all of this will happen on the farm.

“* * *,” Emily says. “* * *.”

“* * *,” I say, but that’s a lie. These children we’ve never spoken of? We want them very much. We long for them.

“* * *,” Benny says, his voice quiet because all of us are silent. “* * *.”

Joe holds up his hand. “* * *.”

But Benny doesn’t stop. His voice comes without drama or demand and still, he keeps talking. “* * *.”

“* * *,” Joe says.

“* * *,” Maisie says.

“* * *.”

“* * *,” Joe says. “* * *.”

“* * *,” Nell says. “* * *.”

“* * *,” Joe asks. “* * *.”

“* * *,” Nell says. “* * **.”

Maisie tightens her arms across her chest. “* * *.”

Emily sits down on a kitchen chair and Benny stands behind her, his hands on her shoulders. We are all so tired.

Emily picks up a fork and balances it on one finger. She looks at nothing but the fork. “* * *.”

Nell reaches across the table and takes her sister’s hand, and Joe, Joe who never walks away from us, goes out the kitchen door. He is standing at the edge of the garden, his back is to the house. He is looking at the trees.

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ADDENDUM: Readers can click here to see the full dialogue that’s missing in this post, plus a few more observations from me, as I struggle to understand how this writing-thing works.

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Huckleberry Finn — Archetypical Boys — and a Scene from My Upcoming Novel, SHAKEN (ages 9-13)

August 1, 2024 / / No comments

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I’ve been on a good reading streak lately. You know the feeling. These times when you keep picking up good books and your mind feels engaged, buzzing with ideas and perceptions. I read Percival Everett’s new novel, James, which is Everett’s version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from Jim’s point of view. A brilliant book. It led me to reread Huckleberry — it had been decades — which was also profoundly interesting, a book  wholly deserving of its place in the canon of American Literature. Not perfect, nope, but foundational in so many ways. 

Jim and Huck on a raft on the river.

It’s all right there.

Sidenote: 2007 saw the publication of Jon Clinch’s debut novel, Finn, which focuses on Huckleberry’s father. I remember loving this dark, gritty tale when it first came out — we meet Huck in this one, too — and now I feel that I need to revisit it again.

Anyway, that’s three supremely talented writers, like gold diggers seeking riches, working the same deep vein: that great fictional character, Huckleberry Finn. The distilled spirit of the American boy. Or, at least, one version of that boy.

In a similar way, I think of Ramona Quimby as a classic type of American girl. A powerful archetype, for Ramona is the most imitated character in all of children’s literature.

 

 

 

 

Inspired thus, and perusing the internet, as one does, I came across this illustration of Tom Sawyer by Norman Rockwell:

 

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The image jarred something loose in me, because I have a similar scene in my middle-grade novel, Shaken (Macmillan, September 2024). There’s a boy sneaking out of a bedroom window late at night. Sure, I could look no farther than my own childhood to come up with that idea. But there was something else at play. Something deeper and more resonant. 

I should note here that the neighborhood boy in Shaken was inspired, directly, by my childhood friend, Jimmy Kuhlman, AKA, Jimbo Ku. But I now realize that the “Jimbo” in my story was also inspired by Twain’s depiction of Tom and Huck. All those characters (living and fictional)  flicker around the essence of the archetypical American boy, the mischievous & resourceful rapscallion. In my book, I wanted that character to represent a sense of freedom, which was something missing from Kristy’s mindset: a wildness, an openness . . . a touch of Huckleberryness.

Looking back, I understand that I treasured those qualities in my old (and still current) friend. He had an undeniable energy and rebellious intelligence. A rule-breaker. I wanted this character to enter Kristy’s world and leave her enriched and transformed. He’s just that kid in everybody’s neighborhood who is a little bit different. More alive, more free, more daring.

I sensed that those qualities were absent from Kristy’s highly-scheduled, goal-oriented routine. Today I look around and suspect that those qualities are missing from the life of so many young people. There’s just not enough time to muck around. Which is too bad, because so many good and valuable lessons are learned from just mucking about.

Here’s an excerpt from the moment when Kristy first notices — really notices — her next door neighbor. It is late at night and she is sitting on her front porch while the world sleeps. Or so she thinks:

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This was where Kristy sat huddled under a fleece blanket late one evening long after her parents had gone to bed. Sleeping was still a problem—it never got back on schedule—especially since she no longer exerted herself physically with sports. Kristy used to fall into bed dead-tired; now she had become nocturnal, like a bat or a bandicoot. On this night, Kristy wasn’t doing anything in particular. Just being. Enjoying the silence, the body’s quiet, late autumn’s brisk, crisp, sharp aroma of decay.

This was something new, the post-concussed version of herself, Kristy 2.0. Up all hours of the night, not busy, not active, not even restless really. The fall fragrances soothed and comforted her in a way they never had before—the smell of rotted plants and leaves and acorns: dark, rich, woody. Kristy sat content as an owl perched on a limb: watchful, alert, still.

A soft noise came from the neighbors’ house to her immediate right. The Sullivans. A second-story window shivered up almost soundlessly, but not quite. Dark curtains billowed. And a black-booted foot stepped out onto the front roof. A bent figure hunched through the opening and, once outside, carefully lowered the window shut. It was the skinny boy next door, the youngest of them all, sneaking out of his house. Interesting. Kristy felt like a spy, as if she were witnessing a minor felony, something that she wasn’t meant to see. The night whispering a secret into her ear, the moon lending its stolen light.

What was he up to?

His name, she knew, was Jimmy. They had never talked, not much anyway, though his family had moved in nearly two years ago. Though roughly the same age, their paths rarely crossed. He wore a private school uniform and rode the bus to get there. There were four or five Sullivan children—it was hard to get an accurate census—one of those sprawling families with an ever-changing assortment of cars cluttering the driveway. Teenagers coming and going. Young adults. Sometimes they even parked on the front lawn. The family had moved up from the city, Kristy believed. Two and a half hours on the train and a galaxy away.

The boy moved to the edge of the roof, rubbed his hands against his jeans. Then he leaned dangerously out over the black nothingness and, with one hand, grabbed hold of a drooping tree limb. He swung so freely, so effortlessly—like a gibbon brachiating through the forest. Kristy took a sudden intake of air when he dipped to a lower branch, wrapped his legs around the trunk for momentary purchase, then dropped to the earth as if he’d done it a hundred times before.

A lone car traveled down the empty road, casting long shadows with its headlights. The boy stepped close to the house into the shadows. The beams swept across the grounds like searchlights in a prison movie. The danger passed.

Even if the boy glanced in the direction of Kristy’s porch, he almost certainly would not have seen her, wrapped in the deep-blue fleece blanket pulled up to her neck. He furtively moved to the sidewalk and into the street, long strides and calm confidence. He carried something in his right hand. What was it? In answer to her question, the boy lowered a skateboard to the street and stepped onto it. He pushed off—one, two— smooth as silk over glass. With a practiced gesture, he pulled a hoodie over his head and disappeared into the night.

Where was he going, now in the witching hour, while all the world slept? To meet his friends? To party in the woods? To see his girlfriend? Or maybe he was like Kristy, awake because he was lured outside by the autumn air, a nocturnal creature of the dark. A fellow bandicoot. Maybe he couldn’t sleep. Maybe home was too hard. It was a puzzle that Kristy couldn’t solve. Not yet, anyway.

She longed to follow him into the dark.

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For 7th-grader Kristy Barrett, soccer is life. It has always been at the center of Kristy’s world. Her friendships and self-worth, her dreams and daily activities, all revolve around the sport. Until she suffers from a serious concussion and has to set soccer aside for an uncertain amount of time. Kristy begins to struggle in school, experience stress, anxiety, and panic attacks which ultimately bring her to some questionable decisions . . . and the care of a therapist as she suffers from post-concussion syndrome. It’s a story about identity, therapy, new friendships, making mistakes and, finally, coming true to one’s ever-evolving self.

 

SHAKEN will be published on September 10th, 2024. It is available for pre-order. Thanks for reading.

 

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DEEP SURVIVAL: Researching “Blood Mountain”

June 17, 2024 / / One comment

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When I speak at schools to an audience of grades 4-up, I’ll sometimes talk about my wilderness survival novel, Blood Mountain. 

There’s a scary moment in the process that many writers face. After the initial idea for the book — two kids and a dog lost in the mountains! — that happy burst of boing! eureka! — I realized that I didn’t know nearly enough to write it.

It was time to hit the books and talk to experts. Which I did. 

The other day, a few years after the fact, I reread for pleasure one of the books that informed my thinking: Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, by Laurence Gonzales. It’s an amazing book, profound in many respects, and a great read. It’s very much the kind of thing I love. 

When you think about it, just about every story comes down to what a character is made of, the content of that character’s character, and survival stories are so powerful because they bring this question to the forefront. Does this character have the right stuff?

And what is the right stuff?

Rereading Gonzales’ book, I kept coming across ideas that I first encountered there, busily jotting concepts in my notebook, underlining passages, discovering ideas that I would try to incorporate into Blood Mountain. I came to his book wanting to know more about why people got lost, what mistakes they commonly made. And moreso, what attitudes best served “the lost,” and which attitudes might get a lost person into serious trouble. 

Here’s something from page 154: “Psychologists who study the behavior of people who get lost report that very few ever backtrack.”

There’s a deep urge, particularly in goal-oriented people, to keep moving forward. Our eyes look forward, after all. So I made sure to write Grace (13) and Carter (11) that way, a dogged determination to keep going (even when the expert advice is to stay calm, stay put, stay warm, stay dry).

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Another bit of wisdom that true survivors arrive at fairly quickly is the ability to make peace with their environment, a clear-eyed acceptance of the new reality. This becomes Grace’s path. While both characters ultimately need to be rescued, only Carter really needs to be saved. 

Earlier, Grace and Carter, on Day 2, form a plan to climb to a summit for a better view. That’s how they will see the clear path home, as if looking down on a giant map. The mentality, described by Gonzales, is fairly sound but not without risk (p. 160): “Maybe if he just got up high . . . if he could just see the whole area, then everything would snap back into focus and he could calm down.“

Unfortunately, when people are without food and water, depleted already and possibly not thinking clearly, the expenditure of that effort can exhaust or injure them, possibly leading to outright panic. 

So, yes, in Blood Mountain we see exactly that, leading to Grace’s fall (from grace). Psychologically, it has to do with a person’s intense desire to map the self, map the environment — to create a mental picture. So that the interior mind and the exterior environment sync up.

Losing that inner map is the essence of being lost. 

Also from Gonzales: “Part of the terror of being lost stems from the idea of never being seen again.“

I loved that one, because that’s all any of us want in this world, isn’t it? To be seen. To be valued. Without being seen, do we just fade out of existence, vanish into nothingness? 

Again, Gonzales: “Being lost, then, is not a location; it is a transformation. It is a failure of the mind.”

“To survive, you must find yourself. Then it won’t matter where you are.“

The rule is simple: Be here now. 

In Blood Mountain, I separate Grace and Carter and give them different experiences and, more importantly, different ways of responding to those circumstances. 

Grace, though injured and alone (with her dog, Sitka, thankfully), comes to a state of acceptance. Even appreciation of the beauty around her. She begins to set small goals for herself, simple tasks: get water, make a more comfortable bed, ration the supplies, etc. 

A holocaust survivor (p. 169) described the process this way: “Rescue will come as a welcome interruption of . . . the survival voyage.”

I share all this — just a fraction of the insights (borrowed, stolen) that went into writing Blood Mountain. (I’m not an expert, but I played in the writing of this book!)

There’s an intellectual reason for everything that happens on every page. Each scene, each moment, is intentional. Again, it is Grace’s sense of wonder about the natural world around her. The trees and plants and animal life. From Gonzales (p. 240): “It is a decision not to be lost wherever you happen to find yourself. It’s simply saying, “I’m not lost, I’m right here.“

All this is to say: THANK YOU, LAURENCE GONZALES. I couldn’t have written my book without you!

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BLOOD MOUNTAIN is now available in paperback for only $8.99.

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Three Children’s Books That I Loved: Featuring a Plucky Peacock, A Wild Acorn, and Animals in Pants!

November 29, 2023 / / No comments
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I recently opened a new folder and titled it, “Beginnings.” I’ll keep starter files in there. Ideas. Words. Phrases. Seeds for possible stories.

It’s interesting how a line or phrase can open the door to a story. When I have ideas without words, it’s like I’m standing outside a giant egg and I can’t find my way inside.

Words are the voice, the tone, the key.

These past few years, I’ve been teaching a recurring class for Gotham Writers: “Writing Children’s Books: Levels 1 and 2.” We sometimes have special guests, which we all enjoy immensely. Recently we hosted Jen Arena, who has quietly put together an admirable career in children’s publishing. We talked, among a great many other things, about her most recent book:

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Jen mentioned that the idea came in the form of a simple sentence that popped into her head one day: Acorn was a nut.

Those words — it always comes down to words, doesn’t it? — provided a way into the story, a door opening for the writer to walk through.

But better yet, that line didn’t survive the editorial process and didn’t make it into the final book. It became: Acorn was a little wild.

Definitely better.

Here’s to the wild ones.

Gorgeously illustrated by Jessica Gibson, who manages to give the whole thing vibrancy and energy.–

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Jen’s experience reminded me of the great Frank O’Hara poem, “Why I Am Not a Painter.”

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Why I Am Not a Painter

Frank O’Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

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The place where inspiration begins isn’t always where the work ends. Perhaps there’s a lesson in that.

The more I think about Jen Arena’s book, btw, the more I consider it a wholly successful picture book on every level. That is, I think: this is truly a great book. A quiet triumph.

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Another book that I absolutely loved was Leave It to Plum by Matt Phelan.

 

 

This is a bright new series — planned as five richly illustrated chapter books — featuring an adorably upbeat peacock named Plum.

Plum resides at the Athensville Zoo, where the peacocks serve as proud ambassadors, enjoying freedom to come and go as they please. Their prime directive: “Mingle! Guide! Delight!”

Phelan’s cheerful illustrations grace very nearly every spread, imbuing the story with warmth and humor. 

 

 

Many of us know Phelan as an award-winning illustrator, author of groundbreaking graphic novels such as Storm in the Barn, Snow White, Bluffton, and more. But it’s his rich, robust writing that commands center stage here: 

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Every morning the ambassadors met for the Mandatory Morning Meeting of Athensville Zoo Peacocks. As today’s meeting came to order, Hampstead, the head peacock, stood as usual under the Great Tree. All peacocks were in attendance.

All but one.

“PLUM!” bellowed Hampstead.

Plum skidded around the path and joined the congregation.

“Here, O Great Leader!” shouted Plum. “Bright-eyed and feathery tailed!”

“Kind of you to join us for the Mandatory Morning Meeting, Plum,” grumbled Hampstead.

“Wouldn’t miss it!” piped Plum. 

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Last but surely not least, I fell in love with Suzy Levinson’s Animals in Pants.

 

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This is such a fresh, clever, original twist on a children’s publishing standard: poems about animals. But these poems are different, for these animals are wearing all kinds of pants!

You’ll have to read it to believe it.

As someone who looks at a lot of picture books, I confess that after a while many of them blend together: too slight, too predictable, too familiar, as if we’ve already seen it all before. Not so here, for Levinson’s Animals in Pants strikes like a thunderbolt. It’s just nutty enough — silly, playful, joyous enough — to feel utterly fresh and completely new. 

Levinson’s short, sharp poetry is highly skilled, rhythmic and impeccable. And the art by Kristen and Kevin Howdeshell make this animal world come alive in bright colors with almost old-fashioned illustrations (read: a classic vibe), brimming with compositional inventiveness and color. But don’t take my word for it, take a gander for yourself:

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This book is a winner and, for debut author Levinson, it marks what should be the beginning of a brilliant career.

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