How to Be the Best

I admit it, I have a competitive streak.  When I check out my friends at iStockphoto, I get a bit perturbed if their downloads outpace mine. When I read a particularly banal Disney princess adaptation to Mud Pie, I think, "Good lord, a monkey could do better!" More often than not, however, I am my own prime competitor. Which is a lose-lose situation; I can never measure up to my own ideals.

As a writer, I once believed to be Real I had to face unflinchingly the dark, shadowy things on the edge of existence. There was no backing down, no escape. Happy sunshine and cute little bunnies, well, that's what those other writers did. The sentimental ones, the ones stuck on believing their childhood was happy. I saw it as my mission to stare down the darkness and make it retreat.

There's a certain similarity between winter and summer in Michigan. In winter we have a landscape of white and white and white and gray and black. Summer, it's all green. Green is lovely. Warm and shady. But it's still green.

Autumn is creeping through the forest now. For the first time all year I can see the maple trees springing out from the landscape, their sprawling arms reaching as far as they can to spread orange and yellow. The stately oak, rich brown, towers now over the goldenrod fields. An aspen, each leaf twinkling like a golden coin, glitters against the backdrop of color.

The sweetness of life is not tripe, not childishness or sentimentality. It provides contrast. Without contrast all detail is lost; sameness and boredom drift in. Four or so years ago much of my thinking had a sameness to it. Brooding, dark, cynical. Not that I wasn't "happy," but joy came in a more self-satisfied way, a feeling that I was more Real because I faced the ugly truths of the world without those abhorrent rose-colored glasses. Yet I didn't experience a joy or celebration of life and the world. On the contrary, if I happened to notice the quaking aspen, offering me its golden gift, I felt squeamish, unworthy. I didn't trust it, this fleeting beauty. With so much darkness, I should work to face it, to fight it, extinguish it! Shouldn't I?

A righteous calling, but impossible. Like trying to distinguish the maple in a forest from the oak - from two miles away. In summer, as in winter, it's hard to do. Darkness won't retreat unless I bring a little light in with me.

Dewitt Jones said in a video I watched Sunday, "if you celebrate what's right with the world, you will find the energy to fix what is wrong."

Slowly, over years, I've changed my emphasis. I no longer want to be the Best In The World, competing and losing against my scathing inner critic, judge, hangman. I now want to be the best for the world. This new way of thinking is liberating, healing.

During the MFA we talked a lot about the aboutness of a story. The central thrust, the take-home, the gravitas. The story I began in my mind several years ago, the one that became my creative thesis for the MFA, was once about abuse of authority, cruelty, intergenerational evil. But through re-envisioning and revision, I found a different aboutness: hope, innocence, and the triumphant power of the human spirit. The darkness is balanced by light, and the contrast makes both more meaningful.

A Visual MFA - Hamline University, 2009-2011

I ran across all my Hamline pictures as I was organizing my photos ... why not share? A few are posted already (look under the MFA category over in the cloud for the rest of the Hamline University MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults posts), but these, for whatever reason, never made it up. Hmmm. Can't imagine why.

We partake in public transportation:

We have tornado drills!

We talk and stuff:

We maintain a standard of personal hygiene:

We sit around sometimes:

We listen to folktales:

We play "So Big!" with Marsha Qualey:

We play with chickens:

We play dress-up:

We plot our books:

Sometimes we yell:

We partake in musical entertainment:

We walk around a lot:

We go places:

When we come back, we relax:

We work hard! Really!

And we shake a little booty:

P.S. This is what writers do when we think no one is looking.

Beyond the First Right Answer

This morning I saw a video about creativity by National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones. I have a page of scribbled-in-colored-pencil notes with countless lessons, all applicable to my work and life. But one lessons stands out:

There's more than one right answer.

Obvious enough. I can write a poem in free verse or as a sestina; both can be good, or "right." But what struck me was the quote,

"Anybody can come up with one right answer." The key is to look for the next right answer ...

I don't have as much trouble doing this with writing. Particularly after finishing the MFA. Perhaps it's the confidence that comes from training in technique (another point Jones made) that leads to freedom and desire to experiment. I'm more playful in writing than I ever was pre-MFA. My picture book isn't working in prose? Try it in rhyme! Let's make the characters centipedes, set it on Mars.

In other arts, however - poetry, photography, rugs - I have a harder time. Photography is the easiest example.

Jones shared a bland snapshot of his daughter. The sort of picture we all have crowding albums and memory cards. Blown-out highlights, crowded frame, random use of color. He pointed out that if he judged himself on that shot, he'd put his camera away forever. But he didn't stop there. He pushed on, and the next image was tighter, more sensitive and evocative. Ahh, he'd found the Right Answer.

That's where I usually stop in picture making (and poetry and rugs). "Oh, good! I got it!" I think, and the terror at having to put away my camera or hang up my rug hook subsides. For a while. Because who knows if there will be another great shot? What if there's not? Then it's proof I'm a hack, I can't do it, I don't have the gift, my "right answer" was just a fluke, luck.

Jones urges us to look harder, to shift perspective, trust instinct, slow down. To look for the next right answer not in terror, but knowing it will be there. The next shot of this same subject was a close-up of his daughter's face. Sensitive, full of texture and mood. Breathtaking. Another right answer.

This is what I need to do, to let go of the fear, the frantic judging of my self-worth by the image on the LCD screen. I need to let myself fall in love with the world. Because that's what creativity is.

I assumed Jones's glorious images were moments of inspiration, a gift. But he said that it takes him fourteen-thousand "answers" to get those thirty or so "right answers" that end up in a National Geographic story. Just as I read somewhere else that your first hundred thousand photographs are practice.

Dewitt Jones doesn't stop at the first right answer, and neither can I.

Grownups Play Dress-up Too

I haven't hooked more than an inch or written much beyond my thesis since the finger break, but I did graduate from Hamline University's MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program. Exciting!

Of course Dr. D and I had to play dress-up. Only our garb is far more expensive than Mud Pie's little princess dresses. 

A Little on the Overwhelmed Side

I visited a new (to me) hooking group last Monday, and while it was wonderful, full of artists and beautiful rugs, I felt the bar raising up, up, and away. There are Real hooking artists there! Like Brenda. Suddenly my rug looked like a small, shriveled raisin in a field of succulent grapes.

Not that I don't like raisins. I do. But there's a big difference between a prune and a plum, for example. One my children will eat. One they think is gross, for Babies and Old People with Regularity Issues.

Speaking of my kids, this is the Spring Portrait for Little Fish. No joke. They truly expect me to pay money for this? I'm in the wrong biz - school pictures is where the money is.

I'll just keep plugging away, I suppose. Maybe my rug won't resemble the Frankenstein I fear. Maybe? Or perhaps this is opportunity to finish my last-ever packet for Hamline's Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. For some reason I've been putting it off. Can't imagine why ...

Oh, and speaking of the Universe (I was, wasn't I?), it heard.

Riverboat, Riverboat Float Me Away!

Wow, what an afternoon aboard a Mississippi riverboat (see, I know those third grade spelling lessons would come in handy - MI SSI SSI PPI). Good times had by all despite my horror at getting on an old yellow school bus. They smell the same, sound the same, feel the same - was never happier to get off a vehicle.

Jen Huffman shared her amazing eye talents,

The Mississippi impressed with raging beauty,

Our boat, the Mississippi Queen,

And the Fab Four: me, Mandy, Elizabeth, Jen.

Reading Mishmash

My reading has had surprising continuity in recent months, though looking at the number of books actually checked off my TBR list you'd think I'd become an American Idol addict or something. No such luck. I've been rushing to fulfill the requirement of the MFA - 40 books of the 120 listed on their required bibliography - 40 read before my first residency, the rest in my first two semesters (along with reading for courses). And yet ... I can't seem to leave the library without a handful of non-required books. So now I have three annotated bibliographies going. One of required reading for the MFA, one of reading that could be related (i.e. children's books), and one for research or books that don't really fit anywhere else. Like Your Money Counts by Howard Dayton, or Parenting With Love and Logic by Cline and Fay.



Hopkins, Lee Bennet, editor. Wolf Erlbruch, illus. Oh, No! Where Are My Pants and Other Disasters: Poems. HarperCollins, 2005.


Beyond an overuse of exclamation points, this charming collection gets into a child's world without subtlety or subtext. The poems are funny, sad, simple, but not transportive. Most are nostalgic, words of an adult looking back. The illustrations, likewise, have a feel of nostalgia. A 1940s idyllicism. At the State Fair by Rebecca Kai Dotlich was one exception. "I stay very still/in this chandelier chair." captures the child's thinking in childlike words and, interestingly, this illustration is my favorite--it has more depth of meaning, more emotional expression than the others in the book.

Janeczko, Paul B., editor. Chris Raschka, illus. A Poke in the I: a Collection of Concrete Poems. Candlewick, 2001.

The artist in me absolutely loves this book. Raschka's use of color and texture, of negative space and shape exactly melds with the whole notion of visual poetry. A few that especially captured me: "A Weak Poem" in which the poem slants downward, falling over. "Easy Diver" in which a pigeon dives off the roof and lands gently on the ground. "Merging Traffic" in which the word traffic visually merges with the word merge. These poems are quick and clever, the melding of words and meaning, and they get at childhood in such a fabulous way. Finally, "Tennis Anyone?" involves the reader's whole body, not just her eyes, as she turns her head to read from one page to the next and back again, as if she's watching a game of tennis. Brilliant. This is now likely one of my all-time favorite books of poetry.

Beautiful Snowflake Bentley

Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. 1998.

Martin brings Bentley’s love and obsession to the child on a mitten-full of snow. Imagine a book about photographing snowflakes making the reader cry. But Martin does it, gently and in a voice I’ve had the privilege to hear in person! The copies of Bentley’s actual photos at the back of the book show the crisp beauty and incredible detail that fueled his passion. Inspiring.

Oh, and if you ever have the pleasure of meeting Jackie Briggs Martin, she's as lovely as her book. I want to adopt her as my mom.

Residency, January 2010

Highlights from residency thus far? Phyllis shows off a book dummy - the publisher's proofs (cool!) and Mandy Bachta's awesome sandwich.

But honestly, who said MN is cold in January? I mean, I'm only wearing one pair of gloves under my mittens. This is nothing!

Bread and Jam, Peanut Butter and Pepperoni, Whatever

Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban. HarperCollins, 1964.

Engaging the child within everyday family life. The lyrical text is sweet and gentle, reminding me of Rosemary Wells, and with it, Russell uncovers everyday details to engage the world of a child. The sorts of details that may drive a parent batty, but get at how closely children observe aspects of the world that appeal to or interest them. There is a deep understanding of a child’s inner workings: making foods come out even, “How do you know what I’ll like if you won’t even try me?” Through some smart reverse psychology, mother ends the bread and jam fixation, proving that suddenly removing options make those options all the more appealing. Smart, sweet, funny all at once.

I remember seeing an interview (on PBS perhaps?) with Russell Hoban when I was a girl. He talked about how many times he rewrote a book before he was "done" with it - something like one hundred? It shocked and horrified me. Though now that I'm working on picture books in this MFA, I'd say he's about right. Goodness, how many times will I have to rewrite my Appalachian dialect book? Until it's right.

Oh, and right now Mud Pie is on a peanut butter and pepperoni kick. I think I could stomach bread and jam a little better.

Like Sitting on a Cloud and Flying

Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik. 1957.

Four easy-to-read chapters with engaging pen and ink illustrations (Sendak). Each story uses carefully controlled and repeated vocabulary; many have surprise twists at the end. And as with most books, this one engages the child’s world with tenderness and respect. The importance of a child’s birthday, the tenderness of the mother-child relationship. Adventures are kept small and non-threatening (a very little tree on a little hill), within reach without fear. And the final chapter reviews all the stories to aid in retention and reader participation.

Aside: I didn’t care for Mother telling Little Bear that his wishes were unattainable, but who am I? Just a mom of three getting a graduate degree, which is only a little like sitting on a cloud and flying.

I'm Leaving On a Jet Plane

Heading for Hamline University - my flight takes off at 10am - for their MFA in writing for children and young adults. Ten days of lectures and workshops and notes and campus dining hall food. It'll be like walking back in time ten years to those stressful blissful college days, but with WiFi.

More later. Must eat breakfast.