Say It

Yesterday was the next-to-last class in my Writing Children's Books winter term course. As we finished the critiques of the middle-grade novel chapters I realized that most of my students needed a workshop on dialogue. So I created this exercise on the spot. I think it worked out pretty well.

On the board I wrote the following bare bones conversational exchange:

“How are you?” John asked.
“I’m fine,” Mary said. “How about you?”
“Just okay,” John said.
“What’s the matter?” Mary asked.
“It’s my mom,” John said.
“What about her?” Mary asked.
“I think she’s sick,” John said.
“Oh, no,” Mary said.

It was not improved by substituting fancier speech verbs:

“How are you?” John inquired.
“I’m fine,” Mary responded. “How about you?”
“Just okay,” John muttered.
“What’s the matter?” Mary interrogated.
“It’s my mom,” John confessed.
“What about her?” Mary interviewed.
“I think she’s sick,” John whispered.
“Oh, no,” Mary exclaimed.


Nor by modifying each speech verb with adverbs:

“How are you?” John asked politely.
“I’m fine,” Mary said. “How about you?”
“Just okay,” John said nervously.
“What’s the matter?” Mary asked curiously.
“It’s my mom,” John said sadly.
“What about her?” Mary asked persistently.
“I think she’s sick,” John said softly.
“Oh, no,” Mary said sympathetically.

Nor by getting rid of most of the speech verbs altogether, though this is definitely less annoying:

“How are you?” John asked.
“I’m fine,” Mary said. “How about you?”
“Just okay."
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s my mom.”
“What about her?”
“I think she’s sick.”
“Oh, no.”

Instead, what worked to improve this stretch of dialogue was situating John and Mary in a setting and interspersing their bits of speech with body language, action, brief descriptions, and thoughts from our viewpoint character (it could be John or Mary: we picked John). The students decided to make our characters sixteen-year-olds. Where might teenagers find themselves? At the mall. This is the revised dialogue we wrote together:

“How are you?” John asked Mary, as they were approaching the Gap.

“I’m fine,” Mary said. “How about you?”

“Just okay." John lowered his eyes, hoping that the other shoppers couldn't hear. A kid from school walked by talking on his cellphone.

“What’s the matter?” Mary leaned in closer.

John hesitated. Then he made himself say it. “It’s my mom."

“What about her?”

“I think she’s sick." The kid from school seemed to be looking right at him, but John didn't care any more.

“Oh, no." Mary's eyes filled with tears.

Great. Now I've made her cry.


That's better, isn't it?

Outside My Comfort Zone

On Friday I decided to up the coolness quotient of my Writing Children's Book winter term course, as well as providing a huge surge of creative energy, by having Greencastle illustrator/author/animator Troy Cummings come to visit us. Troy is the author/illustrator of The Eensy Weensy Spider Freaks Out! (Big Time!), as well as the illustrator of the mega-fun read aloud More Bears! by Kenn Nesbitt.

Troy read Eensy to us, as well as giving a world premiere read-aloud of his forthcoming picture book about a dad who plays horsey so convincingly that he is captured by horse rustlers and then escapes to star in a rodeo, walk the tightrope in a circus, and win the Kentucky Derby.

Then Troy did drawing exercises with us. The first one involved making character sketches by combining a name, an adjective, and a noun. I got Billy/clumsy/waffle. I was the only one in the class who misunderstood the assignment. I tried to draw a boy named Billy who demonstrates his clumsiness by dropping a waffle. I couldn't even draw that: I had to cheat by making dialogue come out of Billy's mouth: "Oops! There goes my waffle!" But that wasn't the assignment. I was supposed to draw Billy the Clumsy Waffle. Billy WAS the waffle.

Then we had to use pictionary cards to make up a dummy page or spread for a picture book. I couldn't do that one either. I could stick-figure draw a couple of the items on my card: a scarf, a man wearing sideburns, and a fruitcake. But I couldn't come up with any story line connecting them, let alone draw a scene relying on that story line.

The final assignment even Troy admitted was impossible. We each got a slip of paper with something literally impossible listed on it: mine was to draw someone opening a lid and releasing an entirely new COLOR. Needless to say, I couldn't do that one, either.

Here is the humbling thing. Lots of my students COULD do these exercises. Lots of them did them BRILLIANTLY. I would say that out of the group of sixteen of us, there were only three who had visible trouble with the exercises, and I was one of the three. Oh, and I had to show my failed attempts to the class, going FIRST, to show what a good sport I was.

What should I conclude from this? Several things, I'd say.

One is that I've always had trouble with this kind of spontaneous exercise, so my failure here really comes as no surprise. When my boys were small, people often said to me, "I bet YOU make up wonderful bedtime stories!" But I didn't. I can think of a story only if I brainstorm ideas for a month or so, then laboriously work the chosen idea over many more months into its final form.

Two, this makes me a LOT more sensitive to why some of my students feel shy about sharing their writing exercises with the class.

Three, different people have different creative processes. Some of the students who were not shining in the writing exercises I assigned shone here. Different people create in different ways. This is to be celebrated.

Finally, my creative goal this year, you may remember, is to write a book that surprises me, to try something new and different. And so, hey, on Friday I did try something new and different. I found out that it's hard to do this. Maybe I'll try this exercise again sometime in the privacy of my own home just to limber up my creative brain a little bit. Maybe not. But it was a good thing to shake myself up a bit. Scary, yes. Embarrassing, very. But probably on balance, good.

By Popular Request

More pictures of my Greencastle world: views from my office window out at the Prindle Institute for Ethics. This is the peaceful, serene place where I have one of my two offices at DePauw; the other is in the cozy suite of offices belonging to the Philosophy Department in Asbury Hall, right in the heart of campus, steps away from the Roy O. West Library and just a block from my little house. Usually during the semester, I spend Monday, Wednesday, and Friday out at the Prindle, and Tuesday and Thursday (my teaching days) on campus.

During Winter Term, I'm teaching every day except for Thursday from 1-4 in the afternoons, so I spend every morning out at the Prindle, then head to campus to teach, and then return to the Prindle in the late afternoon because there is a Winter Term baking class that meets there and delivers kuchen to us fresh from the oven just as my own class is coming to a close. As part of my new mindful eating routine, I'm trying to make myself a cup of tea and put the wedge of cake on a plate first before eating it. Then: ahhhh.

The Blue Door Cafe

It is somewhat of an ordeal for me to post pictures on my blog. First I have to remember where I put my camera; then the battery invariably needs charging, and I have to remember how to get it out of the camera and how to put it into the charger, and then after I take the pictures, I have to remember how to upload them onto my computer. Of course, all of this remembering would be vastly easier if I executed these operations on a regular basis. One of my new year's plans is to do just that.

So: here are some pictures of my beloved Blue Door Cafe. The two interior pictures were taken in the early morning. The Blue Door opens at seven, and I am usually the second customer there, at least during this quiet time of January Winter Term. You'll notice that it is DARK outside at seven. Indiana is on Eastern time and really should be on Central time, given its geographical location. So the sun rises late here. However, this only makes the Blue Door all the more cozy. The woman at the counter is Sue, the owner and manager who presides there in such a warm and welcoming way and who knows exactly how I like my hot chocolate: made with skim milk, but with whipped cream and chocolate shavings on top.

Maybe tomorrow if I'm feeling extra ambitious I'll take a picture of my mug of hot chocolate, too.

Pajama Party

Last night my Writing Children's Books winter term students and I had our class pajama party by the fireplace in the Great Hall at the Prindle Institute for Ethics. I switched our class time from afternoon to evening, encouraged students to wear pj's and/or nightgowns (complete with robes and slippers if so desired), and to bring stuffed animals and a favorite book to share. I wore a nightgown as well, my favorite new warm flannel Lanz of Salzburg nightgown ordered from the Vermont Country Store, and provided hot chocolate, milk, apple cider, and a tray of cookies, plus a dozen tiny red velvet cupcakes. The cupcakes were in honor of a student who had written her picture book about a cupcake war between two sisters resolved when they discover a shared love for red velvet cupcakes.

I would say that the event was a success. Only a few students actually appeared in their pajamas, but at least there were those few, and we had a total of five stuffed animals, including my jackrabbit, Ruby. I was shocked to find that one bear didn't have a name yet and also noticed some hesitation on the part of my students to make the voices for their stuffed animals. But by the end of the evening, all the stuffed animals were conversing comfortably.

We heard selections from Fancy Nancy, Frog and Toad, and Dr. Seuss, as well as snippets from some older chapter books. The highlight of the evening was when we started reading Junie B. Jones Is (Almost) a Flower Girl, and just couldn't stop. We ended up reading the entire 68-page book aloud, passing it from reader to reader, each one taking a chapter. I especially loved hearing the boys reading Junie's lines with lots of expression.

Next treat for my class: tomorrow we have a visit from illustrator/animator/author Troy Cummings.

Plotters and Pantsers

Last night I took my Writing for Children class to a talk at the Putnam County Library by Indianapolis-based young adult author Mike Mullin, author of Ashfall, a coming-of-age novel about a boy struggling to survive post-apocalyptic conditions following an eruption of the Yellowstone super-volcano. I thought, correctly as it turned out, that Mike's presentation would be a good counter-weight to my focus on younger, sweeter stories. After all, there is quite a difference between trying to stay alive during the aftermath of a volcanic holocaust and trying to get the promised ice cream cone for having passed all of your times tables tests (7 x 9 = Trouble!). And I thought Mike's talk would up the coolness quotient of my course, as well, which it did: Mike studied Taekwondo in order to write the book and ended his presentation by smashing a sizable cinder block with his bare hand.

I confess that I did have a moment of despair at this point in the evening as I wondered how a staid middle-aged authoress is supposed to compete on the lecture circuit these days.

For me, the smashingest part of the evening, however, was NOT the karate chop. It was an insight the Mike offered during Q & A into the age-old writing question of whether it's better to write from a detailed, self-conscious outline, or better to grope your way through a story without any clear plan. Mike called this the difference between being a plotter and a "pantser" (flying by the seat of your pants). I had always thought that both approaches were viable: some writers are plotters, some are pantsers, and both can produce wonderful, and terrible, results.

Mike had a different insight, which I'm still pondering this morning. He pointed to empirical research comparing "logical" versus "intuitive" creative styles. He claimed that according to this research, when logical people try an intuitive style, creativity goes up. BUT (and this is the interesting part), when intuitive people try a logical style, creativity also goes up. He concluded that there are considerable creative benefits in trying the style with which you are LESS comfortable.

Hmm. While I'm not a rigid plotter, I definitely start with a fairly clear vision of what the structure of my story needs to be (details to be filled in later). As I continue on my creative journey this year, with the goal of "writing a book that surprises me," perhaps I need to give myself some "pantser" freedom.

It's worth a try.

A Few of My Favorite Things

When I went on my new year's trip to tiny Goldsmith, Indiana, to visit the boyhood home of my friend Keith, he took me to an indoor flea market/junk shop in Kokomo. I don't consider myself much of a shopper: it's been years since I've set foot in a shopping mall, I buy all my clothes at yard sales and Goodwill, I'm not one for having very much STUFF in my life. But this Kokomo market was irresistible.

I made three purchases, pictured above: a lovely blue-and-white ceramic teapot, a copper teakettle, and a goose-shaped cookie jar. The teakettle was quite tarnished, but Keith brought me over some Brasso, and I tried polishing it with amazing results. Then Keith re-polished what I had already polished with even more amazing results. And the goose was already amazing, especially as she cost three dollars. This is the goose who might become my story goose, my jar of ideas. Or maybe she's my muse, a benign, serene creative presence in my life.

As of this moment I have yet to boil water in the teakettle, make tea in the teapot, or put a cookie or story idea into my goose. I just have them all lined up on my stove to look at. The gleam of the copper makes my heart sing. Every glimpse of the goose makes my heart shout. The teapot actually cost more than both of them together and right now I love it less, though I still do love it.

I love all three. Especially the goose.