Morri Stewart's Blog: The Insistence of the Elders

How do I grab my reader's attention? Writing a YA novel in a world in which our younger readers are far more pre-occupied with the information on their cell phones than any hands-on, tangible book seems almost insurmountable. And yet......

When my children were younger, in grade school, we lived in a part of town without a bus stop that would take them directly to their school. The nearest stop was about a five minute drive. Each morning we would gather all the necessities for the day, pile into the car, and head to the location where the bus driver would see my vehicle and stop for the children. Rather that treat this as an inconvenience, I suggested to my kids we go early and give ourselves time to read a book together! Thus began a year of such wonderful words from a wide range of authors. We read Roald Dahl, and Shel Silverstein on the lighter side and William Golding as our biggest tackle.

It was during Golding's audio book, Lord of the Flies, that I fully realized the impact of a parent on a child's exposure to the "written" word. Some of my fellow parents were startled that I had chosen "Lord of the Flies" to read with my 9 year olds. As we listened we would pause the author's voice and discuss the book. The words took us to that island and we poked sticks in the sand together, uncovering layer upon layer of meaning. There were scary moments and learning moments, and I was there, the whole time, helping them to navigate their new-found knowledge.

After all, isn't that what we do as parents?

Whether writing fact or fiction, the author’s words are impacted by his or her own life experiences. Subjectively we look through our unique optical lens in the hope that what we have experienced in our lives will translate into those ‘little truths’ which resonate universally with our readers.

“The beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me by means of the world that is in me, all things being grasped, related, recreated, molded and reconstructed in a personal form and an original manner.” Goethe

The world of Faltofar is peopled with elders, children, monsters and mighty, tiny creatures. Thom and Lilianna begin their summer prepared for adventures based upon their memories of past summers in the forest. But when they encounter Torr, a creature they have only ever seen in a book, the children realize they must shift how they view their world. Torr becomes the lightning rod of new experience. He is a mythical creature who opens the proverbial door to a whole new perception of Faltofar and the childrens’ role in their world and relationship to its future.

Thom and Lilianna have a gift. It is the gift of youth. One can argue that their lack of life experience makes them seem incapable of and, unprepared for, confronting the atrocities of Morauth and her army of destruction but, in fact, it is their greatest tool. However, the children must either convince their elders of their innate ability to step into their undefined roles or break the shackles of the pre-determined assumptions of the older generations.

Tabula rasa (Latin ‘scraped tablet’ – ie., ‘clean slate’), is a supposed condition that empiricists have attributed to the human mind before ideas have been imprinted on it by the reaction of the senses to the external world of objects. -Britannica.com

Ultimately the success of the children will only happen with the help of those who believe in them. Faltofar and our world are not so different.

In the spring of 2015 I took my computer and walked out to the magical garden my family and I had created and I began to write Faltofar.  Previous to our botanical efforts, the side yard had been a repository for miscellany: an aging, heavy canoe, rotting, leftover lumber, unused pots of all sizes and shapes and one ponderous propane tank.

The garden idea had percolated on my family’s collective back burners for quite a while.  The side yard had potential to be something other than a dirty collection of sometimes used toys and leftover pieces of prior projects. On the day we finally cleared off the land our neighbor, who had caught the contagion of creation, volunteered his rototiller. The freshly turned soil wafted the heady scent of warm, fertile earth into the air and seemed to validate our dreams of something grand and lush to come.

How fitting that I planted myself and my computer and notes in the midst of our botanical success in order to begin to create again.  As bees lazily drifted from flower to flower and water from the sprinkler tapped insistently on the newly painted propane tank, I set my mind to the stories my children had grown up hearing and helping to form.  My time in the garden was sacred.  My family understood my need to sit alone with this new foreign land called Faltofar I was imagining into reality.

Every afternoon that first summer I would purposely tuck my writing paraphernalia under my arm and with a wave to whomever was around slide the latch on the garden gate and step into my private world.  Even if it was only for an hour, I committed time to write.  Opening the gate was the first step.  This ritual of writing is imperative.  It is the beginning.