Beth Neff's Blog - Posts Tagged "ya-fiction"
You're an Artist
Writing *blink*
Read a paragraph or page from one of your favorite books. Pay attention to the use of words, the lengths of sentences, the choices of verbs and metaphors. Now write a paragraph imitating this exact style. Make the subject different but try to ‘hear the voice.’ What’s hard about it? What, of your own writing style wants to creep in? Listen carefully because that’s probably YOUR voice. (Note: this is not plagarism. You’re not going to try to copy another author’s writing and pretend it’s your own. Think of it as how the great masters of the Renaissance required their apprentices to copy the master’s work again and again until they had honed their skills.)
Read a paragraph or page from one of your favorite books. Pay attention to the use of words, the lengths of sentences, the choices of verbs and metaphors. Now write a paragraph imitating this exact style. Make the subject different but try to ‘hear the voice.’ What’s hard about it? What, of your own writing style wants to creep in? Listen carefully because that’s probably YOUR voice. (Note: this is not plagarism. You’re not going to try to copy another author’s writing and pretend it’s your own. Think of it as how the great masters of the Renaissance required their apprentices to copy the master’s work again and again until they had honed their skills.)
Out of the corner of your eye
New writing *blink*
Collect ten gestures. Watch people in your school, office, at the bus station or grocery store. (Be discreet – no staring, please.) Observe how they move their bodies, perform gestures, make facial expressions depending on their reactions to whatever is going on around them. Just write these down and keep them for future use or build a story around them. Don’t use words that describe feelings – just rely on the descriptions to convey the emotions.
Collect ten gestures. Watch people in your school, office, at the bus station or grocery store. (Be discreet – no staring, please.) Observe how they move their bodies, perform gestures, make facial expressions depending on their reactions to whatever is going on around them. Just write these down and keep them for future use or build a story around them. Don’t use words that describe feelings – just rely on the descriptions to convey the emotions.
Or maybe a musician!
Writing *blink*
Have you ever heard of a riff? It's a blues concept, a variation on a musical theme. It's the idea of staying true to a general set of rules (timing, key, etc.) while letting the imagination go within those parameters. Just like writing, right?
Okay, here's the exercise:
Choose an object. Study it, observe everything about it and then use the written word to describe it. In other words, create a riff. Ask questions. Do you and this object have some history together, some associations? A story? Write from any perspective, even that of the object itself. A riff on everything to do with this object.
Have you ever heard of a riff? It's a blues concept, a variation on a musical theme. It's the idea of staying true to a general set of rules (timing, key, etc.) while letting the imagination go within those parameters. Just like writing, right?
Okay, here's the exercise:
Choose an object. Study it, observe everything about it and then use the written word to describe it. In other words, create a riff. Ask questions. Do you and this object have some history together, some associations? A story? Write from any perspective, even that of the object itself. A riff on everything to do with this object.
You might need to *blink* twice at this one!
Freeze frame – describe an event that occurred recently with as few adjectives as possible, no added emotion or response. Simply say what happened with short sentences, attention to detail but no flowery description. It doesn’t even have to be a significant event, might be better if it’s not. This is from your point of view.
Now, consider writing the same event from the perspective of someone else. Or write it in a different tense, sprucing up your descriptions, nailing them down, as you go. Have fun! And send me your results - they may be posted at www.bethneff.com!
Now, consider writing the same event from the perspective of someone else. Or write it in a different tense, sprucing up your descriptions, nailing them down, as you go. Have fun! And send me your results - they may be posted at www.bethneff.com!
Put it in its place
Did you do last week's 'freeze frame' *blink*? Now, instead of an event, write about a place. Be short, direct, accurate, no flowery language necessary. And you don't have to be describing Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon. Maybe you just want to talk about your kitchen counter or the path out to your mailbox. In any case, pay close attention and try to include observations from the perspective of all your senses. If you're still enjoying yourself, change tense and go again.
And, don't forget, you can send your results to me at authorbethneff (at) gmail (dot) com and I might comment or post (if you want me to.) Keep it fun!
And, don't forget, you can send your results to me at authorbethneff (at) gmail (dot) com and I might comment or post (if you want me to.) Keep it fun!
Sustaina ... what?
The short bio included on the cover of my book and in all the publicity material says I have worked, among other things, as a sustainability activist. Not surprisingly, a few people I’ve met at bookstores and schools have asked me what this means.
At first, I felt a little uncomfortable talking about it, not because I’m not proud of my previous accomplishments or have anything to hide. It’s simply that I felt it had little to do with who I am now, the author persona I’m presently wearing, the novel I have written.
And then I realized that none of that is really true. Sustainability IS what I’m doing now. Less than I would have expected has really changed in the transition from activism to fiction writing. I’m still talking about many of the same things, still making the same points.
Let me explain. First, I need to say that sustainability is not just about lasting a long time as in ‘it’s not sustainable to spend more than you earn’ or ‘it’s not sustainable to keep burning fossil fuels.’ These things may very well be true and the concept of sustainability does require that actions and behaviors are able to be sustained over the long haul. But it goes a little further than that.
Sustainability is often described (among those of us who actually find a need to describe it) as a three-legged stool. A stool needs three legs to stand on and can’t function without all of them. This interconnectedness is critical. And, specifically, each leg of the stool stands for something. One is environmental responsibility. A second is economic justice (not suprisingly often mistaken, particularly in business jargon, to mean anything that helps a product or service promote itself.) And the third is social equity. Without all three, the stool can’t stand.
The idea is, of couse, that the ‘yardstick’ of sustainability can be used as a criterea for how we determine our actions, both personally and as a society. It’s a measured accounting – not just financial – of the both short and long-term impact and benefit resulting from decisions. No decision can proceed unless the stool stands balanced and steady.
When I think about the book I’ve written, I realize that sustainability exists, for me, as a core belief system that I use to measure not only the social contract all of us are a part of (whether we wish to be or not) but also as a tool to evaluate emotional and psychological well-being. This is simply another way of saying that what we often refer to as a social ‘safety net’ is a big part of sustainability. The people who have fallen through the net, or stretched its limits, the people who are stressed emotionally, pressed economically, the places that are crumbling structurally, are a symptom of a wobbling stool where one or more of the legs have broken down.
What we’re really talking about is resources, tangible and intangible, how we access them (fairly,) how we utilize them, our relationships with them. Sustainable culture attends to the distribution of resources in all its manifestations – environmental resources like land and fuel, food and conserved spaces, ecological diversity; economic resources (which instantly echo those of the first list;) and social resources such as families and communities, education, mental and physical health.
It turns out that, in caring for and about Sarah, Cassie, Lauren and Jenna, however fictional they may be, I am doing much the same work I have always done.
At first, I felt a little uncomfortable talking about it, not because I’m not proud of my previous accomplishments or have anything to hide. It’s simply that I felt it had little to do with who I am now, the author persona I’m presently wearing, the novel I have written.
And then I realized that none of that is really true. Sustainability IS what I’m doing now. Less than I would have expected has really changed in the transition from activism to fiction writing. I’m still talking about many of the same things, still making the same points.
Let me explain. First, I need to say that sustainability is not just about lasting a long time as in ‘it’s not sustainable to spend more than you earn’ or ‘it’s not sustainable to keep burning fossil fuels.’ These things may very well be true and the concept of sustainability does require that actions and behaviors are able to be sustained over the long haul. But it goes a little further than that.
Sustainability is often described (among those of us who actually find a need to describe it) as a three-legged stool. A stool needs three legs to stand on and can’t function without all of them. This interconnectedness is critical. And, specifically, each leg of the stool stands for something. One is environmental responsibility. A second is economic justice (not suprisingly often mistaken, particularly in business jargon, to mean anything that helps a product or service promote itself.) And the third is social equity. Without all three, the stool can’t stand.
The idea is, of couse, that the ‘yardstick’ of sustainability can be used as a criterea for how we determine our actions, both personally and as a society. It’s a measured accounting – not just financial – of the both short and long-term impact and benefit resulting from decisions. No decision can proceed unless the stool stands balanced and steady.
When I think about the book I’ve written, I realize that sustainability exists, for me, as a core belief system that I use to measure not only the social contract all of us are a part of (whether we wish to be or not) but also as a tool to evaluate emotional and psychological well-being. This is simply another way of saying that what we often refer to as a social ‘safety net’ is a big part of sustainability. The people who have fallen through the net, or stretched its limits, the people who are stressed emotionally, pressed economically, the places that are crumbling structurally, are a symptom of a wobbling stool where one or more of the legs have broken down.
What we’re really talking about is resources, tangible and intangible, how we access them (fairly,) how we utilize them, our relationships with them. Sustainable culture attends to the distribution of resources in all its manifestations – environmental resources like land and fuel, food and conserved spaces, ecological diversity; economic resources (which instantly echo those of the first list;) and social resources such as families and communities, education, mental and physical health.
It turns out that, in caring for and about Sarah, Cassie, Lauren and Jenna, however fictional they may be, I am doing much the same work I have always done.
A (fictional) response to a recent news item...
Flash (fiction) On The News
Rhea was eleven when she got tired of wearing layers of undershirts beneath her school blouse and finally told her mother she thought she needed a bra. It wasn’t so much the bulge of the breast tissue itself but the way her enlarging nipples pressed insistently against the fabric of her clothes as if announcing themselves to the world. Rhea knew something about it was her fault but she didn’t know what.
When Rhea was twelve, she heard her brother and his friends in the basement rec room through a cold air return vent in the kitchen. They were talking about knockers and sucking the cantaloupes and having to come up for air between the balloons.They were giggling and guffawing and imitating a high voice that Rhea knew was meant to be hers. The girl-voice was first pleading, then breathing hard and then gasping with either pain or pleasure, Rhea wasn’t sure. Even though she couldn’t be certain exactly what the boys were saying about her, she knew it wasn’t good and she knew it was her fault.
She began to slouch.
When Rhea was fourteen, her parents went to visit her mother’s ailing mother for the weekend and Rhea was left in the care of her brother. Almost as soon as the parents were out the door, Rhea’s brother called his friends to come over. While Rhea remained reading in her room, the house filled with voices and laughter, mostly male but some female, the noise expanding and swelling against the walls of the house as the friends became drunker and drunker. Rhea was a little bit curious but mostly she was just very hungry so she wandered down the hallway and into the living room on the way to the kitchen, keeping her eyes mostly down and her shock at the disarray contained. She would just grab a box of crackers and maybe some cheese, head back to her room.
She felt the hand on her arm without immediately seeing who it belonged to. She suspected it was a mistake so she edged away, continued toward her room but the hand closed around her wrist and she was forced to look up. Into a smile, a voice she couldn’t quite hear above the music, a gesture to follow.
He was Brent, a friend of her brother’s. He had a pleasant face, a very nice smile, a gentle way of just barely touching her skin with the tips of his fingers without feeling at all invasive. He looked carefully at her when she answered his questions as if what she had to say could actually matter to him even though she knew that was impossible and he could barely hear her voice anyway, even after they moved into the far corner of the basement rec room where her mother had shoved an old ratty couch no longer suited for the upstairs.
She drank a little of what he had in his cup. She didn’t think she’d had very much but it had become hard to remember. He claimed to know what he was doing and she believed him.
He claimed that they could really get to know each other better if they went upstairs and she believed him.
He said he would just lie down with her a little bit, they could talk until she felt better, and she believed him.
When his hands were under her clothes and his body pressing her into the mattress, he promised not to hurt her.
She believed him.
He didn’t force her. He didn’t have to. She went along, didn’t know to protest, didn’t actually know what was happening. She couldn’t tell anyone that because they wouldn’t believe her.
How could a fourteen year old girl not understand when...? But she didn’t. That was the truth. The real felt nothing like it had been described. In fact, she didn’t even think to connect what was happening to her body with the health films at school or the gauzy, breathless scenes in movies. It was nothing like either one.
Her body should have known. And it should have known, too, that she was too young to be a mother, that whatever little gears and levers are in there should close tight against the sperm of a man she doesn’t know, doesn’t love, who will go off into the world without even turning back, may never know that his body contributed to making a life that needed a place to live and grow before it could be part of the world and that place was a woman’s – no, a girl’s – body. She should have known. But she didn’t.
And so, clearly, that is her fault too.
Rhea was eleven when she got tired of wearing layers of undershirts beneath her school blouse and finally told her mother she thought she needed a bra. It wasn’t so much the bulge of the breast tissue itself but the way her enlarging nipples pressed insistently against the fabric of her clothes as if announcing themselves to the world. Rhea knew something about it was her fault but she didn’t know what.
When Rhea was twelve, she heard her brother and his friends in the basement rec room through a cold air return vent in the kitchen. They were talking about knockers and sucking the cantaloupes and having to come up for air between the balloons.They were giggling and guffawing and imitating a high voice that Rhea knew was meant to be hers. The girl-voice was first pleading, then breathing hard and then gasping with either pain or pleasure, Rhea wasn’t sure. Even though she couldn’t be certain exactly what the boys were saying about her, she knew it wasn’t good and she knew it was her fault.
She began to slouch.
When Rhea was fourteen, her parents went to visit her mother’s ailing mother for the weekend and Rhea was left in the care of her brother. Almost as soon as the parents were out the door, Rhea’s brother called his friends to come over. While Rhea remained reading in her room, the house filled with voices and laughter, mostly male but some female, the noise expanding and swelling against the walls of the house as the friends became drunker and drunker. Rhea was a little bit curious but mostly she was just very hungry so she wandered down the hallway and into the living room on the way to the kitchen, keeping her eyes mostly down and her shock at the disarray contained. She would just grab a box of crackers and maybe some cheese, head back to her room.
She felt the hand on her arm without immediately seeing who it belonged to. She suspected it was a mistake so she edged away, continued toward her room but the hand closed around her wrist and she was forced to look up. Into a smile, a voice she couldn’t quite hear above the music, a gesture to follow.
He was Brent, a friend of her brother’s. He had a pleasant face, a very nice smile, a gentle way of just barely touching her skin with the tips of his fingers without feeling at all invasive. He looked carefully at her when she answered his questions as if what she had to say could actually matter to him even though she knew that was impossible and he could barely hear her voice anyway, even after they moved into the far corner of the basement rec room where her mother had shoved an old ratty couch no longer suited for the upstairs.
She drank a little of what he had in his cup. She didn’t think she’d had very much but it had become hard to remember. He claimed to know what he was doing and she believed him.
He claimed that they could really get to know each other better if they went upstairs and she believed him.
He said he would just lie down with her a little bit, they could talk until she felt better, and she believed him.
When his hands were under her clothes and his body pressing her into the mattress, he promised not to hurt her.
She believed him.
He didn’t force her. He didn’t have to. She went along, didn’t know to protest, didn’t actually know what was happening. She couldn’t tell anyone that because they wouldn’t believe her.
How could a fourteen year old girl not understand when...? But she didn’t. That was the truth. The real felt nothing like it had been described. In fact, she didn’t even think to connect what was happening to her body with the health films at school or the gauzy, breathless scenes in movies. It was nothing like either one.
Her body should have known. And it should have known, too, that she was too young to be a mother, that whatever little gears and levers are in there should close tight against the sperm of a man she doesn’t know, doesn’t love, who will go off into the world without even turning back, may never know that his body contributed to making a life that needed a place to live and grow before it could be part of the world and that place was a woman’s – no, a girl’s – body. She should have known. But she didn’t.
And so, clearly, that is her fault too.
Responses from "Best of..." Interviews: First Installment
I’ve received some great questions from various interviews over the last nine months since Getting Somewhere came out so thought I’d gather a few of the responses in one place. This is the first installment.
From Eve’s Fan Garden…
What do you like most about writing? What do you like least?
I hope I don’t sound too Pollyanna-ish to admit that I love virtually everything about writing. I love the creative process, the opportunity to incorporate imagination into my daily life. I love watching the characters develop, take on personalities of their own, and I love the ‘problems’ that arise in connecting all the threads of the story and working to solve them. I love that my time is my own, that productivity is completely dependent on my own discipline and resolve and that I can write for a bit, work in my garden (thinking about the story, of course!,) come back to it for awhile, do a little cooking or sewing or reading, and then return to the manuscript just as I left it. I also love just working with words, finding the best ways to express an idea or a thought or an emotion. It’s a very rewarding process. Weirdly enough, I also love the editing process, receiving feedback from my wonderful editor, making revisions. In fact, I might like rewriting the book as much as I like writing it in the first place. And, just having gotten started on the publicity aspect, I’m enjoying that too. There would be no point in writing if I didn’t eventually get to talk to people about it? The hardest part? Waiting. Lots and lots of waiting.
From WMUK interview...
Why did you decide to set the alternative detention facility on an organic farm? What did that environment offer that the girls might not have gotten somewhere else?
One of the primary things that the farm offers to the girls is the element of belonging. Places have a huge impact on who we become. Each girl in the story, except one notable exception, contributes her labor to the farm and also seeks out places among the fields and woods and waterways that allow her to feel a kind of connection that was inaccessible to her before. Without even realizing it, the girls finally belong to something that their families and other people in their lives have been unable to provide.
Another important resource offered to each of the girls at the farm is the ability to control her own use of time. They work hard, using some of their time productively with very tangible results but they also have plenty of free time to explore both the inner and outer worlds that are becoming available to them. They begin to see how precious their time really is and what it feels like to make choices for themselves.
Along with time comes the notion of sovereignty. This is a very good word, I’ve always thought, to describe the concept of ‘control’ without the negative connotations we have with that word. The farm helps to erase the imbalance of power that has been so much a feature of the girls’ early experiences, creates an environment where choices are encouraged, where each person has the opportunity to become accountable for how they behave, how they treat other people, how they view themselves.
And finally, as Ellie states in one of the early scenes in the book, the farm is about food, for sure, but it’s also about passion. The adults who work there are nothing if not passionate about the land, the plants, the food they produce, and the ways in which they attempt to connect with their community through its production. The hope of the program is that, even if the girls do not become passionate about the exact things that the farm represents, they’ll experience what it feels like to be passionate about something and carry that with them when they move on into their own adulthoods.
From The Story Siren guest blog, responding to the question of why I wanted to write a story about juvenile offenders...
From the time I was a little kid, I’ve always been highly responsive to the pain and suffering of others. I think I was in about the fourth grade when I began to read the newspaper and any stories I came across concerning war or famine in other countries, oppression of women or children or minorities, environmental disasters, felt like they concerned me personally. It wasn’t a puppies and kittens thing. It was more of an activist thing. If it was wrong, I wanted to do something about it.
I suppose that’s part of the reason I became an organic farmer. In addition to loving plants and enjoying the labors surrounding their care, even more than the desire to help people eat healthy food, was the satisfaction I derived from restoring a small piece of land to it’s highest level of well-being, the sense that I had an ever-so-tiny impact on making the world a better place.
And I’m sure that’s also part of the reason I wanted to write a story about juvenile delinquents. There’s no question that their experiences are interesting and compelling. But the issue for me was more that juvenile offenders, especially girls, are extremely likely to be victims of circumstance, their crimes the result of powerlessness and oppression. And, in fact, the more I read about juvenile detention facilities, their ‘conditions of confinement,’ which resemble prisons far more than they do any therapeutic environment, the more determined I was to create – if only fictionally – a scenario which allowed these girls to recover the choices that might lead them to better lives.
In Getting Somewhere, these four girls – Cassie, Jenna, Sarah, and Lauren – have an opportunity to address the issues that have brought them to this facility in the first place. They apply their labors to the work of the farm, interact with Ellie, Donna, and Grace, the adults there, and learn to know each other, to identify ‘resources’ when they appear and to put them to use better understanding themselves. Unfortunately, one of the girls is not only resistent but downright hostile to the opportunity being offered to her. And her hostility threatens everything the others have worked so hard to achieve.
The story seeks to address questions that are relevant to all of us and to society in general: What if your life, a part of your immediate future, at the very least, had been determined by something bad that you did? Would you want people associating you with that thing? Would you want to be known by it?
And even more, can you stop being a victim once that’s happened? Do you have choices? And, if so, how do you make them?
From Eve’s Fan Garden…
What do you like most about writing? What do you like least?
I hope I don’t sound too Pollyanna-ish to admit that I love virtually everything about writing. I love the creative process, the opportunity to incorporate imagination into my daily life. I love watching the characters develop, take on personalities of their own, and I love the ‘problems’ that arise in connecting all the threads of the story and working to solve them. I love that my time is my own, that productivity is completely dependent on my own discipline and resolve and that I can write for a bit, work in my garden (thinking about the story, of course!,) come back to it for awhile, do a little cooking or sewing or reading, and then return to the manuscript just as I left it. I also love just working with words, finding the best ways to express an idea or a thought or an emotion. It’s a very rewarding process. Weirdly enough, I also love the editing process, receiving feedback from my wonderful editor, making revisions. In fact, I might like rewriting the book as much as I like writing it in the first place. And, just having gotten started on the publicity aspect, I’m enjoying that too. There would be no point in writing if I didn’t eventually get to talk to people about it? The hardest part? Waiting. Lots and lots of waiting.
From WMUK interview...
Why did you decide to set the alternative detention facility on an organic farm? What did that environment offer that the girls might not have gotten somewhere else?
One of the primary things that the farm offers to the girls is the element of belonging. Places have a huge impact on who we become. Each girl in the story, except one notable exception, contributes her labor to the farm and also seeks out places among the fields and woods and waterways that allow her to feel a kind of connection that was inaccessible to her before. Without even realizing it, the girls finally belong to something that their families and other people in their lives have been unable to provide.
Another important resource offered to each of the girls at the farm is the ability to control her own use of time. They work hard, using some of their time productively with very tangible results but they also have plenty of free time to explore both the inner and outer worlds that are becoming available to them. They begin to see how precious their time really is and what it feels like to make choices for themselves.
Along with time comes the notion of sovereignty. This is a very good word, I’ve always thought, to describe the concept of ‘control’ without the negative connotations we have with that word. The farm helps to erase the imbalance of power that has been so much a feature of the girls’ early experiences, creates an environment where choices are encouraged, where each person has the opportunity to become accountable for how they behave, how they treat other people, how they view themselves.
And finally, as Ellie states in one of the early scenes in the book, the farm is about food, for sure, but it’s also about passion. The adults who work there are nothing if not passionate about the land, the plants, the food they produce, and the ways in which they attempt to connect with their community through its production. The hope of the program is that, even if the girls do not become passionate about the exact things that the farm represents, they’ll experience what it feels like to be passionate about something and carry that with them when they move on into their own adulthoods.
From The Story Siren guest blog, responding to the question of why I wanted to write a story about juvenile offenders...
From the time I was a little kid, I’ve always been highly responsive to the pain and suffering of others. I think I was in about the fourth grade when I began to read the newspaper and any stories I came across concerning war or famine in other countries, oppression of women or children or minorities, environmental disasters, felt like they concerned me personally. It wasn’t a puppies and kittens thing. It was more of an activist thing. If it was wrong, I wanted to do something about it.
I suppose that’s part of the reason I became an organic farmer. In addition to loving plants and enjoying the labors surrounding their care, even more than the desire to help people eat healthy food, was the satisfaction I derived from restoring a small piece of land to it’s highest level of well-being, the sense that I had an ever-so-tiny impact on making the world a better place.
And I’m sure that’s also part of the reason I wanted to write a story about juvenile delinquents. There’s no question that their experiences are interesting and compelling. But the issue for me was more that juvenile offenders, especially girls, are extremely likely to be victims of circumstance, their crimes the result of powerlessness and oppression. And, in fact, the more I read about juvenile detention facilities, their ‘conditions of confinement,’ which resemble prisons far more than they do any therapeutic environment, the more determined I was to create – if only fictionally – a scenario which allowed these girls to recover the choices that might lead them to better lives.
In Getting Somewhere, these four girls – Cassie, Jenna, Sarah, and Lauren – have an opportunity to address the issues that have brought them to this facility in the first place. They apply their labors to the work of the farm, interact with Ellie, Donna, and Grace, the adults there, and learn to know each other, to identify ‘resources’ when they appear and to put them to use better understanding themselves. Unfortunately, one of the girls is not only resistent but downright hostile to the opportunity being offered to her. And her hostility threatens everything the others have worked so hard to achieve.
The story seeks to address questions that are relevant to all of us and to society in general: What if your life, a part of your immediate future, at the very least, had been determined by something bad that you did? Would you want people associating you with that thing? Would you want to be known by it?
And even more, can you stop being a victim once that’s happened? Do you have choices? And, if so, how do you make them?
"Best of..." Interviews: Second Installment
Here are a couple more of the great interview questions I've received since Getting Somewhere came out. This is the second installment and I'll plan to have one more. (And if YOU have a question you’d like to ask, send me a message here at Goodreads and I may post it with my response!)
From Amaterasu Reads
What does it feel like to have a published book?
They say it’s like having a baby – the initial excitement, the long wait, and eventual flurry of pain, relief, exhilaration, and exhaustion. I suppose this is as good a metaphor as any and yet, even though I’ve had four kids of my own, the best preparation I could have had for the experience of writing a book and having it published has been the nearly thirty years I spent as an organic vegetable farmer.
People I knew were pretty surprised when I told them I planned to quit farming, was resigning as manager of the farmers market and director of the not-for-profit I had founded, and that I hoped to become a writer. They were further surprised to discover that I had no intentions of writing about agriculture (at least, not directly!) or sustainability or community planning or any of the other topics I’d devoted my career to so far. What they really couldn’t have known, though – and I didn’t either – was that the experience of farming had, in many unpredicted ways, prepared me well for some of the things I would need to learn as a new author.
Like patience. Is there anyone who truly considers themselves patient? I certainly tried my best to be patient with my kids. And farming is nothing if not an exercise in patience. You know those gorgeous red-ripe tomatoes you love to buy at the farmers market? Well, we farmers plant those seeds in February, nurture baby plants along until they can tolerate the outdoors, weed around them for months, watch them carefully as they ripen, finally bring them to customers a good six months later. And none of this includes the months before spent perusing seed catalogs, selecting varieties, comparing records, crunching numbers, or the previous years dedicated to creating a fertile garden in the first place.
Writing a book is nearly exactly like that. It’s a whole lot of ‘hurry up and wait.’ All of your experiences have collided to create this book in the first place. You’ve spent varying amounts of time getting those perfect words recorded. And you certainly have an idea of what your ultimate goal might be (a published book!) But even once you’ve done the research to determine where to send the manuscript, even after you’ve found an agent and the agent has sold your book to a
publisher, there are so many steps along the way and so many chunks of time when you are simply waiting for the process to unfold.
I guess that’s why they call it ‘practicing’ patience.
And still, for all your best efforts in identifying and pursuing all the necessary resources, you really have very little control over the outcome. Some of it certainly comes down to hard work, some of it is timing, and some of it is just simply dumb luck (sort of like the weather.) And though it may be kind of hard to believe, that’s actually a good thing – recognizing that all you can ensure is the integrity of the process, the quality of the relationships built along
the way.
In many ways, that’s been the best part of becoming a writer and the part where my farming experience has turned out to be most relevant. It doesn’t matter how perfect that tomato turns out to be if nobody ever picks it up, admires it, savors the lovely flavor. Especially with organic farming, each vegetable is truly a labor of love. It matters who eats it, who shares with you a recipe they used to prepare it, who comes back to find more just like it. And writing is the same
way.
Authors care what people think. A book is a special kind of relationship, characterized by the nature of the story, the voice chosen to tell it and the total vulnerability we risk to present it.
In the same way that my farmers market customers wanted to be connected to the food they ate and the people who grew it, readers seek stories that will make them feel connected to something larger than themselves, that tell them something about the world of the author, the world as a whole, and, maybe more importantly, something about themselves. I am honored by the opportunity to give that to them. And of course, that’s exactly what authors want too and are
willing to go to a whole lot of trouble to get it.
From One A Day YA
Describe your main characters. If they were real people, would you be friends with them?
Getting Somewhere is the story of four very different girls who have been convicted of juvenile crimes and choose to serve out their sentences in an alternative detention program located on an organic farm. The narrative switches back and forth between the girls, providing each one’s perspective on the very challenging experiences she is confronting in this unfamiliar environment.
We are introduced first to Jenna who is described as someone who would willingly push others out of the way to get where she has to go. And yet she is, of course, much more complex than that, having been shuffled around from foster home to foster home, eventually landing in juvenile detention as a result of taking the fall for much more hardened (and sophisticated) criminals. She’s turned her hurt into a shell and we are given the opportunity to watch while that shell either weakens a bit and falls away or installs itself as a permanent burden on her back. Cassie, on the other hand, has no experience of the world at all. She has spent her childhood living in an isolated trailer with her grandmother, who has gradually deteriorated mentally, leaving Cassie as the primary caretaker. Their only outside connection is with Cassie’s uncle who, while keeping them alive and fed, turns out to be more curse than blessing. Cassie’s crime does not become clear until late in the book but her personal struggle to fit in, to find something she can call ‘self,’ is a vibrant theme throughout the story. Then there’s Sarah. She ran away from home at thirteen and, as happens to so many girls on the street, becomes the victim of drugs and prostitution. At first, the farm simply means a warm bed and hot meals but she is hard-pressed to resist the pressures – of all kinds – to participate in the drama that ensues there. The last girl is Lauren. She’s a thief and a manipulator and yet no less a victim of the poor decisions of the adults around her than the others. While I don’t know anyone exactly like Lauren – or any of the others, for that matter – there is a little piece of each one of them in all of us. And as one very wise writer said recently, you have to fall a little bit in love with your characters, no matter how difficult. At times, I just want to give each of them a great big hug!
From Amaterasu Reads
What does it feel like to have a published book?
They say it’s like having a baby – the initial excitement, the long wait, and eventual flurry of pain, relief, exhilaration, and exhaustion. I suppose this is as good a metaphor as any and yet, even though I’ve had four kids of my own, the best preparation I could have had for the experience of writing a book and having it published has been the nearly thirty years I spent as an organic vegetable farmer.
People I knew were pretty surprised when I told them I planned to quit farming, was resigning as manager of the farmers market and director of the not-for-profit I had founded, and that I hoped to become a writer. They were further surprised to discover that I had no intentions of writing about agriculture (at least, not directly!) or sustainability or community planning or any of the other topics I’d devoted my career to so far. What they really couldn’t have known, though – and I didn’t either – was that the experience of farming had, in many unpredicted ways, prepared me well for some of the things I would need to learn as a new author.
Like patience. Is there anyone who truly considers themselves patient? I certainly tried my best to be patient with my kids. And farming is nothing if not an exercise in patience. You know those gorgeous red-ripe tomatoes you love to buy at the farmers market? Well, we farmers plant those seeds in February, nurture baby plants along until they can tolerate the outdoors, weed around them for months, watch them carefully as they ripen, finally bring them to customers a good six months later. And none of this includes the months before spent perusing seed catalogs, selecting varieties, comparing records, crunching numbers, or the previous years dedicated to creating a fertile garden in the first place.
Writing a book is nearly exactly like that. It’s a whole lot of ‘hurry up and wait.’ All of your experiences have collided to create this book in the first place. You’ve spent varying amounts of time getting those perfect words recorded. And you certainly have an idea of what your ultimate goal might be (a published book!) But even once you’ve done the research to determine where to send the manuscript, even after you’ve found an agent and the agent has sold your book to a
publisher, there are so many steps along the way and so many chunks of time when you are simply waiting for the process to unfold.
I guess that’s why they call it ‘practicing’ patience.
And still, for all your best efforts in identifying and pursuing all the necessary resources, you really have very little control over the outcome. Some of it certainly comes down to hard work, some of it is timing, and some of it is just simply dumb luck (sort of like the weather.) And though it may be kind of hard to believe, that’s actually a good thing – recognizing that all you can ensure is the integrity of the process, the quality of the relationships built along
the way.
In many ways, that’s been the best part of becoming a writer and the part where my farming experience has turned out to be most relevant. It doesn’t matter how perfect that tomato turns out to be if nobody ever picks it up, admires it, savors the lovely flavor. Especially with organic farming, each vegetable is truly a labor of love. It matters who eats it, who shares with you a recipe they used to prepare it, who comes back to find more just like it. And writing is the same
way.
Authors care what people think. A book is a special kind of relationship, characterized by the nature of the story, the voice chosen to tell it and the total vulnerability we risk to present it.
In the same way that my farmers market customers wanted to be connected to the food they ate and the people who grew it, readers seek stories that will make them feel connected to something larger than themselves, that tell them something about the world of the author, the world as a whole, and, maybe more importantly, something about themselves. I am honored by the opportunity to give that to them. And of course, that’s exactly what authors want too and are
willing to go to a whole lot of trouble to get it.
From One A Day YA
Describe your main characters. If they were real people, would you be friends with them?
Getting Somewhere is the story of four very different girls who have been convicted of juvenile crimes and choose to serve out their sentences in an alternative detention program located on an organic farm. The narrative switches back and forth between the girls, providing each one’s perspective on the very challenging experiences she is confronting in this unfamiliar environment.
We are introduced first to Jenna who is described as someone who would willingly push others out of the way to get where she has to go. And yet she is, of course, much more complex than that, having been shuffled around from foster home to foster home, eventually landing in juvenile detention as a result of taking the fall for much more hardened (and sophisticated) criminals. She’s turned her hurt into a shell and we are given the opportunity to watch while that shell either weakens a bit and falls away or installs itself as a permanent burden on her back. Cassie, on the other hand, has no experience of the world at all. She has spent her childhood living in an isolated trailer with her grandmother, who has gradually deteriorated mentally, leaving Cassie as the primary caretaker. Their only outside connection is with Cassie’s uncle who, while keeping them alive and fed, turns out to be more curse than blessing. Cassie’s crime does not become clear until late in the book but her personal struggle to fit in, to find something she can call ‘self,’ is a vibrant theme throughout the story. Then there’s Sarah. She ran away from home at thirteen and, as happens to so many girls on the street, becomes the victim of drugs and prostitution. At first, the farm simply means a warm bed and hot meals but she is hard-pressed to resist the pressures – of all kinds – to participate in the drama that ensues there. The last girl is Lauren. She’s a thief and a manipulator and yet no less a victim of the poor decisions of the adults around her than the others. While I don’t know anyone exactly like Lauren – or any of the others, for that matter – there is a little piece of each one of them in all of us. And as one very wise writer said recently, you have to fall a little bit in love with your characters, no matter how difficult. At times, I just want to give each of them a great big hug!
Best of...Interviews Part 3
I’ve received some great questions from various interviews over the last ten months since Getting Somewhere came out so thought I’d gather a few of the responses in one place. This is the third installment. (And if YOU have a question you’d like to ask, send me a message here at Goodreads and I may post it with my response!)
For Reading Keeps You Sane
Where did the title of your book come from?
I’m sure it happens all the time: the book is written and all that remains is somehow arriving at the perfect title. The title is the book’s face to the world and finding the perfect fit might require long, diligent effort, even a few initial stabs at it that earn just wrinkled noses and noncommittal smiles.
I have to admit, though, that that’s not the way it happened for me at all. In fact, the title Getting Somewhere jumped into my mind even before the first page was completely written, providing thematic guidance for the actual writing of the novel itself.
That classic concept of a ‘heroine’s journey’ permeates the narrative from the very first scene in which the four girls arrive at the farm in the detention-center bus, taking that first step on what will turn out for all of them to be a bit of a harrowing trip. Jenna is prepared to be seriously underwhelmed, expecting the women who run the farm to have nothing to offer her – just like all of the other adults she has encountered so far in her life. Sarah doesn’t think much beyond a warm bed or a full stomach at first, has trained herself to take things pretty much as they come, assuming others will make the tough decisions and let her know about them afterwards. Cassie has rarely been beyond the walls of her grandmother’s trailer, the boundaries of the surrounding yard, can’t even conceive of what she might confront beyond pictures from the books she’s devoured from early childhood. And Lauren? Well, Lauren expects to get whatever she wants, has no intention of doing anything she doesn’t want to do or being anywhere she doesn’t want to be.
Yet, despite the fact that they’ve all converged onto this isolated spot on earth from significantly diverse directions, they’re all on the same road now. What will they make of the trip? How will they use what they know of themselves to discover their strengths and discard their shackles? How will who they’ve been up until now allow (or disallow!) them to absorb these new and difficult – yet potentially life-altering – surroundings, to negotiate the path laid out before them?
I’m fascinated with the process of personal decision-making, with the way that identity is such a stew of our perceptions of ourselves within the framework of our experiences. Sometimes our experiences hinder our ability to move forward. Sometimes what we believe about ourselves – what we’ve been told by others – simply isn’t true. Sometimes, in order to get somewhere, we have to leave an awful lot of stuff behind.
With Getting Somewhere, both the title and the book, I hope to address some of the most basic questions of trust and choice and forgiveness. I am pleased and honored to invite readers along on that metaphoric – but no less real and challenging – journey.
For A Tapestry of Words
Describe your choice to include strong adult characters in the story.
As you may have noticed, there are a lot of dead and missing adults in YA literature. The reasons are fairly obvious. First, YA characters need to be experiencing some kind of challenge, drama, or even trauma. Killing off a parent (or two) is a pretty good way of doing that. Second, YA protagonists are generally learning how to make the transition from childhood to adulthood (the ‘coming of age’ trope) and the experience is significantly more interesting and dramatic without a parent looking over their shoulders. And, finally, YA is, well, it’s YA which means it’s about young adults. The sense among the adults who edit, publish and market these books is that teenagers just don’t want to read about adults.
The truth is, though, that adults are both the primary problem-makers AND problem-solvers in the world. Whether it’s fantasy or real-lit, it’s usually neither workable nor advisable to eliminate adult voices entirely. Think of Harry Potter. He has both Voldemort and Dumbledore. Or Katniss Everdeen with both President Snow (and the Capitol) and Haymitch (‘maker’ and ‘solver.’) There are certainly exceptions but the point is that the world isn’t – or shouldn’t be – divided up by age groups and adults can serve as both excellent antagonists and critical resources in literary settings. In other words, the identity of the teen character evolves either in relationship with or in juxtaposition to the adults in his or her life.
And, in fact, adults represent a ‘future’ that is not possible to develop in any other way. Kids generally don’t get to grow up in YA lit and yet, if we are to explore the psychologically essential (and dramatically interesting) aspects of responsibility and consequences, it is important to represent how those might manifest themselves over time. Adult characters can provide critical tension by acting as models, reflections, or even cautionary tales, sometimes all at the same time. This is the dynamic that fascinated me as I developed the characters and plot elements of Getting Somewhere.
My characters are four teen girls who have committed juvenile crimes and elect to participate in an alternative detention program located on an organic farm. Clearly, something has gone wrong for them. Though we want to know what has happened to them in the past, the setting and the story line pretty much eliminate any significant role for parents right from the start.
And yet, adults do come to play a significant role. Three women run the farm. They are important to the story, (and to the girls) offering that classic conflict between potential resource and flawed decision-making. Though the issues the girls are dealing with start long before they arrive on the farm, the relationships they develop with the adult women – and the relationships between the women – offer a potent context for exploring those exact issues further. Paradoxically, an understanding of the identities and experiences of the adult characters provides an opportunity to delve more deeply into the girls themselves – the impact of experience itself, the nature of emotional resources, how choices are made, how empowerment happens.
And, maybe more importantly, it is essential for our YA characters to grow, to experience some kind of transformation over the course of the story. While the love, nurture and support for that growth can come from some other source – a friend or love interest, for example – having it come at least in part from an adult (or to be visibly absent, forcing the teen to recognize the gap) is rich, powerful, and compellingly realistic.
In addition to that, there is the question of how we perceive of young adult experience, both in real life and on the page. I think younger readers ARE interested in reading about adults. Genuine adults, conflicted adults, flawed adults. Maybe not as primary characters but certainly as interesting, fully-developed, authentically devised secondary ones. Teens are keeping their eyes on us – as well they should! They want to understand motives, access information, evaluate how their decisions are going to play out in the long run. As authors, regardless of genre, it is our job to give that to them.
For Reading Keeps You Sane
Where did the title of your book come from?
I’m sure it happens all the time: the book is written and all that remains is somehow arriving at the perfect title. The title is the book’s face to the world and finding the perfect fit might require long, diligent effort, even a few initial stabs at it that earn just wrinkled noses and noncommittal smiles.
I have to admit, though, that that’s not the way it happened for me at all. In fact, the title Getting Somewhere jumped into my mind even before the first page was completely written, providing thematic guidance for the actual writing of the novel itself.
That classic concept of a ‘heroine’s journey’ permeates the narrative from the very first scene in which the four girls arrive at the farm in the detention-center bus, taking that first step on what will turn out for all of them to be a bit of a harrowing trip. Jenna is prepared to be seriously underwhelmed, expecting the women who run the farm to have nothing to offer her – just like all of the other adults she has encountered so far in her life. Sarah doesn’t think much beyond a warm bed or a full stomach at first, has trained herself to take things pretty much as they come, assuming others will make the tough decisions and let her know about them afterwards. Cassie has rarely been beyond the walls of her grandmother’s trailer, the boundaries of the surrounding yard, can’t even conceive of what she might confront beyond pictures from the books she’s devoured from early childhood. And Lauren? Well, Lauren expects to get whatever she wants, has no intention of doing anything she doesn’t want to do or being anywhere she doesn’t want to be.
Yet, despite the fact that they’ve all converged onto this isolated spot on earth from significantly diverse directions, they’re all on the same road now. What will they make of the trip? How will they use what they know of themselves to discover their strengths and discard their shackles? How will who they’ve been up until now allow (or disallow!) them to absorb these new and difficult – yet potentially life-altering – surroundings, to negotiate the path laid out before them?
I’m fascinated with the process of personal decision-making, with the way that identity is such a stew of our perceptions of ourselves within the framework of our experiences. Sometimes our experiences hinder our ability to move forward. Sometimes what we believe about ourselves – what we’ve been told by others – simply isn’t true. Sometimes, in order to get somewhere, we have to leave an awful lot of stuff behind.
With Getting Somewhere, both the title and the book, I hope to address some of the most basic questions of trust and choice and forgiveness. I am pleased and honored to invite readers along on that metaphoric – but no less real and challenging – journey.
For A Tapestry of Words
Describe your choice to include strong adult characters in the story.
As you may have noticed, there are a lot of dead and missing adults in YA literature. The reasons are fairly obvious. First, YA characters need to be experiencing some kind of challenge, drama, or even trauma. Killing off a parent (or two) is a pretty good way of doing that. Second, YA protagonists are generally learning how to make the transition from childhood to adulthood (the ‘coming of age’ trope) and the experience is significantly more interesting and dramatic without a parent looking over their shoulders. And, finally, YA is, well, it’s YA which means it’s about young adults. The sense among the adults who edit, publish and market these books is that teenagers just don’t want to read about adults.
The truth is, though, that adults are both the primary problem-makers AND problem-solvers in the world. Whether it’s fantasy or real-lit, it’s usually neither workable nor advisable to eliminate adult voices entirely. Think of Harry Potter. He has both Voldemort and Dumbledore. Or Katniss Everdeen with both President Snow (and the Capitol) and Haymitch (‘maker’ and ‘solver.’) There are certainly exceptions but the point is that the world isn’t – or shouldn’t be – divided up by age groups and adults can serve as both excellent antagonists and critical resources in literary settings. In other words, the identity of the teen character evolves either in relationship with or in juxtaposition to the adults in his or her life.
And, in fact, adults represent a ‘future’ that is not possible to develop in any other way. Kids generally don’t get to grow up in YA lit and yet, if we are to explore the psychologically essential (and dramatically interesting) aspects of responsibility and consequences, it is important to represent how those might manifest themselves over time. Adult characters can provide critical tension by acting as models, reflections, or even cautionary tales, sometimes all at the same time. This is the dynamic that fascinated me as I developed the characters and plot elements of Getting Somewhere.
My characters are four teen girls who have committed juvenile crimes and elect to participate in an alternative detention program located on an organic farm. Clearly, something has gone wrong for them. Though we want to know what has happened to them in the past, the setting and the story line pretty much eliminate any significant role for parents right from the start.
And yet, adults do come to play a significant role. Three women run the farm. They are important to the story, (and to the girls) offering that classic conflict between potential resource and flawed decision-making. Though the issues the girls are dealing with start long before they arrive on the farm, the relationships they develop with the adult women – and the relationships between the women – offer a potent context for exploring those exact issues further. Paradoxically, an understanding of the identities and experiences of the adult characters provides an opportunity to delve more deeply into the girls themselves – the impact of experience itself, the nature of emotional resources, how choices are made, how empowerment happens.
And, maybe more importantly, it is essential for our YA characters to grow, to experience some kind of transformation over the course of the story. While the love, nurture and support for that growth can come from some other source – a friend or love interest, for example – having it come at least in part from an adult (or to be visibly absent, forcing the teen to recognize the gap) is rich, powerful, and compellingly realistic.
In addition to that, there is the question of how we perceive of young adult experience, both in real life and on the page. I think younger readers ARE interested in reading about adults. Genuine adults, conflicted adults, flawed adults. Maybe not as primary characters but certainly as interesting, fully-developed, authentically devised secondary ones. Teens are keeping their eyes on us – as well they should! They want to understand motives, access information, evaluate how their decisions are going to play out in the long run. As authors, regardless of genre, it is our job to give that to them.
