Robin Layne's Blog: From the Red, Read Robin - Posts Tagged "book-fair"

I'm back at last! I got up early enough to be drunk on tiredness, hoping my dream state is still lingering. I heard some writers prefer to write at such times. Wow, it's already 9:02 a.m.! I got up about 7, I swear! But I have done a number of things this morning already, including cook and eat breakfast and some matters of business at the computer, including emailing my writing group to shamelessly solicit ideas for where I'm stuck in my story. But it is a glorious thing to reach the point in going over the old draft where I honestly have holes in the plot that need filling in. I know the gist here--just need the details. And why cannot writing be a community experience, at least at times? I have learned the joys of writing in community in more than one setting. Hemingway's quote bears repeating. Let's see if I can get it right: "There's nothing to being a writer. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed." If I must bleed at the keyboard, letting out all the passion and pain within me, let me also soar the heights of success when I really gain from writing and others love it and gain, too. And let me spend some time with other writers giving and receiving moral support as we inspire one another to write.

October is a special time for writers and booklovers around Portland, Oregon. Why is "booklovers" not a single word to spell check? It ought to be, don't you think? And why did I twice start to spell "Potland"? It must be the skunk-like reek that keeps coming in from the neighbor's apartment. Regardless, it's not a hemp festival that draws me this week. It is Wordstock, an annual book lover's fair. There, I made two words of it. Wordstock is unbelievably inexpensive to attend--$7 a day, or $10 for both Saturday and Sunday, to enjoy all the exhibits, panels, and author presentations at the Oregon Convention Center this weekend (the 13th and 14th). If you sign up for a writer's workshop, which costs $35, you get in free for that day, and if you sign up for more than one workshop, the workshops are discounted. I am going to attend the workshop, "Starting a Series: What you need to do before you sit down to write." Since I sat down to write mine approximately 12 years ago, I figure it's about time I learn some tips. I've mostly been working, off and on, on the first book, but I have worked some on the books to follow. Someone has even suggested I break down my first book into more books as a solution to the problem that it's currently too long. I am considering the possibility, but at present, I don't see it working satisfactorily. I would need to break it up into the right climactic elements, and I'd also have to come up with an extra book title or two. But we shall see what happens. For now, I just want to finish the draft I have. Anyway, the series writing workshop is taught by April Henry, a New York Times bestselling novelist who is starting her 3rd series (I put it that way for brevity and to avoid trying to learn what is the plural of series). At least some of her books are YA, and I'm glad because that's what genre of books I'm writing as well.

The Wordstock-related events kicked off with the Text Ball by the Independent Publishing Resource Center last Saturday. I went for my first year in a zany costume and had a lot of fun. Costumes containing text were encouraged. I didn't win a prize; they seemed to like simpler and more elegant costumes with more unified ideas. I wore my entire button collection, a wire sculpture on my hat, and wrote body puns on my hands, arms, and face (see the pictures I will have loaded this morning). As you will see when you look at my hand pictures, I illustrated the Hemingway saying by making drops of red down my fingers.

I have spent hours going through the Wordstock guide and reading about some of the authors on the Internet, deciding which events to attend Saturday and Sunday, because so many good ones overlap in time. I have the booklet all marked up now, my course mapped out.
I am looking forward to the Open Write, in which contestants write to a prompt for 9 minutes and the work is published on the Internet. I am used to writing to prompts from a number of writing groups (if you haven't tried it, I recommend it, especially when you need to do something fresh; you can get writing prompts online); it's been a while since I've had so few minutes to write to one.

I have been quite the night owl lately, but because the book fair is a daytime event, I have been trying, until this morning unsuccessfully, to change my sleep patterns. The fact that the Text Ball ended at 11 p.m. didn't help. The panels and author events at the book fair don't start until 11 a.m., but I want to have some time for the Open Write and the exhibits. There is always a free book exchange table, and every book- and publishing-related kind of table you can imagine.

I will write about my adventures afterward, but it may take me a few days, since I also have homework in my copyediting class and other matters to attend to.

If I bleed my red blood to be read (and that is not by far the only reason; some of it is for my own catharsis), I have a milestone to celebrate. I have my first fan! Thank you, Dustin, for all your encouragement. Even if I only have one reader, I can legitimately include "Read" in the name of this blog.

Now I shall drink more black tea, put on sweater, and load the Text Ball pictures. I took pictures of some great costumes that I won't post because I didn't get those people's permission. But I will ask my writer's group friends if it's okay that I post some of their pictures as a thank-you for their support of my writing. If you are reading this, I encourage you to comment or message me and tell me what you think--or just say hi so I know you're out there. I want to read YOU as well. If only there was time for us all to read everything we want to share!

I went to Wordstock yesterday; I couldn’t make it Saturday because we had auditions for our next Well Arts performance (which will be in the first two weekends of November). Sorry to miss one day of my favorite book fair, I didn’t have time to visit every booth. But what a wonderful and useful time I had! It was the most productive Wordstock ever for me.

Much of the event inspired me. I wrote notes to myself in the margins of my spiral-bound pad. One of those notes was a provocative concept to mull over. Observe me mulling.

In the panel Writing for Children and Teens, authors Jane Smiley and Melanie Thorne both mentioned “achieving a certain age and staying there forever.” This seemed like a new and unusual idea. I asked the panelists to expand on this thought. The moderator interpreted my question to mean what inner age each of them were inside, but I was more interested in what the idea meant in the first place. The women said it refers to the moment you become “a real person, a real human being” (Jane), “the core you.” Jane said it was the summer she topped 6 feet tall. Her ADD had left her out of touch, she said, until the day she woke up and saw “the world looked different from up here.”

I’m unaware of such an epiphany in my life—at least, so far. I feel I always knew I was unique and real and individual. So much so, in fact, that I used to fantasize that there was a TV show called “Robin” that was all about me—my creativity and intelligence, my struggles to get along with other kids, and my need to be understood. I thought I was great. My parents said I was an old little soul, so I thought I was wiser than most people, including them. Maybe I was. The struggle of not being understood or accepted was painful, but I believed that, just as if they saw my imaginary TV show, people would one day know how great I really was because I would be a famous artist and writer when I grew up. Then my peers would be sorry they had teased me when we were little.

Did most people miss out on that feeling of greatness and individuality? I never understood the desire for kids to be carbon copies of each other and to ostracize anyone who in any way didn’t fit the cookie cutter that I think none really fit inwardly anyway. I never understood adults with the same childish attitude, either. It still strikes me as the epitome of immaturity. I recall some spiel about a movie or something about a team of heroes bent on “protecting the ordinary from the extraordinary.” How imbecilic! I thought. Why protect them from us? We are all extraordinary in our own ways. We were each made in the image of God—a different facet of his very nature. What could be more extraordinary than that?

Even before I started reading the Bible and learned I was made in the image of God, I knew I was extraordinary. But I didn’t know everybody else was. They were mostly so bent on being ordinary that I couldn’t see past that plain disguise. So I was stuck up, and that didn’t help me make friends, either. What do you do when all your drawings are much more realistic and expressive than the other kids’ your age? When they either hate you out of envy or hate themselves because they can’t draw as well as you do? How about when you just have to finish writing out the idea you just had rather than go on an excursion with acquaintances? That didn’t win me friends, either. At some point I had to learn that people are more important than books. But still, there is a balance . . . and at a place like Wordstock, I’m surrounded by nerdy booklovers like myself—good people, good books, and talking about books and people—what a winning combination!

But still—if there is a moment I missed, or several of them, in which I became the core me and then stayed there to this day, I ask the Lord to reveal that to me. It seems to me I must keep growing up in some ways while staying a child in others . . . childlike rather than childish, I’ve heard it said.

When I was a child, I thought that my golden year was age 5. That was before I realized how disliked I was destined to be, and I spent a great deal of my time hamming it up to family and friends of family. I think of my inner child as being forever five.

It’s interesting that although it was only the women who defined the concept, all four panelists had an answer about their inner age (Tad Hills had to think about it a bit). Having a younger real or inner age must make it easier to write about a character who is that age. But if you are stuck at that age forever, how do you write about that character growing up? Maybe I won’t know unless and until I find out my “real” age. Or do I already know it? Is it five? If so, maybe I am an old little soul, even if it’s not in the sense that my parents thought.

I can’t resist adding a reference to “becoming real” in one of my favorite stories, The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. I repeat its message as well as I can remember it. Becoming real, says the wise old Skin Horse, isn’t how you are made. It’s something that happens when you are loved for a very long time. You may get loved into a shabby condition, but when you are real this doesn’t matter.

I know that I have been loved for a very long time. We all have been, but knowing it, really experiencing it so that it’s not just a fact but the core of who you are deep inside, is key to being real. Most of the toys in the story get it all wrong. They think they are real if they have clockwork making them move and make sounds, but those toys stop working, the child loses interest in them, and they are abandoned. Toys that break easily have a hard time being loved, because love hurts sometimes. It’s a deep message. Though it’s a children’s book, I didn’t learn about it until I was at least a teen, maybe older.

When I was little, I had no idea of how deeply I was loved or who loved me. In Sunday school, we sang about it but I didn’t experience it, so “Jesus Loves Me” meant worse than nothing to me. I thought it was a stupid song. Jesus wasn’t real to me, so how could he love me? I hated singing nonsense songs and learning boring stories about strangers hearing strange voices and doing strange things. Wow, what a change came over me once the Bible told me what church somehow could not. At some point “Jesus Loves Me” became my favorite song. But I never drowned in that ocean of love until I was 24. Maybe that’s my real age. The age that my Savior romantically wooed me, healed my broken heart from all those bad past relationships by replacing it with the union of our hearts. He got me alone, isolated from others, and sensitized to spiritual realities. In a vivid mental vision, I saw him climb in my window, walk up to me, and climb into my body. From the inside of me, he showed me what he feels for me and others, acted out the works of his Father’s obedient Son, and communicated his intimate thoughts with me. And he showed me then and over the years what perfect love is.

Maybe I’m not 24, though. Because I’m always growing in that love. Maybe it’s my mind catching up with my heart. Or both catching up with my spirit. Maybe my real age is always what I am becoming. Maybe I’m the age Jesus was when he finished his work; maybe his age is all I ever need to be. Or I should count from the day in my childhood when I first asked him into my heart, because I’m told my spirit became alive that day. But I never recorded the day or year, nor the November day in 1984 when he walked into me, or the day (was it the same one?) in which he first called me his wife. Sad not to have an anniversary, but my life was in a really mixed-up state back then. Drowning in love can be very messy, but I don’t regret a second of it.

I got confused later, and set aside the intimacy Jesus brought me. Eventually I got it straightened out, and then I really wanted to have an anniversary date. I wanted a ceremony to solidify the ethereal bond, and he showed through some other beloved people that he wanted to as well. So on the 20th of November, 1999, I dressed in a wedding gown and, accompanied by three friends and my one daughter, celebrated with music, shared the story of our romance, and let the Lord who is within me place a ring on my left hand. Freed even more deeply from wounds and sins that haunted me, I stomped on the communion goblet we had drank from.

So now I see there are multiple ways I could define my real age. I cannot settle on any one of them. Which is fitting. I never was good with numbers.