Spokane Revisited

In 1950-51, my family lived in Spokane, where I attended Irving and Roosevelt elementary schools. My folks had hoped we would settle there permanently, so they bought a once-grand old house with French doors into the music room, chandeliers—and eight peeling layers of wallpaper. My earliest memory of the place was crouching at baseboard level with a putty knife, scraping down through fifty years of accumulated floral patterns in the room that would be my bedroom. Mom and Dad spent the whole time we lived there reclaiming the garden and scrubbing, stripping, sanding, and painting the house.

I loved that house—the third floor playroom, the second branch up in the maple tree that was my thinking place, and most of all, its location in the same city we had extended family. That's where I met Great-aunt Clara, the subject of my book, The Year We Were Famous. Dad had to follow the work, though. Mid-year of third grade we moved from Spokane to Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island.

When one of my writing buddies, Deb Lund, mentioned she was driving by herself to Spokane to lecture at a conference sponsored by the Inland Empire chapter of SCBWI, I asked if I could ride with her. The conference was held at the Museum of Art and Culture in the neighborhood where Clara worked as a maid while she attended Lewis and Clark High School. The Montvale Hotel we stayed in was built just three years after her walk with her mother across the country. The Carnegie Library from my childhood had been replaced by a shiny new library, though. Irving school had been closed and although there was still a school called Roosevelt, the building I remembered had been replaced long ago. Spokane had grown up while I was gone.

What will I remember most from my trip back to Spokane? The people. I arrived not knowing anyone from the Inland Empire chapter of SCBWI and left with friends. The librarians at Spokane Public Library were welcoming and knowledgeable. The folks at both locations of Auntie's Bookstore were enthusiastically helpful. I look forward to coming back on April 23, 2011, for a program with Linda Hunt and Jane Kirkpatrick!

 

 

 

Final Report from the Writer’s Shack

Did I finish the first draft of Clara II in August as I vowed I would? No, not quite, but I'm up to page 210, with just a couple scenes to go. I have excuses, of course, for why I didn't quite make it. The page proofs came for The Year We Were Famous, and I needed to put Clara II aside for several days to meet the deadline for returning the proofs. My daughter and three-year-old grandson, Iggy, came to visit, and grandkids trump writing every time.

 

At least I'm past that impossible stage where it doesn't feel like I'll ever figure out how to untangle the bits and pieces of plot, and over the next dozen or so revisions I'll layer on refinements to setting, plot, and characters.

 

For the last full week at the island, I had three writing buddies from my critique group in residence – always a terrific motivator. Deb Lund is working on a fantasy now, but is better known for her picture books, the Dinosailor series and Monsters on Machines. Ruby Tanaka is an artist and writer also working on a fantasy, and is on the cusp of being discovered. Penny Holland had several books for children on computers published some time ago, but is letting her creativity loose now on a picture book and middle grade novel. I hope this August writing intensive will be an annual event. My husband likes their company too—they're all good cooks.

 

Hope everyone had a great summer!

Final Report from the Writer’s Shack

Did I finish the first draft of Clara II in August as I vowed I would? No, not quite, but I'm up to

Progress Report

Net gain last week: six pages. The character I did sketches for last week was demoted to minor character status, and a new one came out of nowhere to put a twist on the last 4^th of the book. I guess that's why I'm a fan of chair glue – you never know what's going to happen next unless you keep on writing.

As to progress on TYWWF, I had an e-mail from my editor, Daniel Nayeri, to let me know the first pre-proof pages were in the mail. Never knew I could get so excited about type styles, but he said he and the designer had decided on fancy first letters to open each chapter. Can hardly wait to see what it looks like!

One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

Meaning to take interest in what I'm doing all day in the woodshed, my husband often asks: How much did you write today? Tough to answer. If a 70,000-word novel takes ten years to write, that's an average of 19 or so words a day – net. But that doesn't mean I only wrote 19 words a day. I wrote pages and pages of longhand, but most of it was background sketches for characters, noodling through a possible subplot that was later discarded, or revising a section already revised a dozen times.

All this is leading up to an explanation for my progress report for this week. How much progress did I make on Clara II? I eliminated one character from the last half of the book, invented a new back-story for one of the characters in the second half of the book – and cut 39 pages out of the first 141. I hope I can look back on this week and say that was a good thing.

The Woodshed is Ready

I swept out the dead bugs and cobwebs, sprayed the geranium I brought up from Everett with deer repellant, and hooked up the computer and printer. The woodshed on San Juan Island is ready for the annual August writing intensive. I try to write a little most days year-round, but in August I write 7-10 hours a day every day and force myself through rock-walled trouble spots in my writing that have accumulated over the past year. The goal this month is drafting the last 1/3 to 1/2 of a follow-up book to The Year We Were Famous. To save myself from the weekly embarrassment of having to report no progress on this blog, I should be motivated to brainstorm my way out of dead-ends and figure out how to thread one of my secondary plots naturally throughout the last half of the book instead of dumping it into one heap in the middle. Wish me luck.

School Picture Day Redux

 

Picture-taking last week was as traumatic as it was nearly fifty years ago when I had my picture taken for the high school annual. I still haven't learned to use more than a dash of mineral powder and lip gloss. I still have mostly bad hair days. Teen-aged acne has persisted long into middle age. I still usually look like the 'before' picture in a book on what not to wear. At least the braces were off my teeth.

 

I tried to prepare better this time, though. Rather than just blow-drying my hair, I scrabbled to the back of the bathroom cupboard for rollers, and while my hair dried, I sorted through all the clothes I'd put out as possibles for the shoot. With five minutes before I had to get on the freeway to Seattle, I carefully untangled my hair from the rollers and brushed. Uff da! The comb-out was a wispy retro pouf, but I didn't have time to wet it down and start over. Maybe it would settle down between Everett and Seattle. Since I still hadn't decided what to wear, I grabbed as many clothes as I could carry out to the car.

 

Although Susan Doupé had said her studio was in a community center, I was surprised to see the center was in the old (1902) University Heights School. This would really be a trip back to my klutzy school days. It was a lovely old building, though, with mellow fir bead board paneling and large arched windows.

 

I had taken Susan's suggestion to have her artist friend (Rhonda) on hand to do my make-up. As she sorted her tackle box filled with a hundred vials, jars, tubes, and brushes, I pulled up a stool and offered my face for her canvas. At the end I still looked like me, but with eyes you could see behind the glasses, a brighter mouth, and well-camouflaged zits.

 

Susan Doupé is the most thorough photographer imaginable. With her high-tech digital camera, she must have taken a thousand pictures: against carved stair railings, on worn wooden steps, upstairs and downstairs, seeking the best light. I was a challenging subject. With the exception of Liv Ullmann, most Norwegians (even third-generation ones like me) don't emote on cue. I stretched a smile a thousand times. Out of so many snaps, surely one will make me look better than I did in my mirror this morning. If I can figure out how to get pictures from a disc to my blog, I'll share some results.