Uncategorized – Flights of Fancy

Things Are Not as They Seem

And why that’s okay

As deciduous trees lose their leaves in fall, they relinquish their lush green opulence. For a short time they gleam yellow and orange, but after a few windstorms, that’s gone, too. The only leaves still clinging to them are dessiccated brown husks of their former selves, doomed to wither the winter away on spidery twigs. No longer do these magnificent organisms we call trees enfold and comfort within the haven of their branches; no longer do they possess any signs of their former vitality. They’ve retreated into their roots, and all we can see up top are stark and skeletal forms. Death.

Crimson maple tree, still with all of its crimson leaves in place — *We moved here in winter and had no idea what kind of tree this was. Imagine our surprise when its buds opened into crimson leaves! Definitely not what we’d been expecting.*

But this is fine! Good, even. If trees never showed us their other selves, their dark sides, those of us at higher latitudes wouldn’t appreciate summer quite so much. We’d get so used to their green sameness that we might stop seeing trees altogether, each of them disappearing into forests like blades of grass into a field. If these giant beings can change so dramatically, then surely all of us more ephemeral creatures can appear as one thing today, and quite another tomorrow.

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We know this well in writing. Characters evolve and grow or regress and fail over the course of a story. We often discover new facets of characters that turn out to be crucial to the plot. Their ability to startle us—as readers and writers, both—is partly what keeps us turning (or writing) the pages. During the process of that writing, my characters flourish as if by magic, like buds from soil. They’ll take charge of the plot and direct it where they want it to go. Resistance is futile. I must listen to what these personalities are trying to tell me, even if it involves taking the story in an entirely new direction.

Dog looking back at camera, about to start off on a trail through the woods — *Tock excels at taking me on new trails—and new adventures (though he always looks back to make sure I’m coming).*

But this is great! Exciting, even. I say this despite being a staunch plotter by nature. Before I begin writing, I work up a full outline, so detailed it appears my unwritten future book is set in stone. Yet during the course of actually writing it, my characters surprise me. Always. I find myself reorganizing the outline, adding new bits, sometimes heading in a direction I’d never anticipated. Even within a carefully structured framework, the delight of finding hidden layers to my characters keeps my creativity flowing.

Dogs, too, aren’t always what they seem. When you acquire a new dog, how many of you have been convinced you know just how it’ll act based on its breed, age, initial behavior, and all of your years of experience with many other dogs? Surely I’m not the only one who has fallen into that trap. Over the years, I’ve had four border collies who enjoyed dog agility. Every time a new one came into my life, I was convinced that this one would be easy. After all, I knew everything about training agility foundation by that point: how to motivate a dog, how to progress from one challenge to the next, how to raise the threshold of difficulty oh so gradually, until we were ready for competition. And then we’d be instant rock stars in the dog agility world!

Border collie sailing through an agility tire — *Except for his difficult-to-remove habit in the start line queue, Tarzan was the closest agility dog to a rock star I ever had.*

Right? Um, no. With each dog, some things got easier, but other things got harder. One dog would bark and bounce right out of the weave poles, another would snarl and snap at the other dogs waiting in line for their turn, another ran fast at home but inexplicably slowly in competition, and a fourth decided that staying at the start line was optional. Every dog presented a different training challenge.

Border collie blasting through the weave poles, mouth open — *Good old Tenzing (First Agility Dog), barking his way through the weave poles. I think he made it through this set without bouncing out.*

But this is wonderful! If I hadn’t had to learn how to overcome those difficulties, I wouldn’t have learned half as much as I did about dog training. Or about how to help other dog handlers through similar issues. I wouldn’t have experienced the euphoria of myself and others at last overcoming our obstacles. Most of all, I wouldn’t have discovered that indefinable, individual essence of each of my dogs. They never fail to astonish me, and I wouldn’t trade any of them for a second.

Border collie resting in front of a tipped-over toybox — *Tock is the only one of our dogs who thinks of the toybox itself as a toy. Though here he’s tired himself out partway through emptying it.*

Whether it’s trees, books, pets, or something else, I wonder what surprises lie in store for us today? Here’s to being astonished and delighted…

Happy Tales!

Come a Little Closer

Said the spider to the fly

Lest you think this is going to be a discourse on the dangers of flattery, let me be clear: it is not.

First, writers are deprived creatures, desperately seeking praise yet rarely receiving it. If by some happy accident a compliment is inadvertently tossed our way, we’ll cling to it, of course. But at the same time we’re prone to disbelieving it.

Second, the only reason I couldn’t resist quoting a 19^th-century poem for the subtitle of this piece is because walking into spiderwebs has become a very common daily occurrence for me. As I stare cross-eyed at my nose, trying to swat the sticky threads and fly bits away from my face, I curse my latest up-close-and-personal experience with the lush Massachusetts woods I now call home.

Spiderweb attached to a tree — *Photo credit: JD-Photos*

Why oh why, I moan, did we move away from Montana? In our old state, so aptly named Big Sky Country, only a very talented spider could spin a web across the trail between giant orange-trunked Ponderosa Pines. I can count on one hand the times I walked into one. Or maybe two hands or four, but the point is they felt like singular events, not part of a continuous tapestry of large-leaved foliage, dense shrubbery, fungus, insects, and arachnids of all sorts.

Border collie sitting in front of a giant ponderosa pine — *A spider would have to be pretty big to string a web from this tree to another.*

In Montana, I only had to open my eyes to see the view. And what a view it was: down valleys with distant-purpled hills, up to jagged soaring peaks, along glinting lakes and rivers, their ripples punctuated only by the pop of a solitary fish, thunderheads billowing ever higher in that massive sky despite their heavy load.

Border collie dragging a stick back toward shore in an alpine lake

In Montana, my goals were as gigantic as my surroundings. I would conduct critical ecological research. I would secure a spot on the national AKC agility team and compete at Worlds. I would publish traditionally and connect with an audience of thousands – not merely for one book, but for many. In every venture of mine, I’d win major awards and make a difference to the world. Pretty ridiculous expectations, and needless to say, I didn’t accomplish any of them. It’s embarrassing, but here I am, forcing myself to lay everything out. I’ve changed a lot compared to the me of three years ago, and I’d like to know why.

*I dreamt of getting on the World Team with Tarzan, but never made it past Nationals. We sure had fun, though.*

When we moved to Massachusetts (yes, I finally learned how to spell it without cheating), the most obvious change was the distance between things. Trees grow fast and close, shrubs and herbs even more so, hills are sometimes steep but always tiny, like a rollercoaster at a little kids’ theme park, and the birds and the ticks plentiful. Living things are not only dense, but diverse. Just yesterday, I counted ten native tree species all competing for resources on the small rise next to our house. Oak, beech, pine, sassafrass, hickory, dogwood, birch, cedar, hemlock, and maple, not to mention viburnum, sumac, and a whole bunch of non-native vines.

Dog sitting amidst vegetation in a dense Massachusetts forest

With this new closeness has come a big shift in my own outlook on life. Some of it’s probably due to getting older, but one thing is for sure: my goals have shrunk as dramatically as my views. I no longer attend conferences and workshops with the same fervor I once had for connecting with professionals in the industry. I just want to write, edit, and write again, trying over and over to bring details to life with words. I no longer compete in dog agility, and in fact don’t even have any of my own equipment anymore. I still walk my dog, yes, but I don’t walk with the purpose of getting to a high summit where I can see the spread of the earth far below, or even to reach a remote mountain lake for a dip of the toes in cold water and the sense of accomplishment that it brings. Now, I walk not only with my dog, but like my dog. We are tuned in to the minutiae of the moment: the soft padding of steps on the trail, the white-and-purple orchid petals beneath the green briar, the whisk of an osprey’s wings across a small brown pond, the bleating of lambs in the field, the rush of wind in the trees, the dappled light that appears more green than yellow.

Dog with a stick in his mouth standing next to a tree that forks into two equally sized crooked branches — *Tock and I always take the time to appreciate wood that has curved into interesting shapes.*

Am I happy? Well, I don’t know that anyone can achieve true happiness, at least not for long. But I do feel a certain sense of peace with myself. An acceptance that my future may never hold the achievements I once hungered for. I still allow myself a modicum of hope now and then, and I try not to get too frustrated.

Except when I blunder into yet another spiderweb…

Happy Tales!

A Life Full of Lists

Do they kill the joy—or make it easier to find?

1. There’s only one rule: start the day with a list

2. One list, two, or ten. Doesn’t matter.

3. Just the process of making the list calms the mind.

4. Better yet, each item listed clears some of the clutter clogging one’s thoughts.

5. There’s the food, always the food…

6. Oat milk

7. Eggs

8. Bread

9. Cheese

10. Cucumbers

11. Tomatoes

12. And why not? Another bar of dark chocolate

13. Writing starts and ends with lists: The Premise, The Outline, The Query, The Synopsis

14. Turns out the dreaded synopsis isn’t so bad if you transfer your story into a long list…

15. Chapter 1, one sentence per scene

16. Chapter 2, one sentence per scene

17. Chapters 3 to the end, one sentence per scene

18. Delete the sentences that don’t matter much (new list: Scenes to be Removed from the Story Itself? Conversely, Scenes to be Added?)

19. Group the sentences into paragraphs

20. Check to make sure the story arc is clear

21. Seek out critiques from people who aren’t familiar with the intricacies of your mind

22. Edit

23. And voila, your synopsis is done!

24. Even walking in the woods can be a list, when you have landmarks to look forward to…

25. The otter at Birch Bridge

26. The dinosaur in the Darkest Part of the Forest

27. The gnomes of Middle Earth

28. The bear on Picnic Log

29. The fairy by the Porpentine Tree

30. The penguins at the South Pole

31. Tom Bombadil on his tree

32. The sasquatch on the Cyclops tree

The fairy at the Four Sisters trees

34. This list could go on and on

35. In fact, Add new creatures to my trails shall be the first item on a list of Next Summer’s Projects

36. Lists do more than provide satisfaction in crossing things off

37. They keep me organized

38. They give me something to look forward to

39. Something to do, now and someday

40. Joy hides amongst a forest of words

41. My lists make it easier to find.

Happy Tales!

This Land is Our Land, Flaws and All

And what that means for our writing

Do you look forward to hitting the road? There’s something so freeing about speeding away from work and worries, knowing you’ll have a stretch of time in which you’re accountable to no one. You can’t eat the usual healthy food or do the usual healthy exercises. All you can do is stare ahead at an unspooling road, snack, and listen to things (compelling audiobooks, for instance).

Winding highway with clear blue sky and crisp mountains in the distance — *A view I like to see from the road: crisp mountains, green trees, clear sky. Photo credit: Pietro de Grandi*

Despite all that, my most recent road trip didn’t give me those expected feelings of release and freedom. It wasn’t merely that I wanted to get as fast as possible from here to there without all of the intervening days. No, it was something much bigger, much more dire than that.

It was the world. The sky. The very air I breathed. All of it, from start to end, was abnormally hot, even for midsummer. All of it, from start to nearly the end, was encased in a sultry orange smoke—the ashy leftovers of northern boreal forest. Sometimes it was faint, making the day appear a bit cloudy or the sun a bit more orange than normal. Much of the time it was thick, depositing an acrid taste in my mouth and a tickle in my throat. Sometimes it descended in such a heavy curtain that I could barely even see the road unspooling ahead. It cast a sad, dirty hue on the dead fields, the trailer parks for farm laborers, the near-melting pavement, the shrunken rivers. Always, it wrapped me in a sense of doom, of claustrophobic global apocalypse from which there’s no escape.

Highway with an orange sky and bright orange setting sun ahead — *While this might look like a pretty sunset, its orange hue is entirely due forest fire smoke.*

What does a writer do in such a grim situation? Turn inward, obviously. Figure out how to create a story from a terrible situation. Because not only do good stories require unfortunate events and flawed characters, but there’s always a way to write an escape. Or at least a way to discover a sense of hope. It’s not often easy to find, but it’s there.

Wet border collie standing knee-deep in brown water — *A dirty dog = a character who doesn’t even know he’s flawed (until bath time).*

Sure, I could fester in a swamp of anger and accusations, blaming the world—humanity, specifically—for all my problems. That’s the easy way out. Instead, I choose to craft situations that might seem dismal and characters that might seem heavily flawed. Yet I make sure these components have the promise of change. And the only way that’s gonna happen is if my characters realize that not only should they do something about the current state of affairs, but they can.

In this floundering world of ours, reading and writing stories with strong character arcs is what gives me hope. The winds of change are there, ready to blow away the smoke and cool the land, if we can persevere long enough to find them. Maybe the inspiration we derive from stories will give us the motivation to solve problems in the real world, too.

Clean & dry border collie — *All clean! Despite hating baths, this character demonstrates that he’s capable of change.*

Happy Tales!

Who’s Your Muse?

Do you write only when it calls?

Whenever writers wax eloquently about having a muse, I picture them sitting at their desk gazing at a framed picture of an elegant Victorian-era person, often a god or goddess, a poet, painter, musician, or some other creative type, a love interest, or at the very least someone beautiful and kind, full of the rosy glow of life. Someone who provides a limitless well of inspiration to the writer, in other words.

Victorian writer working at desk piled with books and with pictures hanging nearby — *Photo credit: Sebastien LeDerout*

How easy it must be to crank out novel after novel if all you need for the words to flow is to think about this wonderful person!

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I’m envious. I’ve never had such a muse. I don’t even like most people, in fact. I love my family and friends (this includes the four-legged furry types as well), but I love them for who they are, not because they inspire me to write.

Border collie sitting in a patch of forget-me-nots and gazing at camera, tongue hanging out, — *Tock is an anti-muse, highly skilled at distracting me from writing. I love him anyway.*

If we broaden our definition of muses to include things, though, I have two big ones. Nature and music. They’ve remained consistent for me during the writing of almost all of my novels. They are what drives me to write—and keep plugging away at—those stories. Each book is associated with a specific form of nature, whether a tree, a volcano, a coral reef, or a glacier, as well as a specific piece of music. I don’t need to play the music while I write, but I’ve listened to it enough that it runs through my head anyway. It ranges from lullabies to hip-hop to Bach, Mozart, Dvorak, or Prokofiev. Nothing thrills me more than scenes in which my nature and music muses speak directly to my characters, causing them to feel and do things they might not otherwise.

Border collie in a jacket struggling through deep snow on a forested ridge — *Even at its most inhospitable, nature plays a big role in all of my stories*

But sometimes I want to write when the thought of nature is exhausting, or when I crave silence rather than my favorite melodies. Over the past week and a half, for instance, I’ve put in 30 hours of work on my trail system on the family place. Nothing makes me happier, but when I’ve finished for the day, I want to sit at my computer and not move or think about moving until tomorrow morning. I don’t even have the energy to listen to music.

Border collie sleeping in a bed that's slightly too small, his head tucked beneath the raised border — *This is how I feel when I am museless*

Still, I write. I must. I don’t think I write as quickly or as well when I am museless, but I feel better about myself for trying. I forge ahead no matter what. Later, when I’m more inspired, I’ll look back at what I’ve written and make it better.

That explains why this essay is so short, actually.

Do you have a muse? If so, who or what is it? I’d love to know.

Most importantly, does your writing only happen in the presence of your muse? What if it’s taking a holiday? Do you push out some words anyway?

Border collie partially hidden in tall grass in the distance — *The reluctant muse. You might just have to get to work and let them come out of hiding on their own.*

Happy Tales!

On the Tempo of Time

I’ve often been envious of my dog because he isn’t as acutely aware of the passage of time as I am. For the most part, he lives in the moment. He alternately chomps or licks his squeaky toys when he’s inside, fetches his frisbee in the yard, explores the universe of shrubs, sticks, and other dogs on the trail, eats at his established mealtimes, and sleeps when he’s tired. What a fantastic life that must be!

Border Collie with a very long stick (still attached to the ground at one end) — *The bigger the stick, the better: Tock in his happy place.*

A dog doesn’t have to think about how rapidly the months pass, how the holidays roll around when it seems we just finished with them, how the aches of our aging bodies and the battle scars in our minds keep multiplying so that waking up in the morning is often just as painful as going to sleep.

But when I give this more thought, I realize that of course my dog must acknowledge time even though he can’t put it into words. For one thing, he can no longer leap into the car without a thought, but is forced to slow down and use a humiliating step. For another, he lives through the ebb and flow of seasons along with me—the lush green growing of spring (sticks in the pond!), the lazy heat of summer (the beach! the lake!), the crisp change of fall (extra food in the bowl!), the frigid cold (snowballs!) of winter.

Border Collie trotting ahead down trail through a lush green forest

On a deeper level, I wonder whether my dog is aware of the nuances in time that happen every day for me. Boring or painful things take forever, like cleaning the bathroom, driving in traffic to get groceries, trying to get back to sleep at 3 am, trying to stay awake and write when I’m not feeling inspired, or enduring unpleasant muscle spasms in my back. So immersed am I in my misery that I can hardly imagine an end to them, a time when once again my life will be more pleasant.

I hope Tock doesn’t experience such anguish, but I fear he might. Every morning, he stands at my side while I eat breakfast, imploring me with his eyes to hurry up so we can go for our walk. Does the wait feel interminable to him? Likewise, the wait for his dinner when he lies at my feet while I’m writing and the “dinner bird” (that sings on the clock at 4pm) has long since sung. Does he wonder whether he’s ever going to be fed? Worst of all are his trips to the vet. Before we even enter the building, all he wants to do is leave. He spends the entire time staring at or pulling toward the door, his toenails scrabbling ineffectively on the hard, cold tiles. Poor guy. He must feel like his punishment is lasting forever.

A clock with a bird for each hour — *Tock becomes very attentive once the dinner bird (House Wren) has sung.*

What about the good things, though? Walks in the woods on a perfect spring day, when the temperature and humidity are just right and the bugs haven’t yet emerged in droves. Working on my trail system at the family summer place. Listening to marmots whistle amidst sun-warmed talus slopes. Playing cards with my son and occasional reluctant husband. Writing when I’m in the zone and the thoughts flow fast. For me, these things sail by. I feel as though I’ve scarcely begun when they’re coming to an end.

I hope this cruel trick that time plays isn’t the same for Tock. I hope time stretches out for him when he’s happy even longer than it does when he’s not.

Border Collie lying in grass with a frisbee between his front paws

Of course, nothing would seem so wonderful if it lasted forever, right? In the best of all possible worlds, we’d move from one delightful thing to another, and another, and another. Last summer after Tock and I spent six timeless, satisfying hours on trail work, I admit that nothing felt so good as finishing for the day, putting my feet up, and eating a good meal. Tock would not have appreciated the shower, but he had a big dinner and a well-earned rest.

Though time ticks relentlessly onward and we can never re-visit the past (how I would love to hug my former dogs again!), it has proven very helpful in its effect on my memory. The good memories stretch out in a long golden glow that I can enjoy for as long as I want. Meanwhile, the bad memories have shrunk to nearly nothing. The super unpleasant sensation of childbirth, for instance, has totally vanished, as if my son were born in an instant. But I’ll forever remember the experience of holding him for the first time. The memory of devouring some homemade brownies after all that hard labor is pretty special, too. As for Tock, I’m hopeful that he’s reliving his best memories when his legs twitch during a dream.

Sleeping Border Collie surrounded by toys

What causes time to alter its tempo for you? Does it compress or expand depending on the nature of the moment you’re experiencing? Even if your legs don’t twitch when you’re dreaming, does time slow down when you remember the good things? It’s my hope that time can reward us all in that one small way.

Happy Tales!

Getting it Right

(Or: Striving for Perfection in an Imperfect World)

Have you ever reassured yourself that you’ll get the next one right? You could be referring to any important thing you’ve done in your life—and plan to do again. Writing a book, training a dog, raising a kid, selecting a job, a career, a partner. I’m sure I’ve missed some. Not all of them apply to me, thank goodness, but for books and dogs I’ve said it more times than I can count.

If you’ve read my previous couple Substack essays, you’ll know I’ve spent the last several months wallowing with indecision. I didn’t want to compose a story like the ones I’d already written, but I didn’t have any new ideas. Not a single one. I began to worry that I’d exhausted all of my interesting thoughts, and not only would I not get a new manuscript “right” enough to be published, but I’d never write again.

Dog catching a pine cone in a barren, snowy field — *Even in a veritable pinecone desert, Tock finds one to fetch. He is my inspiration!*

First, I don’t think there’s a writer out there who hasn’t gotten stuck with their writing at one point or another. There are so many parts to the process: coming up with the idea for a project, fleshing it out, starting the actual writing, finishing the writing, editing it to incorporate the suggestions you get from critique partners and editors, and trying to get the darned thing published. Each part provides another opportunity to dig yourself into a hole. You are not alone.

*Digging in the sand: a favorite pasttime*

The thing that helped me the most was remembering that I would never write a story without some overlap with my previous books. Maybe a lot of overlap. Since there are themes that are important to me, why not continue to write about them? It’s like training a new dog with the same tricks you’ve worked on with previous dogs—something I’ve done in the sport of dog agility many times, always with the exciting goal of turning my most recent furry companion into a teammate. Similarly, nothing’s wrong with crafting a story that contains the elements you love most (for me, this includes nature, music, mental health, and climate change, all packaged into a fun middle-grade fantasy). There’s no rule that says I have to move on to something totally different!

Stormy Lake Michigan beach — *Nature is an important part of my world … and thus my writing*

Alternatively, many writers find it liberating to incorporate themes they’ve never considered before. Of course, any new theme likely will be important to another writer (or two, or a hundred). This brings up another concern most writers have: how do we write a story that hasn’t already been written by someone else?

Answer: we can’t. On a general level, all of the basic story ideas have been written. On a specific level, however, each story is likely to differ in quite a few ways. Characters, pacing, voice, and plot structure or details, to name a few. One thing that can help give your originality a chance to surface is to avoid reading similar books within a few months of starting your own draft. Then you won’t end up writing, for instance, a book about a magic school that is far too derivative of a particular best-selling series I don’t need to mention.

Whenever I worry about copying someone else’s story, I remind myself of dogs. Every time I’ve adopted a new one, I’ve assured myself that this time, training will be a breeze. The last dog(s) taught me everything I need to know, and I’m so wise at this point that I’ll end up with the perfectly trained companion. Right?

Three border collies lying or sitting next to eachother — *Despite being the same breed, these border collies were quite different from one another in their personalities and training needs.*

Answer: nope. Just like stories, every dog ends up developing into a completely different beast—even within a breed or a litter. All dogs present their own challenges, but hey, the training process wouldn’t be interesting if they were the same. Over the years, I’ve learned different things from each of my delightful pets.

My most recent dog, Tock, has been difficult in ways I’d never experienced before. He gets easily frustrated whenever he feels that something isn’t going the way he expected. For example, he’s a great trail dog who never gets far away and always waits for me at junctions, but if I turn the “wrong” way (i.e., a direction we don’t usually go), he vents his frustration by leaping up on me while uttering a little growl. Chastising him doesn’t prevent it. He’s quite certain he’s right.

Dog sitting in front of a trail junction — *Waiting for me at a trail junction. You’d never guess how naughty he’s prepared to be if I make the wrong choice.*

To train Tock out of this annoying behavior, I’ve had to think one step ahead of him, rewarding him for good behavior before he resorts to bad behavior. As I approach the junction—but before it’s clear which way I’m going to go, I call him to me and reward him. He gets a treat for his recall and forgets to punish me for making what he might otherwise deem the incorrect choice.

*In full treat mode. He’s not thinking about jumping now!*

I liken Tock to a headstrong character (or plot) who refuses to let me write them in a way that they don’t want to be written. I can’t just subdue them into submission. I can’t force them to be someone they aren’t. Instead, I need to think about what they want, and try to make that happen. In the end, the story will only benefit from this approach.

The toughest challenge I’ve endured with Tock was a leaping behavior that surfaced at agility competitions. Unlike dogs who bark the entire time they’re running, Tock would keep all of his excitement at running the course bottled up until the very end. But as soon as he completed the last jump, he’d launch himself at me. Not into my arms, like many dogs who are overjoyed to be picked up by their owner to celebrate after a run, but an all-out vault into my torso. At 45 pounds, the combination of his weight and his headlong hurl would almost knock me over. Worse, I worried about getting disqualified if the judge deemed this to be aggressive behavior while we were still in the ring. I had trained previous dogs to run to the leash stand, grab their leash, and tug on it with me as a way to reward them immediately for their run and also keep them busy until I could get them safely out of the ring. This worked great for them—but not for Tock. He insisted on plowing into me like a horizontal rocket, and then retrieving his leash.

What could I do? Well, I reasoned that if I could only get to the leash stand first, I’d be able to direct all his excess excitement into our game of leash tug. To give myself a little more time, I started directing him over the final jump a second time (fortunately, there’s no penalty for re-taking the final obstacle). While Tock was busy circling the jump and re-jumping it, I would race ahead, grab the leash, and hold it out to him by the time he caught up to me. He didn’t waste any time grabbing it and engaging in a vigorous game of tug. We had our solution!

Dog taking an agility jump in full extension, looking ahead — *Heading for the leash stand!*

Granted, it was kind of a clunky, ridiculous solution, but it was exactly what Tock needed. He was happy, I was happy, and our teamwork only benefited. After many competitions that ended like this, he was eventually willing to drive straight to the leash stand without the need for that extra jump.

I guess my point is that while there is no perfect story, or dog, or person, or life, a little careful thought and willingness to step outside whatever box you find yourself in can go a long way. We just need to look forward to learning whatever we can from each imperfect situation—and to improving things until we can live with them.

A border collie is standing up on the edge of a box, trying to convince another border inside the box to jump out — *Tock doing his best to convince a playmate to get out of the darned box already.*

Happy Tales!

The Counting Game

Remember, you have to count all the way down to zero. No peeking!

One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight …

The last time I played Hide and Seek was probably more than ten years ago, but I feel like I still experience it a bit every day. Counting down or counting up, doesn’t matter—my brain insists on organizing things with numbers. Is this weird? I don’t know.

Here’s a sampling:

Two hundred = the stairs down to the Lake Michigan shore. To hypnotize myself back to sleep in the middle of the night, I count this descent step-by-step in my mind.

Wooden stairs descending through cedar woods to a distant beach. — *Can you spot the border collie?*

Four-Seven-Eight = the breathing pattern I employ as my backup means of sleep hypnosis.

Forty-five = the minutes I allow myself to get back to sleep before giving up on hypnosis and getting out my book.

Two = the hours I’ll read before trying, again, to sleep. I’m apparently kind of obsessed with this issue.

Four to eight = the hills my daily dog walk encounters (varies per route).

Seven = the big roots I must climb over on one section of the trail.

Dog standing on a trail above a big root that crosses the middle of the trail

Twelve/eight = the compound quadruple meter (four beats per measure, three eighth notes per beat) of a rhythm that beats in my head while I walk. Sometimes I catch myself clacking my teeth to it.

Two = the “rev-up” words I recommend agility students use to get their unmotivated dogs blasting off the start line (Ready? Steady?)

Six to Eight = the hours I once practiced per day, back when I aspired to be a professional musician.

One (or one thousand) = the maximum number of chapters (or minimum number of words) I try to write daily for a first draft. Depending on plot complexity, this often ends up as a single scene within a chapter.

Forty to fifty thousand = the total number of words I aim to write for each MG manuscript.

Two = the number of drafts I write before anyone other than my dog experiences a word of it.

Sleepy dog lying on dog bed — *A captive listener*

Twenty-five to sixty = the number of agent rejections I force myself to endure per manuscript, before giving up and moving on to the next one. (I know you’re supposed to acquire at least 100 rejections, but my spirit can’t handle that many.)

Two = the chocolate-chip cookies I get to eat at the end of a good day. (Thus, every day becomes a good day.)

Looking at my list, I see that it highlights things that are central to my life: sleep, food, dog/walks, music, and writing. Not bad. Except for the music and writing parts, it’s pretty much a dog’s life. A lucky dog.

Do you stratify your days with numbers, too? Writers in particular: I’m curious whether you religiously keep track of your word count, or the number of minutes per day that you write, or anything else numeric related to writing.

I’m starting to think that the childhood game of Hide-and-Seek should be part of a training manual for How to Navigate Life. It requires tremendous self-control, yet it nurtures excitement for what comes next.

And what does come next?

Simple. It’s the release of restraints, the sudden transition to a new stage. if you’re the counter in that game, it’s literally the time to unmask your eyes and set yourself free. You might tiptoe or clomp, walk or run—you choose. The best part is that you finally get to search for those little devils who’ve been hiding from you. And the structure, patience, and anticipation leading up to this point make the whole thing worth it.

Back to counting. But watch out, because pretty soon … here I come!

Happy Tales!

How Old Are You?

Don’t worry, you won’t need to count the candles on your cake for this one.

After you’ve reached a certain age, at least until you’re so ancient that you’ve gained bragging rights, people stop asking how old you are. For me, this happened around the time wrinkles started to spread from the corners of my eyes like neglected cracks on a car windshield. Avoiding the topic of age is fine with me. I’ve always been grateful not to be reminded of my own mortality. I’ve also gotten increasingly sensitive to how long I’ve spent on this planet without making much of a difference. And to be completely honest, I worry about ageism in the writing world, where professionals may look down on anyone who isn’t a wunderkind with tremendous future potential.

*None of us can avoid the inexorable march of time, and with it the reduction of our own potential. Photo credit: Ricardo Moura*

So it’s kind of weird that I’m asking such an intrusive question. I think I need to rephrase it. What I really mean is, how old are you in your mind? What age is the person your memories most frequently revisit? These might be your best memories, but they could just as well be traumatic ones. That is, I’m not asking what age you want to be (twenties for me, please—backpacking and trail-building in the wilderness with seemingly limitless energy and nary an ache). Nor am I asking what age you feel yourself to be (I’m guessing about eighty for me on days when my back hurts from sitting, my hips ache from walking, my elbow stings from lopping weeds, my foot twinges for no apparent reason, and my thumb throbs from an old pinecone-throwing injury).

Writer & dog standing at the shore of a high alpine lake in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana — *I will never not hike, though it definitely takes a toll on the body!*

I most often see myself as about eleven years old, one of the happiest times in my life. At that tender age, I was still young enough to feel secure in my place—surrounded by family and friends, immersed in school, music, and nature. But I was old enough to question things that were happening around me and to realize that the world was a heck of a lot bigger than I’d thought it was just the year before. I wouldn’t lose my best friend for another year, and I wouldn’t lose my ability to play music for nine more. I didn’t yet suffer from teenage angst, and I didn’t have to deal with the high pressures of academia or adulting. I spent a lot of time in imaginary worlds—stories that never left my head, though the complex imagery that accompanied them sometimes made it onto paper.

Mural of a landscape with a crowded town surrounded by lush greenery and jagged peaks — *If I’d had the nerve to paint one of my childhood murals on a city wall, it might have looked something like this. Photo credit: Muhammad Shakir*

This, then, is why I write middle grade fiction. Pre-teen kids deal with huge issues, for sure, but they’re still young enough to be resilient, hopeful, and curious. They’re at a prime age to go on fantastic adventures—both real and imagined. They treat the obstacles they encounter with humor, courage, and surprising wisdom. They make such fun protagonists!

My husband says his thoughts most frequently take him back to high school, a time when he enjoyed nerding out with a wide variety of creative friends. I’m guessing he’d focus on YA if he were a writer. My aunt, who writes women’s fiction, says she revisits her thirties when she met the love of her life (and my uncle chooses his forties for the very same sweet reason). My eleven-year-old dog doesn’t say, but he acts like he’s about three. Maybe picture books would work best for him.

Dog lying with front paws on an open picture book, with a picture featuring a cow diving into the water — *Tock enjoys his favorite picture book, The Mollys B, by Joann Howeth.*

My question for everyone else remains the same: how old is the you that your mind replays most? Was this a good time or a difficult time for you when you actually lived it? If you write, do your protagonists tend to be that age as well?

As we make our way through our lives, maybe our most memorable age will give us a better understanding of the whole. That’s my hope, anyway.

Dog standing on a rock, his shadow reflected facing the other way on the ground. — *Is that unforgettable time of your life in the distant past—or maybe happening right now?*

Happy Tales!

Stuck in a Rut — and it keeps getting deeper!

Do you ever want to be a little kid again, nestled deep in the universe of your mother’s arms, content in the knowledge that she’ll look after you, nurture, comfort, and help you so you don’t have to do it on your own? Best of all, she’ll figure out what you want to eat and prepare it for you. I have such fond memories of savoring my thermos of pea soup at preschool.

A bowl of pea soup with a wooden spoon — *I no longer have the Holly Hobby lunchbox & thermos, but the fact remains: this was my favorite food, growing up. Photo credit: Saad Ahmad*

I often wish I could go back in time for this exact reason: to have my mom in charge, making all the important decisions. No doubt about it, I have a great mom and have been unusually lucky in that respect. But I wonder whether other people with big love for their parents yearn to return to those early days. I also wonder whether the difference between then and now is particularly harsh for writers.

Parent and child holding hands — *Photo credit: Prabin Basnet*

To explain what I mean, I need to specify: I’m talking about the past/present difference for aspiring writers—those without an agent, editor, or publicist urging them to usher a new work into the world. If that is you, welcome to my Unagented Writers’ Club! We have no one directing our career, guiding us forward, or validating our writing from the perspective of a mentor in traditional publishing. Every day we have to choose what to work on all by ourselves. In fact, we have to choose whether to work at all. Would anyone notice if we stopped?

Sadly, no. No literary professional, anyway. And this is what is suddenly stopping all my forward momentum.

Dog stopping headlong to intercept a frisbee in front of a soccer goal — *If it’s a matter of keeping the frisbee out of the goal, Tock absolutely will slam on the brakes for it.*

This stuck status is weird for me. For so many years now, I’ve done what all the writing craft books tell us to do. I’ve written a story, sought outside critiques, taken it to workshops, polished the thing to a shine, submitted it, and, while waiting for the replies (if any) to my submissions, begun another one. I’ve lost count how many unpublished novels I’ve got at this point. Nine, I think? After completing the last one, I’ve found myself reluctant to start again. I can hardly stand the thought of birthing yet another story that will never find its way to readers.

Worse, this feeling has bled into other parts of my life as well. Or maybe without the constant writing I used to do, I’ve noticed the other bits more. Every day I wake up at the same time, eat the same breakfast, go on the same walk with my dog, and proceed to fill my day with the same things I did yesterday. When I crawl into bed at the usual time, I think to myself, “Well, that’s another day done.”

Dog standing inside woods where trail leads — *Almost every day, Tock and I enter the woods here.*

Do you ever feel like this? Totally stuck in your life, as if each breath inhaled, each minute lived is simply another one to get through, on the way to some distant goal that, realistically, may never happen? Your tires are spinning, and you’ve finally realized that all this engine revving is just making you sink deeper.

*This dog is a much more thorough hole-digger than Tock. Photo Credit: Suraj Tomer*

I’m tired, I guess. Tired of pouring my soul into something that only my critique partners will see. Tired of a sinking feeling in my gut that this story will progress no further than any of its forebears. Tired of wondering what the point to all of it is. I’m stuck in a hole of my own making—one no one would even know about if I didn’t mention it here. The worst of it is, I can’t seem to dig my way out!

Looking up from a deep rocky hole with blue sky above — *My current POV. Photo credit: Elias Tsapaliaris*

Hold on. I need to stop my rant here, because I do in fact have a way out. It’s so obvious I’m embarrassed to have overlooked it.

Dog standing next to digging tools that are lying on the grass (shovel, pulaski, and trowel) — *Tools for unearthing something*

I have a shovel.

Not the metaphorical one I thought I needed, but an actual steel shovel. All I need to do is fetch it from the garden shed, grip its smooth wooden handle and start to dig. This will get me away from my computer and my dark thoughts, first of all. Second, it’ll take me to the garden, which desperately needs weeding and turning over before the first frost. Third, and most important, as I use the blade to dig beneath the grass roots and excavate the rich loam, maybe something in my mind will loosen as well. It might pull me further away from writing … or it might pitch me back into it. I don’t know, but I have to try.

As I dig, I remember how last year in this same garden, my shovel turned up my grandmother’s ring. I thought I’d lost it in the woods months earlier, and spent many days scouring the part of the trail where I was sure it had fallen. That time wasted was nothing compared to my joy at spotting a golden shine through the dirt. An unexpected treasure!

Part of a gold ring sticking up through the dirt — *Do you see it?*

As I dig, I think about Stephen King’s wonderful craft book “On Writing,” and how he likened finding a story to digging for fossils. You have to chip away and away with tremendous patience, never certain what you’ll find—or whether you’ll find anything at all. If you’re lucky, a form will gradually begin to reveal itself, and if you’re even luckier, it’ll turn out to be so special that you won’t stop digging until it’s been completely unearthed.

As I dig, the shovelfuls of soil turn to clumps and then to grains, the weeds to root wads to thin white hairs. The deeper I go, the more I see. A worm, a beetle, an acorn, a tiny green tomato. I’ve written before about focusing on detail, for other reasons, but I realize that it’s key to working through my publishing woes. I need to let go of my big-picture writing goals for now, and focus on the very small.

I can do this. On a walk I’ve been on hundreds of times, for instance, I spot tiny changes every day. A leaf turning gold here, a fallen branch there, a tendril of algae in the pool, a kingfisher swooping low over the water. The same goes for writing. There’s always a nugget of a tale to nourish, whether or not it’s developed into a complete book. There’s always something to revise, whether or not it’s ever submitted.

Dog tugging on a very large branch that's still attached to the ground in the woods — *Tock is good at helping me spot interesting new branches (or trunks, in this case) that deserve a good tug.*

And on it goes. I give my shovel a pat when I put it away. It doesn’t confer the comforting guidance of my mother, nor the professional structure and motivating deadlines of a literary agent. Nevertheless, it’s prodded my brain out of its rut. My creative work isn’t done, should I choose to continue it. I guess the best I can say to myself for now is “stay tuned.”

Happy Tales!

Photo credit for opening image: Janusz Maniak