Sympathy from a Five-Year Old

Today I visited a teacher supply shop with my children.  We weren't there very long, but it reminded me of long hours spent in these stores with my mom when I was young.  My mom, like all good teachers, spent much of her own time and money on preparing her classroom.  If you totaled up how much she spent on bulletin board supplies alone, it would probably be enough to pull a third-world country out of poverty.

Anyway, I shared this recollection with my children on the way home.  Here's how my conversation played out with my five-year old daughter.

After driving away from the store, I said, "My mom was so good with children.  I wish you could have known her."

"Is your mom already dead?" Maggie asked.

"Yes," I replied.  "My mom died about seven years ago."  Tears started pooling.  I didn't realize the memory would be sentimental.

"Well," Maggie said.  "That's sad that your mom died.  But it's good that you don't have to go to those stores anymore."

My tears immediately morphed into laughter.  My daughter has always been very matter-of-fact when death is the subject.  In fact, her sincere response encapsulates one of the main reasons I am drawn to writing for children.  Children see the world so clearly.  Their interactions with each other and with adults aren't veiled by years of social formation.  A child can voice in one sentence what a grown-up has been trying to convey his/her whole life.  What a gift.

What You Need is a Little Focus

So I've committed myself to being a serious writer (at least until the next period of deep depression).  But here's my problem now: how do you choose what to work on?  There is the obvious...a contest to enter over here, a mentorship application over there.  But what do I send in?  I have numerous manuscripts at this point (all of which could be perfected even more...do they ever come to completion?), not to mention the scores of what I call "half-baked ideas" in my computer, all vying for my undying attention and devotion.

I think that kills my writing time more than any other thing right now.  Focus.  What to work on.  I sit at the computer and look at the intimidating list of files and my brain starts swirling with all sorts of thoughts...gee, my character in that story really needs fleshing out, or the ending in that story is really weak, or does that story fit this publisher...maybe I should reread it for the thousandth time to see....Agggghh!

I'll be hunting for some professional advice on this topic, and any and all comments would be appreciated.  Now back to staring at that list....

Good News (and a Kick in the Pants)

The summer is hard for a stay-at-home mom/writer.  Writing has taken a back seat to family vacations and days at the swimming pool. 

But even harder on the novice writer is the growing pile of rejections and worse, hearing nothing at all.  The phrase, "no-news-is-good-news," doesn't stick in the writing world.  Rather, it means your writing has been heaved unceremoniously into a mile-high stack of paper destined for the recycle bin.  Many publishers and agents put this fact out in front.  And to put it in the language of the street, I'm down with that.  But when you attend a conference and make a personal contact, you hope to get more than a deafening silence broken only by the lonesome cricket melody.  You expect at least a form notice of rejection, if not a short personal note.

So earlier in the year when I received no word from a conference contact, the wind dropped from my sails, and my boat floated stagnant in the water.  I needed distance from my writing.  I needed to reassess my priorities...then...

Out of the blue, I get a letter of acceptance from Highlights magazine.  Holy cow!  Just when I had begun to think the writing gig was a pipedream, I get a contract offer for my story, "Wobblejohn."  And my next thought went something like this: "Man, I better get back to writing."

So let that be a lesson to you, Kristen Hilty.  Don't go wasting time on daydreams and pool tans.  Get back to work.  Write, write, and write some more.  Because in the middle of all the silence, someone, somewhere, might be reading your stuff and actually liking it!

Nature's Cleanser

A week ago, the winds they were a'blowin'.  For most of us, the winds wreaked havoc with our sinuses.  Pollen swirled in the air like a yellow tornado.  Weather reports cited the highest pollen count in years.  Even I experienced a tight throat and itchy eyes.  I'm usually unaffected.

But the winds played another role that week.  While at the park with my daughter and another playmate, I heard the cracking of limbs above.  One branch even fell a little too close for comfort, making us rethink the wisdom of playing under the canopy that day.  Mother Nature had implemented her built-in cleansing system.  The same winds that forced many of us inside with coughs and wheezes were busy blowing away the detritus of the trees.

How nice would that be to have a great gust of wind blow through our busy lives and blow away all the unnecessary stuff that we pile on?  What would go, what would stay? 

And Another Thing...

I like about children's books is that they rarely go on the half-read pile.  Increasingly I am reading my "adult" books half-way through and then stopping.  I don't know if this says more about me or the book.  I'm usually dogged in my determination to finish a book, even if I hate it.  I want to say I made it to the end, that I got my moneys worth.  But lately, not so much.  Am I tired, easily distracted, bored, incapable of protracted thought other than, "did I feed the dog this morning?"

I'm hoping it's just a developmental cycle of my adulthood, because I'm starting to feel a little guilty.  On the other hand, I think I have finished almost every picture book I've ever picked up.  Granted, there were a few I wanted to burn by the end, and maybe they never got read again, but at least I finished them.  There's some satisfaction in that.  Maybe I should just switch entirely over to picture books?  Naw...

One Darn Good Dragon Movie

I took the kids to see "How to Train Your Dragon" today (in 3D), and all three of us loved it.  It was one of the best kid movies I've seen in a long time.  The writing was superb.  The jokes were funny, the plot was intense, and the ending wrapped back to the beginning in a nice, but not cheesy way.  What a wonderful treat (versus a certain guinea pig movie that shall forever enter my memory with the pain of a dull tack being repeatedly poked into my gray matter)!

The focus of the movie was not new: a misfit teenager who finds acceptance through his wit and determination.  But there was a surprise twist at the ending, at least for me.  (I had not read the book that the movie was based on.)  After a mighty dragon duel at the end, the main character loses a foot (not on screen, mind you...he sports a prosthetic device in the final sequences). 

I was surprised by my initial reaction to the footless character.  An amputation...in a kid's movie?!?  But then a wave of sentimental gushiness broke over me.  Of course an amputation in a kid's movie!  Why haven't we seen this before?  We so often relegate deformities or illness to "special" children's literature.  The type only read to your kid if they themselves have the handicap or illness which is the subject of the book, and typically published by the APA or a specialty house.  We ourselves got a plethora of books about diabetes when our son was diagnosed with Type 1, but he was embarassed for us to read them to his classmates, because the books were not "cool."  I kind of agree with him.

I'm sure there are some kid's lit characters with physical handicaps that escape my memory now, but by far we ignore the sheer numbers of these kids among us in our tales of normality.  What if instead, they were the heroes in a few stories?  How would normal kids start to perceive these "special" children?  Maybe they would start to be "special" only in their courage, and not in their physical differences. 

Departures and Other Comings and Goings

We saw a film called Departures last night.  It's a Japanese film about a man who is fired from his job as a cellist with a big Tokyo orchestra.  To make ends meet, he and his wife move back to his home town, and he takes a job as an NK agent.  Based on the ad in the paper, he thinks an NK agent is a travel agent, but as he finds out later, it's a person who prepares a body for burial. 

As a former hospice worker and someone who has lost very close family members, I was moved by the man's journey through the movie.  At first, the job repulsed him.  But he came to love the job and even defend it to others who thought it was bizarre or unclean.  I balled over a lipstick scene that caught me offguard because of my own mother's funeral.  (Note to others: always discuss the color of the lipstick with the funeral home before they put it on!)

But the theme of departures is what really hooked me.  I've witnessed a lot of departures in my own life.  More, I think, than the average thirty-something.  We've moved at least five times in our marriage; I've held three (four if you count homemaker, a dubious title at best) jobs over those years; I've lost a mother, grandmother, father-in-law, several pets to death; I've left behind more friends than I can count; and our son was diagnosed with diabetes (a departure from good health forevermore). 

Some departures were good.  They brought fresh change and welcome challenges.  Some were not so good, even downright bad.  But they all brought stress, because they were all outside of my control.

I long for a departure that I choreograph.  A departure from the hectic life that has led us to this moment in time, a departure from everything that creates havoc in our lives, a departure from a conservative culture that we don't feel comfortable in, a departure from obligations and expectations that seem so trivial compared to the obligation to our own moral center, our emotional well-being, and our children's development.  Instead, I'm grounded.  Like a large, flightless bird, I run around in circles, but I don't get off the ground.

So I write.  Deep down, this is why I write.  It is my small attempt to fly.  To depart the world that sometimes presses down so hard and squeezes me into a tight ball.