Category Archive

I don’t actually travel that much because the writing schedule doesn’t allow it. However, after updating the schedule of appearances on my web site, I sat back and thought, yikes.

I’ve taught myself to travel light. Not out of any particular virtue, but because waiting for checked luggage to appear is too tense for a traveler who has to catch a ferry. Those extra ten (sometimes more) minutes can mean the difference between catching the 8:I0 and the 9:00pm boats. Doesn’t seem like a huge difference, but at the end of a transcontinental journey, trust me, it matters. So my rule is that I have to fit everything for a trip of any length into a carry-on-sized rollaboard, and a largish shoulder bag. This includes my purse and laptop. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t come. My mother–who has been known to fly from Sydney to Seattle with nothing but a pocketbook–sometimes says, “Bring twice as much money as you think you’ll need, and half the clothes.” She’s right, of course.

Anyway, I would love to meet you! I have upcoming appearances in Bainbridge Island, Washington, Seattle, Los Angeles, Crested Butte, Colorado Ketchikan, Alaska, Sacramento and Cannon Beach, Oregon. Please see http://susanwiggs.com/schedule.shtml for details on these and other events.

…and killing two birds with one stone. Sorry for the cliches, but they apply. I mean, where else can you round up all these authors and get their autographs and raise much-needed money to support literacy programs?

C’mon, people, if you’re anywhere in the vicinity of Natick, Massachusetts this coming Saturday, come to the booksigning! Here’s the scoop:

Today’s guest blog is by my friend and fellow writer/editor, Lori. You can meet her, Aubrey and Pam, and many other literary luminaries at the upcoming conference.

The last weekend in April used to signify my daughter’s birthday was approaching. Now it means the annual Field’s End Writers’ Conference. Aubrey’s birthday is still at the tail end of April; we just have a new way of celebrating it. Last year was our first Field’s End experience. We stayed the night at the Clearwater Casino Resort – a treat for us. Not only did we get meaningful girl time, but Aubrey was especially delighted with the hotel’s accoutrements. We still have the fun cell phone video clips of Aubrey showing off the hotel room. The spinning chair in front of the vanity was particularly exciting.

At the actual conference, Aubrey was initially cowed at being the only young person in a roomful of adults. But the Field’s End participants are a very friendly lot, so Aubrey soon relaxed. We were lucky enough to land at tables with speakers Garth Stein and Robert Dugoni. They helped draw out Aubrey – and everyone else. Bob Dugoni “escorted” Aubrey to the first break-out session. Her workshop tastes ran differently than mine, and she evidently didn’t feel the need to cling to my side the entire day. When we did get together, I was impressed with how well she sat still. An entire day is a long time – thank goodness for Malachy McCourt! Even though she couldn’t remember how to pronounce his name, she asked me recently if he would be there again. Aubrey took away ideas from each speaker, but it was Mr. McCourt’s presentation she found most enthralling. No surprise! Later we had a grand time purchasing books and getting authors’ autographs and personalized messages. What a delight to see Aubrey bloom into a young woman and a creative presence. There are many, many things we learned that day and which remain part of who we are a year later. This year Aubrey told me that she would like to go back to Field’s End for her birthday (and she gets that this means not much else in the way of birthday presents!). So register, we did.

Aubrey’s writing interests are strong and deep, although she’s still not sure she wants to be a writer. But as some of the Field’s End participants reminded us, a writer is not something you become, it’s something you are. Thus, Aubrey is a writer, and a good one. She’s taking honors classes this year (sixth grade) and scored 100 percent on her most recent Reading WASL. Her Writing WASL score was close behind. She counts attending the Young Authors Conference at Skagit Valley College nearly every year during elementary school as one of her writing-related accomplishments. Children’s book author George Shannon is a frequent presenter, so she was excited to “know somebody” at Field’s End last year!My mom, Pam, has never thought of herself as a writer, but she is certainly skilled. She chose (was there much of a choice in those days?!) to be a mom, wife and homemaker. While I was at the UW, she earned her A.A. from Everett Community College. I always knew she was an excellent proofreader and organizer, if you will, of written materials, but I recently realized that she’s also a talented writer. She can deftly describe her own and other people’s feelings and motivations. Mom would disagree (LOL). Once she decides to believe in her skill and channel it to a specific project of her own, look out! For now, she is helping to research and write a book with her brother.

I’m actually writing the children’s chapter-book version of the same story. Although I’m an on-again, off-again kind of fiction writer, I’m still very committed to this story. My preference is to fix and organize words rather than to originate them. That’s the editor in me. My mom recently showed me a progress report from my first-grade teacher. I wanted to be a nurse, teacher, hairstylist and editor. How crazy is that? What six-year-old kid knows what an editor is? I evidently figured it out, and it has stuck with me. My mom plans to join us this year. Aubrey’s okay with sharing a bed with me, although I offered to have her and Grandma bunk together because Grandma’s skinnier than I am and will take up less room. We’ll see what happens.

Seattle author Stephanie Kallos is a born storyteller. After all, she grew up in a place where sofas fly–Nebraska’s “tornado alley.” She’s also been an actress, a teacher and a nominee for both a Raymond Carver Award and a Pushcart Prize for her short fiction. Her incredibly charming first novel, BROKEN FOR YOU, was a selection of the Today Show book club, propelling her onto bestseller lists and into book clubs nationwide. Other honors ensued, making this novel one of the most auspicious debuts in publishing–A Book Sense Selection, a Library Journal Best First Novelist of 2005, winner of a 2005 Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award and a Quill Book Award finalist for Debut Author of the Year.
So while her talent is not in doubt, none of that tells you how funny and down-to-earth she is. For that, you have to visit her web site and read her bio. Or better yet, meet her in person at the Field’s End Writer’s Conference on Saturday, April 26.
Like most every writer you’ll meet, Stephanie is a lifelong library patron. “I remember the first library my mother took me to in Lincoln, Nebraska–which is where we moved when I was five. It was only a couple of blocks from my father’s office and we would walk there after visiting him.
“They had something called ‘viewfinders’–you see these in antique stores now. You slipped a thick, cardboard card bearing a photo into the back of these goggle-looking devices. They gave a sort of 3-D look to the scenes. I actually wrote a 1960’s-era library scene in my new book and included these – along with a mean-spirited, censorious small town librarian who is absolutely nothing like [Seattle’s über-librarian] Nancy Pearl.”
Regarding that new novel, it’s called SING THEM HOME and is slated for publication from Grove later this year. Stephanie’s working title on the book–for years–was HOPE’S WHEELCHAIR. “My publisher hated that title,” she admits. “In retrospect, I can understand why. Bit of a downer.” Ultimately, her editor’s assistant came up with the final title.
For a long time, Stephanie believed it would be her first novel. The germ of the idea originated with a 1974 National Geographic photo. “Until I was five, we lived in a very small town in southeastern Nebraska in that swath of territory known as ‘tornado alley.’ My mother’s best friend, Hope, lived on a farm a few miles outside of town. In one of those examples of random tornadic behavior, a funnel cloud bypassed the farmhouse across the highway and then drove northeast directly into Hope’s farmhouse, destroying it completely. Hope was home (she suffered from MS and was confined to a wheelchair) along with her youngest child. She was badly hurt, but the baby was found wandering the fields, wearing a diaper, slightly scratched but otherwise unharmed.
“The photo – which was taken in a milo field about four miles away, near Blue Springs – shows a farmer leaning over the remains of Hope’s grand piano. It’s the only thing that came down in any kind of recognizable form. My mother used to say, ‘How can a deep freeze just disappear? How can a refrigerator just disappear?’ This is the kind of magic one lives with in tornado alley. I heard one author describe magical realism as ‘sofas that fly.’ In Nebraska, sofas fly all the time.
“The story centers on three siblings – Larken, Gaelan, and Bonnie Jones – who grew up in a fictional town in SE Nebraska called Emlyn Springs. When they were 13, 12, and 7 years old, their mother Hope was carried up in a tornado and never came down. It’s about the special kind of grief that surrounds such a loss (i.e., one which leaves no gift of bones) and how that grief has resonated throughout their lives and informed their identities.
“I’d like to think that anyone who has struggled with the strangeness of grief will be engaged – and hopefully comforted – by the characters’ journeys.”
Stephanie is a working mother, and juggles family and writing with grace and a writer’s eccentricity. “There are times when I’m at my desk from 9 until 4, a schedule which aligns with when my kids get on and off the bus. There are other days when family obligations mean I can only squeeze in some journal-writing, or tinker with a paragraph, a sentence, the placement of a semi-colon. I do tend to get very grumpy if I don’t set aside time to write at least a little bit every day.
“On the other hand, it’s extremely counter-productive to allow writing to become punitive, an exercise in punching the time card. I really have to guard against that, as I’m somewhat hard-wired for self-punishment. Sometimes inspiration comes when I’m taking an early morning walk, driving to the grocery store, standing in line at Starbucks, or running errands. One must be constantly open for business. When in the middle of a book, I’m really thinking about my characters all the time. If someone makes the mistake of asking me how I’m doing, I usually launch into a description of how my characters are doing; I don’t stop until I notice my friend’s glazed, slightly concerned expression. For me, being a writer involves cultivating a benign form of schizophrenia. I have notepads everywhere; I adopted this practice years ago after reading an interview with Anne Tyler, who raised four kids while writing her early novels. Yes, being a writer consists largely of applying the seat of one’s pants to the seat of the chair, but there’s a quality of attention one must maintain, a continual vigilance/readiness to receive the odd idea/inspiration.”
“In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion remembers, ‘Had [my husband] not warned me when I forgot my own notebook that the ability to make a note when something came to mind was the difference between being able to write and not being able to write?’”
Stephanie is an avid and eclectic reader. She’s a huge fan of the Salinger oeuvre, Anne Tyler, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, The World According to Garp, and The Cider House Rules. “My dear friend Sheri Holman writes brilliant books; I’ve learned so much from her. I’ve also learned a great deal from Myla Goldberg, Ian McEwan, A.S. Byatt. Lately – as I await feedback from my editor on the latest draft of Sing Them Home - I’ve been indulging in thrillers: Chelsea Cain’s Heartsick, and the Japanese novelists. I really like a change-up when it comes to reading.
“In terms of my work on Sing and exploring the landscape of grief, the greatest writer-to-writer gift came from Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. My father died suddenly a few months after the publication of my first novel; my mom followed him a year later, almost to the day. Ms. Didion helped me understand why my mother was able to donate all of Dad’s clothes to the Goodwill but left his shoes in the closet: How else would he be able to walk home to her?”
In addition to writing, Stephanie is a knitter. “It’s a tremendously valuable discipline in terms of reminding me of what writing is about and how a book is built: stitch by stitch, row by row, occasionally having to unravel everything you’ve done and start over.”
Stephanie Kallos has a lot more to share. She is this year’s opening speaker at the April 26th conference.

Lit Up at the Library

Roy Blount, Jr. is one of the country’s most distinguished men of letters. Add -ist to almost any form of writing, and he’s been there, done that–journalist, novelist, humorist, panelist…And he’s also written plays, biographies, memoirs and screenplays. He starred a PBS documentary (”The Main Stream“), is a regular on NPR’s game show, “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” and occasionally performs in the literary-themed band, the Rock Bottom Remainders with Stephen King, Dave Barry, Amy Tan and other writers.

But like all writers, his journey began at the public library. “My childhood library, in Decatur, Georgia, was a large grey-stone building, which is still there but greatly expanded and better lit inside,” Roy says. “The old one was lit well enough for me, the books lit it up, and I wanted to read all of them. Lots of orange biographies of pioneers, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and Kit Carson. I can’t remember reading any biographies of anybody who didn’t wear buckskin. I read all the Oz books, and the Dr. Doolittle books. It was a family joke that when I was a little boy in the library I would get so excited I would have to go to the bathroom real bad and be dancing around not wanting to leave the books. I guess that is not a very delicate story, but there it is.”

With memories like that, how could he not grow up to be president of the Authors Guild and a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers? And with a writer’s voice like that, how could we not invite him to be the keynote speaker at our spring conference, “Writing in the Garden of the Gods“? [

Photo credit Valerie Shaff]

Another library memory can be found in Roy’s latest book, Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South:

One afternoon I was in the library of a small town in Mississippi, in need of some information, so I went up to the lady behind the desk there. Ahead of me were an elderly white man and a young black woman. The white man was saying:

“….just hit me suddenly, you know, that I wanted somethin’, and then….it hit me what it was. That I wanted. It was pie.”

“Well,” said the lady behind the desk.

“A piece a pie. It’s funny cause u-sually I don’t want pie, this time a day. But I did, that’s exactly what it was, that I wanted. But I couldn’t think who would have pie…this time a day.”

“Uh-hmmm,” said the librarian.

“Miz Boyd a course serves extremely fine pie. But a course Miz Boyd wouldn’t be open…”

“I was goin’ to say,” said the librarian.

“…this time a day. So I said to myself, I said, ‘Now Wawltuh, where in town would they be liable to know…where a body could get a piece a pie.’”

“Mm-hm,” said the librarian, looking thoughtful. “This time a day.”

“I said, ‘Well I tell you where somebody is liable to know. At the li-berry.’ So I told myself that what I would do would be to just come on over here and….”

“I declare, Mr. Owsley, I don’t believe I know…where….” She raised her voice: “IOTA?”

A faint voice came from back in the stacks: “Uh-huhhhhh?”

“DO YOU KNOW WHERE MR. OWSLEY COULD GET A PIECE OF PIE?”

“You mean…this time a day?”

At that point the young black woman stepped forward and said, “’Scuse me, do you have anything about the Army? ’Cause I got to get out of this damn town.”

Roy will be joined by Pulitzer-prize and National Book Award winner Timothy Egan, bestselling novelist Stephanie Kallos and other distinguished guests at Kiana Lodge on April 26. Registration for the event opens on February 1, so get out that calendar you got for Christmas and write it down now. Better yet, subscribe to the free e-newsletter at www.fieldsend.org. For further information about the conference, please see http://fieldsend.org/conference08.html.

*** CALENDAR ALERT ***SAVE THE DATE

WRITING IN THE GARDEN OF THE GODS
Field’s End Writers’ Conference 2008

WHO: This year’s line-up of authors and speakers includes: Roy Blount, Jr. (keynote speaker), Stephanie Kallos (opening speaker), Knute Berger, Alice Acheson, Lyall Bush, Laura Kalpakian, Thomas Kohnstamm, Rosina Lippi aka Sara Donati, Jennifer Louden, Nancy Pagh, George Shannon, Charley Pavlosky, Sheila Rabe aka Sheila Roberts, Suzanne Selfors, David Wagoner, and Timothy Egan (closing speaker). Professional actor Ron Milton will be on hand for the Page One sessions.

WHAT: Third annual Field’s End Writers’ Conference, “Writing in the Garden of the Gods.”

WHEN: Saturday, April 26, 2008
9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

WHERE: Kiana Lodge
14976 Sandy Hook Rd. NE
Poulsbo, WA 98370

DETAILS: This one-day conference, held at the spectacularly beautiful Kiana Lodge near Bainbridge Island, is a combination of lectures and breakout sessions presented by an eclectic group of people in the literary world.

The day offers three groupings of breakout sessions. Guests will select three workshops to attend according to their interest (literary fiction, poetry, nonfiction, screen writing, dialogue, genre, travel writing, editing, journalism, historical fiction, and commercial fiction). Each breakout session will also offer a Page One workshop, where conference guests can anonymously submit the first page of something they’ve written for possible live reading and critique by the guest authors.

Lunch is provided and there will be an early evening wine and cheese reception and book signing providing conference guests, authors, and speakers a chance to mingle. Shuttle buses will be available to carry walk-on ferry passengers to and from Kiana Lodge.

Registration begins February 1, 2008. Early registration is recommended as the conference is limited to 250 guests and has sold out in the past. Cost to attend is $135 if you register before February 28, 2008 and $150 after March 1, 2008. Groups of 5 or more can register for $130/person. To register for the 2008 Field’s End Writers’ Conference, visit www.fieldsend.org.

Founded in 2002, Field’s End is a writers’ community whose mission is to inspire writers and nurture the written word through lectures, workshops, and instruction in the art and craft of writing. Located across the Puget Sound from Seattle on beautiful Bainbridge Island, Field’s End is an affiliate of the nonprofit Bainbridge Public Library, which is located at 1270 Madison Avenue on Bainbridge Island. For more information, call (206) 842-4162 or visit www.fieldsend.org.

###

MEDIA CONTACT:
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Concept 2 Launch
(206) 890-3435
kirsten@concept2launch.net

kirsten graham
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innovation.connections.results
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e:kirsten@concept2launch.net
www.concept2launch.net

Ask almost any avid romance reader which book got her hooked on the genre, and she’ll likely name a title by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. For me, it was Shanna, which held me mesmerized behind my college math and poly sci textbooks and was a revelation to the budding writer in me.

Millions of readers were saddened by Kathleen’s passing. I was privileged to know her, having met her when she opened her amazing antebellum home to a group of writers who had come to Alexandria, Louisiana for a workshop. She was soft-spoken and gracious. You’d never know, to meet her, how vast her influence was on our industry. She was incredibly humble. To meet her, you’d never know she’d taken the publishing world by storm. My favorite room in her home? The Shanna master bath. It featured the original painting from the book cover and was done in the same lush color scheme.

I gave her a copy of one of my books, which she read and later told me she enjoyed it a lot. (I still have that letter in a special place, tucked into a signed copy of The Flame and the Flower.) Later, I’d get the occasional e-mail from her, letting me know she’d read my latest and giving me glimpses of her journey from Minnesota homemaker to blockbuster author, the likes of which publishing hadn’t seen since Grace Metalious or Jacqueline Susann. According to Kathleen, there were few expectations attached to her first book. She told me the initial print run target was about 30,000 but the actual number was a great deal higher–600,000. Although the book was not an immediate blockbuster, her next one, The Wolf and the Dove, hit #2 on the New York Times list, and a phenomenon was born.

Here’s a snippet of the opening of Shanna, the book that started it all for me and so many others. The writing speaks for itself. Even now, decades later, she takes me away, to another time and place. She was a true original.

“Surely, madam, you jest. To propose marriage to a man about to hang? Upon my word, I cannot see the logic in it.”

” ‘Tis a matter of some delicacy.” Shanna presented her back to him as if embarrassed and paused before continuing. She spoke demurely over her shoulder. “My father, Orlan Trahern, gave me one year to find a husband, and failure shall find me betrothed to whom he wills. He sees me a spinster and wants heirs for his fortunes. The man must be of a family privy to King George. I have not yet found the one I would choose as my own, though the year is almost gone. You are my one last hope to avoid a marriage arranged by my father.” Now came the hardest part. She had to plead with this filthy, ragged colonial. She kept her face averted to hide her distaste. “I have heard,’ she said carefully, “that a man may marry a woman to take her debts to the gallows in re turn for an easing of his final days. I can give you much, Ruark–food, wines, suitable clothing and warm blankets. And surely my cause–”

At his continued silence, Shanna turned toward him and tried to see his features in the gloom, but he had carefully maneuvered their positions until she now was presented full to the light when she faced him. The wily beggar had moved so stealthily that she had not been aware of it.

Ruark’s voice was somewhat strained as he finally said, “Milady, you test me sorely. A gentleman my mother tried to teach me to be, with good respect for womanhood.” Shanna’s breath caught as he stepped nearer. “But my father, a man of considerable wisdom, taught me early in my youth a rule I’ve long abided.”

He walked slowly around her, much as she had done with him a few moments before, then halted when he stood at her back. Scarcely breathing, Shanna waited, feeling his nearness yet not daring to move.

“Never–” Ruark’s whisper came close to her ear, stirring awake a tingling of fear in her. “Never buy a mare with a blanket on.”

Shanna could not suppress a flinch as his hands came over her shoulders and hovered above the fasteners of her cloak.

“May I?’ he asked and his voice, though soft, seemed to fill the very corners of the cell. Ruark accepted her silence as consent, and Shanna braced herself while his lean fingers undid the velvet frogs. He drew the cloak from her, and though lacking splendorous trimming and fancy laces, her deep red velvet gown enhanced her beauty divinely. She was the gem, the jewel of rare beauty which made the dress more than a garment but rather a work of art. Above the hooped panniers which expanded her skirt on the sides, the tightly laced bodice showed the narrowness of her waist while it cupped her bosom to a most daring display above the square decolletage. In the golden glow of the tallow lantern, her skin gleamed like rich, warm satin.

Ruark stood close, his breath falling softly against her hair, his head filled with the delicious scent of woman.

You knew there were several reasons you shouldn’t get your mom exotic cut flowers for Mother’s Day. (Or if you must, please buy locally, and get organically-grown flowers.)

Here are a few items any mother would love:

1. A Bugzooka. She’ll never have to wipe a smeared dead bug from the window again, and she’ll feel like a humanitarian for setting them free outdoors.
2. A nose egg separator. If you’re going to cook something, you might as well be entertained while doing it.
3. A hostess apron so pretty that people won’t even expect you to cook.
4. Or a Kashwere robe to sit around in all day and read novels.
5. Three quick book recommendations: I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron, Meeting God in Quiet Places by F. LaGarde Smith or Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading by Maureen Corrigan.

And let’s be honest. The most treasured gift of all is time spent together, right? That’s what my mom’s getting this year. After the CRW conference, I’m heading down to have dinner with my parents and spend a few days in their company. What’s better than that?

‘Tis done. We talked, sang, laughed, cried, created, learned, ate and had an incredible day at the Field’s End conference. Thanks to all the amazing speakers and writers who participated. Special thanks to the Bainbridge Island Beach Cottage for providing accommodations. There’s a slide show of the event here. Happy writing to all!

Authors Carol Cassella, Michael Donnelly, Mickey Molnaire at Kiana Lodge.

I inhaled this book. My copy of The Penny Tree came in the mail last week, and I took a peek, thinking I’d just sample it and then put it on my TBR pile. Many hours later, in the middle of the night, I was still curled up in my favorite chair, still reading. And when I got to the end, I felt like flipping back to the beginning and reading it all over again. It’s that good. So good that it made me want to take my daughter out into the garden and nail a penny to a tree. So please, treat yourself. Do it now. You’ll thank me.

I first met Holly at the Maui Writers Conference, in the intensive pre-conference retreat. Picture ten writers in a room at a tropical resort, madly reading, critiquing and revising each other’s novels. Okay, don’t picture it. Not a pretty sight, especially because they put me in charge of a group, and I am notoriously messy.

The students in my group that year were talented, intense and driven, but none moreso than Holly. The first thing that struck me was how very generous she was with her fellow writers in the group. But what I remember most of all is reading the draft of her manuscript, a novel called The Tin Box, and getting that twisty feeling in the gut that you get when you realize you’ve discovered something. I was thrilled for Holly, but not at all surprised, when the book was picked up by publishers worldwide and released to great acclaim. Attending the right writers’ conference can be invaluable–believe it.

Now Holly’s third novel, The Penny Tree, is about to be published, yet again to great acclaim. It’s been picked up by foreign publishers and book clubs. If you like really delicious, emotional women’s fiction, this one’s for you. Here’s a brief interview with the always-entertaining Holly Kennedy. She is a kindred spirit, a woman with a great heart, a busy life and a first-class blog. Enjoy!

Q. Okay, tell us what The Penny Tree is all about.

It’s a story about a woman (Annie Hillman) who’s offered a second shot at happiness while coping with the fall-out from her failed marriage. It involves a determined anonymous admirer, a handful of anonymous ads, and the complicated emotional terrain of a family slowly torn apart by their child’s life threatening illness. 

Q.  Do you have a Penny Tree of your own?

A.  No, but I wish I’d been given one when I was growing up, because there were times when I sure could have used one!

Q.  Are parts of the story based on real-life events?

A.  Yes, there are a few that were borrowed from my life. For example, at a recent family reunion, one of my nieces walked into a plate glass window at a restaurant, followed later by my husband, who was followed by his father moments after that. To me, it was hilarious, because they were from the same family, and I knew I wanted to use this in The Penny Tree. There are more, but any smatterings of fact have been carefully blended into the story. However, to clarify, I’ve never seen a drive-in movie theater burn down, I’ve never met a crazy woman with a feather duster in her back pocket, and my boys have never shaved their heads (yet).

Q.  Are any of the characters based on people you know?

A.  None of them, although there are coincidences that have been ‘borrowed’ from my life here, too. Unlike Annie, I wasn’t adopted. I’ve never been fired. And I can say with confidence that I’d make a horrible physical therapist. Sadly, though, my nephew was diagnosed with Hystiocytosis when he was three, although he did survive and is now a healthy young man. I have a Newfoundland dog (Sully) and like Annie, I bought my boys goldfish that refused to die, the same goldfish my husband revived with a turkey baster four years later when our air stone tanked.

Q.  Your main character often lacks confidence in her role as a mother. Was this intentional? 

A.  Yes, mostly because this reflects how I feel as a mother. No matter how old we get, we never stop growing or changing, and being a mother is a delicate balancing act as you guide these little minds through life, even though yours often needs guidance as well. So to me, making Annie appear wholly confident in her role as a mother wouldn’t make her real. 

Q. In the book, it says, ‘Some people meditated or did yoga before they started their day. Others jogged. Annie paddled with her eyes closed.’ What do you do to unwind?

A. I make a double shot of espresso and I write. For me, nothing else comes close.  

[Special note to writers: Registration for the Field's End Writers Conference ends April 24! And to readers: Come see me at the Everett Library on Sunday, April 22, at 2pm.]

Page One is probably the most important page of your manuscript. It’s so important that we’ve given Page One its own room at the Field’s End Writers’ Conference this year. We call it the Moose Room thanks to the trophies on the walls. And no, those are not the heads of failed writers. They’re just part of the audience. A staff of expert instructors–Editor Veronica Randall and authors Robert Dugoni, Garth Stein and Katherine Ramsland–will be on hand to critique and comment on your page one, which will be read aloud to the group. Scary enough for you?

For the courageous, the workshop will give you invaluable feedback from seasoned professionals. If you wish to have your work considered, bring one page, between 250-300 words, double spaced, in a 12 point font.

For the timid, you can learn from listening and watching, and perhaps joining in the discussion.

So I’m feeling courageous. Here’s Page One of Just Breathe, which will be published in hardcover in September 2008. I have a horror of reading my own work aloud, but for the sake of my art, I humbly submit:

Just Breathe

© 2007 Susan Wiggs

One

            After a solid year of visits to the clinic, Sarah was starting to find the décor annoying. Maybe the experts here thought that earth tones had a soothing effect on anxious, aspiring parents. Or perhaps that the cheery burble of a wall fountain might cause an infertile woman to spontaneously drop an egg like an overly productive laying hen. Or even that the soft shimmer of brass chimes could induce a wandering sperm to find its way home like a heat-seeking missile.

            Forty-five minutes, flat on her back with her hips elevated, was starting to feel like forever. It was no longer standard procedure to wait after insemination but many women, Sarah included, were superstitious. They needed all the help they could get, even from gravity itself.

            There was a quiet tap on the door; then she heard it swish open.

            “How are we doing?” asked Frank, the nurse practitioner. Frank had a shaved head and a soul patch, a single earring and a tattoo. At six foot two, he looked a bit incongruous in pastel pink surgical scrubs with little bunnies on them. Mr. Clean showing his nurturing side.

            “Hoping that it’s a ‘we’ this time,” she said, propping her hands behind her head.

            He smiled, offering a look so filled with compassion and hope that Sarah wanted to cry. “Any cramps?”

            “Plenty. Maybe that’s a sign that things are working.” She lay quietly on the cushioned, sterile-draped exam table while he checked her temperature and recorded the time.

            She turned her head to the side. From this perspective, she could see her belongings neatly lined up on the shelf in the adjacent dressing room: her cinnamon-colored handbag from Smythson of Bond Street, designer clothes on padded hangers, butter-soft Manolo boots set carefully against the wall. The keys to her SUV, bought in anticipation of the blessed event that refused to happen. Her mobile phone, programmed to dial her husband with one touch, or even a voice command.

            Looking at all this abundance, she saw the trappings of a woman who was cared for. Provided for. Perhaps – no, definitely – even spoiled. Yet instead of feeling pampered and special, she simply felt…old. Like middle-aged, instead of only twenty-six, the youngest client at Fertility Solutions. Most women her age were still living with their boyfriends in garrets furnished with milk crates and unpainted planks. She shouldn’t envy them, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself….

“I’ve always wanted to write a novel…”

I hear this a lot. It comes as no surprise to me because I truly believe everyone has a story to tell. But only a few end up actually doing it–getting their stories down and then sending them out into the world. Which ones actually pick up pen and paper, or fire up their computers and actually go for it? There’s such power in taking action on your own behalf, in finally saying, “Today’s the day.”

I have a little card stuck on the bulletin board in my study with a handwritten reminder: “This is your shot.”

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s a quick note from Mary Guterson, author of We Are All Fine Here.

“In college, I didn’t know what to do with myself so I became a speech therapist. I figured I could work in the schools, have my summers off, and make enough money to live off of until some Hollywood director discovered me and made me into a movie star. I’d always wanted to be a movie star. Turned out no Hollywood directors were seeking their next discovery in the halls of my suburban Seattle elementary school. Turned out also, I didn’t care for other people’s children. Major career mistake, any way you looked at it.

“One day, a friend of mine pulled a draft of a novel she’d written out of a drawer and handed it to me. I couldn’t believe it. An entire book, written while I’d been doing my best to enjoy the world of lateral lisps and teachers’ lounges. For years, I’d dreamed of writing, but it had always seemed an impossible dream, as unlikely as my becoming a movie star. Who could just sit down and write a book? I stared at my friend’s pile of typed pages. Then I went home and gave it a shot….”

So there you go. What have you done for the writer in you today?

Elsa Watson is proof that you can have a gentle soul, a rapier wit and a fierce intelligence all at once. Could be it’s that degree in Classics from Carleton, combined with service in the Peace Corps, where she and her husband served for two years in West Africa, in Guinea-Bissau, and her tireless work on behalf of West Sound Wildlife Shelter.

In Africa, to pass the long evenings, she tapped into her passion for old stories and myths, and began writing stories of her own. “By the time we returned,” Elsa explains, “I’d finished a few ‘practice books’ and knew I’d found something I loved to do. In 2001, I took my first stab at historical fiction and the pieces began to fall into place. I love balancing my days between research and writing, digging up details about what life was like eight hundred years ago.”

Currently, Elsa is working on two historical novels–The Thieves’ Handbook and The Pirate’s Apprentice, both featuring strong, smart young women who are down on their luck. Crown Books published Maid Marian, a stunning first novel Booklist calls “an intriguing new twist on an old legend.”

A winning blend of action/adventure and female empowerment, Maid Marian gives us her side of the Robin Hood legend, beginning when Marian is a child, long before she meets the famous outlaw of Sherwood Forest. The story is set in medieval times, during the reign of Richard the Lionheart, and follows Marian from Warwick castle to Sherwood and beyond. “Because she was born both an orphan and an heiress,” Elsa explains, “Marian is an unusually independent soul. She struggles through the intrigues of court life and regents, and more than once comes face to face with the imposing Eleanor of Aquitane. Marian’s wits and courage are her best assets, and she uses these to create the future she wants for herself.”

The author was inspired by curiosity about the legendary character. “Maid Marian has intrigued me since childhood. I’ve always been a fan of the Robin Hood story, but I could never understand why so much of the attention went to Robin, and so little to Marian. It struck me as strange that her name is so well known, yet no one has a sense of her character beyond her role as Robin Hood’s consort. Once it occurred to me to write her story myself, I couldn’t let go of the idea. I wanted to show how complex her own life might have been, and how she might have struggled with the choices she made.”

The novel is bound to appeal to anyone who loves historical fiction or an old-fashioned romance. “It’s a great choice for young women, since it involves a young heroine who has the will to shape her own destiny,” Elsa says. “Maid Marian is set in England’s Midcountry during the late twelfth century…Tensions ran high during this time–a huge class division separated the ruling Normans from the Saxon underclass. Taxes were also very high, since King Richard needed to finance his Crusades into the Holy Land. Marian sees a great deal of the land and falls in with people from differing classes. She is therefore able to compare castle life with small village life or with the hidden camp in Sherwood forest.”

Elsa approaches the writing process in shifts. “First I spend a month or so on research only, bringing home huge stacks of books from the library on everything from clothes to food, weapons, and animal husbandry. Next, once the story is roughly planned, I’ll begin writing. I write each morning until I’ve finished about six book pages, then I spend the afternoon doing follow-up research and planning out the next day’s writing. And last comes the editing process, in which scenes are cut, scenes are added, and many, many paragraphs are rewritten. It’s a wonderful thing, really, to be able to spend weeks and months shaping a story into whatever it ought to be.”

The library is a key player during the process. “I would be sunk without our library. When I’m researching, I have regular moments of panic that the librarians will see me coming with my huge stack of books and flee the building. But so far, so good! No one batted an eye even when I ordered the Young Sea Officer’s Sheet Anchor five different times over as many months while I was working on a book about pirates. I needed it desperately, but it was popular - I kept having to turn it in so other people could have it, then put myself back into the hold queue.

“I make good use of the inter-library loan system, which lets you order books from all over. I also love the children’s section. I always begin researching a time period there, since kid’s books give such a wonderful overview (and include pictures!). The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] is a real treasure for historical fiction, since it can tell you when words were first used in written English. Lately, I’ve begun to make use of the library’s database system and am looking up New York Times articles from 1916!”

Want to meet Elsa (who is one of my favorite people in the world, btw)? She’s teaching a workshop at the Field’s End conference on April 28. She is irresistible! To visit Elsa online, go to www.elsawatson.net.

Women Take Center Stage:

Author Elsa Watson Recommends…

I, ELIZABETH by Rosalind Miles. “A wonderful, first-person account of Elizabeth I’s life, including the dramatic events within her own family and court.”

PERSUASION by Jane Austen. “Seven years after she turned him down, Anne Elliot meets her former suitor, Captain Wentworth, when he returns from the Napoleonic Wars.”

WIVES AND DAUGHTERS by Elizabeth Gaskell. “A touching, wide-ranging novel that follows half-sisters Molly and Cynthia through the complexities of English society.”

A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E. M. Forster. “Whether in Florence or southern England, Lucy Honeychurch struggles with the same question - to follow convention or her own heart?”

MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather. “Experience the hardships and joys of immigrant life in 1800s Nebraska.”

[Real quick - Alison Kent was nice enough to have me as her guest blogger today. Check it out.]

In my endless quest to make less work for myself, I finally found a use for the Nigerian banking scam e-mails. If you have an e-mail address, you know what these are–Floridly-worded, gorgeously flattering missives to you, the writer’s “cherished and most trusted friend.” Begging your precious indulgence, they also need your banking information so they can make a $53million deposit of their family wealth into your safekeeping, offering you a cut of several million for your troubles.

Why is this working well for me? Because I’m a fiction writer, of course. At present, I’m writing a sequence that involves minor characters from a made-up diamond-rich small nation in Africa. Sophie, the main character, needs to bankrupt the bad guys, so she creates her own version of the scam and cleans out their treasury. The whole shady procedure is outlined in my e-mail. Talk about a step-saver.

Another bonus–the names! I needed some authentic-sounding names for my African characters, and who can make up something as good as “General Sani Abacha,” or “Barrister Momoh Sanni Momoh”? That stuff is priceless. A quick scroll through my spam catcher yielded some other lovely examples: Mr. Femi Gidado (ACCOUNTANT OFFICER), Clement Okon, Mr Madu Frank, “Colonel Timi Phillips,” “Dr. Bisi Odum, Notary Public” and the adorable-sounding “Bibi Nilini,” who salutes me respectfully from her hiding place in a temporary safe house in Abuja. Inspiration!

And today, I have a little gift for the writers out there. As you get going on a novel, sometimes you notice that everyone’s name starts with the letter “M” or that you have a Harlon, a Harley and a Harry in the same story. Here’s a simple way to avoid names that look and sound too similar on the page. It’s a copy of my handy dandy character Character name chart, an idea I cribbed from the ever-resourceful and talented Debbie Macomber. When you create a character, write his or her name in the appropriate box, and you’ll quickly see if you’re overusing something. Have a great writing week.

You know who she is, that angsty girl who stayed up late and cried a lot and lived a deep inner life all through high school. She kept journals and never showed them to anyone. She wrote lines like “i am the moon in the water/stillness surrounded by skim milk…” Okay, maybe you didn’t write stuff like that but I know one teenage girl who did. On second thought–if you say you didn’t write stuff like that, you’re fooling yourself. But here’s the good news. You’re not alone.

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My writer profiles on this blog are starting to look like a Gallery of Hotties, which believe me, is not intentional. I just happen to know a bunch of writers who are talented and hot, and they would probably hate me for saying that, but it’s my blog, so there. And stay tuned, because there are more where these came from. In some ways, Kelli reminds me of Garth, in that she is accomplished as well as gorgeous and talented, and yet instead of wanting to set her hair on fire, you find yourself liking her. A lot. And wishing you could meet her. (Which you can.)  

The original interview with Kelli was done by Jeannine Hall Gailey, a Seattle-area writer whose first book of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, was published by Steel Toe Books. Poems from the book were featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and will be included in 2007’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Evansville Review, and The Columbia Poetry Journal. She’s currently helping edit Crab Creek Review.  This interview was previously published in Rock Salt Plum. I’m reprinting Kelli’s comments in their entirety because it’s all just so good. Enjoy!  

Kelli Russell Agodon was born and raised in Seattle and educated at the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University where she’s recently completed her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing.  She is the author of two books of poems, Small Knots (Cherry Grove Collections) and Geography, winner of the 2003 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. She is the recipient of two Artist Trust GAP grants, the William Stafford Award, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, as well as a Puffin Foundation Grant for her work towards peace with her international poetry broadside series: The Making of Peace. Her poems have appeared or will soon be appearing in places such as The Atlantic Monthly, Prairie Schooner, Meridian, North American Review, the print version of Poets Against the War edited by Sam Hamill and on NPR’s “The Writer’s Almanac” with Garrison Keillor.  Kelli’s work is also featured in Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times anthology.  She has been a featured poet on the ABC News website for National Poetry Month and awarded a Soapstone Writer’s Residency in Oregon. Currently, she lives in a small seaside community.  Visit her website at: www.agodon.com 

Small Knots originally started out to be what my chapbook Geography became—a book about one woman’s experience with breast cancer. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that I couldn’t condense a life to only a disease because there was so much more I wanted to explore as a poet and as a woman. I wanted the book to have a greater complexity to it.   The subjects I wanted to write about and add to the collection also reflected many of the same themes I had written about in Geography, the idea of loss and the events that happen in our life that slow us down, make us pause and consider the philosophical questions, the basic “why am I here?”  When I began to explore the other ideas on my mind, I saw them falling into three categories: generations, love and illness. Those became the three sections of the book and from there, it was just a matter of choosing the best poems to tell the story I wanted to tell….The first section, “Tangle,” focuses on generations, both in our histories and stories, as well as having a daughter and losing a father. The second section “Interweave,” focuses on love and relationships. I wanted to show younger love and also consider the idea of retirement and growing old together. The last section “Stitch,” is the diagnosis of breast cancer and the story of  living with the disease. Once I understood my sections, then it just came to be a matter of choosing the best poems to complete the stories.

There were a lot of favorite poems that I didn’t use. Mostly in the first two sections, I had to make choices on which poems helped the reader move forward and gain a better understanding of the book/narrative as a whole, and which poems took the reader out of the story or sent them in other directions.   I actually have two other manuscripts in process because for me, theme, coherence and a larger vision for a book is very important.  I wish I could just pack all my favorite poems in a book and say, “Here you go!”  But my mind doesn’t work that way.  I think at heart I’m a storyteller and so I’m constantly trying to weave a narrative thread through my work. The positive of all this is that I have some great poems ready for my second collection.

Many of what I consider the “Northwest writers” have had a strong influence on my work, Richard Hugo, in making me rethink my sentences and deleting words like “but” and “then.” I always remember his suggestion that the reader will put two ideas together without us holding his or her hand. William Stafford, in the simplicity of language, and using words not to show our own intelligence or appear perhaps wiser than we actually are, but to convey an idea to another. Also, I’m influenced by Stafford’s dedication to peace as well as writing political poems. I was definitely influenced by Sylvia Plath’s wordplay, creating words and images like “moth-breath” “wedding-cake face.” I like the noun-noun combos in her poems very much. I’m influenced by [Edna St. Vincent] Millay, less by her individual poems, more in the way she chose to live her life as a poet. Her confidence, her activism─she was ahead of her times in what she was writing. More recent poets I’ve been influenced by are Li-Young Lee, for the spiritual aspects that layer his poems, Olena Kalytiak Davis for her edginess (of which I have none), Naomi Shihab Nye for how to tell a story and write with a larger vision, Aimee Nezhukumatathil for her playfulness, Martha Silano for her incredible use of language, Susan Rich for her strong narrative poems, and Bob Hicok for being able to go from image to image and somehow make it all work out. 

My first poetry mentor in college was Linda Bierds at the University of Washington. She was incredibly supportive to me as a poet and many of things I learned from her twelve years ago, I still return to today. In the mid-nineties, I met another poet named Paula Gardiner, who was the person I turned to for support when I left my 60-hour-a-week corporate America life to move to a small rural village and focus on my writing. Currently, I have a couple of writing groups I turn to when I need feedback on poems, as well as a few other poets I can email poems to if I need to work through something….I’m a perfectionist myself and I revise poems extensively, but the feedback from others helps me understand what isn’t coming across in the poem and where I may be losing people.

I think we are all writers of some sort. Everyone has their own unique, individual story; I guess the key is to know which parts to tell. Picasso said “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”  I think we’re all creative beings, the challenge is to keep that, whether it is writing, painting, dancing. We need to keep that creativity in a prioritized place in our lives. 

I think it’s important for writers and artists in general to have solitude, time strictly for themselves and their art.  I think women, mothers in particular, have a harder time of taking or finding that time for themselves.   For so many years, women were asked to put their goals and passions to the side so they had enough energy and time to take care of whatever else needed tending. The problem with that attitude is that you can’t care for others if you aren’t taking care of yourself and it’s an easy to way to bring feelings of resentment into your situation. I definitely don’t believe people with families (male or female) can take off for a year and disregard the family part of their life, but there needs to be a balance.  It’s a mix supporting the people you love by caring for them as a mother, wife, friend, or daughter, but also making sure you are being supported by them in that you’re allowed the time you need to create. 

Balance is the key.  For me, Soapstone allowed me a chance to intensely focus on my collection.  Don’t get me wrong, it was incredibly hard to leave my family for a week and I had a lot of guilt about leaving my young daughter with my husband while I drove to Oregon to be alone.  But the time there was so important to me, I probably wouldn’t have finished Small Knots or learned so much about myself had I not gone. And through the experience, we all gained confidence; my husband in knowing he could take care of my daughter without my help, my daughter in knowing that her father could give her the care she needed and that I would return to her, and I gained confidence in my writing and knowing that what I do is important. And when I returned, I was greeted with the best welcome home hug. By the next day, things were back to their regular routine, as if I hadn’t gone.

[My blog and] the internet definitely keep us better connected to our favorite writers, especially poets and writers who keep a homepage with their reading schedule, blog or new projects.  For me, I love to read other poets’ blogs because it reminds me that we are all going through the same things—rejection, self-doubt, and insecurity, mixed in with some success, acceptances, and joy. I forget many times when I’m writing on my blog that others are reading it. I do a lot of it as a sort of free-write meditation, high-tech journaling, I guess. It’s nice when people comment or email me about something I’ve written. It’s also been good for me to return to earlier times in the blog to see where I’ve been, either good or bad, as it reminds me that things pass and that it’s not always about rejections or acceptances, just a lot of everything in between. And a few of these blog entries have gone on to be poems or parts of poems. I think the net is a positive place for poets and poetry lovers because there is an enormous amount of well-written poems out there to consider. Readers and writers can step away from their region and see a much greater variety of poetry. It takes away “regional writing” because we have so many poems from so many places at our fingertips. The diversity of writing is incredible.

I’m not really someone who writes when they’re inspired. If I waited for inspiration, I’d probably have two poems a year. I’m usually inspired by reading other poets, so if I need a jumpstart to my writing, I’ll grab a favorite book of poems and read a few and see if anything comes from it.  Mostly, my work begins with me sitting down and starting a poem to see if it goes anywhere. I have a huge number of poems in my “In Process” file that will never see the light of day. But I keep them and occasionally I’ll go through that file and something will get my attention and I’ll start the revision process. Sometimes it works, sometimes not and it returns back to the file until another day. I am always revising. When