Category Archives: writing

Jeopardy

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JEOPARDY

Answer: One summer night I lay alone in a grassy field outlined in pines whose perfume stained the sky.  In the distance, a pocket of people played guitar and sang quiet songs.  The grass beneath my head was soft as a pillow, and the stars felt close enough for me to use the Big Dipper to ladle up a heaping scoop of memento constellations from this perfect night.  Then, though I couldn’t see it, a hand pressed me gently into the earth.  There, beneath that great palm, I felt eyes gazing at me with delight and charity, and I for once welcomed eternity.

Question: Do you believe in God?

fieldatnight

 

Truth Tripline

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I’m one of those writers who doesn’t really know what she wants to say until she says it.  I don’t do a lot of planning before I start fiction projects.  I might have a vague idea of the ending, but I don’t know the steps it will take to get to that point, or even if that ending will be what I eventually land on.

Apparently, Jo Rowling planned Harry Potter for seven years before she started writing it.  It definitely worked for her.

For me, I make friends with a few characters and then I toss them into a situation together to see what they’ll do.

Listen, I know it’s kind of a trendy thing for authors to say that they are surprised by what their characters do, but I’ll be honest with you: it’s the truth.  I am sometimes shocked at what happens when I sit down at the laptop to write.  I won’t let my characters have the final say; I get that, as the author … but they usually know what they’re doing, and I’m usually humble enough to listen.

When I sat down to write my current work-in-progress, all I knew was that it featured three teenagers and one of them wasn’t sure if reality was really reality.  The first thing that happened when I started writing was that this blind, elderly man named Gordon suddenly started speaking.  I had no idea where he came from, had not planned or prepared for him … but there he was.  And he ended up being an important character in the story.

C.S. Lewis had the image of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood in his head.  He wrote, “At first I had very little idea how the story would go. Then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams about lions about that time. Apart from that I don’t know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there he pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.”

Likewise, Lewis said that the stories weren’t originally intended to be Christian allegory.  “At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.”

This happens to me while I write.  I won’t know what a character should do or say … and then I just write it.  My fingers just fly across the keyboard, and I, Jackie, at home on my couch, am marveling at this truth that I tripped over.

Where do these things come from?

I think I know.

Alice in Wonderland 2 by *Ashenebal on deviantART

Alice in Wonderland 2 by *Ashenebal on deviantART

Favorite Book Lines

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This was originally going to be a top ten list, but I should have known that that would about KILL me.  So, in the end, I simply present to you a list of some of my favorite lines of literature:

Jude stopped in front of her and, with both hands cupping her face, tried to make a smile. Narnie flinched.
‘Leave her alone,’ Tate said.
‘I need a revelation,’ Jude said. ‘And you’re the only one that can give me one, Narns.”
Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

“The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.”
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

“And Dimble, who had been sitting with his face drawn, and rather white, between the white faces of the two women, and his eyes on the table, raised his head, and great syllables of words that sounded like castles came out of his mouth.”
That Hiddeous Strength by C.S. Lewis

“The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”
The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

“He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.”
The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle

“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.”
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

“Do you remember all of your audiences?” Marco asks. 
“Not all of them,” Celia says. “But I remember the people who look at me the way you do.”
“What way might that be?”
“As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me.”
“I am not afraid of you,” Marco says.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

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“Remember how it was when we kissed? Armfuls and armfuls of light thrown right at us. A rope dropping down from the sky. How can the word love and the word life even fit in the mouth?”
The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

“It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

“It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind.”
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

“It was a jumble, it was a mishmash, and somehow she pulled it together, somehow she threaded every different thing through the voice of a solitary mockingbird singing in the desert.”
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

“There’s more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
East of Eden by John Steinbeck

“I saw a beached red dory.  I could take the dory, row out to the guy, and say: Sir.  You have found a place where the sky dips close.”
For the Time Being by Annie Dillard

What are your favorites?

In Defense of “The Last Unicorn”

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The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle is one of my all-time favorite books, and I re-read it like it’s air.  I recommend it quite often.  And yet, people very rarely take me up on my suggestion.  I think it’s because of the title.  I mean, let’s be honest, it sounds like the final book of a trilogy where the other books are Giggle Glitter and Rainbow Smiles.  I get it.

But no.

This book routinely polls as one of the top 10 fantasy novels of all time.  It is stunning.

These are the reasons I love it so much:

1. The lyrical writing.  It’s like this completely gorgeous narrative poem!  On every page, you encounter a gem so beautiful you want to put it in your mouth like rock candy.

“Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.”

“Her voice left a flavor of honey and gunpowder on the air.”

“When you walk, you make an echo where they used to be.”

2. The humor.  Beagle’s timing for tossing out a laugh-aloud moment is impeccable and doesn’t distract from the story, only adds.

“The magician stood erect, menacing the attackers with demons, metamorphoses, paralyzing ailments, and secret judo holds. Molly picked up a rock.”

“You pile of stones, you waste, you desolation, I’ll stuff you with misery till it comes out of your eyes. I’ll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into a sheep. I’ll turn you into a bad poet with dreams.”

3. The meta-writing.  Story about story.  The characters have this self-awareness that they are a part of a story, and it’s a fascinating device I’ve rarely seen used.  Beagle does so with flawless charm.

“Haven’t you ever been in a fairy tale before?. . . . The hero has to make a prophecy come true, and the villain is the one who has to stop him — though in another kind of story, it’s more often the other way around. And a hero has to be in trouble from the moment of his birth, or he’s not a real hero. It’s a great relief to find out about Prince Lir. I’ve been waiting for this tale to turn up a leading man. . . .”

“The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock on the witch’s door when she is already away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”

If you like the fantasy genre, or even just world-class writing despite genre, then you need to read this book.

last unicorn

Drops of Jupiter, Revisited

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drops of jupiter revisitedI’ve been to nine planets in twelve years, and it’s starting to show.  Long gone are the days of summer-acting, rain-walking, spring-listening, and June-talking.  The tiny drops of Jupiter in my hair and on my skin have lost their sheen.  Constellation stories are old, memorized.  The flashing waves of the sun, my old playground, hurt these tired eyes.

I remember when Venus was a show-stopper, when Saturn’s rings were my cosmic carousel.  In my moods, I hid in Neptune’s dark spot.  On cool nights, I’d put the top down and cruise the Milky Way, that galactic highway.

But tonight, I am resting in a crook of the moon, and from here, I can see evening lights stretching across the northern hemisphere.  I almost miss that particular gravity of home, can almost picture the lilacs that grew on the farm, a medley of purples for those two weeks that passed like a moment. 

May…  Minnesota…

The breeze would trip from spring into summer as it rushed across the newly-plowed fields and all the lakes and through the flames of the bonfire that lit the surrounding faces with an intense orange glow.

It’s so cold in space.

 

an exciting update!

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I have some exciting news!

I was just admitted to grad school, and though I won’t be starting until January 2014, I am so eager to pursue my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts.  It is a low-residency program, which means that I will still live in Minnesota, stay working at Northwestern, and do much of my program online and through correspondence, but once each semester I will travel out to Montpelier for an intense 10-day residency full of lectures, workshops, and meeting with an advisor.

You might remember that, at the start of the year, I was saying how my life is different than I’d imagined it would be at 31, and that I’d always expected to have an advanced degree by now.  The thought wouldn’t leave me, so I started to investigate graduate programs around the country.  I was drawn to VCFA for its low-residency format and how it is project-based and because it is one of only a few schools that has an MFA specific to YA writing.  Also, this is the school where Jandy Nelson, author of the incredible The Sky is Everywhere, attended!  The idea kept taking root, and when my friend Hannah asked me, “Would you go if it was free?” and I answered, “Yes!” without a moment’s hesitation, my true desires were revealed to me.

So I applied right after I got home from the writing workshop in California, sending them the newly revised first 25 pages of my manuscript, along with a critical essay, and a personal essay, and I’ve been pretty quiet about it on my blog because I didn’t want to have to reveal to the world wide web that I’d been rejected if that’s what happened.

But it didn’t!

I’m so thrilled.  I chose to defer to the January semester because of my roommate Desiree’s wedding this summer and so that I would have until the end of the year to polish and finish the novel I am writing now (which you all see snippets of here and there and everywhere).  I wanted to start grad school with a blank slate so that I wouldn’t be pining away for an unfinished project the whole time.

So, there’s my news!  I’m doing cartwheels of joy!

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My Love/Hate Relationship with Feedback

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“If you show someone something you’ve written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready.’”
David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

Yup.  That’s about it.

No, but seriously, I have such a love/hate relationship with feedback and writing criticism.

On the one hand, I hate it.  Showing people a chapter you’ve written is like saying, “Look, here’s my baby.  Tell me if you think it’s ugly.”  And they do.  You slave over your words, you climb up a mountain with them, and when you finally reach the top, someone pushes you over and you tumble back down.  It’s really, really hard to get writing feedback, especially when you truly care about a project.  When I was in my writing program in college, I couldn’t look at feedback on my poetry and stories immediately after our work was graded.  I would get my work back, and– while looking away from the top of the page where the grade was– would fold it in half and tuck it, unseen, into my backpack.  In my room, I would move it to a desk drawer where it would sit– still unseen– until it was time to work on the next draft; usually by that time, the sting would have gone out of it a little bit.

During my senior capstone, I had to learn how to handle criticism.  I met every single week with my advisor, who could cover the whole front and back sides of a sheet of paper in red ink full of suggestions, deletions, squiggle underlines (bad), straight underlines (good), and the word PUSH.  There would be more red ink from her than black ink from what I’d originally written.  In addition, every week, I sat down with a group of seven other writers, and we critiqued each other’s work aloud in a local Caribou.  At the beginning of that semester, I would pray before I had to meet with my advisor; I was so nervous for her critiques and so scared I might cry in front of her.

By the end of that semester, though, I had learned how to handle criticism– and better yet: I had learned how to take the criticism, revisit my writing, and make it better.  When I graduated, I had a senior portfolio I was proud of.

So on the other hand, I love criticism.  I love that my friends who love reading and writing, words and metaphors, can see the potential in my drafts and that they are willing to put the time and energy into reading them and making suggestions.  I love that they can pick out the obvious flaws that I somehow just cannot see.  They tell me when my characters aren’t being true to themselves; they find big-picture concepts that are a little off and help me correct them.  I have realized that the mere fact that someone is willing to offer feedback shows that they are investing in me and my writing, shows that they believe it has a future, one they want to buy into.

I’m so blessed.  I have the most incredible writing group.  Anna, Rachel L, Jaidyn, Rachel R, Carra, and Addie.  We meet once a month to share life, stories, poems, and commiserations.  They are all completely brilliant and care deeply for me and my novel, and I am so, so grateful for their help on this journey.  Along with my writing group, I also have wonderful beta-readers in Elyse, Stacey, and Mary.  My faithful blog readers Brienna and Melody too!  My mom and sister are rockstar readers as well.

In addition, I have been getting help from Ben Barnhart, this incredible editor in Minneapolis, and of course, I went to the Big Sur Writing Workshop too for an intense look at my first two chapters.  I have come a long, long way from those early days of feedback– now I seek it out.  It’s still not easy; make no mistake.  It’s hard.  But it’s good.  

In fact, for me, it’s the only way I can take my writing to the next level.

How about you?  How do you feel about feedback and constructive criticism?

group reading

Jealous Palm

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hairAfterward, Silas and I had Holy Communion with Laurel on the beach: grape Crush and Goldfish crackers and Silas’s reassurances that it was not irreverent.  We spread a bed sheet over the sand, which felt cold and tired here at summer’s end.  A cool breeze came over the waters from the southwest so that Laurel’s hair blew out behind her like bridal veil.  Silas read a poem he’d written in his Moleskine notebook:

 

Is she the only one to notice the way
the low orange moon walks the streets tonight,
this full satellite standing at the intersection beside men
out late, their shadows stretching behind them like secrets?

She loves the peculiar, the collision of common and celestial,
holiness networking with profanity.  Magnificent absurdity,
the whole of it: God putting on skin and walking with liars,
divinity stapled to a death machine. 

The phenomenon holds her like a jealous palm.

“Silas, that’s really good,” Laurel said as she leaned back on her elbows, looking out at the waves on the water.

“Really good!” I gushed.

The praise bounced right off of him.  “It’s about you, Laur,” he said.  He handed me the bottle of Crush and Laurel the bag of Goldfish.  I felt the bubbles of carbonation burn my throat as I swallowed.

“I know,” Laurel said, then tasted a cracker, God’s body.  “I am held by a jealous palm.  I believe that.  Right now, I believe that.”  She closed her eyes, perhaps in prayer, and breathed in the scent of the breeze: algae and white clover that carried over the water onto this holy space.