Snowy Day

The icicles are dripping now
     Slowly disappearing in the light from the sky
The snowman has lost his mind
     And his nose is just a root on my grassy ground
In the shade, a lingering reminder of the clean quiet of the morning
But in the front yard, no trace, just the holly bush, basking in the winter sun.

Turkey and Cranberry Sauce and Dressing, Oh My!

I hope that you had the most joyous of Thanksgivings, and I'm wishing you a magical Christmas season!

I was fortunate to go "home" for Thanksgiving, back to the family farm in Georgia.  It's the place where I derive the most inspiration for my work, and I had a lovely marathon writing session curled under a blanket on the back porch, laptop in hand, gazing across the backyard with its ponds and on to the river beyond.  The sound of the river is invigorating, and the sounds of the birds reminds me that there are lives going on all around me, lives I tend to dismiss.

I also read a little Annie Dillard while I was home, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek".  It was as if she'd written it there on that farm, and her awe at nature was mirrored in my own.

Perhaps the highlight of my holiday was taking my three year old son on a walk around the farm.  We made our first stop at the garage so he could climb on every tractor, and then he picked up a broom, took it outside, and tried to sweep the leaves.  He's a tidy little guy.  Afterwards we walked to the river, and the look on his face was priceless: eyes wide, mouth agape; he couldn't believe the sights and sounds of the rapids. We walked along the river looking at deer prints in the dirt and collecting feathers.  He found a hawk feather which was definitely the discovery of treasure for him.
Come to think of it, we were both like treasure hunters in search of fortune, and I think we both found it.

It's easy to get caught up in the day to day hustle and bustle of life, of work, of the holidays.  My trip home reminded me that creation and inspiration fully arrive when we take ourselves out of society for a bit so we can breathe deeply, move slowly, and simply be amongst the rest of creation.  This holiday season, I hope you're able to make time to step outside of necessity for a spell.  I know that it is in those moments that you will find the treasure of inspiration, a treasure you may not have even known you were seeking.

Sometimes it's Too Much

What I wrote today was difficult to relive.
Oftentimes I write from my life experience, and life is not always fulfilling.
I think that's why so many broken people are writers.

But then again, aren't we all broken in some way?

Five years ago, I lost my grandfather.  It was a difficult four months as he was dying, a difficult four months filled with hurtful revelations, broken promises, unrealistic expectations, unbearable pressure, and unanswered questions.  It was a time when everything I thought I knew about a man who had been such a central part of my life was proven to be a lie.  Everything.

I've been waiting for the right time to write about it, and early on I realized that there would never be a "right time".  There would be a "right project".

There's something Faulknerian about my experience losing this man who had been my hero and my father, something about seeing clearly for the first time that he was someone I never really knew.  And when I stood in that booth at the country fair, holding the photographs that sparked this project, I knew that this was the time. 

Reliance is the project.

I've been so excited to begin this manuscript; the words have been saturating my mind for weeks.  But if I'm being honest, I've also been wary, because I knew that this day of writing would come.

We didn't have a funeral for my grandfather.  Truth be told, if we had, the funeral should have been held weeks before he died in body, for that was long after he died to me.

But perhaps it's more fitting that in memorial I bury him in these pages, in these words I've put to paper today.  His life was fiction, and so there he shall remain.

Sometimes writing is too difficult.
Sometimes it's too much.

NaNoWriMo is Underway!

Greetings from my kitchen, where I am finally putting the finishing touches on getting the kids to bed, preparing lunches for tomorrow, baking my granola for this week's breakfast, and medicating my sore throat.  And now there is finally time to write!

NaNoWriMo began this week on November 1, and no, you're not too late to give it a shot!  I am at 15% of my goal, which isn't too shabby, and frankly I'm amazed at the time I found (*made) this week to write.  On Wednesday I went to the public library and banged out a couple of thousand words...this novel has been building up inside of me for a couple of weeks now...on Thursday I wrote at home at the kitchen table, and on Friday I treated myself to a yummy crepe and wrote at my favorite local coffee shop.  Whether you like coffee or not, I must recommend your local coffee shop as a haven for inspiration.  There's something about being in a space where something else is being created, where conversations surround you and people are gently sipping their comfort.  And it smells pretty great too!

I'm working on my novel, tentatively titled Reliance, and I'm realizing that this is the second manuscript where I've worked with a very different process than usual.  I've been on a hunt for narrative voices.  My friend and fellow writer, Jennie, always says to "steal what you like" from other writers.  So I'm stealing a little Faulkner on this one.  In the vein of  As I Lay Dying (a masterpiece of narrative voice), I'm using multiple narrators to tell the story.  The trick here is to get the story out and, in the process, to find their voices.  Last week I was drumming along with my main character's daughter's voice as she described the situation surrounding her father's death.  Suddenly she received a letter...and the next thing I knew, Daisy Prater had entered my life, and the story, and she was rambling on and on about quite shocking things!  I love these moments when a voice forces its way in and hijacks the story. 

And so I'm letting the story flow.  It's all out of order right now, but the pieces are coming to me that way.  Time will tell if they get resorted in the manuscript or if a little time-jumping (not unlike the works of my muse, Faulkner) is the best way to convey the meaning.

What I know for sure is that this story is coming organically.  And that's a good thing.  Nay, it is a great thing!

Happy writing! 

Fall Sestina

I rarely write poetry. Yet today I thought I'd try my hand at the sestina form.  I'm sitting in my living room, my hands so cold with the chill of the house in fall.  Outside, I see the leaves with the suggestion of color on their edges.  Perhaps I too have the suggestion of color on my fingertips.

Fall Sestina

As I watch the leaves
Falling, falling
Upon the mossy earth.
I consider the chill
And wonder if it's life
Sharper and hard.

I touch the ground, so hard
Under the layer of leaves
Now resting from life
And the thrill of falling.
My body seizes with chill
As I stare at the earth.

My fingers dig into earth,
Thrusting through the hard
Surface, the chill
Now forgotten, blown with the leaves
No longer falling
But surging with life.

I consider this, my life,
As my fingers force aside the earth.
My soul is falling, falling,
And the task is growing too hard.
I'm surrounded now by the leaves,
Overcome as I fight the chill.

My soul grows cold with chill,
But I fight for signs of life
Even as the autumn leaves
Continuously crowd the earth,
My frozen fingers now hard,
And I feel myself frozen, falling.

The rain now falling,
Compounding the chill,
My face cold, on the ground hard,
Too hard, to allow new life.
I consider my breath, the earth,
the peaceful corruption of leaves

No longer falling. I lie on the earth
And the leaves stifle the chill
As my hard heart now thaws for life.

Chest Pains

Last weekend I traveled with a friend home to the country fair in Georgia.  I come from one of the most beautiful regions of the country, the Georgia mountains and foothills, and the land did not disappoint.  Not only was the drive beautiful, but Jennie and I took a walk around the family farm on Sunday morning, on trail and off, and I marvelled as I always do at the beauty of untouched nature.

We visited the Chickamauga Battlefield and discovered there is actually a tunnel in a hill in Tunnel Hill, Georgia.

I got to visit with my grandmother, and she treated us to a breakfast of biscuits and pecan praline butter.

It was a weekend full of inspiration.

There's something about going back there that helps me remember my passion for writing and that aids me in conceiving a new project.

Perhaps it's the quiet, slow pace of life.

Perhaps it's being in creation.

Perhaps it's being away from the push and pull of my life in South Carolina.

At the country fair there is much food, clogging, music, and crafts, and it's requisite that one stroll with ease amongst the tents and booths.  Toward the end of the day a photograph outside a local photographer's tent caught my eye.  At first, all I saw were beautiful purple rings that faded from dark to light, from deep purple to lavender.  I wandered over to find that it was in fact a photograph of onions.  Beautiful onions.  They looked like jellyfish. They called me within.

Just inside the tent my eye was struck by a black and white photograph of a gnarled tree silhouetted against the sky.  And the feeling began.

The feeling of a new project is a little bit like a punch in the chest, but it begins deeper within me.  It's a voice that starts to whisper deep in my belly; I can feel it swirling around before the idea reaches my mind.

I turned inside the tent and saw a black and white photograph of a window with the words, "God never closes a door without opening a..." painted above.  The window was distorted as was the dark, featureless reflection of a man within it. He looked as if he were wearing a preacher hat, and below the reflection, the shadow of his open hand was reaching up from the bottom of the wooden house.

There was a tightness in my chest.

As I searched for a smaller print of this photograph, I flipped to a color photograph of a dilapidated house with a rotting portico and a dead tree in front of it.  Two bright blue flowerpots stood outside the front gate as if they'd been banished.

The tightness almost took my breath away.

And just like that, it was there in my mind.

The story, the characters, the setting, the meaning, the feeling.

I felt the tug of my new manuscript.

Once again I became the vessel.  I didn't create this story or its characters.  They were born within me.

I'm ready to help them manifest.  I'm ready, at last, to write.

A Second Chance

It has been a crazy month.  With the new school year kicking off, I have been drowning in summer reading assignments and letters of recommendation for my seniors.  My soul has been thirsting for writing, but time has not yielded the space for it.  It is with a grateful heart that I sit down today with my computer, a bowl of granola, and (a little) quiet while the kids are upstairs getting ready for the day.

I've already learned a few lessons myself this school year.  That's one of the perks of teaching: if you're someone who loves learning, you continue to learn.  I think of my classroom as a cooperative.  After all, a mind is never so saturated that it doesn't have room for more knowledge and creative thought.

A couple of weeks ago I was waxing poetic about Wuthering Heights when Jane Eyre came up and, of course, Wide Sargasso Sea.  My relationship with the latter goes back about fifteen years, back to my undergraduate days.  I was a hesitant student, often shy in class, and I received lower overall grades than I earned on written assignments due to my "lack of participation".  However, I was participating silently.  For example, if a professor or student used a word with which I was unfamiliar, I would write it phonetically in my notebook and then seek it out when I returned to my dorm room.  This is how "recalcitrant" became one of my favorite words.  Thank you, Jessica-with-the-amazing-vocabulary!  I would also note the titles of books professors mentioned or loudly and repetitively claimed their love for.  One title that I wrote down repeatedly was Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

I finally read the novel fresh out of graduate school (where once again everyone seemed enamoured with the text).  I remember checking it out from the library and being astounded that such an impactful book could come in such a slim volume of one hundred-twelve pages.  So I dove in, barely moving from my bed as I immersed myself in the backstory of Bertha Rochester.

And I hated it.

I despised the book.  I found it underdeveloped, scattered, untrue to the original characters, and overall, a bore.  I felt bamboozled by every professor who ever sang its praises.  But worst of all, I felt as if perhaps something was wrong with me.  After all, these men and women I so admired and held in such high esteems adored the book.  Maybe I wasn't the intellectual I thought myself to be.  The only other book I'd ever felt this way about was Revolutionary Road, and I'd thrown it across the room upon completion, yelling, "I want this book out of my house!"

For years I would cringe whenever anyone mentioned Wide Sargasso Sea, though secretly I wondered if the problem were actually me.

And so a couple of weeks ago, my students gave me an assignment (well, actually they gave me two, but you don't want to be subjected to the lemur-inspired villanelle they asked me to compose!).  My assignment was to give Wide Sargasso Sea another chance.  They held me accountable, and I did it.

I loved the read.  The prose was, in fact, beautiful.  The complexity of Bertha (Antoinette) hurt my heart and elicited my sympathy.  The criticism of colonialism was realistic and scathing. And Rochester...well, I don't like him very much right now.

This experience was a lesson for me.  And interestingly, it's a lesson I teach my students all the time.  Books affect us differently at different times in our lives.  While I identified with the young tomboy, Scout, when I read To Kill a Mockingbird as a middle schooler, I now find myself in Atticus, both in his work for justice and especially in his longings for his children's happiness and goodness.

While I will probably not be picking up Revolutionary Road again anytime soon, I'm grateful my students persuaded me to give Wide Sargasso Sea another chance.  I'll be purchasing ti for my personal library soon. And so I leave you with this question: what book should you give a second chance to move you?

We Need Stories Now

When I look at what is going on in our country, I'm overwhelmed.  I feel devastation, frustration, disheartenment, embarrassment, sadness, and disbelief.  I feel anxiety constrict my chest as my news apps load.  When I turn on NPR, I silently hope it's a replay of Ask Me Another and not the hourly news update.

We need stories now.

This summer I've been trying to read stories with voices that vary from my own.  I've made the choice to seek out writers who are not middle-aged, white, middle-class women.  Because I don't know the unique experiences of others as I know mine.  I've also sought out stories by women who match my demographics but whose lifestyles are beyond my scope of experience.

We need stories now.

As I look at what happened in Charlottesville, my heart cries out.  My heart cries out, and concurrently, I thirst for understanding.  It's easy to feel sorrow; it's more challenging to empathize.  I will never know what it's like to be a woman of color standing in front of a Confederate monument on her statehouse grounds.

We need stories now.

Sometimes we imagine that people reading at home are closed off from the world.  On the contrary, by experiencing the stories of others, we engage the world.  We learn more about the complexity of the human person.  We are in conversation with those whose lives are so different from our own, or perhaps so similar.

We need stories now.

As an English teacher, I too often hear students ask why they have to read novels for school when their future plans are in math or the sciences.  The answer is, because stories teach us about what it means to be human, about the variety of human experience.

We need stories now.

I urge you today to read someone's story.  Someone who may be different from you.
I urge you today to share your story.  Share it with someone who needs the understanding of you.
I urge you today to consider the complexity of the human story, the story of our country, the story of your community.

We need stories now.

Summer's End

I had such plans

The books I would read

The manuscript I would complete

The new characters I would unleash into the world

The workouts I would accomplish each and every day

The friends with whom I would catch up after such a long, busy spring

The places I would travel, places I may have never known existed prior

The foods I would learn to make in my own kitchen

The carefree games I would play with my children

The correspondence I would compose

The songs I would sing

I had such plans


Summer break always seems so vast when it begins, and it's sort of difficult that summer goes on even as we all head back to work and school.  Yet though I leave many of my goals unfulfilled, I cannot deny that it has been an amazing break.  I feel renewed, refreshed, and even more determined to pursue my career in writing.

And though break is coming to a close, it does mean that fall is on the horizon.  My favorite season full of my favorite tastes, sights, smells, and feelings.  So bring it, Mother Nature.  I'm ready for that crispness in the air!

"Call me Ishmael"

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

"It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not."

"124 was spiteful."

"It was a pleasure to burn."

"You better not never tell nobody but God."

I've been giving a lot of thought to opening lines lately.  When I first met my husband, he told me that when he picks up a book, it isn't the cover that makes it or breaks it for him--it's the opening line.  He reads one sentence and then makes a decision.

I thought he was nuts.  After all, if I'd stopped after "I am an invisible man" and considered it too obvious, I may never have breathed through the masterpiece that is Ellison's novel (and one of my husband's favorites, by the way).  What if I had indeed dismissed it by the first line?

Yet the truth is that, like it or not, opening lines matter.  For some novels, it's all the majority of people know about it (Moby Dick comes to mind); for others, it is the line that continues to resonate long after the cover has been closed.  The opening line sets the tone, the narrative voice, and the style.  A lot hinges on those carefully chosen words.

The opening line of Sweet Divinity reads: "One of my earliest memories of my mother involves pot leaves and sprinkles of dirt raining from the heavens".  At various points it was: "One of my earliest memories of my mom involved pot leaves raining from the sky" and "When I think of my mother, I see pot leaves falling from the sky."

Miranda begins this way: "It is an uncommon sight to observe a young woman vanish into the sea."  It originally read something like, "It is a sight uncommon to watch a young woman disappear into the water."

Visions and revisions...searching for the most precise words, for the appropriate tone, for the exact voice one hears in her mind.

Different tones, different voices, different novels.  All made clear by the opening lines.

As I begin work on my next project, I'm keenly aware that the opening line matters. And so I will craft, and recraft, until it is just right...until my husband says he would definitely read that book.

Time's Ticking Away

I'm in a slump.

I'm reading a lot.  That's positive.  So far this summer I have read mystery, science fiction, literary fiction, chick lit, young adult literature, memoir, and literature in translation.  I think I'm up to eleven books, and I'm deep into two others at the moment.  You can find me on GoodReads if you'd like to keep up with my frenetic bookshelf!

I've also signed up for a cooking class where I will be learning to bake sweet summer treats and make ice cream.  I'm hoping this will be a great experience so I will be driven to sign up for another class that involves entrees...but we'll see.

I've been traveling this summer.  I went to Tampa overnight to the U2 Joshua Tree 30th Anniversary tour (one of the best nights of my life, hands down), journeyed to St. Augustine with the hubby and kids where I toured a pirate museum, ate too many donuts, and single-handedly kept the Rita's Italian Ice open.  I also read five books that week.

I just returned from Georgia where a trip to our family's farm for my grandmother's birthday turned out to also include the surprise wedding of my mother (yes, that's right, a surprise wedding).  While there I did some outlet shopping and went on long walks through the fields with my son.

Back home, I've taught a college essay writing camp and tutored several kids in a variety of areas involving writing.  I've had the opportunity to catch up with some amazing former students.  My family and I have been tearing through our "Summer of Fun" jar, including travelling to a city in North Carolina we'd never visited, and having the worst best-looking-burger I've ever encountered.

All along, I've been editing Miranda, and it's coming along quite well, but I haven't had the time to write fresh words.  Which has me thinking, is it in fact that I haven't had time, or is it that I haven't made time?  I've never been one of those writers who sets a daily quota or schedules time to write.  I'm someone who can be going along with her day and suddenly it hits me: that turn in my stomach and tinge of pressure in my chest...it's the story trying to get out.  And when that happens, I write until I cannot possibly write one more word.  It just flows out of me like a purge of emotion and life.  It's an amazing experience.

And yet I think I've been ignoring the feeling, setting it aside in order to do the other things I feel compelled to accomplish (or to binge-watch episodes of Friends while working jigsaw puzzles...a mindless pleasure).  My arms are aching as I write this post, because the sequel to Sweet Divinity is inside me, and it so badly wants to live on the page.

So maybe I'll second guess the scheduling and quota.  You can't force good writing, that's for sure, but I'm beginning to think I should spend a little time setting the mood.  Maybe I'll lock myself away and light some candles.  After all, I clearly have a love affair with words.

Musings

The summer has been busier than I anticipated.  Though I read five fantastic books while at the beach, I'm way behind in my reading goals.  In addition, I've been sloughing through my manuscript, which is all well and good, but I'm so thirsty for new words!  My writing goals have also been suffering as a result of the tutoring and essay camps that have been filling my days, and I may have been giving into temptation a little more than usual when drawn to the playroom where a jigsaw puzzle and every episode of Friends are waiting at night (that is one fantastically written show!).

I've had several ideas for new manuscripts marinating in my mind for quite a while.  I find that my greatest struggles as a writer are finding the narrative voices.  For example, several years ago I experienced a horrifically difficult time in my life.  A piece of my extended family was fractured and then permanently disconnected, a piece that I had emotionally relied on for years.  When I came out on the other side of that mess, with the help of my husband and an amazing counselor named Alice, I was able to see that my story was one that needed to be written.  When it was happening, my husband and I used to joke that if someone wrote this story in novel form, publishers would laugh and decry it as "unrealistic"; it was more soap-opera worthy than literary fiction.  But I kept notes, my husband kept artifacts, and I allowed the story to sit on the back burner for a while.

I tried to outline a manuscript that developed the story, and I even wrote an opening paragraph once, but it just wasn't ready.  And any writer worth her salt knows you can't force it and expect art.  And yet this summer, as I was relaxing by the ocean, watching the tide come crashing in, I found it.  Or rather, perhaps it found me.  The narrative voice arrived in all of its complexity and emotional toil.  I always sought the voice in a modern day library or bookstore, or maybe in a small, country town.  And yet when she arrived, she arrived from the past, from the turn of the century in fact, and she arrived from the coast.  Whereas in Miranda, the protagonist disappeared into the water, in this new piece, she was emerging from its depths.

When I looked at him, all I saw was a shell.  The eyes were wide open and darting about, and yet the body was emaciated; the vitality melted away from the bones and through the sheets.  There were no more doctors, no more pills, no more antidotes and trials.  Death had won the war.  And though the eyes in those sunken sockets were desperately searching, I knew the look they conveyed.  It was fear.  Fear of a life ill-lived.  Fear of an eternity of wandering.  Fear of demons denied.

And thus we begin again...

Summer Reading Has Arrived!

My family knows that they will not see me for at least an hour.  And they may as well not bother to call my cell phone.  I cannot possibly answer.  This is the day I walk through the library, collecting books for our family's summer vacation.

I, quite literally, judge the books by their covers.

I begin with the "A" aisle and walk slowly, running my eyes over each spine, allowing my mind to read the title, take in the colors, font, design.  If the spine piques my interest, I take the book from the shelf and give the cover a glance to decide if I wish to read the inside flap.

I tend to gravitate towards the thin paperback books with bright colors or a font with character.  A font with an elegant script will ensure I will slide it from the shelf for further inspection.

If the cover features a woman looking longingly into the distance, especially if she's wearing clothing from the Puritan/colonial era, it's a no.  If there is an animal on the cover, it's quite possibly a no (don't judge...I'm still recovering from Where the Red Fern Grows).  If there is a plantation house front and center, back on the shelf with you!

Do I consider that sometimes I'm missing out on an amazing read?  Yes.  But I believe fate will reunite us.  Do I ever run across a dud in my stack of beautifully covered tomes?  Indeed.  It's a bummer.

However, I am prepared for that moment.  Which is why I allow myself to check out ten books for our week long vacation.  After all, a girl needs options!

I look forward to library day all year.  For me, it is the official start to summer.  And I love the moment when I see a book and I know, just know, that it's going to be remarkable.

There are two series that I am devoted to and I read the next book in the series each year on vacation, and I often take one extra book in the series, just in case.  But the others are completely random, and I love the moments of discovery that this method brings.  Besides, who doesn't love loitering in the library amongst all the possibilities?  For this girl, it's true love.

What I'm taking on vacation this year:

Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile by Gyles Brandreth (I LOVE this series.  Oscar Wilde is my
jam!)
The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection and The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith (I always anticipate my summer reunion with Mme Ramotswe!)
Manuscript Found in Accra by Paulo Coehlo
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
The Iguana Tree by Michel Stone
Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian
A Fine Imitation by Amber Brock
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio

Check out the covers...I think you'll like what you see.

Now...let summer begin!

Summer of Fun = Summer of Inspiration!

I wish I could claim this idea as my own, but the truth is that I saw it in a magazine years ago and then adapted it for my family.

At the start of every summer, my kids and I gather around the table and create our "Summer of Fun Jar" list.  We each get several scraps of paper and write on them various ideas we have for fun this summer.  In past years, the items have ranged from "Visit the Zoo" and "Find a Waterfall" to "Create a Harry Potter Themed Meal" and "Have a Camp Out".  Some new additions this year? "Visit a State Park", "Turn the House into a Museum", and "Spa at Home" (believe it or not, that wasn't one of mine!).

The idea here is to get us out of the house, or at least away from the screens for a little while, and to do so on the cheap!  Most of our items are free or take the place of money we'd spend anyway (like a themed meal).  A few of them incur a cost (the zoo, a museum, a baseball game), but we can splurge occasionally!

We draw an activity at the beginning of the summer and once we've completed it, we draw another.  We began back in 2012 by drawing just one a week, on Sunday night, but we quickly realized it was too much fun to hold off...and we really wanted to make all of our ideas happen.  Besides, everyone's excited when it's time to draw the next little slip of paper from the jar!

I believe that creativity is one of the best gifts we can give or receive, and many of our activities are just that, whether it's writing a story or going to see a free concert, baking a new treat or buying something from the farmer's market and figuring out what to do with it!  And we work our creative muscles together, as a family.  This way we try to show our kids know how important creativity is!

Last night, as part of our "Summer of Fun", my ten year old daughter made dinner all on her own, a three course meal.  Simple? Yes.  Delicious? Mostly.  The best?  Absolutely.

Let the fun commence!


It's been a bit since I've updated you on my bookshelf.  What I'm reading this week:
Queen Isabella by Alison Weir
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo (I know, it's a crime that I haven't read it before now!)

In the meantime, I've also read: Are You There God, It's Me Margaret, by Judy Blume; Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman; and The Notorious RBG, by Irin Carmon.

I also want my readers to know that if you recommended a summer reading book for me, I've ordered it or put it on hold at the library, and I'll keep you updated on my reading!

We Need Kindness Now

Regardless of your political persuasion, I'll bet you can agree with me that we need a little kindness in the world right now.  Every morning I open my news apps with trepidation.  I know that I need to be informed, that I need to see the reality of what's happening in the world, but the truth is, I'd rather not know.

And yet I've realized it's important to face the difficulties of the world in order to figure out where the help I can give is best placed.  This is also what drives me as a teacher.  I know I can spread positivity in the world, and where better than with the future difference-makers?

Yet at this time of year I find myself getting a little down about it.  It's the end of the school year and I'm tired, the students are tired, my children are tired.  And when I get tired, I turn into the gumpiest, most impatient woman on the planet...or at least in South Carolina.

And yet the world finds a way of bringing me back to hope...

Yesterday I attended our school's graduation excercises.  I always look forward to them as I'm a sentimental, nostalgic type and I love seeing the kids transition from what they've always known to that for which they will be known.  But this year was extra sweet for me.

I teach a creative writing independent study, a class limited to four students who choose to write a novel, a short story collection, a poetry collection, or a play/screenplay.  It's a tall order--especially for second semester seniors--so I usually end up with the kids who have been waiting for a reason to have to find time to write creatively.  This year I worked with two novelists and two poets.  You should probably make note of their names, as I'm certain the world will be blessed with their writing quite soon.

Katherine, Sophie, Louisa, and Jacob gathered around me after their graduation, when their peers were heading to the cafeteria for cake or taking pictures with family.  They had two large reusable grocery bags containing five boxes, and they were so excited it was barely containable.

They had created for me what has to rank as one of the best gifts I've ever received.

Inside the boxes was a tea set.  Each writer had painted a teacup and saucer that illustrated some element of their writing.  Katherine's teacup featured a pair of eyes staring at me, a la The Great Gatsby, eyes being pivotal to the characterization in her novel, a fantasy surrounding specially enabled humans and a mysterious and (hopefully) misunderstood stranger.  Sophie's depicted a cat on a windowsill and a school bus to remind me of her book of poetry, a glimpse through the eyes of several students who were experiencing the same events with different emotional responses.  Louisa's was painted rainbow because each of her poems focused on a different emotion, and Jacob's was covered with a passage from Deuteronomy, a chill-inducing moment from his Jason Bourne-esque novel.  The crowning piece was a teapot featuring the title character from the novel I had worked on with them, Miranda.

They had gathered at a local pottery studio after exams to make these pieces for me.  That's right, four high school seniors, during the week when many of their peers go on beach vacations and throw last minute celebrations, had spent an afternoon painting pottery for their teacher.  Wow.

So today I feel better about the world.  Because these four stand as examples of the kindness that is on its way.  These creative, intelligent, compassionate minds are making their way into the world and are determined to share their voices in it.

So when you look at the news and feel the anxiety I share, let your heartbeat slow and your breathing regulate.  The future's looking mighty bright indeed.

And now for something completely different...

One of the questions I've often asked myself is: What kind of writer am I? And by that I mean, in what genre does my work fit?

As I've written on this blog, I love writing in the chick lit genre, particularly about the American South.  I have stories for days, a veritable well from which I can draw inspiration. Certainly Sweet Divinity fits perfectly into this style and genre, as does My Literary Boyfriends.  Yet I also enjoy writing literary fiction; at least, I have enjoyed writing it when working on my manuscript of Miranda.

So the question remains: What genre suits me best?  And I think the answer is "both".

When I first set out on my journey to publish, I just sent out whichever manuscript was ready, not a worry about a long-term career.  I just wanted to publish.  But the more I work, the more I know this is what I wish to do, consistently, for the rest of my life.  Therefore I came to the realization that perhaps I had to choose: Am I a Sophie Kinsella or a Jane Green, a Caassandra Clare or a Chris Cleve?  It seems as if in order to market your book, one must market herself, and that requires defining yourself as a writer.

But the truth is, I am both a chick lit writer and a writer of literary fiction, and I'm pretty sure I've got some nonfiction inside of me as well.

So while I'm still seeking representation for Sweet Divinity, I think I'll give Miranda a little bit of love, and we'll see if she strikes an agent's fancy.  Besides, while I can be sweet and humorous, I certainly believe I'm complex enough to be gothic and metaphysical as well.  We should all own our unique complexities.  And I'm ready to own mine.

A Query Query

I've had many questions about the journey to publishing. This is a journey I've been on for some time, and I take it for granted that everyone who knows me or who reads this blog knows the path a writer takes on her way to publication.

But the truth is, it's a much more complex path than many imagine, with many alternate routes from which to choose. From the moment I completed my first manuscript, I've been trekking the route to representation. On this path I submit query letters to literary agents whom I think will like what I have to offer. With perfect timing, a captivating hook, and luck on my side, the agent asks for a partial of my manuscript, then the full manuscript, and then ultimately offers me representation (with a possible rewrite there at the end to see how I work with others). I've been down this path to the very end, through the rewrite, only to get the breakup letter that lowers the spirits of any writer. In fact, I save all of my rejections in a folder so that one day when I sign with an agent or publisher, I can hit "delete" in a grand purge!

I've had a lot of success with my query letter, and I'm grateful to so many blogs and articles that have helped me strengthen it. The first round of queries, I sent this letter in a shortened version, but when I began to shop around last summer (the summer of my literary ailment), I added a paragraph on marketing. This was after I received a rejection that contained something like, "I love it, but I don't know how to make it stand out in a busy market."  So I decided to address that concern upfront.

I'm not naive enough to believe my query is perfect. However, it's effective.  So if you're wondering just what a query letter looks like or maybe just what this novel I've been ddiscussing is all about, I offer you the generic form of my query letter for Sweet Divinity.

Dear Reader,

Based on your interests and the clients you represent, I feel certain that you will enjoy my commercial women’s novel of 95,000 words titled Sweet Divinity.

Amanda Jane Roberts swore she would shed her country ways and never look back to the Georgia farm where she was raised.  But now that she’s discovered her husband’s affair (in a movie theatre, no less!  How tacky!), she’s packing her bags and her precocious five-year old daughter and heading home.  And home hasn’t changed one bit.  Her feisty mother who shoots squirrels from her attic with a shotgun, watches her preachers on television, and tosses her son’s marijuana plants out the window (replacing them with useful herbs, of course) is still the independent, wise woman she always knew.  Her best friends, young mother Dana and closeted David, are ready to pick up where the friendship left off.  And the country boys are still gentlemanly and sincere.

But Amanda soon learns that although home may not have changed, she has.  The girl who once loved working outside, cheering on the local high school football team, and baking sweet goodness in her mother’s kitchen has become a city girl whose girlfriends love high heels, overpriced coffee, and air conditioned comfort.  She has forgotten the politics of small town life, and is quickly thrust back into a world where people are judged on their ability to hold with tradition.

Against this backdrop, Sweet Divinity is the story of a woman searching for her true identity and the strength to make a life of her own.  Starting over as a single mother, she longs to find her place.  Through taking on the challenges of living with her opinionated and idiosyncratic mother, establishing herself as the town’s most sophisticated (and still southern!) baker, and explaining to her daughter why life is disappointing but ultimately rewarding, Amanda begins to realize that although she may be “citified”, perhaps there is a little bit of country girl deep down, hollerin’ to get out.  Thus the novel raises a universal question: how much of who I really am is defined by the place I call “home”?

Sweet Divinity will be my first published novel.  While studying English at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, I was fortunate to be selected for an independent study in novel writing under the mentorship of Gap Creek author Robert Morgan.  I received my MA degree in English from The College of Charleston/The Citadel and currently teach high school literature and creative writing courses in South Carolina.

I am very excited to send you the manuscript of Sweet Divinity (named for the essential southern sweet—I can send you some of it as well!).  The authentic Southern voice fills what I see as a gap in a women’s market full of metropolitan voices or stereotypically “southern” twangs.  Women want authenticity and relatable qualities in their protagonists, and my heroine, Amanda, appeals to southern women in an authentically regional manner, but also to every woman in the universality of her experience.  Having lived and studied in three southern states, I can attest that there is a rich market here waiting to be tapped by a sassy southern voice.  I look forward to traveling and promoting my work in my region, but also sharing a bit of this place through national marketing.  I believe in Amanda Jane.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Megan P. Koon

 

A Storytelling Mouse

I love Walt Disney World.

No, wait...I am obsessed with Walt Disney World.

It's true; I plan friends' trips to Disney, presenting them with multiple recommended packages from which to choose. The minute our family vacation is over, I'm pricing the next one.  I completely lose it when Eeyore enters the room.  I tutor all summer to fill the "Disney Fund", and once filled, I book and plan our next trip.  Driving through Orlando without visiting Disney is simply not an option.

Why am I so captured by Disney?  Is it the element of escapism?  The irresistible return to childhood?  The pixie dust?

I've given this a lot of thought (too much, perhaps), and I have to say, I believe my Disney adoration is due to the fact that, at the foundation, Disney is about storytellers.  And I love storytellers.  Heck, I am a storyteller.

Disney was founded on a mouse with a story, piloting a steamboat.  It has transformed classic fairy tales and folk stories into icons.  It celebrates the diversity and unity we find in one another.  It imagines how we will interact in the future.  It looks at the ways man and nature need each other.  It pays attention to the details, understands that sometimes it's the little things (like the tiniest mouse) that make the story work.

When I think about the stories that have stayed with me, I realize that Disney is behind many of them.  Sure, I've read the original Grimm stories, and I know that Disney made its tweaks, but I cannot deny that Disney has increased the widespread longevity of these tales.  I remember being terrified of the Evil Queen's transformation in Snow White, going to see The Little Mermaid at my first slumber party, crying the instant the music began in The Lion King because it moved me in such a deep way (okay, my eyes still fill with tears each time I hear the opening cry of "The Circle of Life").

The point is, these stories have really meant something to me, and watching them come alive while being invited to be a part of them moves me in such a fundamental way.

I feel sorry for people who reject the "materialism" of Disney.  They're missing the whole point.  Disney is built on stories.  A trip to the Magic Kingdom is about living those stories.  Stories preserve our history, assist us in expressing our emotions, and capture our creativity and imagination in productive and meaningful ways.  We need to celebrate our stories.

So save your pooh-poohing of Disney and listen...there's a mouse waiting to tell you his story.

Hemingway the Human

I've been thinking a lot about Ernest Hemingway this week.  I just finished teaching A Moveable Feast for the fifth year, and I ran across a nonfiction work, Hemingway in Love, by A.E. Hotchner, on display at the local library.  Considering that my class was completing our study of Hemingway's story of love and writing in Paris that very day, I couldn't help but think that the fates had somehow placed the book there for me to find.  Or maybe it was just a librarian with a hunch.

No matter, the book enlarged my understanding and fascination with the man who lost love and could never find it again.  And it got me thinking about the way we consider writers of the past.  Do we picture them holed away at their desks, scribbling furiously with dull pencils or clanking away on their typewriters with a cigarette dangling from the corner of the mouth?  I read A Moveable Feast and I wish I could walk to a little cafe and write for hours surrounded by interesting people, foreign tongues, the swish of skirts, the clink of tea spoons, the laughter of lovers.  And yet I write best in silence, outdoors, in the sunlight.

I think it's easy to think of the great writers of the past: Hemingway, Faulkner, Kafka, Woolf, Hardy, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Twain, Poe, Wilde, among others--as writers alone.  We forget that they loved, that they lost, that they ate, that they took baths and brushed their teeth.  We forget that they were also human beings who were thus imperfect, but not only in the ways we expect them to be. I hate that people talk endlessly about Poe's "opium addiction".  I prefer to dwell in the stories I read about his playful interactions with children or his playing of the flute.  There's so much more to a writer than the paper and the ink.

And yet, a writer is a writer.  Being a writer is so essential to who I am.  It's how I reflect, how I cope, how I explore, how I love.  Should we separate the writer from the person?  Or should we simply take more time to see the whole person, every aspect of who they are?  Reading A Moveable Feast, one sees Hemingway as the brash, uber-masculine man that pop culture promotes, but one also sees the lover, the flawed man who got wrapped up in money and fame like so many before him and so many to follow.  What interests me most is the fact that he's working on this book at the end of his life, before he took his own life.  He's looking back at what he was.  It reminds me of The Great Gatsby by Hemingway's friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Nick wonders if Gatsby can remember his initial dream, his dream before it was made incarnate in the flawed human form of Daisy Buchanan.  He wonders if Gatsby, before the end of his life, had seen the grotesque nature of the rose or the pain caused by the bright sun.  Perhaps at the end of Hemingway's life he, too, was trying to grasp the life that eluded him.

No one looks at Hemingway's life in a superficial way and thinks it was a life unlived.  The man was an amateur bullfighter, a boxer, a big game hunter, a deep sea fisherman, a war veteran, a war correspondent, a husband and a father.  And yet, in Hotchner's recollection we are told that the last time Hemingway saw his first wife, Hadley, on the streets of Paris, he said to her, "I want you to know, Hadley, you'll be the true part of any woman I write about.  I'll spend the rest of my life looking for you" (151).  We can all get down on Hemingway for cheating on his wife; we can get down on him for wanting it both ways.  But what we see when we look closer at his life is a man who messed it up and realized it too late.  A man who longed for fame and then realized he didn't want it.  A man who spent his life trying to find the simplicity he forfeited so early on.  I want to believe that, in the end, he found it again.  And if that's so, then he found it through writing.  The closing line of A Moveable Feast reads, "There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.  We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached.  Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it.  But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy" (211).

Writers are humans using language to live.  I hope that Hemingway found the life he longed for.

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast, Scribner, 1964.

Hotchner, A.E.  Hemingway in Love: His Own Story, St. Martin's, 2015.

My Process, Part II

As promised, here is the second voice that made its way through my mind when I sat down to begin work on My Literary Boyfriends.  In retrospect, perhaps I was channelling the English teacher desire for vengeance.

Chapter One: In which an unsuspecting teenage brat gets his
    I was raised in a bookstore, so I probably had a few books dropped on my head as a baby, which no doubt explains my indecisive nature.  But one aspect of my life upon which I was completely decisive was my choice of career.  I am, indeed, a librarian.
    But lest you click your tongue and shake your head, and start applying all those mundane librarian stereotypes to me, let me stop you.  Yes, I love books.  Yes, I love peace and quiet.  Yes, I wear glasses.  But at least once a day some disheveled middle-aged man (usually in specs himself) will walk up to my circulation desk and ask to speak to a librarian.  Sigh.
    “I am the librarian, sir.  How may I help you?”
    Overly-dramatic shocked look ensues.
    “No.”
    I blink rapidly to avoid rolling my eyes.  “Yes.”
    Overly-dramatic shocked look continues.  And then…inevitably…
    “But you’re too pretty to be a librarian!”
    Now, I suppose I should take this as some kind of a compliment, but I don’t.
    “Sir, are you implying that all librarians are required to look a certain way?”
    Now he’s embarrassed, looking about to see who is listening.
    “No…no, I just thought…”
    I take a deep breath.  “How is it that I may help you, sir?”
    On behalf of all librarians everywhere, I must insist you put your stereotypes aside.  We are not all mousy, timid little people stuck in the fashion world of nineteen sixty-five.  We do not all carry canvas bags and where large, frameless glasses.  And we wear make-up.  Really.  We do.  One of my fellow librarians and I always put our faces on in the bathroom mirrors in the morning after we’ve clocked in, so we won’t be late.  See, we’re street smart too.
    But I will admit that perhaps I’m a little more…how should I put this?  More fashion-conscious than most of the librarians I remember from my youth.   Perhaps it’s because I’m only twenty-six.  I wear heels to work, as the stacks make fabulous private runways, and my glasses might be Kate Spade (except for special days when I wear my D and G’s!).  I see why these men have the reaction they do, but I just don’t understand their need to tell me about it.  It’s a library.  No one goes to the library to pick up women.  And if they do, that is beyond pathetic and they should at least go to the Barnes and Noble.  It’s like a capitalist library.  And when you meet the girl of your dreams, you can take her out for coffee right away.
    Seriously, I’m appalled that they allow drinks and sticky sugar goo so close to their books.  Shame.  Shame on you.
    Now you may be thinking that my job is boring somehow.  All the shelving and scanning and database entering.  So I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  The absolute, bar-none, best part of being a librarian.
    Summer reading.
    Some kids come into the library the first week of June, eager looks on their faces, summer reading lists in hand.  The most excited have usually narrowed down their list to a select few choices, and they ask my opinion about which to choose.
    I love these students.  I see myself in them, excited to read something new, learn about something complete unknown, and get a head start on their homework!
    For these dear children, I take the time to listen to the types of books they like to read and then choose the tome that will most likely please them.  It’s like a puzzle, figuring out which book fits the kid.  And sometimes, when a kid says just the right thing: “Well, I really like the Brontes because I love the setting and the emotions.  And the words are just so beautiful”, I hand her my Thomas.  I’m very protective, of course, as Thomas only deserves to be read by one who can truly appreciate his perfection.  Same with Will.  Oh—did I say that?  William (we’re on a nickname basis, you see).
    But at the end of the summer, with nary two weeks until the start of a brand new school year, the stragglers inevitably show up at my desk.  I find there are three types of procrastinator.
 
Procrastinator #1: The “Two Much to Read”
    “Can you help me?  I’ve got to choose a book off this list and I have no idea what to do.”
    “Why are you waiting so late to decide?”
    Smile.  “To tell you the truth, I’ve been reading all summer, but I just haven’t read anything off the list.”
    “What have you been reading.”
    Eyes brighten.  “I read the entire Game of Thrones series!  I loved it!  But it took me all summer, you see, and…”  Kid shrugs and hands me the list.
    I like this kid.  Sure, he isn’t reading “high” literature, but at least he’s reading.  I hand him Lord of the Flies and send him on his merry way, with a promise that there will be a pig head on a stick at some point in the book.
    “Awesome!”

Procrastinator #2: Too Busy
    “I’ve been working all summer, and then my family went on vacation to Mexico (poor kid) and the next thing I knew—it’s the end of the summer and I haven’t read a thing.”
    This kid doesn’t bother me.  Sure, he’s read nothing all summer and thus his brain has begun to shut down and beginning to read something now will be like handing a kindergartener Ulysses, but at least he has no aversion to the summer reading assignment.
    “What have you read in school that you liked?”
    He bites his lip and looks at the ceiling.  “I liked The Great Gatsby.  That one was pretty good.”
    The Sun Also Rises it is.

Procrastinator #3: I Hate Books (I need a minute to compose myself here…okay, I’m ready.)
    “Why haven’t you started your summer reading before now?”  
    He narrows his eyes.  “Because it’s stupid.”
    Thoreau.  He gets Thoreau.  And only because Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography isn’t on the list.

    There is a certain satisfaction in handing out these books, doling out justice one tome at a time.  And while you might think that I’ve missed an opportunity with kid three to give him a wonderful book and inspire in him a love of reading so rich that this cynical child will become the next Mark Twain, consider this.  That kid isn’t going to read a lick of that book.  His parents forced him off of his Playstation and into the library, and now he will go home, Spark Notes the book, write a completely crap essay, and assume the teacher’s fool enough to give him a passing grade.  I pray she’s smarter than that.  At least I know that with Thoreau, the Spark Notes will be boring as hell.

My Process, Part I

When I first begin a project, I have to find the narrative voice. With Sweet Divinity, this was easy. With Miranda, it took months, and let's just say there were a LOT of voices in my head! To find the narrative voice for my new project, tentatively titled My Literary Boyfriends, I started this way...

        I have two literary boyfriends and they haven’t the faintest clue about each other.  My American boyfriend is William.  A Southern gentleman with a lovely pair of melancholy eyes, an insight into the human heart unrivalled by any other, and a genius of language manipulation.  When we first met, I was intimidated by him—he was so confident, so smart, so…Southern.  And yes, maybe he tips the bottle a but too much, but I hardly care.  I’m completely smitten.
But what William doesn’t know is that long, long before I knew he existed, there was another lover.  A poet, a novelist, an observer of human emotion, morality, and candor.  Thomas.  My British beau.  Creator of the moors of Essex, the heart of Churchminster, the beauty of Tess.  He drew from me a sigh of longing that exuded all of my pent-up teenage emotion.  I love him.
These are my literary boyfriends.  The men with whom I fill my life.  My Southern gentleman.  My British beau.  Thornton Wilder wrote that people are meant to live two by two in this world.  I prefer three.  I’ve always been indecisive.  Don’t tell the boys.


This initial piece is narrated by the first voice I heard when I began exploring the concept of My Literary Boyfriends.  To be fair, it sounds a lot like me.  After all, William Faulkner is my literary boyfriend, but Thomas Hardy is in fact my literary husband.  When I think about these writers and my enduring love for them, what you just experienced is the voice I hear.  But the trick in writing in first person is letting the authentic voice of the novel come through your pen (or keyboard).  So while this was the first voice, it wasn't the right voice.  At least not to begin.  In the next post I'll share with you the second voice I encountered on my journey for a narrator.  Spoiler alert: It wasn't "the one" either.  That said, I really like her.  Get excited.

What I'm reading this week:
The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman (I've only 60 pages to go!)
William Faulkner by Caroline Porter (though I'm skipping sections that contain spoilers of novels I've yet to read)
Absalom!  Absalom!  by Willliam Faulkner (my self-proclaimed "favorite book", though I haven't read it since grad school so I'm reminding myself why I love it)
The Spy by Paulo Coehlo (the cover is beautiful)

Where Does Inspiration Come From?

As a writer and a teacher of writing, I can attest that the one question I get more than any other is, "Where does your inspiration come from?".  The answer is simple: Depends.

For the manusript I'm shopping now, Sweet Divinity, inspiration came from being at my favorite place with one of my favorite people.  My friend Meby and I were at EPCOT at Walt Disney World (I know, didn't expect that, did ya?), strolling through the World Showcase, and she told me a hilarious story about her brother getting caught growing marijuana in his bedroom.  The story was so memorable, it could only be fiction, but it wasn't, and so I immediately asked permission (or as I like to call it, "vocally copyrighted" the story) to use it in a future novel.  That story was the spark that began Sweet Divinity, and though it plays only a small role at the start of the novel, it gets credit for being the inspiration that allowed me to meet my protagonist, Amanda Jane.

The manuscript I'm currently working on is titled My Literary Boyfriends.  For years, in my classroom and out of it, I've been referring to William Faulkner as "My Literary Boyfriend" (not to be confused with Thomas Hardy, "My Literary Husband"...but perhaps we'll save my literary family tree for another post).  One of my amazing colleagues, Jennette Pelicano, was making copies in the teacher's lounge one day when I walked in, and she said, "You know, I've been thinking, you should totally write a novel about your literary boyrfriends.  That just sounds like a book I would read."  Jennette  passed away a little over a year later, and I started work on the novel just after.  This one's for you, Jennette.

And then there is the big one, the magnum opus, THE novel, the Pulitzer Prize, Nobel winning, and, best of all, Oprah Book Club selection (and I mean that...it's been an artistic dream of mine since she hailed my literary boyfriend--see above-- as her summer selection).  The working title is Miranda, and I've been writing this novel for the last twelve years.  It has been restarted again and again, each time with a different narrative voice.  It has been workshopped countless times.  It has been completely revised.  It has been shelved and then returned to.  It's...driving me nuts.  But I digress.  The inspiration came at the end of a day spent at the Summerville Flowertown Festival in 2005.  I was at a booth that sold reproductions of photographs from the turn of the century, and I was rifling through the matted photos when a frame above the box caught my eye.  It surrounded the image of a young woman holding a parasol and a travelling case, fully dressed, standing on the sandy beach, looking towards the sea.  I bought it immediately, and that woman has been using me as her story-telling vessel ever since.  Perhaps that's why I have such a difficult time completing her story.  I feel obligated to get it right.  And I will.

So, inspiration?  It can come at any moment.  Sometimes you're seeking it, and sometimes it's seeking you.  The important part is to be receptive to it.  Be quiet and listen...inspiration is all around you.

An Epic Life

Last week I was asked to provide the meditation at my church's Holden Evening Prayer service.  In particular, I was asked to reflect upon the following passage of scripture.  Last fall my family lost one of our brightest, most loving members.  I hope I've done her justice here.

“Jesus Christ is the light of the world; the light no darkness can overcome.”

On September 28, 2016, my amazing sister-in-law, Tanya Gee, died after a four year battle with chondrosarcoma.  She was thirty-nine years old and left behind my husband’s incredibly resilient brother, Chris, and two children, Will and Sabin.  It's a testament to Tanya that when I learned of her initial diagnosis, I didn't cry. Because I wasn't afraid for her. This was Tanya. She was the light in our family. She was the strongest of us all.

Now it isn't an exaggeration to say that Tanya was the single greatest person I ever knew. First of all, she had a God given zest for life. She owned a Spongebob cookie jar. She dressed her infant son as Elvis for Halloween. She loved that game where you spin and then eat a jellybean, not knowing if you're consuming juicy pear or freshly cut grass. She also perfectly embodied that characteristic for which we all strive: a servant’s heart. She would buy food for a homeless man on the corner, she read to at-risk elementary school students after work, she taught confirmation classes at Immanuel Lutheran in Columbia, and as a judge, she was noted for her fairness and true desire for justice for all. And she was also fluent in German; in fact she and my brother in law got married at a small Lutheran church in Germany, the same one Tanya’s parents had been married in.

During the four years of her courageous battle, there was so much darkness, but it was Tanya herself who taught us to always look for the light.  When she had part of the ball and joint of her hip removed during the first year of her cancer battle, Tanya, an avid runner, responded by purchasing an adult sized tricycle for herself.  When she was elected by the legislature, on her first try, to serve our state as a circuit court judge, Tanya special ordered a pair of black converse and a pair of solid black sneakers that would minimize her limping stride under her judges’ robes.  When she lost part of her arm to cancer just over a year ago and the bone was replaced by that of a male cadaver, Tanya, always progressively working for equality, joked that now she could use whichever restroom she wanted.  Last summer, when a tumor was removed from her spine, causing her to wear a chunky, white, plastic back brace, she joked that she looked like a storm trooper bar maid.  And throughout her battle with cancer, Tanya worked from her various hospital rooms to raise money and notoriety for the Sarcoma Warriors Foundation.

When she entered hospice care, my spunky sister-in-law wrote what she called her “concession speech”.  It’s printed in full online, and you should all read it.  But here’s a sneak peek: “We all die, right? And we all know we're going to die someday. That's part of living. Perhaps it's because of this that I feel strangely calm about knowing that it will be cancer that kills me. I have many nights in the hospital room to reflect on life and death, and I tell you truly that I am not scared to die...My children, my parents, my husband, and my dear friends will cry, and wonder, and question their faith. I wish that I were able to make everyone feel as calm as I do...I hate that I'm leaving the party early, but am awed by being on the brink of taking the next step which we all should be looking forward to.”

Weeks later, my husband’s brother told me this story: The day after Tanya died, before their family left Duke, he asked the kids where they wanted to get lunch, and Will, who is in middle school, asked to go to a burger place on the other side of town.  Obviously, Chris said yes.  As the three of them were eating lunch, “Here Comes the Sun”, by the Beatles, came through the restaurant speakers.  Will smiled for the first time that day, because that was their “family song”.  The next song was “Stand By Me”, the title song from Tanya's favorite movie.  What are the odds? Will then went up to order a sundae and the woman at the counter made it herself and then didn’t charge him, so he went back to the booth.  Minutes later the woman came out with another sundae for Sabin, saying they just looked like they needed it.  Chris said he looked around for anyone in the restaurant who knew them and what they had just been through, and seeing no one, asked the woman why she did this.  She pulled up a chair and replied, “My father died four years ago today of cancer; I guess I just thought I could do something for someone else today.”  She had no idea that they had just been through something painfully similar.  We concluded that somehow Tanya must have had a hand in all of this.  She would have loved every detail.

From Tanya, my family has learned that in the darkest night, there is always a sunrise just ahead.  In the midst of the darkness of our lives, we can rest in peace knowing that, thanks be to God, we can all look forward to the light there is to come, or as Tanya put it, “the next step which we should all be looking forward to.” In the meantime, let us live our lives as Tanya did, shining forth the light of Christ to others.

“Here comes the sun, / Here comes the sun, / And I say, It’s all right.”

“Jesus Christ is the light of the world; the light no darkness can overcome.”

Be Inspired!

Inspiration comes from many sources.  In fact, it's around us all the time, but it's up to us to listen, to allow it to enter us.

It's easy to fill our lives with noise.  I'm constantly moving from one task to the other: working, picking up the kids, making dinner, giving the kids baths, reading bedtime stories, answering the requests for water, tissues, another tuck-in, a missing stuffed animal, then bathing, making lunches for the next day, and maybe--just maybe--watching a show I missed when it originally aired or reading a chapter of one of the pile of books on my nightstand.  I sleep well at night.

It's difficult to cultivate the quiet moments for ourselves.  But we must.

Recently I took a group of five high school seniors to the state literary meet.  They competed in extemporaneous speaking, extemporaneous essay writing and humorous oral interpretation (reading). This trip is always one of the highlights of my academic year as a teacher, and it isn't because we perform well.  It isn't because I love the thrill of competition.  It isn't because I like to show off how wonderful my students are.

It's because on this trip we create inspirational moments.

The meet is held just outside Charleston, SC, so it's a haul for us; thus, we load the van and drive down the night before to ensure a good night's sleep.  The kids are always so focused on the competition, on the performance, and I find myself time and again reminding them that they will be fine, that they need not overprepare, that the true purpose of this trip is to enjoy.

Our first stop this year was to a hidden beach on Sullivan's Island from which we could see the skyline of Charleston, the history of Fort Sumter, and the loneliness of the Morris Island Lighthouse.  It was sunset, and a couple was having engagement photos taken, so there was a beautiful ring of candles set up on the beach.  The kids climbed up on rocks and marvelled at the pelicans swooping through the air and the sailboats coming into focus as they entered the harbor.  Two of my students rain straight for the water and began frolicking, shoeless, in the freezing ocean.  Inspiration indeed.

After dinner at Poe's Tavern (a literary pilgrimage for certain--I recommend the "Sleeper" and the "Black Cat"), we went to the vast public beach which was completely empty.  The touristy restaurants and rentals were dark, allowing the stars to fill the night, and there was only the sounds of the surf and the six people frolicking in the sea foam.  We walked for an hour on the beach, just talking and laughing, commenting regularly on the beauty of the moon, the stars, and the inky black sea.  We talked respectfully about politics.  We joked about the books we loved as kids.  We sang songs from Moana.  Everyone named their favorite genre of book.  When we returned to our access path the sea had taken some of our shoes, so there was much ado about their recovery.

We never talked about the upcoming meet.  Because it wasn't about that.  It was about just being together.  It was about listening, sharing, being inspired.

The next day they enjoyed competing, and two of them placed (4th and 1st in the state in their categories).  Yet I like to think we all learned something on the trip as well.  Maybe inspiration isn't all about preparation.  Maybe inspiration isn't all about makng sure everything goes exactly to plan.  Maybe inspiration isn't all about trying to solve a problem or waiting anxiously for the arrival of a spark.  Maybe inspiration begins with listening to others and to ourselves--and honoring what we hear.

Sweet Divinity (aka My Love Letter to the South)

When I write, I write almost excluisvely about the South.
Perhaps it's because I've lived in the region for thirty-three years.
Perhaps it's because there are so many characters in the South, a writer can never run out of material.
Perhaps it's simply because I love the South.

The manuscript I'm shopping around is titled Sweet Divinty, and yet it occurred to me not so long ago that there may be some sad souls out there who have never tasted the pure fantasticness that is Southern divinity candy.

As a child, I used to buy divinity twice a year at the Prater's Mill Country Fair, a fantastic gathering of artists, craftsmen, cloggers, fiddlers, tractor and engine buffs, Civil War re-enactors, farmers, cooks, and bakers.  I would dream of my culinary journey each year as the air turned crisp in the fall and again when the flowers began to burst forth in the spring.  Each year I followed the same eating routine: lunch at the Methodist church bbq shelter where I would eat fresh bbq chicken with sweet baked beans and a soft roll, a snack of Mississippi Mud Cake from aisle three, a cup of homemade vanilla ice cream while I watched the Dixie Rainbow Cloggers, and a ziploc baggie of divinity from the angels at the Shiloh Baptist Church to keep me company on the drive home.

There were so many other treats, but a girl has to stop before she gets outrageously, roaringly sick.

That perfect divinity was the highlight of the fair, one I anticipated each year, and one that never let me down.  Growing up, I always heard how difficult it was to make divinity, how the weather had to be just right, and the stand mixer had to be plugged in and ready for action.  My own wonderfully southern grandmother only made divinity one time that I can remember.  As for me, I tried making divinity for the first time just this year.  I pulled out a recipe from my Nana's old timey cookbook, bought myself a candy thermometer, and gave it a go.

The ingredients are simple: egg whites, sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, and optional pecans (not optional, if you ask me). And yet making this treat sent from heaven above (thus, the name), was a challenge, to say the least.  My students will tell you that I'm a fast-paced person, an addicted multi-tasker.  And yet there I was, holding a candy thermometer in the syrup, crouched at eye-level as I watched the little red line climb higher and higher until the moment it hit the "hard ball" stage when, as I was told, I immediately whisked the pot off of the stove and poured the contents into the running stand mixer.  There was a moment of triumph--I hadn't messed this up yet--and then I felt my life draining away as I slo-o-o-o-o-owly poured the syrup into beaten (and still methodically rotating) egg whites.  I had looked at the recipe, which read "pour slowly into egg whites (5 minutes)" and wondered what that "5 minutes" meant.  Ha--it meant that it would take me five minutes of holding a heavy metal mixing bowl in order to pour the syrup without burning the egg whites.  FIVE MINUTES of watching syrup run in the tiniest of streams into a rotating bowl.  Not so bad, you say?  Go into your pantry, grab the pancake syrup, and pour it steadily into a bowl for five minutes.  Then get back to me.

My first batch turned into glop the minute I proudly plopped it onto a baking sheet.  But after a couple more frustrating attempts to make it "stand up", as well as ten minutes on the Internet seeking hints, I plopped down a spoonful of candy and--miracle of miracles--it stood up!

As I pressed a pecan into the top of a piece and popped it into my mouth, so many memories came back.  Memories of the country fair, memories of making sand art with the little old man whose booth was always busy, memories of touring the old cotton gin and being amazed watching the waterfall power the old mill, memories of the sweetness of childhood.  I love the South, and I love that I was raised here.  It's so much a part of who I am.

But I think I'll leave the divinity making to the ladies at Shiloh Baptist Church.

Where I Am

I completed my initial manuscript of Sweet Divinity early in 2014.  It began as my project in a Creative Writing class I was teaching in 2013, and I aimed to complete it before my second child arrived in 2014.  Thank goodness it worked, because there is no way anyone could find the time to work on a manuscript with a newborn baby in the house.  Besides the obvious time constraints, the lack of a functioning brain would no doubt prevent anything literary from taking shape!

I spent the summer lying down, as my baby was humongo and even walking across the room was a challenge for my lungs.  But while I was lying down, I polished my manuscript and began work on researching routes for publication.  Back in my early twenties, in the early 2000s (Ah! What a time!), I had sent out query letters to several agencies regarding a young adult manuscript I had titled Bittersweet Sixteen, and a couple years later for another manuscript, Slings and Arrows.  I hadn't gotten a single bite.  So I took an almost ten year hiatus from submitting to really figure some things out:

1. What genre of writing did I wish to write?
2. What genre of writing should I actully write?
3. Did I really believe, with all of myself, in the mannuscripts I had submitted in the past?
4. Was I really in a place in my life to take on marketing and promoting my work?
5. Did I really believe in myself as a writer?

In the meantime, I was working on a literary fiction manuscript with a workng title of The Case.  I don't mind telling you that I am still working on this manuscript.  It has been workshopped three times, totally rewritten once, and it haunts me every day.  I love this piece.  Love it.  And I'm keeping it close until it reveals its entire self to me.  So we wait.

After I finished the initial manuscript of The Case (now working titled Miranda), I began Sweet Divinity.  It sprung from a story one of my closest friends told me about her childhood, and as I wrote her story, Amanda Jane's began.  Amanda Jane is the protagonist, and she's a lot like me.  In fact, as I sat to write, the words were flowing so quickly, so easily, because so much of Amanda Jane's story was my own.

So in August 2014, I sent out a slew of query letters to agents across the United States, and then I had my baby.

I received one request for a full manuscript, and I was thrilled.  For about a month.  I was then heartbroken (the whole "new baby" thing may have played a role in the totally literary breakdown that followed) when an agent who represented authors I enjoy told me that she loved the manuscript, but did not know how to market it.

So I put my manuscript aside until May 2016 when I contracted pneumonia.
I know what you're thinking, "Who gets pneumonia in the summer?"  I do, of course!
My friends told me that it was very literary to contract pneumonia.  I agreed and added that I was thrilled that it wasn't tuberculosis, which would be the epitome of literary but also quite tragic.

While I was once again spending my summer lounging around the house (not as much fun when the baby is now toddling around, randomly pressing buttons on your computer to add to your work), I decided that perhaps I should give ol' Sweet Divinity another try.  Because I truly believe in this manuscript.  I truly believe in Amanda Jane.

But this time would be different.  I had a plan.

First, I read the manuscript again and made several changes and many tweaks.  Each time I did so, the work got stronger and I realized that as much as I loved the story, it hadn't been complete.
Next, I went back to my query letter, which sounded weak and absolutely inauthentic.  I scratched it and, remembering the previous comment on marketing, dedicated a paragraph to why this work fills a void in the market and what I am prepared to do to help it sell.
Finally, I researched agents who are interested in my genre and who had represented clients like me.  I also looked for new agents who might be building a list and so would perhaps be looking for someone new to the scene.

I sent my letters, and I was thrilled when I received a number of requests for the full manuscript.

So here I am.  Waiting.  So much of this early stage is waiting.  But I don't mind.  I've come so far with this manuscript, and I believe in it so thoroughly.

It's absolutely worth waiting for.

MPK


PS: What I'm reading this week:
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman
Scat by Carl Hiaasen

What I'm Reading This Week!

I am a writer, so therefore I am also an avid reader.  Makes sense, right?  And thus, I am often reading multiple texts during any given period, in addition to reading the original works of my Creative Writing students.  This week I'm reading an eclectic set of books, including a biography, a nonfiction work about teenage girls, and a graphic novel for young readers.

Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith, Deborah Heiligman
This book is the latest in my biography series.  Last summer I decided that I was tired of my husband knowing more than I do about history, so I decided to walk into the public library and read the first book on the shelf in the "Biography" section, no matter the subject.  I selected John Adams, by David McCullough, or perhaps it chose me.  I'd never read a biography that so captivated me; it was truly a fantastic read.  I decided to proceed alphabetcally, so the next biography I chose was Beethoven: The Man Revealed, by John Suchet, followed by Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff.  I've been fortunate that each of these works has taught me, kept me entertained, and expanded my understanding of people.  Charles and Emma is no exception.  It is the telling of Darwin's life and the creation of Origin of the Species, but with a special emphasis on the relationship he had with his wife, Emma, who was a deeply religious woman.  So far, another compelling read.  Interestingly, it seems this book was intended for a younger audience, yet I found it in the adult biography section: lucky me!

Enough: 10 Things We Should Tell Teenage Girls, Kate Conner
I was gifted this book by a friend who recently sent her teenage daughter off to college.  As I have a young daughter of my own (though not quite a teenager--a "tween", she insists), my friend thought this book would help me prepare for the journey ahead.  Conner writes in a conversational way and doesn't act as if she has all of the answers.  What she does have is life experience, which she reflects upon to help parents understand the power of our words and deeds upon our daughters.  There is a religious bent, but like the rest of the book, it isn't "preachy", just a point of view, and a subtle, organic one at that.  So far, this book is giving me confidence that maybe I won't screw up my daughter's life, and maybe, just maybe, she won't "hate" me during the coming years (I hear you chuckling).

The Red Pyramid, Rick Riordan and Orpheus Collar
Let me begin by stating that the last book I read along with my daughter was Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty.  I loved it, but my daughter had to stop reading because the vivid nature of the book frightened her.  How she has managed to read The Red Pyramid three times is beyond me;  it's pretty intense!  I think it's important to read what my children are reading (easy for me to say as my son is currently obsessed with Sandra Boynton), so in that spirit, I'm reading this graphic novel.  I've just begun, so there isn't much to say, but I've found a new appreciation for the graphic novel in recent months.  I recently read book two of the Maus series by Art Spiegelman, and I'm amazed at the way these writers use visuals to enhance their works.  I won't be adding illustrations to my work any time soon (my high school art teacher can support this decision), but I'm amazed at those who do.

On Deck:  I recently borrowed the book S. by J.J. Abrams from a former student.  I just adore experiential reads, and so I'm excited to dive in.  And on a recent trip to the bookstore with some Christmas money (yippee!), I purchased The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, The Rain in Portugal by Billy Collins, The Spy by Paulo Coelho (autographed!), Thirst by Mary Oliver (which I have already read and gifted to friends--I decided it was time to gift it to myself!), and Upstream by Oliver.  Good times ahead!

What are you reading?  Comment below!  I love recommendations!

I am a writer....

Welcome to the official blog of writer Megan Prewitt Koon.

My first story was about a dog and a cat who climbed into a box together,  a simple story that goes to show that we all really can "just get along".

My first novel was written when I was in third grade.  It was titled From Georgia to Florida...and Back.  I'll leave you to guess the contents of the plot.

The summer of my freshman year of high school, I wrote a full-length novel based on a band trip I had taken to Europe.  My friends all got to pick their characters' names, and I got the license to add in the romance plot I had longed for and missed many important cultural sights trying to achieve.

In college I wrote a novel that helped me to work through some truly awful events I had experienced. It was therapy.

In grad school I wrote short pieces for a creative writing class that would remind me that I was actually pretty good at this.  I would send out my first query letter.

Eleven years later, countless queries later, more rejections that I care to count later, I'm still at it.

Because I am a writer.

So the short version is that I cannot remember a time when I was not writing: short stories, angsty poems, pieces that were stories but should have been poems, novels.  I love it.

I love the feeling of my fingers on a typewriter or a computer keyboard.
I've longed for a writer's callus on my finger, and for a brief period in high school I worked so diligently to make one appear.
I adore the moment a character becomes real, takes off on her own, moves beyond your own expectations for her so that your intentions are unimportant (sucka!) and hers are happening, whether you like it or not.
I live for the sentences you write before you sit back and wonder if you really wrote that, because it's so dadgum good.

I am a writer.
I am a daughter, a grand-daughter, a neice, a cousin, a daughter-in-law, a sister-in-law, a wife, a mother, a teacher, a friend.
I am a writer.
I am a creator, an artist, a grammarian, a reader, a dreamer, a killer, a goddess, a vessel.
I am a writer.

And I'm so grateful you're here with me.