Monday, September 13, 2010

The Writer's (Real) Life



Sometimes, okay, most of the time, my life is plain dull. Some may think otherwise, because it sounds thrilling. I move back and forth from Maine to Savannah with my cool British writer/illustrator partner, our two dogs and cat. I have a new teaching job outside of Philadelphia, so we’ve added a third stop to the chaos. I swim in the Maine ocean in a wetsuit. I see alligators in the swamps of Georgia. My mother lives on a tiny island in the Caribbean where I go snorkeling. My in-laws live in Brighton, England—the hippest town in GB. I know a lot of famous people (like Ron Koertge and Jane Resh Thomas, etc...oh and I knew Zero Mostel, too who is not a children’s book writer, but what the hey—knowing him makes me seem exotic, right?) I had a spider monkey as a pet when I was growing up. My family lived in Norway in a hut in the mountains with no electricity or running water while my father studied lemmings. I write. I illustrate. I have a few books published.

But, the truth of the matter is, my life is dull. I prepare for classes. I read Hamline packets every month. I try to get daily exercise. I walk the dogs. I pack and move a couple times a year. I go to bed insanely early and get up the next day. I stress about writing or not-writing, and when, if ever, I am going to get my next contract. A contract validates that work, but the work is the only thing that makes life interesting, and as writers we can always make our life sound as dull or exciting as we want. Why I have never written about that monkey or the lemmings yet, is a curiosity to me as well.

10 comments:

  1. Why on earth haven't you written about the lemmings?

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  2. I spent a month in arctic Sweden studying glaciers one time. One of the lemmings' favorite pastimes was to run out onto the glacier and die, at which point the sun would heat their dark little bodies and they'd start melting into the ice. Many's the time I'd be walking along, only to discover a tiny water-filled hole with a dead lemming at the bottom. Who knows, maybe they were slowly making their way to the bed of the glacier just to see what was it was like. Which is dumb, because I had an ice-penetrating radar, like, right there. They could've just asked.

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  3. See?? Peter has a lovely premise for a toddler book ... get to it, Lisa. And he's left lots of room for the illustrator ...

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  4. Well, maybe Peter should write it, then. I've never found my angle. All my father's research on them was painfully dry. Though he did discover that they do not commit suicide. That is a myth. Every seven years lemmings (muskrats, too) over populate. In their frenzy to find wider space to live comfortably a lot of them freeze, fall off cliffs, even fight for the best living quarters, in other words, some die. It's actually a form of population control, but it is not suicide. Eventually the survivors find a nice, open home in the tundra and live happily for seven years, until it happens again.
    Talk about a seven-year itch!

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  5. This is all becoming very lemming-centric, but hey, I'll go with it. One of the biggest factors that popularized the lemming suicide myth was a Disney film called "White Wilderness," in which lemmings were herded into the water and flung off a cliff using a turntable. Thanks, pre-ethics board America!

    http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp

    Good thing your father could set the record straight, Lisa.

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  6. Population control in South Pasadena consists of people fighting over the rare house that comes up for sale at an inflated price and then killing themselves for 1. not getting it or 2. working two jobs to pay for it. They sometimes freeze thanks to too many daiquiris and fall off of faux-Adirondack chairs.

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  7. Lisa, you know I've been bugging you to tell the truth about the lemmings for years and now you have a crowd of people urging you on. Besides, I had no idea they were so cute. (Although dead lemmings aren't quite as adorable. Still, with Peter's help, I'm sure you could fudge that somehow.) Go for it!

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  8. You've found your Lisa-esque angle: "Eventually the survivors find a nice, open home in the tundra and live happily for seven years, until it happens again." All of your characters find a home, or a friend, or whatever it is they need to survive.

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  9. And on the endpapers you could have a glacier, dotted with tiny mysterious holes.

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  10. Dead lemmings could be cute, with the right illustrator.

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