Faculty Voices: MarshaQ

Last weekend I had the good fortune to spend time with MaryLogue and Gene Yang, MFAC faculty members past and present. Both were in Eau Claire to be part of the annual Chippewa Valley Book Festival.

While Gene was wowing a room of readers over on the local university campus, Mary was doing the same at our public library. I sat in on Mary’s session, “Cozy vs. Noir,” in which she talked about the differences in the various forms of mystery novels.

As daughter #1 and I are in the process of writing a novel together, and as said project is turning out to be a space opera murder mystery, I was an attentive listener in the room.

Mary mentioned one thing that I’d heard her say before, and it’s always stayed with me: When imagining the protagonist of what would turn into her Claire Watkins mystery series, she knew she would make her a mother because she “wanted her to be vulnerable.”

We who write for and about children don’t have to work too hard to identify how our protagonists are vulnerable—it comes with the territory of being young. Nevertheless, everyone has a specific vulnerability, and identifying it, as Mary did for her heroine, and working it can be a terrific plot and character developer.

One common point in my YA novels is that my protagonists have generally been emotionally and financially secure young women, and, for the sake of the plot, that very security is their vulnerability. How does a character behave when something is lost, either by accident or of her/his own doing? What’s the difference? How about when something is taken away?  

When I entered college during the Vietnam era, the college chaplain would invariably end services or other gatherings with his favorite benediction: “Comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable.”  

Marching orders for social justice, them words; they’re also good writing advice.

Inkpot Interviews: Mary Logue (AKA Mary Lou Kerwin)

Under the nom de plume Mary Lou Kirwin,  MFAC Professor Emerita Mary Logue followed up the release of her 2013 Caldecott honor book Sleep Like a Tiger by returning to writing mysteries for adults. 

Please describe the book.

These two books are a series—in the first one, Killer Librarian, Karen Nash is on her way to England for the first time when her boyfriend dumps her.  She’s horridly disappointed but decides to go anyway.  At the B & B the owner, Caldwell Perkins, also a bibliophile, takes her out for a curry and things start to look up.  Then a nice old gentleman, who has just created a new rose, dies in the garden room.  And Karen’s afraid her ex-boyfriend’s life is also in danger.  What’s a librarian to do?

Death Overdue finds Karen back in England, trying to figure out if she will can make a life there with Caldwell and his books.  Then his old girlfriend comes back and is killed in the library by (you guessed it) books. 

As the story progressed from inception to copy-edited version, what were the major changes? How did those changes come about? When did you first begin work on it? When did you finish? 
The first book was done as a lark.  It didn’t have a murder in it, but the editor said they would buy it if I killed someone off—so I did.  The second book, unbelievable, wasn’t edited at all—just went straight to copy edit.

What research was involved, and how did it affect the story’s development? 
Since most of these two books was set in England I had a good British friend vet the books.  The most amazing research I did was on the new Globe theater.  If you go online you can actually tour the building.  Very helpful.

Without naming names, tell us who your first readers are (e.g., live-action writing group; online writing group; editor; agent). When do you share a piece of writing?

I can name a name—it’s Pete Hautman, my guy.  I usually show him the first forty to fifty pages, just to find out if I’m headed in the right direction.  Then when I’m done he reads the whole thing.  I remind him to tell me the good things first—then he can have at it.

What books do you love to teach or recommend to students?

I liked The Five Children and It and Mistress Masham’s Repose—older British children’s books.

What widely-loved or acclaimed book is one that didn’t work for you?

Many of the highly touted books I didn’t quite climb aboard the story—even the Harry Potter books and Twilight.  But I read a chunk of them just to know what everyone was talking about.  I like books in which real people talk to real people about real problems—usually. 

 

During the January 2013 residency Emily Jenkins lectured on “How to Be Funny,” and one of her suggestions was to “use jolly words.” A good idea even if one isn’t trying to be funny. Do you have a favorite jolly word?

In French, I love the word semblable. Just say it a few times.  Great feeling in the mouth.  I also am very fond of the word smock.  I enjoy using the word rather.

***

To learn more about Mary and her writing, visit her website. 

The Devil Made Me Do It

In the Hamline MFAC program we encourage students to try different forms of writing as well as to write across the genres. This isn’t a “do as I say, not as I do” injunction. Members of the faculty also play around with their writing, and some of that play time has been a springboard for serious projects that resulted in publication. Most recently, Ron Koertge and Anne Ursu have explored fairy tales (Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses; Breadcrumbs), Gary Schmidt bit the bullet and wrote a fantasy (What Came from the Stars), and Mary Logue wrote a picture book (Sleep Like a Tiger).

Though nothing is headed toward publication—or even the open air of a public reading--I’ve been playing around too. 

 Earlier this week I wrote about the NY Times interview with Kate Atkinson. Another gem from that article was her description of what she learned by writing fiction for women’s magazines: “You learn to turn a story around on a sixpence.”

This is not a writing skill I have, something that was made clear to me a few years ago when doing some work-for-hire writing. The editor of the project kept rejecting my ideas for stories with the same question: where’s the moment of change?

Those clear short-story moments when things change elude me. I like a bit of ambiguity, you see, served with a side of complexity. Novels are my natural playground.

Still, I want to have the skill, and as a result I’ve recently been writing flash fiction and reading a lot of revised folk tales, hoping that an immersion in the modern use of old stories will help me acquire a feel for the short form.

I’m not sure I’ve got that under control, but I did come up with a splendid writing exercise, one I’ve already had fun with for my work-in-progress as well as the novel on the back burner. The origin of the exercise is Newbery-winning writer Laura Amy Schlitz’s book The Bearskinner. (I should note that lately my source for finding folktale retellings is Lise Lunge-Larsen; her wonderful weekly blog for Children’s Literature Network (Snipp Snapp Snute) is loaded with recommendations. Yes, I could browse through the 398s at my library, but why not let an expert do some legwork?)

In The Bearskinner, a man makes a deal with a devil, and the story goes on from there. As Lunge-Larsen points out, a deal with the devil is an old trope.  It’s also a great idea for character exploration. What deal would your protagonist make with the devil? Once the bargain is struck, what are the specific challenges that threaten success? If the devil is walking alongside the protagonist during the period of the deal, as in The Bearskinner, what  conversations would occur?

Even if your story is firmly grounded in a world that acknowledges no supernatural whatever, I bet you can still learn something by playing around with the devil.

Hear the Cheering?

The Hamline MFAC community is a happy one today. Two of our own, Gary Schmidt and Mary Logue, are the authors of picture books that were honored by the American Library Association.

The Pura Belpre Award for best picture book illustrated by a Latino/Latina was awarded to Martin de Porres, the Rose in the Desert, illustrated by David Diaz and written by Gary D. Schmidt.

A Caldecott Honor, runner-up to the Caldecott Award for the best illustrated book, was given to Sleep Like a Tiger, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski and written by Mary Logue.

These are illustrator awards, but as Jackie Briggs Martins, another MFAC luminary, recently said, "First was the word."

Wonderful books, wonderful illustrations. Congrats to all four creators.

Chillin'

Just finished the first full day of the residency. Great lectures by Mary Logue and Jackie Briggs Martin. One sits and listens to all the good points made and what comes to mind are the flaws in one's own work. Well, this one goes through that, alas.

Tonight I took turns at the podium with Kelly Easton Rubin and Claire Rudolf Murphy for the first night of faculty readings. After I read from a rather dark manuscript that's headed to a drawer for a little R & R, Kelly got us laughing and then Claire got us singing. As the kidz say, or used to say, Sweet.

Tomorrow we start workshopping. Daily workshops are like the home room for the residency--a great place to get to know people and their writing.

As Anne said, except for Ron, who is staying warm in California, the Inkpot bloggers might be a little slow, a little dazed, a little confused over the next few days.

One last thought: The hotel we return to at the end of the long day is very nice, the kind of place the George Clooney character in Up in the Air would have liked. I 'm going to crash soon, but first I need check out the mattress and find out what my my sleep number is.

MQ