Faculty Voices with Sherri L. Smith: Drowning in Research

Have you ever wondered how to go about building the world of an historical novel?  Well, let me show you how I do it!  I am currently writing a book set in 1940s Japan.  Toward that end, I am:

• learning basic Japanese;
• going to Japan;
• reading the 20th of 30 or 40 books on the period and culture, including wartime diaries;
• emailing strangers and asking them odd questions;
• outlining;
• day dreaming; and
• basically drowning in research.

This is what I do.  For every single book I write, I drown myself in the process.  It’s probably not healthy—I have next to no room in my head for my own day-to-day life when I’m in drowning mode—and it’s never won me a championship on Jeopardy.  But for the few bright moments of vision and revision, I become an idiot savant.  I become an expert.  

Granted, it’s a useless sort of expertise, unless you are a writer.  Like cramming for a test, as soon as the book is done, the knowledge will fade to make room for the next story.  Really, what good is it knowing what instruments use silk strings, or what blind men used to play in Edo period Japan, unless you are a writer (or a time traveling musician)?  I can’t actually play a string instrument (if you don’t count three Groupon lessons I took for cello… and I don’t).  My book doesn’t even take place during the Edo period.  Does it matter if I know the name of Japanese work pants, or the common crops of a mountain farming village circa 1937?

Hopefully, yes.  To my story, and to my readers.  (The pants are called monpe!)

I say “hopefully” because I don’t know how much of what I am learning will be used in the final book.  There is a lot of “read-and-discard” going on.  I scour the internet for reference books, checking out what I can from the library, and purchasing the more obscure titles.  It can be frustrating, like sifting for gold.  Sometimes you buy a 500-page book that turns out to only have a paragraph or two of interest.  And then, sometimes, you hit the motherlode.
Like the koto player writing her own book on the spirituality of Japanese instruments.  Or the sociology book about the region you are researching, tucked in the high shelves of a small used bookstore in Vermont.  Suddenly, vistas open up!  Volumes of information that make the warp and weft of great worldbuilding, and the intimate details that make the story ring true.  It’s this sort of gold strike that makes all of the digging worthwhile.  

While the work seems huge, I like to start small.  I like to use kids’ books—they give you the short version of your research, and often come with a handy list of cited sources.  Those are the adult books I turn to next.  From there, I develop my story, making a list of what I don’t know along the way.  And then I start asking question of myself, the story, and take that list to the library, the internet, looking for answers.  

I do my research before, during, and after a draft.  Every time I feel stuck, it usually means I need to do more research.

And remember, nothing you learn is wasted, even if you discard it for now.  Somewhere deep inside that sea of knowledge, you might find the seeds to your next story. 

  

Sherri L. Smith is the author of several award-winning young adult novels, including the 2009 California Book Awards Gold Medalist, Flygirl, the “cli-fi” adventure, Orleans and the middle grade historical fantasy, The Toymaker’s Apprentice.  Her books appear on multiple state lists and have been named Amelia Bloomer and American Library Association Best Books for Young People selections.  Sherri has worked in comic books, animation, construction, and most recently, a monster factory.  Currently, she teaches in the MFA Writing program at Goddard College and the Children’s Writing MFA program at Hamline University.  Her latest book is the YA noir mystery, Pasadena.  Learn more at www.sherrilsmith.com.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: Re-Vision Part 2

Before reading this post, be sure to check out part one to see where this poem started.

So I thought about the poem and in my own pagan way prayed about it and worked on (re-visioned)  the last third or so.

The Plane Doesn’t Crash But the Landing is So Rough

There’s a Lot of Screaming

Right next to the airport is a gentlemen’s

club where all the dancers wear Santa

hats.  I have a stiff drink, slip 20

to the topsy-turvy down girl on the pole,

then enter the freeway tentatively, like

a horse at the ocean.

Windows down, I hear John Coltrane

from the nearest Camaro and near

1st and Hill a congregation praying

from a rooftop.  

I’m not quite sure what to do with

my other life, the one that ended

on the tarmac where the ambulances

congregated.

It rides alongside me making mordant

jokes about the seatbelt.

Home at last, I park beside an electric

reindeer lying on its side and twitching.

Lighted windows.  On the shadowy

porch the smokers are changelings,

shape shifters.

We go inside together, that other life

and I.  My wife says, “Oh, there you

are.  I was starting to worry.”

Her other life looks at mine and bursts

into tears.

Ah ha.  Now the turn in the 4th stanza is a portent I can live with.  As is the new character, “my other life.”  Now there’s some accord between it, the fallen reindeer, and the shape shifting smokers. The tears in the last stanza seem more, as we say, earned.

I’m probably another draft or two away from being completely happy with it.  I’m not sure about mordant.  And there’s a chance that whole little stanza can go.  

We’ll  see.  A little more prayer, maybe some chardonnay, a good night’s sleep and anything is possible.


*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program. He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: Re-Vision Part 1

Prose comes from the Latin prosa = straightforward, “without the ornaments of verse.”  Oh, dear.  ‘Ornaments’ is an awful word.  Verse as Christmas tree, similes and metaphors dangling from the branches.   

Many of the poems I write are, as many have pointed out and not always kindly, “prosey.”  Meaning easy-going and fun to read.  And they can be straightforward because I want readers to come along with me but if I really wanted to be straightforward I’d write prose.   One of my disciplines is to reward my readers with something yummy every few lines  -- a turn of phrase, an unlikely word in a likely place.  Whatever it takes to keep someone’s eyes on the page.   

Sonnet is from the Italian sonetto:  little song.  I don’t write many straight up sonnets, but all my poems are little songs:  melodies, show tunes, arias, lullabies, hymns.

Here something I’ve been working on.   Is it an aria?  A hymn?  Or  -- shudder  --  just elevator music.

The Plane Doesn’t Crash But the Landing is So Rough

There’s a Lot of Screaming

Right next to the airport is a gentlemen’s

club  where all the dancers wear Santa

hats.  I have a stiff drink, slip 20

to the topsy-turvy down girl on the pole,

then enter the freeway tentatively,  like

a horse at the ocean.    

Windows down, I hear John Coltrane

from the nearest Camaro and near

1st and Hill somebody praying

from a rooftop.  

Home at last I park beside an electric

reindeer lying on its side and twitching.

Lighted windows.  On the shadowy

porch the smokers are changelings,

shapeshifters.

It’s California, winter, but something

is blooming.  Perfume and terror.

Coming in hot to LAX, the woman

beside me clawed at my jacket.

“Tell my husband I love him,” she

cried.  Taxing to the gate she blushed,

“That  thing before?  It’s not really

true.”    But she was excited still.  

Vibrant and giddy.  Glad to be alive.  

“I’ll never forget,” she said, “the first

time he kissed me.”

There are some things in this draft that kept me interested.   The long title pushes me into the poem, the simile in the second stanza was a pleasant surprise.  I’m okay with Coltrane, the electric reindeer, the smokers but then the little song slips off-key.  Where’d that woman come from?    The last thing this piece needs is another character, much less another one with conventionally sentimental feelings.  

Come back on Thursday to see how Ron revises his poem.


*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program. He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Faculty Voices with Sherri Smith: Writing in the Age of “I Wonder What Comes Next”

Were you like me, and so many other writers, mid-draft in something and feeling pretty good about it (or terrible, but willing to continue because it still felt promising), and then… the election.

I wonder if you’ve felt the sea change?  

Now, maybe you were blindsided.  Maybe you thought, “this is a done deal.”  Maybe you thought your side would win.  Or maybe you knew without a doubt that your side would not win, but you felt the freedom to vote your conscience.  Or maybe you won, and you were hopeful, but still a little shocked.

Regardless, the thing lying on your desk now labeled “Relevant Text” is no longer quite so relevant.  It’s as if you’ve written a manifesto in Standard English and woken up in a world that only speaks Pig Latin.  Now what?  Can I rewrite this?  Should I?  Will Pig Latin last?  What if Pig Latin lasts?  H-oay o-nay!  (Is that even correct?)

You have become irrelevant over night.  

Or, if you are very lucky and prescient and timeless, you’re “this is going no where” work is suddenly the Great American Make America Great Again Novel!  Maybe it’s a clarion call for justice no one knew we needed.  Maybe it’s a treatise on how to reunite a nation half the citizens didn’t realize was divided.  Maybe you will be the next Nobel winner for nailing it, and getting it to market on time!

But, for the rest of us, what now?

Do we scramble to write more sparkly vampires because, hey I hear that was hot a few years ago, or do we stay committed to our newly not-so-relevant works and mine them for new relevance?  As chidren’s writers, how do we deal with our own sudden coming-of-age while still offering honest guidance to the next generation?

Because, as much as the world has changed and continues to change, so are we.  We are no longer looking back in order share what we’ve learned with young people.  We are learning anew, and we need time to absorb this new age of “I Wonder What Comes Next.”  The only thing that has stayed the same are your manuscript (and if you had one, your deadline).  And now your story is wondering, “What’s the attire in this brave new world?”  Brown shoes in a tuxedo country?  

It doesn’t matter because, in this case, the writer makes the clothes.  Listen to your self changing, growing over the next few months.  Tap into the truth of this new coming of age.  Who will we be as a nation?  It’s that new citizen who will be the one picking up the pen, flipping open the keyboard.  That’s the writer you will have become.  And our manuscripts will never be the same.

As Octavia Butler said in her seminal novel, Parable of the Talents:  God is Change.

Welcome to the new religion.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: Make Every Word Count

As some of you know, Chris Heppermann and I wrote a trilogy for young readers. Basically aimed at pre-teen girls featuring -- wait for it -- three pre-teen girls. Oh, and a witch. Backyard Witch, as a matter of fact. But don’t leave your seats while the blog is in motion. Afterwards, you may rush to Amazon.

Writing with Chris was fun; writing for younger kids was fun. I’d never done anything like that, but Chris knows the kid-business and is great at structure. I like to just sit around in my smarty pants and emit evenly-spaced bars of irony and jest. (And that’s me emitting, okay. Not my pants.)

Now she wants to work on something even shorter. For even younger readers. Sure, I’m game.

So we think of some characters and some problem-to-solve. Wendell as a bored, over- sheltered little bear and Goldy as the fearless daughter of avant-garde artists.

Chris told me what to do -- Punchy. Short sentences. Not much description since an illustrator will do that. Here’s my opening:

*    *     *

“Wendell, are you all right?”

Wendell looked into his empty bowl. “Almost finished, Ma.”

“But you’re all right.”

“I’m just on the patio.”

He made his spoon clink against the blue bowl so he could stay outdoors a little longer. So his mother would think he was occupied. And safe.

Not even twenty yards away, stood the woods. Tall trees making the usual dark canopy. A familiar path leading toward the sun-dappled clearing, then circling back toward his house. A path he walked every day with his parents while the porridge cooled. Every day. Day after day.

He could see other paths, dimmer ones. Where did they go? And who made them?

With a sigh, he carried his bowl indoors and put it on the sink.

“Such a good little bear,” said his mother patting him on the head. “Time for a nap now?”

“Mom, I just ate breakfast.”

*  *  *

And here’s Chris’s:

On the wall of Wendell’s bedroom was a map that showed all of the places he could never go:

Up north to the bridge. “You might fall off,” said Mama.

Down south to the lake. “You might fall in,” said Papa.

Out west to the cave. “Full of scorpions,” said Mama. 

Out east to the meadow. “Who knows what’s over there,” said Papa.

“I’ll be careful,” said Wendell.

“It’s time for breakfast,” said Mama.

“How am I supposed to be an explorer when I grow up if you never let me explore?” said Wendell on the way downstairs.

*    *    *

I looked at hers and thought, Oh, yeah. So that’s what you meant. Harder than it looks, but aren’t most new things? I’m not giving up. I’ll think haiku. Make every word count.

Stay tuned.


*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program. He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Faculty Voices with Marsha Qualey: The Big One - Conflict and Antagonists

We focused on plot this past residency. I welcomed this topic immersion because for the last several months I have been writing short stories after years of novel writing, and I have been hugely challenged by the need to pare down the scope of my storytelling. How much plot can a 5000 word story handle? How do I know what is essential? What should I spend time on?

The residency session I concocted and led (with gracious participation from very game students; thank you, all) was, frankly, quite self-serving as it was an exploration that’s relevant to my own writing questions.

In the session we first discussed the types of conflict in fiction as outlined by Victoria Lynn Schmidt in her book Story Structure Architect:

Relational Conflict 

This is the main character in conflict with another human

Social Conflict

The Main Character faces the group and the cultural/social/legal limits of that group--a religious organization and its laws, a secular institution and its laws, or maybe a book club and its expectations.

Situational Conflict

The main character is challenged by something that occurs or arises in the natural or human-made world, maybe tornadoes or fire or being lost in the woods or swimming among sharks.

Inner Conflict

The main character is challenged by the self—by habits or uncertainty or memories or any of the many physical or emotional elements of that person.

Paranormal Conflict 

The main character is challenged by technology, science, or the limits of what is possible: unleashing a new strain of bacteria, dealing with superpowers, ghosts.  

Cosmic Conflict 

The main character deals with fate, destiny, or God

Then we did a close reading of a few scenes from The Goose Girl, one of the residency’s common books and discussed what types of conflict were present in the scenes. Were the scenes loaded with too many types? How much is too much? What types of conflict might be best for what types of scene?

Types of conflict are nearly interchangeable with types of antagonists. I concluded the session by encouraging the writers to make their own conflict/antagonist list for each of their own stories. What are the specific conflicts or antagonists a protagonist might encounter? This is crucial world building. 

In her lecture “Bad Luck and Trouble: Antagonists in Fiction”, Laura Ruby told us that the most important antagonist “is the self.” Similar, one could say, to Schmidt’s “Inner Conflict.” I agree with Laura (who wouldn’t!) but my final caution to the residency students in my session was about this very important antagonist: Use this conflict sparingly in scenes. This is especially and most obviously true of action scenes, of course, but all scenes can bog down when they focus on inner turmoil. Once established, the inner conflict is part of the reader’s base knowledge and the writer need only—at most—quickly signal that inner struggle. Unless there is a change about to occur that will alter the plot trajectory, it might be a good idea to bury the self.


Marsha Qualey has been a faculty member in Hamline's MFAC program since it began. She is the author of several YA novels, one novel for adults, and several work-for-hire books for younger readers. For more information please visit her website.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: You Never Know

My friend Gerry Locklin turned me onto poetry in grad school at the University of Arizona. We were 22 and 23 respectively when he showed me a copy of an indie magazine named The Wormwood Review. I didn’t need drugs to open those doors of perception. The Wormwood Review did it for me. I was studying poetry (and how I hate to see the words study and poetry side by side. Can’t you just see students gritting their teeth and wondering what that freaking albatross stands for?) but none of the poems in Wormwood or Poetry Now or Aldebran Review needed lucubration; they were right there on the page waiting to be enjoyed.

And they were enjoyable: goofy and uncultivated and against-everything-one-should-be-against, they were little celebrations of another kind of life – not serious, not dogged, not sober, highbrow or grave. They looked liked they’d been fun to write and they were fun to read. Did any of these poets imagine their verse was immortal or enduring? No way. Although Wormwood lasted a long time, lots of the indie mags were as ephemeral as the poetry they published. Here today, gone – sometimes – today.

Still, a lot of us who started fifty or so years ago are still around, still writing, and often still not taking things seriously. But here’s the thing – writing fast as I do and in a sense tossing poems often leads to a lot of balmy but imprudent work. Poems that don’t jell and never will. Poems that more witless than witty. Poems that collapse under the strain of so much whimsy. But every now and then something very cool happens and a poem steps forward wearing its jester’s cap and bells and just kills. A little gift from the poetry gods.

Of course, after that I want another gift, so every morning I give my Ego ten bucks and send it off to watch a movie about itself, put my butt in the chair and do my best. Because – as the title up there says, you never know.

*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program. He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Faculty Voices with Ron Koertge: Poetry as Prompt

There are times when I can’t/won’t write what I’m supposed to/what I’ve planned, but I want to put a few hundred words on paper. My promise to myself is this: write every day. And though I’ve broken promises to everyone (my first wife puts up her hand), I rarely break ones I’ve made to myself. 

“Oh, Ron, what do you do when you can’t write what you’d prefer to write?”

Funny you should ask. Can’t you guess? I turn to poetry.

But not as poetry. I don’t want to write poetry. I want to use (put your other hand up now, my bitter darling) poetry to get something off the ground, to energize me.

Here’s what I do: I Google Poetry Foundation and on the right side of the page troll through Browse Poems. Like window shopping. (Any anthology or book of poems would do. I just like the Poetry Foundation.) 

When I find a first line I like, I jot it down and make a short list. Here’s what I just came up with in five minutes –

                  1. A striped blouse in a clearing by Bazille.

                  2.  Watch the fire undress him.

                  3.  When love was a question mark, a message arrived.

                  4.  I’m still thinking about your porch light.

                  5.  The bear stopped dancing and unscrewed his head.

#4 is a likely keeper, and #2 interests me a lot. And I want to put blouse/striped blouse somewhere.

That’s plenty to get me started. Will this turn out well? Who knows. Will it be fun? Probably. I don’t need to think for myself when I have poets thinking for me, using language in a nostalgic and pedestrian way (#4) and/or making it punch me in the gut (#2).

Let’s say I’m drawn to #2. I know I’ll stick to short, staccato sentences probably in the form of commands. If I want to get anywhere with #1 I’ll look up Bazille and discover that he’s a painter (not so interesting) but is also a restaurant! So is the blouse on a waitress in a restaurant named Bazille? And is she serving something hot to the guest who complained about his dinner being cold, something so hot he’s on fire from head-to-toe?

What’s interesting is this - I rarely finish these exercises. Wound up by them, I’ll go right to the thing I’m working on. But lots of time the language in the poems’ first lines will either appear in the work-in-progress or at least, like iodine in water, color a whole page in a way I could never have predicted. 


*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program.  He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and recently co-authored a young reader series. You can discover Ron's literary work by visiting his author's website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.

Diversity Shines in Two Alaskan Novels

Today's Inkpot post is from Claire Rudolf Murphy*, an amazing author and MFAC professor at Hamline University.  Diversity is a big topic, and one Claire explores through the examination of two Alaskan novels, My Name is Not Easy and The Smell of Other People's Houses.

Hello, Inkpot Readers. My awareness of the need for more diversity in children’s books has been deepened by our work in the Hamline MFAC program. As we read more widely and I reflect on my own work and respond to student work, my understanding has grown, but also a realization about how complex it is to get it right. Diversity comes in many forms - along with race and culture, it includes religion, social and economic levels and setting. Regardless, we must do our best to avoid stereotypes. A nonfiction writer can only write what actually happened, so the diversity comes by doing far-reaching research on one’s subject in all its complexities.

A novelist has many choices when developing a cast of characters. I learned a great deal about culture during my 24 years in Alaska, but in my first novel I failed the stereotype test. To the Summit features white climbers on an expedition up Denali (Mount McKinley.) I wanted to include a Native Alaskan character, so I developed a Yup’ik guide named Gabe based on my experiences teaching in a Yup’ik Eskimo village for three years. I got help and worked hard to get the cultural details right, but looking back I realize how unlikely and inauthentic it was to write about a Yup’ik person from the coastal part of Alaska who climbed mountains for adventure rather than necessity.

But two current Alaskan writers succeed admirably, their stories featuring characters of many cultures. Debby Dahl Edwardson was raised in a Norwegian Minnesotan family, but for 30 years has lived in Barrow, Alaska with her husband and his extended family. Fro her web site: “My husband is Inupiaq (Eskimo) and most of the stories I write are set within this cultural context. It is not the culture I was born into but it is the one I belong to, the one that has become home to me as a human being and as an artist.” (See www.debbydahledwardson.com.)

           

Debby’s novel My Name is not Easy, a National Book Award finalist, is based on her husband’s experiences attending boarding school with Alaskan Natives of many cultures. I taught at a boarding school similar to the setting of Debby’s story and can speak to the authenticity of her teen characters and how the white adults running the school have good intentions, but make many cultural missteps. Not surprisingly Debby has been asked many times about writing about other cultures. “People want to know what constitutes authentic writing from a cultural perspective. They want to know how to tell whether the books they are reading or writing are authentic to the cultures they represent. A good part of this comes from recognizing your own cultural bias.” Listen to her interview at: http://media.aprn.org/2011/ann-20111027-07.MP3

On a guest blog post about writing across cultures, she wrote: “People sometimes say that I write outside of my own culture or that I write through a borrowed culture. I can't imagine consciously doing any such thing. If you understand the worldview of your characters and write from within that worldview you are not writing outside of anything and you are not borrowing—you are immersing yourself within. Does your own individual perspective on life bleed through? Sure. But you are aware of this and you control it—not as a bad thing, but as a conscious thing.” See: cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2011/11/guest-post-debby-dahl-edwardson-on-lens.html

Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock, one of our Hamline alums, recently published a novel set in Alaska called The Smell of Other People’s Houses. An earlier version of this story was her creative thesis. Based on her childhood memories, experiences of family members, friends and her own children, and her work as a reporter with Alaska Public Radio, the story features characters from Alaska’s many cultures. Tough things happen to all the characters, no matter their culture. From my years living in Alaska, it felt authentic. Bonnie-Sue uses cultural details and it is clear which cultural group a character is from. But she also spoke to the fluidity of Alaskan culture. In an email to me she wrote, ““One thing I do know is that you can't tell if someone is native or nonnative based on their skin color and what I love about Alaska is that we're all kind of in it together. But as kids, we didn't care about what race you were. We cared whether you were fast enough to be on our swim team relay, or if your mom made better after school snacks.” 

But Bonnie-Sue also spoke to me about the responsibility writing about this setting and these characters. “Did I do this right? Did I do it justice? She laughingly told me she is working on a story right now in which “place isn’t such a huge character.” Alaskans have embraced the novel. And readers unfamiliar with Alaska will come to experience it through these well-rounded and riveting characters. Bonnie-Sue worked hard to make sure the cultural details remained in her story. And she won another fight, too. “Normally audiobooks are read by professional actors. But I knew that the voice of Dora had to reflect her character--a young Inupiaq girl. I sent the New York producer some news stories featuring teenage voices that I had produced in Alaska and she agreed with me that Dora's character absolutely needed authentic representation." An Alaskan actor was hired.

Learn more about Bonnie-Sue at her web site www. Hitchcock.bs.com. Listen to her interview: http://www.kcaw.org/2016/02/22/author-writes-about-smells-and-memories-in-new-book/. I also posted a more detailed review of Bonnie-Sue’s book this week at: http://renegadesofdiversity.weebly.com/blog/april-04th-2016.

Thank you, Debby and Bonnie-Sue for showing us the way by writing such powerful stories with diverse characters.


*Claire Rudolf Murphy is the author of over a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction and a professor in Hamline University's Master in Writing for Children and Young Adults program.  To learn more about Claire and her writing, please visit her website or faculty page.