Alumni Voices: Becky Stanborough

Why I Am Taking Two Terms Off

1973. Two sisters are deep in a game with some bean bag dolls. The dolls are fending for themselves through a long, hard winter in the woods. There is trudging. There is hunger. There are wrenching soliloquys. Then the bean bag girls—Puffin and Jocelyn—build a schoolhouse out of red bible story books. Puffin herds her beanie children inside. Jocelyn stokes a fire in the imagined wood stove. Everything is always okay once they get inside the school.

I have been playing this game my whole life.

1988. I should be blowing on the sparks of my freelance career; instead, I am on a stepladder, painting the eaves of a schoolhouse red. That year, I write brochures, catalogues, copy for the backs of other people’s books. But my heart is in the schoolhouse, where we read Romeo and Juliet and paint canvas teepees with the juice of berries we stole from the woods.

Ponce de Leon Hall, Flagler College

2010. MFA in my back pocket, I pack a bag and head into the forest, this time for a week-long retreat with our Jane, Marsha C., and Phyllis. All week, writers sit knee to knee with their mentors, talking about their stories. They amble down dirt roads and over footbridges, still talking about their stories. At the end of that week, I take a job teaching at Flagler College. I want the life Jane, Phyllis, and Marsha have—not just the words on the page. I want the relationships they have with their students. My first term under Flagler’s red roof tiles, my classroom has a hearth in it.

Here’s the question I’ve been trying to answer recently: Am I a teacher who writes, or a writer who teaches?

It’s not a semantic distinction. At Flagler, I have written more than four hundred pages of lecture material and dozens of critique letters. But very few stories. I know that the first few years of teaching, when you’re creating courses out of thin air, there’s not a lot of creative energy left for story-drafting. Still, most Hamline professors and lots of graduates somehow balance the demands of the classroom with the demands of the book.

Maybe I lack discipline.

Maybe it gets easier once you master the courses.

Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe, feeling a little lost after graduation and facing a small flurry of rejections, I turned to the safest, warmest place I know.

Not that teaching is anxiety-free. Every single term, I stand in front of a new group of students, awash in strangely adolescent anxiety. What if they hate me? What if the soccer players in the corner laze audaciously like that all term? What if that girl is twisting her hair because she’s bored? Then, about week four, something happens. The students write an essay in which they tell me about the event that changed their lives forever, or if it is a fiction class, they submit their first manuscripts. I read them. I write back. And that is when love shambles in, barefoot and late, as usual. Ten essays and two workshops later, I don’t know how to let them go.

Once, I opened a note from a student I knew had been beaten and berated every day of her childlife. She had written, “I think I am Matilda, and you are my Miss Honey.” That kind of letter is lifeblood (though if I’m in a bleak mood I might call it a crack pipe). I start asking questions like, “Do I spend my time writing on the off chance something gets published, or do I help this person standing in front of me right now?”

And it’s not just the love that has me hooked. In the classroom, I’ll try anything. When I taught Skellig, I thought, What if, instead of talking about the book, we responded with a sculpture instead? I lugged a thirty-pound slab of clay into the room, made a whole bunch of mistakes about how best to cut and distribute it, and let everyone play. They sculpted owl-embellished branches, babies enfolded in petal cradles, and many other lumpy, indistinct things—and if ever a story celebrated the lumpy and indistinct, it is Skellig. What keeps me from turning myself loose like that on the page? Why don’t I relish the grand foolish writing mistake?

I don’t know. Here’s what I know: This year I turn fifty. I am deep in the game. All the time, I’m thinking about the teachers without whom I’d never have dreamed of writing, and the writers whose books saved me when I was in school. Heaven help me, I don’t know which one is more important, and I sure don’t know which one I’m better at. Two roads do diverge in the yellow wood, and all I know to do is wander back and forth between them, making my wrenching soliloquys.

***

Becky Stanborough is a January 2010 graduate of the MFAC program. She teaches and writes in Florida.

Faculty Voices: Marsha Wilson Chall

Recent School Visit—Brookfield Academy, Brookfield WI (suburb of Milwaukee, locally pronounced Mi-WAW-kee—Go West, Young Ls!)

DAY 1: Drive, not fly. Lots to transport:

1. Large dog prop with doggie disguises.
2. Small suitcase for stacks of demo-drafts, F&Gs, galleys, puppy masks (child disguises), train   whistle, bottled water, two Fiber One Bars. 
3. Box of extra books, just in case. 
4. Corgi-sized purse.
5. Other clothes (author disguise)

Dinner half-way (Osseo, WI): Subway. Young adult customer walked two blocks to save gas. Subway employee-friend says that didn’t save her much. Reminder—fuel up now.

Snack Stop Somewhere: Travelers’ Oasis. Small Turtle-Pecan Cluster Blizzard on premises. Read all greeting cards.

Arrival: Sheraton Brookfield. Complimentary membership in Sheraton Club (private lounge, business center, comp water/soda, daily Happy Hour—what? ).

Room: Well-appointed overlooking outdoor pool area—what? February.

Evening: Sanitize room (my problem—own it). Lay out toiletries and undergarments for morning, prep in-room coffee system, Fiber One Bar. TV Lite, low volume. Fractured sleep.

DAY 2: Primary School. Lost. Arrive 10 minutes late. Make morning assembly anyway. Saint Rene, Library Media Specialist, does FAQ about me with kids. Check into library. Equipment/Set-up successful. Four presentations. Three bathroom breaks. Sign books. Kindergarteners perform One Pup’s Up in puppy masks. Happy day!

Later: Sheraton Club Happy Hour! Comp appetizers—WI mozzarella sticks w/ marinara sauce; phyllo-wrapped asparagus. One wine ($4, not comp). Sated.

Much later: Not sated. Room service Veggie-wrap. Fade to black.

DAY 3: Upper School. Not lost. Morning assembly. Two hours meet-n-greet students. Great questions both ways. Boy named Ferris after namesake wheel. A sign! Wanted to write about Ferris Wheel for years. Lunch with Saint Stacey, Library Media Specialist, and teacher with artist-son. Publishing-Hamline-SCBWI talk (über-active WI chapter). Love Brookfield Academy. Thank you, thank you!

Return to Hotel: Gift shop. Buy souvenir snowflake hat. Shop owner works 12 hour shifts. No reliable help. Consider hiring on, esp for Sheraton Club’s comp appetizers. Not too great tonight—basic veggies/dip and meatballs. 

Homeward Bound: Night driving. Good Roads. Until…BLIZZARD. Snowblind. TRUCKS! Exit to Tomah? Pull over. Hazard lights. Pray. Wait. Pray. Road reappears. GO.

Later: Find Fiber One Bar. Demolish.

Home.

DAY 4: Dog. Laundry. Husband. Thank you notes. Notes of thanks.

Alumni Voices: Maggie Moris

Sign Post

  No writing is a waste of time ... It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding. I know that. Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.                                  

                                                                                        –Brenda Ueland

Ms. Ueland

You know what I say? Bully for Brenda, because please note, she arrived at her enlightened philosophy AFTER she was published.

This post is for the rest of us. Don’t get me wrong. I continue to believe with every expectant, hopeful cell of my long-numb fingers that my moment to be published is just around the bend.

With my bulging, Get-Ready-for-Me-World bag well packed, I stand poised on the platform, peer down the long curve of track, check my watch and wait for the train–The Official First Book Train.

Yup, here it comes.

Any day now

Any minute.

Any second and, yes!

A train, does indeed, arrive. Hooray! Friends and colleagues step forward into their reserved cars. I step forward too, but then the conductor puts a firm hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, Miss.”

The train pulls away. A few familiar hands flutter out the windows in farewell gestures of, “Better luck next time.” And then the train is going, going, gone.

Huh. Really?

Every time it happens, there is a hitch in my heart. But what to do? Stay? Leave? Abandon all hope? Throw myself on the tracks? Because, let’s be honest, why would any sane person continue to tilt at that damnably capricious publishing windmill–Brenda Ueland notwithstanding.

There is only one thing that keeps me going at the moment: A Sign.

What Sign? Truthfully, I can’t afford to be picky, and I suggest that you hold to my low standards. Be on the lookout for any Sign–any small, slim, slender, smidgen of serendipity to sustain you.

For example, my first middle-grade novel included a world of talking ravens. While I worked on the book, every time I spotted a crow or a raven, I took heart.

The latest book is completely different, so of course, the signs are, too.

Case in point. 2013 was a long, tough year of revising this novel for the umpteenth time.

On one particularly Doubt-Full day, I sent my main character, Zellie, off in a new direction. She had evolved from a fairly placid girl into a budding magician. She yearned to perform. She practiced her sleight of hand by rolling a quarter over and around her knuckles. I wrote a brand-new chapter, even as I wondered about the new direction.

(This was also the first time I revised a novel in isolation, without benefit of feedback from others. It was time to trust my own story compass to re-imagine the story from beginning to end.)

Maggie's dogs: Oliver (l) and O.Henry (r)

But, as I had in the days and weeks and months before, I wondered if I was on the right track. With no clear answer before me, I turned off the computer and took our dogs for a walk.

The sun shone. The breeze warmed. The dogs happily nosed their way along the outfield fences of a nearby ballpark as I dawdled behind, lost in thought and riddled with doubt. Then, as I approached the grassy area around the base of a field light, something winked at me.

I reached down and folded my fingers around an improbable find: a quarter.

A round, real, take-that-to-the-bank quarter.

In the flat of my palm, the quarter stared up at me with a dull gleam and waited for comprehension to dawn. Frankly, I was stunned. This had to be a sign, right?

In the words of all the other slack-jawed sooth sayers, sign-seekers and

beleaguered believers: Uh-yup.

The quarter resides beside my computer as a tangible token to hang in there.

My train will arrive. Some day, as long as I keep doing right by my characters and their stories, the locomotive will pull up with a gush of steam. The conductor will take my hand and I’ll be off because I’ve got what it takes and a ticket to ride–a two-bits ticket.

Your ticket, your proof, resides within whatever associations can be found that link your stories with the larger world and invisible energy stream that surrounds us. If you doubt, if you wonder, if you despair, try looking around. Pay attention. When you need it most, I hope you get a sign–a sign you can’t miss and one you can bank on.

***

Maggie Moris is a 2009 graduate of the Hamline University masters program in

Writing for Children and Young Adults. She’s been working on the nuts, bolts and business end of writing for fourteen years. She looks forward to reading your stories and knows that some day you’ll read hers, too. In the meantime, she recently launched a very new blog, Where The Horny Toad Lives. Hop on over for a visit to her first posts. No ticket required.