Becoming a writer

I just celebrated my birthday. Since I happened to be spending some time in my childhood home, I started thinking about how Jane the writer came to be.

I grew up in a place called Fairy Chasm. Over a hundred years ago, one of the residents thought the children resembled fairies as they skipped along the paths. 

Chasm is another name for ravine, but it sounds much darker, more mysterious, like these woods right behind my house.

My bedroom was in the attic. This is a picture of the desk my dad built for me, tucked under the eaves. 

The most import part of the room were two large bookshelves, full of old books that had been treasured by generations of children. Mary Poppins, Wizard of Oz, Ivanhoe, Wuthering Heights.

But the real reason I became a writer is because of what was at the end of the lane. 

This path led to other paths. Some were only in my mind. But all eventually emerged at the shore of Lake Michigan, where there were no boundaries except some place way off in the distance, where water met sky.

Good-bye, Columbus!

Alas, I'm not that writer-in-residence at Thurber House anymore. 

It's wonderful to be back with my family and friends in Brooklyn, 

but I miss a lot about Columbus, Ohio. 

I learned so much from teaching the young writers.  

The teenage writers were so articulate and passionate about their work. 

They made me feel smarter just by talking with them.

The younger writers were so enthusiastic and creative

--even on days when they weren't wearing costumes!

I felt part of a great community of writers who had spent time in Columbus. 

I was honored to autograph the wall after my appearance 

at Cover to Cover, an amazing independent bookstore. 

The city itself was so beautiful. 

I loved being able to walk or ride my bike along the Scioto River. 

This Topiary Park was just a few blocks from Thurber's House. 

Seeing the familiar from a new perspective inspired me 

whenever I walked among these figures based on 

Seurat's painting of A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. 

I'm grateful to everyone at Thurber House 

for making me feel so welcome

 and always being willing to laugh with me. 

I miss everything about my month in Columbus.  

Did I mention the ice cream?

Looking for the ghost

Staying at the Thurber House has been very inspirational. Some of the stories James Thurber wrote were based on things that actually happened in this house—including “The Night The Ghost Got In.”  Many people who have worked here have had their own ghost encounter. Since my second novel is about a haunted house, I expected that I would too.

But I didn’t. I slept undisturbed. I heard no thumps. I felt no brush of cobwebs. Now as a writer I've learned that you can’t always wait for inspiration to pay you a visit. Sometimes you must be brave and go look for it. Especially if it is something disturbing.

So one night, that’s what I did.

I waited until dark. I turned off all the lights. With only the faint glow of my cell phone, I crept down the same stairs where James Thurber had heard the thumps almost a hundred years ago. All my senses were alert. But I didn’t see or feel anything. And then, as I turned the corner and stood upon the bottom step, I saw something glowing beneath the dining room floorboards.

I gasped and grabbed the newel post. I seemed to see the light pulse. Or maybe I was the one who was trembling.

When I leaned closer to take this photograph, I realized what it was. Someone had left the light on in the basement.

There was a logical explanation. And yet nothing could have persuaded me to go down there to turn off that light.

"Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast"

I’m staying in James Thurber’s house in Columbus, Ohio.  I’m honored to be this year’s Thurber House Children’s Writer in Residence. I can’t believe a week has already passed since I arrived. Everyone here is so welcoming, and rightfully proud of how much their city has to offer. I’ve only started to go exploring, because I've been busy writing my new novel.

I’ve already done some great work here – how could I help it with this as a writing space?

Okay, I’m kidding. That’s the desk in James Thurber’s bedroom.

This is a picture of my own. Even if I'm not actually able to sit at his desk, it’s so inspiring to be here.  I feel connected not just to Thurber, but to all the dozens of other writers who have stayed in the attic. Who've heard the ghostly creak of the stairs. Who've watched the storm clouds cross the Ohio sky from the garret window. Who've left a bit of themselves behind on the bookshelf. Thank you all for keeping me company!

This past week, I’ve given workshops to five different groups and met nearly one hundred young writers. I envy their imaginations and I'm impressed by how bravely they worked. Some had never written a story before. I'm sure some others have already written more books than I have.

After giving a workshop at the Worthington Library, I got the chance to share some tea in the children's section with another favorite literary figure of mine. 



That reminded me of something the Queen tells Alice in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. "Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Staying here in James Thurber's house makes it easy to believe impossible things!

After The Storm

"SANDY REMIX"

I'm standing in "Sandy Remix"
(photo by Katherine Koch)

I wasn’t in New York City when Hurricane Sandy hit last October. But when I returned to my park soon after, I was shocked to see how many trees had fallen. There were mountains of broken branches and trunks. Eventually most were chipped into mulch and so returned to the earth. But a few lucky bits of wood were used by the tree-house architect, Roderick Wolgamott Romero, to build "Sandy Remix."

You can go in it, as I did the other day, when you visit the Brooklyn Botanic garden. It’s amazing. Who could resist climbing up to stand in what feels like a giant bird’s nest?  Especially on a beautiful spring day, when flowers are unfolding everywhere.

One tree house can’t compensate for all the destruction, but it’s important to find what good we can in any disaster. When I was a kid, somehow I figured out that almost any ordeal could be easier to endure by thinking what a great story it would make afterwards.

In that way, my bout with cancer became part of my new novel about a parrot and a girl who’s forgotten how to try.

Life goes on. And trees toppled by a hurricane become a new vantage point from which to appreciate nature.

A VARIATION ON A WRITING ROUTINE

Sit down.

Get up to go get coffee.

Sit down.

Try to move the cat. Fail. Turn on the computer anyway.

Start typing (which isn’t the same as writing but sometimes occurs before the coffee has taken effect).

Notice the battery is getting low.

Get up to find computer cord.

Plug in cord. Realize that computer isn’t charging. Jiggle cord. Replug cord. Notice that computer STILL isn’t charging. Get incredibly frustrated because without computer there can't even be typing.

Somewhere power is being created by coal and water and wind. Power surges through cables and is tamed by transformers. Power enters my apartment and waits in an outlet, ready to be used. After I plug the cord into the outlet, I can see the green light glowing at the end of the cord. Power is there! However my computer rejects the power. For reasons of its own (which I have given up trying to understand), it prefers to use its battery. Even though it knows and is telling me that the battery has only 11 minutes left, no, 10, now 9, 8 . . .

Realize that this is a metaphor for a human condition. Denying the good. The Greeks probably had a better name for it, which I don't know.

So I repeat what E.M. Forster said:  “Only Connect.”

Connect to the world. Don’t be isolated. You can't make it on your own. Why would you even want to when it's infinitely better to connect?

WELL-ROUNDED CHARACTERS

For the past few months, I’ve been doing workshops at Writopia Lab. As a published author, I’m supposed to be the leader. But I learn as much as I teach.

Click here for more info about Writopia!

One young writer wrote a piece in which a woman fell in love with a passionate composer. The woman was supposed to marry another man who was more practical. I assumed the young writer wouldn’t care much about the boring guy. I was wrong. The young writer said that she actually liked that character. She could see the good in him. I was the one who had succumbed to a preconceived notion.

Any piece of writing is much more interesting if the characters are a mix of likeable and disagreeable traits. Then something surprising can happen. Those unexpected twists are what readers crave.

In my first novel, Nature Girl, I wrote about a girl who was mad at her family. That provided a lot of the humor, but some readers wondered if she had to be quite so angry. Maybe she didn't have to fight with her family all the time?

When I started writing my new book, The Desperate Adventures of Zeno and Alya, I fell into a similar trap. My amazing editor Liz Szabla helped me find ways to enrich the relationships. The novel is much stronger because there's real affection between Dr. Agard and his parrot Zeno, even though Zeno still believes his owner is his servant.

I can’t help but think that I need to apply this lesson to people I meet. I live in New York City--I’m going to get annoyed. (Don’t get me started on the people who throw trash on the subway tracks!) But wouldn’t we all be better off, as writers and readers and children and parents, if we treated everybody as well-rounded characters?