FREE VERSE

by Kathy Cannon Wiechman

My mother was a published poet for children, and her poetry was essentially Rhyme and Meter. When I rattled off original lines from the top of my head, she decided to teach me the right way to do it. I was five.

Her preferred style was perfect rhyme, scansion without flaw, so that’s what she taught me. With the rare exception of school assignments to do otherwise, I wrote only Rhyme and Meter. Perfect rhyme that always scanned. Always. And my published poems have all been that type of poem.

In more recent years, I’ve met poets who prefer their meter imperfect, so it doesn’t sound “sing-song.” I can’t write it that way. Mom wouldn’t approve. A missed beat grates on my ears. The sing-song part comes from the way it is read, not necessarily the way it is written.

Less than a dozen years ago, I tried my first free verse poem that wasn’t assigned. People had told me for years that my prose tends to be poetic anyway, so I decided to dip my toe in that stream. My subject matter was a serious one, the death of a baby. Without the rules of rhyme and meter, I self-imposed other rules. I used the same words in different ways. I wrote two verses in two opposite moods. Free verse, I was taught, shouldn’t be totally free.

After that, I went back to the prose I love and the form of poetry that had been comfortable all my life. But a person needs a challenge now and again.

At our Rich Wallace reunion in 2011, Gina Gort (retired Swagger) encouraged each of us to write an individual and personal version of George Ella Lyon’s poem WHERE I’M FROM. George Ella’s poem is free verse, so I waded in once again. (If you want to see the result, click here.)

Gina Gort’s poetry continues to inspire me. Another retired Swagger, Juliet Bond, gave free verse a try as well, and just blew me away with a few of her pieces.

While I like well-written free verse, I confess I am not a huge fan of the Novel-in-Verse. When Karen Hesse wrote OUT OF THE DUST more than 15 years ago, she set a very high bar, and too many authors have attempted poor imitations which read more like prose chopped into short lines than true free verse. I stayed away from them in my reading choices and vowed never to write one.

But writer friends have written them, and some very well. I recently decided to give them another chance. I immersed myself, reading several in a row, finding a few good ones (ETCHED IN CLAY by Andrea Cheng, MAKE LEMONADE by Virginia Euwer Wolff, and INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN by Thanhha Lai, to name a few).


As I took my daily walk one afternoon, thinking over an incident from the night before, I found the incident falling into my mind in short snippets of verse. Free verse! I came back to my computer and wrote. Characters emerged to act out the incident, and a story grew around them. I never saw it coming. I was writing a Novel-in-Verse. Whether it will be good or not remains to be seen, but I never shy away from what the Muse sends me. This time she sent me something that went against the grain. She gave me a challenge. OK, Muse, challenge accepted.

Time Travel

www.comicvine.com

by Kim Van Sickler

By pure chance, three of the last books I've read treated time as a fluid concept. The designations between past, present and in one case, the future blurred. Events in the past were shown to have enormous significance further along in time. And the stories were told via the narrator(s) gliding back and forth to different time periods, furthering the impression that time was elastic and we, the readers, were time travelers.

I thought this mode of storytelling was fun and exciting, and kept the reader on her toes for actual time travel books like Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife.

And it follows that we'd slip back and forth in time in the book I'm currently reading, M.J. Rose's The Reincarnationist. The main character in this book is seriously injured in a bomb blast, and when he recovers, finds himself especially attuned to two of his past lives: one a hundred years ago, and one, closer to seventeen hundred years earlier.

But this time slipping device was also used quite effectively by A.S. King in Please Ignore Vera Dietz . The story starts in the present, but then chapters jump back and forth between the past and present until Vera comes to terms with what she needs to do for herself and her dead former best friend Charlie...and does it. The time travel aspect of storytelling here is purely for the benefit of illustrating how Vera has to come to terms with her past to fix her future. There's a bonus of a parallel story involving her father. And the book spotlights how our past actions (or inactions) can come back to haunt us. King could have told her tale chronologically, but she opted for a nonlinear way to communicate with us. It was an effective way to pull me in, keep me actively engaged, and connect the dots.


And for a story that takes time and turns it on its head, there's Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad.  There isn 't one star in this book, but rather a series of characters who rub up against one another, leaving a lasting effect. Each chapter is another opportunity for Egan to turn the tables on us, leaving us to navigate which character, at which point in their life, is narrating, and how the chapters interrelate. This is POV time travel on steroids. Nothing is off limits here, even traveling into the future. For readers who like twists and turns and scenic routes in their storytelling, this book is a must read.

tessiedesigncompany.blogspot.com

This mode of storytelling seemed like it would be an effective way to tell my current WIP: The Mall at Gullybrook. So, I'm trying it. My YA WIP is a story of the kidnapping of three American teenagers from the same small town American mall to serve the sex slave industry. It skips back and forth over a two-year period. Time is the girls' enemy, and their friend. Time allows them to either remember or forget; plan for the future or give up. It really is a powerful literary construct.

Have you read any of the books I've mentioned here, or others that allow you to slip between past, present, and/or future with ease? Do you find it disconcerting or exhilarating? Have you tried writing that way yourself?

Lets Go Mining!

by Jon Egan

http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/walrus.html

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

from "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll

One of my favorite stanzas from one of my favorite poems, and my friends, the time has definitely come.…I have not written a word of creative or non-creative anything (unless my resume counts as creative writing?) for months, and months, and well, you get my point!

So much has happened, and so much has not happened, since the last time I put pen to, ummm actually…fingers to keyboard.

So I’ll attempt to give a quick recap on what the past six months have been like.

 Over one hundred and fifty job applications submitted
 Over one hundred and forty-six non responses
 Three interviews
 Two job offers
 Both out-of-state
 Working a young man's job for six weeks!

Okay, so I realize the first two bullet points are probably painfully familiar to any writer who’s reading this (substituting job aps for manuscripts of course!) but finally I landed a job in Northern Nevada at a gold mine, and I am so grateful, and so tired, and so tired, and grateful. It’s been over thirty years since I stepped foot in a mine of any sort, but it feels like I never left, except for the fact that my body did in fact leave and is still fighting with me to stay away. In fact, on more than a few occasions it's quoted that famous line to me once uttered by Greta Garbo… yes that one! “I Vant To Be Alone.”

Usually at 3 am when I’m reaching over to turn off my alarm clock it begins. The whining repetition of the line, begging me to stay in bed. Home, by the way, is now a twenty-six foot, fifth-wheel trailer sitting in a dirt RV park in Winnemucca, but believe me it looks every part the Hollywood mansion when I pull up in front of it seventeen hours after I leave! Did I mention this is a young man's job?



Talk about a shock to the system: 3 am alarm, breakfast, wash, brush teeth, grab lunch from fridge, by 3:30 am catch the mine bus, by 4 am leave the bus lot, arrive at mine at 5:30 am and work till 6 pm, ride bus back to town and arrive at lot by 7:30 pm, drag bum to truck and drive home to aforementioned Hollywood mansion, shower, make snack for dinner, make lunch for tomorrow, set coffee, climb into bed and lights out by 9 pm!  TIRED never felt so bloody good though. I consider myself extremely lucky to have landed the position.

I get to fly home and see Patty every other week, for three or four days, and those are precious times.

So the point of this lil post isn’t to get everybody to say,"Awww poor bugger." (Although sympathy is always welcome. Patty dishes it out in good supply, but one can never get enough!) No the point of this is actually a comparison to what we writers go through.

As I said earlier, we sit down and write our hearts out hoping that the jumble of words we arrange on paper will entice the reader to move beyond the opening lines and somehow get caught up in the story we crafted. Once we have crafted our piece, had friends read it,and make adjustments based on their input, we send it out into the world. We pray, or we chant, or we drink, or we do whatever it is we do while we wait with everything crossed, that someone did in fact read and like some part of it enough to follow up and ask for more. So we fine tune it and present ourselves again.

We wait again, we try not to read into the length of time that elapses, and when we realize that it’s been an inordinate amount of time, we struggle with ourselves. Should I call, follow up in some manner, or do I wait for that reader, or interviewer to pick up the phone or drop me an email. I can't stand it, so I call and leave voice mails. Am I being a nuisance or is this a positive trait?

Finally we get the call and it’s negative. “Sorry, you’re overqualified.” “Sorry, your story just wasn’t right for us. Although we did enjoy it, there’s just something that doesn’t work for us! (WELL CRAP! Tell me what it is and I’ll fix it!)

Then it happens. We get that positive response… yes we love the piece, or the manuscript, or your resume, and we’d like to work with you, or we’d like you to work with us, and here’s what we would like you to do. Go out and buy a trailer, because every man and his dog has already moved here so there’s no accommodation, and move out-of-state, and work the way you did when you were nineteen or twenty. Kiss your wife goodbye and tell her you’ll get home when you can, and face off against that inner self that says I can't do this, and smack it in the mouth, and punch it in the nose, and beat that voice into submission, because you can’t doubt your ability to get through this.

Isn’t that the same as getting a positive response from an editor, or an agent? Don’t we work like mad dogs and Englishmen out in the midday sun? Don’t we doubt ourselves, and our ability to get through the re-write or the edits or changing the whole story? Don’t we sweat and question every choice of word or phrase, in the hopes that if we craft it just right we’ll be a success, and just like my new job, I don’t need to be a best seller, although it would be nice, because then I could maybe get onto permanent day shift.

http://www.jokeroo.com/pictures/dogs/hello-im-a-mad-dog-you-want-to-play-with-me.html

Three weeks ago I was doubting my ability to push through the hardship, and I was struggling with the physicality of my new job, and my psyche was doing everything it could to come up with a reason to pack up my Hollywood mansion and head home to California, but I beat it. I managed to come to terms with what I’m doing, and I accepted that I’m exactly where I need to be at exactly the right time in my life.

It finally occurred to me that I am a writer, and as a writer I’ve fought these same issues and I gave up on them. Now I realize that I gave up too early. I look at the Kathy Wiechman’s, and the Melissa Kline’s, and the Kim Van Sickler’s, and I realize that they went Gold Mining and they had the character to fight through the hardships. They get on the bus every morning at 3:30 am, and I need to stop with the excuses and get my writing out there, because eventually I will get that positive response, and the struggle will be worth it.

So if you’re stuck in that dusty RV Park with me, all I can say is, Too Bloody Bad! Get off your bum and get writing, and don’t stop, writer. Write! (But it’s okay if you wanna have a bit of a whinge every now and then. Drop me a line and I’ll talk you off the ledge.)

UNWORKSHOPPING

by Kathy Cannon Wiechman

If you read about the Swagger Writers on the left side of this blog, you’ll see that we met at Highlights Foundation workshops at Boyds Mills.

I attended my first Highlights Foundation workshop at Chautauqua in 1999. Now they do all their workshops at their Boyds Mills property near Honesdale, PA. And what a beautiful place it is! I went there for the first time in 2001.

I have attended quite a few workshops there since then. Why do I keep going back? It is more than the beautiful wooded setting, more than the excellent faculty, more than the delicious food and pampering the attendees receive. There is always one-on-one time with faculty members, ever-present experts to help you with whatever issue you’re dealing with. I have learned more about writing for young readers in that place than I learned in the many classes and conferences I’ve been to over the years. (I also learned to load and fire a muzzleloader so I could write a Civil War scene more accurately, but that’s another story.)

And last year, the Highlights Foundation added something new! The Unworkshop (aka: Unguided retreat). No faculty members for this, but an editor from the Highlights/Boyds Mills offices occasionally dropped by to join us at mealtime.

As with the workshops, I had my own private cabin (with bath). Three times a day, at mealtimes, I walked a short distance to a place called The Barn (a gorgeous new building completed two years ago), where they served great food that fit all my dietary needs. Over meals, I got to know the other writers in attendance.

While Highlights Foundation workshops are intended for Writers for children, the Unworkshop is for ANY writer who wants time to write. At the October Unworkshop I attended, a mother-and-daughter writing duo came. Mother Rosemary writes for kids, but daughter Alicia writes for adults.

At my most recent Unworkshop (April 24-May 4), a writer named Erin and I got together after supper one evening to read first chapters to one another. It was up to us how we wanted to spend our time.
Erin signed up for only four days, while I signed up for the whole week. That’s another perk of the Unworkshop. The writer decides how much and which part of the available time, he/she wants to attend. And the price is based on how long you stay.

Kathy's latest Unworkshop crew.

In between those social meals with writers (and whichever editor may have stopped in), I was free to write. At my own pace. On whatever I chose to write.

I have now attended two Unworkshops. At the first, I worked on a first draft of my most recent novel, and at the second, I revised a previous novel. When something in Chapter 32 brought up an issue first hinted at in Chapter 10, it was still fresh in my mind because I’d worked on it just a few days before. These retreats are ideal for FOCUS.

I amazed myself with how much work I could do (37 revised chapters this last time) when there was no phone, no TV, no chores to do. My mind was never distracted by thoughts of a meal that needed cooked or a floor that needed mopped. There was no listening for a dryer to buzz or watching the clock to check the oven or crockpot. I was In. The. Zone. And it was fantastic!

I did take a break every afternoon to walk along the creek or one of the trails, but otherwise I wrote ALL DAY. For me, it was Heaven. Other writers might spend less time writing. But that’s the joy of it. It was up to each of us to plan our day. 

The Highlights Foundation also offers Guided Retreats, where authors or editors are on site to set up critiques or answer questions. With no structured sessions, writing time is up to individuals, with as much help (or as little) from the faculty as needed.

With guided retreats, unguided retreats, short workshops, long workshops, workshops on picture books, nature writing, fiction, non-fiction, novels in verse, Young Adult, fantasy, historical fiction, and so much more, the Highlights Foundation has something for every writer (and illustrator, too).

For more information, go to here.

Maybe I’ll see you there one of these days. Because I’m definitely going back.

Secondary Characters Bloghop Star

by Kim Van Sickler

I almost didn't profile this character for the Secondary Characters Bloghop...because I figured everyone would choose him. His book portrayal was complicated and riveting, and his on-screen presence blew me away.

I'm talking about Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series.

Here's our first glimpse of him in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Professor Quirrell, in his absurd turban, was talking to a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin.

It happened very suddenly. The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell's turban straight into Harry's eyes — and a sharp, hot pain shot across the scar on Harry's forehead.

"Ouch!" Harry clapped a hand to his head. 

"What is it?" asked Percy.

"N-nothing."

The pain had gone as quickly as it had come. Harder to shake off was the feeling Harry had gotten from the teacher's look — a feeling that he didn't like Harry at all.

Is Snape friend or foe? Voldemort's right hand or a wizard who renounced the Dark Arts and is acting as Dumbledore's spy?

We, the readers, teeter back and forth through seven whole books. He hates Harry Potter. Look at how he picks on him in Potions class! But he's teaching him to steel his mind against Voldemort. Yes, he's hard on Harry during those classes, but isn't it so that Harry will succeed? Except that we learn that Harry's father bullied Snape! Of course that's reason enough for Snape to hate Harry and wish him harm. But Snape loved Harry's mother! That's reason enough for him to feel protective of her son!

I am going to go so far as to say that the BIG QUESTION of whether Snape is good or evil is the most suspenseful character mystery of all time!

Even when we think we know the answer, there's more information to come that turns what we thought on its head. This man has more layers than a wasps' nest.

As if J.K. Rowling's character development of Snape isn't perfect enough, along comes actor Alan Rickman to bring him to the movie screen. That oily, caressing, condescending voice of his! It sends thrills down my spine! That straight black hair! So severe, yet it frames that expressive face like a curtain. That face! Sexy, yet repulsive at the same time! OMG! I love him and hate him. One thing for sure, he steals every scene he's in.

He knew what a treasure trove he'd been given. The role challenged him so much as an actor that when it was over, he took out a full-page ad to thank J.K. Rowling for writing it.


Severus Snape...scintillating...meaty...complicated. A character study in contrasts. Bloody brilliant.

TREASURE

by Kathy Cannon Wiechman

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I was on my way home from kindergarten when I spotted something white and made of wood, sticking out of a neighbor’s trash can. I pulled it out to find a broken knickknack shelf.

I dragged it home. “Look what I found, Daddy!”

Dad could have said, “It’s trash, Kathy. Put it back where you found it.” But he didn’t. He repaired it, gave it a fresh coat of white paint, and hung it in my room.

The knickknacks have changed over the course of five decades, while it hung on walls in my different houses and apartments. It has been repainted and repaired again. It hung in my daughters’ room for awhile, and now it hangs in my office above the desk where I write each day. It reminds me of the man who turned trash into just-one-more reason to treasure him.

I share this story with you today because May 16th marks 20 years since my dad died, and I still miss him every day.

Twenty years ago, my family asked if I would write a poem to be read at his funeral.

“I’ll write it,” I said, “but I won’t read it.” I didn’t think crying and blubbering and reading garbled words was the right way to honor my father. So my daughter read it.

As a father and grandpa, you’ve given much more
Than your love and your welcome concern.
For they say that we learn by examples we see,
And you’ve given us plenty to learn.

We have grown up observing a man who could care
While he taught us the right from the wrong.
We have learned by your love and devotion to God
And we’ve witnessed your faith ever strong.

You have had to endure lots of problems with us
From the big ones to some very small,
But you showed us that hard work when tempered with love
Makes us able to get through them all.

It was plain you were tender and knew it’s OK
To let sentimentality show.
You have taught us to honor tradition and roots
And you still have allowed us to grow.

We watched your good examples, but if we would choose,
Second only to God up above,
The example we’ve taken the most to our hearts:
The importance of family love.

We will need all that love just to give us the strength
To get through the days you’re not there.
We’ll continue to pray for each other and trust
That our Dad is in God’s loving care.

It’s been twenty years since Kelly read those words at Dad’s funeral. Just listening, I cried and blubbered. Today, tears fall on my keyboard as I still miss the man who made laugh-out-loud jokes about his bald head, the man who walked me down the aisle at my wedding, the man who babysat his grandkids so I could attend church, the man who turned trash into treasure.

Spinning History

by Kim Van Sickler

History is written by...people. People with their own agendas, biases, opinions, and artistic flairs. Over time, events and people are romanticized or vilified. Even though the evidence might point to a very different reality. Frankly, it's fascinating to me how we've come to accept certain historical stories as facts. And since I was just in Gettysburg, here are some of my favorites from that era.

John Brown. He's known as a devout abolitionist, and credited with triggering the Civil War that ended slavery. As an elementary school student I was taught that he was a hero, but there is certainly another side to that story. Like why did he take it upon himself and his band of sons to travel to the homes of pro-slavery advocates in Franklin County, KS, order them outside, interrogate them, and assasinate them? Pre-Harper's Ferry, John Brown had dropped out of his Congregational ministry studies and tried and discarded careers as a tanner, wool merchant, land surveyor, and farmer. He was married twice, father to 20 children, and directly influenced by his father, a staunch abolitionist. Some could and would say he was a shiftless loser. Post-Harper's Ferry, he was a martyr for racial equality.

Tragic Prelude by John Steuart Curry

Secretary of State William H. Seward. A fervent abolitionist, he was another polarizing figure. He wanted to be president, but was passed over for the Republican nomination in favor of the less radical Lincoln. Lincoln made him his Secretary of State and insisted he keep the position even when he wanted to resign right before Lincoln's inauguration. The Academy Award-nominated film Lincoln portrays Seward as the politician who is largely responsible for lining up the votes for the passage of the 13th Amendment. Seward scholars say that's accurate. Not what we were taught in school. In school it was all Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln. I never even heard that the assassination of Lincoln was a coordinated effort with simultaneous attacks on Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Seward was in bed recovering from broken ribs and a broken jaw from a carriage accident when his would-be killer jumped on top of him with his dagger and slashed up his face and neck. Yet he lived. Wow. This guy needs his own movie.

In the movie Lincoln, Seward takes it upon himself to engage in the backroom dealing necessary to get the 13th Amendment passed.

Pickett's Charge. The tide was turning in the three-day Battle of Gettysburg and Cemetery Ridge was still barely under Union control. General Robert E. Lee couldn't bare to leave it that way and decided to stop fighting the flanks and go for the middle. He ordered General Longstreet to take the center of Cemetery Ridge, so Longstreet in turn assigned three of his divisions to do the job. In the 1993 movie Gettysburg, Longstreet agonizes over this bold directive, fearing it would fail, and by golly he was right. For 3/4 of a mile, Maj. General George Pickett's division led the march across open fields towards the hunkered in Union Army. A move that historians have disagreed about ever since. Was Lee's order a brave attempt to win a close battle, or a grandiose gesture that ensured the Confederates' defeat?

Confederates walking straight into cannon and rifle fire in Gettysburg (Courtesy of the movie Gettysburg.)  

What's one of your favorite historical dramas?