Book Lists

Good morning, Readers and Writers!

Happy Memorial Day! Summer is here….finally!

Here in Chicago, it seemed that the sun would never get here, but last week, our entire neighborhood turned green. It has been fun to get back to walking and riding. I find that when I walk/ride in silence, I often can solve my story’s problems. Often, I get new ideas.  Just by sitting back and observing others and listening to myself/nothing/the world, I often figure out what to write next. 

This is what I love about summer. Everyone is out. There are opportunities for eavesdropping. And I LOVE watching old people kiss on the beach.

But it is also a challenging time in terms of writing. In other words: the kids are coming home!

Don’t get me wrong: I love when the kids are here. College (and marriage and grad school) are changing them in all kinds of good ways. When they are in the house, there is more to do: more cooking, more relaxing, more outings, and more downtime with them. More catching up. All good things!!

Except when do I get my writing done? (Let’s not even get into my yoga schedule!)

That’s why, today, I want to talk about summer goals. Today, writers, I am going to challenge you to get your summer off to a great start!

Start with a calendar. And be HONEST. 

I write down all the visits and trips first. Then I ask: Will there be writing time? 

An hour? A half day? How about 15 minutes in the morning?

Even if that is all you have, commit to it.

Sometimes, however, the answer is NO. There will be NO writing time. 

If there is no time–if your kids need you or you have new responsibilities, or you are going on a magnificent vacation, no worries!

Just because you are a writer does not mean you can’t take an intentional break. I remember the first time I told Tim Wynne-Jones that I write 365days a year. He looked at me like I was crazy. I think he said, “Haven’t I taught you anything?

Take a break!

Let the ideas simmer!”

The first time I did it, I was scared. I was sure I would lose my ability to write a single word ever again for the rest of my life. (Yes, I can be dramatic.)  But when the vacation was over, and I sat down, I had new ideas. And a lot more energy for the project I wanted to start. I was inspired. (It’s also nice not to feel distracted all the time!)

Here are some tips to help you stay focused on your projects and writing life without having to ignore your responsibilities/kids/husband/beach/yoga class/fabulous vacation:

CARRY A JOURNAL….everywhere. That vacation may inspire observations that can go into a book. Jot them down and go back to whatever you were doing. If people ask what you are doing, tell them! When people find out I’m a writer, they always share GREAT stories.

READ. BINGE READ. READ OUT LOUD. Reading (in or out of genre) is the best way I know to get used to playing with words . . . and helping to find my voice.

GET THE KIDS INVOLVED! One summer, my daughter wrote book reviews for the local Indie bookstore. (Writing time!) Another summer, we each wrote a story and had a reading. It was fun! We made cupcakes!

I know people who have bound books with their kids, too. 

And if none of these things will work?  ENJOY YOURSELF. No regrets. The writing life is a long one. Open your eyes and ears and have an experience. Talk about it with others. Take (safe) chances. Kiss the kids! They never stay as long as you want them to.

DON’T FEEL GUILTY. You are still a writer!!!!  Listen. Look around. Observe gestures and listen to syntax and look for interesting places in your world. 

And if inspiration hits, the kids will understand. Tell them, today Mom is a writer, and go into your office and WRITE. 

Have a GREAT SUMMER!

Sarah Aronson grapples with guilt on a regular basis, but not when it comes to writing! 

A Bird on Water Street is the debut novel of author illustrator Elizabeth O. Dulemba, a frequent contributor to the SCBWI Bulletin and the Illustrator Coordinator for Southern Breeze, Board Member for the Georgia Center for the Book, and Visiting Associate Professor in the Hollins University MFA in Children’s Book Writing and Illustrating program.

Set during the 1980s, the book chronicles the 8^th grade year of Jack Hicks, who lives in Coppertown. The small  mining town sits at the southern tip of the Appalachian mountains in a denuded area known as the Copper Basin. There is a not a tree, a bug or a bird that lives in the area, and Jack, who does not want to be a miner like his father and grandfather before him, aims to change things. The Mixed Up Files was happy to catch up with Elizabeth and discuss her debut novel.

1) The completely devastated environment that these characters live in is rather bleak, not only are there no trees or birds, but there, the threat of death from working in the mines is ever-present. Yet you managed to show these characters also enjoying their lives through telling of tales and music. How did you manage to balance a sober story with the vitality of some of the characters?

First, thank you for having me on The Mixed Up Files. I’ve been a follower for a long time, so it’s an honor to be a guest!

The balance of the sobering environment versus the strong sense of community came from real life. My husband and I lived near Copperhill (called Coppertown in the book) for several years and we experienced the juxtapositions of the area first-hand. Nothing in the area was simply black or white, all good or all bad – it depended on your point of view. I loved swimming in these gray areas as I wrote. I wanted the reader to judge how they felt about the situation for themselves.

I also believe we make the best of where we land in this world. If you don’t know any different, how can you label your situation unique or unusual? Life goes on no matter where you live.

2) You have so many authentic details of life in Appalachia from the claw hammer banjo playing, to eating boiled peanuts, to music Fridays. You and your husband lived in Appalachia, yet you have painted a portrait of life decades ago in the past. How did you research what it was like to live in the Copper Basin during the 1980s?

 I’ve always been drawn to the mountains ever since I was a kid. I went to camp on Lookout Mountain every summer and was rocked to sleep each night by cicada song. Later, I hiked, camped, and picked blackberries all over the North Georgia Mountains fancying myself a wilderness woman. I was even a hang-glider pilot after college (in my thrill-seeker phase) and hiked, rock-climbed, and rafted my way through the southern Appalachians. So I’ve been experiencing these wonderful mountain nuances for most of my life.

For experiences outside my own, I interviewed tons of locals, miners and people who grew up in the Copper Basin. Most of the scenes in A BIRD ON WATER STREET have a thread of truth in them from the stories people shared.

3)   Your names of your characters say so much about what is going on. You have characters with the last name Rust, Slaughter and Chase. Even the creek is called Brawling Town. C’mon, this can’t be a coincidence? Tell us a little bit about how you came up with some of the wonderful names in the novel.

There were indeed reasons for the names I chose, although perhaps not what you would think. Most of them are real names and were fabulous on their own! My goal was to honor the people I already knew who were embedded in the story-behind-the-story in some way.

For instance, when we lived in the mountains, we lived on a feeder creek for “Fighting Town Creek” – so named because of American Indians who used to play a Lacrosse-like sport nearby. It became “Brawling Town Creek” in the book. “Chase” is for Richard Chase who was a story catcher and gathered Jack Tales into an anthology that’s been a big part of my life. (It’s why my main character is named “Jack.”) “Slaughter” is the real name of our neighbors there (one a famous writer who helped me in the early days of my career). And “Rust” is a family name – one that stood for large industry around the same time period. (I also liked the idea of rust being associated with metal – a sign of corrosion – even though copper doesn’t rust.)

So while they all do indeed have strong, symbolic meanings to me, they were not necessarily chosen for allusion purposes.

4)   I loved all of the references to the 1980s—the kids watch the Dukes of Hazzard, drink fifty cent RC Colas and Moon Pies. How much of this came from your own childhood and how much was research?

I loved the Dukes of Hazzard when I was a kid – I admit! And at that camp I mentioned… RC Colas and MoonPies were a big deal. Moon Pie was also a client of mine in my graphic design days before I became a writer/illustrator full-time. One of my favorite stories is when Jack steps on a copperhead while picking blackberries. When I read that scene at events, people think I made it up, but that was my story – I stepped on a copperhead in Devil’s Den. Really! Jack and I are also very much alike in our love and regard for nature. He feels it thrumming through him – like he’s connected to it. For him, trees truly are holy, as is the diversity of life within nature. That is definitely from my own childhood!

5)   There are difficult moments in the book, including accidents, death, a child with disabilities borne from an alcoholic mothers as well as mention of teen pregnancy and marijuana cultivation. You definitely don’t show the world through rose-colored glasses, but you also show lots of hope. What line did you have to walk in terms of showing the world that you had researched.

I made sure everything in the story is experienced through Jack’s eyes, with his limited scope and experience. He doesn’t understand the world yet – not completely. He’s learning about these controversial topics for the first time and isn’t jumping to snap opinions like we, as adults, might.

It’s part of why I love writing for this age group – character is still being formed at this age. The reader can’t assume that a character will be or do one thing or another, because even that character doesn’t know. There is no default behavior in place, like there is so often with adults. There’s still room for change and awareness.

In A BIRD ON WATER STREET, controversial things occur off-screen, in Jack’s periphery, as things often do in life. Just as no man is an island, no story stands alone. Story arcs from other characters’ experiences intersect Jack’s. But by keeping the point of view limited to him, I was able to present them in a more innocent way.

I also tried hard not to impress my views upon the reader. I’m sure my biases snuck through, but I tried to be nonjudgmental.

6)  What was the best thing you learned from the process of writing a Bird on Water Street?

I learned that I am indeed a writer. I was always an artist – an illustrator. That skill was identified at a young age. And even though I was always illustrating the stories that filled my head, I didn’t know that I could write – not really. It’s thrilling to be able to finally share my stories with confidence.

But the best part of writing A BIRD ON WATER STREET has been the people, the support I’ve received from fellow writers as well as the locals who have shared their stories and histories with me since the book came out. I can’t tell you what an honor it is to know that I’ve responsibly relayed a community’s history in a way that makes them proud.

Thank you again for having me on!

Hillary Homzie is the author of The Hot List (Simon & Schuster MIX 2011) and Things Are Gonna Be Ugly (Simon & Schuster, 2009). She can be found at hillaryhomzie.com and on her Facebook page.

Hello Mixed-Up Filers!

Is it that time already? Really?

Wow, two months sure does seem to fly by at times. It seems like I barely have time to press submit, watch two or three comments come in on my post, answer them, catch up on my TV shows, read a few books, ponder the meaning of life, and then before I turn around and it’s my time to go again.

So keeping all of that in mind, I know recently there’s been a huge write-in campaign for me to go once every seven and a half weeks instead of two months, so I just wanted to let everyone know, that while I appreciate the cries for me to undertake a possible seven and a half week time frame, I just can’t imagine keeping up with that type of grueling schedule.

So until then, I’m once again faced with my usual dilemma, What to write about?  I always find it tough, since as it is, I don’t think my posts fall into the category of normal or usual for this or for that matter, any other site. I mean, when I looked back over my last couple of entries, I realized that they’ve been more or less, some form  of therapy sessions. Well, that’s when that light-bulb dinged and went off over my head. My writing, besides enjoyment for me, is and always has been, a kind of therapy. For whatever reason, I seem to do my best when I’m down or depressed. Now, I don’t actively seek that by any means. After all, who likes to be depressed? But, when it does happen, I find that the writing pours out of me.

As I stated in my last post, I’m a very private person, and yet somehow when I write, everything personal just comes pouring out. I know writing is personal  and solitary anyway, but things like this blog are a weird phenomenon to me. I find myself talking about things that I would never, ever want to say to anyone else in person. But, there is still that feeling of anonymity here, even though I know and know full well, that there might be some who actually read this. True, according to my history, that number is usually reserved for just one or two people, one of whom may or may not be my mother, but still, it feels “safe” to write here.

Whenever I do write for myself, or for a place such as this site, I let everything out. I get more “real” than I am at any other time. For example, earlier tonight, I was forging through my latest WIP, when the emotions hit me. You see, this one is very personal to me. Without going into too much detail, I find it hitting me hard at times. Sometimes, so much so, that it becomes difficult to continue. The reasons for which are silly in my mind, because I’m nothing like the main character. I don’t have anything in my life that resemble that of my character, but there is still something there that I associate with personally, and wow…sometimes, I just need to stop and take a break, while at other times, I push myself on and write through the emotions. That is when my best writing seems to occur. (Yes, that is an opinion! J ).

I do notice, that when I stay away from writing too long, it calls me back. I feel the need and the urge. It is like a drug in that way. I need it. I need it for my rehab. For my sense of well-being. For my mental-health. I need it to fight the demons I have going on inside and to heal my psyche. In writing, I get to control the turmoil…at times. Because, as every writer knows, sometimes, those pesky creations seem to have a life and mind of their own. But, I am ultimately their master.

As I put this down on paper, (Screen) I see that I actually smiling, since I realize that I’m making myself out to be far more tortured and perhaps psychotic, than I wanted, but remember, demons do come in different shapes and forms, so please nobody stage an intervention for me. Yet. Really, I’m fine. Well, as fine as anybody who chooses to undertake writing as their passion can be.  But, I’m fine. As long as I continue my therapy.