Charles Emery’s voice

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’m working on a middle grade series. I’ve recently paused writing the second story to edit the first.

At a conference last fall I had the opportunity to read the first six pages of the first novel aloud to a group of twenty-five writers and the accomplished author/editor Arthur A. Levine.  In preparation I spent a day tweaking the brief introduction to the book. Arthur’s advice was to carry the voice of the narrator in that introduction throughout the novel, and I might have something worthwhile.

After the conference, I reread my manuscript and discovered serious inconsistencies in the narration. One voice was enthusiastic and immature.; another, brusque and flashy.  A third seemed unfocused. The only voice worth hearing was indeed the the plain, confident one in the introduction. Who was that? I searched my memory for the face of someone I knew who spoke like that. One wrong face after another appeared in my imagination before I recalled that of Charles Emery (pictured).

The late Mr. Emery was my high school coach and English teacher at the Fountain Valley School of Colorado.  He was an extremely reserved but approachable man in his forties. His teaching manner can best be described as deliberate. He gave good lectures supporting his positions with historical facts and passages from the text. Students could always tell when Mr. Emery was about to read. He would lean back in his chair, lower his half-moon glasses, and tip his head up slightly.   He read us Chaucer, Shakespeare and Donne in his naturally low timbre. There was a resonant, Gregorian hum to his voice that caught the ear. He spoke almost without inflection. The poignancy and emotion of the stories were carried rather in the occasional pause or drop in volume.  He read to a room filled with sixteen-year-old boys, none of whom ever spoke over him. I recall closing my own eyes or staring out through the window, not to avoid his performance, but to focus on it more intently.

Mr. Emery – Chuck, as he insisted I call him in our few correspondences years later - was a decorate war hero (UDT in WWII). He was a champion handball player and had been a scholar at Columbia University. He never spoke of any of this to us. We learned about it in murmurs from the seniors. I never saw him brag, or swagger, or speak sharply to anyone.

I’ll never have Charles Emery’s voice, but always carry it with me, perhaps feebly into my own little stories.

Here’s a bit more about Mr. Emery from the school. As you will see, I’m hardly alone in my praise of him.

http://www.fvs.edu/podium/default.aspx?t=204&tn=FVS+bids+goodbye+to+Senior+Master+Emeritus+Charles+F.+Emery+’38&nid=367998&ptid=39771&sdb=False&pf=pgr&mode=0&vcm=True

Maurice Sendak and his uncle

Let me start by saying I never met Maurice Sendak, the exceptional author and illustrator of children’s books. But  I’d like speak about my reaction to something he once said :

After Sendak passed away last week, NPR replayed a 2006 interview with him (below). In it he talks about how his fury at his aunts and uncles drove his work – in particular his uncle’s comment to Maurice Sendak’s father that nobody would want to kidnap his children.

I’d like to offer a different take on the uncle’s statement that I feel I owe to my empathetic mother, who couldn’t bear even her own anger.

Naturally, a child might feel anger at what seemed to be a hurtful snub. I certainly would have as a boy myself.

But as an adult, I’d like to suggest an alternate explanation. Seeing the anxiety in his brother’s face, might not the uncle’s words have been meant to comfort and reassure his brother? Why indeed should Maurice Sendak’s father be concerned? Was his the family of a celebrity millionaire? Was there a kidnapping of a similar child in his neighborhood.

What I’m suggesting is not that the Sendaks’ reaction was extreme. We all feel personally threatened hearing news of notorious crimes.  But later in life, shouldn’t an adult look deeper? I’m not suggesting any kind of parity with the great author, but shouldn’t a writer see the world with more nuance than does a child?

NPR Narrative … Another book features a baby being kidnapped, just as the Lindbergh baby was famously kidnapped when Sendak was a boy.

MAURICE SENDAK: I had my father sleep in our room. We all shared a room, my brother, sister and I. And he had to sleep – and I still can see him with his underwear top, trousers, a baseball bat lying on the floor. And in case the kidnapper came in, he would kill him. And when my Uncle Joe – who I then used as the ugliest of all the Wild Things, because I loathed him – was – he said to my father: Why would they want your kids, Phillip?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SENDAK: How insulting could that be to a child, when he isn’t worthy of being kidnapped?

INSKEEP: Have you now gotten even with the people who made your childhood unhappy?

SENDAK: No, of course not. But, you know, being in a fury and not getting even is a lot of the energy that goes into work.

* http://www.npr.org/2012/05/08/152253537/beloved-childrens-author-maurice-sendak-dies )

The new chair

I can’t recall the last piece of furniture I bought for myself, but this chair spoke to me.

The chair was sitting in the store, its seat under the weight of a candelabra that had been left on it, as a matter of someone’s convince. The steel frame was elegant, yet sturdy and wrapped in leather that glowed like fresh caramel.  As I lifted the candelabra, I could see the stitching done by a strong and steady hand. The back had straps like suitcases that people carried in the Age of Steam.  With the leather, the straps and the stitching, the piece seems half-chair and half-journal. It occurs to me that furniture makers are, in their own tongue, storytellers. I liked this story, and I’m glad to have a copy in my home.

BTW, Steampunk enthusiasts may appreciate aspects of the chair as well as the steel and glass table in the background.

you can not control what you do not measure

 

 

 

 

 

“You can not control what you do not measure.” It’s a phrase in business with murky origins. Someone is said to have coined it, but it seems that he was misquoted or a poorly paraphrased. Whatever the phrase’s beginnings, its meaning is profound.

There is a time to be unaware of one’s position: a dream, a moment of creation, a walk with the one you love. But I have discovered that if I do not gauge my progress, I am likely to make little of it. I count my pages now. I focus on milestones and personal deadlines. It’s made a huge difference in my writing. Everything counts, not with the same level of importance, but it matters nonetheless.

Intermission

Due to a fortuitous event, I’m taking what may be several months off from writing the second book in the series to edit the first. My good fortune is the opportunity to work with Emily Ballentine, a young Seattle editor with much to recommend. Emily is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound. She is intelligent, firm in her opinions, and open to mine.  We’ve divided the manuscript into four-parts.  I’m currently working on her notes from the first. We are united in our opinion that we can produce a saleable manuscript ready for submission in the fall.

I would hesitate to do this were I not at a very good stopping point with the second manuscript.  In addition to having 48,000 words completed, I have a detailed outline for the entire story.  I’m a bit reluctant to put the second story off, but Emily’s assistance is simply too good an opportunity to pass up. I’m certain there is a cadre of writers out there who will be working with her in the very near future.

From the novel: Erin and Monique caulk the forecastle deck

[Note: two girls from the 21st century are under full sail on the pirate ship Velocity racing toward Sugar Bowl Island. The year is 1720.]

The hours crawled by. The work was very hard. The old rope was difficult to remove, and it was rough with crusted tar and splinters. Much of it had to be yanked out by both of the girls pulling as hard as they could together.  To add to their troubles, the sun soon beat on their backs causing them to sweat.  The girls’ knees suffered until Mr. Toofour, the black sailmaker, happened by and, without looking at the girls, dropped scraps of canvas for them to kneel on.

Perhaps the worst of it was that Mr. Rumple made it clear that, once they had received their orders and training, they were forbidden to talk. None of the crew could say anything that wasn’t necessary to their work – even then they spoke quietly in short bursts.  Erin wanted so much to talk to Monique about their plan, their progress, the dangers ahead and most especially how they felt. And unlike in Mr. Bingo’s class in Dream City, they couldn’t whisper or pass notes when they simply had to share passing thoughts.

In time though,  Erin realized the silence wasn’t silence at all. She was surrounded by sounds: The hiss of the sea against the hull. The groans of the masts and yards. The lines trembling and whipping in the wind. The whumps and flaps and snaps of the sails. And, from time to time, the calls and responses of the officers and men. That’s when she understood the ban on chatter.  The officers and men had to be heard when a ship or coast was sighted, or a man hurt or a line broke.

Working on the thirty-foot square forecastle deck, Erin and Monique were constantly shifting about to allow people to pass. The lines holding the triangular staysails in the very front of the ship had to be frequently adjusted by skilled, agile men climbing along the bowsprit like monkeys. All the while, two very young men in long but rather ragged coats stood at the most forward point of the ship sweeping their telescopes across the horizon, along the starboard quarter; the other across the larboard, as Mr. Rumple called it. The young men spoke to no one, not even each other.

[Here is a photo of caulking a replica tall ship deck.]

The caulking material the man is laying between the boards is called oakum. It’s made from animal hair, worn rope or anything else fibrous. It was mixed with tar and driven into the gap with a blunt awl and a mallet called a beetle, a metal version of which is shown here.

Current Word Count 44,614

The Chaser and the Gig

In this photo are the chaser and the gig of the Lady Washington out at sea. The are NOT, as they would be to landsmen, a canon and a boat. They have different names to sailors.

Nearly everything has is different name at sea. The bathroom is the head. The floor is the deck. Walls are bulkheads. A stairway is a companionway. And people are often known by their title and their jobs rather than their names. A senior officer is addressed, Sir; a junior one, Mister. At least in the stories of 1720, the time period I’m currently writing about.

This blog entry is by way of explaining – at least to myself in this log – that there is an explanation why my story has progressed only slightly since my last entry. I have had to spend several weeks more than I already have in learning not just the parts of the ship, but the language of its inhabitants of three hundred years ago. I must say, it’s been more fun than work. Here are the books I’ve studied:

The 24-gun frigate Pandora by John McKay and Ron Coleman (2003)
The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick Obrian (1986)
Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Dana  (1840)
A General History of the Pyrates by Danial Defoe (1724)
Henry IV Part I by William Shakespeare (1597)

The first two are sources for nautical terminology and war at sea. The third is about the duties of the the sailors. The fourth is about the language of the 1720′s and the lives of pirates (written by the author Robinson Crusoe).  And the last for the flamboyance and immediacy I wished to breath into some of the characters. I’ve used my Nook Tablet to search these books. And the audio of the last for flavor.

Now I will resume once again – with better footing - to assemble those words forged long ago into a story yet to come. Hopefully at a faster pace now. I’m hoping to finish the draft by the end of summer.

And by the way, unlike the heaps of useless stuff we landlubbers surround ourselves with, nearly everything is vital on a ship of war. Though small by comparison to the cannons that provided broadsides, the little chasers bolted to the stern were used at the most desperate moment when an enemy came “under the stern,” as was the term. This was the moment when the foe could, in one shot, render the boat unable to maneuver by shooting the way it’s rudder which is just to the right and beneath the chaser. Without the rudder, the enemy could simply sail back and forth pouring fire into the bow and stern with impunity.

The importance of the boat, in that case, would be elevated as it was the only means of escape save death or surrender. That’s why before the action began, the men tied the boats together in a chain and pulled them into a battle well below the level of fire.

Current Word Count 43,266

Chapter 18 – The Race for Sugar Bowl Island

rin’s eyes sprang open from a dream of counting. All was black save a flickering slice of yellow light. She was swaying. Something thumped on the roof. Something hissed against the walls. There were bells. Her mind was still counting them from the dream. Three bells … four bells … five bells.

The truth fell on her like a stone on her chest.  It was the middle of the night. The roof was a deck. The walls were a wooden hull slicing through the Deep Blue Sea. She was swinging in a hammock.  In the belly of a pirate ship scudding toward Sugar Bowl Island. To save another pirate ship from being blown to splinters. The year was 1720.

Erin was three hundred years from home.

Current Word Count: 42, 411

page 132 of the new novel

Shaking with fear and guilt, Erin told the Nighthawk,”We want to fix what my parents did, and save your islands from the Coal People. But we’re just kids, and we’re lost in time!”

Current Word Count: 32, 613

Weekend on the Water 2011

I recently returned from a fabulous writers’ retreat at one of the most beautiful places in North America.
Where: Alderbrook Resort in Union, Washington at the southern shore of the Hood Canal.
Who: Given by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators of Western Washington for fifty writers and illustrators.
The speakers were (and I quote from the website ):
“Arthur Levine, author, publisher of Arthur A. Levine Books, and a vice-president at Scholastic Inc., and Newbery Medal award-winning author Linda Sue Park.”

The weekend has been a life-changing experience for me.  Attending was  a selected group of dedicated and excited writers and illustrators. The atmosphere was friendly, positive and supportive. Jolie Stekly, Joni Sensel and Laurie Thompson and the rest of the staff from the SCBWI-WWA orchestrated everything perfectly.

And the speakers were wonderful.  Backing off the superlatives for a minute, Arthur really helped me understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the beginning of my manuscript.  Each of us sent him the first five pages of our story, plus a one-page synopsis.  He made a point of reading them and writing notes before he arrived. (Which was a feat considering the blackout he and the rest of the Mid-Atlantic had just been through.)  He said many kind things about the piece which I very much appreciated.  But even more important he gave me two ideas, I had considered but that my vanity had prevented me from embracing. Even then, I hesitated. What drove his points home, however, was the clever meeting format he chose. I got to listen to his critiques of twenty-four of my peers’ work, and I agreed with all of hs comments.  How could I possibly consider that his about mine was the only one that was wrong?

Linda Sue Park gave us hours of tips on the craft of writing. She is not just a Newberry Award winning author, but a true artist.  Without getting into the specifics, she uses many of the techniques that other artists use to explore and sharpen her pieces ways that are unique to each of them. Most importantly she taught us to challenge ourselves to write more originally.

Thanks to everyone.  I look forward to seeing the alumni from the conference at upcoming Puget Sound SCBWI events.