Second Annual Ask a Classic Author Event!

Edith Wharton

Last year, my fellow teacher and Jane Austen fan Mary and I organized an event at our school where all of our 7th and 8th graders read a classic book during the third quarter, research the life of the author, and then dress up like their author.  On the day of the event, they assemble some visual representations of their author's life and workspace, and they sit at their "writing desk" and answer questions from other students, staff, and community members about their life and works.  I wish I could post photos of the wonderful costumes that my students came up with last year--there were some students who were absolutely amazing!

I love the fun spin on the classics, and I love that, with the help of abridged classic books and reader's theater adaptations, all of our students can participate at their reading level, and answering the questions orally helps a lot of students who struggle with taking the information from their research and putting it into their own words for a writing project.

This is my, "I write serious, inscrutable literature" face.

I had such fun at the event last year, and I'm so excited we're doing it again this year, even though I was a little stressed about putting together my own costume.  Last year I went as James Joyce (and I read Dubliners,  though I admit I've never been able to manage more than about fifteen pages of his novels before I have to go back and start over...)  In any case, dressing as Joyce wasn't perfect, but I at least managed to don a dress shirt, a tie, and a hat.  I also attempted to imitate his thick black spectacles, but the best part was actually the wispy eyeliner mustache that I do not have a photograph of and which startled me a little to see how masculine it made me look.

Edith at age 19

This year I read Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and I've greatly enjoyed learning about her life and writing, but the entire time I was reading, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, but how am I going to dress up like her???  I mean, look at her clothes.  The painting at left is explained here, at this fascinating site that explores paintings of the people and places of Wharton's life.

"In 1881, when Edith was nineteen, she was painted in London by Edward Harrison May. He captured her keen intelligence, and at the same time her fashionable dress, with its narrow waist, puffed sleeves, and bustle--showing her at once the debutante and also the keen observer who would later become the brilliant writer."

So.  Kind of a daunting task, to dress like her.  I scoured our drama closet for some kind of dress options.  My main hope was for something with maybe some lace at the throat and possibly a poofy skirt that I could pretend was bustle. I layered several dresses on top of each other (all of which were, strangely enough, sized to fit a middle school girl, haha!) and sort of sewed in some pieces of fabric to make up for the fact that none of the clothes actually fit me (I am wearing two full dresses plus another skirt/petticoat thing underneath it all), and voila!  I have a costume!

I look, maybe not like Edith Wharton, but maybe like a slightly unfashionable guest at a social event that Wharton may have also attended?  A guest who is a sloppy seamstress and has lost her corset?  Maybe.     

Now.  I just need to find a good hat.

dreaming in dialogue...writing woes in the wee hours

Happy for percolating...coffee and ideas!

For about an hour this morning, as I was trying to wrangle a little more sleep before the alarm went off and catapulted me into my somewhat waking life, my brain decided that I needed some writing lessons--specifically, writing dialogue.

I had a creative writing teacher once who said that all (interesting) dialogue is an argument--the interaction serves as a way for each of the characters to make his/her point.  Somehow, the characters need to be coming at the conversation from slightly different angles, and then they duke it out until they agree.  Or until the killer jumps out from the bushes.  Or the world ends.  Or they start kissing, I don't know.

In any case, in my dream, I had to write the scene I had been working on before I fell asleep last night, a scene that has been giving me a wee bit of trouble for some time (or...just possibly, one scene in a long string of scenes that have been tormenting me and filling me with paralyzing and agonizing waves of self-doubt about my worth as a writer and indeed as a human being...but anyway, that's not relevant), and instead of allowing me to wallow about in a restful sleep, my brain kept putting me through these dialogue exercises.

Okay, said my brain, or some cruel dream-time taskmaster, write the scene except Darin doesn't believe anything that Cass says.

And in my sleep, I did it.  I held it up, shiny and perfect.  "NOW can I sleep, please?"

Now write the scene except Darin doesn't believe anything Cass says, BUT he doesn't want her to know that he doesn't believe her.


I mean, sure, I can do that.  Dream-writing elissa writes in her dream.  Sleep now?


Now write the scene except Darin doesn't believe her, he doesn't want her to know, but she suspects that he doesn't believe her and not only does this make her angry but it reminds her of the way her brother spoke to her earlier that day and she realizes, with suprise, that he didn't believe her either.


Yikes.  Okay...dreambrain working working working...the alarm ticking on toward an abrupt and painfully noisy conclusion...YES! There! Perfect!  Dream-writing elissa feels a bit smug.  A bit...genius.


Now make her start to doubt herself, but hide that from him.

Simple!


Now make her hide that from herself.

Arghhhhh!  The alarm sounds.  Groggy elissa swims up out of the murky waters of dialogue exercises, disappointed that she didn't actually write all those perfect conversations in real life...maybe it's enough that she did it in her dreams.

 

picture this!

Having a husband who is a photographer means a lot of things.  It means that my children are charmingly documented in a parade of beautiful portraits capturing their every change and mood from birth to the present.

It means that when I need an author photo taken, I can count on him to help me out at a good price.  It means that even when there's nothing actually wrong with the photos that result from our first shoot, when I tell him, "These just...aren't quite me enough..." he smiles, looks more closely at the photos, and says, "Oh! Well, of course!  The problem here is..." and then he goes on to tell me a complicated explanation involving light temperature and bounce-flashes and white balances that have NOTHING to do with the fact that I'm squinting my eyes a little funny and tipping my head at that awkward angle that makes my chin multiply into the plural form.

It means that we can't go anywhere or do anything without a complicated packing process and six camera bags.  It also means that we're almost never caught in that, "If only we had a camera..." position.

It means that the bottom drawer of our refrigerator is full of high speed black and white film.

And it means that up until yesterday, the last time we had a family portrait that included David was actually three days before Monkey was born.  I'm so happy to finally have a photo of all four of us to hang on my wall!  Thanks to David, for taking all those wonderful pictures at our family gathering last night, and thanks to Mom for snapping this shot so he didn't have to sprint madly into place while everyone else tries desperately to remain in place and looking pretty.

a rare weekend

My weekend was so amazingly rare and enjoyable--a hot day with a breeze that kept the humidity from squishing us, kids playing in the riverwater pool, throwing a hatchet at zombies wooden targets, washing the cat, shooting at things, walking by the river in bare feet (was that a snake?), forging through the ferns and forest in sandals, fireworks and mosquito bites, parades and grilled food and running races and bicycles and family.  And sun, so much sun.  I still feel a bit lightheaded.

A butterfly in my mother-in-law's garden had all of us snapping photos and consulting guidebooks. 

I was fascinated all day with this tipping tricycle that just sort of epitomizes the headlong way in which Monkey approached everything he did all weekend long.

David's mom wanted to arrange the kids into a posed picture--a shot of the three of them being "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"--and of course Monkey, being a willful 3-year-old, completely refused to pose.  We did eventually get a shot, which I won't post in case she's got plans for it, but Monkey spent some time sulking in the daisies with  me.

The next day was full of parades and barbecues and baby cousins, but our personal photographer abandoned us for his day job, so you'll just have to trust me.  And now I should stop procrastinating and get back to editing!

Of course it's not you, Mom...

A writer may be observing you right now.

Ask writers what question people always ask them, and you're likely to hear queries such as, "Where do you get your ideas?" or "How do you come up with your stories?"  Readers who fall in love with fictional characters, who get lost in fantasy worlds, who enter a book so completely that they forget about time and reality--they have questions about the genesis of it all.  Where did this come from?

And naturally, the first place they want to find it is in the writer's real life.

My first novel's protagonist has a manipulative, enabling mother.  She's redeemed in the end, but would that fact matter to my own mom, if she were to read it?  Or would she read the mother character looking for herself, for the small details of reality I may have used as a writer for authenticity?  (And oh dear, what will she think of the dead mom in my current  novel?)

Does real life make its way into my fiction?

When I was maybe eleven years old, I got my swimsuit and hopped on my bike and pulled out of my driveway to head down to my friend's house.  Maybe I misjudged the speed of the car.  Maybe I didn't even look--who knows, I was eleven and probably making up stories in my head at the time.  But I looked up, deer in the headlights, and saw this car speeding toward me.  A kid on a country road, driving fast.

In my panic, I swerved back toward my own side of the road, wobbly on my bicycle, and headed for the near ditch.  Which was right where the car was heading, the driver panicked and the brakes locked up.  I remember the screech of tires. 

The car skidded to a stop--the front bumper gave me an abrasion on my shin about six inches long when it stopped just short of me, just short of crushing my leg against the frame of my bike.

My parents, who had just hugged me goodbye and were in the yard working on building the  house, heard the screeching tires and came running through the trees, just as I was reassuring the young driver that I was fine, and he was busy squealing off down the road again. 

I was angry at my parents because they wouldn't let me go swimming.

This instant of my life--which looks so different to me now, looking back at it, as a parent, as an adult, as a driver--has made its way in one form or another into several of my stories.  In one of my first completed short stories, it looks like this:

It was a strange moment when his rage swallowed his tears.  Some years later, he looked up at an oncoming car, misjudged its speed, and pedaled out in front of it.  The driver of the car panicked and slammed on his brakes, skidding across the pavement and stopping only after the front bumper grazed Gerry's shin.  The anger was like that--in the distance but deceptively fast--colliding with him accidentally, out of control.  He stood up, letting the desk top bang shut with a loud crack, and shouted, roared with red face and tight fists raised, "I hate you!  You...you...BITCH!"  He ran from the room, his eyes dry fire ripping across the faces of the kids who looked at him with something like fear.

In KISS THE MORNING STAR (that's third novel's new title!), there is a missionary trip to Mexico with a dilapidated bus and a crazy pastor.  In real life, I did once take a missionary trip to Mexico on a dilapidated bus.  But the group of teens and parents and fellow college student translators was amazing and beautiful and not at all creepy (and Pastor S. was a saint and a hero on that trip, of course!).  My memories of that journey form a little bit of who I am, and those details are what I use to tie my fictional words into the thick fabric of life, adding the layers that I hope will make them into something that captures moments, captures readers. 

But I won't say there isn't sometimes a nagging voice--an editor in my head--will they understand that it's not REALLY real life?  It's the voice that makes it difficult to write sometimes, the voice of: what will my students think if they read this?  What will my children think?  And Mom? If I ever publish a book, I feel like we'll have to have an agreement that she can read all she wants, but all I want to hear is, "I love it, honey." 

My friend and brave beta reader Amy Danziger Ross recently started a Microfiction Monday on her blog, saying she thought it would be a great way for her to keep in the practice of being on the lookout for stories all the time.  But then comes the hard part--publishing them.  What stories are truly ours to tell?

(P.S. if you're here from twitter and looking for the naked grizzly bear story, you'll just have wait to read KtMS.  :P)

photo credit David Hoole Photography, 2010