Alison Acheson

It is like a baby, just a bit. An opportunity to re-write.

Reminds me of sniffing the crowns of my infant sons’ heads and breathing deeply. Somewhere in my core, I carry that smell-memory. Such memories carry and motivate. The tough part is to think about these things briefly, at the outset of a day, or remember them at moments when you need them. And there’s only one way to do this.

I think that will have to be my guiding thought for the year. Slow down. I haven’t waited until the first of January to start anew. Really, I feel as if I’ve been preparing for this coming year for some time now, laying foundation to build on…and I’m ready to build further.

For months, everything has had a slightly frantic edge. Now it’s time to dive in to the cool, silent depths, slow, go deep. Daily yoga time really works with this. Finishing various writing projects. Establishing my editing work. Solidifying teaching. Seeing my boys grow up–something full of wonder in that.

“Be still.” The two words I’ve taken from my childhood/familial belief system. Possibly the most powerful little phrase.

in medias res, in the middle of things, is trotted out in writing classes as THE place to begin telling a story. I was taught it. I have taught it. I read it in the “successful” books now being published.

So when I sat to begin reading with my son this past week, and he interrupted me after a few pages to say, “I hate it when a book starts in the middle of the story,” (uh, did I mention this was my first published book we were reading?) it was a bit of a shock.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Idiot.

“It’s starting right in the middle.” (Yes, dear, it’s supposed to. In medias res.) “And it shouldn’t. It should build up, and set it up, and take time.”

Exactly what we don’t have. And if I do that–if I ‘take time’–I don’t have a hope of finding an editor, a publisher, let alone those marketing people, to publish my book. But how to explain that to an angry-looking red-head who is asking for setting.

This son, my third, is not a happy reader. He only began to enjoy reading after about six months of home-learning in grade 5. Before that, it was a chore; a school-task. And now there are many books he sets aside, often returning to a small number of default.

A month ago he explained to me that when he reads Harry Potter to himself, he can “see” the story. Other writers don’t quite manage to do that in the same way, though if I read aloud to him…after awhile…then he can also “see” the story.

I’m learning. Although just how I’ll use this knowledge, I’m not sure. J.K. Rowling creates visuals and begins with setting up the story. While I’ve tried to create visuals in my work, certainly, I haven’t done so with the thought of time-taking, setting-up, and I’ve never thought of visuals and setting in terms of the needs of reluctant readers. I’ve been quick to agree that it is exactly those readers–reluctant–who need the in medias res, otherwise they won’t stay with us. Perhaps it’s the very speed with which we attempt to haul ‘em in that turns them off and causes us to lose them. We need to get the film reel moving, but first we need to give them the theatre, the feel of the plush seats, the smell of popcorn with real butter, the lights that carve out the path to follow in the floor, the old woman, hunched in the nearby seat who turns up by herself for the afternoon matinee…maybe a digression into the life of the young teen sweeping up kernels and scraps from the floor (why is he here during school hours?)…there’s music playing in the theatre. Let’s see…it’s the soundtrack of…

Emmett enjoying a book

about where I’m going for the Canadian Children’s Book Centre Book Week next spring! I’m Ontario bound, and happy to be. Now hoping I can see the Kids in Cambridge…

I spent time last week, thinking through my presentations, and putting together final touches…and am so looking forward to it. May 5-18.

Here is an excerpt from a recent review of Molly’s Cue:

The plot is linear and uncomplicated, the style undemanding, and the chapters very short, typically subdivided and averaging only about eight pages. Molly’s Cue may appeal to readers for whom high-school is a distant prospect, but anyone entering those doors for the first time would likely have long outgrown the text intellectually, if not emotionally.

Wow.

This was written by Rick Gooding, a sessional English teacher at UBC (it always adds an extra twist when the review is by someone you know, doesn’t it?) and appears in the journal, Canadian Literature.

There are ways to consider this, and it might depend on the day. If, for instance, I’ve just received a rejection from Canada Council, it’s not going to be a good time to read this. If, as happened this past week, I’ve been accepted to be one of the touring writers for Canadian Children’s Book Centre TD Book Week 2012, then my mind might be sufficiently softened to wonder if there’s something to this, or if indeed there so soundly is NOT that I can push it away from me. In a “good” moment I might wonder what’s negative about “uncomplicated” in a book written for a 12 year old reader, for someone who might appreciate reading for pleasure; and in a bad moment, I might wonder if perhaps Rick has ever wanted, or tried, to write for young people himself. Or if he ever was a young person, and not someone mired in post-secondary politics and theories. It’s easy to forget the concept or creating of pleasure in academic life. Even though, I believe, it’s what learning is about.

Then there’s the math. He really has time and inclination to find the average number of pages in chapters? And cite this as indicative of…what? Oh my.

I hear peanut butter on slices of banana is a nice natural way to up your levels of serotonin. Cheer up, Rick.

Just before my friend Katy moved to the UK eight years ago, she came over one evening with boxes of plants she’d dug up from her garden. Some of these plants were from her grandfather’s wonderful garden in Victoria. One of these plants was a peony. Together, we put the plants into my garden, with the idea that when she and her family returned from the UK, two years later, she’d dig them back up and put them in her new garden…wherever that would be.

The peony never bloomed. When she did move back, I told her. Katy said they can take up to seven years after a move to bloom. (So moving is traumatic…) Katy is a third generation–or more–green thumb gardener. I am a second generation no-thumbs gardener (although my grandma had a knack for veg). Last summer was seven years. How many times I’ve looked at that peony, right in the outside edge of my half-circle right-by-the-front-of-the-house garden and wondered about just digging it up and being done with it.

Last week I realized that there was actually a small, round bud on the end of the tallest stem. No! And several days ago, it opened. EIGHT years. One past the max. Late bloomer. Like me. I’ve always been one of those.

You’re supposed to hit your writing stride, your strongest years as a writer, in your fifties, they say. Here I come!

Oh, and I’m an idiot. The no-thumbs thing?! I had no idea peonies smell like roses. A rose by some other name is a peony! Here it is: (wish you could smell)

How could I have ever thought to tear out the green scraggly stuff?

Questions around learning and teaching are always close to me. It’s true that if I had to choose between being a full-time writer and a full-time teacher, I would choose writing without a lot of thought. Without any thought; but not without regret. In my life, there’s a three-strand braid (I specify because I know there are others, and what’s more, given my history, I can do them) of learning, teaching, writing. (And learning is always a part of writing. But a two strand braid gives you nothing, unless you spend half a day twisting it into shape.)

My mind still muddles through all I’ve learned in the past three–at times, painful–years of learning about teaching and our education system. Phrases come to me…or more accurately: reactions to phrases throw me at times. Here’s one: Best Practice. You’ll hear teachers and teachers of teachers use this. It means “this is a principle of teaching that has come to be because after many years it has proven to be THE most effective way of doing _______.” And implicit: therefore, YOU should do it this way. It is, after all, Best Practice.

Now is it because I have a wandery mind, or because I’m a gemini, or ____who knows_____ that I resist the word “should?” Or I’m stubborn, stupid, and simply don’t get it?

Best Practice means that there is a preferred way. It was made very clear to me during the two practica I endured that while I was told I could develop my own path to teaching, REALLY there was Best Practice and I’d best practice it.

But I always return to this idea, from biology, that diversity is healthy for all life forms…and now even the lives of thoughts. So if I find myself gravitating to the notion that there is only one way, am I not choking or bludgeoning, or at least kicking aside, other ways? Even if I, ultimately, can choose only one way to actually DO something, might I consider others? Or create mental alloys from considering combinations? Won’t diversity of thought work best in a world where each student is at the very least just a bit different from another, and another?

Best Practice or Mental Alloys.

This is it: the final of twelve issues to complete the first year of putting this together. I do so enjoy doing this…though notice how it’s affected my blog output…hmm… I also edit the newsletter for SCBWI Western Canada (Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators) as well as head the newsletter committee for the BCHLA (BC Home Learners Association), so newsletters seem to be a point where I’m useful.

This issue features another ex-student, Michelle Superle, and her new work of fiction, BLACK DOG DREAM DOG. It’s so exciting to see these new works…and even more so to read them. I’ve read BDDD to myself, and now to my son. A terrific read, indeed! And beautifully created by Tradewind Books. The cover colour, and the illustrations throughout are just so warming.

And again, the newsletter shares a writer’s space. If you are a writer, and would like to share your own working space in this way, please email me and let me know!

Dr. Michelle Superle, author of Black Dog Dream Dog, and her own big black dog, Horatio…

Go to www.writerswebworkshop.com, and check out the “newsletter” area for the latest!

This one features writers’ spaces…and the alternative of renting a studio…and an update on Literary Living, as the first cohort comes to a close.

http://www.writerswebworkshop.com/admin/files/writerswebworkshop newsletter May 2011.pdf

Thank you, Nancy Halder!   I spotted this in Canada’s wonderful What If? Magazine. Check it out at at www.whatifmagazine.com. It’s “Canada’s Creative Teen Magazine.”

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Last night. At Ardea Books, West 4th Ave. For Michael Christie’s first published: The Beggar’s Garden. First line, first story: They sent the wrong paramedic, one I’d never met before.

Most fun: getting those emails from folks I’ve worked with…the “Hey, guess what!?”

Second most fun: the book launches. Just to see their faces. Nothing like having your first book in hand. And this one’s a winner… check out www.michaelchristie.net