In my more serious ballet years, I often heard from teachers and guest instructors at summer intensives how important it was to be versatile.
If you were a ballet dancer, for example, it was important to take classes in modern and character dancing. The modern dance, with its frequent focus on contraction/release and fall/recovery, would help you perform contemporary pieces more easily.
Sylvie Guillem, legendary etoile of the Paris Opera Ballet, performing a modern piece. Photo from The Dance Enthusiast
The character work would serve you well in the national folk dances so often included in the older repertory–think the Russian variation from The Nutcracker, for example, and the Hungarian dance in Swan Lake.
Hungarian Dance from American Ballet Theater’s production of Swan Lake, from Youtube
The same went for any other genre of dance–if you were a student of Martha Graham, you ought to take ballet technique. If you wanted to be a Rockette or go into musical theater to dance primarily in the Broadway styles–tap, kick, jazz, and cabaret–then modern dance and classical ballet could do you a world of good. You’d have a solid and “correct” foundation from which to move.
Ultimately, dancing proficiently across various styles deepened your artistry, improved your musicality, and even strengthened your overall technique as you were forced to approach movement differently, perhaps work different muscles, and become more fluent in those new movements. All of it would make you a choreographer’s dream, since it meant you could dance almost anything well.
This idea extends beyond types of dance into the broader world of fitness and cross-training, too–dancers of all kinds are encouraged to take Pilates, for example, which is part of the standard curriculum at the School of American Ballet. Professional dancers often make time for strength and HIIT training, particularly the men who have to partner the women.
We see this in the world of sports as well. Football players are sometimes encouraged to take ballet, and baseball players to pursue in the off season any other sport that does not work their shoulders or throwing arm quite so hard. Holistically, they become better and even healthier athletes.
Kansas City ChiefsRB Darrin Reaves at the barre. Photo from chiefs.com
Could this also apply to writing?
I think it does. I think as writers, the more genres we practice and become proficient in, the better structuralists and word-smiths we’ll be.
(Notice I say proficient in, not masters in. I do think true mastery probably lies in spending most of our time, our deepest time, in one to two genres only, where we ultimately specialize.)
That is a major reason why I enjoy writing all kinds of things. I’m often drawn to genre fiction, especially the darker genres I can steep in history and compose in more elevated language, like gothic fiction. But, I also enjoy writing contemporary lit and historical fiction, informal essays, and even some poetry.
In literary fiction, I find myself considering fresh word choice and ambiguity.
In essays and other types of nonfiction, like book reviews, I tend to think more about clear structure and transitions.
With poetry–the toughest!–the challenge is pin-point precision and concision.
My hope is that all of it refines my execution in terms of rhetorical context–a particular piece’s topic, audience, purpose, and of course genre conventions, which I am still learning. Genre has been, for me, the most surprising struggle. It wasn’t until I took writing seriously that I realized how little I understood about it.
Hopefully, given the multiple genres I’m now reading and practicing, that understanding will continue to improve.
And, perhaps, a little extra sharpness, accuracy, or uniqueness that might not otherwise exist will find its way into each piece of work. I don’t think that would happen (or will happen, if it’s not already) if I didn’t choose to write broadly across styles.
Plus, it’s fun. You know the old cliche about variety. All those spices–the salt, pepper, basil, thyme, nutmeg, coriander, you name it–make the entire act more delicious.
Finally, the alchemy that might arise one day from all that practicing, from some mixing…
From the cross-pollination that might occur… the genre mashup that might, just might, grow into something that works, could be pure magic.
So, in this spirit of writing widely and joyfully, here are two summer haikus I recently penned, all inspired by things I’ve observed from my own Vermont yard.
Silent green hills nap
under shadows draped like shawls,
a languid appeal.
I took this photo on the road, not at home, but I’ve often seen Burke Mountain beautifully shadowed, when the clouds are just right.
The first sunflower,
last of summer’s several blooms,
greets slow turning days.
Our first sunflower of the year. It’s bloom has coincided with a gradual drop in temperature.
If you’re not familiar with this form, a haiku is a simple poem of Japanese origin (I prefer the simple, fixed forms because they feel manageable). It consists of just three lines. The first line must contain five syllables, the second line seven syllables, and the third line five syllables, once more.
Traditionally, haikus capture some image or aspect of nature, but they can be about anything.
These little poems I’ve written as exercises in word choice and imagery and, ultimately, for fun. They’re easy to share because I am not an aspiring poet and do not have a ton of emotional investment in any of their receptions, though of course I hope you like them. I don’t love the ending of that first one, so we’ll definitely consider it a draft.
What are your thoughts on writing or even reading different genres? Do you think it makes the entire experience better?
A couple months ago, I hopped on this bandwagon and began writing about my favorite novels from childhood, the ones that sealed my love of reading and proved the most formative in my literary tastes and aspirations.
And, here is Number One. The book with the most enduring influence, the one I loved most as an introverted, bookish kid learning to adore all things creepy yet beautiful.
The first time Zoe met Zoe Louise, Zoe was four years old. Zoe Louise was more than 100. From that day on — living in the same house, separated by a staircase and a century — Zoe and Zoe Louise have been an important and permanent part of each other’s lives.
Now Zoe is older. And although Zoe Louise never grows up, she is changing in dreadful, frightening ways. Time is running out for Zoe’s best friend — and Zoe is the only one who can help her. To do so, she must travel back 100 years in time and somehow alter the past. But in changing the past, must she also change the present? If she saves her friend’s life, will she lose Zoe Louise forever?
An “eerie and gripping time fantasy.” (Blurb and quote from original printing, c/o Amazon.com)
Oh, this novel. I’m not sure I can do justice to how much I loved it, and how much it has affected me.
It is so perfectly and profoundly bittersweet, a love story about friendship. Zoe does in fact alter the past by saving Zoe Louise’s life. The consequence, however, is that the portal bridging their times closes for good, and Zoe never sees her first, and best, friend again. I loved that resolution–it was the right one, the inevitable one. It needed to happen, but it also made my chest ache. I understood even then, it was a story about the hard sacrifices of real love.
Isn’t that so apt for a story about growing up?
This novel also uses first-person point of view, though its narration is less immediate than Hanh’s in Wait Till Helen Comes. Rather, I remember it being more reflective. It’s the older main character Zoe looking back on her experience, and that more distant, wiser frame gives the language a simple yet sophisticated, lyrical quality. It’s been described as “spare,” which I agree with, but I remember thinking it was gorgeous and haunting. I began to absorb a lot about how word choice and point of view create tone and effect, thanks to Conrad’s style.
This book also included details delicious to a little girl like me. Zoe, who lives with her grandparents, enjoys an impressive playhouse that her Pop-Pop added as a kind of outdoor annex to their actual house. Inside is a child-sized kitchen and living room, which blew my mind. I would have sold my soul for something like that. I believe Zoe meets Zoe Louise, the ghost from the past, for the first time in that playhouse, where they become friends. I also loved that–I would have killed for a permanent playmate, someone who could show up randomly, at any time, in my own home, to be my companion and mine alone.
Image from Microsoft Designer
I realize now, as an adult better versed in literary subgenres, that this story has a definite gothic element. The past is very much alive and at play in events, and the house itself, or at least that magical back staircase, has an eerie energy of its own. It seems to facilitate events, as if the universe wants little Zoe Louise’s life to be spared. There’s even a macabre scene where Zoe Louise visits Zoe in the present time (as usual), except she’s rotting. Her body drips fluid, certain bones are visible, and this causes Zoe to realize she must act soon to save her friend from something terrible. In short, this book provided my first literary experience with gothic elements, and I absolutely ADORE gothic tales now, thanks in large part to this YA masterpiece capturing my heart.
The best aspect of Conrad’s book, however, is how respectful it is to young readers. It seems she wrote it on the premise that even adolescents can draw deep conclusions on their own and handle grown-up references. For example, it opens with a meditative, ambiguous poem about ghosts, the past, and time.
Conrad’s poem, which prefaces the novel
At another point in the story, Zoe’s grandmother says their pug looks “like Emily Dickinson.”
There’s even a moment when older, pre-teen Zoe is visiting the past, her presence invisible to all except Zoe Louise, and finds herself in her friend’s parents’ bedchamber. There, she reaches out to stroke Zoe Louise’s father’s cheek. The man, after all, is young and handsome, and Zoe is growing up, feeling urges toward the opposite sex for the first time, though that is strictly implied (and something I didn’t get until much later, on a third or fourth reading). Feeling Zoe’s touch, the father lifts his hand to his cheek, in true haunted fashion.
I read this book multiple times.
The first time, I was nine, and I loved the playmate and playhouse details best.
Then, as I got older and continued to reread it, I was better able to make all the meaningful inferences Conrad intended. It takes Zoe (and readers) a while, for instance, to realize Zoe Louise is actually a ghost. Readers are also left to realize on their own, that Zoe the main character is actually named after Zoe Louise, since main character Zoe’s mother adored the name on the headstone in the local cemetery and–oh wow–that headstone actually belongs to Zoe Louise herself (though the “Louise” part is worn away).
Image from Microsoft Designer
There are more instances of implication, though I can’t specifically cite any others off the top of my head. There’s not a lot that’s explicit in this book, actually, and that made it a wonderfully layered, resonant, and sophisticated reading experience. Stonewords was a book I could revisit again and again and always derive from it something fresh. I didn’t have another deep reading experience like that until I was much older and began studying Joyce Carol Oates’s short masterpiece Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
That says a lot about Conrad’s achievement.
This novel deserved the many awards it won: Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Juvenile Mystery (1991), Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book (1990), & Mystery Writers of America’s Best Juvenile Mystery Award (1991), among others (Google).
I think it might also be out of print, but like Hanh’s and Speare’s novels, it’s still available for purchase on Amazon and in a few other places like Thriftbooks.com.
I’m so glad I still have my childhood copy.
Beloved book
***
These three books were not the bestselling sensations that JK Rowling’s, Suzanne Collins’s, and Stephanie Meyer’s were, but their fascinating premises, emotional themes, and beautiful language made such powerful impressions on me that I strive to write similar material now. Skill-level aside, the only real exception between my work and theirs is, I write my stories for adults because, hey, I want the same gorgeous, gothy, haunting vibes but with at least a dash of sex and romance.
We’re all grownups now, after all.
While writing these particular posts I realized, writing aside, how these books have even influenced my general life choices. I live in New England now, like Kit in Witch of Blackbird Pond, in an old, possibly-haunted house like Molly and Zoe both do, and my husband is a handsome former sailor, similar to Nathaniel Eaton, Kit’s love interest in WoBP and my first book crush.
That’s a lot of similarity, too much to be purely coincidental.
I’d love to hear about the most powerful childhood book that shaped you. What was it, and why?
On August 11, 2008, one of the last precious nights before the start of another contract year teaching, I went with my colleague, Kathy, and her boyfriend, Rezki, to the house party of a friend of Rez’s from high school.
“Come with us,” Kat said. “It’s Jeremiah’s birthday. I think you’ll like each other.”
I was skeptical and emotionally worn out. By then, I’d spent three years on the Houston dating scene, which meant long Friday night Happy Hours that sometimes ended in terrible decisions with co-workers, followed by primping through hangovers for Saturday nights at Red Door or Belvedere inside the loop. There, the yuppy oil/gas execs and Med Center MDs could be found trawling. These weekends usually concluded with Sunday Fundays at La Strada for boozy recuperative brunches–sometimes with a guy, and sometimes with Kat and Courtney, another young, single teacher I was close to. Lots of drinking, lots of socializing, and inevitably, lots of drama.
I rarely spent an entire weekend at home sober, though I still somehow managed to squeeze in planning and grading for two different courses. My energy levels were different then.
By that point, I’d met a lot of men. They were all either machismo-arrogant, commitment-shy, weird, besotted with ex-girlfriends, too old, or just plain sleazy… nothing had worked out. A few short-lived relationships had ended in fiery wreckage, and these guys still thought they could text me wasted at 2 am to say things like, Thought you were an 8 but you’re really only a 7…
This, from the same guy who opined that all women could be rated 1-10, though 10s didn’t exist and 9s were rare, so I should be flattered to be judged an 8…
I was sick of it all. Sick of being objectified, ghosted, you name it. This disillusion was powerful enough to finally trump the creeping anxiety I felt at the prospect of ending up alone. That was silly given I was only twenty-six, but you know how short sighted youth can be.
So, I decided I was done. No more going out, at least for a while. No more looking to meet anyone. I’d take it easy, allow myself to rest over the weekends, and focus on being the most conscientious and professional educator I could be. Only good things could come from that, I figured. I needed to get my crap together.
Then, Kat came along with that invitation, disrupting my plans.
I could have said no. But, the reality of another long, difficult school year loomed ahead, and the thought of some final summer fun was too attractive. So, I agreed to go with Kat and Rez to this guy Jeremiah’s 33rd birthday party at his garage apartment in The Heights.
I didn’t hold out much hope for him. I’d been disappointed too many times. He’d probably wear thick-framed glasses and be short, squat, and obnoxious in some way. All I remember Kat saying about him was how smart he was. For some reason, in my mind that precluded him from being nice or good-looking.
I figured, I could at least hang out with my best friend, drink someone else’s beer, people watch, and maybe let this birthday boy amuse me. It sounded better than staying home alone.
I should have trusted my friend. Kat knew me better than almost anyone else.
When we arrived at the party in that trendy bo-ho neighborhood inside the city’s loop, I was shocked at the number of people already there. Thirty at least, exuberantly packed into the small, neat yard between an old 1930s bungalow and a large garage apartment with steep wooden stairs. There was at least one keg of beer well on its way to floating and a large inflated ball pit, the kind you see at kids’ play places. Inside the pit were multiple grown-ass adults lounging and crawling over each other in drunken laughter, holding up their Solo cups in futile attempts to keep from spilling their Lonestar.
I remember grinning. This was a surprise. Definitely different, and it did look like a lot of casual fun, exactly what I needed. No need to impress anyone.
Then, Kat introduced me to Jer.
He was tall, six feet at least. Broad shoulders and a nice, slender build. Large, bright, nearly almond-shaped brown eyes that swept over everything and everyone in a way that was both friendly and pleasantly proprietary. Immediately, he smiled at me. Our friends had told him they were bringing me, and he also knew we were being ever-so-gently set up.
Oh, that smile. In that moment, it was his best feature. Large, natural, and dazzlingly sweet. Straight, white teeth, too. I wouldn’t say I was swept off my feet, exactly, but I snapped to attention.
He was also kind to me. Right away. There was never any aloofness, never any head game, not even that night when he was the star of his party. That might not sound terribly interesting, but this wasn’t the hook in some formulaic rom-com. It was real life, and I needed someone like him. A man who was sweet, transparent, ready to have a good time, and happy to avoid unnecessary conflict.
Typical. In our first house together, a rental in The Heights
Jer alternated gracefully between sitting with me and making his rounds among all his friends, who kept pouring in, more and more of them. I think in total nearly fifty guests stopped by that night. He knew so many people, and everyone adored him. There were plenty of back slaps, hugs, guffaws, and allusive friend-speak, those ridiculous, coded exchanges that meant nothing to us who lacked context. He was ultimately inclusive, though. He let no one feel overlooked.
He made me a definite priority. We talked about all kinds of things, none of which I remember exactly. But I do recall how he made me feel–welcome, comfortable, appreciated, and, by the end of the night, special, and he did it in a totally respectful, natural way that never felt weird, over-eager, or icky. He had the most wonderfully natural self-confidence I’d ever seen in anyone, and a wonderous sense of playfulness and whimsy–hence, the ball pit. He was also hilarious; his humor was quick, witty, and sometimes absurd but never biting or bitter.
He had a dog, a black labrador-greyhound named Jib, who looked even happier than Jer at all the petting and attention he received. It was clear Jer adored his pup, and that was the final bright green flag.
The ball pit, taken the afternoon of party day
Jer seemed so effortlessly happy that night, and for me, that was a powerful appeal. Neurotic and insecure as I could be, I was drawn to his kind, charismatic energy.
I gave him my number, and that was basically it. From there, we started dating. We discovered how compatible we were in interests and tastes and fell into exclusion pretty much right away. I also had a chance to witness, early on, what a noble and gracious soul he truly was, and that was the tipping point for me. It proved I had indeed met a man who was authentically good, a rare someone who was absolutely worth keeping and striving to be the best partner for (though I’ve always fallen short). We became good friends as we fell in love, and in so many ways I felt centered, maybe for the first time in my adult life.
Early pic. Who are those babies?
My professional goals went to crap that year, though. My students’ state assessments scores weren’t great; I’d been too distracted by my wonderful new boyfriend to do a great job preparing them. Oh, well.
A few dating highlights:
We spent an entire week together at his place right after Hurricane Ike, when half the city didn’t have power and school was cancelled for ten weekdays. A delicious cool front swept through, and the air was crisp and alive. We stayed up late every night talking and drinking bottles of expensive chianti on his porch, Jib falling asleep at Jer’s feet.
Later in our relationship, we spent most Saturday mornings getting coffee at Onion Creek–where Jer was an unofficial VIP who could cut the line because he was a favorite with the baristas–then bumping around The Heights in his topless Jeep (when it wasn’t too hot) looking at houses we might eventually rent together, discussing and daydreaming about all kinds of odd things.
The house we eventually rented
Finally, one September evening a year in, we were the last couple to venture toward the exit in the lobby of Jones Hall, after the Houston Symphony’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, my favorite symphony, one I’d said was on my bucket list to experience in concert.
“Let me offer you something else from that list,” he said as he got on one knee. To the collective gasp of lingering patrons, he proposed, much sooner than I anticipated.
We spent that night in the penthouse suite of Hotel Icon downtown, sipping Dom Perignon. I still have that bottle. It was a truly perfect marriage proposal.
Picture taken looking out from our penthouse at Hotel Icon, the night we got engaged
Now, we’ve been together for seventeen years, married for fifteen–we celebrated our anniversary just a few weeks ago, on July 31st.
Closing day, new homeowners, pre-VermontFifteenth anniversary flowers. The color for year fifteen is crimson, apparently.Us now, photo taken in May at the Inn at Burklynn in East Burke, VT
Had you told me right before I met Jer that this would be my future, I would have given you owl eyes. Up to then, my two serious relationships, with my high school and then my college boyfriend, had only lasted eighteen months each. Though I wanted it, a lifetime of monogamy seemed like a feat that maybe I couldn’t pull off, restless as I always became and as objectionable as the men always were.
Wedding day, July 31st, 2010; photo by Bryan Anderson
But I’ve never considered leaving Jer. There’s never been even a hint of a reason. I trust him completely, and I’m so grateful that I can.
Honeymoon, this portion on Nantucket Island, MA, standing in front of Brant Point Light
We discuss all the important things together; there are no secrets. He still adores me and spoils me responsibly, which I respect.
Always spoiled. A birthday gift, I think, in our suburban Houston house
He won’t, however, take my crap when I’m crabby and knows how to point out when I’m being ugly, usually by gently suggesting I take a walk or a nap. It usually works. We’ve gotten good at communicating through our irritation.
Peeved about something
When our nonspeaking daughter was diagnosed with Level II Autism Spectrum Disorder in 2018, we were able to absorb the emotional impact together. We’re still very much problem-solving partners when it comes to raising our special kiddo.
As couples do, we’ve grown and changed, and thankfully that’s happened together. His most powerful appeal to me now is his enduring humor. Literally every day, he makes me laugh. Even on the days we get peeved with each other, or our patience is frayed, he’ll say something hilarious (often without realizing it), and if I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of laughing (though that’s rare), I have to grit my teeth. That humor has been our saving grace. It brings such an important levity to our lives, a much needed one given our sometimes difficult and frustrating circumstances.
On that note, Jer’s an amazing father.
Daphne print
Not perfect (neither am I), but no one is. He’s unconditionally loving, however, and as nurturing as I am, if not more so, and always open to learning and growing into the best kind of daddy for our little girl.
Daddy and daughter being goofyStill being goofy
He also just celebrated his 50th birthday.
Birthday dinner#1Birthday cocktail
It was particularly special because we had family travel all the way up here to celebrate with us, including his uncle and younger brother, who he hadn’t seen in over four years.
Jer with his brother and uncle–clearly all Shaws
He and Derek had a fantastic time running around the NEK together–no wives, no kids to drag along–utterly free for a while to be, simply, two brothers reunited. I think that was the best gift anyone could have given him.
Brothers
I will concede, though, that the lightness, the easiness Jer possessed when we first met is nearly gone. That smile of his isn’t quite the same, despite the appearances in these newer photos.
I don’t think that denotes anything awful or tragic; it’s probably natural. Of course, the responsibilities he carries now, as a husband, father, and bread-winner in this chaotic world, are far heavier than they were then, and everyone’s back bends a little under such weight.
I worry, though, that caring for us has robbed him of certain vital things. He can’t rush off on an impulse to sail a boat. He can’t go hike the Appalachian Trail. He can’t take a lower-paying part-time job in order to write a book that I know would be fantastic.
He barely has time to write now, even on his blog. I do my best to encourage him–I suggest we sprint together, or that he start a Substack for his Schooner Bum’s Guide to Project Management idea, which I think would kill it on that medium. I send him notice of publication opportunities that I think would suit the pieces he’s already done. He’s a talented writer, far better than I am. He placed second overall years ago in the Children/YA fiction category of the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition with his children’s verse A Dragon Tea Party, which he dedicated to Daphne and briefly queried. Too briefly, in my opinion.
He works long hours, in a challenging job, bumping up against a salary ceiling that remains stubbornly lower than he’d like, despite all his professional accomplishments and years of promises from supervisors about wage increases and promotions. AI is already whittling down his department. But he goes on for us.
Hiking last year; a fantastic day in an otherwise difficult summer
I try to encourage him to make time for his creativity, but I also don’t want to pressure him too much. Hopefully, our work together on Mythic Moose, our online trading card game shop, is giving him some kind of creative outlet. He’s done an awesome job with the branding.
I hope Daphne and I haven’t robbed him of an amazing thing he might otherwise have done if we hadn’t come along. We love him so much and want all the best things for him.
Jer and I had lovely anniversary coffee here the morning after staying overnight at the Inn at Mountain View Farm. So peaceful
Okay, this is heading into bleaker territory, so I’m going to stop now. Suffice it to say, we cherish him, and these celebrations have been the perfect opportunity to remind him of how wonderful he is, and how lucky we are to have him.
See you in a few days! I’m making up for lost time. It’s been a busy August.
Hi, friends! Today is my fifteenth wedding anniversary, and I’d planned to write a short tribute to my loving, nearly-perfect husband, but my daughter’s not having it.
So, to get my final post for July live in as little time as possible, I’m sharing a previously-written review of a book I just finished. Next week, I will effuse about the best decision of my life: to marry one of the most wonderful men I’ve ever known.
Told through multiple points of view, this mystery follows estranged friends Callie, Meg, Tess, and Lindsey as they are drawn back together on the five-year anniversary of their friend Zoe’s disappearance. At the same time, zealous true crime podcaster Patricia Adele (who initially ruined their lives in the wake of her own exploitative investigation) also reappears. Patricia has a book about Zoe’s case in the works, and she’s ready to barb them all with fresh questions and provocative new leads, even as Callie, the group’s default leader and original Judas, plans a special housewarming memorial to honor Zoe on Block Island, where the girls had their final summer trip together and where Zoe was last seen.
This novel is the story of four grieving friends still trying to put their lives and, tentatively, their friendships back together. They face opposition not only from Patricia but one another, as each brings her own secrets and confessions to the party.
This book is nearly perfectly paced, as a mystery ought to be. Nothing ever dragged, and I ate up each chapter as the author breadcrumbed tidbits and planted a few effective red herrings. I also enjoyed all the details of the Rhode Island setting—the houses and beaches of Block Island, plus the one-way streets of fancy, touristy Newport, with which I’m familiar.
The novel also does a nice job questioning whether true crime blogs and podcasts are an ethical form of entertainment. Patricia’s desire to feed her own amateur investigations and speculations to her fans drives her intrusive, insensitive behavior, even as it comes from a strange, sad place of personal alienation and has a clearly negative impact on Zoe’s friends and family. It’s a timely, relevant issue, considering how real-life bloggers like Turtleboy affect cases like Karen Read’s. I’m a true crime junkie myself, and the novel made me consider whether my love for these podcasts is in good taste, and whether these influencers pose a real threat to the justice system.
Karen Read and blogger Aidan Kearney, also known as Turtleboy. Image from the Boston Herald
The best thing about The Housewarming, however, is its exploration of and ultimate tribute to female friendships. These women feel real, and my heart broke, then mended, over all the ways their shared tragedy and time both together and apart evolved their relationships, just as it does in real life. This book struck me as a kind of love letter to all the girls’ girls, all those who grew up with a tight-knit group enjoying their own little traditions and intimacies and struggling with their inevitable secrets and betrayals as life reshapes them.
In this spirit, I love how the missing woman, Zoe, is given a voice at the very end, her single chapter creating a bittersweet clarity and poignancy that made my chest ache. Readers find out enough about what truly happened to her, and who Zoe actually was, to feel satisfied, while the story retains a haunting, realistic degree of ambiguity. There is no single, neat bow to tie everything up, and I appreciated that.
My only real nit-pick with this book was my feeling that Patricia the blogger’s story was incomplete. Her point of view is given a chapter once at the beginning and once in the middle, and I wish she’d been allowed one more chapter of her own at the end, perhaps to complete her own arc or provide a glimmer of something she might have learned or how she might change (or not change), or to plant the seed of something she might have realized based on what she witnesses at Callie’s party.
I recommend this thoughtful, seasonal book for anyone who loves mystery and women’s fiction. Congratulations to Kristen Offiler for a strong debut!
Hello, rejection, my old friend. I’ve come to talk about you again.
But, as promised, this post is brighter.
Last week I lamented a difficult rejection I got early in July. Suffice it to say, it was for a short horror-romance I felt good about. I’d worked hard on it, and I thought it had a good shot. I also really wanted the validation from that particular small press.
This week, I’m feeling better. The sting is almost gone, and after three weeks reflecting, I’m reenergized for two reasons.
First, I get more time to make my story better.
If I still like it, then I’ll dive back in to make it more tense and propulsive, particularly at the beginning. If the editors only read the first few paragraphs of each submission, I can see how they might have thought mine was too slow.
Having listened to a fabulous podcast on effective scene work, I’ve already considered how I might intensify the conflict in that initial scene while still laying the foundation for the female main character’s arc. Right now, things are nearly perfect for Carly in those opening paragraphs; I think there’s a lack of effective tension.
These five elements must be present in every single scene. Image c/o campfirewriting.com
Such revisions could also improve Curran, Carly’s love interest and the story’s primary antagonist. Right now, I suspect he’s rather bland, especially at the beginning where he’s just pleasing Carly. That’s a definite failing because his awful backstory and inner struggle (despite the glow-up he’s experienced) make him absolutely ripe for deeper characterization, even in the story’s first section of dialogue. There’s opportunity for him to resist Carly because he desires her yet senses there’s something deeply wrong with him, so he wants to protect her, too.
Honestly, this challenge excites me. If anything, it will be fabulous practice for writing well at the scene level, even if this story never gets published.
Conflict! Conflict is the key, always. It’s the driving force, what compels the story forward, what gets readers turning pages. There needs to be enough of it, even at the very beginning. Even if it’s subtle.
More time also means the opportunity for professional feedback. I’d love to have a minor (translation: available and affordable) developmental editor who specializes in adult horror/speculative fiction review this story and tell me whether or not it lands. If it doesn’t (it probably doesn’t), someone who can tell me what might enable it.
What might ensure the story’s ultimate resonance and target reader’s satisfaction? Is either the A story or B story not clear enough? Is the horror element not awful enough? Is it missing a romance beat? Is the pacing off? Is there too much focus on one aspect and not enough on another? Does it suggest insensitivity regarding either of its harder topics (bullying, erotic asphyxiation/sexual assault)? Does this genre mashup just not work?
I truly think I can make this piece memorable and gratifying, and I’d love to start down a horror-romance path as a possible niche, if there’s promise here. While I can make additional self-edits with fresher eyes, ultimately I’d rather not rely solely on my own judgement, even as I’m reading Shawn Coyne’s The Story Grid right now (a method he claims can help writers edit their own work more objectively). I feel like I’m doing what he’s describing, but this self-perception could be totally distorted. It wouldn’t be the first time. I’d love a professional to weigh in, somehow.
So, there it is. More time, in this case, is a gift.
The other reason I’m feeling better is broader, more philosophical.
Generally speaking, rejection is protective.
Not just for the publication, but for the writer too. It hurts one’s credibility if a piece is published when it’s not ready, or the author herself isn’t ready. Even on a small scale, we want effective work out there in the world; we really only have one shot with a reader.
I already have some experience knowing a piece is in print when it needed more time. It’s not a good feeling. If we’ve already put in the effort to create something thus far, we ought to muster the patience to keep going, if that’s what the story needs. We need to delay that instant gratification, digging deep if necessary, to keep the big picture in mind, that long game. Our later selves will thank us for it.
And sometimes, rejection exists to remind us of that. Though it might feel like a slap, it’s not. It’s a pat on the head and a “shoo” out the door: Thank you, but go, please. Make this better.
I’m reminded of some advice from author Clare Beams, which I have printed and taped into my writer’s portfolio (yes, I’m the nerd who does stuff like that):
“Be as patient as you possibly can–and then try to be one degree more patient than that. This path is a wonderful one in many ways, but it is long, and will feel long, for just about everyone at one point or another. Taking the time to get the work itself exactly right–to craft the absolute best possible version of this piece of writing that this version of yourself is capable of producing–is something you will never, ever regret.”
Beams goes on in this same Writer’s Digest interview to describe the time and revisions it took to get her novel The Garden just right:
“The first glimmers of the idea for this book came to me in late 2018. I sold it as a partial manuscript to my editor in early 2021, and submitted a full draft to her about a year later. She and my agent and I then all jointly decided the book was sapping some of its own hauntedness by dipping into the wrong head for big swaths (at that time the book had two main points of view), and that the whole thing needed to be told from Irene’s perspective. This was absolutely the right course of action, though it was daunting—I wouldn’t say it represented any kind of change in my original vision for the novel, but rather a change in my sense of how best to capture that vision. The various subsequent rewrites took about a year.”
This is a fabulous example: a single novel six years in the making, involving a collaboration that resulted in major, “daunting” revisions to improve its execution. The praise for this book, however, speaks volumes about the value of that time and effort. Though I’m a newb to all this, I don’t think what Beams describes is exceptional. I think such time and effort are the professional norm.
So, I am hopeful. Rejection is normal, even beneficial, and my armor is getting sturdier, my patience better. I plan to get back into this horror-romance soon, while Daphne still has one more week of extended school year and I still have some time to myself on these summer mornings.
Summer view from the top of Darling Hill
If, in the long run, anything interesting develops for this project, I will be sure to update you.
In the meantime, please feel free to share any other reasons why rejection is good. I’m sure I’m overlooking something.
Eight days ago, I opened my email and saw at the top of my inbox the notification I’d been waiting two months for.
Dear Jennifer, Thank you for submitting…
The salutation sickened me.
I knew what the rest would say–that this small horror press was passing on the story I’d submitted in late April.
I sat there for a minute, a little stunned, comprehending the implications. I considered deleting the message and trying to go about my day. But of course, I couldn’t resist clicking and reading the entire form letter because there was an irrational sliver of hope that it might just surprise me. That, maybe, this press didn’t start their acceptances the same way everyone else did, with Congratulations!
Such wishful thinking.
Sure enough: Unfortunately, we are passing on your piece at this time.
This wasn’t my first rejection of the year. I’d had another one, about two weeks prior, from a literary magazine with a 10% acceptance rate for my contemporary story, “You Should Have Stayed.” I’d expected that one, but since my story fit their theme, and I’d revised it thanks to some excellent and encouraging professional feedback, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. When that notification arrived, I felt I’d done all I could and was proud of myself for trying. That particular note was longer and warmer, too. I’m not entirely sure it was a form letter.
This one was shorter and more terse. A definite form letter, and it stung.
The sting is lessening, thankfully. Now, it’s more like an occasional smarting, since I’ve had several days to reflect on it–and, blessedly, not the luxury of time to wallow, what with a camping trip, family in town, a kiddo to take care of, and a husband on the mend.
Now, I can calmly articulate why it hurt and why, on the flip side, it’s quite likely a good thing.
Sunset on Maidstone Lake in northern Vermont. Photo by hubby
First, the more obvious: why it felt like a wound.
I worked hard on this piece, a 6K spicy horror-romance. I labored at it for most of March and April, scrapping my first attempt entirely and letting it evolve into something simpler and much better. I trusted the process and became emotionally invested in the characters, which I felt was a good sign. I was on to something. For sure.
The call for this particular anthology was also a brilliant opportunity to try my hand at a newer blend of genres, one with all the primary romantic beats but with a narrative shaped by the horrific. In this case, a woman trying to come to terms with a difficult past just as she discovers, one terrible night, that her amazing new boyfriend is actually a werewolf ready to tear her to pieces. And not in the mind-blowing sexual way, though they do have great sex before things go south.
No, this wasn’t a typical paranormal romance. No sexy shifting, no Omegaverse, no knotting. It was much more old-school American Werewolf in London style, much more horror-driven, and much more emotionally compelling (or so I thought). The shifting is torturous and frightening, a brutal and irrational affliction, and the suffering man needs help. My female protagonist, who finds a surprising new strength and redemption, is there, in the end, to save him, even as he helps her too. It’s Carly’s story primarily, though, and I loved her arc. I still love her.
Image I created on Microsoft Design while writing my story. I’d hoped it might be a sample to give a character artist so I might commission something way better, if the story got accepted.
Now, though, I have to wonder if my perception was totally skewed, even more so than usual (since none of us are ever totally objective about our own work).
I’ve always assumed, if something feels great to write, it must be fairly solid. That’s only logical, right?
But then, I’m reminded of all the articles I’ve read where the authors describe being passionately invested in certain pieces, only to realize much later they’re actually flat. Fundamentally flawed, somehow, but they loved these works too much to see it.
Or the reverse, as Stephen King described of his debut success, Carrie. How that novel felt awful to start, and he actually threw it away, only to have his wife rescue it from the trash can, her objectivity allowing her to see its potential. Sometimes, he tells aspirants in his book On Writing, something is sound and worth pursuing even when it doesn’t feel good to write.
So how the hell are we supposed to know? Is there really a way to tell the difference?
How do we know what’s strong and worth fully pursuing, versus what what’s actually weak and should be relegated to an e-file and nothing more?
Maybe the answer here is, time. As much time as we can allow between the completion of a working draft and a revisit, when we can look at it with the freshest eyes possible. It’s hard to find that kind of time, however, when we have deadlines.
Or, maybe, we never quite know. Even with plenty of time. Even with alpha and beta readers, critique partners, and editors giving us positive feedback within that ample time. Maybe it’s just something we can never quite perceive correctly, never quite control.
Plus, there is the subjectivity. Even if the fictional elements are sound–working scenes all connected by a through-line, a dynamic protagonist who experiences a clear arc, the submission and genre expectations met–what appeals to one publisher might not appeal to another. How are we supposed to know who will like it? How do we get a surer sense where that’s concerned?
Actually, I know the answer to this question: you read some of the work that publisher has already produced. Though I’d purchased two books from this press, I didn’t take the time to start either one. Maybe out of fear, I suppose, that I’d realize how inadequate I was. But it would have been a good idea, and that mistake is on me.
This ignorance, this blindness, terrifies me. It feels like a permanent handicap we have to figure out how to live with, or how to manage, so that our hearts don’t get broken over and over and over again. How do we manage it?
Or, maybe I am just a “sweet summer child” in the world of publishing. I’ve just begun this writer’s odyssey, after all.
Maybe, our hearts must break on the regular. Maybe, that’s the life of a writer, or at least one trying to get published. Maybe, it’s always a little painful because we have to take chances when we feel one way but know the truth might be entirely different. The fewer the chances, the less likely we are to succeed, right? Isn’t this just another form of gambling?
Ugh.
So, there you go. That’s the first reason this rejection hurt.
The other one is, I wanted validation. Having my story selected by a more established, competitive press (one with an acquisitions team!) would bring me a surer sense of legitimacy. A little more evidence that I’ve leveled up, that I have some promise. That I’m not wasting my time.
I realize, however, this is a dangerous desire. If I want the stamina it takes to make it in publishing (whatever that actually means), I have to find that validation from within.
Looking for it externally only leads to forever moving the goal post and never being able to appreciate, even enjoy, the progress I do make. And I do believe I am getting better. Blind as I ultimately am, I think I have enough clarity to see that the three short pieces I’ve written this year are better than any short piece I got published last year, even though only one of these three has been accepted so far.
Many people say, if you write, you’re a writer. I need to start believing that. Maybe, I need to write these words down and keep them nearby, and speak them out loud each time I sit down to compose. I think I have some mindset work to do.
For the sake of length, I’ll end this here. Next week, I’ll have a cheerier reflection–why rejection might actually be a great thing.
In the meantime, I acknowledge how extraordinarily privileged I am to call a story rejection a “problem,” a source of pain. So many people are suffering right now and would sell their souls to have their heart ache for this reason.
I didn’t just lose a child in a flash flood, or have my child taken by ICE. My husband didn’t just lose his job to AI. I could go on and on about all the nightmares that didn’t just happen.
Thank you for reading. If you’ve had similar experiences with rejection or want to offer any words of wisdom, whether you’re a writer or not, I’d love to read them.
Last week I alluded to some craziness in our June, but let me preface this post by saying, it hasn’t been awful.
*Cue the Halleluja chorus*
On the contrary, Daphne is doing quite well, especially compared to this time last year, when she had continence issues and regular meltdowns that often involved smashing her iPad.
This summer, she’s been generally happy… I need to find some wood right now.
*Knock, knock*
Anyway, things have been smooth for her. When that’s the case, everything else is easier, and I’m definitely more chipper.
Pleasant summer day
She’s been off for three weeks. The first two she spent at home, and I decided I wouldn’t push a strict visual schedule like I did last summer (about which I labored, continuously on this blog, to convince myself was actually helping her; it was not).
Instead, I simply aimed for general consistency: breakfast, outside time, 2-3 indoor activities, errands, then dinner and bedtime. It’s been working. She’s been compliant, cheerful, and occupied enough with sensory input and some academic and OT-style skill-building for me to feel ok with the time she does spend on YouTube Kids, while I fill Mythic Moose orders or simply catch my breath.
Daph’s been painting, and I love her work. The one on the left makes me think of undersea flora; the one on the right looks like a waterfall at sunset.
We’ve also made some treks out: to Get Air, the big trampoline park just outside Burlington, Bragg Farm to look at the animals and share a Maple Creemee (a Vermont soft serve specialty), and of course to the lakes, Willoughby and Crystal.
Bragg FarmSo cute, so Vermont
Those special days are fabulous for filling the downtime even more pleasantly.
North Beach on Lake Willoughby
Last week, she started her extended school year (ESY) services in the context of the district’s summer camp program. Now, for the month of July, she goes to half-day summer school four days a week, and Paula, the fabulous paraprofessional who worked with her in Kinder and First Grade, is her summer 1:1 aid.
*Cue the Halleluja chorus again*
I now have three and a half hours to myself every Monday through Thursday in July, and it’s perfect. I can weed the garden, do some light cleaning, write a bit, and relish my summer reading.
Baby bell pepper in our gardenBaby Roma tomatoes
When I pick her up, she’s content and regulated from the change of scenery, and I’m more refreshed. It’s even easier to have a good afternoon playing and doing her activities as usual.
Novel I just finished; now I’m starting MEXICAN GOTHICby Silvia Moreno-Garcia
So all of that’s been positive.
My poor husband, though, has had a rough time. His upper abdominal pain flared up again in the middle of the night, despite us doing our best to follow a low-fat diet. He drove himself to the ER, where he was admitted and X-rayed. The pictures revealed a stone lodged in the opening of his gallbladder, so the attending doctor admitted him and booked surgery to remove the troublesome organ. Since it wasn’t technically an emergency, the doc didn’t wake the night surgeon, but they took his gallbladder out the next day.
It was minor surgery, done arthroscopically, and he’s healing well, but he’s been sore and unable to do as much. Then, just as he was feeling more normal, a sebaceous cyst on his back became infected, causing fresh, awful pain and a fever. Thankfully, that happened just as he was due for his surgical follow-up, so the nurse who saw him went ahead and drained the cyst. It was more brutal than I thought–she cut pretty deeply. We’ve been changing his seeping bandages regularly, and he’s on a round of antibiotics, which never make him feel great.
“I’m a walking calamity,” he said. “And I’m tired of being cut on.”
When it came time to take out the gauze the nurse had inserted after the procedure, he asked me to help.
I was expecting a half-inch wedged into the incision.
Oh, no.
It was, like, six inches packed into his flesh. I kept pulling and pulling, too slowly while he hollered. The blood and pus welled out, and I about lost my lunch.
Adding to that fun, while he was still in the hospital, a brutal heat wave descended, and Daph and I had to sleep downstairs where we have two AC window units. The upstairs becomes an oven on these rare days. We have a metal roof that’s meant to trap heat for the depths of winter, which it does beautifully, but it roasts us when temps climb into the 90s, even at night.
So, we were sleeping downstairs when early one morning, I heard what I thought was a vigorous egg song coming from inside the chicken coop. I didn’t get up, I admit, but when I did finally pad into the kitchen for coffee around seven, I glanced out and noticed the raised lid on the coop’s nest boxes.
What the hell?!
Panicked, I scanned the yard, looking for strewn feathers. Instead, I saw all four hens standing on the rocking chair up by our porch, looking spooked but fine.
Later, Jer checked the footage from the Google Nest cam over our garage. This is what he saw:
Holy crap
Thankfully, that big guy didn’t get any chickens, eggs, or trash (it was the day after garbage pick-up, and the can was empty), so he hasn’t been back.
It’s definitely predator season, though. At our barbecue on July 4th, all our neighbors and friends swapped stories of recent chicken attacks. Bears, foxes, raccoons… one friend’s poultry are so terrified, they’ve stopped going into their coop at night and are roosting instead in the trees, higher up. Another friend’s hen lost an eye, and she’s been trying to find a local veterinarian who will treat backyard chickens.
Hence, the chaos I mentioned. But, things seem to be calming down.
I also received my developmental edits for my story “Elspeth and the Fairy.”
A mock book cover for my story using Microsoft Design
I had a sick stomach opening the editorial letter, but to my relief, even delight, I read almost nothing but enthusiastic feedback, with only a few suggestions, all centered around deepening the impact of the protagonist’s emotional struggle.
“There’s very little to do developmentally,” my editor wrote.
*Cue the Halleluja chorus for a third time*
So, I’ve been working contentedly on those, and they’re just about done. When considering her suggestions, I actually divided my story into scenes and analyzed each for the requisite components: clear protagonist & antagonist, inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis, climax, resolution, and a character (protag or antag) who clearly “wins” that scene.
I’ve thought about doing this before, but I’ve never actually made myself go through with it. It took a little longer than I thought, but it revealed how I could develop more tension in my first two scenes. Not surprisingly, the weaknesses this analysis revealed aligned nicely with my editor’s notes.
That’s it; just a quick little catch-up. I hope you’re well and your summer’s going smoothly. If you’ve had any interesting adventures, I’d love to hear about them. Hopefully, they’re nothing too dire.
Baby sunflowers
See you next week!
XOXO,
Jenn
Postscript: I was finalizing this post just before I read about the horrific flooding in Texas. I don’t personally know anyone affected, but my father does. All the nightmares coming out about it have stopped me cold, and I’m not ready to fully acknowledge it. I might write about it next week, but for now, please know I find it devastating, and my prayers are with the families.
Do you remember the first story that made you fall in love with a different time and place?
For me, that book was The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. It ranks #2 in the top three childhood titles that shaped my bookish tastes and, eventually, my writerly aspirations.
Here’s a synopsis of this wonderful historical novel, published in 1958 and winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal:
Orphaned Kit Tyler knows, as she gazes for the first time at the cold, bleak shores of Connecticut Colony, that her new home will never be like the shimmering Caribbean island she left behind. In her relatives’ stern Puritan community, she feels like a tropical bird that has flown to the wrong part of the world, a bird that is now caged and lonely. The only place where Kit feels completely free is in the meadows, where she enjoys the company of the old Quaker woman known as the Witch of Blackbird Pond, and on occasion, her young sailor friend Nat. But when Kit’s friendship with the “witch” is discovered, Kit is faced with suspicion, fear, and anger. She herself is accused of witchcraft! (from Goodreads)
I first read this book on my own when I was in fifth grade. I was introduced to it when I was out with a school friend at The Galleria, Houston’s biggest, fanciest mall at the time, right off the ritzy 610 Loop.
I’d spent the night with her, and her mom dropped us and her teenaged sister off there for the day (Jeez, can you imagine a parent dropping off ten-year-olds now to be anywhere alone in public?!). We walked around, bought candy at the fancy sweets shop, ate lunch like big girls at Birraporetti’s, and spent the remainder of our time inside one of the multiple book shops, maybe the Walden Books (ah, my Houston nostalgia is panging hard right now). We both spent most of our mad money on novels, and one of the titles Kelly grabbed was Speare’s famous book.
This was the cover on that particular copy:
from Amazon
Isn’t that gorgeous? I was taken by it.
Others have been, too. Last year, Briar Press NY featured this one in a brief reel of their favorite old-school gothic books covers.
I can’t remember if I bought my own copy that day, but regardless, I read the book not long after that.
And, over the years, I read it again and again. It was even our English class’s novel study in eighth grade, the same year we first had American History.
What an impression it made on me.
Katherine “Kit” Tyler was a wonderful heroine–impulsive, determined, yet kind and easily chagrined. She was also homesick, which paralleled some of my own feelings because we had moved recently to a new neighborhood in a different suburb of Houston, and I had started at a new school and was making new friends. I sympathized with Kit’s feelings of loneliness and alienation.
Kit on the dock; image from Microsoft Designer
I was also fascinated by the community described in the book. The New England Puritans, I understood, were a strict and strange religious people, and I remember thinking how awful it was for Kit to sit for hours every Sunday listening to a never-ending sermon as the pew “bit into her thigh” (that line has lingered). But the people of Weathersfield also enjoyed a strong sense of community and managed to work in some fun when it was appropriate. I learned about the village dame school, where Kit assists, Puritan courting rituals, and husking bees, for example. Later, when I studied Puritanism in more depth, memories of this story gave me a strong foundation for understanding, as children’s historical fiction ought to.
I also remember some of the imagery Speare uses to describe Kit’s first experience with the breathtaking fall foliage: “jewels” or “jewel-colored,” I believe were the words, and I thought how amazing it would be to see that for myself. (So glad I now can, every autumn!)
I liked the dynamic with her cousins, too: Judith and Mercy were quite the foils to each other as Judith was the town beauty and Mercy the quieter, kinder, more spiritually-centered model daughter. A Puritan household of three teenaged girls was an amusing situation, even if the liveliness was restrained.
Then, there was the romantic element.
The multiple romances develop quietly and naturally, well-aligned with Speare’s lovely, spare style. The central love story belongs to Kit and her sailor friend Nat, who serves as First Mate on his father’s ship that brings Kit from Barbados after her grandfather dies to Weathersfield, Connecticut, to live with her aunt and uncle.
Though Nat and his family hail from nearby Saybrook and our New Englanders themselves, they are people of the sea first. They have a worldliness and wisdom most of the other Puritans do not, so Nat understands why Kit dives into the water in the opening chapter to rescue a little girl’s dropped doll. Though irritated as he automatically jumps into the icy harbor after her, he isn’t shocked the way her fellow passengers are, once he realizes she can stay afloat. He understands that people from warmer climates often swim, that it’s not a sign of witchcraft, as the Puritans believe.
Thus, he is one of the few characters who seems to understand Kit–her habits, attitudes, and the world of tropical England from which she hails. He is her only lifeline to home; he is also a friend of Quaker Hannah’s, like Kit. It is there, in Hannah’s home on the outskirts of the village, helping out this gentle, loving elderly lady, that Kit and Nat are reacquainted and their friendship deepens.
Nat and Kit; image from Microsoft Designer
When Kit is arrested on charges of witchcraft–not long after poor old Hannah herself–guess who rescues them both?
It is when the novel resolves, however, when Kit is safely back in her aunt and uncle’s home and Nat is gone on another long voyage, that she aches deeply for him. She realizes she must love him and fears she will never see this nonchalant, happy-go-lucky, yet noble young sailor again. In the novel’s final scene, when she is visiting the docks looking for his father’s returned ship, she notices a new “trim little ketch” tied up, and a man in a bright, blue coat bent over checking cargo. It is Nat, and before she can restrain herself, she cries out for him. They run to each other, clasping hands. It is their first and only act of physical intimacy in the story, but it is hard-won and deeply satisfying. Nat tells Kit he wants to speak to her uncle and refuses to take her onboard the new ship that is now his own. When she protests, he tells her: “When I take you on board The Witch, it will be for keeps.”
Wow, did that make my little preteen heart swoon!
Another notable romance in the story happens quickly and unexpectedly between John Hale, a young minister, and Kit’s quiet, overlooked cousin Mercy (who I believe had a limp, if I recall correctly. Yay to Speare for including a character with a disability, long before inclusivity was lauded as a key value in children’s literature). John returns from an expedition fighting Indians. Having risked his life, he goes straight to Mercy, not Judith, who he’d been pressured into courting after Kit unintentionally caught the eye of the man, William, who had previously courted Judith. There, he puts his head in Mercy’s lap. That tender, honest moment, so rare for these two proper, people-pleasing characters, also made me want to leap for joy.
By the end of the novel, all three girls in Kit’s household are engaged to be married. Judith does find her way back to William, thankfully.
These are the attributes that stood out to me in my childhood. The book’s greater value, however, lies in its message of kindness and acceptance, particularly of those who are different from us, who we might not understand immediately. Old Hannah, a Quaker, has spent her life being dangerously judged and alienated by the righteous and indignant Puritan community. Yet, she remains a generous, virtuous soul, and Kit recognizes this truth, even as she faces a similar situation. Hannah is another friend and ally for Kit when she needs love and acceptance most, and together, Hannah and Nat represent a powerful found family for this novel’s heroine. New connections, friendships, and love are always possible, the novel also suggests.
Hannah and Kit; image from Microsoft Designer
Though published long ago, this book still has so much value. I have no idea if it’s still taught in schools. I suspect not, given that it probably appeals more to girls than boys, and best literacy practices suggest that material appealing to both sexes is more effective. Plus, it does not represent people of color, so its diversity is arguably limited. It’s also potentially problematic in that Kit comes from a Barbados plantation that would have had slaves; her beloved grandfather would have been a slave owner, and that’s not a topic addressed in the story. So, I understand if this “old fashioned” book is overlooked in favor of more modern, representative titles, and there are so many of quality out there.
However, Goodreads’ statistics give me hope. According to their website, 2,431 people are currently reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and 85,197 people want to read it. They’re probably all adults, and that’s totally okay. These numbers are impressive for a children’s novel published 67 years ago, and they cement Elizabeth George Speare’s legacy in historical fiction.
What was a favorite historical title of yours when you were young? What did you learn from it?
See you next week, when I plan to fill you in on the craziness of our June.
Whenever we’re doing the chicken chores, or when I take Daphne outside to swing, Susie runs up behind us and pecks our Achilles tendons. She’ll even come straight at us sometimes to peck the top of our feet, a real problem in the warm months when we’ve donned sandals or flip-flops, exposing plenty of skin.
You can see the tiny scabs healing on my feet. The freshest one is low on my right foot.
“Are you choosing violence today, Susie?” My husband likes to ask. “Are you choosing hate?”
Her attacks can actually hurt–she’ll get a pinch of flesh in her beak and pull, sometimes breaking the skin and causing us to bleed. Jer kicks her away. More often than not, I just pick her up. Sometimes I’ll put her on my lap and swing with her, which she loves. She gets drowsy and almost cuddly, a sweet response that keeps me from totally despising her.
This is all quite odd, not only because she’s a hen but because she’s a Rhode Island Red, which is supposed to be an especially docile, affectionate breed. Not Susie.
She acts, in truth, more like a Rhode Island Red rooster, which has a reputation for being quite the bastard–the truth to which I can attest because Marty, our late chanticleer from our original flock, was a prime example of a real asshole.
Marty in March 2022
Which got me thinking.
Hens sometimes get aggressive toward one another, pecking, biting, and chasing other girls away during feeding or laying in the nest boxes. But Susie doesn’t do that to her sisters. I’ve never seen her go after another hen, not even little Daisy who was clearly ill and a detriment to the flock (and who we recently lost to a predator).
In fact, Susie’s sometimes the victim of chicken-on-chicken violence. She suffers the occasional peck from Doris, our older hen and the current flock’s alpha. Susie’s only rough with humans, so I don’t think this behavior is just about trying to move up in the flock’s social hierarchy. She’s not trying to challenge Doris. Her actions seem more defensive, like she’s protecting her sisters from us and possibly other potential predators.
Susie and Doris, who doesn’t take any of Susie’s crap
I’ve also seen Susie tidbit. This is another rooster behavior in which the male scratches around in the dirt. When he unearths a tasty worm or other bit of live protein, he crows, calling his girls over to enjoy it while abstaining himself. Susie’s done this; she’s scratched and made a terrible screeching cluck, and then her sisters have charged over in that amusing waddle-run to peck frantically on the ground around her while she watches. Even when we scatter mealworms as treats, she often holds off, letting her sisters partake first.
Finally, if she’s in a particularly foul mood, she’ll puff up and do a strange side stalk as she comes toward me, about to bite. That was something I saw Marty do. Susie will even extend and then arch her neck in a way the other girls don’t, posturing like a rooster about to crow.
I started some casual research. Yes, some hens can become roosters, figuratively or literally, due to certain environmental or hormonal factors.
Apparently, a hen might take on the behaviors of a rooster when there’s no cock in the flock (lol). The absence of a rooster qualifies as an environmental stressor, since there’s no natural protector for the group. Other sources of stress include losing flock mates, which poor Susie experienced when we lost Mildred and Beverly back in December. So maybe, life on our little farm just hasn’t been that easy, and this is Susie’s reaction. From that perspective, it’s really rather noble.
This masculine behavior can also have a hormonal cause. According to Talkinghens.com, “when a hen’s left ovary becomes damaged or diseased, the right gonad can develop into an ovotestis, producing male hormones like testosterone.” This development can go so far as to create even physical changes in which the hen grows features like spurs and a larger comb. I don’t think Susie’s features are any sharper or bigger, and she hasn’t stopped laying eggs, thank goodness, but it’s possible disease has caused a hormonal change in her body and thus in her personality. We’re pretty sure her flock–probably from little Daisy–was infected with Marek’s Disease despite being supposedly vaccinated. While Susie isn’t sick, carrying the virus might have caused or contributed to a shift in her hormones.
Whatever the reason, if this behavior continues, we might have to start using a spray bottle to squirt her in the eyes.
Say what?!
It’s one humane recommendation for dealing with aggressive roosters, so it ought to work with Susie. I don’t want to kill or rehome her; she’s not inherently evil, and we need all the eggs we can get.
And look, she can identify however she wants, as Jer says. It’s 2025, after all.
She just can’t attack us.
I’ll keep you posted on her behavior management.
I never thought I’d contemplate how to handle a difficult hen. What’s the oddest pet problem you’ve had to deal with?
When I was still teaching, I was one of several district instructors trained in the AVID strategies.
AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination, and it is a national organization that designs in-school support curriculum and strategies aiming to prepare all interested students in becoming “college and career” ready. (Though, what that means now in a rapidly changing world with AI, who knows?)
AVID offers electives for high schoolers, for example, that teach study methods like Cornell Note-taking, which students then apply in all their core classes. AVID also provides extensive professional development for educators in all content areas, where it stresses the importance of writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading (known as WICOR, in AVID-speak). We teachers were trained to include these WICOR elements in all our units or lessons. That was a no-brainer for me, an English teacher, but it was often a revelation for the math, science, and elective instructors.
In fact, those WICOR elements are the five key skills AVID emphasizes. They are the core of their mission, so to speak. It is AVID’s belief that these skills are what truly develop learning and success, no matter the subject area or challenge.
It’s odd, but I’ve been thinking a lot about AVID strategies lately, and even teaching and learning in general.
My curiosities and concerns about AI have provided a lot of that context.
My daughter’s own educational experience has also prompted much of that musing. Being nonspeaking, she cannot write, ask questions, discuss, or even read about things the way her peers can, at least not yet.
Daph labeling on her AAC device. It’s a start.
So much of how we learn derives from these activities. They are how we think, how we actively process the world. It worries me that she cannot yet engage this way. I often wonder how we, her family, teachers, and friends, can better help her develop an inquiring literacy. That’s her right as a person, and I’m not sure how best to achieve it, but that’s a topic for another post.
I’ve also been thinking, more specifically, about AVID’s emphasis on writing to learn, because last week was a personal milestone for me.
I hit my one-year anniversary writing this blog.
It’s not a huge deal, but I published my first post on June 4th, 2024 (rereading it now makes me cringe a little). Since then, my casual, once-a-week blogging has proven so beneficial.
It’s kept me in a solid writing routine, requiring me to compose at least a thousand coherent (hopefully!) words a week. That’s not nothing for someone who wouldn’t have to write much beyond a grocery list or a business message for Mythic Moose, if I didn’t have this WordPress.
iStock image from Unsplash
More importantly, this blog has clarified my experiences and goals for my fiction-writing life.
It’s also allowed me to reflect on both the wonderful and difficult aspects of my daughter’s journey.
It’s helped me see how much I’ve learned and changed as a person, as someone who chose to uproot her suburban professional existence and start over, as a forty-something homesteader, stay-at-home parent, and newbie creative.
By maintaining this blog, I have, indeed, written to learn.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this. I wasn’t sure I’d feel any benefit. I wasn’t sure I’d even have enough to say to post once a week.
It was my longtime-blogger husband’s gentle encouragement, however, plus the advice I kept seeing about the importance of starting an author platform (even before you’re really an author), that convinced me to give it a try.
I’m so glad I did.
I don’t have many subscribers. I don’t get many views. I hear mostly crickets, but it has still been a lovely, valuable endeavor. Maybe even more so because of the silence.
I didn’t intend to set the internet on fire. Rather, by sharing the things that are important to me, I’d hoped to gain clarity from these posts and perhaps make some human connections, and that’s exactly what’s happened.
While this WordPress is technically my baby author platform, it’s really more like my diary, albeit a public one, and I love that aspect of it. It’s my little cozy corner of the internet, and I would keep writing here even if I lost all my readers tomorrow.
But I do have readers, and I appreciate all of you.
Thank you for making your way here, even if it’s only occasionally. Your time means so much, and I hope you find these posts interesting, amusing, sympathetic, clarifying, or even hopeful, depending on who you are. I do my best to be honest about where my family and I are in our various journeys, and if it helps you connect, or makes you feel a little less alone, then I’m thrilled.
It’s been fun updating this site. I’m going to start a Favorites page, where I will list the authors, bloggers (including my husband’s hilarious Vermontism blog), podcasters, and artists I currently love. Some are well established; others are newer and deserve as much attention as possible.
I hope you’ll check out that new page. A link for it will appear on my home page, and I’ll get it under construction as soon as possible. Daphne’s on summer break, so now my time is more limited, but hopefully I’ll get it up over the course of this week.
On a quick, final note, I’m off to a great start increasing my seasonal reading. I dove into the Adult Summer Reading Program at our local library, the St. Johnsbury Atheneum, where I collected my bingo card and chose my free book from the second-hand bookshop affiliated with the Atheneum (a donation-to-purchase program staffed by volunteers, with all proceeds funding the library’s children’s programming).
My free book! I haven’t read any Isabel Allende since Daughter of Fortune years agoSigned! Mind blown! She did, after all, receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014.
I also finished my first novel this week, Complications in Parisby Melinda Copp, which I adored.
Jennifer Shaw 