Not Just for Tweens

If a random person had handed me a copy of Shannon Hale’s novel, Ever After High: The Story Book of Legends, I might have flipped through the pages and admired the stunning design, skimmed a page or two and handed it back unread. I would not have known what I was missing.

Fortunately for me, the person who handed me the book was Sarah, the granddaughter mentioned in the two previous posts. This book moved into her life, luring her away into remote corners of the house and keeping her up half the night.

When Sarah finished reading the book, she began talking about it in fascinating depth and detail. She mentioned that the characters were the children of fairy tale people like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Prince Charming, and a long list of others. These charmed children all attended Ever After High the boarding school for all descendants of legendary characters. In a keystone event, second year students ceremonially claimed their legacy and pledged to relive their ancestral stories to keep those stories alive for the world. Should they refuse, the story and all characters in it would go POOF!

Sarah was intrigued by the fact that Raven Queen, the daughter of the Evil Queen (who poisoned Snow White), didn’t want to relive her mother’s life. She explained that the book was about Raven’s adventures as she made up her mind whether to sign the pledge. She loaned me the 300 page book to read, but reclaimed it when I was only 50 pages in so she could read it again herself. I was so intrigued that I downloaded the Kindle version.

I quickly discovered that this book is masterfully crafted, multilayered and rich, and definitely not just for kids. Raven’s struggles with self and with others are heroic, her insights profound. The issues she struggles with – personal identity, self-determination, and more – are epic and universal. Every page sizzles with action.

The part that gave me goose bumps was the insight about Story and its power to shape lives. Raven helped all the other characters, both royal and common (yes, they did have discrimination issues there), see that they are the masters of their own stories, something precious few adults in today’s world realize. They are not bound by the past – they can write new versions. They are free to write their own “Happily ever after” stories with an entirely new cast of characters if they wish. In fact, they write stories forward as well as recording the past.

That message fits perfectly with the noblest mission of memoir: process the past, pick your own path, and write a bright future.

There’s so much more to be said about this book, about finding and following Truth, about Story and differences, and many more things, but I’ll leave it to you to read and discover as you wish. I’m grateful this astute young lass convinced me to read it.

I was thrilled that Sarah was eager to discuss the book and already seemed to understand that she doesn’t have to live like anyone else, that she can invent her own life. She was excited that the book put this hunch into words and brought it to life for her. She has many years to map out and edit her “blueprint” story, and a lot more years to revise as she goes.

This book may shape her life in some small way. Isn’t that what we all hope for, that a book, a story, even a few words we write may shape someone’s life? That can happen, but only if we write!

Write now: take a cue from Ever After High. Spend some time considering how closely you are bound to the story lived by one of your parents or other relatives. Write a few stories about the similarities between you. Explore aspects of your story you’d like to change, then write a new story with the direction you prefer. Share that story if you like, or tuck it away and let it work its magic, leading you along the path you wrote of.

Discover by Doing

“I don’t really know how things will turn out until I start making them. They don’t always look like I thought they would, so sometimes I’m surprised.”

My eight-year-old granddaughter Sarah was talking about the clothespin doll she was wrapping in a scrap of cloth when she told me this, but she could have been talking about writing. She is also a budding writer, though most of her story-making remains in her head at this point.

I covered her doll making process in my previous post and explained how observing her expanded my creativity. Here are a few tips I gleaned that apply to any creative endeavor, especially writing.

Remain open to possibility. The doll pictured above became an Evil Queen, eventually  named Medusa. Sarah didn’t know who the doll would be when she began. Its identity emerged from the choice of spikey silver hair and black fabric and grew with the addition of lace and lamé.

Stories often work that way for me. Sometimes fanciful stories emerge from freewriting and their significance and meaning for my personal or life story become apparent only later. Other times I may know the bones and drift of a life story, but  my reflections often refract in new directions, adding unexpected elements. Based on my observations of Sarah, I’m ready for lots more freewriting!

Bounce back from mistakes. Sarah discarded several scraps that didn’t look “right”, didn’t quite fit, or didn’t please her. “Sometimes I have to try lots of things before I find what works.” Doesn’t this sound just like the editing process for writers?

Take a break when you need it. These dolls joined several she brought from home to become characters in a sequel she began writing to a book she dearly loves. I saw in silent awe as she made notes on a clipboard to set up the story , then began acting it out. “I’ll work on it more later,” she decided when she hit a snag.

Accept dead ends. “Or maybe I’ll just start over.” Sarah does finish projects, but she has no qualms about abandoning the ones that don’t please her, at least if they aren’t assigned projects for school. Aside from homework and chores, her equivalent of adult work tasks, everything she does is play. What a liberating way to view self-assigned writing projects.

Use organization tools. Sarah didn’t need tools to plan her dolls, but she is using them for writing projects. Her school begins teaching story organization tools in kindergarten, and I wish I’d had time to learn more about them. Her abbreviated notes looked like an outline of sorts, a cryptic sketch of plot. It reminds me of story idea lists, outlines, mind maps, and other planning tools covered in previous posts.

Play with your work. In my opinion, this is the key. Sarah asked various forms of the question, “I wonder what if …” constantly. “What if she had a silver cape? …” “What if” is said to be the most powerful tool a writer can use. It pushes us into the Land of Make Believe, perhaps better understood as the Land of Unlimited Possibility.

You can use “what if?” to explore writing techniques, and you can also use it as a way of examining alternate views of past experiences: “What if she really meant … ?” or “What if something else was going on that affected that situation?”

Realize that imperfections add character. This is a touchy tip, a tw0-edged sword. Sarah’s dolls are quirky and rough cut, exuding the power of primitive art. They are perfect for her purpose, capturing the heart of her vision, but they are imprecise, with blobs of glue peeking beyond hairlines, ragged edges, and more. Would they work as they are in the marketplace? Hard to say. Perhaps our biggest challenge as writers is retaining the freshness of a draft while editing out major flaws. Over-editing can sanitize the life out of a story or interject additional sparkle. Keeping the right balance between Heart and Craft is an ongoing challenge.

Another side to this tip is that imperfections in the people you write about (yourself included) add character to the people and the story.

My time with Sarah as we made these dolls and I watched her begin developing a story was a powerful reminder that life can be an ongoing writing workshop. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Write now: take a play break with your writing and indulge in fifteen or more minutes of freewriting. Explore the results and look for material you can polish into a memorable story.

The Value of Rethinking

Last week I learned the value of suspending judgment and listening with an open heart. “Hey,” you say. “You are within a few million breaths of completing seven decades of a passingly happy and successful life and you just figured this out?”

To that I can only say, “Yes and no.” Of course I’ve known this most of those nearly seventy years. But a few days ago my eight-year-old granddaughter inadvertently put new spin on the concept.

Let me back up. Compare this picture featured in a blog post on September 1, 2009

with this picture from last week.

Both pictures feature clothespin dolls. I made the dolls in the top picture four years ago for my daughter’s girls. Sarah, the oldest, was four at the time. When they came for a visit last week, Sarah, who is now eight, wanted to make clothespin dolls. My mind whirled at the thought of teaching her to sew the tiny seams along the sides of the dresses, but Sarah immediately took charge of the situation.

She selected a rust-colored pipe cleaner from a pile on my desk. “What can I cut this with?” “Why do you need to cut it?” “To make hair!” Huh, what? Hair made from pipe cleaner? Why not? I pulled out my stash of craft pliers, and Sarah snipped a couple of pieces and twisted them into hair that I hot-glued on. To my surprise, it looked great.

With barely a pause, she chose fabric for the dress, and before I realized what she was doing, she had snipped a ragged rectangle from one corner, wrapped it around the doll and taped it shut. “I want to use this ribbon for a belt.”

Heckuva deal, I thought. So much for me teaching Sarah how to make these things. “Do you want to learn to sew dresses like the ones I made?” I asked. “No! I know how to sew, but that’s not what I want them to look like.” Oh! KAY! New page, new doll story.

Sarah eagerly accepted a sparkly silver hair suggestion for her next doll (third from the left). A taped scrap of “silky” black lining fabric formed the perfect dress, adorned by a snip of lacy fabric and slinky silver spandex cape.

I quickly realized that my job was to provide resources and explain the advantages of hot (faster than white) glue instead of tape (doesn’t stick well to fabric). Based on her whims, I found strands of yarn for hair, and Sarah did the rest, cranking out dolls at warp speed, intuitively mixing snips of this with scraps of that. She never paused to cogitate, and in an hour or two she had exhausted my clothespin supply .

I admit I was stunned at the results. Her dolls have panache! They sizzle with character. When I made the initial batch, I was thinking inside the nostalgia box, making dolls recalled from the past. Dolls that look like real people. With no limiting beliefs, Sarah was drawing on unbridled imagination and fairy tales. My dolls are dressed to milk cows and bake gingerbread. Her dolls cast spells and eat poison apples. My dolls are for playing house. Hers are for populating fantasy worlds.

My post four years ago was titled “Memories I Wish I’d Had.” If you read that post closely, you’ll notice that the memories I longed for would have been about making things, making dolls for playing house with classic roles. I wanted to capture the past.

Sarah took a version of this concept to a new level. Her focus was on making things, but she was future oriented. She wanted dolls, but not for playing house. Sarah was creating adventure stories. She selected, snipped and wrapped her emerging characters, creating her story bit by bit.

Did I remember to tell her these awesome glam scraps are left over from her great-grandmother’s doll-making days? Maybe not. But Sarah’s dolls capture the spirit of stuffed fairy and mermaid art dolls Mother made near the end of her life. Did Mother imagine stories as she stitched her dolls? I bet she did. Mother and I both made traditional dolls for playthings early in life. Mother got wild and crazy much later. She rethought what dolls were about.

Sarah is skipping the traditional phase. By suspending judgment and giving her free reign to follow her muse, I gave her space to follow her dreams, and in doing so, she unwittingly cracked open a limiting shell around my creativity that I had not realized was there. That drawer of glimmer and glam has been patiently waiting in my physical work room for nearly twenty years. Sarah began pulling it into her stories. Now it’s time for me to follow her lead into that larger space, making new use of old materials, both manifest and remembered.

Write now: recall a time if you can when you showed someone how to do something (formally or otherwise) and learned something yourself in the process. If you can’t remember such a time, teach someone something soon and write about it. That something may be as simple as using a new seasoning in a favorite recipe or as complex as designing a web page. Teach, then write, including an account of how your thinking changed in the process.