Posts Categorized: Writer

Book Review: Feathers—To Speak Without Words

I could tell you what Feathers by Jaqueline Woodson is about, or maybe I couldn’t. If I could tell you I don’t know that I would want to. A plot summary would give you the wrong idea. It might lead you to think you understand the book, when you still have no idea. Feathers almost says so many things, but in the end tells you nothing. It changes a good reader without speaking.

A white boy in a black classroom? A lesser author could say a lot here. A deaf boy among the hearing? Again much could be said. And Woodson almost says something, but then trails off as if she’s been distracted.

Woodson’s writing style bonds with the characters and the tone of the book. She melds environment, personality, and tone together. She starts the book this way and follows through page after page:

His coming into our classroom that morning was the only new thing. Everything else was the same way it’d always been. The snow coming down. Ms. Johnson looking out the window, then after a moment, nodding. The class cheering because she was going to let us go out into the school yard at lunchtime.

It had been that way for days and days.

And then, just before the lunch bell rang, he walked into our classroom.

Stepped through that door white and softly as the snow.

Yes, things happen because a white boy is in a black school, but Woodson redirects the obvious to Jesus. The new boy is called Jesus Boy by his classmates. Perhaps this is due to his long hair and the fact that he cries in class once. Jesus Wept. Yet, once again Woodson speaks about something, religion, without telling you anything. She uses the pock marks in Franny’s palms delightfully, no preaching. The presence of Jesus Boy leads to a theme on faith. Woodson skillfully weaves a relationship between Franny and her religious best friend, Samantha. The cause of loss of faith in one leads to a strengthening of faith in the other.

“Strange,” Samantha said. “How one day you can believe in something. And the next day you don’t anymore.” She shivered. There was a hole in one of her mittens. When she saw me looking she put her hand in her pocket.

“And then, when you don’t have that thing to believe in anymore, you don’t have anything.”

This may sound nihilistic. It isn’t.

The magic of Woodson’s Feathers comes in the relationships she creates. They are gentle, unforced, and as genuine as a natural pearl. The relationships all touch Franny like overlapping bubbles. Each bubble has its own color and hue. One of the most satisfying relationships, although it’s hard to choose, is Franny and her handsome, deaf brother, Sean. Woodson uses descriptions of sign language as a form of color and music, of smell and emotion. The first words Franny used as an infant were words her brother taught her. The interweaving of sign language among spoken dialogue makes the language in this book three dimensional. It’s beautiful.

We’re having chickennnnnnn, we’re having chickennnnn, I signed, moving my hand slowly at the end of the word chicken and doing a little dance. Sean’s smile got a little bigger.

Feathers is not plot driven, although there is a timeline of events to follow. Feathers’ power comes from Woodson’s ability to create living scenes from seemingly trivial moments. There’s Jesus Boy’s entrance to the class; walking home through gray winter days with her friend; laying in an afternoon darkened room next to her mother; and many more. Woodson seems to believe that life happens between the big momentous events when we can’t avoid ourselves. One of the most memorable scenes in the book is a chapter describing Franny and Sean making dinner. The chicken is frying. The rice is being seasoned. Mom is resting in the bedroom. Dad comes home from his trip. It is snowing outside. Trivial, meaningful things are said. It’s family life at its truest and most meaningful.

Woodson’s Feathers is a short book, categorized for children, but there isn’t an “adult” book anywhere with more beauty and truth in it.

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These books by Tory Anderson are now available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback format:

Posted By: toryanderJul, 21Comments: No CommentsCategories:

On Books–Wanted: A Committed Relationship

I love to read books. I exist in a circle of friends and acquaintances who share this passion. However, I think there’s a big difference between me and most of these other readers. I often see posts and memes on Facebook and Twitter touting “bloodshot eyes” from all night reads where they couldn’t put a book down. This never, ever, happens to me. I never read a book I can’t put down. The reasons for this aren’t what you might think. Let me explain.

Reading fast is something that I can do. All of my classes as an undergraduate and a graduate student required reading the assigned novels quickly. There is one class that stood out. It was a class on the 20^th Century American Novel during a short summer term. The class required me to read a novel a week and write a paper on it. I did not enjoy that class. I didn’t enjoy reading any of the books. In fact, they seemed like bad books. I’m fairly certain the rush to read them had a lot to do with my opinion of them.

In contrast, I remember the first book I read by choice after I graduated. It was Dicken’s Bleak House. With the pressure of professors and papers gone I was able to read the book slowly and deliberately. I remember the experience being delicious. From the opening paragraph I started slowly:

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.

I was still reading slowly when I reached the part where one of the characters–one who consumed copious amounts of alcohol–became a victim of spontaneous combustion:

“Aye!” says Weevle, “Here I am, Mr. Snagsby.”

“Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?” the stationer inquires.

“Why, there’s not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very freshening,” Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.

“Very true, sir. Don’t you observe,” says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to sniff and taste the air a little, “don’t you observe, Mr. Weevle, that you’re–not to put too fine a point upon it–that you’re rather greasy here, sir?”

“Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in the place to-night,” Mr. Weevle rejoins. “I suppose it’s chops at the Sol’s Arms.”

“Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?” Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again. “Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning ’em, sir! And I don’t think” Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then spits and wipes his mouth. “I don’t think,– not to put too fine a point upon it–that they were quite fresh when they were shown the gridiron.”

To read lines as delicious as these quickly would be a sin as great as wolfing down a $250 dollar dinner at a five star restaurant. No, lines like these are to be read slowly, with a pause following, to let them be digested for their full value.

I suppose one of my friends may point out that reading a book from beginning to end in one sitting isn’t necessarily about reading the paragraphs quickly–it’s about the book being so engaging that you can’t stop reading until forced to by running out of pages to read. Is it that I am not reading books that are that engaging?

I would have to disagree. During the two months I spent reading Bleak House I was completely immersed in it. The twentieth-Century world in which I lived was seen through eyes filtered with Victorian colors. The frantic Twentieth-Century sounds were intermingled with the sounds of horses’ hooves on cobblestones, the shutting of heavy oak doors, and the rustle of petticoats under long muslin dresses. I was angered by some characters, charmed by others, and several more I was completely in love with. The plot, with its many children, moved forward with all the power of the Mississippi River. This was an engrossing book, but it was also a beautiful experience that I would not hurry through.

I spent a year reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It’s not that I purposefully read slowly. Like most my life is busy and I don’t find it easy to put my personal reading into my daily schedule. It can be weeks between the end of one reading session and the beginning of another. You may point out that this should encourage me to read more or to read faster while I have the time. The thing is, I don’t have to. The magic of a book is that it is eternally patient. My books hold their place and wait for me as faithfully as Sonya waits for her convict Rashkolnikov in Crime and Punishment. The story does not go on without me. The story does not grow stale. The story does not resent my absence. It picks up fresh and vibrant as do two old friends who unexpectedly run into each other in the park.

Not all books require a slow reading. Since collage I have read many books in one sitting. Two of these were The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Hunger Games. These books were catchy and had plot lines that took off like drag cars on the race track. I did feel a thrill while reading them, but the reason I read them so quickly was because they didn’t require a slower reading. I could pump through the pages without worrying about missing a thing. I wasn’t eating the expensive dinner from the five star restaurant with its subtle and nuanced flavors, but a tasty hot dog from a street vendor. I don’t read these kinds of books often because they don’t give my soul much nourishment. They are momentarily entertaining, though.

I have been reading to my children for the past thirty years. Yes, I do have a lot of children–eight last time I counted. Still, thirty years can only be accounted for by my reading to them until they leave home. Often, as when we read the Abhorsen trilogy or the Harry Potter series, my children (and wife) would beg me to read another chapter after I had determined to quit for the night. I would resist this. I was enjoying the reading experience as much as they were. That is exactly why I didn’t want to read another chapter. Didn’t they know that if we read another chapter we would finish the book that much sooner? And that the sooner we finished the book the sooner this particular wonderful time together would end? I would assure them that since we would most certainly reach the end of the book, why not let the end come slowly, deliciously? I think I lost that battle as many times as I won it. It’s a battle that continues with my last three children who remain at home.

I know that people have a right to read books as quickly as they want. I imagine that reading styles are as varied as people’s personalities. My personality longs for the book that wants a slow read. I need the books that will be my friend for more than a night. These books do not depress me when they come to an end; they have power over death (the turning of the last page) and continue on with me throughout my life. When it comes to books, I’m looking for a committed relationship.

Posted By: toryanderAug, 5Comments: No CommentsCategories:

Man-Truck Police (Satire)

I’m the artsy type living in a cowboy community. It’s a great little community here as long as you remember your place. I respect their tough cowboy ways and they let me be artistic. We got along fine until I got my pickup truck.

You need to understand; down here trucks are for the tough cowboys and the tough women who marry them. The truck signifies the man. You go out to check on the cattle you go in your truck. You pick your girl up for a date she better be able to climb into your truck. You need to pick up a gallon of milk you go in your truck. My son worked with a local fellow who grew concerned when my son told him he was going to college.

“You just need to get yourself a truck and a job and you’re set,” he said.

Getting a truck is the right of manhood. It usually comes after shooting your first deer. You have to look good in a cowboy hat. A farmer’s hat is acceptable if it sports a John Deere logo.

I knew better than to go out and buy a big truck. I was allowed the ’72 Chevy I brought down from the city with me. It didn’t offend others to see an artsy type driving that. It finally wore out. My brother meant well when he gave me his old Dodge Ram. I had never dreamed of owning such a truck: V8, four-wheel-drive, towing package, running board, the works.

When my teenage daughter saw it she exclaimed, “You got a man-truck!”

This immediately made me apprehensive. She was right—this truck crossed the line into big truck territory. What would people think when they saw me driving it? I had been seen riding my bike to church. I was comfortable in a minivan. I felt a sense of foreboding.

A couple of years earlier I had broken an unwritten code of conduct. I had driven my minivan up the steep, narrow, canyon road behind the town to the beautiful ridge at the top. It’s understood that only four wheel drive pickups or four wheelers can make it up that road. I don’t know what got into me, but one day I loaded the kids into the van—it was an all-wheel-drive Ford Aerostar after all—and successfully negotiated my way to the top. The truck owners who were already up there were unhappy to see the minivan come zipping along. I felt like a man in shorts and a t-shirt at a formal event. They never forgot.

Now, in my pickup truck, I tried not to meet the eyes of the cowboy in the truck with the dualies who pulled up next to me at the light. I parked on the other side of the parking lot from the pack of big trucks belonging to the men who met for coffee and news at the convenience store/post office in town. If I was unloading trash at the dump when another truck pulled in next to me I would act meek, letting the other man know it was an honor for me to be operating my truck. I liked my truck. It was useful. Still, owning it added stress to my life. I knew I was a pretender.

One evening, right after dinner, there was a knock on my door. Two men stood there, cowboy boots, cowboy hats, jeans, beer bellies extending slightly over large, shiny belt buckles—I knew who they were before they spoke.

“Man-Truck Police,” the man with the handlebar mustache said. He wore a bolo tie with a nice piece of turquoise in the tie clip. He flipped opened his elongated, rawhide wallet and flashed a badge.

“That your truck?” asked the other man. He didn’t have a mustache, just two day’s growth of stubble. He wore a Western shirt of yellow plaid with the collar open. He pointed to my truck. His diesel powerstroke sat behind it rising a good foot higher.

“Yes,” I said. The word came out weakly. I was acutely aware of the words on the t-shirt I wore, “Writing’s my superpower. What’s yours?”

“There’s been an unworthiness complaint,” said the first man. He didn’t speak unkindly, but he was all business. “We’d like to see the size of the trophy deer that you keep on your living room or family room wall.”

I swallowed something bitter that didn’t taste at all like the quiche I ate for dinner.

Noting my hesitation, the man in the bolo tie added, “We already have a warrant.”

“I don’t have trophy deer on the wall,” I mumbled.

“How’s that?” the man said, leaning forward, straining to hear. “You mean it’s in storage? You remodeling?”

“I’ve never shot a deer,” I said, mumbling a little louder this time.

The two men stared at me speechless. The temperature dropped ten degrees.

Finally the man in the stubble spoke. “You own a gun, don’t you?” I sensed the critical nature of this question.

“Yes,” I said, with great relief. It was only a single shot .22 my dad had given me when I was twelve, but they didn’t ask. They were visibly relieved.

“No one’s ever seen you in a cowboy hat.” He spoke like it was a known fact, but he was letting me challenge it.

“No, but I have this.” I reached behind the door and brought out my straw gardening hat. If you looked with a little imagination it could be a cousin to a cowboy hat.

They looked at the hat then glanced at each other not quite able to hide their disgust behind their professionalism.

“Any headwear with John Deere?”

“No.” I was going down hard. I knew it.

“One last thing,” said Bolo Man. “Would come out and man your truck for us?”

What could I say? You don’t tell the Man-Truck Police no when it comes to a Man-Truck investigation. I went out, trying to swagger a little, but the knee-length, cargo pants shorts ruined the effect. I reached up and opened the door. I hesitated before I climbed in. The height was slightly more than I could manage without the running board, but using the running board I often hit my head on the way in. I grabbed the steering wheel and pulled myself in without the running board. It took a little shuffling, but I didn’t hit my head. I couldn’t tell by the looks on their faces whether or not I had passed that test.

“Close the door and relax,” said Stubble Man.

I did as he asked. I rested my elbow on the open window and tried to think cowboy. There was a way to fill out the cab of a big truck. I had seen even small cowboys do it well. The two men studied me from the side and then from the front. They were inscrutable.

Finally they turned their backs to me and talked, but only for a moment. Coming back to the door Bolo Man said, “I need to ask you to get out of the truck.”

To my credit I slid out of the truck in a fairly macho manner, but it was too little too late.

“It is our judgement that the worthiness complaint is valid. You can give up your keys now or appeal in front of the truck posse tomorrow night at 8 pm at the town hall.”

It would be no use. I could do without the humiliation. I removed the truck key from my Pokemon keychain and placed it in Bolo Man’s waiting hand.

“I’m sorry, son,” he said. “There’s no shame in this. We understand you were given the truck by a city boy. They don’t understand.”

My brother was a city boy, but he was man enough for a truck. They wouldn’t have questioned him. He had even shot a deer once. He was going to be disappointed when he learned why they took my truck away. My brother gave it to me because he thought it would make a man of me. It hadn’t. Instead I had disgraced the truck.

I watched as my truck disappeared down the street following the Diesel. They would make sure it found a home with a man worthy. I looked over at my minivan. At least I didn’t have any trouble getting into that. And it could carry all eight of my kids at once. It suited me far better than the truck, anyway. I pictured one of those cowboys sitting in driver’s seat of the van. The picture made me smile. The smile faded when I remembered actually seeing that happen once. The cowboy had been in hard times. It was embarrassing to us all. The memory helped me understand more clearly why they took my truck away.

Posted By: toryanderJul, 14Comments: No CommentsCategories:

Writer

Writing with Children–Is It Possible?

What is it like to write with children? I’m not talking about an elementary writing program. I mean being a novelist and a father with four children still at home? Let me tell you—it’s horrible.

At a recent speaking event Brandon Sanderson was asked how he can be so prolific. He is known to have published between two to three thousand pages in novels (really good novels) in a year. He said he doesn’t spend a prodigious amount of time writing. He will write for maybe eight hours in a day then enjoy an evening of computer games or some other entertainment. I laughed when I heard this. From my viewpoint if eight hours isn’t a prodigious amount of time then what is?

Because my writing earns little money yet, I have to look to other means to house and feed my kids. This means my writing time is squeezed between other activities. After I park the school bus at the end of the morning run I head over to Arby’s, buy a sausage biscuit and a hot chocolate, then take out my laptop and write. I have to ignore the older fellows who meet every morning at the table next to mine to complain about people who believe in man-made climate change. I’ve learned to focus and write. I get about an hour and a half in before my thirteen year old daughter shows up. She’s finished her morning class at the middle school and waits for me to take her home where she will finish her schooling. We don’t leave for another hour because my fifteen year old son has a second class at the high school before we pick him up, too.

When my daughter arrives I may or may not get more writing done. My daughter loves to talk to me. She is an observant, thoughtful girl who loves to read and write. She likes to tell me stories about the people and events in the class she was just in. She likes to discuss the book she is reading. Currently it’s the Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien. Sometimes I sigh and look pained when she slides into the seat across from me and starts talking. This is because usually the creative juices have just started to flow by the time she arrives. It’s irritating to have my concentration broken just when I’ve started to get productive. She knows I am trying to write and does her best to keep her chatter brief. I’ll give her two dollars to buy some French Toast Stix. Then she will settle in, open her book, eat French toast and read. All too soon we have to pack up to pick up her brother and drive home.

I don’t have to leave to drive the afternoon route until 2:00 pm. On the clock that gives me three more hours. It doesn’t work that way. It takes time to greet the wife and then settle into the home office and find the creative thread again. Soon after I’ve found my way back in to the story the door to my office will open and wife will come in. She will pull over the stool and sit so she can discuss family matters. After she leaves and I am getting back into the flow I get a call over the intercom. It’s my sixteen year old son. He wants to tell me that he’s found really good Frisbees for $10.00 online. That’s great. I can foresee good times out in the back field. I might have half an hour left before I have to leave for the afternoon bus route when my seventeen year old daughter knocks on the door. She stands before me and in her cheerily animated way tells me about the structure of our government. She is studying for the GED and gets excited when things become clear to her. Then my writing time is up.

Reason tells me this is no way to write novels. I have to agree. Under these conditions writing novels is difficult to impossible. What is the solution? Someone close to me suggested that I put the writing urge aside for a few more years, go get a regular job, and finish raising my kids. Then I can write to my heart’s content. Basically he is telling me to quit writing and pretend I will get back to it later when I have fewer interruptions. There are many who take this course. Most never write anything.

Another solution is to live more strictly. I need to lay down household rules. My wife should make the twenty mile round trip to pick up the kids in the mornings so I can go straight home and write. Then, once I’m in my home office no one, that means no one, is to bother me until noon.

I’m more willing to consider this second solution than the first. Writing is not a hobby to be off until retirement. Writing is my art, my drug that I need in my life in order to survive as a whole human being. The second solution has some credence? It doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask for an uninterrupted block of time to write. Can’t my family wait until after noon to discuss their lives with me? There is still a lot of time in the day left.

I’ve looked into this using what little right-brained ability I possess. At first glance it makes perfect sense. After a closer study it falls apart. There are nine more productive hours in the day after noon, but I am accessible for very few of them. I have to drive my afternoon bus route, then my evening bus route. Intermixed with this my wife is running kids to dance. Other of my kids are running to youth programs. I have play practice. No, there is no reliable “talk” time in those hours. This is why my family comes to me when they do.

There is the option that I enforce my “no interruptions” rule anyway. I have novels to write, for Heaven’s sake. I deserve my shot at producing great art before I lose a clear mind and die. Leslie Norris, my creative writing teacher in college, told me of a writer he knew who enforced his no interruptions rule with no exceptions. He would miss family gatherings if they fell in his writing windows. I don’t know who this writer was. I know I hope he found literary success for his sacrifice.

I am not willing to make that sacrifice. Good family relationships are priceless for the joy they bring. I could not create a novel perfect or successful enough to replace what my family gives me. This sounds like a meme, but there are those of you who really know what I mean. I have a wife who loves me and teen age children who actually enjoy talking to me. Only a fool would believe there is a good reason to throw that away.

On the other hand I won’t give up my art either. My family has not asked that of me. If I stop to discuss family matters with my wife or take time to listen to a story from my thirteen year old it does take me longer to write my books, but I still write them. I’ve already written two novels under these conditions—Joey and the Magic Map and Jacob and Lace—and am in the middle of writing The Magic of Rosalie. If the readers could hear the daily agenda my wife discussed with me in the middle of the pirate scene in Joey, or see my daughter dancing pointe for me in her new ballet shoes during the City of Rocks scene in Jacob it might annoy them. The truth is that I am usually annoyed by the interruptions, too. But as I look at the finished novels in my hand and remember the interruptions from individual family members, the novel and the family become intertwined. Writing my novels becomes part of my family experience. My family experience becomes part of my artistic endeavor. I don’t want it any other way.

Posted By: toryanderApr, 14Comments: No CommentsCategories:

Joey and the Magic Map Is Available on Audible

Releasing Joey and the Magic Map as an audio book is every bit as exciting as publishing it in book form. I’m old enough to use the mis-nomenclature of Books on Tape when referring to audio books. I’m sure that over the years the list of audio books I’ve listened to is well into the hundreds. Sitting in a comfortable chair or lying in the shade with a good book is one of life’s pleasures. Turning up an audio book while on a road trip or going for a walk is another of life’s pleasures. When the narrator is well-matched to the audio book, as if often the case (such as Tim Curry and Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series), the pleasure is even greater.

Joey and the Magic Map is read by newcomer Cory Anderson. He captured the pace and tone of the book’s voice perfectly. Take a moment to listen to the sample to see if you agree. Join Joey on his search to find out if he deserves to be loved. A ghost, a magical caretaker, and a magic map help him on his way. You can purchase the Audible recording here: Joey and the Magic Map — Audible.

Posted By: toryanderJun, 17Comments: 1 CommentCategories:

Writer

Writing With Children

I’m a writer. Even so I’m beginning to dislike that phrase. It’s so vague. It means exactly what I am. It also means a million things that I’m not. Some of those “nots” are things I would be embarrassed to be. Some of those “nots” are things I dream of being.

So what kind of writer am I? I believe I’m one of the desperate sort. I’ve reached the level of where I write for the sheer joy of creation. Of course I would take great pleasure in gaining a worldwide audience, but I’ve reached the state where I find joy in writing even if my audience is only in my imagination. My “desperation” isn’t born from the need of being discovered, but from the need of finding time to write.

I’ve broken the cardinal rule of any artist: I married and had children before I was famous. If you don’t know what that means it means you haven’t broken that rule or you don’t know any aspiring author who has. I didn’t just break the rule, I broke the rule is a big way. I got married and had eight children. What was I thinking? I knew what I wanted to be when I got married. I had been published in limited markets and was studying writing under a very successful author. Frankly, I was bowled over by naiveté and life itself.

I never had anything against having children. In fact the idea pleased me. I had my first son before I graduated from college. He’s been nothing but a good thing in my life. To be fair it wasn’t he who stopped me from writing; it was the basic responsibility that I be able to shelter and feed my wife and him. Yet, that alone wouldn’t have stopped me from writing. Now I have eight kids and I am writing. The difference is that back then I had big emotions for writing, but no faith in my ability. That lack of faith, combined with the fact I found a very good job, deflated my ambitions.

It was sixteen years later that my desire to create gasped and started breathing again. The Great Recession of 2008 had begun and my employer had gone under. I found myself with seven of eight kids still at home and no income. I was desperate for a way to provide for my family. The idea of writing again came to mind—and not just the idea, but the desire. However, unless you are JK Rowling you don’t just write a book idea on a napkin and turn it into a billion dollars. I needed money in time to pay the next house payment. I hadn’t written seriously in fifteen years. The desire to write again was more of a nuisance than anything. Still, amid my desperation for money the compulsion to write again wouldn’t go away.

Ignoring that compulsion and concentrating on responsibility I started eking out mortgage and food money through a one-man computer repair shop in the small town near where I live. I was making a living that a homeless man would turn his nose up at. Then something wonderful happened—my family and I got used to living on very little money. Rather than try to build my small computer repair business into an IT empire so that I could buy a big house, a car with less than 200,000 miles on it, and a trip to Disney World I gave convention the finger and started writing again.

I didn’t have the courage to do this on my own. There was a trigger. My computer shop wasn’t making enough money to keep me from losing my house. I picked up a second work-from-home job that would take away a few hours from my shop each day. It was a desperate action to get the extra dollars I needed. It was a miserable job and I lasted only two weeks. That job made me so miserable that the relief from quitting changed me. I should have been afraid of losing my home, afraid of what would become of my family, but I wasn’t. I decided that since I had been willing to take those hours away from my computer shop anyway, instead of giving them back to the shop I would use them to write. Each morning I would keep my shop door locked and ignore the phone while I wrote on my novel, Joey and the Magic Map. It was the most freeing experience of my life.

Every writer knows there is a hole in the plotline here. How did I keep my house and feed my family? It’s not like my shop suddenly started making more money in the fewer hours I was giving it. A friend, aware of the struggle my family was having, made me aware of an opening for a school bus driver. Now there’s something that never crossed my mind in my entire life. I got the job. Driving a school bus is an obnoxious interference to my computer shop and to my writing while at the same time inspiring and enabling the latter. Being amidst the life forces of so many children is strangely invigorating.

During summer break I keep my shop door closed and write late into the morning. During the school months my morning writing time goes up in smoke due to my morning bus route. But what is the cliché? Where one door closes another door opens? I often find myself driving activity trips: girls basketball to Manti, boys wrestling to Panguitch , or the Spanish class to Cedar City. Many times these activities run all day. I drop the kids and then I’m off to the nearest public library to write for four or five hours. I’ve found some of the quaintest, most charming little libraries you can imagine where the writing just spills onto the page. Some of the activity trips are over three days. On those trips I am basically getting paid to write. My computer shop struggles along, but stays open. On the multi-day trips my son, who is in a computer-based charter school, keeps the door open for those dropping off computers. It’s a desperate bid, but I’m a desperate writer.

Today I am writing this while at my daughter’s dance team competition. It is the four hour break between her morning dance and her afternoon dance. I’ve found a chair and an electric outlet behind the door to one of the dressing rooms. The door has opened and closed a million times already almost, but never quite, hitting me. Girls in heavy eyeliner and sparkly eyeshadow come and go; girls with flouncy feathers on their derrieres strut down the hall; girls in flowing white drift by. The energy is amazing. It is inspiring and horribly distracting to my writing, but I am a desperate man. I will do what I must to hang on to my family, but I will write.

Posted By: toryanderMar, 24Comments: No CommentsCategories:

Writer

Morgan Middle School Reading Classes

I spent a day at Morgan Middle school speaking with sixth grade reading students. What a pleasure. Them aren’t just nice words–those children really were a pleasure to speak with. I don’t know if there is something about sixth graders or if there is something about me, but I connect with sixth graders. I told one class of sixth graders that at eleven-years-old they are experiencing the most magical year of their life. I saw a couple of perceptive, if doubtful, kids roll their eyes. What could I mean by that? They have high school, dating, marriage, sex (hopefully in that order) ahead of them and I’m telling them that sixth grade is as good as it gets? Actually, that’s not what I’m telling them. I said it was the most magical year, but even that can’t be proved. All I’m trying to say is that sixth graders are old enough and smart enough to ask the hard questions in life, but young enough not to have the messy awkwardness of puberty pulling emotional strings. This combination makes them especially sharp and fresh.

My goal in these reading-writing workshops is to help the kids see the world like writers: seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. With this age group is isn’t hard. I had them for about an hour and fifteen minutes. They gave me their attention the full time. In the third class I was a bit worried. I walked in to find the kids sitting askance in their chairs. Some were backwards with their legs hanging over the chair backs. One student with a shaved head walked in late and loudly announced his tardiness. I prepared myself for a more difficult time communicating to this class. It turned out that their casual demeanor wasn’t a sign of behavioral problems, but of a more casual teaching style presented by the teacher. The kids were great. About an hour into the presentation I took a chance and read a three page scene from my book Joey and the Magic Map. I was worried I would lose them here. At the end of the scene I looked up into the faces of several students who were completely lost in the scene I was painting. That says a lot about the student’s discipline and imagination and maybe a little about the success of the scene I wrote. Either way it was gratifying.

I have several classes of seventh and eighth graders coming up soon. These students long ago fell into the tangled jungle of puberty. I drive many of them on my school bus. I’m sure they will be surprised to see their bus driver in their classroom. I expect it will be quite a different experience than the sixth graders, but I still have high hopes that it will be a good one.

Posted By: toryanderJan, 29Comments: No CommentsCategories:

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