This is how I learned to write about teen heroines who
make a way out of no way
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I’ve learned about writing from many teachers. The best of them blended the craft of writing with the art of writing and were honest about its challenges and its charm. |
Words, phrases, and stories fascinate me. Growing up in Marinette County in rural northeastern Wisconsin, I heard my older brother Tony embroider his descriptions. |
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Tony colored the daily and ordinary happenings with biblical phrases. He embellished our neighbor's haphazard house building---“holes in a roof, lepers, and olive trees—-nothing more.” Describing the endless crowds attending our eccentric aunt's funeral, he said, “Dromedaries coming from the East.” The biblical messages were meaningless but the action and detailed clarity captivated me. |
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Tony still entertains with his depictions which are exactly what my dad did for decades. We recorded my dad telling a story several days before he died. On that scratchy cassette tape, our giggles bolstered his fading strength as he wove a tale about cats, dynamite, lying, and lightning. His clout with language, command of storytelling, and sway with humor were his final gifts to me. |
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More ruthless and edgy, my mother sliced the air with her razor blade opinion. “The clowns in Washington,” she ranted. Well into her 70s, she marched on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC and, after her death, we found dozens of politicians’ responses to her handwritten letters. |
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My mother lectured mercilessly, nonstop. “Waste will be our downfall” was a favorite. She was a dumpster-diver well ahead of her time, an Aldo Leopold-conservationist when Aldo was hardly a teenager. Her voice left no stone unturned. She taught me voice. |
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While an undergraduate and graduate student, faculty taught me writing details and simplicity. When I returned to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire from southern California, I began a long career as a university professor teaching nursing and writing academic papers. As a professor, I responded to the written work of hundreds of students. Every student-writer was an impressive teacher. |
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University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
The temptation to write fiction emerged and snowballed later in my career, well after a heap of academic writing. I could not resist. I joined writing groups filled with experts and novices and I took classes at literary centers and the university. I practiced writing at every opportunity.
Happy and challenged, I learned I could learn to write fiction.
For me, learning is magic. Learning (actually, re-learning) how to play the flute. Learning ballroom dancing, roller-blading, and cross country skiing. Learning more about teaching. And learning how to write.
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A statistics professor in my doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee dedicated himself to learning something new each semester. "So I never forget how students struggle to learn statistics," he said.
I was a student in one of those grueling stats courses when, far into his 60s, this professor was learning how to kayak---lessons at the YMCA, an injured shoulder, pain-killing drugs, and weeks of physical therapy. All this, so he remembered the struggles of learning something new. I learned statistics from him, but I learned a whole lot more. |
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Struggles, yes, but learning to write fiction has also been a thrill, a revelry.
Learning something new is like that.
Learning something new is like that.
"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."
--Jack Kerouac
--Jack Kerouac
