Outside the Writer's Room: Writing in the Kitchen on a Snowy Day in Vermont

I know writers are supposed to barricade themselves in private soundproof rooms, where they can keep the outside world away while they create new worlds on paper. So, why do I find myself writing in the kitchen so often? Maybe it's the closeness of the tea kettle. Maybe it's the light. Or maybe the expectations loosen up and it's just more fun ...

At any rate, I was sitting at the kitchen counter scribbling a first draft of a poem (shown at the bottom), which kept getting changed each time I looked at it (multiple drafts; and can we still call it "scribbling" on a computer? well, why not?), and out of the corner of my eye caught something in motion outside the kitchen window. In one coordinated leap, I grabbed the binoculars and made it to the window, and then ran to the next one, pulling out my cell phone and adjusting its bold little camera to "zoom." And here's the result: a fox that wove back and forth along the field, then came right down to the edge of the yard where the gardens begin, where a mouse must have been traveling under the snow. I watched the fox pounce, dig down, and snap up its snack and chew (with mouth open, eeyew).

It paused to look toward me -- movement at the window drew its attention, I'm sure -- before heading back toward the woods at the top of the field.

And THAT is why writing by a kitchen window is a Very Good Idea. Forget the desk, for today.

***

Religion

I was seven, my brother five, my cute little sister

just three years old. We played tag

with lots of other kids in the neighborhood.

The Slaines were Catholic, lived across the street,

and their girl my age – was it Nancy? –

had a “wedding dress” when she turned seven

and made her First Communion. How envious

I was of her cuteness, and her day of lacy

beauty. The little girl who lived on our other side,

Eileen, sat on the wooden edge of our sandbox

and edged her words with scorn:

“Nancy’s Catholic,” she emphasized in a new way,

a pout of her rosebud lips indicating

a form of disgust. Even then, I knew it must be

something she’d learned from her parents.

Then she announced, with pride,

“I’m Protestant!” – sure, we had heard that label in our house.

My brother grinned, bobbed his crewcut head, agreed.

I had curly hair (too curly said my mother),

which bounced even with my neutral nod.

Then my little sister, rising to the call,

stood up, saluted, and said, “I’m American!”

-- BK

What the Young Squirrel Showed to Me

Walking uphill on our dirt road on Friday, I noticed a very large and long "pinecone" that had been run over -- still mostly attached together, but fringed and shattered along its edges. Ten minutes later, headed back down the hill, I found this very young squirrel digging into it, extracting the protein-rich seeds.

The little squirrel (a red one) stayed on task and let me get closer than most adult squirrels permit. But finally he/she grabbed the biggest chunk of the cone and bounded off into the scrub and woods next to the road.

The squirrel's attention to the cone pushed me to wonder more about it. I looked up the cone today -- and that's why I put the term "pinecone" into quotation marks, as these fibrous seed carriers come on spruces and even birches, not just pines. But it does seem from my Audubon Society Field Guide to be a cone from a white pine.

I was really surprised to see the "cones" on birch twigs in the book. All these years admiring birches, and I've never looked at them closely enough to see what carries their seeds! A few pages later are photos of acorns; why didn't I even stop to notice that different kinds of oaks present different shapes and colors of acorns? Guess I was always just pleased to be able to say "oak" and "acorn."

As I look at the neighboring town of Lyndonville with intent to frame a YA mystery there (probably in 1898), I'm finding the same surprise at what I've walked or driven past without questioning, noticing, or naming. Lyndonville suffered two devastating fires in the first part of the 1900s, wiping out one side of its main street, then the other. Yet there are structures that date to 1898 on most of the "town center" streets. And only recently, my husband Dave (who lived in that town for two decades and has a great collection of postcard images of it) and I realized how many portions of the massive railroad complex from, say, 1855 to 1950 linger in town, repurposed or quietly shuttered and overgrown.

Soon I'll choose names for the teen and the two older women who'll make up the main characters of this book-being-planned. While those details come together, I'll also look around the town for traces that remain of the people I'm envisioning. I've already seen evidence of their lives (the real ones, not my fictional versions) in Census documents and 1890s advertisements.  Crafting a good story from these "seeds" means paying attention to the names and existence of what's already there.

Thanks, Red Squirrel. You've got me asking questions and seeking answers. Way to go.

Buzzards at the Cemetery

We made a delivery to friends in North Monroe, New Hampshire, this morning, then headed home on the "scenic route" -- which immediately had me slowing the van and stopping in the middle of the road, to watch the unusual sight of a large turkey buzzard perched on top of some "road kill" (a crushed and furry heap of smashed animal) and refusing to move. I wanted to take a photo but Dave was concerned that we were a target for other cars arriving, so I let the car roll slowly forward, and with a clearly resentful shrug, the buzzard left its prey and allowed us to pass. I parked just beyond the spot as I realized what I was seeing where the buzzard had landed: THREE enormous turkey buzzards sitting together on the stones of the North Monroe cemetery, waiting for another chance to consume their meal.

As I eased the car door open, stepped out, and closed the door most of the way, more buzzards landed in the field on the other side of the road. I have never seen such a large group of turkey buzzards -- I usually see them as two to four in a group, wheeling in the sky. What was drawing them?

Next I realized that between the flock of birds of prey and the road, a small fox sat with its ears twitching. Fox kit (young one)? Or mama? I think probably the mama, since it watched the road intently. I raised the camera and caught a photo, but clearly was one threat too many, as the fox then stood up and trotted toward the road bank -- and vanished. Must be the fox den was under the edge of the road.

So, what was holding the flock of buzzards in place? It can't have been the small tattered mound on the road. It was barely enough for one buzzard to consume. I'm thinking cow ... the field is part of a dairy farm, and either a cow went down, or a calf didn't survive the birthing process and is tucked under the green growth where I can't see it, but the turkey buzzards can.

The birds perched on the cemetery stones became restless; you can see one here, toward the right, wings raised. I decided we should move on, and let them get back to bird business.

What an unusual morning!

And that is how writers get distracted. But fear not: Sue Tester and I finished our "semifinal" draft of Charlie's Place a week ago, and my editor at the publishing house is taking a look. Two more sets of revisions to complete, before I can let myself launch into writing The Fire Curse. Chug, chug, chug, puff. I think I can ...

Learning the Downy Woodpecker's Call(s): Why That Matters in Writing Today

I watch for when this spring's robins start tidying up last year's nest.

Walk for 20 minutes in the morning and your brain lights up with oxygen delivery in the areas that feed the writing process. The brain scans are quite clear about this effect!

But it's a bit more complicated to say why I am so excited that I learned the call of the downy woodpecker a few days ago. (You can hear it -- in fact, you can hear three different calls, the "pik," the "whinny," and the "drum" -- on the Cornell University ornithology site: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/downy_woodpecker/sounds.) When I first starting trying to notice birds more deliberately, I realized I had an odd assumption left from childhood: If I already recognized a bird by its plumage and knew its name, I believed the bird was "common." And if it was new to me, I assumed it was "rare" because I hadn't become acquainted with it before. Wow, was I wrong! The birds I already "knew" turned out to be the ones my mom could name, so she taught them to me when I was a child: robin, sparrow, chickadee, bluebird, cardinal. My mom always wanted to see a hummingbird, but never had, and she considered them exotic.

Turns out that hummingbirds are common! I can see a dozen or more in a summer, now that I pay attention to them. So are woodpeckers, and in the trees around my home there are downy woodpeckers and pileated woodpeckers (the ones that remind me most of "Woody Woodpecker" from cartoons, because of the tall red crest of feathers on their heads). I think there are hairy woodpeckers, too, but I'm not yet good at differentiating them from the downy ones.

How do you learn to "see" a woodpecker? For me, it came from learning to hear one! Not just the rap of the beak on the tree -- that could be any of the three I've named, or even a "sapsucker" (more on those, another day). But the downy woodpecker has a distinctive call, and if I notice it and look up right away, it's so easy to see the black-and-white bird after all.

How different a lilac bud looks, compared to the eventual flowers!

Bringing the invisible, the unnoticed, the mysterious and marvelous, into a poem or novel makes a huge different to how vivid and memorable the writing becomes. It also helps me reach more fullness of characters, and to question, in the best of ways, why I'm choosing a particular path for a work. So each day, on my 20-minute walk, I question what I'm seeing and hearing, asking names, changes, explanations, and yes, seeking the invisible within the story at the same time. It matters to me.

Where Plot Ideas Come From: Tracks in the Snow

Turkey track, solo ... or so you might think

Two clusters of turkey tracks crossing the stream: Look closely.

Mourning dove, "pigeon toed."

It's cold here this weekend -- bursts of snow keep arriving, and it was nine degrees when I went outside. Although the chickadees call (their two-note mating call) in early morning, the woods go nearly silent later in the day, as we all hold our warmth close, self-protection in what can still be wild winter on the ridge. Tonight's forecast threatens subzero temperatures, not unusual for mid March, although it won't last. The trees are signaling buds and more.

Silent though the woods can be, the larger birds are on the move. With the snowcover down to a fragile couple of inches, seeds are everywhere for them with just a quick scratch. How different they are from one breed to another, though. See the solo turkey track in the first photo? It could fool you if you don't follow further -- the second photo, taken not far from the first, reveals that a family of at least half a dozen turkeys passed along here, crossing the stream around the same point.

The third photo means a lot to me as I work slowly to bind all the plot threads together in my "Nancy Drew-style" mystery, ALL THAT GLITTERS. I'm in the last few chapters and it has to go "right" in order to build to the climax I want. There are homing pigeons involved in the plot -- and the tracks in photo 3 are of mourning doves, the wilder sort of pigeon here on the high ridge. I hear their plaintive calls all morning. See how the footprints angle back to each other, always crossing, as the round-bodied bird appears to waddle along? That's where we get the expression "pigeon-toed" -- to walk with one's toes pointed inward, so the right and left feet appear to leave crisscross trails.

The cold air, the photo, the reflection on pigeons, and then, breakfast with strangers at Polly's Pancakes in Sugar Hill, NH, where you often share a table as the staff packs everyone in -- that's what it took to move me to the next component of ALL THAT GLITTERS. Suddenly, I know what's coming next.

PS - You can read the chapters as they are written, at WattPad: http://www.wattpad.com/3668250-all-that-glitters-chapter-1-all-that-glitters-by.