PLOT, Stick to the PLOT

 

There is a ubiquitous how-to writing suggestion to cut any of the text which isn’t serving the plot. This includes description of landscape, weather, and general sideshows.

 

Writers of yore had no such compunctions, and leisurely took us to places where we stopped and smelled the roses before resuming the characters’ journeys to their resolutions. Poor Tolstoy would have been eviscerated by contemporary editors for the almost novella-length chapters that veered off the plot. I know, I read War and Peace, the whole thing.

 

Today, we are told we don’t have the time. Readers don’t have the patience. No one can stand still and wait for the narration when it takes the slightest rest.

 

I had an editor tell me that a half-page section of dialogue, while hilarious, didn’t advance the action. When I suggested it served both as more character revelation and also for comic relief, the editor’s response was that readers, especially young ones, don’t have the time for that. Cut, cut, CUT.

And, for that matter, also cut the view of the countryside as seen by the main character from the moving train window. Never mind that the train is moving fast. The plot is what must move here, so unless there’s a killer on the train who’s looking for our hero, we don’t need to see or hear our hero’s thoughts on the train. Move, move, MOVE.

 

I humbly suggest we should strike a middle ground here. Resting places in novels are precious spaces, and I intend to keep them, because as a reader I need them just as much as the fictional characters do.

THE PITFALLS of BEING PLUGGED IN

 

Where I live, the neighbors and the local news are rife with daily reports of break-ins, car “smash-and-grabs," phone and laptop thefts.

WATCH OUT! 😦

 

Speaking of phones and laptops, the local news and video sharing sites are full of warnings about how hackers have gotten into them, stolen our data, and are running wild with our accounts.

WATCH OUT! 😧

 

And while we have hackers taking space on our frontal lobes, apparently our government is not immune to them. Our electric grids, defense apparatus and voting rolls, not to speak of the social security numbers of all of us, have been infiltrated by hostile entities.

WATCH OUT! 😨

 

As if this isn’t enough and you may be thinking that you can always leave your country for a better protected one, from all directions the media is blasting that our whole planet is close to dying because we will toast on account of Global Warming, something we are told is happening ever faster than anyone predicted.

WATCH OUT! 😱

 

Wait a minute--- I have a better suggestion. Stop watching. At least pull the plug on media that is dependent on us staying plugged in and is counting on the fear factor to keep us there.

 

This isn’t a call to put one’s head in the sand. I sure don’t. But I suggest that taking breaks from being plugged in is a cure that most are long overdue.

 

I take regular internet/computer/phone breaks. Not long ones, just enough to look around, appreciate my reality and good fortune of being alive, and restore healthy breathing.

 

I come up for air now and then. It makes a better and even more alert me, more able to cope with all the above.

MARCH 11TH IN HISTORY

 

1861 Confederate states adopt new constitution

In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas adopt the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

 

When grumblings about “we need Civil war” enter your sphere, please re-consider. We came too close to duplicate the fractious abyss that is Europe, and because the Union prevailed, we remained a large continent where citizens move freely between territories and states. It seems normal to Americans, but it is not the norm as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

 

The reference link concludes with—

Although Britain and France both briefly considered entering the Civil War on the side of the South, the Confederate States of America, which survived until April 1865, never won foreign recognition as an independent government.

Phew, that was close. Too close. A hundred and sixty-four years of endless “hot” wars between states were averted, but not before a tenth of Americans paid with their lives.

 

Especially because if this, if you’re tempted to go yell at or slap someone for advocating war, consider baking them a pie or inviting them over for tea and cookies. Resolve not to allow conflict into the conversation.

^ Me, wearing a Peace Corps T-shirt, inviting you for coffee^

 

Blessed are the peacemakers.

INTUITION is not a FEELING

 

A few months ago, I read an excellent post about intuition and its place in the writing process. See it here.

 

It wasn’t news to me that good writing is intuitive even as it uses the cloak of logical and systematic exposition.

 

The most precious nugget the post gave me is the articulation that intuition shouldn’t be confused with a feeling or an emotion.

 

Instead, think of intuition as the mind processing information so fast and connecting the dots before we have the words, or articulation, to explain it rationally.  

 

Intuition is an awareness of a high order. Creating without it yields something akin to assembly manuals of the sort that come with various gizmos. That’s “technical writing,” and writers of poetry or prose aren’t doing that.

 

Good writing connects the dots before we have the words to name them.

More CAT INDULGENCES

 

Once every few months, I just feel compelled to share snippets of the joy that are my cats.

 

No, I’m not a “childless cat lady,” but a child-full one. 😸 

 

No, I’m not a “crazy cat woman,” but a sane one. 😹

 

What I am is an unapologetic feline fancier. 😻

 

These marvels of nature are graceful beauties who do us a favor by allowing us near them.

 

Lucky plucky me, I have three such wonders close by.

 

Here, have some:

{{{TO MY FABOULOUS FANCY FELINE FRIENDS 🍻}}}

🙏Please think good thoughts for Sokolov, 🙏

🙏our black cat, who is very ill 🙏

The Advantage of the KNOW-NOTHINGS

 

Conventional wisdom, CW for short, is that there are the right times and the wrong times to query agents and editors. The month of December, especially the week between Christmas and New Year’s, is the very wrong time.

 

I got the attention of my second agent, a consummate experienced professional, during that very “wrong” time. Before being agented, I got a request for the full manuscript of my eventually acquired and published novel during that (very) wrong time, also.

 

I wasn’t breaking the rules, I just didn’t know them.

 

I also got the best job I ever had back in my pre-motherhood life by breaking a few rules because I didn’t know them. Not going into details here, but trust me. I learned later that, innocently, I stepped over a few faux-pax.

 

I write this as a reminder to self and also a public service to share, so that fear of standing out mustn’t paralyze, and could also be recognized as a possible advantage.

 

The same goes for writing and constructing stories. Distinctiveness for its own sake is a vice when it’s a pathology. But innocence of conventions is not, and it’s more than all right.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Thomas Edison

 

Thomas Edison should be the lodestar to every person who ever heard the victimization narrative and fell for it.

Don’t.

Just don’t buy it. Because if you do, you will have victimized yourself times ten.

 

 

Thomas Edison was almost deaf.

He had only a few months of formal schooling.

He started working at age 12.

He was viewed as “odd.”

He didn’t come from any ruling elite or so-called “right families.”

 

 

He went on to be the holder of (arguably) more patents than anyone, and we owe him much of what is fueling the engines of modern technology, not least of which is what is driving this blog I am typing on right now.

 

Which is a good reason to celebrate his birthday, February 11^th, not with gratitude for Edison's inventions but as a reminder not to focus on the obstacles life deals us. Instead, let's celebrate the amazing opportunities that being alive presents.

POINT OF VIEW (aka POV)

 

The voice of a story comes to me in the form of a line. For me, it’s usually the first sentence/paragraph.

 

This line also contains the point of view. I don’t recall ever “choosing” it, it chose itself.

 

This post explains how pivotal the POV is to the rest of the story. It is more important than plot points or list of characters or even theme. The first two evolve and change as one drafts and later revises, the last emerges on its own if the story is worth its salt and pepper.

 

But the POV determines almost everything, and if (unlike me) you aren’t seeing it clearly and wonder whose it is, consider how much difference it would make if the narrative thread is seen from, say, Aunt Olga’s vantage point or Cousin Vladimir’s. It makes all the difference.

 

There is also the so-called omniscient POV, less humbly called G-d’s. I don’t write this all-seeing POV because 1. I don’t know how to do it justice, and 2. The remove feel of it doesn’t drive my writerly engine.

Long ago, a writing friend asked me to read part of a novel she was working on and asked if the POV was omniscient.

“Actually, it isn’t. It’s ‘head hopping’,” I said.

Head hopping is moving from different characters inner most awareness without so much as taking a breath, which causes a jumble and disjointed state in a reader. Omniscience requires some remove. A lot of novice writers confuse the two.

My friend resolved to pick one character’s vantage point and stick with it.

 

When writing in first person, it’s clear whose POV it is. When writing in third person, it’s important not to stray from what the character could know or see or even overhear. If more than one POV is needed, there are good novels that alternate different chapters clearly marked for changing the POV. A classic example of multiple POV is The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg.

 

I will continue to let my stories choose, because it works for the way I work.

POV^

Need a Break from DYSFUNCTION?

 

A few months ago, I realized that between the news (wars, crimes, the latest pathogens and some petty pointless bit—ing about others), and the sort of movies and TV shows I was watching, which were mostly about dysfunction (wars, crime stories, pandemics and plenty bi---ing), it was taking a negative toll on my psyche.

 

Sure, it was compelling, and it is an aspect of the human story. But I needed some medicine to balance this out.

 

And so, I have been making the effort to pay attention to basically good people doing or trying to do good things. Flawed people, (is there any other kind?) but decent and with a conscience that is alive and serves to guide.

 

I like THIS IS US (now all seasons streaming on Netflix) and novels like ASK AGAIN, YES by Mary Beth Keane. If you have recommendations for some such, I am as wide open as ever.

 

Let the light of humanity pour in~

©Art by Shelagh Duffett

EVOCATIVE

 

The very word, “evocative,” is evocative.

 

The dictionary definition, “Serving to bring to mind. Making you remember or imagine something,” brings up feelings of hazy memories one can’t quite place or anchor.

 

Good poetry is supremely evocative. Good prose is subtly so. Good music evokes on the most sensual level, as do smells and even certain qualities of light.

 

I was mulling over a Leonard Cohen song, AVALANCHE, whose words I find evocative. But— blimey— if I know what they mean. I just know that the many attempts to analyze it fall flat. From the literal to the highfalutin theses I read, none touch what this song evokes in me, which is dread and impending doom.

 

This is but one example. I find James Joyce’s Ulysses evocative, but also unreadable. I wonder if, on some level, he meant it to be. A sort of hiding in plain sight.

 

I’m not this sort of writer, but I am intrigued by evocative writing.   

“IF YOU COULD MEET ANYONE FROM HISTORY…”

 

There’s a well-known trope/parlor game/interview question that asks which long-dead persons you’d like to meet, have dinner with, interview, etc.

 

It’s fun to think about, and the answer supposedly reveals something pertinent about us.

 

About a month ago, someone put this question to me and I realized my older answers didn’t hold for me anymore. My old answers were Shakespeare (did he really author what is attributed to him?), Jesus (what was the historic flesh-and-blood person really like?), and Abraham (Is he in fact one actual person, or a myth?).

 

But I realized that Shakespeare would almost certainly be a disappointment. The works are far greater than the author, as is almost always the case. Jesus of Nazareth is also far greater as spiritual residues present to this day. As to Abraham, I would likely not like him at all and he not like me. Anyone who would sacrifice his beloved son Isaac and lie to his boy while climbing to the place of the intended killing (all to prove his complete obedience to G-d) is the sort of fanatic I avoid like the plague today.

 

Then, they came to me like figures emerging out of a thick fog. The people I would most like to meet and spend a day with, the people I would like to get to know and be known by, are my father’s mother and father. They perished in the Holocaust and the Nazis wouldn’t allow my father, still a boy himself, to keep even the locket he wore with his mother’s photograph.

 

What I know of them are the memories of a boy. When I asked my late father to describe them physically, he gave such a vague description that I couldn’t conjure their faces. Years later, when my father returned for a visit to Poland and found a neighbor he remembered from his childhood still living in the old building, the neighbor angrily snapped at him saying, “What Jews? There were never any Jews here.” He had hoped someone had photos of his family, but instead found complete erasure.  

 

If you believe in the afterlife, you might be telling me that I will meet my grandparents some day. You might be telling me that they are watching over me right now. I won’t argue. It’s a mystery, as far as I’m concerned.

 

But today I would choose to meet them while I’m still part of this world of action, because I sense it would inform the rest of my time here in a meaningful way.

AH-HA! MOMENTS

 

One of the powerful tools in storytelling is the Ah-Ha! Moment.

 

It’s a character recognizing their fault, or not their fault, and how to carry on doing better.

 

These are powerful moments in real life, also. For reflective people, these recognitions are numerous, and not nearly as dramatic. But in the context of story, they are crescendos that lead to the stories’ climax resolutions.

 

Just this morning, a stranger who had parked their car in front of our driveway (blocking my ability to use my car) said I was “impatient” when I asked him to move. I did what I always do, covering up my frustration with a smile and asking how long it would be before he would, you know, pretty please, free our driveway. He said, “not long,” and I walked away.

 

But I was seething. Underneath my practiced non-confrontational smile, I thought--- The nerve of him. Not for blocking my driveway, but for calling me “impatient.”

 

But even before he did move on, twenty minutes later, I realized he was right. I was impatient. I didn’t need to use my car right then, I could wait. If I had an appointment to get to, I’d explain, and he (probably, hopefully) would have moved. Going to the store this morning was not an urgent matter, and I was simply being impatient.

 

This complete stranger called it. If patience is virtue, (and I believe it is) I need to work on it.

 

This tiny lightbulb moment got me thinking about my fictional characters, and their moments of illumination.

Let there be light~

HAPPY TO BE READ

 

Back to answering another from Karen Jones’s blog post list:

Are you excited about the idea of people reading your work…?

I have always had “people” reading my writing, whether they were my teachers or family members or friends. I know what Karen means, though. She means people I never met and likely never will-- except as readers.

 

My first published essay was in eighth grade. It was, as we used to say, a “heady experience.” Many years later, I began blogging. The few strangers who responded to my early posts quickly became on-line acquaintances.

 

But the first review I got to my published novel, The Voice of Thunder, brought people who were strangers to this day. This, like my eighth-grade essay, was “heady”. I imagine that multi-published writers who have wide readership have a more nonchalant feelings for the experience of complete strangers reading what they wrote. We humans adjust to most things that are not common and then become a new normal for us.

 

Few in the human family, which numbers in the many billions, become so-called famous. But for the famous (“celebrities,” how I dislike the word) it is just what is. Fame itself feels undesirable an existence to me. For the famous who don’t crash and burn, it is just the way it is.

 

So, the answer to the question is two-pronged: I find a reaction to my writing from a total stranger to quicken my heartbeats, but only for a bit, and then I adjust and it is how it is, part of the package of writing for publication.

 

Excitement is an ephemeral thing. It happens, and then it’s gone.

HOPE and CHANGE

 Every New Year's Eve we celebrate what I can only call "Hope and Change." It's not the year that passed, counting blessings but also awfulness, but what we hope is the door to change.

If the definition of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a form of looniness, then New Year's Eve celebrations are forms of madness.

Call me crazy, but without hope I really would go mad.

Happy New Year!

Happy HANUKKAH and a Very Merry CHRISTMAS

 I have no issue with those who insist that only "Happy Holidays" is the way to greet people whose observances are unknown to the greeter. 

But I have more affinity with those who are less sensitive, and (like me) appreciate the majority including the various minorities in their greetings.  We are Hanukkah people, but if you wish me a Merry Christmas, brothers and sisters-- I'm happy to be joyous with you in your merriment.

I choose not to feel conquered, excluded, or imposed on. Your happiness is a blessing, and I am only glad to share it.

And in years such as this one, we get to dance together, because as happens every few years, the calendars decided your holidays and ours overlap.

SECURING YOUR FILES

 

Having had complete loss of my desktop(s) not once, not twice, but (gulp) thrice in a period of a year, the matter of preserving one’s work is not a theoretical one.

 

Yup, 2022 was a doozy for my shouldn’t-have-trusted computer(s) and two years later, in August of 2024, I once again experienced the joy of having to transition, as my oldy (they all were) desktop needed to be replaced because Windows 10 support ends October 2025. Happily, for now, we crossed that bridge. 👍

 

I learned a few things in the process. Best thing was to (finally) succumb and pay for cloud storage. The thing is, I am not sure I know how to retrieve my digital contents from the cloud. If you do, let me know. But it feels better to have it.

 

I also learned that my habit of saving all my documents onto flash drive(s) saved me from total loss. More than one flash drive, because I have had these die without warning in the past. I've also had two hard drives that backed up and died. Best thing about this sort of saving (flash drives) is that I do know how to retrieve and upload when the need comes, and as I said, it came and came and came.

 

In the pre-historic days when I first began using a computer, I printed everything that mattered in order to have hard copies. Flash drives weren’t invented yet and didn’t become ubiquitous until later. I had files saved to a CD, which was somewhat more cumbersome.

 

The hard paper copies are great for proofreading, but if the digital work meanders to the great nowhere ether forest or evaporated by a bug, it means typing and typing and more typing from the printed pages. It isn’t an elegant solution. But in those ancient times I just didn’t trust the ephemeral nature of words on a screen. I only believed the reality of something I could hold.  I still feel this way about books I am reading, by the way.

 

But digital files need a digital back door storage.

 

What do you do? I’d love to know.

SYMBOLS and SIGNS

 

We grasp reality through stories. But before we have sentences that make paragraphs, we have symbols.

 

I quote the first part of my favorite sentence from another writer’s post, “Life speaks to us through symbols….” Lisa Tener’s whole post is worth reading.

 

Unlike the notion that using symbols makes a story literary, I contend it makes any story better. It makes a story good.

 

Think of weaving consistent symbols into your storytelling. Now make their appearance organic, and you have better stories.

 

Thoughts as I finished draft number two of my current WIP. 😔

 

Can you guess what my current woven symbol is? Don't try too hard. My Beta readers are yet to comment on it. My hope is that it's seamless, and they so won't.

HOW DO YOU LIKE* CRITICISM?

 

*What’s not to like?

 

Someone asked me yesterday how I feel about being criticized.

Simple: I don’t like it, but I’m not against it. 😰

 

The question came in the passive construction, deliberately obscuring the action’s source. This forced a vague answer.

 

Because (and this is key) it depends on WHO is doing the criticizing.

 

After the initial sting, I think I usually can tell if this person is coming from a helpful place, and let me tell you— it matters. A lot.

 

When suggestions for improvement come from a loving unselfish place, they are golden. Don’t get me wrong. No Pollyanna, I. It never feels good in the immediate aftermath. Never.

 

But some time after, as soon as a few hours, these offerings are gifts.

 

One thing that distinguishes the loving criticisms are if they are something one can change. This is pivotal.

 

If words point to unchangeable things, they are not well meant. Forget about 'em as soon as you can. Toss ’em to the wastepaper basket at the edge of the universe. Go on, act it out. Print those words, crumble the paper, and give it your best basketball throw into the garbage.

 

But the actionable ones coming from someone who is a fan/friend/faithful family— count these as fabulous. Because your “F” today is a chance at an A+ tomorrow.

A STATE of THANKFULNESS

 

Thanksgiving week, and all across the continent folks are discussing recipes, menus, and the now-ubiquitous “here come the holiday blues.”

 

American Thanksgiving centers around a single meal because the story attached to the national ethos involves a single holiday feast.

 

Whether true or (most likely) half-true, a tradition that follows most Americans contains memories of these family get-togethers.  I remember my mother telling me about the Thanksgivings of her childhood when I, her Israeli daughter, had no notion what it was about, nor the image of Indians sitting together with Pilgrims in the seventeenth century. I only knew the nostalgia in her eyes for a country she had left to go and help build the Jewish state. But we always remain the children we were, years later and miles away.

 

Holiday meals are fine. But I have come to focus on the matter of the underlaying theme. Thankfulness is not for one day a year. It’s a good habit for every day.

 

I now end each day, just after turning off the lights, with at least three things I am thankful for that happened that day.  Not general things, but specific ones. Some days are particularly challenging, and I count things that could have happened but (thankfully) didn’t. Most days (again, thankfully) it’s easy, because life’s gifts are more abundant than my normal state acknowledges.  

 

This routine has a way of strengthening itself. It’s a good habit to develop. I’m thankful to the person who suggested it. I no longer remember who it was but Thank You.

ROBERT FROST and ME

 

When I asked writing friends where they go to clear their heads of cluttered mental debris and recharge, I heard “the beach” more times than anywhere else.

 

For me, the beach holds little solace. Sure, it’s lovely at sunset. Otherwise, it’s like a party: too well lit, too exposed, too rah-rah and whoosh-whoosh of waves, bikinis, and volleyballs.

 

A walk on the beach is also hard on the feet & leg muscles. Afterwards, I need a rest from that rest.

 

I’m with Robert Frost, who declared the woods his recharge station. Especially the dark and deep ones. The sounds of a redwood forest, dripping dew, singing invisible birds who also shelter there, and the gentle deep colors gratis of the low light are my place of remembering that life is a gift.

And speaking of woods, nothing compares to the California Redwoods. On a hike there, we paid homage to one tree who has his own name. Methuselah is named after the biblical character who lived to be nine-hundred and sixty-nine years. (Genesis 527) The old redwood tree named after him is almost two thousand years old.

Methuselah Tree^ (Redwood)

Woodside, California

 

Beaches are transitory. The redwoods stand and watch the sands wash away. I’ll take the less travelled road. 

 

The Yesterdays of THIS SIDE OF TOMORROW

 

Other than my own, there are few traditionally published books whose inception and labor pains I have witnessed.

 

Today, a spectacular birthday to one of these few is a cause for celebration.

 

The author, Tina Cho, is a critique group colleague of many years. Neither of us had been published when we started working together to improve our storytelling, and, since then, she has risen to the top of the kidlit writers’ profession. Many published picture books later, her debut novel is being released *today*-- and a great day it is.

 

Re-named This Side of Tomorrow, it began as a non-fiction picture book text about the two Koreas, one filled with light and the other enveloped by darkness, seen from an omniscient point of view.  Our critique group offered feedback, and all of us thought it would make a worthy picture book.

 

Editors’ feedback suggested re-writing it as a human story with survival of escaping from the dark Korea on the north to the light Korea on the south. Our critique group saw that manuscript as well.

 

A new editorial suggestion said it needed to be a story for older readers, a middle grade novel. Tina wondered if she could write a middle grade novel at all, having polished her skills on shorter stories. She decided it was too important a story not to try. Tina and her family were living in South Korea at the time, and she went on to research and interview and learn from people who had made this harrowing journey.

 

Many months later, she had the story. I was privileged to read that first or second draft and offer feedback. I had published a middle grade that also had a historic and political backdrop, so Tina thought I might be helpful. I don’t know if I was, but reading that excellent draft, I became committed to following this story’s journey to publication.

 

First, Tina entered it into a competition, and it won a prize from a good publisher and an offer to publish. It was not a generous offer, but it already surpassed thousands of never-to-be published middle grade novels languishing in writers’ computer files. Tina thought hard as to whether to accept the offer. You know, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

 

She also pursued agent representation, and, once she got an agent’s offer and accepted it, her new agent thought they could do better.

 

And better they did, but not before her agent suggested re-writing the story as a novel-in-verse and later, as a graphic novel, and a lyrical one at that. I saw sections of that draft as well.

 

At every incarnation, it struck me that a very good story was becoming a great and greater one.

 

Once acquired, the search for an illustrator artist began. The publisher found a wonderful match for Tina’s words in Deb JJ Lee. The long process of putting images to the words began.

 

And beginning today, you can see and read it for yourself.

🔆{You can read the starred Kirkus review in this link}🔆

WHO DO YOU WRITE FOR?

 

You may be right to take the title of this post two ways. The first is asking about the imaginary audience for one’s words and stories. The second is a ballsy/HUTZPA, more a challenge than a question, as in— who you imagine is even reading what you write. 😝

 

I will ignore the second, because it’s rude and also fruitless. Whether it is two, twenty, two thousand or twenty thousand, when writing-- we just can’t know. It isn’t helpful to creative motivation.

 

But the first is relevant.

 

When I was twelve, I began writing a diary. Diaries, so many say, are for oneself only. Mine wasn’t. I addressed all entries to one specific person who was unlikely to ever read them, but I needed to see this person in my mind when I wrote.

 

Later, in my teens, I always had a person in mind when I wrote a story. But the person changed from story to story.

 

When I began writing in earnest in my late thirties, I visualized no one. It became clear to me that the person I wrote for was my younger self, the one at the intended audience’s age.

 

I still write my novels for eleven-year-old me, and my picture books-- for six-year-old me.

 

No matter what a writer will tell you, there is someone in their mind when they write. Otherwise, it is a soulless mechanical exercise using how-to formulas. Yes, we’ve all encountered those when giving feedback and even, rarely, in published works.

 

Like prayer, real writing is addressing someone. This post is for you. 🙌

The TENSION of TENSE Choice

 

I adore first person present tense.

Present tense takes me, as a reader, right in. I’m here, and here we go together, all the way until the story’s end.

 

When it comes to writing picture books for the very young, it also feels like natural language. Toddlers use present tense even when speaking of past or future events.

 

Here’s the kicker: what to do when a picture book is about something that is no more? Think, the past. Think, HISTORY.

Like the Milkman, or corsets, or rotary phones.

 

There are writers who can do it. I’m still struggling.  

DO YOU FEEL LUCKY?

 

It’s a tough question.

 

As a feeling, it forms our orientation every day. One day this way, and the next, that-a-way.

 

But the role of pure luck in life and history is a persnickety matter. Storytellers avoid it, because one can not make sense of lucky coincidences.

 

Historians, who are also storytellers when it comes right down to it, also avoid it for the most part. Their jobs and whole professional discipline would evaporate if luck is deemed central to events.

 

Philosophers and theologians have argued about the place of coincidence. The understanding of creation hinges on the notion that a thinker/great designer is behind it, or a chain of gazillion coincidences just had a lucky streak.

 

Some, like me, have come to understand that coincidences are few, but they do exist and do play a part in all journeys.  But how to tell this in stories, and in what proportion to place luck in a story?

 

Now, that is the question.