MotherReader: National Delurking Week – It’s National Delurking Week. Delurk! Delurk! I know you’re out there.(I, by the way, am one of the lurkiest lurkers going.)
A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy: Charles and Emma – “Charles Darwin had faith in science; his wife, Emma Wedgwood, had faith in religion. Despite having opposite beliefs on the role of God in science as well as life after death, the two married and had a long, happy marriage of mutual support and love. How?”
“Well, if you like your warnings ahead of time, then I’d say watch out for weasels and the Banshee—the Lost Soul of the Lost and Found—and a lot of other Cursed Creatures. Hmmm, and let’s see…the mice come in waves. And if you hear hooves coming behind you, crouch down. It’s the Pooka, and it won’t be a good ride if he grabs you.”
—The Prince of Fenway Park
In the early 90s, Julianna Baggott and I were classmates in the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, along with David Scott (whom Julianna would later marry) and a number of other fine poets and fiction writers. (To name a few: Rowan Jacobsen, author of that bee book I raved about; his future wife, the poet and illustrator Mary Elder; poet Elizabeth Leigh Hadaway; novelist Quinn Dalton; Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Claudia Emerson; and acclaimed speculative fiction writer Kelly Link. We all got to study with the great Fred Chappell, making us some of the luckiest people on the planet.)
I’m always excited to hear that one of my friends has a new book out—especially when it’s Julianna. She is a writer of tremendous talent: a poet whose keen-edged phrases can make my breath catch in my throat, a spinner of magical children’s tales, a novelist who writes with an intense and lyrical candor. She has a gift for drawing her characters with a terrible honesty suffused with tenderness and a kind of raw humor. Her people are real people, aching and vulnerable and brave.
It’s no surprise, then, that Julianna’s 2009 middle-grade novel, The Prince of Fenway Park, made this year’s Cybils shortlist for Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her latest novel, The Ever Breath, has just come out and I am champing at the bit for a copy. As N. E. Bode, she wrote the deliciously original The Anybodies, The Nobodies, and The Slippery Map. Her novels for adults include Girl Talk, The Miss America Family, The Madam, and (as Bridget Asher) The Pretend Wife and My Husband’s Sweethearts. She has published three collections of poetry: This Country of Mothers, Lizzie Borden in Love, and Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees. Julianna and Dave and their four children live in Florida, where Julianna is an associate professor in FSU’s creative writing program.
Because talking about writing with other writers is one of my favorite things to do, I asked Julianna if I could bombard her with questions for an interview here at Bonny Glen. She said yes, and here it is.
I am always wildly curious to know how other writers work. What’s your writing life like—the rhythm of your days and weeks, with writing and mothering and working and researching and all the rest of it?
I stay up late at night. My husband wakes up early in the morning. He’s a stay at home dad—the hardworking kind who’s really taken over all of it (grocery shopping, cooking, carpooling). So he does the morning rush, getting the oldest three off to school. I sleep in with the 2 year old. We have sitters who come and stay a couple of morning hours so Dave and I can both focus. We wrestle the calendar and the business side of writing and the creative side, too. When I’m stuck, I ramble to Dave and he blathers and eventually he blathers something that helps. I sometimes have teaching days—I teach in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State—or departmental meetings with professorial types—of which I guess I am one—and I try to come up for air around 3:30 when the kids come home. Sometimes I head back to work at night. And on my bedside table there’s always a stack of reading—books to blurb or grad student novels, etc… And then the day begins again—another version of the same.
We are like Civil War reenactors—except without the woolly pants and cannons.
Tell me about your writing process: How you work, where you work. Do you work on one book at a time, or do you have several projects going simultaneously? Do you pour out a first draft and then go back over (and over?), or do you write slowly, polishing as you go? How many drafts before you show someone? Who are your first readers?
I collect notes for various projects that are coming up in metal bins on my VERY messy desk. When that project pops up, I map on big sheets of art books—big wild outlines that I accept as THE plotline although it ALWAYS changes many, many times. Sometimes I juggle more than one book. If one fights me, I jump to another. I also will work in small essays and op-eds from time to time. I’ve been in Real Simple, The New York Times, Boston Globe…I also will shove a poem in from time to time—poems come in waves—
Like the mice under Fenway Park?
Yes. Like the mice. In waves, followed by dry spells—more emotional than logical for me. I adore revision—more and more the older I get. More freedom in a way. I write on scraps of paper that float around the house and get lost. I write all over certain books—a real marginalia freak. Some books are fairly smooth in writing the first drafts. Others are like wrestling gators. The problem is that you don’t know which is which until you’re in too deep. I can’t think in terms of drafts as I move throughout the novel as I write it—back and forth and all around. My first reader is Dave though there are certain novels he doesn’t read until they’re published, and I don’t read to him necessarily in order. I might start reading to him in the spot where I’m stuck—say page 64. I summarize and tell him my problem and read. It’s great because I’m all caught up in the details accumulated over the past 64 pages, but he isn’t. He can see the book as some platonic future version of itself and his suggestions can be really broad and drastic, often what I need to hear.
See, this is one of the things I love so much about you and Dave, because it’s one of the things I love so much about Scott and me: the collaborativeness of the creative process. Nothing I write feels alive to me until he reads it.
Okay, when you’re deep into work on a novel, do you read other fiction? Nonfiction? Watch tv (and what!)? Movies? Swim? Rock climb? Mario Kart marathons with Dave?
When asked if I have hobbies, I answer: I like to sing along to the radio in the car, loudly. Does that count? Hardly. But I do get up from novels a lot. I get up and pick seeds from the Cosmos. I cut apples. I get in the car and sing loudly. I have to walk away and then come back—away and back. I love stupid TV. I hate swimming. I make myself pay for peeking at my Amazon ranks/reviews by doing push ups.
Do you get stuck in your head/have trouble shaking off the world of the book? Any transition processes? Scott and I call it coming out of the cave—that place you enter when the work is working.
I try not to fully shake the other world. I like the blending—how one world helps me with the other.
Do your kids read your works in progress, or do you make them wait until story’s done? I remember you said Phoebe pointed out that your first draft of Anybodies happened almost totally “in rooms”—such a sharp insight.
I used to read aloud to my kids as I wrote, but it got too confusing. I kept changing things on them. And now, strangest of all, they don’t read my work. I’d have never seen that coming. But it’s as if too much of me as an author filters down into our daily lives. They want me as mother. And so we don’t blur mother as writer. They love the authors they love as authors. But I’m their mother and that relationship is something we all have decided to keep oddly pure. Does this make any sense? It’s not something we planned. But when we read a novel as a group, it’s never mine.
You have published under the pseudonyms N. E. Bode and Bridget Asher as well as your real name. How did that come about?
I’d written three literary novels in three years—pubbed with Simon & Schuster. It was too fast a pace. I started competing with myself for review space. So we decided on writing under a pen name. My agent wanted me to do crime novels—I get terrified playing the board game CLUE —but I was reading again to my kids the books I first loved.
So I decided on that. N.E. Bode followed.
Then my kid book editor wanted me to come out as Julianna Baggott and the timing felt right. My two recent novels The Prince of Fenway Park and The Ever Breath are Baggott novels.
As for Bridget Asher, I wanted to be able to build an audience in one kind of novel—smart, contemporary work for women—but still have the freedom to write my own odd stuff as Baggott and not lose the readership I’d built.
So Asher seemed like a good way to do that.
Let’s talk about The Prince of Fenway Park. A question I always have about every book is “what’s the story behind the story”—what sparked the idea, etc. And then I’m always curious about the research. Did you get to tour Fenway Park?
Funny story. The Prince of Fenway Park came out of complete frustration. I was having a conversation with Dave. I had finished a laborious collection of poetry in historic women’s voices (Lizzie Borden in Love). It entailed huge doses of research. I said to Dave, “Can’t I write a book that I already know something about? Or you? What do you already know?”
He said, “I know the Red Sox.”
I didn’t want to write baseball book. I write magical novels—not realism and certainly not sports realism. But then I said, “Wait, there was a curse on the Red Sox. It was reversed. This could be the story of the boy who did it!” It came to me all at once. Dave and I sat there for a while, saying, “There was a curse. It was reversed and this is the boy who did it.”
The irony? Well, the book entailed tons of research. Dave knew Fenway Park, but the exact mix of grass in the outfield? Did he know the history of Pumpsie Green? Bill Buckner’s childhood?
Dave, of course, volunteered to do a lot of the research. In fact, he was the one who toured Fenway stem to stern. He considered it a gift. He went behind the Green Monster and stood on the pitcher’s mound—took notes, snapped pictures. For a while, everything in our house revolved around the Red Sox, and the dining-room table was littered with baseballs, taken apart to see what exactly was inside.
Now for some questions about your reading life. What are you reading right now? Are you a rereader? Do you and Dave swap books or read aloud to each other? How about family readalouds?
I’m not a rereader. I’m not a rewatcher. It pains me to watch a film—even one I love—twice. I do it from time to time. But it’s hard. I’m reading Vonnegut and Leslie Epstein now—both on World War II—when I’m not socked in by student work, which I am. Atwood visits in spring so I’ll be on her latest book soon. Haven’t yet read the new Lorrie Moore. Must. We have done a lot of family read alouds, but not recently.Our age range is difficult right now for consensus— high school, middle school, elementary and toddler. I was a big Ramona and Beatrice fan, and Fudge, of course, and Dahl and I loved Sherlock Holmes and saw tons of plays as a kid—I loved Mamet way too young.
Back to your writing. Tell me about The Ever Breath.
There was once just one world—this one. And it was home to all the magical and un-magical creatures. (This was way back. This world itself was still pretty new …) But then there was an Exodus. Two worlds were formed—the Fixed World of un-magical creatures, this world we know, and the Breath World, where all of the magical creatures were sent off to. And there are these two kids—brother and sister, Truman and Camille—who find themselves on an adventure that takes them through the passage and into the Breath World where they must find the EVER BREATH—an amber orb with a breathing breath within it. They have to save not just one world but both worlds …
I’m at work on the sequel, The Ever Cure, right now.
Excellent. I can’t wait. Thanks so much, Julianna, for dropping by the Bonny Glen!
Vote for your top ten middle grade books of all time (not just this year or last year) by 11:59 Eastern on January 31, 2010. This will NOT include young adult books (for kids 13 and up) or early readers (like Mr. Putter and Tabby or Frog and Toad Are Friends).
More details here. My brain is spinning at the notion of picking out a top ten—ranked, no less. The card catalog in my mind is flipping and riffling, cards flying everywhere. I’ll think about it, but already I feel the option paralysis setting in…
January 10, 2010 @ 7:41 am | Filed under: Books, Links, TBR
Have resolved to make better use of my Delicious account to keep track of books I read about online and want to remember to check out. Such as:
The Miss Rumphius Effect: National Puzzle Month – Great Reads – “Here are some books and/or series that will encourage readers put on their thinking caps. Also included are links to related puzzling resources.” I keep forgetting to check out Winston Breen. Flagging this post so I’ll remember!
Chasing Ray – Nonfiction Books for Curious Readers – Science book recommendations including Houghton Mifflin’s Scientists in the Field series & Extreme Scientists—looks like stuff up Jane’s alley. Also of interest: “Finally, after reading Anastasia Suen’s Wired, I was reminded yet again of how valuable nonfiction picture books truly are. This patiently written step-by-step overview of electricity’s journey from dam to living room light switch is truly a brilliant book. Suen completely demystifies the process making it clear to even the least technologically inclined.”
1) It’s time for the Comment Challenge! Combox discussions can be one of the best things about a blog, but I freely admit I am terrible, terrible, at clicking through from my reader to actually type out a comment. So often I’m reading while nursing the baby, or on the iPod (which, for all its fabulosity, is a serious pain to type on), and so I very seldom comment anywhere. Out loud. I am exceedingly chattery in my head. Your blogs provide such excellent discussion fodder! Well, for the next three weeks I shall make an effort to participate in the Challenge and leave comments on five kidlitosphere blogs daily. There are over a hundred children’s-book-related blogs in my Reader, and I don’t express my appreciation to those smart writers nearly often enough. Challenge details here.
2) The CYBILs short lists are up! And there goes my TBR list, piling up higher. Eek.
Gregory never forgot things—”He’s like a small elephant,” said Father—and a week later, while Gregory, Janet, and Marta were having tea in the kitchen, he took his chance. Marta had made a wonderful cake-tart of apricots glazed with jam and they had eaten and drunk and laughed. Marta’s usually sallow cheeks were quite red; her eyes, which were often so dull, were bright. There was not a trace of sadness in the air until Gregory put down his cup and asked in his small, quiet way, “What did you have in your kitchen, Marta, that we don’t have in ours?”
Oh, I didn’t know, I didn’t know! The Kitchen Madonna has been in my pile for months. One of you, someone out there, wrote about it a while back, and whatever you said made me hunt up a used copy. It arrived old and drab and worn, much like the Marta of the story, and I stuck it on a shelf and forgot about it. It turned up during a housecleaning last week, and I picked it quite absently this afternoon—and wound up sobbing my way through it. Oh my.
The baby was asleep in my lap and Wonderboy, who is feverish today, slumped against my shoulder, dozing, while beside us the four girls played a Wii game. I ought to have been up getting dinner on. I ought to have been doing a good many things, but I fell into that book and still haven’t climbed back out. I’m staring at a picture, a crooked golden crown, a painted blue sky, a flickering red lamp.
It’s Rumer Godden, so of course I expected it to be a good story, a moving one even. But just how moving, I had no idea. And that’s all I’m going to say about it—here. We can talk more in the comments, if you like.
Like the stable in Narnia, some things are bigger on the inside than you’d ever guess from their (old, worn, drab) exteriors.
The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.
The story was written in 1950. I think I first read it around 1983, because I remember having seen Wargames not long before coming across the story, and nuclear war seemed a very real and near possibility. Remember those scary TV miniseries? The Day After, anyone? Or what was that British one…Threads?
Now here I am in The Future, closer to 2026 (the year in which the story takes place) than to 1950, or to 1983, for that matter. Despite the chilling post-apocalyptic scenario, I couldn’t help but smile at the rather endearing Fifties sensibility enshrined in the high-tech, automated Year 2026 house.
Two thirty-five.
Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played.
But the tables were silent and the cards untouched.
Martinis and bridge in mid-afternoon? It’s quite charming, really. I mean, that and eerie as all get-out.
Those robot mice that clean the house—Bradbury envisioned the Roomba fifty years ahead of its time, in a smaller and more clever incarnation. I could go for a dozen of those little vacuuming mice, “whirling their mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust.”
The title comes from a Sara Teasdale poem which is quoted in the story, another chilling moment which might have come off as heavyhanded but doesn’t. The empty house, the last house left standing after the war, reads the poem to its incinerated mistress, the automated voice sounding in the silence.
“There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
if mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.”
The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray. The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played.
“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” —JOSHUA, the Wargames computer
Here’s the climax of that fine film. Major spoiler so don’t click play if you haven’t seen the film yet—Jane, this means you. 🙂
