To Beverly Cleary and Ramona Quimby

I dove back into the Ramona books this summer and realized two things: 1) these books remain powerful to me to this day, and 2) these stories were healing medicine to me as a child. They gave me strength and hope and insight.

In this series, Ramona Quimby is a sensitive, creative child who wants to fit in but often gets in trouble. She misunderstands normal social cues, and her heart gets broken. She expresses her truth in the world and is often seen as silly or wrong or annoying. She seeks solace through her creativity. She marches to her own drum. As a kid, I could relate.

What I love about these books is that, through these stories, Beverly Clearly gently offers both sides of the equation. We can clearly see what a pest Ramona can be. We can also understand her motivations and marvel at the brilliance of her inner world. And we see her allies—sympathetic teachers, loving parents, an older sister who is sometimes frustrated but always deeply cares for Ramona.

I read these books over and over again as a child because I felt that in their tribute to Ramona, they were also celebrating me. They gave me an understanding to a world that often felt bewildering. They made me feel like everything could be all right. These books were magical to me, and I am so glad that I found them.

Dentists and Kate and the Horses

One day, a couple of years ago, I was walking down a hill, dreaming up things about Kate and the Horses, and I thought, “Her dad is a dentist, and her mom is a singer.” Then a cavalcade of ideas followed. She was a performer, charismatic, the type of person who mesmerizes people, who everyone loves on sight. He was a pedodontist, a dentist for children, someone they dreaded coming to see, someone who tried to make up for that with silly gifts and awkward patter. But despite their differences, these parents love each other, and they love their daughter, Kate, a girl who manages to challenge the world every time she opens her eyes.

I resolved to do research on this father. My mate and I invited my beloved dentist and his wife out to lunch, and I asked questions about what it was like to be a dentist and dentists in general. Dr. Nakamoto recited of litany of character flaws that make up your average dentist, but I took it all with a huge grain of salt. He had been my dentist for years. I felt so fortunate to have met him. When I went to see him, it didn't feel like dental work. It was an opportunity to spend time with a friend.

Then Dr. Nakamoto did the unthinkable. He retired. After an appropriate period of grieving, I went to a a local dentist. It was a shock to my system. It's very different when you go to a dentist who is not your friend. It's unpleasant and scary. I felt I had walked into a nightmare. I left that place and never went back.

Recently, I knew I had to find another dentist. This time, I tried a different approach. Instead of picking a name out of a hat, I surveyed my neighbors. I made a confession. “I'm scared to death of going to the dentist. Do you know one who's kind?” I made a discovery. Many people are afraid to go to the dentist. Through these conversations, I found my new local person. People recommended many dentists to me, but I chose this dentist because he had dogs at his office. Again, I felt like I was back with Kate and the Horses, where Kate is able to do difficult things with the help of animals.

On my first visit, Mike went with me for moral support. There were no signs of dogs in the waiting room. I sensed a trick.

“Where are the dogs?” I asked the receptionist.

“They're in back,” she told me, and moments later, she opened the door, and Tux, a young Boston terrier, bounded in to greet us. He let us pet him for a minute and then he raced back to the door. Hmm. I was again skeptical. Was this all just smoke and mirrors?

But Lulu, an older, more experienced Boston terrier, strolled into the room once I sat down in the dentist's chair. She looked up into my eyes.

“I need your help,” I told her, although I didn't say it out loud.

She jumped in my lap. It made an enormous difference. I was so happy she was there.

Ellen Tebbits by Beverly Cleary

A few days ago, I started a new board on Pinterest, “Favorite Middle-Grade Novels.” As I was pinning my pictures of my favorite book covers, a name popped in my head that I hadn't thought of for a very long time—Ellen Tebbits. I searched for the cover. When the image popped up, I felt like I was meeting up with a very old friend. There's Ellen Tebbits, wearing a tutu, in a ballet pose, looking justifiably annoyed as Otis Spofford stands right beside her, in cowboy regalia, mischievously mirroring her move. I knew I had to read it again.

Beverly Cleary wrote Ellen Tebbits in the early fifties. Some things no longer belong to our world. Today children don't experience the trauma of wearing woolen underwear, the joy of clapping erasers during recess, the anger when someone pulls the sash of your dress at school, or the delight of walking around town while your spurs jingle jangle.

However, I didn't care that those things were out of date. The ideas expressed in this book transcend time: the need for a best friend, the torment of being teased by a boy, the longing to wear the right clothes and to always fit in. I raced through this book and decided that this would be a Cleary summer. In other words, I'm in for a good time.

Pinterest

This past week I heard this episode on Mark Dawson's Self Publishing Formula podcast about Pinterest and marketing. I also downloaded this free e-book that came about as a result of this podcast. I basically decided to give Pinterest a try.

I ended up creating four boards, two dedicated to books I had written (Joy Returns! And Kate and the Horses), a book in the works (The Loudest Meow), and one I'm dreaming about (Here Comes the Kittens!). They're inspiration boards with images that celebrate things in the books. Sometimes an image will look like a character. Sometimes they remind me of a trait in a character or a theme or something that's important to one of the characters. Sometimes it has to do with place or mood. I can already see how it will help my writing in the future. Finding an image makes me remember forgotten details. The pictures take me to task, reminding me of things that I need to explain and clarify and show the reader to help deepen the story.

In this time, I discovered how much I love working on Pinterest. If I could, I would like to devote entire days to Pinterest. I already spent much more time than I had planned this past week on Pinterest. I just kept thinking of more images that I wanted to see. I built up these four boards and decided they were all wrong, deleted everything, and started again. Here's where you can find my current boards.

This time I think I'm on the right track. There is much more to do, but I think it's a good start. You can look and see what you think. If you are on Pinterest, let me know, so I can check out your boards, too.

The Cycles of Writing

Right now, I'm in the “review after the copy edit” phase of my book.

As with everything else, all writers do things differently. I am of the philosophy that writing has different cycles. It's not all word counts and numbers of pages. There are times when I need to focus on those things—for example, in the beginning stage of a book, I need to spend several months writing the first and subsequent drafts of a manuscript until I know that someone else has to chime in. Then I turn it over to beta readers. While they look at my book, I hunker down for a phase of study (writing and marketing), research for the next book, or notes about future projects. Then my readers let me know what they think, and I pick up the draft, going through their suggestions until I'm written out again, and it's time to give it to the developmental editor, who gives me further feedback on whether my book is structurally sound. Once again, I return to my draft, revising and correcting, until it's time to hand it off to the copy editor.

Every time I let go of my book, I'm happy to do it. I have nothing more to give at that point. I need other trusted pairs of eyes to see what I cannot at that moment. I have what Judy Blume calls “a messy mind.” It takes me a while to be able understand and express what I want to say. I wish I had the kind of mind that could completely think out a book and be able to send it directly to a copy editor and then just take care of the line edits. There are writers who can do that. I belong to the subterranean sloppy sect.

However, that said, I keep my early drafts to myself. I can't have people telling me it's a mess before I've cleaned it up as much as I possibly can before they see it. If people make comments during my set writing times, it makes me self-conscious and confused and unhappy. Again, other writers flourish with continual feedback. That's just not me.

Each time the book comes back to me, I have gone through at least several days of existential doldrums, where I wander around the house and tell myself that I'm not a writer. I'm a fraud wearing slippers at 3:00 in the afternoon. I expect it now. I have thought about shortening my deadlines, but I want to give my readers and my editors some space. And I also want to give myself that gift. It reminds me of, when I was a kid in Michigan, waiting for spring. There's this pent-up energy, this anticipation and frustration, and then one day, the warm days return. My book is back, accompanied with many suggestions and ideas.

I always feel so happy to return to the world of word counts, of concrete markers that something is actually happening. But frustration also sits on my shoulder. How could I not have seen that? There's embarrassment. My readers and editors must think I'm an absolute idiot. There's sometimes a sense of hopelessness. Why did I think I could write? But there's also excitement. I now again see things that I want to do. With the help of my friends, it is clear. Then it's just a matter of diving in again, trying to make the best book I can.