Finding childhood and the fabulous Neil Gaiman

I came close to drowning in the Atlantic when I was four or five. My sister, who would’ve been fourteen, had taken me to the beach near our house in Oceanside, N.Y.

The funny thing is that I barely remember the fear. The image in the far reaches of my memory is a neighborhood girl a few years older than me deciding that I’d been using my inner tube long enough and she should have a turn. So she yanked it over my head. My initial reaction was outrage at being dumped, but that immediately turned to surprise that without the tube I sank. I hadn’t been taught how to swim. I flailed up and went under again. At some point, my sister who was chatting with friends on the beach noticed and came to rescue me.

There was helplessness in being so little and suddenly unanchored in the vastness of that water, of it rushing over my head. Each memory I have of those early years may be fading on the edges but every one of them carries some visceral punch: the blue-and-white feathers on the floor that were all my dog left of my parakeet; sitting abandoned at the kitchen table peeling the “skin” off canned peas I had to eat; fever dreams of hulking beings whose shadows and crazed chatter bled into waking hours; being swallowed by the skyscraper canyons when we went to the city; euphoria and power in becoming a witch or gypsy at Halloween.

Amazing as it is that we remember events from our early childhood, it’s even more awesome when a writer can settle deep into those moments, pulling up raw truth and turning it into a story new as dawn and old as time itself. Neil Gaiman’s THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE is one of those books for me, and is the reason I rummaged around my head for those early memories, wondering what I’d find, and then being awed yet again by Gaiman’s ability to wander the paths of childhood and unearth its joys and terrors.

The novel is only 178 pages but packs in a vivid story of mythic proportion. A middle-aged man attending a funeral decides to drive past his childhood home and finds himself continuing to the end of the lane where an old farm reveals his forgotten past.

 Truly frightening at times, it weaves the nebulous quality of memory and the ability of a child to see with both confusion and absolute clarity; there’s an honesty to children’s observations despite lack of experience (or maybe even because of it).

All sorts of labels could be attached to this book—fantasy, horror, magical realism, fable. To me, it’s just storytelling at its finest, the kind of tale that is true down to its very bones.

Here are some snippets in Mr. Gaiman's words:

It was dark, and our candles cast huge shadows, so it looked to me, as we walked, as if everything was moving, pushed and shaped by the shadows, the grandfather clock and the stuffed animals and birds…

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Ursula Monkton smiled, and the lightnings wreathed and writhed about her. She was power incarnate, standing in the crackling air. She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty. She winked at me.

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“Oh, monsters are scared,” said Lettie. “That’s why they’re monsters.”

*
The water was cool on my foot, not cold. I put the other foot into the water and I went down with it, down like a marble statue, and the waves of Lettie Hempstock’s ocean closed over my head.

Big names, big hearts

This week has been painful. I lost a dear family friend, Joanne, to cancer Wednesday. I will hold her always in my heart as the funny, bright, energetic woman she was. The same day, author L.K. Madigan died of that damned disease. May you both be at peace after the long suffering. May we find a cure someday.

No photos really work for this, so I chose a moment of peace in nature, which always calms my soul.

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The loss of my friend followed on the heels of the horrendous earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand that has taken more than a 100 lives, with more than 200 people missing and possibly buried in the rubble of what was once a beautiful, thriving city.

How can we help, especially if we live half-way around the world? Let Neil Gaiman show us one way. Yes, that's a teaser. The answer lies ahead.

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While the search for the missing continues in the NZ's Canterbury region, people who survived are dealing with injuries, homelessness, loss of all they owned. The Red Cross is already stepping in to help the survivors, and two New Zealand speculative fiction writers have come up with an amazing way to assist that.

J.C. Hart and Anna Caro are compiling an anthology of short stories with themes of survival and hope. The funds are to be donated to the Red Cross Earthquake Appeal and other charities. They contacted numerous authors and have received promises of stories for the book from many established writers.

Among them, *drum roll* NEIL freakin' GAIMAN!

Mr. Gaiman, not only writes surprising, marvelous stories, he's proven time and again that he is a generous man, fully involved with life.

I'll be buying this anthology, for sure, when it's published. You can keep up on the progress at Tales for Canterbury.

Thank you in advance for lending support to this fantastic project.

My kingdom for a voice

I seem to have misplaced my voice. You know, it's that unique little POV way of expressing yourself that every writer and that writer's characters need if they don't want to be lost in the crowd.

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Moira Hahn's "Heaven and Hell" precisely illustrates my howling need. This series of paintings explore an afterlife that is a mashup of Eastern and Western beliefs and culture. I adore the work for its visual voice. It sure gets your attention in a stunning way, doesn't it?

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Voice is on my mind for a variety of reasons. I've been wanting to post a comment Neil Gaiman made in The Guardian's article on writing rules. Among his "rules" were these two:

"Laugh at your own jokes." Really, that's brilliant. You should be chuckling if you're composing a funny scene or witty banter. I do and then wonder if it just my own twisted humor. But when I take my scene to my face-to-face crit group and hear them laugh as I read, relief rushes through me. Okay, I managed to find voice and it was funny.

"Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter." So says Neil, who has one of the world's great voices.

Now, here I'm going to say I am an avid reader of Neil's blog, which he has been writing for almost a decade. Yes, you read that right. He is one of the original blogging authors. But I can always tell when his stand-in guy writes a post. It's not Neil's voice. It's someone telling us about Neil's life, because Neil can't blog at the moment. That throws me off and drives home the point of how important voice really is.

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And that brings me to my voice, which has gone missing in my query drafts. Sigh. I mean, I think I have a voice, but when I try to wrangle the essence of a novel into a few paragraphs, it becomes these overworked, dull-as-dirt sentences. Luckily for me, I won a query critique from Writing Out the Angst and the wonderful Suzy Hayze has lit a torch to help me find my lost voice.

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What about you, have you found your voice? Are you searching for it? Do you have any idea what it looks like?

Gardens of my mind

A friend asked me to water her garden whilst she camps at a seaside park, wandering the shore, watching for dolphins and breathing in the salty, moisture-heavy air. We live in an arid zone where plants would turn brown and crisp quickly without a hose gushing into pots and trickling into the ground. It's a pleasure for me since I am currently garden-less. I love green. I adore trees. I am a nut about fruits and vegetables bursting forth.

As a bonus I got to eat a handful of those little tomato gems, which surely have been touched by the Flavor Fairy's wand. They do not seem to be from the same planet as supermarket tomatoes. There is a sci-fi story in there somewhere.

All of which leads me to writing. I was bummed to miss the SCBWI conference in LA this weekend but have come to realize I have an abundance of inspiration around me--from the mini-world of a garden to the enormous reach of the internet.

Lady Glamis has been posting a superb series on mapping your novel. I am not a outline whiz and fall straight to sleep if faced with making a list that involves Roman numerals. I like to write as if possessed by a story, to let the characters lead me on a merry dance, to submerge myself deep in the enchantment.

I must do a weird tangent thingie here and thrust in one of my favorite anecdotes from Neil Gaiman. He said in a blog post that he was traveling with his daughter after the death of his father and when the plane landed, she interrupted his writing to tell him it was time to get off. He said: 'But I want to find out what happens next.' If that isn't going deep, what is?

Back to my taskmistress the lovely Lady Glamis. I have decided that my Mr. Toad's Wild Ride writing needs me to examine its structure, to map its arc, to study each scene's tension. Since I have her great suggestions, I have something to start with but it's still going to be daunting when facing a 300-page story.

Therefore, I'm announcing that I'm starting today, in lieu of conference. I could have done that without a peep, or told a writing buddy, but if I stand on my mini-platform and shout it out to any who read this, I feel like I'm making a commitment, a goal. And I honor those.

Well read

Neil Gaiman gives the best advice on reading aloud here.
Have you ever heard him read? Sooooo good. His tips will help anyone--whether you are reading to a child, at a booksigning or to a critique group. So link on over and get advice from the master. Any personal reading aloud tips you want to share? Or moments you'd rather forget? heh-heh

Neil Gaiman, my hero

Newbery Medal winner Neil Gaiman surprised his audience, and apparently his publisher, when he announced a competition for independent bookstores. Speaking at the Book Expo Day in New York, Gaiman said there will be a competition for best Halloween theme around The Graveyard Book. The winner will get Gaiman for a booksigning. At a time when independent stores are being crushed under the weight of the big boys, this would be a coup to have a man whose epic career spans the Sandman novels and two books-to-film Stardust and Coraline.

I love that while he is riding high on success, he remembers the roots. To learn more about the contest, visit his journal where he will flesh-out the announcement soon. Tell every indie you know about it. Make it count.

P.S. This is so cool -- He just won Best AudioBook of the Year and he put up a link to a free reading of his first chapter. I'm positive he was the kind of dad who read to his kids. He is one of the best audio readers I've ever heard. I can't wipe the smile from my face when I hear his The Wolves in the Walls, and I love his reading of Stardust, too. He is able to be funny and terrifying (scared the bejeebers out of me with some stories in Fragile Things), as well as deliver subtle character voices.