The Writing Life Too

Well it’s been hotter than a bordello in New Orleans these past three days and today is supposed to be in the 90s. I’m escaping to the Oregon Coast and am so looking forward to walking outdoors and not being punished by the heat. There has been lots going on, most of it too dull to report here such as lots of medical appointments. I’ve been asking people to write me to be a guest writer here on this blog—so far, not much interest drummed up. Here’s the deal: you write about which books (three max) influenced you and why. Keep it under 1000 words. Here’s my entry:

When I was growing up in a small town in northern Wisconsin there were three factors that influenced me to become a writer: I came from a large family with five siblings and a large assortment of aunts, uncles and cousins who were all storytellers. This means that when I’m at a party or only walking through my neighborhood I’m often shaping a story out of what I hear and see to pass along. Sort of an anti-Zen way of being in the world.

My hometown is wrapped in rivers amid a land laced in lakes and forests. Water and the sound of it like a lullaby. Summer skies as blue as cornflowers and night skies like a magic show. Somehow the rivers and water, the power of place have slipped into my veins, echo in all I write.

The other factor that sculpted me as a writer was that my parents owned books and were readers. In my childhood the heyday of the timber industry was over (most of Wisconsin had been clear cut by the early 1900s) and the town seemed divided into two groups. There were neighborhoods of large, almost palatial homes owned by the lumber barons, executives, and mill owners, then there were the modest ranches and bungalows owned by the rest of the townspeople. Our neighborhood was mostly a blue collar place. The family across the street owned a bakery, one neighbor was a postal worker, another was a cop, and the rest of the parents worked in the shoe and paper factories in the region. My father was one of these factory workers although later he’d work for the post office.

When I was about four and my older brother Shannon was six, we began regular excursions to the town library. In these days when parents don’t allow children out of their sight, these trips seem particularly daring. The library is ivy-covered and nestled next to a winding river and park, and the trip, stopping along bridges to drop pine cones into the current, and pausing under weeping willows, was an adventure in itself.

In the library I met Miss Violet the children’s librarian who wore sweater sets and her pointy-rimmed glasses on a pearl chain. Under her benevolent gaze I discovered many writers, but most importantly The Box Car Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner which is the story of four orphans who for awhile live in the woods in a box car. The story of plucky orphanhood so sparked my imagination that I coerced my sister, cousins, and neighbors into acting out this scenario again and again on wintry afternoons, converting a closet to the boxcar or in the summer in a hidden place under cedars branches in our back yard.

But what I hadn’t realized until I was much older was that my parents were the only adults in the neighborhood who owned books besides the Bible. There was a book case that held my father’s books collected since he was a boy by Zane Grey, Jack London and Louis L’Amour about dogs and horses and the West. And then when I was about ten a young man with severe acne knocked on the door, selling Colliers encyclopedias to work his way through college. My parents bought the set on an installment plan and the books arrived one by one in the mail along with a set of Junior Classics that included Gulliver’s Travels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Treasure Island.

At Christmas we were also given books as gifts and I received The Bobbsey Twins, Little Women and Nancy Drew mysteries and learned that perhaps it’s not always bad to be an uppity girl and a big dreamer.

Fast forward through the years and when I moved to Portland, Oregon I started teaching writing classes. This happened because I couldn’t find a regular job so started juggling a series of part-time gigs. And the more I taught, the more I analyzed what makes fiction or nonfiction compelling, and I often passed along suggestions of what I was reading.

A few years ago I stumbled across Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River. It’s narrated by Reuben Land who is eleven during the story’s events and the story has never left me since I read his first words. Jeremiah Land the patriarch of the tale is a Christ figure, Davy his older brother gets caught up in a deadly feud, and the story is woven through with a series of miracles. It introduces Jape Waltzer one of the most dastardly villains written in years, and it features one of the best children characters to grace the pages of fiction, Swede Land. If you liked Scout, Jem and Holden, you’ll love Swede and her epic cowboy poems about Sunny Sundown.

Place figures prominently in the story but Enger’s language or should I say his magical prose will make the skin on your neck prickle and you’ll be delighted by fresh word combinations. Over the years of teaching writers I have urged them to keep an inspiration notebook—a place where they can scavenge, eavesdrop, and collect the beauty of language and sensory treasures that are all around us. About four years ago when I was writing three books at about the same time I discovered that my vocabulary was anemic and I was overly fond of using ‘dazzle’ and ‘whisper’.

So I started a word list in my notebooks and when I read Enger, my list doubles and I add these sorts of writerly gems: spectral, screeling, biggity, snuffy, foundering, guttered, wattled, knuckly, stipply, trounce, bilious, and sanguine.

I also scatter my notebook with his descriptions and figurative language such as when he compares a character’s voice to a kazoo and describes another as “trim as a leprechaun” and “up the stairs he flew like a witch.” He also wrote, “In times of dread it’s good to have an old man along. An old man has seen worse.” These words are from Enger’s new novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome. It’s another adventure tale and quest, it contains another complicated bad guy who thinks he’s a good guy, it’s filled with the mystique of the West, and a battle for redemption.

It’s also another story that makes me feel as I did when I first discovered fiction and a story cast its spell and the world disappeared except for the bubbling creek that I was sitting next to, the sound of water over rock adding to the story’s potency. I sent my father a copy of Enger’s latest book for Father’s Day so we can talk about it the next time I visit him completing the circle of how stories teach us about life and crack open the human heart.