Reading and Signing at the Top of Maine

Fort Kent, Maine 5.15.12– met with Don Chouinard and Joce­lyn Saucier’s classes. A great time was had by all. It’s the cul­mi­na­tion of a two-year string of spec­tac­u­lar vis­its that took me from the inland moun­tains of Maine to the coast, from the river city of Gar­diner to the  Thomp­son Free Library in Dover-Foxcroft. It took me twice to Fort Kent at the top of Maine, first to to Kara Beal’s First Annual Fort Kent Mid­dle School Authors’ Con­fer­ence (I hope there will be many more). And then to meet the great young folks you see in the pic below.

I hate to see it all wind down, but it has to.  Today I vis­ited the Mars Hill Ele­men­tary and High Schools, and tomor­row a full day in Ash­land. Then home.

Very grate­ful to the Maine Arts Com­mis­sion , espe­cially Dar­rell Bul­mer, and to Josh Bod­well at the Maine Writ­ers’ and Pub­lish­ers’ Alliance for steer­ing me towards the Arts Vis­i­bil­ity Grant that made this possible.

Creative Writers All

What was it about meet­ing this merry band of Gar­diner High School cre­ative writ­ers that made the sun shine brighter and turned the world into a great big sea of possibilities?

Here’s what hap­pened. It was 12:20; lunchtime. They could have been over in the cafe­te­ria, clumped up tight around the tables, but here they were, hang­ing out in Christina Benedict’s class­room. A few girls sat around a lap­top, absorbed. A tall young man wrote out word scram­bles on the black­board, and the guesses flew — silly, fumy, hit or miss. “This isn’t a test” was his atti­tude. “It’s fun.”

The bell rang and more cre­ative writ­ers filed in. We began. Their ques­tions were writ­ers’ ques­tions — about the process, about where ideas come from, about what it feels like to have a story take over your mind. The changes in pub­lish­ing. How to make a web­site. What it costs to self-publish. What the main­stream pub­lish­ing world is all about. Where do titles come from? Char­ac­ters’ names? What is the impor­tance of set­ting? Place?

I read from Spring Bear a bit, but I’d lost track of the sec­tion of new work I’d printed out and brought with me. I was really bummed. I wanted to read my new work to these folks. But we talked abut free writ­ing, and I told them how mine gets lost, buried under lay­ers of edit­ing that end up as the final draft. We shared the tricks we all have to escape the fear of the blank page, and con­fided in each other our writ­ing rit­u­als. I for­got to tell mine about hav­ing to have the kitchen tidy before I write, but I did tell them about the long string of mud rooms that has dou­bled as my study.

Now it was 2:30 and school was over but the buses would make it hard for me to get my car out, so I stayed longer. I got to shake hands with two seniors, one headed for U ME Farm­ing­ton and the other for Cham­plain Col­lege in Burling­ton VT, both want­ing to become writ­ers. I wish them well. It isn’t easy, but joy and pos­si­bil­ity were in their eyes, and I know they’ll be fine.

May their gifts inspire oth­ers, just as their teach­ers have inspired them. The gifts of lov­ing to write, of tak­ing joy in what words can do, of giv­ing your­self the free­dom to be your­self on the page — all that shone in their eyes. I saw it in their smiles. May it be with them always.

Quite a Workout

Up at 6 a.m. and dri­ving on snowy roads by 7 to meet Amber Jeskey’s class, which had just read Spring Bear.  She turned out to be a top-notch, no-nonsense Eng­lish teacher with a sharp lit­er­ary mind  and the skills of a drill sergeant.

Her class of thir­teen guys and seven gals, all seniors at Medo­mak Val­ley High School in Wal­doboro, fired ques­tions spot-on for an hour and twenty minutes.

It made for quite a work­out. So when we were done, Bob and I stopped for a late break­fast at Moody’s Diner, down Route 1 a bit.

Here he is, tuck­ing into scram­bled eggs, bacon, and pancakes.

A very won­der­ful morning.

Class Trip

SPRING BEAR found its audi­ence one warm spring day in in this high school Eng­lish class in Winthrop ME . It was one of the hap­pi­est days of my life. (I’m the lady on the left in the pur­ple blouse, sit­ting on a desk). Those spec­tac­u­lar teenagers seated to the right either know some­one like — or could them­selves have been — my Evvie Mal­low or Rich Parker. Con­nect­ing with them over a world I’d imag­ined and they’d come to know through the book was –um — sorry, I just can’t find words for it.

But they did. They wrote me let­ters. Here is some of what they said.
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