Making of a Writer (9780307820464)

FICTION
A Candidate for Murder
The Dark and Deadly Pool
Don’t Scream
The Ghosts of Now
Ghost Town: Seven Ghostly Stories
The Haunting
In the Face of Danger
The Island of Dangerous Dreams
The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore
Laugh Till You Cry
Murdered, My Sweet
The Name of the Game Was Murder
Nightmare
Nobody’s There
The Other Side of Dark
Playing for Keeps
Search for the Shadowman
Secret, Silent Screams
Shadowmaker
The Specter
Spirit Seeker
The Stalker
The Trap
The Weekend Was
Murder
!
Whispers from the Dead
Who Are You?

NONFICTION
The Making of a Writer

You love to read
. You love to write. Many of you have written to me to ask, “How can I become a published writer someday?”

My answers to your letters often include the advice to read, read, read. A love of reading leads to a love of writing.

I also suggest that you write for your own pleasure every chance you get. In some letters I’ve explained the importance of character development. In others I’ve suggested ways to make story beginnings exciting. I always try to help you understand the
process
of creating a story.

Writing is much more than learning a few rules from a necessarily short letter. Writing is a complicated mixture of talent, art, craft, structure, free-flowing ideas, unleashed imagination, soaring hopes, wondrous insights, giddy joy,
deep satisfaction, dreadful insecurity, total misery, strong persistence, and solid determination.

Writing is an ever-developing awareness of people and events that has its beginnings in childhood.

At some point nearly every writer takes stock of a lifetime of accumulated experiences. Sometimes it’s surprising to discover the writer’s special awareness, which began in the early years and has subtly guided the direction that person has taken.

This book is about the incidents that happened when I was young that helped me grow and develop as a writer.

I hope that what I share with you will not only entertain you, but will also lead you to keep your eyes and ears open to the insights and ideas that will come bursting into your own imagination.

Happy reading. Happy writing—now and in the future.

When I was young
I filled notebooks with my writing. Sometimes I jotted down special thoughts, bits of description, verses, and short stories.

The number of greeting cards I designed, with personalized verses inside, would have shaken the marketing department heads of Hallmark. Every member of my family received my illustrated poems on holidays, birthdays, other special occasions, and sometimes just-for-fun days. It made my relatives and friends feel special, and I suppose it also saved me money at the greeting card store.

When I was ten, I mailed one of my poems to a children’s magazine to which I subscribed. I can’t remember the name of the magazine, but it had a page devoted to children’s writing and art.

My poem was titled “Springtime,” and I remember that one line was “and children play outdoors because they’re glad it’s spring.” There must have been some literary license involved because in Los Angeles children played outdoors all year round.

In April 1938, two months after my eleventh birthday, I opened the just-arrived issue of the magazine. There on the children’s page was my printed poem, with the byline
Joan Lowery, age 10
.

My name! My byline! In a magazine that people all over the United States would read!

I can still visualize my name in print under the words I had written. This was what it was like to be a published writer. In print! With a byline! Delirious with success, I knew I was on my way.

When I was a
baby my parents and my mother’s parents, Mathias (Matt) and Harriet (Hattie) Meyer, whom we called Nanny and Pa, bought a white stucco duplex on the corner of 73rd Street and Gramercy in Los Angeles. They added a large, square room that connected the two sides of the house through my parents’ and grandparents’ dining rooms. Since my mother had been a kindergarten teacher, the room was outfitted like her former classroom with an upright piano, a sturdy work table and chairs, easels and poster paints, a school-sized blackboard, a ceramic pot that held damp clay, a dollhouse, and a roomy space for toys. Everyone called it the playroom.

My parents’ side of the house was arranged in a square, and my grandparents’ side of the house was shaped like an
upside-down
L
. After my sister Pat was born, when I was five, she and my other younger sister, Marilyn, shared the second bedroom in our parents’ side of the house. My bedroom was on my grandparents’ side of the house, at the far end of the upside-down
L
.

The two sides of the house were quite different, although both had chairs and sofas upholstered in the stiff, prickly plush fabric that was in fashion then. I can’t remember what color they were because they were all covered in homemade slipcovers of printed fabric that didn’t match but had been purchased at a “good bargain.” The object was to protect the furniture underneath. The slipcovers were removed only for special guests and parties at which there would be no children.

I can see now that the slipcovers cut out a lot of the stress to which children are subjected. With the furniture well protected, no one cared if we climbed onto the sofa with our shoes on to color the designs in our coloring books, or sat there munching on saltine crackers.

The gas stove in my mother’s kitchen was fairly new. It looked like a table on white enameled iron legs with the oven on top, next to the four burners. Nanny had an old, heavy iron stove whose oven was like a dark cavern underneath the burners. Mother had an electric refrigerator, but Nanny had a wooden icebox out on the service porch.

Two times a week the iceman arrived in his truck, picked up a huge block of ice with tongs, and carried it on his back to replace the melted ice in the icebox. There was a pan underneath into which the melting ice could drip, and Pa had to empty this heavy pan at least once a day.

The children in the neighborhood loved to jump into the open back of the ice truck, grab slivers of ice, and run
before the iceman returned. If he came back too soon, this good-natured man would pretend to scowl. He’d shout, “Who’s taking my ice?” and then take a few steps toward us as we ran away squealing.

Nanny loved to cook and to bake, so both sides of the house were rich with the fragrances of pot roast and onions, cinnamon-sugar cookies, rich chocolate puddings, and comforting chicken soups.

Our grandparents and their activities played a big part in our lives.

Each spring Nanny and Pa bottled their own root beer. We all loved root beer, especially in black cows, sodas made of vanilla ice cream and root beer. Nanny cooked the root beer mixture and scalded the bottles, and after the brew had been poured into the bottles, Pa would cap them with a small metal bottle-capping tool that could be operated only by exerting great physical strength.

The bottles would be stored on the service porch, and after a certain period had passed in which the carbonation did its work, the root beer would be ready to drink.

It was delicious, and to add to the fun and excitement of each summer, every now and then a bottle on the service porch would explode with a noise we could hear all over the house.

It was best when I was young and could scream at the explosions. When I grew a little older I often had to help clean up the sticky mess.

I watched Nanny make fudge, which, at an exact time in its cooling, Pa, with his strong arm, beat into a creamy texture. Nanny taught me how to darn socks and took me with her when she visited her circle of friends in the neighborhood. Mrs. Christiana offered me cookies. Mrs. Ritemeyer,
who subscribed to the
Los Angeles Times
’s rival newspaper, the
Examiner
, always saved her Sunday comics for me.