Making of a Writer (9780307820464) (3 page)

What if
Tunkentel, many years later, decided to leave his home under the bridge and munch his way into the village? The villagers were terrified and ran away—all except for Little Nell’s mother, who faced Tunkentel and encouraged him to return home. Deep in his strange troll mind was a memory of this kind and brave woman—who had once again brought chocolate cookies—so Tunkentel lumbered back to the bridge, thereby sparing the villagers.

Or
 … What if
Tunkentel was not really a troll at all, but a prince who had been put under a spell by a horribly mean witch?—a prince who needed someone kind and pure of heart to break the spell. Enter Little Nell’s mother, who learned how to break evil spells from her grandmother, who just happened to be a
good
witch.

Or
 … What if
Tunkentel was a wizard in disguise who needed a good and loving helper in order to overthrow the evil king who …

Each recital of the poem brought forth in my mind a new dramatic possibility involving the troll Tunkentel. I never did get the message my mother was attempting to give me, but I began a lifetime of
what if
s that have led me into story after story after story.

What if
s are the keys that unlock the door to imagination. They’re free. They’re plentiful. I used them to open the door wide, and I ran right in. You, of course, can run in, too, whenever you decide you’d like to.

During my elementary school
years I was never fond of arithmetic. I groaned over my homework in addition and subtraction. I often thought that the time I wasted memorizing the multiplication tables would be much better spent blissfully lost in a book of fiction. With that attitude, needless to say math wasn’t my best subject.

When I had trouble with my homework in arithmetic, I went to my father. As an accountant, he was the family’s expert in math. He would explain the concept of the problems and the method of solving them, and I would then do my homework.

Often I became stuck on one or two problems. Daddy wouldn’t work them for me or even give me hints. He’d go over the process, and then he’d say, “Think about them
when you go to bed. Tell your mind to work on them. It will do this while you’re asleep. In the morning, when you wake up, you’ll be able to solve the problems.”

I took him at his word. I would read over the two or three unsolvable problems just before I turned off my bedside light, and in the morning—just as Daddy had promised—the solutions would be there. My math grades improved immediately.

Later, when I had grown up, I was fascinated by scientific magazine articles that claimed we use only ten percent of our brain.
That covers the conscious, thinking part of our brain
, I thought,
but what about the part that works while we sleep?
If this were an extra part, and we could use it, too, I’d take advantage of it. I didn’t want to miss out on a thing.

From that time on, just before I fell asleep, I’d often think about scenes in a story I was writing, or a problem in a plot that I couldn’t seem to solve, or a character, or a missing ingredient, and I’d say to this mystical part of my brain, “Work on it.” Usually I’d awake with the answer, or I’d find it the moment I sat down at my typewriter and began to write.

In the 1970s a number of self-help books were published that attempted to explain what was called the unconscious, subconscious, even supraconscious parts of our brains, giving more detail to a process with which I was very familiar.

At this time I had an unusual experience that convinced me that my subconscious mind was on the job. I began to write my second young adult mystery,
The Séance
. I had written only a few chapters when I was interrupted by a number of other projects that demanded immediate care.

“You work on it, I can’t,” I told my subconscious mind, and put the manuscript aside.

A few months later I was baby-sitting Melia, our first grandchild. To help her get to sleep for her afternoon nap, I lay on the bed with her, singing lullabies. Soon after she fell asleep, I did, too.

I dreamed that the door to the bedroom opened and a group of people filed in. They stood at the foot of the bed, looking at me.

They were easy to recognize. I knew them as the characters I was writing about in
The Séance
.

“I wish she’d get back to our story,” one of them said. “She’s put us off for too long.”

Another character shook his head and looked at me sadly. “It’s because she hasn’t worked out some problems in the story yet. I think she’s procrastinating.”

“Why?” someone asked.

“Because she’s wrong about me,” a character spoke up. “She thinks I’m the murderer, but I’m not. She doesn’t realize that yet.”

At that moment Melia stirred and woke up. I woke up, too, fascinated by what my subconscious mind had done for me. I wished I had heard more in my dream and wondered if my characters had other messages for me. If they did, I’d have to get busy and find them myself.

The next day I began working once more on the story. The character who had claimed to be innocent had been right. I soon discovered the identity of the real culprit and eagerly finished my manuscript.

I told my father, “Remember when I was in the second grade and you taught me to use my subconscious brain to solve problems while I slept? You were way ahead of your time.”

He laughed and said, “It wasn’t my idea. My second-grade teacher taught the process to me.”

Perhaps over the generations a few people learned and taught that technique. Perhaps it was something instinctive—especially for writers. Recognizing the subconscious mind and putting it to work is one of the best things a writer can do to help with the long, difficult, and totally satisfying occupation called writing. Believe me, there are many days in which a writer needs a great deal more than that recognizable ten percent of the brain!

From the time Katie
McGowan, our youngest granddaughter, could talk, her world was shaped by dialogue. Her baby spoon and fork would carry on a conversation, sometimes joined by salt and pepper shakers. Dolls would chat with stuffed bears, a rosebud in a vase would have a spirited conversation with a paperweight, and an oak leaf would mother an acorn. Life was story. And story was dialogue.

I attribute this verbal approach to the world to heredity. As a child I was exactly the same.

As a Christmas surprise my father, whose hobby was woodworking, built a two-story dollhouse with a pitched roof and a balcony at one end. My mother wallpapered and
painted the rooms and supplied the house with furniture and dolls to fit. As more dolls were added, they became an odd assortment. Some were wooden, with bright red smiles and lacquered hair; some were glass-eyed breakable china, with an occasional chip off a tiny nose or foot. A few, such as a molded lead cowboy with chaps and spurs, drifted into the collection. Some I created from odds and ends, like Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners, to serve as character actors in my countless stories.

When I began creating stories for my dollhouse, my sisters were too young to know or care what I was doing, but as they grew beyond the toddler stage, they’d often sit and watch intently, listening to my doll characters perform their stories.

My audience quickly expanded. Neighborhood friends who had come to play would discover a show in progress. They’d plop down cross-legged on the rug in front of the dollhouse to watch. It wouldn’t be long before the doorbell would ring and a couple of kids would ask, “Mrs. Lowery, is Joan going to make a show?”

Often when a friend of Mother’s came to visit, her children would be directed to the dollhouse.

“Joan, put on a show,” Mother would say, eager to get the children settled so the grown-ups could talk without interruption.

I put no time constraints on my dramas; although some of the plays were short, others could go on and on until we were called to meals or the little kids had to leave to go to the bathroom.

Mother would say to the audience members, “Time’s up. Dinner’s ready. Come back tomorrow at three o’clock
after school.” Or even, “We’re having guests tomorrow, so please come Monday after three, and Joan will finish the show.”

I didn’t mind the interruptions. I was an eager, willing dramatist with a ready-made audience. Could any situation have pleased a writer more?

Even though I was young, I knew that a restless, wiggling audience needed to be captured immediately, so I always began my stories with action. Something exciting happened. Something suspenseful. Something that would keep kids in their seats to find out what would take place next.

In my dollhouse dramas there could be no narrator, no explanation, no description. I had only the stiff-bodied, expressionless dolls to tell my stories. But I had
dialogue
.

Dialogue—including my tone of voice—had to tell the entire story. Dialogue opened the first dramatic scene, and dialogue was responsible for the closing line of each play. I had to grab my audience’s attention and hold it, and I had to do it with dialogue.

So the opening of my plays would go something like this:

Two girl dolls are seated in the living room as the play begins. One walks to the window and back to her chair. Then she walks to the window again.

I can’t remember ever losing an audience, and I learned how important dialogue is in keeping a story alive and moving.

During my eighth year
Mother decided that the living room drapes were terribly out of style and would have to be replaced. These drapes were made of dark red velvet trimmed with gold fringe, and the matching piece stretched over the center part of the window was rounded at the top. After the drapes had been taken down, my creative mother took a second look at them and thought what a wonderful covering they’d make for a puppet theater.

Daddy designed and made a folding frame that could be taken apart and transported in the trunk of our car. Mother redesigned the drapes to cover the frame and wrote scripts adapted from traditional fist-puppet plays and fairy tales. Our entire family helped make and paint fist puppets, their heads papier-mâché, and Mother sewed their
costumes. Then Mother, my sister Marilyn, and I memorized our parts.

Pat, who was only three at the time, was given a small part, too. Her job was to sit in the audience, a darling doll with a big bow decorating her blond hair. When Punch called out, “Where do you think I got my big red nose?” Pat had to shout back, “From eating red apples!”

Because I loved Pat so much, I suffered for her each time she dutifully yelled out her line and everyone turned and stared at her. Pat was a trouper, although she admitted many years later that she had hated playing that part. Shamelessly, in spite of my love for my youngest sister, I was thankful Pat’s job hadn’t been given to me and I could work invisibly behind the scenes.

Although the behind-the-scenes work appealed to me more, it didn’t always go smoothly. The space was small and crowded with three people, various backdrops, Mother’s folding chair, and countless puppets to manage. If I happened to move too close to my five-year-old sister, Marilyn, she would pinch. Marilyn was a cuter, younger near-image of me, but she had definite ideas about what she wanted, and she took no prisoners.

Unless I had puppets on both hands, I’d naturally pinch back, and on a couple of occasions the stage rocked dangerously. I don’t know how she did it, but somehow, without missing a line, Mother managed to threaten us into good behavior, and the show miraculously continued without mishap.

For three or four years we were volunteer entertainers with our puppet show wherever there were children—at hospitals, schools, and orphanages. In spite of occasional—and sometimes painful—pinching contests, I enjoyed performing
with the puppet show. I loved hearing the children laugh and shout back to Punchinello in our Punch and Judy script, but it wasn’t until we performed at a Maryknoll orphanage for Japanese children in Los Angeles that I suddenly realized the magical, transcending power of suspense.