Making of a Writer (9780307820464)

by Nixon, Joan Lowery

  I loved listening to my parents and grandparents tell stories about when they were young. I was always eager to hear a Joe story or a Margaret story or a Matt-and-Hattie story. Instead of the names I knew them by, their given names transferred them into a world that existed before mine, a world in which they became the leading characters in their own stories.

  I thought how lucky my mother was when she was young to have shared a bedroom with her aunt Gussie. Gussie owned a candy store and made hand-dipped chocolates. She left for work very early in the morning to make the candy and returned late in the evening after she had closed the store. Margaret didn’t see much of her aunt, except on Sundays, but each morning when she awoke, she found that Gussie had left a little gift bag of chocolates for her.

  My father told about his Irish mother, Mary Elizabeth Lowery, dashing from the restraining arms of her family back into their burning house in the middle of the night. She appeared at an upstairs window, flinging into the darkness something that smashed on the ground. When she stumbled out the front door, her family pulled her to safety and scolded her. What was so important that she had to risk her life to save it?

  “The alarm clock!” she answered with surprise. “Without the alarm clock, we’d all oversleep, and you’d be late to your schools and jobs!”

  Some of the tales scared me a little, like Daddy’s account of the night job he hated when he was a senior in high school. As he described his duties as night watchman in a mortuary, I easily visualized him making his rounds, his only companions the dead bodies waiting to be buried.

  One of the family stories that impressed me the most had to do with Nanny—Hattie—when she and Matt had been married about eighteen years and lived in Chicago.

  I don’t know at what point in their marriage Matt decided to bring his father to live with them, but it was probably not too long after he and Hattie had married. In hushed tones, Mother solemnly remarked that her grandfather, Nicholas Meyer, had become an alcoholic and could not work.

  Nicholas lived with his son Matt and his family, but he refused to communicate with any of them. Through the years he never spoke a single word to Hattie or to my mother. Stubbornly, he wouldn’t learn English, and the few words he did mutter were in German, translated as “those bad boys,” when my mother’s younger brothers, Al and Vincent, came near. According to Mother, Nicholas Meyer was a very mean old man.

  Each morning Grandpa Meyer would rise early, dress, and go downstairs to the kitchen. He’d take his place at the table, where Hattie was already busy preparing breakfast. He’d grasp his fork in his left fist and his knife in the right and bang them up and down on the table until his food was placed in front of him.

  When Mother was seventeen, Hattie became very ill. There were no miracle medicines to rely on at that time, and nothing the doctor prescribed seemed to help. Hattie continued to weaken. Finally, one morning the doctor called Matt into Hattie’s room. “I’ll tell the children to come in and say goodbye to their mother, and then I’ll leave,” the doctor said. “There is nothing more that I can do.”

  Matt held Hattie’s hand and cried as the three children came into the room.

  Hattie roused herself enough to ask what time it was, and when Margaret told her, she said, “Did you get Grandpa his breakfast?”

  “No,” Margaret answered. “Grandpa didn’t get up.”

  Hattie opened her eyes. “That’s not like him,” she said. “Go to his room and find out if he’s all right.”

  Margaret knocked at Grandpa’s door, and when he didn’t answer, she entered the room. She couldn’t rouse him, so she went back to her mother and said, “Mama, I think Grandpa is dead.”

  Hattie immediately struggled to a sitting position, wrapping her arms around Matt to comfort him. Then, being practical, she said, “There’s so much we have to get done.” From that moment she began to improve, and a few days later she was well enough to be on her feet again.

  I wish that when I was young I had asked my parents and grandparents to tell more and more stories about their lives before I became part of them. I wish I had listened intently so that I could remember each and every word. I wish I had written their stories to keep forever.

  There are so many wishes for what might have been. Wishes play a big part in the making of a writer.

  Chapter Four

  It’s not likely to shock anyone to learn that when I was about five or six I didn’t always pick up my toys or hang up my clothes. It was much more fun to run outside and play, or climb into a high branch of our next-door neighbor’s fig tree to read Five Little Peppers or A Child’s Garden of Verses, two of my favorites.

  Every action has a reaction, and my mother’s reaction when I was not as tidy as I should have been was to recite a certain poem to me.

  Margaret Lowery, my mother, was an energetic person with great leadership qualities. She had waited seven impatient years to have a child, so when I came along she became highly active in the Los Angeles Mothers’ Educational Center. This was composed of a group of women whose intention was to search for the most perfect and modern way to nurture, guide, and discipline their children. Apparently, reciting this poem made their list of recommended activities.

  I don’t remember the title of the poem. I doubt I want to. But it began, “I love you, Mother,” said Little Nell. “I love you more than tongue can tell.”

  When I was grown, I came across this poem in a library collection and for the first time learned the rest of it. As I had heard many times, Little Nell told her mother she loved her. But there was more. After Little Nell’s declaration of love, she ran outside to play.

  Little Nell had a sister, whose name was Little Nan. Little Nan didn’t go out and play. She told her mother she loved her, then swept the floor and picked up her clothes and did the dishes. The poem ended with a question: Which little girl loved her mother best?

  When I was young I didn’t get the message. I didn’t listen to the poem beyond the opening lines because when my mother began to recite it, I heard the words like this: “I love you, Mother,” said Little Nell. “I love you more than Tunkentel.”

  Immediately, my mind was drawn to Tunkentel. What a wonderful, exciting name! No first or last name. Just one name—Tunkentel. With a name like that, he couldn’t be human. He was most likely a troll who sat under a bridge and ate billy goats gruff and stray cattle and chickens and maybe a farmer or two.

  But why did this troll named Tunkentel love Little Nell’s mother?

  What if at one time in the past the villagers had been terribly unkind to Tunkentel—all except for Little Nell’s mother? What if he had cut his ugly big toe on a rock and had gone looking for help, and she had cleaned and bandaged it? What if she had then sent him home with a bag of chocolate cookies?

  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 ifs that have led me into story after story after story.

  What ifs 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.

  Chapter Five

  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!

  Chapter Six

  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.

  BETTY: (cross voice) What’s the matter with you, Mary Jane? Can’t you sit still? I’m trying to read. (I threw in
a lot of sibling banter. It was understood by everybody.)

  MARY JANE: Didn’t you hear that strange sound, Betty? (Right off the bat, both names have been established, and something has been said that piques the interest of the audience.)

  BETTY: Hear what strange sound?

  MARY JANE: That kind of scratching, scrabbling noise, like someone’s trying to get inside our house.

  BETTY: (jumps up from her chair and joins Mary Jane at the window) I knew we shouldn’t have stayed in this mountain cabin by ourselves. Summer’s over. Everyone’s gone back to the city.

  MARY JANE: Don’t blame me. Staying here another week was your idea. You kept saying you wanted to stay in the mountains long enough to see the first snow.

  BETTY: (holds up a hand) Shhh! Listen. I heard that scrabbling sound, too. I think it’s on the roof.

  MARY JANE: (whispers) Maybe it’s an animal.

  BETTY: Maybe it’s a hungry bear.

  MARY JANE: It’s not a bear. Bears hibernate. We’re just scaring ourselves. I wish we hadn’t listened to the kids at the boat dock talking about the weird monster who lives in the mountains.

  BETTY: I didn’t pay any attention to them. I don’t believe in monsters. Besides, they admitted they’d never seen the monster.

  MARY JANE: (scary voice) They couldn’t see him. They said he only comes out after all the summer visitors have gone home!

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

  Chapter Seven

  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.