Today is National Face Your Fears Day.  I really like this one.  It’s the opposite of the old maxim, “Don’t look back, something may be gaining on you.”  I prefer to know what it is I’m running from.

Facing one’s fears is a perennial subject in children’s literature.  Childhood is supposed to be a marvelous time of freedom and exploration, but anyone who hasn’t blocked off his or her childhood memories completely knows this isn’t even close to the truth.  Even under the best of circumstances, children live in a  world peopled with incomprehensible giants and surrounded by all sorts of grist for their fear mill.

What were you afraid of as a child?  A monster under the bed or in the closet?  Spiders? Snakes?  Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

I had a veritable jungle that I had to maneuver my way through every day.  There was a tiger outside the bathroom window that would jump in and eat me if I closed the bathroom door all the way.  There was a gorilla outside my bedroom window that used to stand and look in at me.  I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but I knew it wasn’t good.  If I kept the filmy inner curtains closed, though, he couldn’t get in.   There was an alligator under my bed, so I had to get a running start and leap into bed every night lest he bite off my toes.  When I went out at night with a big pipe wrench to turn the antenna on the TV (if it was turned one way,  it picked up Colorado Springs stations, turned the other way, it picked up Denver stations),  I sang “This little light of mine” all the way around the house and back so the bears wouldn’t get me.

Compared to the kinds of threats far too many children have to contend with–war, starvation, abuse of all kinds, homelessness, abandonment–my menagerie of fears seems rather silly, I know.  Well, except the bears.  We lived in the mountains and there really were bears in the nearby woods.  But, to me, all these threats were as real as real can be, and I had to come up with a strategy to deal with each one.

Nowadays, my fears take other forms.   They mostly revolve around being vulnerable and/or forgotten.  Poverty, illness, old age, loneliness.   These are the monsters in my closet now.

It’s all right, though.  My childhood experiences with fear taught me what to do.  Face my fears.  Name each one and devise a strategy for coping with it.  Love, gratitude, courage, wisdom, reaching out to others, accepting help when I need it.  These are the best defenses I have for dealing with my current crop of fears.

Of course, a bit of singing in the dark doesn’t hurt, either.  It still keeps the bears away.

I am working on Halloween costumes for my granddaughters (fairy dresses with “ice cream cone hats,” as ordered).  As I was tweaking the pattern for the dresses, I realized how similar my process is in both sewing and writing.

When I was a beginning seamstress, I did exactly what the pattern directions told me.  Now, the balance of power has subtly shifted.  I have a picture in my mind of what I want the finished dress to look like.  I use the pattern as both a jumping-off place and a shortcut, but am no longer confined by it.  My skills have taken me beyond imitation and into the realm of creation.

When I first started writing, I read every “how-to” book I could get my hands on.  I also read every children’s book in the particular genre I wanted to try. (You should see the stack of early chapter books I went through before writing Dragon Dilemma.)  From both types of reading, I learned the rules of story making and followed them as diligently as I once followed pattern directions.  Lately with my writing, however, I am finding that I am more willing and able to “adjust the pattern” if my vision demands it.

For instance, in my new YA historical novel, The Book of Dove, conventional wisdom says that a story must have conflict from the outset in order to grab the reader.  The book starts with Dove telling how she washed ashore on Iona as a baby, all alone in a small boat.  So far so good.   However, Dove isn’t terribly angst filled over her mysterious beginnings because:

1. She has good and loving foster parents.
2. This conflict isn’t, as the book progresses, the major conflict of the plot.
3. Dove is a very spunky character.  Fretting about her past isn’t at all in keeping with her personality.

All good reasons to branch off from the established pattern.  But, I wasn’t confident enough when I first started sending out the manuscript to stick to my guns.

First there was an editor who really liked the manuscript.  She sent me two pages of notes that said, among other things, that Dove was too complacent and needed more tension and there was too much detail in the first chapter.  Getting a two page revision letter is, as any of you writers out there know, a very BIG DEAL.  So, I rewrote the manuscript, adding a rather contrived scene in the first chapter where young Dove agonizes over her abandonment. I also cut a lot of details, or moved them to farther on in the book.  The editor said she  liked what I’d done but ended up turning down the manuscript.

Then, an editor at a conference critiqued the first chapter and said Dove seemed more upset than the situation warranted, and I should put in a lot more details to help ground the reader.   In other words, she also wanted me to follow a certain pattern, but one that was the exact opposite of the first editor’s suggestions.

Totally confused and feeling damned if I did and damned if I didn’t, I put the manuscript aside.

I told a writing friend of my frustration.  She asked me to read both my old first chapter and my new one out loud to her.  When I was done, she said the voice seemed truer in the old version, and pointed out that Dove’s voice is the real strength of the story, which I agree with totally.

So, I sat down, threw out all the patterns, and simply wrote what felt right.  The first chapter is now closer to the old one in that it is more telling than showing and the conflict is understated.  I’ve “killed my darlings” by the drove, though–I condensed three chapters into one– and the writing is much cleaner and tighter than before.  Most importantly, Dove’s authentic voice comes through loud and clear.

Will I be successful with this attempt to color outside the lines?  In a commercial sense, perhaps not.  Only time will tell.  But, in an artistic sense, yes, I think I have succeeded.  I stayed true to the needs of the story rather than following the rules of the game and have a manuscript I feel really good about.

But–and this is very important–I learned the rules thoroughly and practiced them diligently for years before taking such a risk.  So, learn your craft.  Learn it well.  Then be brave enough to adjust the pattern if that’s what your vision demands.

Happy word stitching!  Let me know how you do.

I’ve been reluctant to promote Woolly Bear because of some snafus and miscommunication with the publisher.  I have tried to take action to change the situation, which hasn’t worked so far, so I’m now focusing on simply cleaning up my own vibration–which is all I need to do, according to Abraham.  And, yes, I am a believer in the Law of Attraction.  Sometime I’ll go into my reasons for knowing it works (not that I always am in top vibrational form).

Anyway, back to school visits and Woolly Bear.  It’s an incredibly beautiful book, thanks to Michele Coxon’s illustrations.  Kids love the story and adore acting it out with my puppets.  They also love my other two books, Turtle Island and Dragon Dilemma. It’s ridiculous for several hundred copies of a couple of really good books to sit in boxes in my garage while I sit in my office beating up on myself because they’re only good rather than “perfect”.

Kids don’t worry about things being perfect (until they are taught to do so).  They’re all about enjoying  what is, moment-by-moment.   Jesus said we needed to become like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.   I think what he meant was that we need to let go of all those pesky, ego driven “shoulds” and reclaim our birthright of wonder and appreciation.  When I am able to do that, I’m definitely in heaven right here on earth.

So, back to school for me.  The kids and I have a lot to teach each other!

With the demise of extended families, elders were seen in our society as useless and, like old horses, put out to pasture.  With all us Baby Boomers turning wrinkly and silver, though, that paradigm is shifting. Grandparents in other parts of the world have always had an honored place in their societies.   It’s nice to think that’s begun to be the case again in our own culture. Older people have the wisdom of long experience for which there is no real substitute.

I’ve been thinking about how many of my favorite children’s stories have wise elders in them.  Some are wizards such as Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books and Dalben in Lloyd Alexander’s Pridain series.  Some offer the main character a safe haven and a listening ear, such as Hannah in Witch of Blackbird Pond, Matthew and Marilla in Anne of Green Gables and Crane Man in A Single Shard.  All of them add richness, texture and depth.

Do you make a point of putting older people in your stories?  I often do.  It just seems natural and right to have an elder or two somewhere in the mix.

Elders make good writers, too, expecially for children.  Many authors begin their careers late and/or continue writing into their seventies, eighties and nineties.  Scott O’Dell was sixty when he wrote Island of the Blue Dolphin, his first children’s book.  He penned nearly thirty more children’s books before his death at the age of ninety-one.

I found a list of books on starting a writing career later in life at September University, a good site for creative aging in general.

So don’t get discouraged if you are an elder who wants to write.  And if you are a writer, remember to include a few elders in your cast of characters.  Your stories will be the better for it.

I decided to come up with my own version of a writing challenge by coming up with prompts for myself that are geared to writing for children.   I’m going to do this every other day and keep writing about writing in between.   My goal is to have something new on my blog every day.  We’ll see how it goes.

If you’d like to use my writing prompts, too, please do.  I’d love to see what you come up with.

Today, I wrote about setting as character.

Tomorrow, let’s see, I believe tomorrow I will write about a terrible birthday party.  See you there!

Chautauqua Institution

Just spent a week at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautuaqua, New York with some amazing folks!  People who write for children are way cool.  It was more like a family reunion than a conference even though it was the first time many of us had been there.  Still waiting for my chi to catch back up with me, however, so will gather my thoughts and write more about what I learned there in the days/weeks to come.

For now, just let me say this.  If you want to be a children’s writer, do it for love more than money (which I already knew) and expect to cross paths with some really fun, dedicated, CRAZY people along the way!

So, names are important, and I’ve had a slew of names in the nearly six decades of my life, none of which really felt like mine.

1. I started out as Patricia Louise Kuhn.  My mother wanted to name me Robin, but my brothers and sister insisted I be named Patrick or Patricia because I was due on Saint Patrick’s Day.   However, I arrived three days “late.”  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard this story, always with the hilarious punchline “and she hasn’t been on time for anything since.”  Nuff said.  I was called Patty until 5th grade, at which time–there being five other Patricia’s in my class–I became Tricia.
2. A week before my nineteenth birthday, I got married and eagerly changed my last name to Sanborn, grateful that I wouldn’t ever be called “Kuner pickle” again.  I continued to answer to Tricia, however, which most people shortened to Trish.
3. Six years later, that marriage ended.  I held on to the Sanborn but dropped the Trish and started telling everyone to call me Patricia, instead.  This was the “yuppy” phase of my life, and I thought Patricia Sanborn had an upwardly mobile ring to it.
4. Ten years later, I met and married my second husband and changed my name to Patricia Sanborn McFadden.  I dropped the Louise and kept the Sanborn because I wanted to acknowledge all the phases of my life up to that point.   I also started a pre-school.  Since Patricia was too much of a mouthful for the kids, I became “Miss Pat” to them and just plain Pat to everyone else.

As you can see, my name(s) say a lot about my history and associations, but not very much about me.  They’re all just labels.  I don’t feel like a Patty, Patricia, Trish or Pat.

Okay, here comes a slightly weird part of my story.  About fifteen years ago, I was reading in bed one evening and a very pleasant, deep male voice said “Your name is Green.”   I figured I’d gone round the bend.  However, I’ve never heard any other disembodied voice, and finally decided it probably wasn’t a psychotic episode, after all.  Which meant that my name, apparently, was Green.  Great.

Except . . .Green didn’t feel any more right to me than Patricia.  Was it my last name?  Pat Green?  Ugh!  My first name?  Green McFadden.  Marginally better but still no cigar.  How about the color green in some other language?  Verde? Vert? Still no good.  I tried Pansy Green, Shamani Green and just plain Green.  I named my publishing company Green Turtle Press, to show my appreciation to the voice without actually going “Green.”  I  tried different spellings.  I began wearing nothing but green clothing.  But my heart just wasn’t into “Green” as a name; I got frustrated and dropped the whole thing for long stretches of time.

Then, last week, I told about the mysterious voice and its cryptic message at a women’s gathering I sometimes attend.  The next morning, I ran into one of the women who said, “I’ve been thinking about your story and I think you should see if there’s a Celtic word or name that sounds like “Green.”  Even though I have a lot of Scottish/Irish ancestry, am very drawn to that part of the world and took a trip to Ireland and Scotland with my daughter a couple of years ago, this possible solution to the mystery had never occurred to me.

I started googling Irish names and almost immediately ran across “Grian” (pronounced Gree-un, like Ian with a Gr in front of it), which is the Celtic word for sun and also the name of an Irish sun goddess.  As soon as I found it, I knew this was my name.  I started asking people to call me Grian.  I got the grianmcfadden dot com and started redoing my website.

Sure, there are bound to be a few complications, of course.  For one thing, all my writing up to now has been published under the name of Patricia McFadden.  But that’s not a biggie.  Lots of writers have several pen names.  And, no, I don’t plan to change my name legally.  Too much hassle.  My sister’s legal name is Carol but everyone has called her Susie all her life (which is another story), and she doesn’t have any major problems with it.  And, no, I’m not going to expect my brothers and sisters and ninety-four-year-old mother to call me Grian.  But I am doing my best to retrain my friends, all of whom seem to be taking it in stride.

What’s in a name?  Plenty, if it’s the right one.