I first saw the acronym WIP (work in progress) on knitting blogs. WIPs are a natural part of being a knitter. I normally have at least four projects on the go so that if I lose interest in one, I’ve another project right there that also needs attention. See, I’m really good at beginning things — and very good at ending them once the finish line is in sight. The middle? Eh, not so much. The thrill has worn off and the rewards of completion seem impossibly remote and all there is left is the process. The yarn trails over and through my fingers, the needles tick the stitches past, the project hangs between then and then and is only, forever, now. What it is.

This is actually (and I am only realizing this as I type, which is yet another good reason to write because it kicks my brain into gear) a very good analogy for writing as well. Beginnings are so explosively full of potential. Oh the many things this story can be! I don’t even like to look at them too hard in case they run and hide but I spy them! They’re right there, all that magic, all those soaring, wonderful words like rags tied to tree branches, wishes waiting to be whipped away by the wind. And the end feels a bit like an avalanche. The words are pushing me forward and I am just typing as fast I can to stay ahead of the inevitable, crashing end.

The middle however, is hard. The daily reality of the work squats like limp lettuce sandwiched between two slices of adreneline. It is only grit and patience that keeps the words going. That is when it is work.

But what else gets the sweater knit? What else gets the book written? Or anything anything at all done? What is worth doing that is not, at some point, work? The middle is the whole point. It is the center without which there is only the idle, dusty dream of what could have been. This is what keeps me knitting when I have twelve inches of 2×2 ribbing ahead of me — knowing that each stitch is as crucial as every other stitch, that every stitch is both the beginning and ending because each stitch is one of the many many steps that links beginning to end and makes it whole.

And coming to the end of a day’s writing or an evening’s knitting feels good. And if I do not see dramatic progress in the project, yet I know that progress is progress, dramatic or not. The process is the product.

(This was brought to you by the inspiration of Kate Quinn whose new WIP Wednesday seems a marvellous way to celebrate the middle of the week and of the work.)

Even if I’m not blogging, I am writing. Fiction is very redemptive, especially when life is not sending a ladder down into the sixth circle of hell so that you can climb out. Or whatever circle of hell is the “worrying about things you’re not sure you can change” circle. I’m not sure if it’s the sixth. I think lust is the second and traitors are right at the bottom getting chewed on but other than that I’m a bit foggy.

So I wrote a story about two boys who did, in fact, manage to escape a trip to hell. Very rewarding to rescue someone from the eternal flames.

Here’s a bit of it.

“You missed a bit,” she said sweetly. A tiny sparkling cube of glass sprang from a crack between the floorboards. It flew straight into her mouth and she swallowed it. “That’s better. Stupid of you to miss it. Stupid, lazy, wicked boys.” She looked at us carefully, as if deciding whether she’d eat us next.

“Wicked, yes,” she said. “But maybe not quite wicked enough.” She leaned forward and looked me straight in the eyes. She put out her hand and drew her finger slowly down the side of my face. It felt like a tear rolling down my cheek. “No, not quite wicked enough,” she sighed. Then she winked. “Not yet anyway.”

She was right in front of me and the room was deathly quiet except for the sound of Joe’s breathing and my own. That was when I realized something else. We were breathing. She wasn’t.

I couldn’t look away. Her eyes were fixed to mine like they were on the same hot skewer. I was going to stand here looking at her forever. I was going to vanish and all that would be left was the deep darkness of her eyes and the leaping red flames in their center. I was falling and still she stared at me and I couldn’t even blink.

I couldn’t blink. Which makes my nose itch. Which makes me sneeze. So I sneezed, hard. And you know you have to close your eyes when you sneeze. Physiological fact. Otherwise your eyeballs would pop out. So I sneezed and my eyelids clamped down to keep my eyeballs safe in their sockets. And just like that, I was back in my own head and my eyes were free to wander around like puppies in a park. I sneezed again.

She laughed and it was the most beautiful laugh I had ever heard, like a thousand happy babies all gurgling at once. “I’d say bless you, but that wouldn’t be right, would it?”

Not, let me make this clear, techno-geek. Geeks are in the know, ready, willing and able to wrestle HTML into submission, to laugh in the face of Javascript and to know how the heck RSS works. I am a dweeb, and while geeks are now wearing witty t-shirts with saying like “Me n’ you (2 squared) eva” and sporting black-rimmed librarian chic spectacles, dweebs are still tucking their shirts into their granny panties and spilling chocolate milk on their laptops.

The point is that since I imported this blog to my own site (completely impressed by my own savvy) no one has commented and I admit I felt sad, lonely and abandoned (although admittedly, it’s no more than I deserve after such a monumental hiatus). However, it took one of my Twitter pals, Megin (who blogs here) to point out that it was impossible to comment as I had clearly not gone through all the 234 settings and made them friendly and welcoming. No. For a couple of weeks now this blog has been all: “Do I know you? Well, do I? No? Well, push off then, mate.” Whereas it should be all: “Hi! Hi! Come in! You want tea? Cake? Rum? No? That’s okay! Stay anyway! Happy to see you.” If there was a “leap-up-and-lick-you-like-adorable-puppy” setting to welcome commenters, I’d enable that.

Anyway, if you are at all inclined to comment, go right ahead! I’ll be thrilled to the tips of my dweeby shoes that you stopped by.

I have for most of my life (that is, all the bit since the age of about 10) been a closet children’s book reader.  When the ‘cool’ kids were reaching for Stephen King, I went wandering with Jo March. When the hip college students were carrying Kafka, I hid in the secret garden with Mary. When the reading western world fell gooey-in-love with Salman Rushdie, I went to Imperial Japan with Katherine Paterson. I searched the woods of words for Terebinthia and Perelandra. I went to Sherwood Forest and Camelot and Tintagel. It’s not like I never read grown-up books. I do! But even then, my favorites of those tend to be books that edge not so much into the supernatural, but into the supranormal. The edge of existence where all things seem possible, even if they aren’t really — that lingering, lurking murky darkness that births fairy tales.

And while I’m confessing, there’s another thing I’ve always been closeted about. I reread books. Over and over. I long to enter their worlds again, see their skies, taste the air. I keep going back to Green Gables. I surrender once again to the inexorable will of Mary Poppins. I climb the Faraway Tree. The idea of never again visiting Oz or Narnia or the pioneer west… oh no. Not possible, absolutely incomprehensible, no way. I will always return, like one who has drunk the waters of the Nile who must therefore always come back to Om id-dunya, Cairo, the mother of the world.

What ’s intereresting about this is that I had to turn forty (or maybe just a bit before) to freely admit this to people. Seriously. Thirty years of guiltily hiding The House at Pooh Corner inside the New Yorker? It’s silly. But one of the most wonderful things about me getting older (although the children would just say old) is that I grow into myself more and more fully. And suddenly it doesn’t matter if a few people think I’m two measures short of a sonata. The people who matter won’t care. A few might even nod knowingly and suggest a new writer I might like. And that’s worth more than pearls, more than salt.

This week’s London Review of Books has an article called “In Praise of Difficult Children.” I haven’t read it yet. I didn’t want to read it until I had had a chance to think what I would have written, had I written such an article.

I DO have a difficult child. I have two complicated ones but only one truly difficult one. My first. And I am absolutely certain I would be a lesser person were it not for what he has demanded of me.

First, he demands tenacity. He never slept. He cried all the time (and that is only the most minor of exaggerations). He could not be comforted. He found no respite at all in my arms. There was no sense that I, as his mother, could do anything more for him than any other body willing to hold him and walk and walk and walk. He was, even then, a picky eater. He only liked the right breast. Then he only liked the left. Then he wanted neither except if I were in the bathtub. Then he wanted to feed for three hours straight. He was having none of that proper mouth positioning crap. He was going to purse up his little lips and suck as if I were a straw. Ow. But I could not give up. Of course not. I was his mother. He was mine. I had to stick it out, no matter what. I still do. The same rule, over and over. The same limit, over and over. The same line drawn over and over.

He demands patience. Recite the same poem (Christopher Robin goes hoppity hoppity hoppity hoppity hop…) three hundred times a day. Never vary the pace or speed of movement. Never move suppertime even by a minute. Allow no loud noises, bright lights, harsh clothing. He needs me to be soft voiced and gentle, even when I want, need, to give a loud roaring noise of sadness and despair (I think we’re back in the Hundred Acre Wood with that one).

He demands faith. As teachers, grandparents, relatives, strangers, indeed, grown-ups of all kinds find themselves bemused, confused and finally eroded by his inflexibility, his comprehensive knowledge of geography, grammar and space, his volatile temper — as all those around us ask “what is wrong with your child” I must carry on believing in him. Absolutely and utterly. He is my child. I will not doubt that we can pull him through whatever challenges he faces. I believe that he will grow up to be something wonderful, no matter how hard he struggles now.

He demands strength. I must face him down daily, set limits, enforce them, refuse to be bullied by temper tantrums or sad looks. I must always be strong, sure and present, a rock in his unsteady world.

He demands courage. I must face what he is, rather than what I had imagined he would be. I must confront him when necessary, confront others when necessary. I must walk forward into the darkness fearlessly because I must light the way for him.

He demands love. I found within myself a well-spring of love far deeper and richer than I had imagined I possessed. I imagine it as a heavy silk blanket, warming him, cushioning him against a world he finds sharp-edged and unsettling.

Of course, it is not just me who benefits from my acquaintance with a difficult child. He accepts nothing on trust, questions, pushes, demands to know why from all those around him. By never acceding quietly to anything, he forces people to rethink their assumptions, to explore their rationales. He creates an atmosphere of questioning, an almost electric swirl around him that energizes those caught in its wake.

Without this child, and others like him, refusing to sand off their square corners to fit our round holes, we would lose the opportunity to grow past our assumptions and limitations. He pushes everything, everyone. If we are open to it, we will find ourselves and our worlds expand as he passes.

Pre-Conference Intensives for Writers

Originally uploaded by SCBWI

That’s me there in the red sweater (which I knit by the way) in a photo taken by the official SCBWI photographer. This is the morning session of the Writers’ Intensives. I am concentrating very very hard, as you can tell. Actually, I probably was. The two hours flew past and there was lots of good writing to be had.

There is also this photo of me and Kaela:

I was really glad she was there. I think I’d have gone far crazier than I did if she hadn’t been there to giggle with, I mean, discuss issues in deep profound ways. And drink wine. I pretty much don’t want to go to SCBWI conferences if she’s not there.

The conference was a huge, hugely surreal, mind-boggling experience. I am still processing all the information I received and scrawled down in looping letters in my notebook. It’s taking me this long partly because there were so many different kinds of information: pure artistic inspiration, cold hard business advice, amusing anecdotes and intelligent analysis. Much of these sit in different parts of my brain

So for instance, there was this inspirational thought:

Remind children of beauty. The world is harsh and ugly enough.

That was Bruce Hale. I agree with this wholeheartedly. I think of children’s brains as gardens. What they ingest (whether books, TV, conversations, images, parenting, teaching — everything) are the seeds and those seeds, depending on where they came from, grow into flowers or weeds, trees or brambles. It is crucial that we plant seeds of beauty, give them rich, powerful language to express their thoughts with, write stories of power that show the many wonderful ways in which they might grow up. Children’s writers are really parenting their readers. What would I want my own children to discover about the world? How can I write a story that lets them discover it?

But there was also this more practical, savvy thought:

Get a hook.

Almost everyone said that. I know I know. Actually, I did leave the conference with a far clearer understanding of how important the first 500 words are, which is very useful.

Then there was this rather sobering reflection on the state of education today from Richard Peck:

You can teach children, or you can fear their parents, but you can’t do both.

So true. When teachers pander to parents, children lose. They become spoiled, weak, vain, self-indulgent. Parents can’t always demand enough from their children — we are too close, too sympathetic. A good teacher will take a child and force them to do better than they thought they could. And it will cost the child. It will be hard. It will make them work, think, cry even. But it will make them grow.

And the bottom line was Ursula LeGuin (I can’t remember who quoted her, I think it was probably Bruce Hale again):

Sure it’s simple writing for kids; just as simple as bringing them up.

Ah.

There’s something about modern life which seems to require a vast amount expertise from us about all manner of things: technology, mechanics, construction, medicine, law, money. I suspect I am supposed to go to the doctor armed with the piles of research I have done, ready to challenge her decisions on this or that. I always feel like I should go to the mechanic already knowing what the heck is making that rattle-rattle zing noise. If my computer starts acting bizarrely, I feel compelled to raise my geek quotient and fix the darn thing.

But here’s the thing. I really don’t want to be an expert in auto-mechanics, plumbing or immunology. There are schools to teach you those things. If a pipe starts leaking or the car starts making a funny noise, I don’t want to have to have an opinion about them. I just want them fixed. This means of course that I am at the mercy of the potentially unscrupulous or inept mechanic, plumber or doctor. I’d still rather trust them (even foolishly) then pretend to be an expert. But it’s not the modern way. Information is so accessible that it’s almost a crime not to use it, imbibe it, digest it, process it and own it. But while the availability of information is so vast that infinity is starting to see it approaching, my brain’s ability to deal with it is very limited.

I got information. It’s just not about medicine, pig farming or organ music. It’s not about rotors or potato blight or programming. It’s not about brick laying, giardiasis or balloon animals. I can, however, take one look at a child staggering down to breakfast with bright red cheeks and say “Fifth’s Disease” and be right. I can tell you the difference between its and it’s, imply and infer, fewer and less, uninterested and disinterested. I can also make a Cuban Side Car, knit a sweater and sing Abba songs, sometimes all at the same time. I can cook Italian food, swear in five languages and order wine in six. I gotz skillz.

Just not the skillz to tell me that the horrible noise the car is making when I brake means I shouldn’t wait four days before taking it to the mechanic. The guy took the keys away because the car was apparently unsafe to drive and I’d been running the children back and forth to school quite happily, except for wincing at the screeeeeeech.

Oops.

I spent the weekend at a conference. Ooh, fancy, say you. Indeed, say I. It is awfully like having an actual career, getting to say that “I am going to a conference” or “I just came back from a conference.” And hey, I’ve read my David Lodge. Conferences are potential hotbeds, hotbeds I tell you, of interesting vice. Of course, the only (not particularly interesting) vice I explored this weekend was not sleeping eight full hours a night. Wheee.

So the conference was the annual winter conference of SCBWI (The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators), which is a phenomenal organization, something between a writers’ union and an Italian family on holiday. Chaotic, frenetic and emotionally charged but fundamentally loving. For three days, I allowed the rusty tin can of my brain (gently prized open with a butter knife) to be filled with news, information, encouragement and criticism: Richard Peck reminding us how much books matter, how books teach us who we are and who we want to become; four agents all suggesting that actually, they’d quite like to read our queries, that they’re excited about finding something wonderful; Jay Asher showing that waiting twelve years before having his first book published wasn’t really all that long (someone in the audience has been waiting thirty years! eek!); Tomie de Paola on the phone.

I’m still digesting. But some thoughts linger: nothing happens without working at it; good writing rises like cream; there are happy endings (or at least, happy to-be-continueds); and not trying is worse than failing.

I’ve always allowed fear to triumph over possibility. I’ve never allowed myself to be ambitious. I’ve never aimed at a goal that I thought I might not achieve. I’ve never truly stepped off the lion’s head (Indiana Jones’ reference, third film). But I have one foot in the air now, and the abyss is beneath me. I’m scared, but there’s power in it too, that foot just beginning to come down, just about to hit the invisible path, or to plunge into the darkness.

Kinetic energy beats potential energy any time.

And we’re off. A more or less functioning website with a more or less functioning blog and suddenly I feel like a fully paid-up member of the interwebs. Ah ha! Now I exist in virtuality, as well as in reality.

(Of course, now I must write very important and witty things at every turn which is not necessarily possible considering that my brain is currently full of phlegm and appointments that I forgot to write down so that now I only remember THAT I have things I need to be doing, but cannot remember what or when those things are supposed to be happening.)

One interesting phenomenon of the writing process is when I am really getting stuck into one idea, when it’s outlined and planned and the writing is just beginning to seem attractive rather than terrifying or muddy, suddenly ten other ideas will suddenly show up and start jumping around like they’re on pogo sticks, waving their arms and trying to get my attention.

“Oooh, pick me! Pick me!” they cry. “I am SO much more interesting than that thing you’re writing. I’m funnier, brighter, more original, easier to write! I have a better plot! You won’t have to deal with that little invisibility problem you’re currently worrying about. G’wan. Stop writing that and come over here!”

It’s quite appealing, actually, the thought of rushing over and going to play with the new kids. From here, they all look so lively and interesting. They’ve got muddy knees and freckles. One’s got a scooter. Another’s being followed around by a ghost with a large hat. That one there, it’s got the most enormous, intricate key you can imagine, all curlicues and teeth. Imagine what THAT might open!

But then I look back, and my story is looking a little sad. A little neglected and forlorn. And I remember when it was new and exciting and how I ran over to play with it. And it’s not nice to drop your old friends any time someone new comes along. New isn’t better. It’s just new. So I go back to work, I mean play. And my story and I create something wonderful together.

So all you other stories over there? Wait your turn. I’ll get to you eventually.

But don’t go away, kay? I don’t want to lose track of you.