On Writing
Thoughts on a career of literature, writing, publishing, and teaching writing. . . . (More in blog archives)
OnWriting

Just Another Manic June Day

Outside my window that is.  After a late, cool spring, the birds are in full choir mating and nesting and feeding.  It's a great time to be a birder (which I am, sorta), but not a great time to write–not when crazed robins collide against the screen, and Baltimore Oriole males whistle unendingly from their perches like Bronx construction workers remarking on pretty girls in their summer dresses passing below.  And then there's the resident pair of loons on the river; they never seem to sleep, but then again they have their single, furry chick to protect from eagles above and large pike below.  I've come, like the survivor  of Crane's "The Open Boat" (the cook, the oiler, the Captain and the journalist) to be the "interpreter" of their calls.  

Am I complaining?  No.  This flush of intensely loud and green spring is what Minnesotans live for.  Snow and cold weather has receded in our minds so much so that winter feels like it's from another lifetime--certainly not this one.  But  mid-June means it's time to buckle down to the writing desk.

After very nearly passing on the nonfiction hunting book project, I've reconsidered--thanks to a persistent editor.  There are still questions to be answered about audience, but at some point one must stop cutting bait and cast the line.  That will happen as soon as I clear the decks of a long-overdue YA novel for HarperCollins, the sequel to MEMORY BOY.  Have had several false starts on it, but finally have it up and running.  Must deliver on July 1, and feels like about 80 pages to go.  That's about six pages a day for two weeks straight.  No pressure (ha).   But it doesn't have to be perfect--it just has to be done.  And there's the take-away line if you're an aspiring fiction writer, or are struggling with your M.A. or Ph.D thesis.   The goal is the full draft, and then you can revise.  Besides, your editor or your thesis advisor needs something to do; the more they feel a part of the process, the better things will go for you and the project.

Literary miscellany:  the summer fiction issue of the New Yorker is out, and always worth a look.  Love the poem "Don't Do That" by Stephen Dunn.  Some good short stories in there as well, including one by Jonathon Franzen that is set in St. Paul; it's an oddly compelling story, one that slowly darkens as it goes along.  

My new YA novel SUPER STOCK ROOKIE had a quiet debut, but should pick up with help from a feature article in the summer VOYA magazine.  The three "Motor Novels" (one more to go) will form a trilogy, which is its own unique literary matter.  But the orioles are calling for more grape jelly, and I have six pages to write. 

Over and out for today. . . . 


Posted by will weaver at 6/17/2009 6:19 AM | Add Comment

Literary Life

My cancelled book tour to Texas was greatly disappointing, but allowed me to get my mind right for the commencement address I gave at the University of Minnesota, Morris.  The UMM is in west central Minnesota, out where the wind blows in from the western prairie, but the school has a great reputation as a small, progressive, liberal arts college.  It has about 1500  students.  Graduation was held outside on a bright, chilly (55  degrees) and windy day, when the banners fluttered and mortarboard hats sometimes sailed away.  But everything went well, including my talk (he said, modestly).  A short speech--mine was 13 minutes or so--is akin to writing a good short story; you must  do a lot in small container.  My main metaphor was Dickens' "best of times, worst of times", with an emphasis on 'best.'  My quotations ranged from Blaise Pascal to The Big Lebowksi, with Thomas  Wolfe, Arthur Miller and a few more sprinkled inbetween.  I seemed to  hit the right note, and ended with a couple of lines from Bob Dylan's "Forever Young."  

Prior to the event, the UMM  Disability Office staffers had asked for a written text of my remarks in order to assist their American Sign Language interpreters; however, I had to explain that I don't write out my speeches (I can't imagine standing up and there and reading from written text).  But I was able to give a general summary, and a few of the quotations, which they found helpful.

My personal preparation focused on keeping it short, and keeping it about the students.  I also rehearsed.  As with sports and public speaking, it should be "Practice like you play."   I gave my speech outside, on my lawn, in my black robe; my audience was the Mississippi River, a few ducks, and my dog--who seemed a bit weirded out at the sight of me declaiming to the river.  But the rehearsal (which I timed)  clearly paid off, and I can't recommend it enough--especially if you are speaking only from notes. . . .

Enough about me.  On to Chekhov.   In an airport bookstore recently, I picked up a "best of" short story collection by Anton Chekhov.  He was a great influence upon me early on, when I was learning the short story form, and I enjoy revisiting his work.  In the introduction, he lays out his personal list of what writers need, and very high on it is "compassion."   If there's anything I've learned about what separates great writers from merely published writers, it's that, and compassion is what I always aspire to when creating fictional characters.

Posted by will weaver at 5/25/2009 1:54 PM | Add Comment

One 'Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I'm supposed to be in Texas this week, visiting six schools from Corpus Christi to Dallas.  My crew chief was supposed to drive down with our "Bookmobile" stock car and trailer, I was to fly down, and everything was arranged.  Close to a year of planning with teachers and librarians, and a final itinerary that looked like it came from a professional travel agent.  Then came the Great Swine Flu Scare. . .  

One school closed, then another, and the whole trip went up in smoke.  I could see this coming from a distance; the 'flu thing was a big train, and my ten days in May was the intersection.  We collided head on,  no thanks to a hysterical media which whipped up an international frenzy over a relative tiny number of deaths and illness worldwide.    The "Swine" 'flu story was page five, not page one;  the machinations by Bush and cronies to justify the Iraq war was page one, not page ten.  It would be nice if the press someday would get things right not in terms of facts (which should always be correct) but in terms of emphasis and proportionality.  I guess that part we have to do for ourselves....

But the sudden hole in my schedule resulted in some good things.  Our race team had more time to prepare for the summer season (see race reports and photos at www.motornovels.com), and we visited a couple of local schools.  As well, I got to enjoy more of Minnesota spring (which included yard work), plus go into my last week of speaking engagements well rested and thoughtful.  Will give my first university commencement address (University of Minnesota at Morris), a 10-15 minute speech to the graduates.   Woody Allen has an essay called "My Speech to the Graduates", and it's all the cliches' in the world strung together--hilarious and worth tracking down.   The job of the commencement speaker is to give unsolicited advice to a captive audience (hehe), and I'll try to avoid that.  Mainly I'm going to tell them that they've been lucky to be in the bubble of school the last eight years... but in a cheerful way, of course.  


 

 

Posted by will weaver at 5/13/2009 6:42 AM | Add Comment

Genius? Or Process?

I 've written in earlier blogs that writing is a process not a miracle.  That publishing a novel is far more about hard work than genius.  That many (if not most) would-be writers do not work hard enough at the sentence level--then gripe about the publishing industry "putting up walls" against new writers. They (the unpublished writers) start to see the publishing world in conspiratorial terms:  that it's against "any one new", etc.   Whenever I run into this type of person, I know the next question is going to be about self-publishing, a debate I also have covered in early blog entries.  

But today's New York Times column by David Brooks, the agonized conservative (he's a Democrat deep down, and I'll bet ten bucks he voted for Obama), puts a finer point on the discussion of natural talent versus hard work.  Totally without permission, I've lifted the body of his column and pasted below, and have butted in with comments in brackets:

(NYT May 1, 2009)

. . . .If you wanted to picture how a typical "genius" [my emphasis] might develop, you’d take a girl who possessed a slightly above average verbal ability. It wouldn’t have to be a big talent, just enough so that she might gain some sense of distinction. Then you would want her to meet, say, a novelist, who coincidentally shared some similar biographical traits. Maybe the writer was from the same town, had the same ethnic background, or, shared the same birthday — anything to create a sense of affinity.  

This contact would give the girl a vision of her future self. . .  give her a glimpse of an enchanted circle she might someday join. It would also help if one of her parents died when she was 12, infusing her with a profound sense of insecurity and fueling a desperate need for success.

Armed with this ambition, she would read novels and literary biographies without end. This would give her a core knowledge of her field. She’d be able to chunk Victorian novelists into one group, Magical Realists in another group and Renaissance poets into another. This ability to place information into patterns, or chunks, vastly improves memory skills. She’d be able to see new writing in deeper ways and quickly perceive its inner workings.  [If you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader.]

Then she would practice writing. Her practice would be slow, painstaking and error-focused. Ben Franklin would take essays from The Spectator magazine and translate them into verse. Then he’d translate his verse back into prose and examine, sentence by sentence, where his essay was inferior to The Spectator’s original.  The aim is to focus meticulously on technique. . . . [At some point, you must lay a page of your writing alongside that of your favorite writer.  Compare, contrast.  Why is their writing better?]

By practicing in this way, performers delay the "automatizing" [my emphasis] process. The mind wants to turn deliberate, newly learned skills into unconscious, automatically performed skills. But the mind is sloppy and will settle for good enough. ["Since I speak English, I can be a writer"--this is the unsaid assumption by the person who has a sudden desire to write a book or become a writer.  With any "practice", they start writing.]  By practicing slowly, by breaking skills down into tiny parts and repeating, the strenuous student forces the brain to internalize a better pattern of performance.  [This paragraph is about understanding the grammar, style, prose patterns, types of sentences, and above all, the techniques of fiction.]

Then our young writer would find a mentor who would provide a constant stream of feedback, viewing her performance from the outside, correcting the smallest errors, pushing her to take on tougher challenges. [An editor?  A writing workshop?  A circle of writer friends?  But ideally friends who distribute tough love in their editorial comments.] By now she is redoing problems — how do I get characters into a room — dozens and dozens of times. She is ingraining habits of thought she can call upon in order to understand or solve future problems.

The primary trait she possesses is not some mysterious genius. It’s the ability to develop a deliberate, strenuous and boring practice routine.

[end of David Brooks' essay]

Mr. Brooks' ending is a bit of a downer, and slightly misleading.  If we write something that is "boring" to us, it will also bore the reader, but to be fair, he's talking about "practice." However, what he might have added at the end is the thrill that comes when you, the writer, break through the membrane of self-consciousness ("I'm writing this"), and, with all your techniques "automatized", enter the zone of creativity wherein the story unfolding on your screen is more true and more real than, as we say, life itself.  Now you're ready for publication.

Posted by will weaver at 5/1/2009 8:38 AM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

Book Awards

My young adult novel Saturday Night Dirt was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, but it lost to Brian Malloy and his comic (and first) YA novel.  Happy for him....  Not wild about such awards ceremonies, this one a big deal at a big hotel in St. Paul.  Louise Erdrich won in adult fiction, and it was nice to connect with other writers--if only briefly--in the literary schmooze--athon run by lively librarians.

Met at the St. Paul Hotel with my editor to puzzle over the hunting book, which has me worried.  It's a problematic project with some built in birth defects, especially in terms of audience.  See my previous blog entry on "Pre-writing Strategies...."  My main worry about the hunting book is that I'm no longer a hunter at heart.  Me and Thoreau, as we got older....  I'm also a serious curmudgeon when it comes to modern hunting technology, gear, and overall vision promoted by the outdoor channels.  The high tech gear, the inane talk by witless bubbas, the obsession with trophy animals--all that is as far from my idea of hunting as a velvet painting of the Last Supper is to a cathedral.   Sorry--I'll save it for the book, if indeed there is one in me.  Right my rhetorical position is Argument–against all that is wrong with modern hunting.

Other news:  My second Motor Novel, Super Stock Rookie, is due out in a couple of weeks.  The first one has sold more in hard cover, faster, than any of my YA titles, but Lord knows I've worked hard on its behalf.  Have been on the road nearly full time recently, including southern MN and Iowa City Schools, and next week all the way to South Texas. Team Weaver Racing will take the No. 16 "Bookmobilie" and do a bunch of schools as far south as Corpus Christi.

After I get home I have a couple of "remarks" to make at conventions (and my first college commencement address), then it's once more to the lake.  Actually, the river--the Mississippi–where my wife and I live.  We'll relax and swim and boat for the summer, though she'll teach one summer class.  The three months of northern MN summer make the long winter worthwhile.

Speaking of summer life, my essay "Up-North Literary Life", posted here earlier, has been picked up for inclusion in an anthology to published by the big MN literary center, The Loft.  Cool.


Posted by will weaver at 4/28/2009 3:19 PM | Add Comment

Pre-Writing Strategies: Every Book Is Its Own Puzzle

Writing teachers talk to their students a good deal (sometimes too much) about "pre-writing."  That is, thinking through a topic, finding a rhetorical approach (compare/contrast, analogy, etc.), and only then beginning the rough draft of the essay or research paper.  Well, the same holds true in approaching a book-length project:  strategizing, puzzling over, thinking through one's approach before putting a single word to paper can be key to the success of the project.

When writing a novel, one of the first decisions I make is about time:  how much "real time" am I to cover?  A year, a summer, a Saturday night?  That relatively simple decision provides much comfort because, of course, writing is more about what you leave out that what you put in.  A decision on your narrative time-span creates automatic boundaries; it narrows your field--allows you to write more about less, which is also nearly always a good thing.

Point of view is another decision:  omniscient?  Limited?  First person?  Third person?  These are basic literary issues that must be clear in your head before beginning.  However, every book (every writing project!) has its own, unique, often subtle and sometimes elusive questions to be answered.  For example, an editor approached me to write text for a photo-essay book called BARNS OF MINNESOTA.  The historical society press wanted to highlight the tall old Midwestern barns "before they all fell down."  Good project, I replied, but how would I fit?  I'm a fiction writer.  But I knew that was a glib answer, and I was drawn in by the photos and the editorial vision of the book.  I signed on.  The editor and I strategized about approaches.  I wanted to write more than just photo captions, of course, and gradually negotiated my way into my strong suit:  a narrative approach (it's the fashion equivalent to when-in-doubt-wear-black). In the end, I wrote an imagined life of one barn:  from its raising, to its middle age full of life and cows and barn cats, to its sway-backed, missing-shingled decline and fall.  Real, literal fall.  The book has a been a big success for its small publisher, selling close to 15,000 copies and is still going strong.

Now the same editor wants me to do a book on hunting.

See what I mean?  How to approach THAT topic?.   I have the cred, the background (and the taxidermy)  to write this book, but there are no end to the approaches.  For example, I could make an argument for hunting, with an assumed audience of nonhunters--which would be a stupid approach because no non-hunter is going to read the book.   I could do the  "I-hunt-to-join-and-understand-nature" approach–which  has been done a hundred times.  Or, how about a more scholarly approach?  Look at what other famous writers/outdoorspeople have said about hunting; Thoreau in particular has some very provocative thoughts about the "evolution" of the hunter (he finally laid down his guns).

The great irony of this book-to-be is that I go to the woods with my gun to clear my head and not think at all.  For me, hunting is  about the unsaid, the unthought, the unwritten.  Bred-in-the-bone instincts without analysis.  Experience unrecorded. . . .

My pre-writing so far has been to gather up some books and essays on blood sports, and read them with one eye closed.  I don't want to be colored by anyone's vision.  I don't want any one quotation or image or rhetoric to get stuck inside my head.  

The one decision I have made is that hunting–real hunting, not the "horn porn" animal assassination shows on the Outdoor Channel–is beyond any single person's ken.  Beyond any single point of view.  There is no "I" consciousness in the world who can adequately explain the nature of hunting.  But I love a literary challenge, and this one is going to be one for sure.




Posted by will weaver at 4/10/2009 7:54 AM | Add Comment

Road Warrior

Have been remiss on this blog, but spring takes me on the road three out of four weeks.  Recently visited several schools in Mankato, MN.  Will be in Iowa City schools for most of a week in April, then all the way to South Texas and batch of schools down there, with some keynotes inbetween.   But no complaints, for sure. It's great to have invitations to talk about books, writing, and literacy.  Visit a junior high school for a day, and your faith in the future will be restored.  There are kids, it's clear, who will be GREAT adults:  thoughtful, creative, funny, successful.  And a few, it's clear, who are headed down dark roads.  But the goal for all of us is to optimistic, and I remain so.  That's what I love about working with younger readers--they help us adults peel away the hardened layers of skepticism and doubt about the way the world works....

Must get my adult brain on for a commencement address at the University of Minnesota, Morris branch.  It's a great, smaller liberal arts school, and I'm already working (in my head) on my remarks.  May 16, outside, weather permitting (this is Minnesota).

Literary notes:  don't miss John Updike's "last" poems from the recent New Yorker magazine.  Some are written from his hospital bed just days before he died.  They are quite remarkable, even joyous at the end.

Posted by will weaver at 3/24/2009 11:34 AM | Add Comment

van Gogh and Technique

Yes, Vincent van Gogh, the painter (1853-1890) , famous for his technique with vivid color and landscapes.  But technique is technique, be it painting or writing, and in a recent article in the Smithsonian magazine (Jan 09), Paul Trachtman writes:

". . . van Gogh's discipline was as firm as his genius was unruly, and he taught himself all the elements of classical technique with painstaking thoroughness.  He copied and recopied lessons from a standard treatise on drawing until he could draw like the old masters, before letting his own vision loose in paint.  Although he knew he needed the utmost technical skill, he confessed to an artist friend that he aimed to paint with such 'expressive force' that people would say 'I have no technique.'"

What's my point here?  How van Gogh approached painting is much the same as a committed, serious writer should approach writing: first learn the rules, and then you can break them.  It doesn't work the other way around.


Posted by will weaver at 3/4/2009 9:33 PM | Add Comment

Self-Publishing: the Debate

Below is a conversation among two writer friends about self-publishing.  The first is Marsh Muirhead, essayist, poet, short story writer, and  author of Key West Explained.  He loves to take breaks from chilly Minnesota and head down the Florida Keys.  The second is Susan Hauser, poet and nonfiction writer.  Her  many books include Full Moon (poetry), You Too Can Write A Memoir, and Wild Rice Cooking.

 WW:  Lots of aspiring writers track me down, searching for help with “getting published.”   When they understand how much work  (heart, spirit, focus, revision and persistence) it takes, they often ask me about self-publishing.  What are your opinions?

 MM.  Self-publishing means more books than ever (quality not a factor), while we have fewer readers by the hour. However,  I do not think this is the end of civilization as we know it–for two reasons. If you self-publish you need to sell the books via an effective distribution system, and you need to reach your specific readership with a quality book. Nobody but the writer will spend much time and effort in distribution; so that puts a limit, I think, on unreadable books.

My two favorite example of the latter: a friend’s aunt "found a publisher" ( a vanity publisher) for her novel. The publisher "placed" it on Amazon as part of the package. The Auntie does all and any other distribution of the book herself (a dubious endeavor since she and her husband, in their late 70s, find the cocktail hour taking up increasing portions of the day).  What to say about the quality of her novel?  It is well punctuated.  Sometimes it is told in the first person, often the third, shifting as if much of the writing consists of notes by the author to herself while she sketches out her imagined life story where very little happens. Today it is ranked 1,760,000 on Amazon -
 zero sales.
 
 I published my Key West Explained with the idea that it has little competition, a very focused readership, and the best way to sell that kind of book is on Amazon. Today it's ranked 39,800 over-all, and #2 in books (it sold 5 copies yesterday, a very good day) in the category of  "books about the Florida Keys."  It is almost the only book about Key West exclusively, is the only one heavily illustrated, has a map, a 2008 (C) date, and the word "Explained" in the title–a diction choice I thought was crucial to its appeal. Sales continue to slowly increase; it's at about 60-70 books per month now. The printing of 2000 copies should sell out late next year (I have one other distributor in the Keys who supplies the bookstores - they sell a few copies a month as well). The book is over-priced at $21.95 so I still clear $9 a copy after Amazon takes its cut and I pay for mailing the cases to them. When all 2000 sell I will realize a profit of about $6000, unless I totally deduct 4 trips to Key West, at which point the book will break even -- and I get 4 free trips to Florida.
 
The key to sales was me, and a particular technique:  I reviewed all the other books (25) on the keys so that my review directs anyone browsing Key West books on Amazon to get my pop-up tab directing them to KWE.

Since creative work –poems, collections of stories, novels– compete with hundreds of thousand of like books, self-publishing would be a dubious effort for that, and I would never consider it unless I had very strong artistic, critical, and editorial support AND a distribution system.

WW:  Susan, what’s your reaction to Marsh’s comments?

 SH: Here's the thing about self-publishing, that Marsh acknowledges that he does: you have to package books and mail them. When they are selling well, as KWE is right now, Amazon will take a whole box. If they sell less well, as most literature does, Amazon does not stock any copies. Instead, when they get an order, they send you an email and a mailing label and you package the book and send it out. Eventually, Amazon deposits a payment in your bank account. I have done this (as you can tell) with Full Moon. When I started, Amazon took a dozen copies at a time. They shipped them and as they sold they paid me for them. After a while sales declined to a dribble. Now I get occasional orders, in spurts. I think someone gets one as a gift, buys a few more for gifts, then the impetus peters out. I find it is not worth it to me to keep packing materials and postage on hand (weigh the package or put out money for the postal carrier). I'd rather spend my time writing.

 Of course, self-publishing starts with the production of copy for the printer. As Marsh knows, this can be time-consuming. Even if you hire a company that does that, you still have many decisions to make. I have a friend who paid a well-known company to do that and she had no end of trouble. In addition, she has not sold enough books to recover her costs even though the book is a good one.

Publishing is like writing: if you haven't done it, it looks like it can't be too much trouble. But in reality, it is. I occasionally self-publish things because I like figuring out the placement of text on the page, etc. But I would not want to do it with the intent of providing income. Marsh is being smart about KWE, writing reviews on Amazon, etc. For me, all of that would be time away from writing.


All that said, I have a couple of mss. I have not been able to place with publishers and I plan to self-publish them when I retire. Maybe. The decision in the end is about how one spends one's time.


 

Posted by will weaver at 2/21/2009 8:42 PM | Add Comment

Prairie View Juvenile Center

There's nothing juvenile about the Prairie View School–at least from the outside.  Its an old State Hospital–built in the 1930's is my guess–set on a hilltop on the outskirts of Waseca, a farming town in SW Minnesota.  Foreboding on the outside with heavy roofline brows and stone sides, wire-meshed windows and fenced passage ways between buildings, the school has a similar gloominess inside.  Worn granite flights of steps, heavy cast iron radiators cranking out the heat in the classrooms–and keypads on every door.

Buzz in, buzz out.  Know the code.  I have arrived with my books, my thoughts, and my No. 16 stock car.  I'll be here all day talking to the kids, ages 13-18.  My crew chief and some staff unload the car from our enclosed trailer, and secure it on a (fenced) tennis court between buildings.  I head inside to get oriented and prepare.

The staff is a mix of men, women, younger and older, and they have the tonal quality of outdoors people.  They are always watchful, observant; they seem to know what's happening behind them and in all directions.  They have peripheral vision–especially when the students arrive.  

Single file.  It's an arresting image (poor choice of word) to see the kids enter in single file and wait for instructions.  A handful of girls must sit on the left.  Boys on the right.  They are conditioned to ask permission for nearly everything.  I do not know and have not asked why they are here, but a staff member confided that a few will eventually be "sentenced" for "up to two years."  Some quickly re-offend in order to get back here, where there is order, not family chaos; where there's  food and heat and a bed.   Some say outright that their future will be prison.   

In my first session (20 students, which is good), there is no real introduction, and I tell them about myself.  Farm background.  Small town high school.  Hunt, fish, write, play some piano, father, husband. etc.   I need them to have a sense of who I am.  I go around the room and get their first names and where they are from (all over MN).

I talk some about college days, when I was partying too much my first two years, and had to change my scene.  There's an uptick of interest, and I get a few questions about that.  I talk about how sometimes we all need a different, a new set of friends. . . .

They've read a couple of my books.  "Kids read quite a lot here," a staff member told me earlier.  There's very limited TV, no internet access except in class.  I talk about writing books–it's a process not a miracle–and make a big point of writing realistic fiction (as opposed to sci-fi or fantasy).  Writing out of my own experiences.  Taking my own life seriously.  Trying to make sense of the life and times I landed in through no choice of my own.  They have some good questions about the fiction.

When we talk about my stock car novel, I tell them about Skyler Smith,  my 18 year old driver–how he was supposed to be here today but he's in "trouble".  That he's in danger of not graduating from high school, and so losing his "ride."  Trying not to be heavy-handed, I talk about Skyler holding up (or not) his end of our bargain.  Of being (or not being) a good team member.  The staff, interspersed around the room (and always watchful) nod their heads slightly.  Their entire curricular theme is about Personal Responsibility....

To break up the session we go out to see the "Bookmobile" close up.  Single file.  Girls first.  I notice something else about their movement:  the kids stop at every doorway, every threshold, to look up or to hear permission to step through. 

Outside in the biting air, we move in an orderly circle around the car.  I explain things:  the engine, chassis, safety features.   "No, you can't sit in it.  No we can't start it up!"  The students laugh and are having fun.  Then, too soon, it's back inside.

I read to them for awhile, do more Q & A, and soon my first session is over.  On the way out, in a stolen moment at the back of the line, two boys pause.  "Tell me again about why you had to switch schools and ditch your friends?" one of them asks.  There's an urgency in his voice.   

I say,  "I had this feeling that I wasn't going anywhere.  I was stuck.  I wasn't moving forward."

"That's us, right now," the other boy says, and they laugh.

But it's a good laugh, and the first boy adds, "I've only got four months left."

After two more sessions, interspersed with a fine pot luck lunch put on by the staff, I meet with the teachers for half an hour of "professional development" chat--as if I could help them.  But  I promise to follow-up with a list of good YA fiction, authors I know that these students will like.  We deconstruct the sessions.  I ask about a thin, blonde girl in the third session, who alternated between annoyance and being totally absorbed in the talk--even raising her hand a couple of times to ask me things.

"She's new," a teach says.  "It takes them a few days to let down their guard and understand that no one's going to bully them or pick on them, like in regular high school.  That doesn't happen here.  Once they understand that, we can start to make progress."

Then I press them a bit about their jobs--about how they remain positive.  "Humor," they say, and all laugh.  A couple of older boys appear in the doorway.  They each hold one of my books.  They are 'graduates', in transition to the community on work internships, and I go to say Hello and sign their books.   We chat briefly.  They have a strong handshakes–a built confidence from their time here. Their grip on my hand, and their eyes directly on mine  fill me with hope for all the kids, and a deep appreciation for the adults who help them.

As I leave the building, a sheriff's van arrives.  Four teenagers get out.  A large Deputy ushers the kids toward "Intake", as its called in the prison business.  The kids walk awkwardly, and then I notice that they have leg restraints to keep them from running.  




Posted by will weaver at 2/13/2009 8:53 PM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment
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