Divergence and Kid Pods

This morning I'm struggling to revise a story that is the third in a series of middle grade fiction. I'm having trouble because I know there's too much going on in the plot. When an editor or an agent reads it, they're going to tell me it isn't focused enough. I get this a lot. My process for doing everything, including making decisions about my life, is basically inductive.  I gather all kinds of information—I diverge, widely. I think about a lot of possibilities and slowly things begin to pull together, like magnets finding each other in an expanded universe. Whatever I am working on takes shape like a newly forming planet. I have no idea how big it will be or how the colors of its crust will combine or what layers will lie beneath. Will it have a chewy center or caramel one? I don't know. I wait for the ideas to find each other and then I see what the thing is. Early in our marriage my husband, Tom, and I were sitting in the living room of our tiny apartment. “Hunh, Tom said. “I bet you never played golf.” I shook my head, “Nope, I didn’t.”  “That makes sense,” he nodded. “ Why,” I asked. “Too convergent,” he told me.

This process of mine is largely internal and frustrates those around me. When I brought papers home over the summer to work on during college, I could see my mother growing more and more tense as I wrote nothing and seemed not to be working at all on my assignments. Then one day I would sit down and it all tumbled out. I remember one particular take-home exam that my history professor kept. He said he liked the ideas in it. I wish I had a copy of it now. I didn't even think to xerox it—Xerox what a funny word from an ancient time, when only a single company was in the photocopying business.

The story I am working on is forming like one of those planets, and this time I play my mother’s role: I am frustrated and critical, worried about the outcome. During graduate school I remember having a poster on my door that made everyone laugh. On it was a picture of a man sitting at his desk, sweating and biting his pencil, clearly in distress. The caption said something similar to: “Lord deliver me from this totally unnecessary and self-imposed  trial.” The poster said it better than my paraphrase, but I think you get my meaning. My difficult story has me in its jaws only because I let it.

I heard one of those advice-giving author/agent types telling a group of potential children's book authors that they should write one sentence summarizing the focus of any story they are crafting. She directed them to refer back to that sentence as they wrote and make sure everything included in the story was related to it. I've been thinking about my stories, if only to figure out how to write a good synopsis of at least one of them. I have not yet tried to write that one sentence summarizing the focus of the story I am struggling with. If I do come up with the sentence, I fear huge revisions will be necessary. I fear that I will not like the story after I chop it up.

Because of this author/agent’s suggestion however, I have recognized that my stories are about groups of children. Similar to the Penderwick novels by Jeanne Birdsall, the children in my stories face every day problems and are in the real world. They are not, however, from a single family as are the Penderwick sisters.  I think that is because most families don't grow that big these days. Instead, children develop groups of friends that they depend on. I write about “kid pods,” small groups of children that come together to form strong bonds of friendship. They face everyday problems like overly strict teachers, not being as good as someone else in sports or math, the death of a grandparent, the illness of a parent. I think what I am calling “kid pods” could even be an inoculation against gang absorption. For now, that is as far as I have gotten in distilling my books, but discovering just that one feature has been helpful and I have to thank that author/agent for getting me to take a look.

I am still stuck with this lingering doubt about the manuscript I'm working on.  As I read through it, I find small things I need to change. Some are annoyances, like using the verb “laugh” too much and removing an unnecessary “that,” as I did in the sentence I  wrote just before this one. Others are a little larger, I find I can cut out sections of unnecessary detail. Rolling up the sleeves of a hand me down jacket is a familiar experience for younger children, but they don't need a lot of detail about how many folds were made in the cuffs, unless it's an extremely amusing number like 16. Unfortunately the really huge edits I need to make are eluding me. The best I can do for that one sentence summary is say the main character is discovering who she is out in the world, separate from her family, especially her older brother. But as for all of us, inescapably, a lot of who she is has to do with the quirkiness and eccentricity of her family.

What a broad, even diffuse, goal—to craft a story that hinges on a character finding out about herself? “What a cliché!” I say to myself. Plus, it's a particularly unattainable goal, since the character has not entered puberty yet and will have many, many years of self discernment ahead of her. My story will not follow her that far. I must be satisfied with taking her where she is now, in fifth grade, with an older brother that is getting even older and her supportive but eccentric parents. That is another thing I have noticed about my stories: the kids’ parents tend to be around. They are not lost or in the background or unavailable or working too hard to answer questions and say good night. I read wonderful books about kids whose parents are absent or at least not present in spirit and mind. I read wonderful books about kids sorting through parental separations and divorce. I guess I just don't write them. For some reason they don't come out of me. My stories are a little bit corny-sweet and optimistic. They are not over- sweet—they just do not have hugely dark overtones—and they are located in the realm of reality. No matter how many books about Merlin and King Arthur I have read, how much I enjoyed Harry Potter, despite the ton of books in my husband’s science-fiction collection that I pilfer, I write stories about ordinary kids.

Working in the visual arts, when I am stuck with a painting—whensomething feels wrong or I just don't know where to go with it—I have learned two things that help more than any other,. One is to step away. There's an artist I take lessons from on off and on. She actually takes her students by the shoulders and separates them from their easels as she loudly commands, “Step away from the painting.”  You might be surprised how many painters lean forward toward their easels with their brushes in hand, trying to put a last little dab on before she drags them out of reach. Stepping away does wonders for your ability to see what you are doing. I have let the story lie for many months. I am returning to it now with fresh eyes. I am seeing things that need changing and changing them.

When I am finished with this overhaul, I will take the story to my writing group. For the second helpful thing I learned working in the visual arts is to seek input from others. I have improved countless paintings by listening to my fellow artists. However, I also learned the hard way not to accept all the critique I was given. Before I surmised this, I ruined a handful paintings by listening to pointers that did not lead me to the place I wanted my painting to end up. I think that is part of learning about receiving critique. Sorting out what bits to accept and what parts will really help is often difficult, but sticking it out and finding your feet while a few good artists give you feedback is well worth any discomfort you may feel. 

I once cut out the figure of the fiddler. I stuck him on an iridescent background and gave him a golden fiddle. An artist walking by my table in a shared studio space commented, “Oh, Julie, I like your frog.” I passed it off as her looking at the collage upside down, but it bothered me.  The good friend sitting beside me was puzzled too. “How could she see a frog? That's a fiddler,” my friend said. We had lunch planned with her daughter, so afterward, in the parking lot, I brought the collage out and held it up. “What do you see?” my friend asked. Without hesitation, her daughter replied, “A frog.” I handed the painting to the daughter. My friend and I stepped out into the parking lot to look back at it. Simultaneously we cried, “It’s a frog!” The fiddler’s hat had two bulges on top, as many hats do, because they sink in the middle. I had exaggerated them just enough to make them look like the two bulging eyes of a bullfrog. The brim of the hat, which turned downward just a tad, looked like the frog’s wide mouth. My ‘fiddler’ was dressed in black including that hat. He had become the silhouette of an oddly shaped frog playing a golden violin on an iridescent background. I trimmed the two bulges off the hat. After that, we asked several people to look at the collage, both artists and non-artists. Each of them responded to my friend’s question with the same answer: “a fiddler.” There are times when a critique from someone who is not an artist, can be very helpful.

I will take my story to my writing group. Hopefully it will not sound like a frog. They'll give me some feedback and I'll have something to mull over. I expect their input will help me and my story move forward. After all, that group is my kid pod.