Chapter 3 - Shut Up!

When I was a kid, I didn't want to be a writer...in my spare time I painted and drew. But if a painting I began wasn't suitable for framing in the first fifteen minutes--and it rarely was--I'd start hearing chatter in my head that would go something like this: "That's lousy. You don't know what you're doing. You're no kind of painter. You stink."

So begins this chapter where Levine addresses the inner critic in all of us. She talks about how our critical beliefs, can and will halt our creativity if we don't learn how to tell them to "shut up." Recently, I finished a college class in which the assignments included quite a few essays about this very subject. For my final, I wrote an essay about how I am learning to quiet my inner critic and develop my own voice as a writer.

Levine goes on to say that we who continue to be creative and battle against that inner critic are heroes. I like the sound of that. I've always wanted to be heroic.

Writing prompt: Turn someone you dislike (or like) into an animal. It can be a camel or a caterpillar or any kind of animal. Describe the animal. Tell what happens to it in a story. 

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Sunny.  She was very sweet, and a little mischievous.  One day she went out to feed her bay-colored horse, Dreamer.  As she was filling up the watering trough, she looked at her own reflection and started imagining what she would do if she were a horse. Just then, she felt a tickle of a breeze on her neck.  She turned in the direction of the breeze, slipped on the wet grass, and fell into the trough.  As she picked herself up, she was startled to realize that she had indeed turned into a horse.  She had four legs ending in hoofs, two large ears, and a long mane and tail.  She was slightly shorter than Dreamer and had a blaze patch of white hair on her forehead. Her left back foot had a stocking, which means that it was white up to the hock.

She stamped around for a moment trying to get her barrings.  She was still standing next to the watering trough on the outside of the fence, and Dreamer was watching her with suspicious eyes. She looked around wondering how this could happen to her.  Her thoughts were still her own, but her body was defiantly the body of a horse.  Would she ever be human again?  Was there anyone that could help her?  She tried to talk but neighed instead.  Oh dear, she thought.  No one will know what happened to me.  What do I do now?

Thinking like her old self, she went to sit down on the ground, only to find that she didn't know how to settle herself down into a sitting position with four legs.  She finally gave up and laid down on her side instead. However, by this time she was feeling quite panicky and decided that she would rather be standing and struggled to get her four feet under her again.

Another Run at a Beginning

I stared into the corner where I placed my stick this morning, but it was empty. There was only one person that could have taken it, and that person was my big brother David. How could he leave his sister defenseless? How was I going to make it home now? I had two options. I could retrace my steps for a half a block and then walk around the whole block, which would take an extra fifteen minutes, or I could hope to sneak past the nemesis of the neighborhood.
Our neighbor's dog was the cause for my apprehension. And believe you me, I had reason to be nervous around her. She reminded me of a miniature wolf. She was, I suppose, a medium-sized dog with a grayish-brown coat and a white belly. Her tail was fluffy and long. But despite her unthreatening size, she was the most menacing thing in my world. Ironically her name was Cuddles.

David and I had to deal with her on a daily basis because we had to cross her path on the way to school. That’s why we started carrying sticks; large, heavy ones. If Cuddles saw the stick, she would bark at us, but she’d stay in her owner’s yard.

The neighbors were civil people; however, they couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that their little Cuddles was a mean dog. The problem was that they were usually at work when we went to school. Even after my mother explained how terrified we were of the dog and asked them to watch it more carefully, they said that we must be harassing the dog or it wouldn’t bother us. It took my dad going over and threatening to call the police, for them to keep Cuddles tied up or in the house.

That eased the situation considerably, but there were times that the Rasmussens forgot or Cuddles wiggled her way off the chain. Walking to and from school, I was always filled with apprehension until we had gotten past the Rasmussen's house and had stowed our sticks for our next foray. David was much braver than I was, still if Cuddles saw any one of us, and wasn’t tied up, she was more than eager to gnash her teeth and tear after us.

We devised a system so that we would always have a stick to protect ourselves. There were only two places that we kept them so that they wouldn’t get lost or taken. The first was by the chimney on the corner of our house. These sticks were for business and we never played with them so they were always there when they were needed. The other place was in the corner of Mr. Harston's steer pasture near the end of the street. We each had our own stick and we weren’t supposed to use each other’s. Now my stick wasn't where it should have been. I remembered that David hadn't gone to school this way this morning. He had walked over to Jonathan's house to help him carry something for Show and Tell. I had figured that he would help his friend take his stuff home too so I hadn't thought to carry his stick with me on my way to school. Now I was stuck.

Chapter 2- Why I Wrote This Book

In this chapter Levine shares a little bit about the purpose of this book. She says that after volunteering to teach creative writing workshops in her hometown, she began to see some common ways that students get into trouble with their writing. She also tells about a picture book she had written that was initially rejected because she was too close to the story, but that was accepted after some thoughtful revision.

Writing Assignment
Write a story about a main character who finds a diamond necklace on a seat in his school bus. That's the main idea, but change details as needed.

With only on week left, the school year was coming to a close. My school bus stop was next and I was ready to go home and shoot some hoops. As I gathered my backpack and jacket, a sparkle of light reflected off something in the seat. I looked down and saw a necklace made of crystals set in gold, or maybe the stones weren't crystals, maybe they were diamonds.

I looked all around to see if anyone else had noticed. Then I glanced out the open window and saw a old woman staring at me. She whispered, "Grab the necklace and come on." I don't know how I heard her over the rumble of the bus engine, but I did, so I picked it up and got off the bus.

She was waiting for me, but started to walk down the sidewalk just as I got to her. I quickly moved up to walk beside her. Holding out the necklace I asked her if it was hers. She smiled, but kept walking. Then she said, "I've decided to ask you to keep the necklace for me. You seem like a trustworthy boy and it will be safer if I don't have it."

I was about to ask her what she meant, but just then a tan car came squealing around the corner ahead of us. I felt, rather than saw the woman halt suddenly, but when I turned back to her, she was gone. The car was still headed my way so I knelt down to retie my shoes so that I wouldn't look so conspicuous stopped there on the sidewalk by myself. As the car drove past I looked out of the corner of my eye so that I could see the driver. What I saw puzzled me even more. I guess that I assumed that the driver would look like a gangster or something, but this guy appeared too normal to be one of them. He was wearing a dark suit and seemed to be a business man on his way home from work. His face didn't look worried or strained like I had supposed it would.

I straighten up and put my hand in my pocket where I had stuffed the necklace when I heard the car. In addition to the necklace, there was also a piece of paper on which was written, "I'll be in touch." I didn't remember the woman giving me the paper, but it had to be from her. Now my head was full of questions. Where did this necklace come from? Why was it on the bus? Who was the old woman? and why was she worried about keeping the necklace safe? and from whom was she keeping it? And, how was she going to find me?

Suddenly I was exhausted. I didn't want to shoot hoops anymore. I just wanted to get a glass of something cool to drink and lay down.

Chapter 1- Part two

In the second part of this chapter Levine suggests 7 rules for writing.

1. The best way to write better is to write more.
2. The best way to write better is to write more.
3. The best way to write better is to write more.
4. The best way to write more is to write whenever you have five minutes.
5. Read! The payoff for this pleasure is that reading books shows you how to write them.
6. Reread! There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.
7. Save everything you write, even if you don't like it, even if you hate it. Save it for a minimum of fifteen years.

She then explains the last rule commenting that she used to think that she would remember what it felt like to be a child, but she can't. She says, "When you become a teenager, you step onto a bridge...the opposite shore is adulthood. Childhood lies behind. The bridge is made of wood. As you cross, it burns behind you."

As I read the 7th rule, I remembered a story I wrote in 4th or 5th grade. We were supposed to write a story about an animal (probably after reading a book like Summer of the Monkeys). I wrote about a wolf cub. I remember that the story wasn't very good because I had a hard time getting into the character.
I didn't understand at the time, that because I have terrible allergies and can't be around animals, I didn't have enough positive experiences to write about loving or rescuing animals and have it come out sounding the way I wanted it to. The narrator of my story loved animals and was rescuing an abandoned wolf cub. But, I didn't love animals, in fact I resented them and all the people that could be around them. I don't have a copy of that story because I didn't think it was very good and didn't want to keep it. Although it would have been irregular for a 5th grader, my story would have been much better if I had taken a different route and put my real feelings into it. In that case, the story would have ended badly for the animal.

Chapter 1-A Running Start

This chapter begins with several writing cues to begin a story and instructions to pick one and write for 20 minutes. Well, here goes...

Jason had never felt so foolish before, and he hoped he'd never feel so foolish again. Just yesterday his life seemed to be looking up, but that was all gone in the blink of an eye when he insulted the only man that could help his family. When Jason went to school that morning, he passed Mr. Hazen on the street and thought that maybe he could gain the old man's favor by helping him with his packages from the feedstore. Mr. Hazen nodded, accepting his offer to heft the bags of chicken pellets into the back of the truck. Then Jason said the first thing that came to his mind. He asked how many eggs the old gentleman's wife cooked him each morning for breakfast. The man's face turned red in an instant and he grabbed the side of the truck with a fierce grip. It was a perfectly innocent question, except that Mrs. Hazen had died three weeks previously and the whole town knew it. Jason knew it too, but had just forgotten. He stammered out an apology, but Mr. Hazen just stared hard at him for a moment as if he was memorizing the boy's face, and then quickly turned and climbed into his truck. Jason's shoulders drooped as he finished his walk to school where he sat down into his desk with a thump. He was already dreading the end of the school day when he would have to tell his father what he had done. His father would not be pleased, especially since he had planned on visiting Mr. Hazen about his watershare the next day. Mr. Hazen had not planted his grain field because he was grieving for his wife. He would not be using his watershare this summer and father wanted to rent it from him so that he could start a new field of hay. Now Jason had gone and upset the old man before his father had asked. Jason was sure that Mr. Hazen wouldn't rent the share to his father now.

My 20 minutes are up. Honestly, I don't know where this story came from, but this first exercise was fun.

Counting the Cost?

This week I just started reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. It begins with a reference to Robinson Crusoe in which Robinson states, "Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it." As I read this story's beginning, I thought about my resolve to write more and to take on this Writing Magic project. What have I got myself into? At this point I surely don't know, but if this project doesn't turn out like I hope, it will not be for lack of trying.