off to water

The garden is parched and so am I. No sooner had I turned in the novel (one week ago today) than I turned my attentions to permissions. I need to provide Scholastic with a document that lists each photograph and its source.

Do you think I had these sources handy?

Think again.

Oh, I saved urls, and some of those links were still working, most other photos weren't too hard to find on the web elsewhere, but finding the source of the photos has been a nightmare. Who took that picture? And who does it belong to?
I don't even wanna talk about it. Time-Life, AP, UPI, Bettman/Corbis, Getty Images, the JFK Library, the Library of Congress, NARA -- National Archives and Records Administration -- I don't wanna talk about it. And that's just for starters. Did you know there's a rabbit living under my artemesia?
WHAT WAS I THINKING? I have squirreled down rabbit holes, I have climbed up trees, I have fallen off cliffs, I have been all over the lavender like this bee, in my quest to track down the source of each of these photos. My photo source document is now fifty pages long. Fifty pages. And I have 8 sources to go.
I am wrung out on this permissions thing, and I hope I never again put up a photo on my website that is not credited. Do you realize how many people do this? When I'd come across a credited site in my searching (thank you, Eyes on the Prize!) I would shout Hosannas and Bless Your Hearts! The sun would beam brightly all over me, in exactly the way it's slathering itself on this hydrangea.
I will be smarter next time. Now I understand. Now I know. And I am parched. I'm going to go water my garden and then come back in to track down these last eight photos. If I can't find one -- no way -- then I'll substitute for one whose source I can verify. Then I'll ship the whole kaboodle off to Scholastic so they can do their part.

I did hear from my editor yesterday, just a teeny note. He's on page 206. So far, so very good. That, as much as anything, waters my soul.

thunked

OMG. Each book is different, but there has never been a book like this one, with such a crazy-quilt of patches making one beautiful whole. Fiction -- a novel -- with creative non-fiction interlaced in just the right places. Seven scrapbook sections, four opinionated biographies, I don't know how many song lyrics and photographs -- I am bracing for the permissions nightmare to come.

But you know what? It's done. This full, complete, utterly beautiful novel is DONE. And, as of 2:17pm EST, it is e-thunked, off to editor David Levithan, with an email saying that the accompanying letter is coming by pony express later. I am too whacked out for anything else at this point.

Pete (Seeger) and I waltzed until midnight. Done! I said. Not so. I found a knot as I read through. I stayed up until 5 this morning trying to fix it, but it became knottier the more I worked with it -- so I went to bed, convinced that I was just cross-eyed with fatigue. Got up at 7am to finish it and saw that it was more than fatigue -- it was a structural flaw with the chapter.

Who would have thought that a small comment, comment 400 in chapter 29:

Can you describe what they are wearing? I'd love to give the reader a little more of an image --

would cause me such grief at the 11th hour? It did. But now it's done.

Thanks so much for all the email yesterday -- it was such a boon. I first started this novel in 1995 as a picture book. At some point I'll tell you the saga. But today is for acknowledging finishing. It hasn't sunk in yet. Maybe it will soon. So let me say it again. I finished. I thunked. I did. The novel is done.

The novel is done!

dark chocolate and primary sources

Thank you for the chocolate! You know who you are... and so do I. Bless your heart. I was so surprised when my mail carrier friend Bobby showed up with your package. I'm already eyeballing my first piece as I finish lunch. (I did stop for lunch today, as Jim cooked.)
And I've bought myself twelve extra hours. I need them. Instead of hitting Fedex at 6pm tonight, I'm hitting the send key on my laptop at 6am tomorrow morning -- remember, Tuesday was/is my deadline. So the Fedex package will arrive on Wednesday, but the manuscript will be waiting for my editor tomorrow morning, as promised. I've let him know.

For most of yesterday, I was absorbed in Pete Seeger. Who knew how perfectly he fits into the landscape of this new novel? Oh, I'd heard the stories. But to read about them in primary source accounts is nothing short of amazing... and to try to distill his life into the space I've got... impossible. So that's what I'm wrestling today.

Some quotes I'm working with as I finish shaping this biography:

Talk about ivory towers... I grew up in a woodland tower. I knew all about plants and could identify birds and snakes, but I didn't know about anti-semitism or what a Jew was until I was 14 years old. My contact with black people was literally nil... If someone asked me what I was going to be when I grew up, I'd say an Indian or farmer or forest ranger. Maybe an artist. I'd always loved to draw.

After losing his scholarship at Harvard:

College was fine for those who want it, but I was just not interested.

In a letter home to his wife, Toshi, during World War II:

After the war, I want to organize a very large chorus of untrained voices.

To the House Un-American Activities Committee:

I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American.

This sentiment gets right to the heart of what my novel, The End of the Rope, is all about.

Until I stumbled across it in research, I didn't know that Pete had sung for civil rights workers in Albany, Georgia in 1961. I didn't know the albums of children's songs Seeger made with Moe Asch in the fifties were made during the period he couldn't get work in this country. I have those albums -- I bought them at a library sale many years ago. I can't tell you how many times I danced with my children to Pete Seeger singing "All Around the Kitchen."

And... Pete kept journals from the time he was a young boy. Lots of journals. Man after my own heart.

Thank you to the readers who wrote me passionately about Pete Seeger and asked me to take another look at how well he would blend into this 1962 novel. He was on my list, but I was saving him for another book. I think he's perfect here. I think you're perfect for speaking up.

My new chocolate is perfect, too. I'm choosing just the right pieces to go with a slice of this strawberry buttermilk cake baked by Hannah.
One day soon I'll have pictures of something other than food or manuscripts to show you, but that's my world right now. Friends invited us over on Saturday night. "I'm laboring," I said. I stayed here and panted and pushed. It's about to pay off, too -- this baby is almost here, born brand new into the world.

checking in, remaining calm

Just popping in on Sunday morning to say that Rome isn't working. It just won't work. I have given up trying to make it work. I've switched to three other biographies for this novel: John Glenn, Peg Bracken, and Pete Seeger (bless you, readers who mentioned Pete).

I realize that's three times more biographies than I need for the allowed space. No matter. I need to write them. We don't have to use them all. But I can't decide which one right now, and my experience with the 1960 Olympics in Rome shows me that I can't afford to put my eggs in one basket right now.

I'm trying to remain calm, but I am losing perspective. This novel is one great big mass in front of my eyes right now. I'm off to the library for books I've put on hold about the above-referenced folks. I'll come home and make one or three of these biographies work. They're sketched out, but I need primary sources now.

I also need my editor's eye and sensibilities.

My deadline is Tuesday morning when said editor walks into his office. I need to do a thorough read-through yet (which always involves many hours of brushing up and tweaking and making sure connections are working seamlessly). I was hoping to reserve Monday for just that. Then I need to write a letter to accompany the ms. and burn the CD of songs from the early sixties. If you're interested in the playlist, let me know, and I will post it here next week.

Just checking in because it helps.

cross-eyed in the sixties

Enough of these vegetables! Send chocolate. Dark chocolate.

Have finished three of four opinionated biographies. Have spent so much time with the Kennedys in the past 24 hours, I feel as if I *am* a Kennedy. Listened to Richard Burton and Julie Andrews sing "Camelot" a hundred times, as I revised "The Kennedys in Camelot and the New Frontier." (Revised title, too.)
Fannie Lou Hamer is now "The Light that Shined from Ruleville." I love her. Truman is still "The Farmer from Independence." I've got to wrestle down Rome -- "Athletes in the Eternal City." Hope to finish that one tonight.

I've reworked two scrapbook entries and have deleted another. Have shifted interstitial moments here and there. It's coming together. It is. I've discovered that if I put the screen on 25%, I can see 12 pages together on the same screen. This helps.

Over the weekend, I'll finish all the extra material and do a read-through. Maybe the read-through will be on Monday. Probably.

Tuesday. That's my THUNK goal. THUNK. Into the mailbox. Complete with a playlist on CD of all the tunes in the book, so editor David can have it all -- photos, biographies, music, news clippings, recipes, social commentary, and one rip-roaring story about a girl and her family in 1962 during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Washington, D.C.

Did I say send chocolate? :>

opinionated biographies for lunch

Actually, it's risotto and over-easy eggs on a bed of romaine. Comfort food for the last push. Talked with my editor yesterday and have promised the entire novel to him next week. Yesterday was for making a final decision about the opinionated biographies. Today is for fact-checking, reworking, finding a bit of poetry if I can for these stories, and wrestling them to the mat.
Biographies in a novel? Well... yes. Opinionated? Oh, yeah. I made a list of ten or twelve people I wanted to profile in this book, who would exist outside the narrative but within the covers of the book, as color and flavor, giving heft to the overall arc of the Sixties Trilogy. I researched them and sketched them into the book.

From the pack, I culled four. I am calling them:

1. The Farmer From Independence. This is an opinionated biography of Harry Truman and a delineation of the Cold War leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis (and a hint of the Vietnam Conflict to come).

2. The King of Camelot. John F. Kennedy and Jackie, Caroline, John-John, and that famous phrase, "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, known as Camelot." Or was it?

3. Athletes of the Eternal City. The 1960 Summer Olympic Games have been called The Olympics That Changed The World. You can read why at this link. My task is to show this in my opinionated biography of the 1960 Summer Games that includes gold medals for Cassius Clay, Wilma Rudolph, and Rafer Johnson.

4. The Sharecropper from Ruleville. She didn't even know she had a constitutional right to vote, but when she was told that she did, 44-year-old Fannie Lou Hamer marched to the courthouse to register. She was beaten and jailed. She caught the fire of social activism and in 1964, at the Democratic National Convention, she uttered the now-famous words, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Whew. What a task -- bridging the fifties and cutting a swath across the early sixties, AND setting the reader up for Book Two (which takes place in 1966) as well. And, making sure I tell these opinionated biographies in such a way that they are stories about people who were once children, as most of my readers will be children. I want them to see themselves in these biographies and to make connections to their own lives as history.

I'm mourning the biographies I had to cut: Betty Friedan, John Glenn, Rachel Carson, Students for a Democratic Society (including Tom Hayden, the Port Huron Statement, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement), Highlander School (and Myles Horton, Virginia Durr, Rosa Parks and more), SNCC (and Medgar Evers, Stokely Carmichael, John Lewis and more), Werner Von Braun, Motown and Stax Records, Richard Alpert/Ram Dass (really!) .... and more. Some of these may be useful to me for Book Two, but I limited myself to four opinionated biographies in Book One.

So now, I have officially killed some of my darlings.

Who would you have picked for this first book in the Sixties Trilogy? Who do you consider the movers and shakers of the Sixties, people who defined us as a nation in the 1960s? Don't forget music, television, and film. Our social history is as important as the political one.

Who would you pick for the next two books? And could you write those biographies for me, please? Hahahahaha. Okay. Back to work.

sope creek

Sometimes you just need a creek. Especially when this is what you've been staring at for two days straight. You're juggling opinionated biographies:

Scrapbook elements:

The narrative and the comments between you and your editor:

And a story map that's helping you see everything of-a-piece.

It's dizzying. Time on a Sunday afternoon to put down the laptop, close the notebook, and head for the soothing sounds of someplace wilder than the story in your head and under your fingertips. A place where the ferns grow and the water slips between the rocks, where an old paper mill once stood and a covered bridge crossed the creek. The mill is a place of ghosts and the bridge is no more, but the water remains, and there are wading and sitting places galore. Roll up your pants legs and stick your feet into the stream. Find a place to listen. There are so many stories here.

Then return, refreshed, to the page. Read the comments that keep you going, and realize how close you are to the very, truly end. Count on it. And... keep going.

so close I can taste it

Almost, almost, almost. On Monday I'll show you my story map. With almost 350 pages of narrative plus scrapbook elements, song lyrics, biographies, historical photos, and interstitial moments, I've been tearing my hair out, trying to figure out if the placement is balanced, and if each additional element serves the story as well as it can. We're creating something very different -- it's brand-new territory for me and my publisher (and for readers). I finally discovered that I needed a physical map to get me to the end, so I could see the entire novel in front of me.
I'm still using this map, but when I'm done I want to share it with you. Wish I could share the limeade I made to celebrate the almost-end. Do y'all celebrate almost-ends? I think it's important to do this.

I also wanted to reward the guy working in the heat outside with the pickaxe, digging up the ridiculously old, unbelievably massive, mostly-dead azaleas at the front of the house. (Hey there, students and teachers at Mt. Ulla Elementary School near Salisbury, NC!)
We lifted our glasses to celebrate the almost-done -- his and mine. I'm so close I can taste it. I hope getting to the end tastes as sweet as this homemade limeade.
You can find the recipe in Each Little Bird That Sings. It's the iced tea recipe -- make the syrup just the same, and instead of tea bags, add the juice of about fifteen limes, more or less, to taste. We like it tart.

Thanks so much for all the funny, frank, and supportive email after my last post. It was such balm to a novel-weary soul. I'm racing for the done-done this weekend, fueled by encouragement and limeade.

the last mile of the way

Many years ago I took my kids to the Folklife Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C. It was HOT. We were weary. Ahead of us, in a tent that was so packed we couldn't see the stage, the Birmingham Sunlights were belting out soul-stirring gospel tunes with such energy and enthusiasm that we were pulled in like moths to a flame.
I had never heard of the Birmingham Sunlights, but I would never forget them. They asked for volunteers to come on stage and help them sing the next song. I stood up. One of the kids -- I don't remember which one -- said, "If you go up there, I'll never speak to you again."

I went up there.

Five volunteers and five Sunlights. We each ran through our part with our Sunlight -- the audience snickered and cheered us on as we did -- and then all ten of us sang our hearts out to "The Last Mile of the Way." Soon *everyone* was singing - we were, all of us together, the song. The energy zinging through that tent was so amazing I thought we might lift right off the ground. I have never forgotten it. And the children still speak to me.

The chorus to this song feels particularly appropriate for where I am right now with this novel:

When I've gone the last mile of the way,
I will rest at the close of the day.
For I know of the joys that await me,
When I've gone the last mile of the way. *

Please let me go that last mile of the way and Get This Novel Off My Desk! Slog, slog, slog -- isn't that always the last mile of the way? That's how my work feels right now -- total slog. I'm tryin' to get to the close of the day. I want some of that joy that awaits me, some of the joy I felt that day, singing with the Sunlights.

You can hear the marvelous Birmingham Sunlights (including "The Last Mile of the Way") here.

breakfast of revisers

Every time I post a photo of my breakfast oatmeal, folks ask me for the recipe, so I'll append it below. What's happening this morning, though, is revision.
Yesterday I tried moving forward, but I needed more information. I found a blunder: I'd excerpted JFK's Cuban Missile Crisis speech in the book, but had not mentioned the blockade of Cuba in my excerpts. Whoops. Back to the speech, back to other snippets it suggested, and I was swallowed up in research that led to yet one-more-thing... frittered away the day. Or did I?

This morning I'm rarin' to go with revisions, and I'm armed with the information I need not only to finish this book, but to catapult me into the next. The thing with a trilogy, I'm finding, is that the first book sets the tone for the rest. I'm already planning books two and three (two is drafted, horribly drafted) as I write book one -- the look, the feel, the structure. And these books are not sequels -- they are companion novels in the way that the Aurora County books are companions.

So I'm working this Saturday morning. Time out for a lovely time with son Zach this afternoon, where we'll lift a glass to son/brother Jason, who turns 35 today and breezes back to Atlanta tomorrow. See you soon, Jason -- happy birthday!

Thanks, too, to a childhood friend who wrote me after seeing yesterday's post, to say, "You are already Robin. You have always been Robin." Ohmy. Then she writes: "Isn't it good to have a history with someone?" Oh yes. Yes, it is.

Here's the oatmeal recipe. I use organic oats and fruit. This is easier than packaged oatmeal and better for you (says the health sage -- ha).

Boil a cup and a half of water in a kettle on the stove. (I just fill the kettle). While that's happening:

Put yourself a half cup of oats in the bottom of a small pot. Sprinkle 'em w/

-- one or two shakes of the salt shaker
-- 1/4 tsp. or so cinnamon
-- 1 T. or so ground flax seeds (opt)
-- a squirt of agave nectar (or honey)

Pour the boiling water over the oats (use one cup to 1-1/2, depending on how thick you like your oatmeal).

Put the pot on the stove eye that you just took the kettle off. Turn the eye off and let the pot sit there, covered, while you cut up half a banana or pour your coffee.

Scoop whole thing into an earnest bowl, and top with whatever you've got on hand -- banana, blueberries, dried cranberries, strawberries. I always use sliced almonds and whatever fruit is in season. Walnuts are good, too. Sunflower seeds. Etc.

Eat whole thing with colossal gratefulness to be alive and tasting such flavors.

Day By Day

I'm eating lunch and watching Godspell this afternoon. Research, don'tcha know.

I missed Godspell when it came to theaters in 1973. I was 20 years old and busy with a toddler, another baby on the way, and a disintegrating teenage shotgun marriage. I was supposed to have gone to college. I was supposed to have "done something" with my life. I was supposed to have made my parents proud.

Instead I left college at 18 and had a baby, then two by the time I was 21. I had missed the movement I wanted to be part of, and the world skipped by me in my twenties. But I heard "Day by Day" on the radio and fell in love with it.

It would take me many years to understand that my life just went in a different direction, that all lives go differently from the way we plan. It took me longer to learn to appreciate that different direction and to embrace it, to protect it, and cherish it.

I scribbled in my twenties, while I scrabbled out a living. I got serious about writing when I was in a safer place, in my thirties. I began to publish essays and features in magazines and newspapers. I was in my forties before a publisher was willing to work with me on a picture book that turned into Love, Ruby Lavender. It was published in 2001, when I was 47 years old.

Just before it was published, I became suddenly single again. I scrabbled once again until I could stand on my own two feet. Both my parents died, and I missed them (and yes, Cuz, I know they were proud of me). I have just turned 56 years old. I'm seasoned, and I'm still here.

Now all the children are grown and I am writing about the Sixties, when I came of age. I'm watching Godspell (which, along with Hair and Jesus Christ, Superstar, ushered out the Sixties). I'm watching Godspell and remembering what my mother and father were afraid of, and what they tried to keep me from. To save me? To save themselves? Who knows.

I would have been Robin. And I would have loved it. But my life didn't go that way. I look back on my life, however, with surprise to see that I have loved it. All of it. Even the so-difficult, so-traumatic stuff. It's okay. I'm okay. I'm good! And today, if I still want to be Robin, well... I can.



Here is Robin Lamont, my counterpart, singing "Day by Day" -- a song I sang my young children to sleep by when I was in my early twenties. Click twice if you want to link directly to YouTube, where it may load faster.

Me 'n Robin -- we would've been a pair, eh?

I'm gonna make me one of those hair wreaths.

Charleston

We met here, Jim and I, in high school. We came last weekend to celebrate his mother's 83rd birthday. We meandered King Street, ate collards at Jestine's Kitchen, took in Spoleto (liked Piccolo Spoleto even better), and wandered the harbor between celebrations.

There is a magic to Charleston. It's more than the architecture, the charm, the low country and the harbor. I have discovered another magic...
The other magic? I wrote, focused and intense, on the way down, in the car, while Jim drove. I wrote every early morning while we were there. Sometimes a change of scenery is just what's required. I'm beginning to see the end of this revision. I hope it takes wings this week and flies back to my editor.