dispatch from mississippi: belonging

I was born in Mobile, Alabama, while my dad was stationed at Brookley Field. He had gone off to the Korean War in 1951, just after he and my mother married, and now here I came, in 1953, on the heels of his return. We lived in Mobile for five years, until the Air Force transferred us to Hawaii. I have always claimed Alabama as the land of my birth, and I also claim Mississippi as home, as it was the land we returned to over and again as I grew up, and as my own children grew up, as my people were there. And so was my heart.

My mother was born in Mississippi and grew up in West Point, MS. My dad was born in Jasper County and grew up there. I grew up there, too, with the wacky grandmother who became Miss Eula in LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER, and the three maiden aunts who become Ruby's chickens, and all the cousins and aunts and uncles and a decaying town that is even more of a ghost today than it was when I was wandering its one main road and its cemetery and crossing the railroad tracks to visit Aunt Mitt and playing piano in the unlocked Methodist church.

Mississippi doesn't claim me, though. According to book committees who decide these things, I didn't live for five continuous years in Mississippi, so I am not in the club, even though I am a Mississippian by blood and by words.

This is a long story and one I hope to write about at some point, so I can figure out how I feel about choosing home. Home is in Atlanta today, of course, but home will always be where I've hung my hat: Hawaii, Maryland, D.C., South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia.... and Mississippi as well. "What you know first stays with you." I am a Southern Girl, through and through. I am a human being with stories to tell. What does that mean?

Here's what it meant this week, as I took part in the first-ever Mississippi Book Festival, visited that family I love so much (Uncle Jim is our patriarch now, about to turn 92), and that place that defined me as a child -- and as a writer. Photos below of what becomes Aurora County in my books LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER; EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS; and THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS.

And then there is my first book, FREEDOM SUMMER. I have never before posted pictures of the pool and roller skating rink that closed in 1964. The forest is claiming it now. I have taken photos there for many years, and have documented this abandoned place as it goes back to forest land. I wrote FREEDOM SUMMER -- and REVOLUTION -- to understand what happened. To keep this time and place alive, so we remember our history. So young people will know what it was like then. What it is like now.

Dispatch from Mississippi:

Picking up Kerry Madden along the way

downtown Jackson, Mississippi. My folks retired to Jackson after a long military career, and I kept coming to Mississippi with my own kids as they grew up... Mississippi has been a constant in my life, all my life.

With Ellen Ruffin at the Eudora Welty house on Friday night at the author reception

Kimberly Willis Holt, moi, Chris Barton, and Karen Rowell of USM.

Jamie Kornegay and Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Mississippi has been such a staunch supporter of my books. Jamie's new novel is SOIL. "It has saturated the South!" Jamie says.

Kelly Kornegay, who (among other things) reads and buys children's at Turnrow. She heard me whining about not being recognized literarily as a Mississippian and said, "Debbie, people who have lived here all their lives are trying to ESCAPE Mississippi!" which made me laugh and gave me perspective. She also said, "Your books are THE quintessential books on what it means to be from Mississippi, to be a Mississippian. You're IN." hahaha.

Fuzzy photo of a bunch of us including Lori Nichols, Ellen Ruffin, Greg Leitich Smith, Susan Eaddy, Kerry Madden

taking in all in. What a lovely evening.

We had to turn people away, in Room 113 of the State Capitol, for the Young People's Literature panel. It was that way on all panels, all day. The turnout was tremendous. HOORAY!

Pontificating. Which I am very good at.

This is what it's about at a Festival.

And this. Clara Martin is the children's book buyer at Lemuria Book in Jackson. Last year on the REVOLUTION tour, she had me sign her copy of LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER that she has had since she was a fourth grader. "My favorite book!"

Chris Barton signing Shark vs Train and John Roy Lynch in the Lemuria tent.

At dinner, Saturday night, with my loves.

My son Jason with his Great-uncle Jim. Both of them jesters.

Two more Jims: mine, and the cousin I have always called Bubba.

If you're a RUBY fan, you recognize this sign!

My grandmother's house, The Pink Palace, in RUBY, Snowberger's Funeral Home in LITTLE BIRD, House Jackson's home in ALL-STARS, and Young Joe's home in FREEDOM SUMMER. This was my world every summer, and the place I longed for when I wasn't there. Still do, I guess.

The back kitchen. Sloped ceiling, lightbulb on a string, Nanny eating buttered toast and milky coffee at the enamel table, closthepins in a bag hanging on the door, a pan of green beans waiting to be snapped. I did dishes in the deep sink with my Aunt Evelyn, who we all called Goodness. Once, when my mother sent me in to dry while Aunt Evelyn washed, Goodness waved me away with, "Go play. I let God dry the dishes."

My friend Howard now lives in Rhiney Boyd's house, across the road from my grandmother's. Rhiney had a son named Luther Rhinehart Boyd, which is where I took Mr. Norwood Boyd's name from in ALL-STARS.

Kerry listens to Merle's stories. Merle now owns my grandmother's house (The Pink Palace, in the background).

I adore Lois. She has just entered the Witness Protection Program. I think she got dressed just for us. "I used to wear all black and brown, but now I wear COLOR all the time." You go, Lois. Go on with your colorful self.

This is where I'm sitting this morning. Back to the pink chair and back to work. Knowing that it doesn't matter if Literary Mississippi claims me or not. I claim me, and those people who are, and who once were: moments, memory, meaning, as I always say when I teach. 

I will never live long enough to write all the stories asking for my attention. They claim me. And for that I am grateful.

48 days, day 14: stray thoughts collected

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

 Stray thoughts:

1. 1969 it is. I spent the day there yesterday, and I made some decisions about construction of Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy. I'm going to try third person vignettes next week for several characters I have in mind.

2. Quote from Arthur C. Clarke: "I don't worry about periods of not doing anything; I know my subconscious is busy." Exactly. I had enough energy yesterday to update my manifesto for the Year of Exploration. I am three months in. I've done a lot more than it looks like from the outside. What COUNTS, when you are measuring your progress? That is one of my eternal questions.

3. This piece, "The Middle of Things:Advice for Young Writers" by Andrew Solomon in the NYer, is great. Good writing, which I am always looking for. I am tempted to quote great swaths of it but will content myself with one of the many lines that resonated: "Your work is not opposed to your life; you do not have to choose between them. It is only by living in the world that you acquire the ability to represent it." Do read it if you are struggling in the middle... of anything, including your writing.

4. I'm thinking about Leo Buscaglia these days and Love 1A. I can't find my old copy of LIVING, LOVING, AND LEARNING, so I ordered one from abebooks. And I see there is a whole lot of Leo on YouTube. I might give him a new listen and see what I think, with, oh, 20 years of experience living in the world since I last listened to dear Leo.

5. I'm thinking a whole lot about love lately... period.

6. And time. My essay "On Being a Late Bloomer" is here.

Happy Weekend, friends. Live in the world. Love one another. Bloom, bloom, bloom. xo Debbie

48 days, day 1

{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm! }}

I have 48 days until I step on a plane to attend the SCBWI Summer Conference in Los Angeles, where I will gratefully accept the Golden Kite Award for REVOLUTION! So stoked about that. I'm also teaching a workshop (here is the whole conference schedule): "Structuring Your Novel: Providing a Scaffold For Your Plot." Y'all come!

In the meantime, in this Year of Exploration, I have 48 days to write and I'm going to use them. I want to catalog them here, so I can see, as I step onto that plane on July 31, just what I have accomplished. Last year (and right up to June 1 this year) was so jam-packed with REVOLUTION travel as well as work in schools and at conferences and with family and more... so much travel. All good. But not much time to write.

And, as you may have surmised through the recent Picture Book Intensive I participated in, I want to write picture books. And, as you may know if you're a reader here or have read COUNTDOWN and REVOLUTION, I have a third book in the sixties trilogy to deliver. I have given myself a year to get the draft of book three to David at Scholastic. I had better get hopping.

So let me chronicle the next 48 days (day 1, yesterday, is below), and let's see if I can jump-start my fall writing (I'm home more this fall than I have been in years), by declaring a writing retreat of sorts, at home, with the great wash of family and friends and garden and summer that flows through days at home, loving that and yet finding a way -- I hope -- to work well here, and see what happens.

One thing to note: After the PB Intensive, I finished a draft of the Robert Kennedy book I have sold to Scholastic. They kept it a while (um... years) and made some suggestions for revision which didn't resonate for me. I kept it a while (um... years), trying to figure out another way in that would satisfy us both. The power of writers reading their work to one another is what broke open my thinking and got me past seventeen drafts that Did Not Work. Thank you, Laurel Snyder, for the suggestion you made during the PB Intensive that broke the revision dam for me and got me back to the page.

Handing in a revision is so exciting! Let's see what Scholastic says about it. I hope to hear soon.

Day 1: Friday, June 12, 2015

My childrens' dad died on May 11. The funeral was postponed so we could all go to Colorado for son Zach's graduation from the University of Colorado at Denver. We were there from May 15-19, living together in the same rented house, where we started the process of healing from that wound... a process I'll document at some point. We are doing well, I think, and are pointed forward now. Zach flew home on Monday, June 8, and Abby came for annual summer camp at Grandma and Grandpa's on Tuesday, June 9.

Abby left yesterday after spending three days here for summer camp. We went to the library. We read So Many Books (my discoveries, here). So today was for organizing for the next 48 days. I gathered manuscripts I want to work on -- picture books. Some of them I read to Janie when she was here for the PB Intensive Work-Along we did together last month. Some of them I tossed! I began working on a story about Rachel Carson. The other mss are dotting the floor around my chair. How many can I get to in 48 days? I have a draft of Rachel dated 1999. I have many other drafts, none of which work. I know the story I want to tell. Armed with what I learned in the Intensive, I'm going to move forward.

I've weeded some of the older mss in my stash, and I've kept some... the ones that I love, the ones that went to committee at different publishers years ago. Some have partial drafts and lots of research. Some are biographies. Some are just ideas.

I also researched Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy. I have a draft started that I do not like (nothing new). I am being pulled to move the story from 1968 to 1969, which will open a can of worms for me, especially if I move it from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I just cannot get excited about SF for some reason. I also am having trouble with 1968 because that year covers So Much Ground. Assassinations, riots, war, the breadth of rock-and-roll (finally)... not that I'm averse to all that, but I'm having trouble grounding the reader in one place. So there's that to wrestle as well.

I've been saying, "two pages a day on book three, and I'll have a draft in a year." I'm not sure I can be that prescriptive.

I made green smoothies. A homemade meal in the middle of the day. Spinach salad with blueberries, baked potatoes (white and sweet). Popcorn. Steamed broccoli. I watered the new yard we're putting in, took progress photos of the front and back yard coming together. Most photos of the days I keep are currently on Instagram.

So lots is swirling. I also caught up with social media. Stayed up late researching and reading.

Let's see how day 2 goes.

YOU?

green gables love and exploration

Oh, Anne Shirley. Where have you been all my life? YES, friends have swooned over Anne of Green Gables and have told me I MUST READ THIS BOOK, and I have demurred and thought, meh, it just isn't in my wheelhouse, I'm just not interested, she lived in NOVA SCOTIA (wrong... sorta) and I am from the American South and it's going to be twee and saccharine and not at all interesting to me, and...

Well, I was wrong. Even though I haven't yet met Gilbert (RIP, oh no) and have only gotten as far as the first picnic, I know I'm onto something special that is showing up now, to teach me. I just know it. I don't know what I'm going to learn or how it will be incorporated, but in this year of exploration, this is what has come next.

After a spirited conversation while in Mississippi with my cousin Carol, a retired 2nd-grade teacher and librarian, I downloaded the audio book (thank you, Overdrive, and Gwinnett County Libraries!) and listened to it on my way home from Mississippi, where I had spoken at the Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival, listened to it as I drove to Montgomery (flat tire at 5:30am and all), and listened to it as I drove from Montgomery, where I spoke at the Alabama Book Festival, all the way home.

Charmed.

Evidently, so is Sarah Mesle. She writes, in the Los Angeles Review of Books, "Ten Things I Learned From Loving 'Anne of Green Gables.'"

This is exactly the kind of kismet that happens when you open yourself up to the universe and say, "teach me." Things come into your path. (Sometimes they are weird things, and things that don't seem to fit together. I just trust them.) People who don't even know you help you on your way. Sara Mesle, thank you. I'm not going to worry about the lack of plot... which was beginning to niggle at me. I'm just going to enjoy myself.

Jonathan Crombie, the actor who played Gilbert in the 1985 mini-series production of Anne, has just died. This is something I likely wouldn't have heard about (as I don't follow the news anymore), except that I had that spirited conversation with my cousin, I started listening to the book, and Carol sent me the news yesterday.

Life turns on a dime. So does death, as Comfort Snowberger well knows. And so does how we parse the world. Carol sent me this ending to Anne, so I could see it and hear it and feel it and be part of her sadness at dear Gilbert's death, and so I could be pulled a bit more into the Anne community. I'll append it here so I can remember...


*****
You can see photos from the Book Festival and the Alabama Book Festival at Facebook and on IG. It's Sunday evening as I write this. Got to get ready for Wolf Hall on PBS. I text through the whole thing with Carol. I've learned to trust her literary judgement, and now I've got her trusting mine. I loved the novels by Hillary Mantel -- "you must watch this!" I told Carol, my Anglophile. One day she and I will get to Great Britain together. I want to be prepared. Maybe Wolf Hall is part of the year of exploration.

Happy Monday, friends. xoxoxo

back to school

Notes on Being a Late Bloomer is here.

The Year of Exploration is here.

 It occurred to me yesterday: I am intuitively doing what I did when I was so young and a single mom, uneducated, needy, and wanting a life for my kids, for myself, wanting to understand the world and to find my place in it. I went to school. I got my undergraduate degree from the many libraries I haunted during those years.

I was barely 22, I was broke, I was alone with two small children, but I had a library card. I still have a library card. Now I have two (we made peace). Suddenly, in this year of exploration, I am back to school and in much the same way. Let's call it a graduate degree.

I'm following my intuition, pulling on strings when an idea comes to me or someone mentions something that rings a "year of exploration" bell. I am truly following my nose here, as well as my list of things I want to explore. These notes are the ones I took when listening to Malcolm Gladwell's THE TIPPING POINT from my library system's Overdrive account. *love* Overdrive.

I don't know what I'll do with what I learned from THE TIPPING POINT, but that's not the point. I know I will use it. I know it's part of the year of exploration. It will tie in with everything else. I've always been a learner; I rarely have a stretch of time in which to learn in depth, intensely. That"s where I am now.

I finally excavated my office. I've been on the road for the past six months -- I've traveled in six months as much as I usually do in a year. I have bought myself some time off the road. My sabbatical starts June 1. I'll still travel. But that travel landscape is going to look different going forward.

More on that later. For now, I've spent the most lovely, rainy Friday afternoon going through ephemera of the past six months on the road. Letters from students, student writing, receipts, little gifts and remembrances, bills and business stuff... "Oh! There's my parking receipt!"... and photographs to remind me of good work done with new friends.

I got on the road 15 years ago when I became so suddenly single, and I've done a good job of taking care of me and mine, I've done good work on the road -- I've learned so much -- and I've written some good books. Now is the time for stillness and learning to love my new hometown, and writing, and learning, and being. Becoming. Something. I don't know what yet. I am trusting the process.

Have a great weekend, friends. I'm going to be off exploring. I'll capture and post exploration photos at Instagram and Facebook (mostly IG, as that's where I chronicle daily life). xoxoxo

an open letter to DeKalb County Georgia public libraries

{As part of my #yearofexploration I decided to stop protesting the $45 fee I must pay to use the library up the street from me. Having two library systems will be much more convenient for the many expeditions I hope to helm this year. Here is what happened when I tried to renew and asked a question...}

An Open Letter to the DeKalbCounty Public Libraries in DeKalb County, Georgia:

April 3, 2015

Dear Library Board and Director Weissinger:

Yesterday at 3:00pm, I went to the Reid H. Cofer/Tucker branch of the DeKalb County Library with the intention of paying the annual $45 and renewing my non-resident library card. I want to tell you about my reception at the circulation desk.

I live in Tucker, Georgia -- in the same town as this library and less than one mile from this branch -- but in Gwinnett County. I moved here in 2004 from the Washington, D.C. area and immediately got a library card at the old Cofer branch in Tucker.

At the time it stuck in my craw that I had to pay $45 for library privileges because of a county line. The DeKalb County school bus picks up students just four houses up the street from me, on Ginson Drive. In protest, I refused to pay after my first year with DeKalb. I also had a card in the Gwinnett County Library System, and from 2005 on, I used only that system. The closest branch is seven miles from my house.

I love the Gwinnett County Public Library system. But DeKalb is a walk away from my house and much more convenient, and for a working writer, using both branches is ideal. So I broke through my resistance this week, and I walked to the desk at the Tucker library and presented my old card and asked to renew it.

I want you to know that the two librarians behind the circulation desk could have cared less about my request and were entirely unhelpful. There was no line waiting and there were no other patrons nearby. I was told that I needed a check or cash in order to renew -- I had a credit card. That was fine. I would go back home and get a check, I told them.

When I asked who I might write to, to officially protest the fact that I live in Tucker and cannot use the Tucker library, both librarians shrugged. "The tax office?" one of them said. The other nodded, "It's a tax issue."

"Could you help me figure out who it would be?" I asked. They shrugged. "It would be Gwinnett County," they agreed.

"I'm going to go home and get a check -- I live less than a mile away... would you mind helping me look this up or tell me who to ask?" Yes, they would very much mind.

"Isn't this what librarians do?" I asked. They shrugged. "Well, it's what librarians used to do!" I said. And I stalked out the door, frustrated and suddenly angry.

What DO your librarians in DeKalb County do? Is there some reason they no longer help patrons -- former, present and future -- with research questions or requests? Can they not direct them to help? Is morale so low in DeKalb County or training so ineffective, or apathy so rampant that there is no hope?

Throughout my life I have never been far from a library. Libraries have actually saved my life -- another story for another day. They have been an essential part of my life and my work and my play. You have a stunningly beautiful library in Tucker. It's a shame it is filled with librarians who don't understand customer service or the idea of what help really means. It's a shame I cannot use your library without paying a $45 fee every year -- a fee I was willing to pay and walked in ready to pay.

Gwinnett branches are farther away from me, but the librarians at my branch know me and welcome me and research with me and laugh with me and hold books for me and for my four-year-old granddaughter when I bring her (she lives in DeKalb County!), and they help her fill her book basket with stories.

I feel welcomed in Gwinnett and I will continue to be a proud patron. I looked forward to building similar relationships in DeKalb County. I can see, it's not the same kind of inviting, caring, helpful place. Too bad, not only for me and mine, but for the many citizens you serve.

Sincerely,

Deborah Wiles

www.deborahwiles.com

Tucker, GA

something different

I'm taking an art class -- two -- at Creativebug when I return from family, schools, and a conference in Mississippi. Both are on-demand work-alongs -- you choose the time and place to work on each session -- and both are Lisa Congdon classes. Sketchbook Explorations and Basic Line Drawing.

I'm a life-long doodler as well as a notebook devotee and evangelist, as you may know, and in this year of exploration, I've dedicated myself to working more with my hands, going back to my roots. I want to get out of my head -- all those words! -- and use my mind in a different way.

I leave for Mississippi on Easter Sunday and I'll be home on April 11. Wanna work/play together when I'm back? I have no expectations. I'm in this for the discovery, the exploration, totally. You've got a couple of weeks to investigate at Creativebug, and you can take a different class if you like, or no class at all. I've slowly been buying the materials for my two classes and I'm just about ready to go.

I'm off to a local school this morning. Atlanta International School. All day talking about history and stories and personal narrative with grades 4 through 8. And KEEPING A NOTEBOOK.

Gotta put on my face. Happy day, friends. xoxo

the year of exploration

For some time I have been birthing -- in my head and on paper -- a new way of seeing, working, living, connecting, and being in the world. Why? Maybe it's turning 60, with the knowledge that there is less time before me than behind me for sure. Maybe it's recent disappointments and realizations. Maybe it's recent gifts and surprises. Maybe it's the on-going therapy, which is hard work. I'm sure it is.

Whatever it is, this shift in my thinking feels major, so I'm going to do something about it, and I will chronicle it here, March 20, 2015 to March 20, 2016 (start where you are, and I started with Saturday's post, "On Being a Late Bloomer").

I want to see where this new energy and commitment take me and my work. I'll also Instagram my explorations, using the hashtag #theyearofexploration.

I'll label it that way here, too. I used the blog to chronicle my 2012 year off the road to finish REVOLUTION and called it "the year of possibility." You can read about it by clicking on the label on the sidebar. (or here. :>)

I'll tag some of these exploration posts "the home economics project." I've had a project in mind for a long, long time, and I want to start making it visible.

I'll chronicle book three of the sixties trilogy as well. I've already starting documenting photographs and research at Pinterest. You'll find a "book three hold file" and a "book three playlist possibilities" board as well as the many boards for COUNTDOWN and REVOLUTION... and I've started resource boards for my other books.. I'll get to them as I can.

I'm going back to the roots of what makes me happy. I'm going to write more. I'm going to use my hands more, which is something that grounds me and centers me and helps me understand my place in the great continuum.

To that end, I have purchased four cacti, three French lavender plants, and a mother fern. I'm going to take a class at Creativebug - line drawing with Lisa Congdon. Also, Lisa's sketchbook explorations work-along at Creativebug. I've got my supplies (which include these plants!) and I'm ready to go.

I have no expectations. I want to do what I ask students to do when I teach writing: pay attention, ask questions, make connections.

I'll be an explorer like Comfort Snowberger in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS: Explorer, Recipe Tester, and Funeral Reporter. Like Dove, the 9-year-old anthropologist-in-training in LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER. I shall be an anthropologist of my life. I'll try to let go of anxiety about the future, and just stay in the day. I will work hard. I'll play hard, too! I'll try to uncover as well as discover. I hope to learn a lot. Wanna come with?