Only Connect: Overview Basics

Workshop: An Introduction to Writing for Children and Young Adults

“An idea is something that makes a sound in the heart.” Katherine Paterson

Once in a while have you ever seen a movie, or read a book, that both friends and critics have given high applause to, and yet it has left you bored or cold or both? The quality is evident, no argument, yet still you just don’t respond. A strong possibility is that the storyline or the underlying threads did not engage your heart. It did not connect. Talent is a required component to any art form, but it is not enough if it doesn’t engage with the intended audience.  And for the example above, you may not have been the intended audience.

Only connection is as high a value as talent in literature for children and young adults. Actually it is probably higher. It is why some children will cling to a poorly written story, or ask to hear a song over and over that grates on our nerves. It may be a concept that doesn’t match any ‘rules’ of a genre, but readers inhale it like dessert. The classic storybook “Goodnight Moon” does not fall into ‘normal’ guidelines for writing to that age group, yet it affects all generations with its heart relationship to that whisper of falling asleep for a child without vocabulary to express their feelings.

Often when we are writing we are translating. We have an idea—a character—a feeling—a fear—a hope that we are trying to put into words, to first translate into something more tangible, and then second to share it with another person.

“One thing we can do is to share with children works of the imagination—those sounds deepest in the human heart, often couched in symbol and metaphor. These don’t give children packaged answers. They invite children to go within themselves to listen to the sounds of their own hearts.” Katherine Paterson

Old Testament prophet Habbakuk first saw a vision, and then was told to write it ‘plainly’ so that a runner could take it.  That’s the craft part of developing our ideas into form: poem, short story, or article that we can make ‘plain’, make our concepts understandable.

Only when we are writing for children and young adults it seems, sometimes, that we are crossing a culture gap as well as generational and we struggle to find the words. We need to find the connections that bridge our hearts, and at the same time keeps the imagination free to expand into new ideas—not packaged ones. New sounds—new stories—new art. Fresh hope.

Action Steps:

1.    Write a definition of dream either as a word or as a concept.

2.    Suppose you were trying to explain this word to someone who doesn’t speak your language. How would you do it?

3.    Then read, The Dream Keeper, a poem by Langston Hughes. http://allpoetry.com/The-Dream-Keeper

4.    What sound does it make in your heart?

Share: How does his poem connect with your feelings and definition?

Read deep, marcy

A Mythic Definition as Imagination

Write with Impact

“The imagination is our way into the divine Imagination, permitting us to see wholly—as whole and holy—what we perceive as scattered, as order what we perceive as random.” Austin Farrer (as quoted in Reversed Thunder by Eugene H. Peterson)

Mythic is often acknowledged, or accused, as imaginary with the emphasis on made-up impossibilities, or fantastical and unbelievable stories for entertainment. But mythic imagination is actually visionary—a strategy of seeing from a new perspective. It dares to ask the what-if questions to the nth degree. It risks failure over and over again in the attempts to make whole broken parts.

Mythic imagination permeates story and science, exploration and cuisine, language and geography. It is priceless, peerless, and passionate.

It dares to dream beyond the reality it can see and touch and feel. Galileo studied the heavens, improved the telescope, created an early version of a thermometer, and set his world upside down in arguments by proposing the earth and other planets revolved around the sun. For that he faced a trial for heresy.

Three Persian astronomers, or wise men, followed a star across a thousand miles to welcome a newborn king, born in a stable.

Known primarily for inventing a working light bulb, Thomas Edison also invented the phonograph and a motion picture camera. With world changing fantastical consequences. Madam Curie is famous for her studies on radium and Albert Einstein for the “speed of light”. He is acknowledged as a genius even though as a teenager he struggled in a school that demanded rote only learning. One of his quotes states, "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

Mythic imagination explodes with possibilities. It ignites wonder. It sparks creativity.

Share: What reality would you like to see re-designed? How would a new perspective change its focus?

Read deep, marcy

                                                                    (Source: bookshelves, via fallukeelskeren)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

A Mythic Definition

Write with Impact

“Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.” Rollo May

Why do we need myth? What exactly is it?

According to one google search, myth is defined as:

“1. 
a traditional story, esp. one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

        2.
 a widely held but false belief or idea.”

How to reconcile two seemingly opposite concepts? The Bible itself is filled with stories under the first category and yet there are also a few verses warning against myths as lies.

Rollo May says that, “A myth is away of making sense in a senseless world.” Perhaps that is where the crunch comes—what makes sense in one situation can be a serious threat in another and seen as senseless.

Yet when we study myth under the first definition above we find ourselves building bridges of understanding between a different world and our world. We begin to see with a new perspective. A perspective that drives from a heart/soul story truth rather than a formal legal rule.

Like wisdom literature or love, myths speak across time and across cultures in fresh and ever changing language. It encompasses mystery and yearning, truth and hope, imagination and creativity in myriad possibilities.

Mythic literature refers to stories that have been handed down from generation to generation, orally and finally in print. They include proverbs, parables, wisdom stories, creation, family heritage, cultural, songs, fairy tales, and folktales.

According to Rebecca J. Lukens the term ‘traditional’ or ‘folk literature’ expresses the universality of human wishes and needs. “Folktales have been called the ‘spiritual history’ of humankind, the ‘cement of society,’ binding a culture together.”

Whether we recognize it or not myth plays an integral part in our lives. As writers when we can tap into its qualities we are able to write our stories with deeper impact, regardless of genre. Sometimes myth will drive the entire narrative and sometimes it will add only a few spices. However it’s premise of soul language has the capacity to add significance whenever it is used.

Over the next few weeks we’ll take a close look at mythic characteristics to see how they can help us build our stories and write with impact.

Share: What mythic story has impacted you?

Read deep, marcy

Reading For Craft

I Could Tell You Stories

Memoirs

“We store in memory only images of value.”

Memoir is one of the most poignant forms of storytelling and so akin to a novel that both have been mistaken for each other at times. Reading and studying memoirs offers a banquet of human experience. Where to start? Where to recommend? With a bookcase overflowing with excellent memoirs and how to write memoirs, I felt that choosing only one book would be impossible.

Then I realized that whenever anyone asks me about writing a memoir, or in the workshops I teach, this is the first book I hand them—literally. Hampl shares the quality of memoirs by telling stories with rich meaning. It’s the perfect place to start craft whether for memoir or fiction writing. Our personal stories within our circle of family and friends will be enriched and our fictional characters more multi-layered.

In her study, I Could Tell You Stories, Patricia Hampl notes that memoir is a landscape bordered by memory and imagination. “For to remember is to make a pledge: to the indelible experience of personal perception, and to history itself.”

As Hampl explores the realm of memory she points out that both Kafka and Rilke saw memory, “not experience”, as holding the sovereign position in imagination.

For herself Hampl discovered: “The recognition of one’s genuine material seems to involve a fall from the phony grace of good intentions and elevated expectations.” What a fresh perspective on motives.

Although she shares specifically via the route of memoir, this door of recognition applies to all forms of writing. If we are unable to infuse our memories, or perhaps our search for our memories into our work then we rob it of honest quest and discovery and an imagination that connects. Each person’s voice is unique and bears witness to life. But in order to share, we first need to identify what really matters to us so we can build our stories, real and imagined, with genuine impact of heart.

“How did I come to believe that what I knew was also what mattered? And, more to the point for the future, is it what matters?”

Share: What is your favorite memoir?