A Shifting Landscape

What can I live without? As a resident of the Texas Gulf Coast area, I have contemplated that question more and more in recent years. Of course, part of my musing is inspired by my growing older, adjusting to an empty nest, facing—and appreciating—the fragile and transitory nature of all life. Then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina, followed shortly by Hurricane Rita, set the modern standard for a coastal disaster in the United States. Strangers to me along with friends of mine lost their worldly goods. Even worse, some lost loved ones, some lost heart. Many have coped and are still coping with a mutable landscape, amid the ruined mementos of their personal histories. Preparing my home for Hurricane Ike’s recent sweep across Houston, I tried also to prepare for the possibility of losses. And that preparation brought the flood of questions: What can I do without for a few days? For a week or two? What can I give up? Live without from now on? What is worth saving?

Meteorologists and newscasters, county and city officials spread the word of Ike’s path and strength, urging and engineering evacuations. As a result, few lives were lost compared to the number lost during Katrina, though land and property of Galveston Island, Kemah, and other coastal communities have been devastated. Ike followed a course eerily similar to that of the Great Storm of 1900 (back in the days before hurricanes had given-names and categories of ferocity). During the 1900 storm, the Gulf of Mexico met Galveston Bay over Galveston Island, inundating the island city, which, at that time, was a major port and the most populous, cosmopolitan city in Texas. Over 6,000 lives were lost. Then, in the years following the Great Storm, Galveston completed a grade raising, rebuilt, and gradually re-invented itself as a small island town, welcoming beachcombers, vacationers, and history-lovers. I am one of those—a history-lover, who has enjoyed touring Galveston’s 19th century homes that withstood the Great Storm, celebrating the holidays at the island’s Dickens on the Strand festival, and watching great performances at the 1894 Opera House. The resilient spirit of 1900 is worth reviving, worth never letting go.

On the night that Ike howled through my neighborhood, bringing twisters torrents of rain, and falling trees, I shuddered—but I also took notes. The writer in me is a constant companion, even, or especially, in dire times. How can I use the experiences of my lived-life in my writing-life? Within the structure of a novel or play, how can I make the overwhelming particular and make the particular universal? In the days following the storm, I have paid attention to my own responses, knowing they are not unique but shared with neighbors and strangers and those long-ago residents of Galveston, whose lives I have researched for writing projects.

Like so many others, I have been sleepless with worry, anxious for news, weary with making adjustments. Compared to many others, my problems have been minor—stretching a dwindling food supply kept in an ice chest, reading and writing by a flickering flashlight, hoping the roots of the trees leaning into the roof hold on a little longer. And I have found renewed pleasure in the ordinary—calls from friends saying they are okay, fine weather in the week after the hurricane, a cooked meal and fresh hot coffee. While storms and upheavals shift whole landscapes, they also alter our perceptions, intensifying our life-long process of sifting through excess and confusion to find the essential. We make choices between luxuries and necessities, recognize the difference between inconvenience and danger, and discover what we can live without and what makes life worth living.

If given only a moment to save something from disaster, I would choose my imagination over my manuscripts, and I would choose my loved ones over my life. Oaks and pines that once towered above my house are cut down, tangled branches and sectioned trunks are heaped in the yard. In a changed landscape, I start the day with what matters—feeding my pets and the backyard wildlife, sharing smiles with my neighbors, rejoining them in the community that sustains us. Across the lawn and through the windows, the sunlight, no longer filtered through as many leaves, shines more brightly now.

Rosemary Poole-Carter

Writing Our Fears

For readers, fiction offers ways to stare down fear from the safety of an armchair. Fear loneliness, and find love between the covers of a romance. Fear crime, and find criminals caught and justice served in a mystery. Fear conspiracies and disasters, and find them exposed and conquered in a thriller. A reader’s fictional roller coaster ride—inching up the precipice of taut suspense, plummeting over the edge of catastrophe, spinning in loops of danger and desire—is as timeless as it is satisfying. But what of the writers who construct the roller coasters? To engage readers’ emotions, to delight, mystify, and thrill an audience, writers must test the rides they design and very possibly face their own fears.

For novelists, writing our fears offers us ways to explore, understand, and articulate the disturbing and horrific, to bring pattern to chaos and language to the unspeakable. Sometimes we write from the dark personal center of ourselves, sometimes from our perception of sweeping events, finding in both approaches the inextricable link between the specific and the universal.

One of my fears—that of madness robbing us of who we are—and my outrage at those who abuse their positions of authority combined in Women of Magdalene, a novel exploring misogyny and racism in a post-Civil War women’s asylum. Through my publisher, Kunati Inc., I have met other writers who keep faith with Kunati’s commitment to “provocative, bold, controversial” books and face an array of fearful topics: war, corruption, paranoia, disease, abuse, kidnapping, suicide, and murder. One of those writers, Karen Harrington, focuses her debut novel Janeology on the aftermath of a mother’s murdering of her own child. Murder is murder, perhaps—yet cases of mothers killing their own children have an overwhelming power to shock. The person, whom we believe should be most trusted with and devoted to a child, destroys the child, a crime that stirs the most primal of fears.

At Houston’s Murder by the Book, an independent bookstore, I moderated a panel entitled “From Mothering to Madness” to explore that primal fear. Joining me were Karen Harrington and Dr. Debra Osterman, a staff psychiatrist at the Harris County Jail. Dr. Osterman treated Andrea Yates shortly after Yates was arrested for the June 2001 drowning deaths of her five children. And the Yates case was certainly an influence on Karen’s work.

I asked Karen what drew her, a mother of young children, herself, to write a fictional account of such disturbing events. Her reply echoed that of many writers who write through their fears: by creating a fictional situation and exploring the motives and actions of her characters, Karen strove for and found a clearer understanding of human nature’s dark side. She asked herself how this terrible thing could have happened. How might it have been prevented? How does the relationship between nature and nurture affect us, particularly in regard to aberrant behavior?

When a novelist writes about difficult subject matter, how he or she approaches the story has a powerful influence on the reader's perception and willingness to take the fictional journey. In Janeology, Karen Harrington reveals the aftermath of Jane's actions from her husband Tom's point of view, giving readers someone to care about and follow as he tries to make sense of tragedy. In Women of Magdalene, I look at the mistreatment of patients through the eyes of an idealistic physician, who challenges the asylum director. And while Karen and I wander the labyrinth of fear and danger in our imaginations, Dr. Debra Osterman addresses mad and criminal behavior daily in her line of work. At the end of our panel discussion, after some lively give-and-take with the audience, Dr. Osterman explained how she copes with the grim aspects of her profession. She renews herself through positive connections with family and friends, good advice for writers, too—and she reads novels, especially mystery and suspense.

For both readers and writers, imagination and realty form not a dichotomy but a symbiosis. Experience creates narrative, and a narrative enlivened with characters, dialogue, and plot becomes a novel, which becomes a roller coaster ride that sends us plunging, spinning, and soaring. Then, we return to our armchairs, a little shaken and a little more emboldened to read and write our fears again.

Publishing, Marketing, Writing--Not Necessarily in that Order

Today, while preparing notes for an upcoming presentation, “Publishing and Marketing Your Fiction”, I reflected on past experiences as both an attendee and a speaker at workshops and conferences. So often the topics that draw an audience of writers pertain to finding an agent, signing with a publisher, marketing to the masses, achieving literary stardom, etc. Presentations on improving writing technique just don’t offer the same glamour or promise of fame and fortune. Next week I plan to give my audience at Lone Star College practical information on the business of getting published—tips on query letters, loglines and pitches, press kits, online promotions, and in-store signings. Glamour and fortune I can only talk about theoretically. A slight pressure is also on me to deliver my information succinctly at the outset of the talk, which will be filmed for the college TV station. Then I hope to open up discussion with the other writers and aspiring writers on the passions that compel us.

Before the immeasurable thrill of receiving a publishing contract—followed by the careful work of reviewing edits, rewriting, and proofing—and before the joy of holding the finished book in your hands—followed by the endless job of book promotion, comes the writing, itself. In the years leading up to my first productions and publications as a playwright and novelist, I asked myself: “If you knew for certain that your work would never, ever sell, would you still write?” “Yes,” I answered. (Even without hope, I hope.) While elated by publication, production, recognition, and reviews, I find the deepest satisfaction in the act of creating a fictional world.

Still, writing is hard for me and time-consuming, and the success of it, however that success may be measured, is uncertain. For those who hope to be published, I can share from experience that it is important to study craft, behave with professionalism, adapt to changing technologies and markets, and be very patient with yourself and others. Agents may or may not make dreams come true—sometimes they shop a manuscript to the few big houses and, if it doesn’t sell to one of those, lose interest in it. Editors may love books, but they may also change publishing houses or leave the business, and the books they love are sometimes left orphaned and unpublished. Rejection letters arrive, and you may find it hard to keep saying yes to your writing while others say no. But writers persevere, and sometimes something wonderful happens. For me, that something turned out to be a contract with Kunati Inc., a young, innovative independent publisher, who matches creative writing with creative marketing. How we reach readers and audiences keeps changing, while storytelling and hope endure.

Rosemary Poole-Carter

Bigotry Revisited

Ten years ago in Jasper, Texas, before dawn on June 7, 1998, three white men chained a black man to the back of their pickup truck and dragged him three miles to his death. This morning, the Houston Chronicle revisited the murder of James Byrd Jr. in a front-page story. The victim’s killers have been tried and sentenced, two assigned to death row and one to life in prison. Bloodstained evidence of the crime—the truck’s tires and rims and the heavy chain—is locked away in a security vault. The gray pickup rusts in an impound lot. Byrd’s family continues mourning his loss and cherishing his memory.

It horrifies me to type the words describing the murder, let alone to imagine the cruelty and agony of that night. Today I remember the shock I felt ten years ago when learning of this vicious killing in East Texas. As a writer of historical novels and plays set in the 19th century South, I have read and researched heartbreaking accounts of bondage and violence. I wanted to believe it was history. Then came this gruesome reminder of how bigotry persists, like an endemic disease.

Not long ago, I viewed a Civil War battle re-enactment in the piney woods of East Texas, an event interesting from a researcher’s and writer’s point of view. For many onlookers, it was a brief glimpse of history, of the camp life and battlefields of long ago. But the number of whites wearing t-shirts and caps emblazoned with the Confederate stars and bars and the volume of their cheers when gray trampled blue gave me pause.

I strive to keep an open mind, to keep prejudices in check, to understand that we are all shaped in various ways by our upbringing, always stopping short of condoning violence. Then, occasionally a new acquaintance, learning that I write, falls into a little pre-judging of me, assuming the imagination of a soft-spoken Southern white woman must run to romanticized tales of plantation mansions. But I refuse to forget who lived in the quarters. For that reason, I am drawn to the Southern gothic, to exploring that contradictory world of graciousness and greed, of compassion and suffering.

Included in Leslie Casimir’s Chronicle story about Jasper, Texas, are descriptions of the community today, of an alliance between black and white ministers, of interracial couples and offspring, of small-town poverty and glimmers of hope. In a way, it is a hopeful sign that ten years after the murder of James Byrd Jr., the crime retains its power to shock, and the murder weapon—a chain—is labeled infamous. Maya Angelou said: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” It is heartening to hear of courage in Jasper.

Rosemary Poole-Carter

Soup and Stories: Post Mother's Day Thoughts

My mother raised me on soup and stories. I was finicky about the former, preferring tomato with so much milk in it that we called it “pink soup”, but insatiable for the latter. In her melodious reading voice, Mama first whet my appetite with Golden Books, later following them with a delectable selection of chapter books: Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, and then Rosemary and the Princess by Josephine Lawrence. How thrilled I was to share a first name with a character in a novel.

Each noon, I entered the kitchen with a stack of favorite books, climbed onto the yellow plastic seat of the kitchen stool, and tucked into a bowl of pink soup, while Mama read story after story. I would make that meal last and linger over dessert, a scoop of vanilla ice cream covered with chocolate Bosco syrup. I’m still not sure when or whether Mama ever ate her lunch.

That diet of soup and stories nourished my dream of becoming a published writer. In secret, before learning to read and write, I turned the pages of books, making up the story and playing at being the author. More than once, I also scribbled in the margins of books, pretending to write.

Years later, while teaching remedial reading and writing classes at a community college, I tried to impart the passion for books that my mother gave me. Of course, my students were not at such an impressionable age as I had been during soup and story time. Still, students with a hunger for knowledge, who developed a taste for books—sampling, savoring, and devouring—and tried new recipes for combining reading and writing skills often delighted me. “Read to your children,” I said to every class, “now if you have children or in the future when you do.” All the cool and ever-changing devices for transmitting ideas may speed and augment communication and perhaps entertain us, but they cannot replace the warm and nourishing experience of reading aloud with loved ones.

In the month of May, reflecting on the loving reading lunchtimes shared with my mother, I recall our special favorite, The Little Mailman of Bayberry Lane, a Rand McNally Book-Elf Book by Ian Munn. This little book is a timeless celebration of the art of communication and of the importance of writing—of issuing invitations to share “apple tarts and little lemon cakes all covered with hickory nuts” and of sending thank-you notes, of communicating our concern and affection for others. The Little Mailman, a chipmunk who leads a cast of charming animal characters, is a messenger of hope. I've never forgotten his greeting to Mrs. Duck: "a yellow letter for you today. Yellow means good news, you know!" Just this spring, my mother sent me a birthday card in a yellow envelope—she has not forgotten either. Bon appetit!

Embrace the Mess

The following is not a review of Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman’s book A PERFECT MESS: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder—How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the Word a Better Place. The following is a testimonial. Commuting to work, I listened to the audio version of A PERFECT MESS and, with every mile, found myself more relaxed with my own clutter and my own life.

Abrahamson and Freedman offer fascinating examples and insights into disorder—from personal to professional to political mess—and explode many clichés about the virtues of extreme organization and the vices of messiness. The authors do not advocate utter chaos, but they do speak up for creative clutter and on-the-fly flexibility. They illustrate how those obsessed with organizing tasks can actually waste time that could be use for accomplishing projects. Life is far from perfectly predictable, and people who cope with disorder and unexpected changes and are not guilt-ridden by their own mess may actually hold, in some circumstances, an advantage over the rigidly neat and tightly scheduled.

As a writer, I have long lived with a certain amount of clutter—notebooks and tablets, pens and pencils, multiple drafts of various projects, research books and magazines, index cards, sticky notes, and scraps of paper. The tactile and the visual are essential to my creative process, and technology has not reduced the mess on and around my desks, which now include computers and printers and memory devices. I am far more delighted by creating a story structure and seeing once randomly conceived plot and character elements fall into a compelling design than I am by tidying up my workspace.

After listening to A PERFECT MESS, I have resolved to put aside any remaining twinges of guilt and embarrassment over messiness and embrace the mess as part of the creative process. Of course, there are limits to how many thoughts I can juggle at once in my head, and occasionally I misplace a book or a page of notes. Still, in a search among the clutter, I have often made serendipitous discoveries that benefited the work at hand or sparked a new project. I shudder to imagine what a “professional organizer” might do to my library by imposing the appearance of neatness without regard to my clusterings of ideas and inspirations.

When someone asks how I go about writing a novel or a play, I answer that my method harkens back to ancient augury. In a cardboard box, I collect ideas scribbled on scraps of paper—notes on setting and theme, plot twists and characters, along with fragments of dialogue. The collecting process may last for months or years. Then, when the time feels right, I open the box and spill its contents across the floor, like a diviner splitting the sacrificial beast. From the entrails—all those bits of paper—I read the portents that foretell the story. I discover the pattern that would not have formed without the freedom of random associations and the energy sparked by a perfect mess.

Rosemary Poole-Carter

Mister Rogers, Happy Birthday to You!

When a friend told me that March 20th is Sweater Day in honor of Fred Rogers, a cozy, sweater-warm feeling enveloped me. For many years—now many years ago—Mister Rogers sang his daily welcome to the neighborhood to my children as I settled them with a snack in front of the television before dashing off to my nearby computer. I wrote my first published novel in 90-minute increments during Mister Rogers and Sesame Street. That was my allotted creative time, though truly all the time caring for my children was creative. And Fred Rogers (1928 – 2003), who would have been eighty years old this March 20th, contributed so much to the imaginative energy in my household, to making each day “a beautiful day in this neighborhood.”

Fred Rogers, wearing his familiar sweater and sneakers, did not overwhelm little children with splashy special effects and blasts of noise. He invited and shared and reassured. Looking them straight in the eye, he told them he liked them just the way they were and that they would never go down the bathtub drain. He introduced children to opera and showed them how crayons were made in a factory and explained that the bad and the sad things—such as divorce and death and war—were not their fault. Then, Mister Rogers led the children (and sometimes the parents, as well) to the Land of Make-Believe, where he encouraged them to use their own imaginations.

While choosing a sweater to wear on Fred Rogers’ birthday, I’m reminded of another special someone’s birthday. A little over twenty years ago, when my middle child turned three, it just so happened that on that day, Mister Rogers came out of his kitchen carrying a birthday cake with a lighted candle on top. Through the television screen, he looked into my daughter’s eyes and sang “Happy Birthday to my Friend.” She glowed with joy. And I’m still sweater-warm with gratitude to our beloved neighbor.

Rosemary Poole-Carter

For more information about Fred Rogers and Sweater Day, please visit Family Communications, Inc. at http://www.fci.org/