Joan Bauer's Journal

Thoughts on Hope: from my speech at ALAN

    I Googled "hope" the other day.  I found a special hope formula for 70% off, a Hope TV Channel, a Hope Finance Program, Bob Hope, an official Hope website, and Wikipedia really went to town on hope, talking about the history of it, how to measure it, recognize it...
    There are millions of "hopes" to click on.
    I'm not sure what that will do for a kid who's close to the kind of despair that's a game changer; or a kid who's being abused at home or somewhere else; or a young reader who has a colossally dark secret that's crushing her; or a boy who feels close to doing something dangerous because he's got so much anger inside; or a regular kid who feels confused and wants to try to understand a little bit of what you do with a conflicted heart.
    It's so easy to toss hope around like a beach ball.  "Wheee!  Here it comes!"  And it just so happens that last week when I started working on this speech, we had a tsunami of complications hit our family.  It was, in a few of those places, quite easy to not feel too hopeful about much good coming out of these things.  In the midst of that, I sat down to work on these remarks, and as I did, I remembered an image that has so captivated me -- and I think it's a true visual of how a try to breathe hope into my characters lives.  And into my own life as well.
    In Asian pottery, there is a method called "golden seams," specially created by craftsmen to mend cracked ceramics. Instead of trying to match the color of the pot to make the crack less visible, they decided to flaunt the flaw by repairing it with lacquer mixed with powdered, flecked gold. It dries bold and shiny, the cracks fill in with gold. Brokenness made beautiful and more valuable.  
    That's what I hope to do -- use gold paint around the broken parts.  Humor certainly is a way to help life go down easier.  In my novel, Almost Home, a girl loses her home -- she's there when the sheriff comes.  How can lightness come in the midst of that?  Her mother is a southern belle wannabe who insists that her daughter always write the perfect thank you note.  And Sugar Mae Cole is a poet and she writes about wanting a home that won't go away with people who really think she's something.
    In Close to Famous, a girl who simply can't read decides to give it one more try.  In Hope Was Here, a girl wants to live with hope so much she changes her name to Hope as if to say to the world, "Call me what I want to become."  Seeds of hope planted in a story.  A touch of gold paint to illuminate the cracks and make them beautiful.
    Who are these kids we adult writers dare to create, as we limp back into our pasts and dust off the boxes we've put away?      
    Where do they hide their wounds?  
    What's their biggest strength?
    What's the thing about themselves they just can't see?
    What are the rules they live by?
    How are those rules challenged?
    How do they find their voices in this very broken world?
    What do they long to see made better?  Ah, that's the door to their hope.  Right there.  
    Now, how do they get on the road?  How do they put shoe leather to their dreams?  How do they learn to talk the talk a little, step outside their comfort zone, and go for it?  
    Here's the lovely thing about hope, it's really quite selfless, it's happy to take a back seat in lots of situations.  It partners in all kinds of moments and doesn't take the glory.
    Take courage -- you don't step out and do something brave without a hope that it could be better.
    Or truth -- you don't speak the truth without hoping someone will get it.
    And my heart goes to Hope Yancey of Hope Was Here, this courageous girl who wears her name like a flag.  Sometimes that flag crashes to the ground, but she's willing to have it be her identity -- that's how she wants to live.  
    We need to show kids what living with hope looks like, how it hides in all kinds of places -- how it's not really meant for exceedingly happy times.  Hope is built for the open sea with the sharks and the wind that's about to knock over your boat.  Let's not relegate it to a Hallmark card with kittens wearing sunhats -- let's take this thing out on the open road and see what it can do.  And if we're teaching a book, let's look for the hope and point it out, and ask kids, Where do you see it?  Where is hope in the building blocks of courage, sensitivity, and friendship?
    Hope is in the soil.  You dig in a garden in the spring and there are the earthworms dancing, they're preparing the earth.  Man, it's a good thing!  That's what hope does; it's there underneath when we don't even think about it, waiting for us to discover it, waiting to make our lives richer and better, waiting to reach out a hand to a kid who is more broken than we could ever know.  
    Years ago, I spoke in Youngstown, Ohio -- a girl came up to me; she took my hand and started to cry.  "Mrs. Bauer, I just need to tell you.. I read your book..."   She couldn't finish.  I was getting ready to speak to a group about humor in my novels, and now this girl was overcome by tears.     
    "Honey, tell me -- "
    "I think I read it 50 times.  I had leukemia, I read it every time I had chemotherapy.  Mrs. Bauer, I don't have leukemia anymore."
    Now I'm crying and the humor crowd is coming in.
    But, that was okay.  
    Hope is a glorious mess of inconsistencies.  It shows up places it has no right to be: at gravesites and horrific accidents -- how dare thing thing come?   And yet it does, sitting down on the couch with sorrow and pain and depression and lost love and terminal illness and anger and so much, so much.  We ignore it at our peril!   And here's what we tell the kids -- here's what we show them in our stories.  Hope isn't a feather,  it's an anchor.  It's not a butterfly, it's a 900 pound gorilla that's come to throw it's weight around.  It's the golden seams glistening off the paintbrush of a gifted artist outlining the cracks and the brokenness and saying, Look how it can be put back together -- more beautiful, more unique -- shining out bold and true.    
    So, we can say to trouble when it turns out the light:  "Go ahead.  Give it your best shot.  Guess what?  I glow in the dark and I am beautiful!"
    Hope is a game changer.
    May our eyes be open in new ways to the young people we teach and mentor.  And may we hold this hope out to them so they can see ahead to a better day.

**This speech was recently publihed in the ALAN Review Fall 2014

 

The Eggs

I adore eggs -- I eat them, I collect them. I love what they symbolize -- new beginnings. And every now and then I'll open a book or a drawer and an egg will be there. Not the chicken variety -- the small ones I've cut out of paper and written on when I was stuck.

I want to be a writer, but it's not happening.

My daughter's stomach keeps hurting. What do we do?

I am so angry at (fill in the blank)...

Then I tuck that egg away as a prayer, as a hope for things to be made right. I'd read of this small way to deal with concerns and anxieties years ago. What is so wonderful about finding an old egg, is that it doesn't stink at all -- time after time I've smiled and seen how the problem was resolved. 

It is not possible to finish this book!!!!!!!!!

Sure it is. My 12th novel, TELL ME, just came out this fall.  May we find the eggs we've tucked away and remember how far we've come.

My Toe

A few days ago I stubbed my toe, which hardly seems like the stuff of blogging, but then it turned purple and I limped a little, and it hurt a little, but I had things to do, so I kept limping and it got better and I thought -- ah, Joan, see, you didn’t have to get an x-ray.  These things work themselves out. 

The next day I overdid it and my toe started to hurt and I started thinking of dire toe problems and rethought that x-ray, but life got complicated again, and I got to the walk-right-in-emergency-care-office after it closed.  By now I felt like my toe had swelled to the size of a zucchini.  I mentioned this to my husband who said, “It’s the size of a baby carrot, like always.”  “Maybe something profoundly grim is happening inside, “ I said.  “You know, some kind of intense clotting.”  My husband touched the purple parts of my toe, and said, “No, it’s not. Try not to think about it.” 

So I thought about an article I’d read about procrastination that suggested that people hyper focus on the small stuff when they are actually avoiding the big stuff.  And I wondered, since a toe isn’t all that big, if there was some deep, all-encompassing thing that I was avoiding?  I decided to make a list, and came up with four pieces of big unfinished business. This caused my toe and the one next to it to begin to throb.  Then the big toe on my other foot began to ache in solidarity as I was forced to look at my life.  And being a writer on deadline, it occurred to me that some day I could use this in a story. It’s just so encouraging to see where a toe can take you.

 

My Pseudonym

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm letting the world know that my next novel will be written under a pseudonym -- either J. K. Bowlings or Erasmus Breach, I haven't picked the name yet, but it's best to speak the truth now because in this news-in-a-nanosecond/Wiki leaks age, someone will find out.  Surely, we all know this.    

It's possible that Nordstrom's would find out first -- prior to this AM, I'd not thought of Nordstrom's as a key info source, but according to the NY Times front page article, Attention, Shoppers: Store is Tracking Your Cell, it appears that Nordstrom's cares so much about who walks into their stores that they were gathering cell phone data on everyone.  

I discussed this pseudonym issue with my daughter who said, "Mom, it would kill you for people not to know you wrote a book." She's right, I suppose, but there's something quite lovely about cloaking one's literary self in a cape and writing, writing as if it were your first ever book.  But growing up Lutheran as I did, I think the guilt would kill me, and the advance would not be as big, and as Abraham LIncoln said, "No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."  And if I was in the presence of someone who had read the pseudonymous novel and was unfairly critiquing it -- I would have to Say Something. Silence would not be an option.   

It's too bad that you just can't slap a pen name on a novel without having to build up the ruse. I thought of spelling my name backwards as a fun party joke, and Naoj Reuab does sound like a fascinating character, but here I am.  Joan.  Writing away.  I feel so much better coming clean. 

**Here's the link to the Times piece.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html?ref=todayspaper

 

Honk If You Love Stories

When I was trying to break in as a new writer, sometimes I would drag myself to my desk,  asking the wrong question —Does the world really need another story?  

Early in my career, I posed a similar question to a rowdy group of high school freshman who were not listening to much of what I had to say.  Everyone knows you're not supposed to ask a surly crowd a question, especially a surly crowd of teenagers.  But I did.

"Why are stories important?" I shouted.  A boy in the back yelled, "They're not!"  I was ready to crawl out the door and find another profession, but when you love something, you defend it.  I hollered back, "Why not?"

A girl raised her hand: "Because stories teach us about life."  I almost gave her money for that answer.  It was the first time I ever led a group of students in an exercise developing a character from thin air. Who was this person?  What kind of a family was he from?  What kind of a heart did he have?  What were his dreams, his fears?  What kept him going...and on and on...

By the end of the assembly, we'd formed a living, breathing fictional character (that is not a contradiction in terms), and a boy in the back shouted, "You're okay, lady."  I wrote that down and slept with it under my pillow.

Does the world need another story?  I don't ask that question anymore, no matter how tired I feel. I know the answer—not just for my work, but for the millions of writers (published and yet-to-be published) out there.  Absolutely, positively, and undeniably YES!  

How to Read a Book (based on a true story)

Among the throng of readers devouring books out there, and we writers just want to say, thank you, there is a little realized approach to reading that can bring unique fulfillment:  Imagine what the writer was going through when she or he wrote what you have in your hands. For as much drama as the book you are now reading might possess, as much wonder as it might stir within you, trust me, the drama of actually getting that thing to print is a story in itself.  

Picture the writer huddled in a chair, fighting against writers block, finally getting the inspiration and hope to push through, editing that section on the magic turtle showing up with a message for the family, realizing that magical realism doesn't quite fit in a historical novel, but now the new thoughts come like a water tap turned on, and the writer is remembering why she does this, it's for these moments when the path in the story clears and the characters are alive and real.  She can hear their voices.  She can't believe in ever stopping. The exhilaration is beyond anything that --  

"Mommy."  

No.  Not now. 

 "Half the gerbil's tail came off."

And this poor writer is swept into another human drama as she looks in the cage and yes, one gerbil has half a tail and the other one is looking guilty. 

"Mommy, did they have a fight?"

"Possibly."

"They'll make up.  They're best friends."  

Maybe not.

And now this writer must keep her brain focused between her glorious story and this drama of life and possibly death, certainly dismemberment, in the animal kingdom, and having only one cage, she takes the gerbil with half a tail, who does seem to be handling it quite well, puts that animal in a plastic bin with food and toilet paper rolls, and calls the vet whose assistant says, yes, he examines gerbils, but they're exotic animals, so we have to charge you more.  And the writer, who knows, as we all do, there is nothing exotic about a rodent, has a third part now opening up in her brain that says, I will need to use this in a story, but not my historical novel about love and loss during the black plague.  The vet can't see her for three hours, so she goes back to her story, but it's strangely not  connected anymore, she's lost that moment of creative abandon, her characters have scattered and she is trying to rope them back, she tries to remember the voices and the rhythms and the progression -- 

"Mommy..."

"What...?"

"Will she die?"  Sobbing.

The writer, of course, gets up and tends to this deep moment and comforts the child.  They have hot cocoa, they talk about the great moments in this gerbil's life, all six weeks of them, they laugh, and they cry together.

It's time to go to the vet, the gerbil seems nonplussed, and the vet confirms this.  "Looks like he's going to be fine."

"It's a girl," the child says.

"Sometimes gerbils go at each other," the vet offers.  "It's best to separate them."  He puts a little ointment on the tail and charges an exorbitant fee for this consultation, far more money than the gerbil cost, although the writer does notice that the gerbil has perked up at the thought of being an exotic animal.  The writer then goes to the pet store and buys another cage, the writer sets this up in the TV room, the child says, "Okay, you guys, make up."  The gerbils glare at each other from across the room.  It''s close to dinnertime, but the writer needs to finish this chapter, so she sits at her desk, and digs deep within until the phone rings and a snarky woman from Mastercard wants to know when she might be sending in that overdue payment.  Now the gas company decides that this is the moment to begin excavating the street and an an army of men with jackhammers appear out of nowhere, but the writer puts on her noise cancelling headphones and finishes the chapter.  It is not a great chapter, it hovers just above okay, but hope is the writer's warm blankie, for surely tomorrow there will be no interruptions, the story will pour out, and the book will be drop-dead brilliant.   

And so it goes in the backrooms of literature.  I can assure you that everything you read will have some of this human drama tucked inside the folds.  May this enhance your reading pleasure knowing the struggle writers go through to bring you our stories.

 

The Project Girls

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, with so much devastation, with complexity and struggle, with a supremely mean election churning toward the finish line, with people wondering whom they can trust, with money short, with credit high, with angst and discouragement and depression and anger all around, I want to tell you about an email I received recently from two girls.  The subject line read: 

HELP US!!! 

They had just read my novel Close to Famous, about a girl named Foster who is a serious baker and struggles terribly with reading. Foster has a green apron with a shooting star -- trust me, that's important (see below).  But let them tell you in their words (I've deleted their names and did get their permission to share their correspondence)...they are The Project Girls.

 HEY Joan I loved your book close to famous it was amazing i read it in a day.Well you see i am in reading competition with my friend and that is where i found your book she read it and she told me so much about it thats all she talked about for a week! A WHOLE WEEk!!! Then she said to me that i need to read the book so i read it and OMG are you an amazing WRITER and me and her are doing a project for YOUR book we decided for our class project were going to make the cupcakes in the back of the book and were doing a powerpoint about your book and I thought it would be cool to do a slide all about YOU so thats why im emailing you im sorry i dont know what to say ive never liked a book enough to contact an author your my first one i would love if you would email me back i would be so happy! just tell me all about you things nobody knows that you wont mind sharing one question id really like you to answer is why did you write this book was it something that happened in your life i would love to put you in my powerpoint Joan so PLEASE email back i would like it real soon our deadlines coming up by the way were in 8th grade!!

Yours truly...

 

It's impossible not to answer an email like this, and you must respond right away.  So I gave them some places on my website to get info and I wrote:

Hi guys -- So glad you liked the book!  How cool is that?  I'll give you one quick thing that NOBODY KNOWS.  And it just happened yesterday.  Before yesterday, my three favorite cupcakes were coconut, maple pecan, and chocolate.  I just had lunch with my daughter in Providence and we went to this insanely significant cupcake place called the Duck and Bunny and now my number one favorite cupcake is Banana Nutella, number two is Red Velvet, and number three is coconut.

Okay, use this information wisely and get a terrific grade. 

Joan Bauer

A week later, I got this...

 

It's us, the project girls!

Dear Joan, do you remember us? We sent you an email pretty fast back and told us your favorite kind of cupcakes!  We did a PowerPoint about you. We wanted to tell you about our project so far its due on the 25th now... Well the PowerPoint is done and we were making cupcakes the night before but we decided we needed Foster Aprons so we went to Walmart and got a pack of aprons coloring dye a shooting star stencil and some yellow paint for the star and also sparkling red grape wine don't worry were 13 and 14 its non alcoholic. We were following directions for the aprons and it said to fill your sink with 2 gallons of water and SALT (it smelled really bad) then to put the packet in (it was like a powder you added) well Sierra dropped it in the sink had to get the packet out of the water out and got our fingers green. (we definitely had a green thumb) well after like an hour of splashing green on ourselves we had to put it in the washing machine it was haaarrrd work we decided to drink our red grape drink and we toasted to you and our green fingers. wish us good luck cleaning up well keep you up on the status of our project.

Yours Truly...

 

I give a standing ovation to these girls for guts and initiative.  I applaud their teacher for giving this assignment.  I salute their parents for being such good eggs, and I so hope the green dye didn't destroy the sink or permanently stain hands, etc., truly I do.    

And in case you were wondering how to get someone's attention, let The Project Girls inspire you.  In my book they get an A+ and major points for extra credit.  Nobody gets better mail than those of us who write for kids.  

 

 

If

My water heater reached it's expiration date.  I never think about my water heater.  I don't go down in the basement, look at it, pat it, and think, ah, here's my water heater.  I had forgotten it was eleven years old, and had over-reached its ten year warranty.  But then I took a shower and there was no hot water, and it was a necessary shower, so I soldiered on, and of the many life lessons I learned that morning, this was the first:  A frigid shower is an excellent way to cut back on caffeine.   

So, after my heart rate had returned to normal, I called my husband at work, who had showered earlier than me, and I asked him if he'd had hot water.  Yes.  Go into the basement, he said, and check it.  Well, you know, I'm grateful for machines of all kinds, but I don't really know how to check them.  But I went down and there was water all over the basement floor because the water heater that I had ignored for years was now acting out, so I knew enough to call the plumber, Joe, and while I was waiting for Joe to come I thought about leaks and how we can't always know they're about to spurt out, but sometimes we can if we pay attention. I wondered what else was about to leak in my life, I wasn't sure, because leaks don't always announce themselves. But then Joe came.  Truly, I like Joe, he gets right to it, which is what you want in a plumber, but my old plumber back in Connecticut was a philosopher.  He saw that a leak wasn't just a leak, a clogged toilet was so much more than disgusting.  He had a theory on everything including why children throw toys in the toilet -- it's a call for help, he told me, they have unmet needs.  I'd always thought it was because they were sick of the toy, but this man had five kids, whereas I only had one who had always respected the boundaries of indoor plumbing. 

I needed a new water heater, and for it to get into the basement I had to find a key, which caused me to search through three drawers and find earrings and people's phone numbers and many other old keys. The key I was looking for was right there where my husband had said, the last place I looked, because I was sure he was wrong.  But the padlock had gotten rusty, so the door was harder to open, and then I wondered what other things in my life had gotten rusty, and several things came to mind.  I did get the lock to open, I did get a new water heater.  I scratched this down on an envelope, I suppose, in the end, leaks remind us to pay attention...and remember the if...

We all have those ifs: If I hadn't showered early, if I hadn't called my husband at work, if we'd been out of town, if Joe hadn't come right away.  And then I thought about the bigger Ifs: If I hadn't seen that growth on my grandmother's back. If I hadn't called my friend when she was sick and needed help.  If I hadn't gone on a last minute vacation with my friend, I never would have met my husband. If I hadn't gotten nauseous, absolutely nauseous, when a well-known pediatrician said my daughter needed serious surgery, and if we hadn't gotten that second opinion that said she didn't...well...there are too many to mention. There's so much to be grateful for in this good, complicated life. 

By the Way, It's Funny

With my 11th novel Almost Home hitting the stores this week, I've been thinking about the process of writing the story, which consisted of me ripping out my heart and expanding my brain and writing poetry and crazy thank you cards and wondering all the time what in the world I was doing, trying to write a story about a girl who loses her home, and has to survive, and has this adorable dog, and by the way, it's funny.  Parts of it, at least. It can't be funny, I told myself, because I'm dealing with hugely harsh things.  And I remembered when I wrote my novel, Hope Was Here, and I was researching that story at the Darien Public Library.  I was at the check out desk armed with books on cancer and abandoned children and irresponsible mothers and kids trying to find out who their real fathers are. The librarian touched my shoulder to comfort me. "I'm writing a book," I assured her.   

This is what I've learned about humor -- sometimes it takes time to grow, like a flower on a battlefield.  So in Almost Home I took my protagonist Sugar on a long journey and in the process I found her strength. 

    My whole life started as one big surprise when I got born in the back of a Chevy in the parking lot of the Sugar Shack in Baton Rouge in a rainstorm so bad, my parents couldn't make it to the hospital.  When I popped out and Reba saw the Sugar Shack sign, she felt it was a sign from God; right then I got my name.  At least God told her to stop at Sugar.  Sugar Shack Cole would have been a chore to live with.  My daddy got the thrill of helping me get born, and believe me, he hasn't done squat to help since then.

    But I was grateful.  As soon as I could write, I sent a note to the Chevrolet company in Detroit, Michigan and thanked them for making such good back seats that a baby could get born and be okay.  That company cared so much, they wrote me back and said that although many babies had been born in Chevrolets over the years, I was the first one they knew of named Sugar. Reba says part of why I'm on this earth is to bring a little sweetness into people's lives.  "And sweet doesn't mean stupid," she says.  "Sweet doesn't mean weak.  I'm not talking kittens wearing sun hats either.  I'm talking kindness.  You go out there, Sugar Mae Cole, and show 'em what it means to be sweet." 

I hope you'll get a copy of Almost Home and see for yourself. As for my novel, Hope Was Here -- it takes on the best and worst of politics, all seen through the eyes of a girl who knows what it's like to hold onto hope. It's particularly fun to read in an election year.  

***And for my friends in Fairfiled County, CT, I'll be at Follett Books in Fairfield on Saturday, September 15th at 2PM signing copies of Almost Home.  I hope you'll stop by.

www.joanbauer.com

Eat Your Vegetables

A few weeks ago I learned that I'd won the Chicago Tribune Young Adult LIterary Prize.  Of course, I was delighted, but it went deeper than that.  I'm from Chicago and I'd worked at the Chicago Tribune many, many years ago in their classified advertising department.  But the delight went deeper still, because my first published piece of writing was in the Chicago Tribune Magazine -- on June 3, 1973 I won second prize in their fruit and vegetable poetry contest.  A poem about lettuce won first prize, but mine, based on my most hated vegetable, a vegetable so vile and disturbing, that I refused to eat it (almost), causing my otherwise gentle mother to rise up in its defense and make me sit there until I cleaned my plate. 

So here it is in all it's glory.

 

 "Lima Bean Blues" 

With fork in hand, with tongue in cheek, with eyes projecting hate,

I glower at the lima beans remaining on my plate.

Oh bilious lima, bean obscene, awash in salt and butter,

My stomach turns, my psyche churns with thoughts I dare not utter.

But there they sit, and I must eat, although I feel mistreated.

There's one thing worse than lima beans: that's lima beans reheated.

 

It makes sense that my first novel Squashed was also about a vegetable -- a giant pumpkin named Max. I have not developed my career any further as a vegetable writer, but I'm grateful for those early years, and perhps there's something to say about, you know, broccoli, spinach, kale, etc..  Kale would be a good one since so much rhymes with it -- stale, flail, jail, exhale, impale, hangnail, wholesale, pass-fail.  So when people ask, what has being a writer taught you?  One of the answers is, you just never know where a vegetable might take you.  

If you're in the Chicago area on Saturday June 4th, please stop by the Printers Row Book Festival and say hi.  My program is in the afternoon -- time to be determined.