All posts by Amber

In praise of hedgehogs and indie bookstores

My Reads, , ,

I am lucky enough to live in Portland, Oregon, home of Powell’s City of Books and many other independent bookstores including one of my favorites–A Children’s Place.

Independent bookstores are more than a place to buy books.  They are places of knowledge.

For years, I had been looking for a beloved book from my childhood.  I couldn’t remember the title so when I went into A Children’s Place and asked Kira P. for “this wonderful book about a hedgehog who has plants grow on him” I was not that hopeful.

But I browsed and a few minutes later Kira asked if the book I was looking for was Miss Jaster’s Garden by N.M. Bodecker.  Yes!  Oh, yes!  That’s the book I wanted with little Hedgie, the flowerhog, and piano-playing Miss Jaster.

Neither Google nor Amazon could bring Hedgie back to me.  Hedgehog is NOT in the title making key word searching very difficult.  I needed Kira and her expertise.  My independent bookseller is smarter than the internet.  So there!

The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean

My Reads

I love this book!

Mostly that is all I want to say this morning, but since words are my playthings and I’m a navel-gazer to the core, I’ll add this:

Lately I’ve been obsessing on what book to write next.  Ideas are many.  Time is fleeting.  I want to write the right one–a book that fits with who I am as a writer and one that leads me forward into the career I want.

I’ve been yearning for focus.  Couldn’t I be like Ellen Hopkins–a master of a particular kind of story.

Then I think of Geraldine McCaughrean.  I’m currently reading her book Stop the Train.  It is equally brilliant as The White Darkness but a totally different kind of book.  She’s a gifted word smith and story-teller in both works, but stylistically and topically, each is utterly unique.

I wish I’d written The White Darkness.  I wish I were that good.  But at least I can aspire to McCaughrean’s skill at realistic world-building and her flexibility with the form.

You don’t have to try so hard

Antics

Recently I had a strange encounter with another writer.  It began with a blush-inducing string of compliments and ended with “That’s why you scare people.”

BLAM!

I’m eleven years old and in sixth grade.  I’m staring in the mirror thinking, “I’m smart.  I’m nice.  And I’m a little bit pretty. So why don’t boys like me?”

Back then, I would have changed to get the boys to like me if I had known how.  But I didn’t know how so I stayed me–shy, awkward around kids my own age, happiest in a book or with adults, and lonely a lot of the time.

I grew up.  I worked hard, striving for competence, excellence.  Maybe I thought that if I were smart enough, successful enough, helpful enough I would be enough.  By thirty, I felt like I was finally becoming the woman I wanted to be.  Then tragedy demolished me and it took nearly ten years to put myself back together again.

Only to be told that I’m scary.

But then this writer said, “You don’t have to try so hard.”

You don’t have to try so hard.

This refrain bounced around my head, snuggling up with a few lines from Mary Oliver that seem to be in my every intake of breath these days:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

It won’t matter if I try harder or make pilgrimage through the desert.  It won’t be enough to make all the boys like me or  to make me un-scary.  And that is a thought full of freedom.

I don’t have to try so hard.

I can love what I love.

And suddenly, I’m singing a song from Rent and feeling light on my feet:

Take me for what I am, what I was meant to be.

 

 

 

Feel the love! Writing kid lit means school visits and that means fun!

Antics, School Visits

 

One of the great joys of writing for children is being a visiting author at schools.  I spent all day last Thursday at Highland Elementary School, and let me tell you, I was feeling the love!

The teachers and librarian had done an amazing job of preparing the kids for my visit.  They knew my books and they knew me.  As soon as I entered the building, the whispers began.

“There she is!”
“That’s Amber Keyser!”
“She’s the author!” 

I did a presentation about wilderness canoeing based on PADDLE MY OWN CANOE for the K-3 classes.  With the 4-5s, I gave my talk on writing comics: TELLING STORIES IN WORDS AND PICTURES.  This was in preparation for Family Write Night.  About 20 kids came back with their families to make 8-page mini comics with me.

I had such a great time.

It is easy to get bogged down as a writer.  We are alone a lot and thus able to fret in isolation about deadlines, how well our books are selling (or not selling), whether we’ll ever write another, bad reviews (good reviews), whether we will ever make a living doing this…  (Feel free to add to this happy list.)

But the great thing about school visits is that to these kids I might as well be J.K. Rowling.  They were so excited to meet a “real” author.  They chanted the refrain of my book as I read.  They gave me hugs.  They wrote me fan mail. They lined up to ask for my autograph.  In other words, they made me feel great.

I know the kids at Highland had a good time when I was there, but they probably don’t know how much being with them meant to me.  Thank you, Highland Elementary Students, for reminding me why writing for children is the best job in the world!

 


Write Fast, Write Slow, Write True

Antics

You know those writers–the ones who finish drafts in six weeks, who revise in a week, who pump out three books a year.  I’m betting that you also know the other ones–writers on the ten year plan.

I am not those writers.  And I am on deadline.  I want to revise faster, but what I want is irrelevant.  I write as fast as I write.  I revise much more slowly.  No amount of goal-setting or chocolate-bribing or self-flagellation gets me moving faster.

Over the years I have become a smarter, more efficient writer and that does speed my output a bit.  But it’s time to face facts.  I write like I hike–steadily, strongly, and at a medium pace.

This picture shows me having fun.   Yes, I’m spending seven days in the wilderness.  Yes, I alternate between carrying that behemoth of a pack and paddling across lakes.  Yes, I’m carrying half my body weight.

I’m always the last one across the portage.  And that’s okay.  Because I get there.  I go strong for a long time.  And–in case you forgot–I carry half my body weight.

Find your pace.  Respect it.  Ignore the fast ones.  Send chocolate to the slow.

Au large!


Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran and illustrated by Barbara Cooney

My Reads,

Marian called it Roxaboxen.  (She always knew the name of everything.) There across the road, it looked like any rocky hill — nothing but sand and rocks, some old wooden boxes, cactus and greasewood and thorny ocotillo — but it was a special place.

If you don’t know this book, you should.  It’s one of those perfect picture books that I never tire of reading.  Each time, I fall in love all over again.  My emotions rise and sometimes tears too because the words and pictures evoke my own childhood wandering in imaginary territory.

My cousins and I built Fort Lava amid the sagebrush and junipers of Central Oregon.  We dodged the horses in the field to get there.  We stole vitamin C from the huge canister in the pantry in the ranch house for snacks.  My middle cousin crunched on Meow Mix and told the rest of us it wasn’t bad at all.

Roxaboxen is a peon to our past worlds, and I want to go back again and again.  What a contrast to books that satisfy once but don’t beg me to return — like I Want My Hat Back, which is both deft and funny but once the surprise is sprung there’s no need to read again — or the books that get annoying on repetition–like Skippy Jon Jones, who will drive me insane one day.

Unlike those books, once is never enough for Roxaboxen.

Sometimes you need to hole up and lick your wounds

Antics, ,

In general, I’m an advocate of the “YES” principle (also known in my world as “JUMP”). I’m a risk-taker. I push myself. I want to try new things, hard things, scary things. I’m not crazy or an adrenaline junkie. Instead, I believe in forward motion and growth rather than stagnation or withering.

Except right now… I’m curling up in my den and licking my wounds.

Over the weekend, my family was a serious car wreck. We were in a series of blind S-curves when a car blasted toward us half-way into our lane. My husband had a split second to try and get us out of the way, and a likely front-end collision turned into more of a side blow, taking out the rear tire and axel. Somehow we all walked away from a car that is likely totaled. It was very scary and for a split second I didn’t know what was going to happen but thankfully, we’re all ok, just a little shaken up. After looking for a towing service, we came across this site, https://findanattorney.net/car-wreck-compensation-lawyers/, which is giving us some insight into the compensation we can get because after all, buying a new car isn’t the most affordable purchase a family can make. Plus, I want to be able to buy a car that’s suitable for our family and that might be a little more than the average car value.

We, humans, have this remarkable capacity to forget. We forget the pain. We forget fear. We forget that every second of every day we balance on a well-honed edge between life and death. Remembering takes me out at the knees, steals my breath, pummels me with the echo of loss.

I know I’ll come up swinging again, but today–and for as many days as it takes–I’m burrowing in and tending to some gashes.

 

 

Give me a sailor and let me run away to sea

Antics, Travel, Writing, ,

This is the thing about writing…  I get to fall in love over and over again.   And not just over shiny story ideas.  I know writers gush about that a lot, but I tend to make an idea prove itself to me before I commit.

(Run with that, Dr. Freud.)

No, I fall in love with the deep substance of the story and–especially with nonfiction–the subjects.

Last week, I spent three days in Astoria, Oregon, doing research for a new book project on the pilots who work the Columbia River bar.

I interviewed two pilots, toured the boat basin and climbed aboard both of the pilot transport boats (Chinook and Columbia), and checked out their shiny new helicopter at the airport.  And, in a completely unexpected turn, one of the pilots offered to let me ride along as they transferred a pilot to an inbound bulk carrier ship.

AMAZING!!!

The two bar pilots I interviewed held me rapt.  I could have listened to them talk for hours.  And if you had been there and heard the way they talked about the sea and the ships and the life of a sailor, you would’ve fallen in love too.  And if you had been on Chinook, zooming across the most dangerous river to ocean crossing in the world, you would have lusted for the power of her engines, the grace of her handling, and the perfection of her lines.

You would fall in love too.