Are your knuckles turning white?

Today I have a guest post up at the blog of my friend and colleague Jon Gibbs, the author of the young adult book Fur-Face. The theme of my post is the illusion of control—and why that can be a juicy topic for writers. Please stop by:

Kathryn's post at An Englishman in New Jersey.

What he left behind

If you are returning to my blog after my summer hiatus, thank you for coming back! I couldn't seem to handle writing these posts while also clearing out our little farm to ready it for the real estate market. Some periods of my life require so much energy that I must defer the recording of them for later. Leaving this farm was one of them.

It's hard to believe: when Marty turned 20 this summer I completed my goal of raising my sons to adulthood here at this farm Ron had chosen. I am free to move on, to choose a home for the first time in my life, and Dave and I are free to finally make a home together. This place hasn't suited our lifestyle for some time. It's for riding horses and animal romping and playing outside. But our barn has stood empty and cobwebbed for more than 10 years. Of all the chickens and goats and ponies and horses and cats and dogs, the last of our many animals--my cockapoo Max--died almost three years ago, and most of my day is now spent in front of a computer or a manuscript. I am ready to leave.

That didn't mean the farm was ready for us to leave it, though. This summer Dave and I and several stalwart family helpers cleared its most neglected recesses of 12 tons of junk. Most of this came from six outbuildings, one of which is a cavernous Pennsylvania bank barn that can hold a sinful amount of crap. We hoisted and we carried and we swept and we blistered and at the end of each day we tore respirators black with dirt from our sweaty faces and we didn't stop until we'd filled a 12-yard dumpster. Then another. Then another. Then another.

Leaving this farm turned into an extreme sport and my actions tell the tale: I'm ready to start the next chapter of my life in a new setting. But it would seem I had one more character study to complete first. Because this summer, going through the detritus that had accumulated in the house and outbuildings, I think I got to know Ron a little better through what he left behind.

What Ron left behind

1. Scraps of wood. I finally got it, this summer. Ron loved to work with his hands as much as I love to write, and he felt about wood scraps the way I feel about books: you'd better keep a lot on hand just in case you'll ever need them again. We cleared out room after room piled high with scrap lumber, saving only a few piles of respectable looking oak planks to give away to friends. (I was almost as hard on my own collection: I gave away eight boxes of books to the library for its fundraising sale.)

2. Well organized bric-a-brac. Part of what fed Ron's sense of material wealth was amassing metal and wood shelving filled with hand-labeled boxes and jars holding everything from clips and U-bolts to old door hinges and plumbing supplies. I think he would have been happy owning a hardware store, because that's what several of our outbuildings look like. The man had inventory.

3. Receipts. Ron was not much of a writer so I was surprised to come upon a box chock full of notes he had stashed in one of the barn's storage rooms. The money fixation that eventually devoured him was foreshadowed in a painstaking accounting he'd kept of which bartenders made what tips on what dates, and how this was all divided. I'm sure the IRS would have loved to see those documents 20 years ago. Oops--they'll have to landfill dive to find them now.

4. Booze. I was long aware of Ron's practice of washing out glass orange juice containers and bringing home booze leftover from the weddings he worked. This was all part of the trademark frugality he'd use to justify the extravagances he couldn't afford. I had given away so much booze after his death I guess I just didn't realize how much was still out there. About three dozen half-gallon bottles. All labeled, of course: scotch, gin, vodka, Benedictine, even grossly separated and rank smelling Bailey's Irish Cream. No whiskey, since that's what he drank. Some of the tops were corroded right through. I didn't know if it would be good for our septic system to put it all down the sink, so for lack of a better idea, I poured them all onto the driveway stones on a hot day and let the liquid evaporate. I'm pretty sure that any bird that caught a whiff of it--perhaps even God--caught a buzz that day.

5. A legacy of love. While our house hasn't yet found its next perfect occupant, we have gotten wonderful feedback from the people who've come to see it. My favorite: "It was a joy to show this property. The owners must have loved their home." I take my share of the credit, as my hands transformed each of the house's surfaces. But Ron was the crew leader, the one with the know-how back in the days before online tutorials. We were a good team when it came to the renovation, and I hope he knows what a great job he did. This farm will offer someone new just as wonderful a place to house their horses and raise a family as it did me. If you'd like to take a look at the fruit of our labors, click here.

6. A dream. I truly feel the weight of this, now. When Ron died he left behind his dream of raising his family on the farm we'd renovated--he killed himself just ten months after the final room was complete, when the boys were just 8 and 10. Of course his dream didn't die with him. I was still here to live it.

7. A hell of a mess. From the early biohazard cleanup to the financial and emotional and psychic cleanup to the final wood scrap dumping, we have been cleaning up after Ron for 12 years.

8. Which leaves for last the most obvious answer as to what Ron left behind: Jackson, Marty, and me.

With a nod to my friend and energetic blogger Jon Gibbs, I'll end with a question: after you are gone, what will people learn about you from what you left behind? Feel free to leave a comment. I'd love to hear your answers.

Scene and Sequel

Because I am a huge fan of delayed gratification, the two days of The Write Stuff conference put on by the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group is my favorite time of year. I love Christmas, too, but I only put a few weeks of preparation into it. I work on aspects of this conference for an entire year, so when it comes I watch it unreel in a dizzying blur.

On a day like today, when I have a chance to pause to take stock, I'm reminded of the terms author Jack Bickham uses to describe plot: "scene" and "sequel." The action happens in scene: a soldier runs up to a ditch, lobs a hand grenade, and runs back to safety behind a rock. That soldier reflects on his action in a sequel: Where did these guys come from? I thought we'd killed them all back at the river. I need to talk to Jonesy, bad, but the radio is back at the plane...

If the final weeks of conference prep are one unrelenting scene, today is my sequel. I want to take a moment to reflect on the fruits of my labor and of many fellow laborers led by conference chair Dianna Sinovic.

In this year's mesmerizing keynote speech, author and DeSales University creative writing prof Juilene Osborne-McKnight tapped her background as a professional storyteller to remind us that the stories that connect us are the reason for all that we do. To hammer her point home, I'd like to set down some of the stories that characterized this conference for me.

• After 9 years of attending and volunteering for this conference, I participated as a Page Cuts panelist for the first time, using experience gleaned from my role as editor at Writing-Partner.com to critique first page submissions from attendees. No story is good without an obstacle, so here it is: I had to do so without having eaten in the past eight hours. I wasn't the only one. Despite a break of almost an hour, and a restaurant less than half full, the hotel was unable to deliver our meals before we had to go to the Page Cuts room. I thought I had saved time by ordering a sandwich, but at least those who ordered entrees got their salads! Despite the hypoglycemia, I enjoyed applying all I've learned to help along a new batch of writers. After which I made a beeline for the crudites at the welcome reception.

• I had the chance to meet three different women I've gotten to know through my online writing consulting business. I first met them through their words and ideas; now I've met them in the flesh. Ever since I started writing for a newspaper 27 years ago, where I mostly met people by phone, I've envisioned people by their voices. I do the same now with people I meet in print, through their writers' voices. And you know what? Not one of these women looked a thing like I pictured them. A fun surprise.

• One of our conferees flew in from Texas so she could meet her favorite author, Maria V. Snyder, whom I had engaged in my role as program co-chair. In my role as Page Cuts coordinator I had randomly assigned this conferee to the room where Maria was a Page Cuts panelist. This woman was able to have her first page critiqued by her favorite author, and I played an unwitting role.

• I stood in the hallway at one point beside a conferee who asked a woman next to me where she was from. The answer I overheard: "Gouverneur, New York." I spun around. "You're kidding me! I know where Gouverneur is and I know how to spell it, too!" To which she replied: "Most of the people who live there don't know how to spell it!" Gouverneur is a village of about 4,000 near our summer home in northern New York; my grandmother was a school teacher there early in the 2oth century. This woman found out about our conference online, drove the 5-1/2 hours to get to it, and had a great time—and during the book fair, sat to talk with my husband Dave and I, who are almost neighbors to her during the summer.

• One of the last conversations I had before heading out the door was with my new friend, conferee Jon Gibbs, whom I'd met at last year's pre-conference workshop. We were tossed into proximity again this year: during an exercise at this year's workshop we exchanged papers, and later that night he was in my Page Cuts room. At conference end Jon was telling me what a superlative conference he'd had: all of the Page Cuts panelists had something good to say about his page; the agent panelist in that room approached him the next day, gave him her card, and said she'd like to see the whole manuscript; an agent to whom he'd pitched a different project wanted to see the whole thing; and then during the book fair he found out he'd won the fiction flash contest and got to read it aloud. When after that he also won a door prize he deferred, embarrassed by and a bit fearful of the confluence of riches.

Following a tradition we've had for a few years now, Dave and I treated ourselves to dinner out on the way home from the conference—this time at Bonefish at the Lehigh Valley Mall—and brought along our conference folders. We always attend separate sessions so we can compare notes after, and we like to do it while all is fresh in our minds. We sat at a "first come, first served" area in the bar across from another couple, who was fascinated by what we were doing. Their son is a writer, currently in England on a fellowship. We all ended up having a great time. 

Thanks for sharing my sequel. For all of these reasons and more, I am eager to once again enter "scene" mode and get to work on next year's conference.