Midwest '11
I seem to be making a habit of visiting Minnesota and Wisconsin in the autumn. This trip was even better than last year--not only did I get to spend QT with Jill, Sarah, and Maggie and her family, but I also got to meet my cousin, Brother John, who teaches Spanish at a Catholic boys' school, St. Lawrence.
Brother John's colleagues invited me to speak to the English and creative writing classes, which was TONS of fun. You would not believe how nice and friendly and polite these kids are. I may be a grown woman, but I'm still afraid of teenage boys--every time I pass a group of them on the street my inner 14-year-old whimpers oh no, they're going to make fun of me!--so you can imagine how surprised and delighted I was when boys kept coming up to me to shake my hand. "You must be the author! I'm so-and-so. Welcome to St. Lawrence! I'm looking forward to hearing your talk tomorrow."Yup. Seriously.
The students came prepared with questions, so once I'd gotten the preliminaries out of the way (and shown them the engagement portrait that inspired Mary Modern, mentioning that Anna and Paul are Brother John's ancestors too) we spent the rest of each class period doing a Q&A. I think I'll answer some of them again here on the blog, since they're questions I get asked a lot. (How long does it take you to write a novel? How do you choose a point of view? Do you outline?)I got to chat with several of the boys after class too, and they kept asking me for autographs (haha)—even on their jack-o-lantern!
Then I came home, and this was in the mail:
I opened the card, and literally gasped. I'm amazed they could fit this many signatures.
My experience at St. Lawrence really cemented my desire to teach. I don't know that I'll necessarily end up teaching creative writing at the high school level, but I can say for sure that I can't think of anything more rewarding than helping people discover and appreciate great literature while nurturing their own voices.(You hear that, universe? I WANT TO TEACH!)
Midwest, part 2
(Continuing from part 1.)
From Madison I took a bus to Minneapolis to visit Jill for a few days. We went to see The 39 Steps at the Guthrie--really good fun!--and we went shopping at a pumpkin patch in the suburbs and carved it to look like this:
The Witch's Hat Tower.
(Funny that I said 'I shall never carve a jack-o-lantern ever, ever, ever again' after seeing this--Elliot carved it; brilliant, right?--when I haven't carved a pumpkin since I was a kid.)
I also did a reading and signing at Common Good Books on the 1st of November, which was fantastic--along with Jill and Walt, Maggie's brother Max and his wife Jillian came out, and there were three complete strangers, which up 'til now hasn't ever really happened. And they were the most enthusiastic complete strangers EVER. Lots of questions and discussion and I read two passages, one at the beginning and one at the end. It was really, really fun.
And I got to sign the door behind the desk!
(I'm in Scotland at the moment, having a marvelous time. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!)
Midwest, part 1
I never anticipated that the best part of publishing a book wouldn't be the good reviews, readings, or invitations to literary festivals. The best part isn't seeing a gorgeous book with your name on it on the new fiction shelf at Borders (although that's pretty trippy too).No, the really trippy part is this: making new friends, and eventually counting them among my dearest, all because I wrote a book and somebody decided to publish it.
In August 2008 Maggie left a comment telling me how much she enjoyed Mary Modern, and when I visited her blog I found the best review I've ever gotten. Maggie doesn't usually write about books on her blog, but this time she made an exception. She even took the book into the bathroom with her, and there can be no greater compliment than that.
So we emailed back and forth a bit, and then lost touch until last summer. Thanks to Twitter, I reconnected with Maggie and 'met' Sarah, the friend who'd recommended my novel in the first place. I got to meet Maggie and her family back in August when they came to New York on vacation, but this trip to Wisconsin last week was the first time I met Sarah in real life. She is so good at expressing herself online that I kept having to remind myself that we hadn't ever had a conversation in person before. (You know how it is if you've ever met an internet acquaintance in real life--they're never quite how you pictured them, not necessarily looks-wise, but the way they speak and carry themselves and whatnot. Not Sarah!)
I also wondered how or if we ever could have met in a time before the internet. I like to think that if we'd lived on the far end of the twentieth century we would have written each other letters, but obviously it wouldn't have been the same--it would have taken us months to iron out a visit by mail, if we'd ever found the opportunity to meet at all, and our (sometimes rapid-fire) email correspondence is probably equivalent, wordcount-wise, to a pen-pal friendship over the course of ten years. Every time their names pop up in my inbox I feel amazed and grateful all over again.
We knit and talked about books and writing and had a sleepover and watched classic 80s movies (I fell asleep midway through The Neverending Story—haha!—but The Goonies was every bit as awesome as I remembered it), and I loved spending time with Maggie's daughters. We fondled beautiful yarns at The Sow's Ear and had delicious fancy coffees afterwards. (The Sow's Ear is far and away the coolest yarn shop I've ever been to--huge selection of great yarns and really nice staff, like Brooklyn General, but with coffee and treats!)
Locally produced sock yarn from Sun Valley Fibers.
And before I left Maggie and I went to Madison to sample the amazing local cheeses at Fromagination (she knows a lot about Wisconsin artisanal cheeses, having recently published an article on the subject) and she took me on a tour of UW Madison. I got to see Sarah and her husband Matt one more time for pizza and hot chocolate before I left; and then the next day I hopped on a bus to Minneapolis to visit Jill, and I also did a really fun reading at Common Good Books. Will blog about that next time.
(Edit, 2013: It's strange to be reformatting this entry for my new blog, having very happily not eaten cheese in 2 1/2 years. I won't knowingly eat it again, and for some very good reasons why, read my post on cheese addiction.)