p e n c h a n t

Working on yet another jacket for the Brian Jacques Redwall series, I’m once again drawing animals in clothes and wielding swords. This is always a challenging process for me. Getting an otter into a dress, a rat into a jerkin, a tattoo onto a weasel’s face, these are easier said—with words—than done—with pictures. I would bet that putting a hat on a rabbit requires more sleight of hand than pulling a rabbit out of a hat. It’s the ears. Either the hat must have a roomy crown, or holes, or grooves in the brim, or else the ears get bent. I don’t know, the folks at Disney don’t seem to sweat it. But I prefer animals to be as nature intended: in the buff (fur and feathers, that is).

Sketch is one of many prepared for the 20th anniversary Redwall cover.

This is the first in a haphazard series of helpful, time-saving tips that, if you already are familiar with, we trust you still will enjoy. If these are not familiar, then—Here’s to better writing! Once we conjure up enough tips, we’ll dump them all together for easy reference. We thought we’d open the series with, you guessed it: Openings.

Be sure and grab your reader’s attention right away. Be so engaging that he or she will come crawling back for more. He or she will want to turn the TV off, or leave the hot fudge sundae melting on the counter, or the cat meowing at the door, or the smoke alarm ringing. (We don’t mean that he or she will, but that he or she will want to.) Start with a great one-liner. Dialogue is always good. For example: “Hey you, reader! What’re you staring at?” That’s actually a two-liner, but it’s catchy, isn’t it?

Drama and a hint at danger always works. Suspense. Plant a gun on the mantle in the opening scene, or a body, and be sure it goes off later on.

Begin in medias res, which means, in the middle of something, such as a horse. For example: Gertrude could not help herself: she was definitely sliding out of the saddle. Makes you want to ride read on, doesn’t it?

Connect the emotions of your protagonist to those of the reader. This is crucial. Of course, you don’t really know what emotions your reader has, but they’re usually feelings we all share, like: pity, sadness, happiness, chagrin, panic, dubiousness, mawkishness, and perplexity. Any one of these, or all, should work. Example: When Hamilton broke his incisor on the ship’s railing, he instantly knew he should not have been resting his chin there, and knew that playing bocci with Belinda later that evening would not be as he had hoped. He stared blankly at the water, wondering, “Are the fish biting?” Don’t you feel pity? Panic? Perplexity?

“Bang!” You didn’t forget the gun, did you? See how effective that is?

By now, any average reader would surely want to turn the page. Following these basic opening tips will send you, the perspiring aspiring writer, well on your way to beginning your work of fiction. Next time, we’ll look at more tricks of the trade, like, setting, tone, throwing your voice, and facing opposition. Have a nice opening page.

-

reflected in the eyes and mind of a man who worked in the oil fields of central Texas and southern California, whose hands then transferred to canvas in oil paints. He painted on any surface he could salvage (canvas, cardboard, paper) the wonders that likely kept him going until he dropped of sudden heart failure at age 61, two years before I was born.

So our paths, my maternal grandfather’s and mine, did not cross except through blood.

I have often thought: Do my eyes see like his saw, when the sun plays just so with a cloud? Do I feel what he felt, when the urge or even urgency to record such a moment stirs within me?

Talent—what is it? I don’t believe one is born with, or inherits, the ability to paint or write or play a violin: those abilities are learned. They may be self-taught rather than formally acquired, but they are learned  nonetheless. They require work, much study, determination. What I do believe one is born with is a tendency or sensitivity toward a particular way of seeing, hearing, thinking and feeling, a tendency toward particular matters. For me, it is the visual effects of nature (nature in a broad sense, including that of humans) and its sounds (again, whether bird or breeze or horse hair drawn over strings, or words), and, essentially, a desire to do something about it.

Apparently this was so with my grandfather. He not only painted, he played music on a violin. These are what must have delighted him, inspired him.

Inspiration. To breathe. In the bible, God breathed into man and man became a living soul.

What catches our eye, what lodges in our ear, what washes through our spirit, these we try to grasp and clasp and then let go, that others may experience, and be inspired.

Both Inspiration posts written on the occasion of my mother’s 80th birthday.

-

-

-

a doorknob, round and red. Red because it is constantly squeezed and turned and shoved aside, and banged against a wall, because there’s no doorstop to soften the blow. Imagine an eye peering through the keyhole, a child’s eye, that leads to a child’s mind that’s eager to imagine. How fun to peer into a keyhole mouth, to grasp a doorknob nose! To squeeze hard and twist ….

To get from one world to another, there is always a passage. The best stories—from the oldest to the most recent—tell us this. It may be a mirror, a gate, a wardrobe, a whirlwind, a rainbow, a rabbit hole, a circle of mushrooms.

A keyhole.

I was that child, peering through the keyhole, and Wonderland waited on the other side. With a doorknob like that, it could only be so. Alive with my child’s mind, I would peer, turn the nose, and enter.

The doorknob worked the door on the guest house in our backyard. The place was quiet, usually dusty—stuffy, in fact; that is what the Adult I remembers. It couldn’t have been more than ten feet by twelve, but for the Child I, the dimensions stretched or shrank according to my will. It could be as airy as a pirate ship, as cool as a cave, as quaint as W. Rabbit’s cottage, as horrifying as the House of Usher. Once or twice it became a haunted mansion without my help, which I entered with my pulse in my throat. Somewhere in the gloom a hag with a ghastly face (my oldest sister’s, compliments of Noxzema), waited to wail when I drew back a curtain. Clammy fingers (my older brother’s) would dart out and grasp my wrist, to plunge my hand into a bowlful of slimy eyeballs (grapes grew in abundance on our property), and again into a plate of intestines (Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and earthworms).

Once or twice or maybe thrice, my dad performed a puppet show there. I sat with the others on the floor, enthralled by the movements and the voices, which were surprisingly childlike in nature. I remember thinking, parenthetically, that my dad was somehow behind it all.

He worked in a machine shop, and consequently suffered from hearing loss throughout his life. Like many of his generation, he was a high school dropout who lied about his age to enter armed service. He was found out; he found true love, married young and settled down. The girl he chose—my mother—declared to her girlfriend, “That’s the man I’m going to marry,” on first meeting him. He later finished his education, got a degree, and became a cog in the maintenance of the Polaris submarines stationed worldwide during the cold war. Because of its confidentiality, his occupation is still a mystery to me. That was my grownup dad.

My childlike dad was also a mystery. How many metaphorical keyholes he provided for me and my siblings to peer into, I’ll never know. But his sparkling outlook charmed and inspired us.

He’s the one who painted the door plate and knob. The one who provided a face that dared us to peer into its keyhole mouth, to grab its nose and pull.

The door plate hangs on a nail in the wall of my studio, and I look at it from time to time. I think how the stories we make, and the pictures we paint, are keyholes for others to peer into, glimpses into other places, to inspire and charm and inform.

Where the doorknob is I do not know. A clump of rusted metal likely buried deep in California soil, and paved over with concrete, for the guest house and its environs were bulldozed long ago.

Where my dad is, I do know. His last words, as he peered up into a cosmic keyhole I could not see but sensed by the brightness in his eyes, were, “Heaven, heaven, heaven!”

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

In a time when class distinctions and attitudes prevailed, John Ruskin believed there were two classes of people: the working and the idle. Both types could be found among the rich and poor, hence the idle rich and idle poor become one class, and the working rich and working poor another. He was encouraging understanding, acceptance, and respect among workers within all economic conditions, a focus on character and productivity, rather than status and education.

Work is a curse and a blessing. We labor under its burden, we are lifted by its benefits. Its burden may be physical or psychological or both. So may its benefits. They may be small or great, deep or trivial, transient or eternal.

Last winter I spent two weeks in California’s Central Valley, working alongside a contractor friend, David, who was building two additional complexes for a boys’ home. As we were hanging a set of doors, David remarked, “This is work!” I looked at him and said, “To me, it’s not.” True, my arms ached, my back was in a sweat, the splinter in my palm was burrowing in, lunch was too far off and always too soon to go.

However.

I was not staring at blankness, grasping for inspiration. There were no contortions of ideations throbbing in my head. I was not on deadline. It was not the eleventh hour; this was not a painting I had labored over for days, or even weeks, that was going awry, that thousands of viewers would judge by their reactions or absence of, that the author would stake some of his or her hopes on, that I would actually be paid for, succeed or fail ….

This was not a year-long—or two years or three—literary work.

This was a house. It would be a home. A home to some troubled young men who perhaps had no home, or who’d had no welcome offered from anywhere or anyone else.

However frequent the frosty mornings chilled my bones, the distant Sierras warmed my senses. However often my trigger-itchy finger, firing multiple nails when only one would do, sent David scurrying for cover, his laughter eased my chagrin. However occasional the back-burdening hauling of lumber dulled my zeal, the thought of home sustained me.

This was not work, this was respite.

As I sit drawing at an open window this evening, listening to the stillness, the crickets, and intermittent falling leaves, I think how blessed I am to be here. To be at home, working.

Illustration from an early 20th-century poster, artist unknown

we bear—who’s to say what they will or can become? True, genes, environment, circumstance, parenting—or lack of it—all these shape our children. But as they mature, they begin to shape themselves, and choose, to some degree, what will shape them. As a parent, I’ve discovered that no matter what you tell or show them, it’s who you are in your heart that will have the greatest impact.

—————————————————————————————————————

Alice And what does outgrabe mean?

HD Well, outgribing is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle.

Again, regards to Lewis Carroll

speaking of eggs (see Enter, view. / Humpty Dumpty), I discovered, uncovered actually, a nest of earthbound eggs as I was digging a hole for a clothesline post.

I recommend using clotheslines, a tried-and-true method that is seldom still tried but still true. Tried before “sustainability” was vogue (and vital, though it’s always been that). Consider the economical, ecological and psychological benefits of suspending fabric from a line, over the plugged-in, push-button, fabric-softener, high-heat, cycle: you have air, sun, and a few moments to reflect. Of course, much of the world has never seen the arctic-white or avocado or goldenrod metal humming box that is the electric dryer. Much of the world has boulders and branches, or nothing—or next to nothing—at all. One added benefit of this honorable but outmoded practice mysteriously delights at night: as you lie between sweet-smelling sheets a part of the left-over sky soothes your senses.

As I was digging this clothesline-post hole, my shovel broke an egg in the ground, spilling its sunny yoke. I carefully unearthed the others—a nest of five—and as I gazed a chill went through me. A copperhead had been in this area last fall. Could it be—?

I went indoors and pulled from my library shelf The Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians. (Another recommendation of mine—the Audubon Society’s field guide series, which covers a range of nature subjects: mammals, mushrooms, wildflowers, the night sky, weather, to name a few). Under Pit viper family (Viperidae), I found Southern Copperhead, and read: “Breeding: live-bearing” So, not a copperhead. We also have rat snakes and black king snakes. The Rat Snake lays a clutch of 5 to 30 eggs in rotten logs or duff; these were in soil. The Kingsnake has a clutch of 3 to 24, so that was one possibility. We also have the eastern box turtle (Emydidae), who frequents our garden. “Breeding: 3-8 elliptical, thin-shelled eggs, averaging about 1 3/8 inches …” Back to the Blacksnake … “creamy white to yellowish, elongated, 1 1/4 to 2 3/4 inches …” These eggs were definitely thin-shelled—I could see the coloring inside—and about 1 3/8 inches.

Back outside I dug a new hole about the same depth I had found the eggs, and transferred the nest, anticipating seeing a slow emerging of tiny turtles—a “bale of turtles” according to James Lipton (see his An Exaltation of Larks, a wonderfully amusing menagerie of collective nouns)—in the near future. The guide mentions that hatchlings sometimes spend winter in the nest, so it may not be until next year.

Which brings me back to our lowly Humpty Dumpty.

But for his humiliating name, he’s an upright character: He’s intellectual. He’s fluent. He’s balanced. He’s above the fray. Yet he’s also vulnerable. He might crack under pressure. If he tips, the consequences are, at best, heart-stopping, at worst—like the fall of man—catastrophic. If he falls, what then? It all depends on your outlook. You’re culinary, you make tempura. You’re artistic, you make tempera. You’re a monarch or a soldier or royal, you try to pick up the pieces—a noble but wretched task.

There’s one other possibility: Who is to say that from the wreckage may not fly a new creation on wings of bliss?

illustration by John Tenniel / regards to Lewis Carroll