You end up writing when...

You end up writing when the need to write is

stronger than the fear of rejection,

when curiosity and your desire to discover

something new about yourself and the world--

and what you think and feel about it all--

is stronger than your fear of failure.

You end up writing when your voice, 

telling you that you must write, 

is stronger than all the voices in your head 

telling you to stop.

You end up writing when you cannot

not write, when it feels as essential to 

staying alive as breathing, and when writing each 

word, your hand shaping each letter on the page, 

is as vital and life-affirming as 

taking a breath.

Listening for words

Listening for words

waiting for a voice

to whisper in my ear

hoping I'll recognize

it when I hear it--

if I hear it--

not knowing what

to expect

sitting in anticipation

of something

(but what?)

not knowing anything

more than the

blank page

and the pen in

my hand

poised over the page

waiting to hear

what I've never heard before

praying I'll be able to

catch the words

with my pen

and bring them

to the page

like pearls

drawn from

the depths

of the sea.

It's like dreaming

Each morning I listen to the silence

and hope to hear a voice and words

I've never heard before.

I listen with my ears

but, really, it's a different

kind of listening

that requires you to open

your heart, to hear

what you're afraid to say

or what you don't yet know

you need to say.

It's your voice and not your voice,

it's your hand holding the pen

and writing down the words

on the page and not your hand.

You hear something, a voice

beyond words. (Are there even 

words to describe it?)

It's like being bathed in light

or immersed in water

and you feel like you're floating

on the page as words 

emerge from your pen

and you see the letters

taking shape and the words

forming on the page

even before the words form

in your mind--as if

you are witnessing your thoughts

coming into being,

what you think and feel

unknown until you can

see the words floating 

in front of you.

It's like dreaming,

and when you open

your eyes the dream vanishes,

and you see instead

a page filled with the words 

you collected from a world

before it disappeared.

Listening for a voice

You think you're listening for words, waiting for them to appear, but really you're listening for a voice, and only when you hear that voice can you hear the words.

It's a voice that whispers in your ear: "I am here. Are you ready?"

And if you're unprepared, not ready to record what you hear, you'll miss it, and the voice will fall silent again.

It's your voice and it's not your voice but all the voices you've ever heard.

And it comes not from some external source but from inside your inner ear, from some place deep within yourself that you can hear only if you're paying attention.

It sounds like the rush of waves rolling into shore or like the flapping of a bird's wings. 

It sounds like the wind blowing through trees, soughing, rustling leaves.

It sounds like rain falling gently on the roof or like the gentle echo of thunder after a flash of lightening.

Your words strike the page just like that flash of lightning.

And then the voice fades like thunder when it's done and disappears until next time.

And the only evidence of its presence are the words your pen leaves on the page.

You hear a voice

You hear a voice inside your head,

Often, it's just a whisper, barely a sound at all.

But, still, you can hear a voice.

And you realize that you have a choice.

You can choose to listen to the voice and follow it wherever it leads you, or you can decide to ignore it and pretend you didn't hear a thing.

If you follow this voice, you may discover something about yourself that you fear or dislike. 

Or you might discover a new world waiting for you that you've never seen before, or you might see the world you know in a new way. 

You might meet people who you've never met before. 

Or you might meet people who you know and who are disguised as strangers.

If you ignore the voice, you risk losing your ability to hear such a voice in the future. 

So, when a voice speaks to you, whispering in your ear to catch your attention, you can choose to listen or not. 

You can follow the voice wherever it might lead you.

Or you can pretend you don't hear a thing and remain wherever you are ...  rooted in silence.

It's your choice.

The Beauty of a Quiet Book

One of the beauties of a quiet book is that life unfolds more slowly in its pages, unlike the rush of plot-driven adventure novels, which are so popular in the minds of editors and agents these days (and in readers’ minds, too, I suppose) because of that rush.

Quiet stories tend to explore a character’s inner world rather than build a fast-paced action plot that can feel like a rapidly shifting maze or a series of bigger (or smaller) hoops through which a character has to jump.

A quiet book may not have much in the way of a plot, and it may examine characters who don't seem to have many flaws or who lack a significant problem altogether, which means that the story may lack sufficient conflict for some readers to stay interested in what happens next.

And yet ... a quiet book can give readers an opportunity to savor the richness and natural rhythms of life, as well as its mysteries, in much the same way sitting on the edge of a still lake or calm sea can offer moments of true insights into the mysteries of life surrounding us.

These thoughts about quiet books were prompted by Patricia MacLachlan's The Poet’s Dog, which I found the other day while browsing through the shelves of our local library. 

One of the mysteries that MacLachlan, the Newberry Medal winning author of Sarah, Plain and Tall and a host of other books, explores in The Poet’s Dog is a what if question: what if a dog could understand language and speak in order to be understood? (MacLachlan performs this same magic trick in Waiting for the Magic, another middle grade reader with more than one dog that can understand and speak English.)

Maybe this idea—that dogs can speak and understand English—is what makes The Poet’s Dog more than a “quiet” book, I don't know. Maybe it even gives it a step up into fantasy. But however you might want to label it, it’s a book as much about the value of words—and how words have the power to connect us to one another, human to human as well as human to animal—as it is about plot and character.

MacClachlan moves her readers inside the thoughts of each of her characters (even if one of the characters is a dog), and I suspect readers are able to hear these thoughts precisely because of the “quietness” of the story.

And maybe that’s another reason why I love quiet stories. In quiet stories you can hear the inner voices of the characters as clearly as you can hear your own. By opening a window into her characters’ interior worlds, MacLachlan gives readers a chance to savor this inside-out view in ways that are impossible when the story rushes by like an out-of-control roller coaster.

Time seems to slow down in quiet stories, and I treasure the chance to slow down, to take my time reading each word, turning details of the story over on the tip of my tongue without feeling rushed or forced to go faster than the pace that I feel comfortable with.

Yes, I admit there are times when I enjoy fast-paced, action-adventure stories and the roller-coaster feeling of falling and rising and falling again so quickly that the world is a blur of pure fear.

But it’s inevitably the quiet stories that take me deeper into life’s mysteries. Or maybe it’s just that quiet stories give me a chance to simply sit with the mystery of life.

At the heart of The Poet's Dog is the mystery of how human beings and animals recover from loss—a dog’s recovery from grief, a child’s recovery from fear, a mother and father’s recovery of their lost children.

It’s a story about restoring balance to the world, about waiting out a storm—whether that storm forms from the weather or grief or loss—and finding faith that life will regain its balance.

It’s also a story about passing on values of kindness, of courage, of hope and trust.

Editors, agents, and teachers may disagree, but I believe the world needs more “quiet” stories that give young readers space to think and to dream, stories that let us pause and appreciate what’s right in front of us, that help us learn how to live in the moment.

On the Edge of Becoming

Sunday morning sunrise

and the world awakens again,

the silence broken only by

the sound of your pen

scratching the surface

of the page.

It's the same each morning.

You don’t know what

your voice sounds like

until you take the risk

of opening your mouth

and letting the words

tumble out, half-formed,

until you let your pen

begin moving across the page,

to see what will flow,

not knowing what

you have to say

until you read the words

that appear beneath

your pen as it moves

across the page.

What can you say

about something so mysterious

as voice? Some people

think you can find it

if you devote the time

to search for it as if

it’s outside you like

hidden treasure or

an unmapped island, and

all you have to do is keep searching

and like an explorer (before satellites

and GPS) you'll stumble

upon it, if you're lucky.

But what if it’s not something

that exists outside you or

that you have to search for,

but, instead, is part of your body,

just like an arm or leg

or like your eyes or ears,

and it’s just a question

of listening intently and

letting it speak and being able

to acknowledge its presence,

like your heart or soul, a part of

your body that you become aware 

of when you pay close attention 

to your pulse, the way you pay 

close attention to your hopes

and dreams?

You find your voice, I think, only

when you stop searching for it,

when you step off the boat and

put down your pack and sit

and wait for it to emerge

on the page in front of you.

Open your ears and listen

to the silence for in the silence 

is your voice, your words

waiting to be spoken,

your stories or poems balanced

on the edge of becoming,

waiting to emerge.

A Snail’s Pace

This little guy, this snail (possibly known as the Globose Button or Mesomphix globosus, although I’m not a snail expert so I can’t be certain) is my hero, an inspiration for writers everywhere.

I love the patient way this snail moves, accepting the pace of his life as he inches forward without regard for what other species might think of him.

I love how he carries his shell on his back with pride. It reminds me of the way a writer carries his stories in an invisible sack in his imagination.

In each case the snail and the writer carry their homes—the shell and the sack of stories—with them, except one home is visible and the other invisible.

Most of all, I love the way the snail is absorbed in the task at hand, unperturbed by obstacles, focused on what he needs to do in order to take that next step, and the next, to reach his destination.

Of course, a snail doesn’t have an editor breathing down his neck shouting about a missed deadline. A snail doesn't need to worry about a broken computer keyboard or power outage or an empty ink cartridge.

Nor does the snail, I suspect, feel the same frustration as a writer at having to retrace his steps to find a different route, even after having gone many miles in the wrong direction.

But I love the snail’s devotion to movement, his persistence, his willingness to stick his head out and take risks, his desire to see just a little further than he might have been able to see from inside the safety of his shell.

The snail is such a vulnerable creature. His slow pace makes him ideal food for birds of prey, I suspect. And yet he keeps sticking his neck out, taking risks, searching for something that he hasn’t yet found. 

One step at a time—the snail is, after all, a monopod—he heads in a direction guided by some inner voice, some mysterious inner compass.

If a snail can listen to that inner voice and follow its own mysterious inner compass, so can we, don't you think?

If you want to see the grace, curiosity, and patience of the snail, click on this link to watch a brief YouTube video: http://www.jaxshells.org/treexx.htm

Stepping Out From Behind Our Masks

One of the most compelling features of poetry–and a book like Nikki Grimes’ Bronx Masquerade which mixes poetry with longer prose–is how the voice of the poems creates an intimacy on the page between reader and narrator, offering a glimpse into interior lives that are usually hidden from view.

Using words and images that are direct and raw, Grimes’ poems come straight from the hearts of her eighteen teenage narrators, each offering us a view of their hearts so stunningly and heart-breakingly clear that it feels as if we’ve stepped magically into their skin for a few brief moments.

Take a look at this poem as an example:

Mirror, Mirror
by Janelle Battle

Sisters under the skin,
we meet in the mirror,
our images superimposed
for one split second.
Ready or not,
I peer into your soul
and dive deep,
splash-landing
in a pool of pain
as salty and familiar
as the tears on my cheek.
Your eyes don’t like
what I see.
You don’t want to be me.
So you curse
and smash the mirror,
which gets you what?
A bit of blood,
a handful of glass splinters,
another source of pain.
(p. 72)

From the first line’s words–sisters under the skin–Grimes points a reader to a world beneath the surface, suggesting there is more to each of us than meets the eye. Our reflections in the mirror may fool us into thinking that we’re different from one another, but, underneath, we share something of the same souls.

Janelle, the narrator of this poem, is just one of the characters in this book who find themselves exploring difficult issues in their young lives as they navigate their way through Mr. Ward’s high school English class.

As the students complete their weekly poetry assignments and read their work aloud each week at the class’ Open Mike session, the narrators begin to discover how much they share in common with classmates who may seem like strangers. Over the course of the year of writing poetry, they come to see one another, not as aliens from other planets or as potential threats, but, rather, as potential friends.

Grimes works her magic in prose, too, not just poetry.

Here’s an excerpt from the narrative that precedes "Mirror, Mirror":

“Look, I am nothing like you, okay?” she spit out. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re fat and I’m not. And you’re wrong about my poem. It was just words. It didn’t mean anything. You got that?” And she slammed out of the bathroom and left me there, stinging from the inside out.

I bit my lip to keep the tears back. I turned the faucet on and washed my hands a few times, staring at the sink until I heard Sheila step out into the hall. I glanced up at the mirror before I left. “You’re wrong, Judianne,” I said to the mirror. “They weren’t just words, and you know it.”

In this example, as in so many other passages in Bronx Masquerade, Grimes captures the subtle intonations of speech, the almost invisible emotional weight that words carry (often unbeknownst to their speakers), and succeeds in recreating, too, the pacing and timing of speech, conveying through words, both poetry and prose, how each speaker feels behind their words and behind the masks that they try to create with their words.

Life in the Bronx might require teens to play their roles as part of a masquerade to survive, and maybe that’s the way life is for teens no matter where they grow up today, whether it’s the south Bronx or suburban Houston or Sarasota or inner-city LA.

But no matter where teen readers (and writers) might live, they can open Grimes’ work and meet eighteen young teens who find the courage and strength to step out from behind their masks, to face the world as they truly are, and to tell the truth about themselves in the poems they share with us.

For more about Nikki Grimes and Bronx Masquerade, visit: http://www.nikkigrimes.com/