Raising Sisters, Not Rivals

When Megan was born a mere fourteen months after Elizabeth , I was elated. Sisters! And almost the same age—not like me, popping up to everyone’s surprise when my brothers and sisters were nearly teens. I pictured them holding hands on the walk to the first day at school, sharing nervous giggles backstage at dance recitals, giving reassuring smiles to each other at the first notes of the Wedding March. But soon enough my mind began muttering, surrounding my joy with insecurity. Raising daughters is tricky. They don’t just adore their mothers forever unconditionally, the way sons do. If they turn out all wrong, or even slightly wrong, they’ll blame me. (As a daughter, I felt certain of this.) Before I was even out of the hospital I began to worry about my little girls’ relationship with each other. My own sister came to help me after Megan was born. I asked her how I could avoid the seemingly unavoidable rivalry that so often crops up between siblings born so close together. I figured she was an authority on the subject. She and my other sister are only eleven months apart. What I was really asking was, “How can I make sure they don’t have the same relationship you two have?”

Her advice was quick. “Just don’t ever compare them to each other.”

My sisters love one another, of course, but there has been a certain amount of tension that has manifested over the years. In the mildest form it shows up as sarcasm and anger expressed in jest; at other times as emotional war.

I’ve followed her advice for the past three years, but it has not always been as easy as I thought it would be. Though born close together, my daughters’ personalities couldn’t be more different. There is the temptation to say, “See, Megan picks up her toys without being asked,” or “Elizabeth is a big girl. She doesn’t throw a fit in swimming class.” But I remind myself there is damage those comparisons could do that I wouldn’t be aware of for years. I want them have all the good things I imagine for them, but nothing more than a best friend who also happens to be a sister. That’s not to say that there won’t be times when one is resentful of the other’s accomplishments:



But most often they are kind to each other, even when they don’t know I’m listening (“Your dress is beautiful, Elizabeth.” “I love how you colored that dog purple, Megan.”).
And every once in a while I catch them in the act of spontaneous sharing:




Those are the times I think maybe—just maybe—I’m doing something right.

- Tiffany

Mommy's Lil' Art Critics

Today, just for fun and because I’m sick of struggling with Bendaroos, I asked Elizabeth and Megan to analyze Jackson Pollock’s 1948 painting Number 1 (left).

“What does this picture look like to you?” I hold out my Art Appreciation book and both girls crowd in to take a look.

Elizabeth replies, in true Elizabeth fashion, “Garbage.”

Megan chimes in with, “A tree.” Wow. I get that.

“Sticks? It’s sticks!” Elizabeth is hunched over the book, staring intently at the brown and red and white and tan and black scribbled, dribbled mess.

“What do you feel like when you look at this picture? Happy or sad?”

“Happy.” Elizabeth.

“Sad.” Megan.

“Why happy?”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth says and shrugs. “I just like it.”

“Why sad?”

“Because,” Megan says, finding it silly to state the obvious. “Garbage doesn’t make anyone happy.”

So. In spite of all our best efforts to weave symbolism into our work and include levels of complexity that will stir emotions, we run the risk of people liking our creation “just because.” And some will just think it’s garbage. Sort of takes the pressure off.

“Garbage makes Oscar happy!” Elizabeth can hardly finish her sentence, she’s giggling so much. They bust up and forget all about Jackson Pollock.

That’s the trouble with trying to have an art discussion with preschoolers. They always bring everything back to Sesame Street.

- Tiff

Finding the "Write" Fit

The other night I watched an American Masters episode on PBS about Louisa May Alcott. As a result, I have become intrigued with the life of Alcott, and oh, how I love to feel intrigued! Have you ever watched a really good movie in which the characters were so complex and compelling that you found yourself thinking of them in the small hours of the night when you got up to go to the bathroom? This was like that.

Now, I have to admit that I only read a portion of Little Women when I was about ten or eleven and that I didn’t like it. I don’t remember why, but it didn’t enthrall me the way other books did. I think I will give it a second chance, knowing now that the book was nearly autobiographical. That’s the way it is with writers—we are secret exhibitionists. We put the intimate details of our lives and thoughts and hidden opinions out there through our characters, whether by accident or design. It’s a pleasant validation when someone thinks we’re worth reading about.

Among the many things about Alcott that resonated with me was how she came to success as a writer (considerable success—she was selling short stories for $200 in the 1850s. That’s roughly what I receive for my work today!). Alcott didn’t dream of writing children’s literature, let alone of becoming the J.K. Rowling of her day. She wrote for kids because that’s what was selling—that’s what paid well. Her real love was writing for adults, pushing the boundaries of convention with risqué tales written anonymously or behind the guise of a nom de plume. Alcott was no doubt appreciative of the comforts her prolific career as a children’s author afforded her, but maybe not as fulfilled as she hoped to be. It reminded me that writing careers often come about in different ways than we imagine they will.

I did not dream of becoming a writer for the Chicken Soup series of books. Before I sold my first story to Chicken Soup for the Child’s Soul, I never read a Chicken Soup book. The series, in my mind, was a gift book series, and I never received one as a gift. I had sold a story for the teen anthology True Volume 2, compiled by Irene Dunlap, one of the Chicken Soup editors. Before writing the story for True, I never considered that I might be able to write for the juvenile market. I simply read the story callout on Craigslist for inspirational stories for teens and I knew that I had something to offer. Shortly after the publication of “The New Girl” in True Vol. 2, I sent a story off to Ms. Dunlap for Chicken Soup for the Child’s Soul and it was accepted. I discovered that I enjoyed everything about writing for kids—the truth demanded in the storytelling, the discipline it requires, the fun of it. I have published more for adults than I have for kids, but I consider myself first a writer for children and young adults, because that’s where my heart is. In the same way, I suspect, Louisa May Alcott might have thought of herself as a writer for adults.

If you are a writer, even a published author in a specific genre, and you are feeling unfulfilled with what you’re writing, take a look at your bookshelves. Think about how you feel when you enter the children’s section of a bookstore or library. Maybe you’re meant to write for kids. If, during all the days I spent writing stories for adults that I never liked well enough to send out, I had taken inventory of my own bookshelf and made note of what gave me joy I would have seen E.B. White there with D.H. Lawrence and Konigsberg next to Kipling. Now Alcott will be there, too.

- Tiff

Writing Resolutions

I stopped making the obligatory New Year’s resolutions many moons ago. It’s like I tell my four-year-old when she’s pressing me to “cross my heart” about something: Don’t promise. Just say “I will,” “I won’t,” or “I’ll try.” I always felt that life’s disappointments were much easier to accept if there wasn’t the added sting of a broken promise. The same holds true for promises I make to myself. Like everyone, I’m made up of good and bad personality traits, and one of my rotten ones is a strong tendency to procrastinate. I procrastinate about doing the stuff almost nobody likes to do (taxes and root canals), as well as about the stuff I love to do (blog and work on my kids’ scrapbooks). Who knows why? I’m done with making a promise to myself, breaking it, and hating myself for it. Now I accept the fact that despite my best intentions, I’m a chronic procrastinator and it hinders me from keeping most specific resolutions. I tolerate the irritation I feel when I can’t get something done, and relish the moments when I shun the “I’ll do it later” mentality and accomplish, like normal people. I have noticed that there is one area in which I have consistently pushed through my put-it-off nature and achieved my small goals: Writing. At the risk of jinxing myself, I think that this year’s writing goals will be named “Resolutions” in my mind. Here’s my short list:

1. Write Ever Day. This seems too obvious to make the list, but if you’re a mother of small children, you know finding time to write can be a daunting task. If you are a procrastinating mother of small children then you know it’s almost impossible. Almost. I’m not like all those admirable (and successful) writers you read about who wrote their best-sellers in a busy coffee shop on their lunch breaks, or like Stephen King who says he likes to write with rock music blasting. I like busy coffee shops and I like blasting rock music, but when I’m writing I need quiet. I also need a space devoted just to the task of writing—somewhere away from the fridge and the laundry and the TV. I now have a quiet space to write, thanks to my near-perfect, always supportive husband’s quick thinking. We have a three-family house with a vacant apartment on the second floor. Suddenly, the burden of not having the apartment rented has become a blessing. I can sit up here with the snow collecting on the bare branches scraping the window and the kettle whistling in the empty kitchen and just write. I have a good baby monitor that I can turn on. Or not.

2. Complete the final draft of my mid-grade novel. This is so achievable, it scares me. I wrote the first draft of my novel Miranda Murray, Carny Kid two years ago in the span of one month. I did this by completing a chapter every two days—one day of “writing like hell without looking back”, a second day for revisions. When it was done I read it over, created a chapter outline that I posted on the wall where I could see it as I worked, and began the process over again. This time I aimed for a chapter a week. I wrote the chapters, sometimes transferring chunks of the rough draft intact, other times completely re-working the original plot. One of the most beneficial things I did at this time was to join a critique group called New York Writers. We met at different locales in Manhattan bi-weekly and reviewed each other’s work. Most of the others were working on short stories, and I submitted the chapters of my manuscripts. Their suggestions were invaluable, and I hope that my schedule permits me to meet with them again one of these days. Regular life intruded upon my writing life for awhile in the form of returning to school and having a third baby. I recently hauled out my files and took stock of where I am in the process of writing this book. I have five polished chapters and twelve to go. I want to complete the manuscript in time for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators annual Winter Conference in New York on January 29-31. This means that I have to hustle like it’s 1977.

3. Attend the annual SCBWI Winter Conference. For years I read about the seasonal conferences for SCBWI and thought of how great it would be to attend. Since I lived in San Francisco and the conferences are held in New York and Los Angeles, it seemed financially out of range. To go would have meant registration fees of at least $350, plus airfare, transportation and hotel. Now that we live twelve miles west of Manhattan, all I have to come up with is registration. To make matters better, a weekend train between my town and New York was added in November, which means I can spend all day rubbing elbows with fellow authors, agents, and publishers, and be back home in Jersey in time to make dinner!

4. Get an Agent. I’m hoping this will happen at the conference, but if not, I plan to start a major query campaign as soon as I’m home.

I once saw a book in Barnes and Noble called Stop Procrastinating Now! I remember laughing because my mind formed a mental picture of all the well-meaning souls who bought that book, took it home, put it on their bookshelf where it languished unopened for years before winding up on a yard sale table. We procrastinators want to change, honest we do. Here’s to a new year, and a new set of writing goals that I will achieve. I’m crossing my fingers, not my heart.

- Tiff

The Art of Eavesdropping

You can’t ever completely know a place unless you’ve been raised there, but you can learn to act like a native if you spend enough hours observing a culture. Only the true natives will know there is something just a little off; maybe it’s the way you call your pocketbook a purse, or say that you’re stoked about that awesome art exhibit at the Met. Those of us from the West Coast think we “know” that New Yorkers are rude and that the city is unbearably loud. In three years of living on the East Coast I’ve never met a rude New Yorker. What I have met are genuine New Yorkers who say what they think without worrying about being politically correct. It’s such a welcome change from what I knew in San Francisco I want to wear it on a tee-shirt: I heart New Yorkers.

As loud as the city can be, it can also be unexpectedly peaceful and quiet—right in the middle of the bustle. Somehow, the collective din of traffic noises seems to fade and the individual sounds sharpen in a pleasant way. I can hear my own flats padding the pavement, the sizzle of kabobs on the streetcart grills, and the hum of conversations crackling around me like a party line. Listening to how other people talk is my favorite technique for honing my ear for dialect.

I’ve found that eavesdropping is invaluable for learning to write like people speak. I think that there are writers who are perfect at crafting believable dialogue, and some who are considered the best writers ever to have tapped a keyboard that are terrible at it. Nineteenth century English author Thomas Hardy had a flawless grasp of the colloquial. While Hardy (in my opinion the greatest of the Victorian English novelists) wrote believable and consistent dialogue for all of his characters, it’s in the language of the commoner where you can hear Hardy’s poetry. You can feel his love for the uneducated character, and his respect for the dialect that defines them. Contemporary writer Elizabeth Berg can write in any voice and it transports you to the kitchen table in Texas, or the tenement in Chicago, or under a porch with two whispering eleven-year-olds. I think Berg’s talent for creating realistic dialogue was helped by the fact that she was an “army brat” and raised around people from a myriad of backgrounds. This might be unsettling for a child, but great training for the budding writer. Berg has even written convincingly in the first person as a male character! The only Elizabeth Berg novel in which the dialogue sounds forced is in Dream When You’re Feeling Blue, a book set in Chicago in the nineteen-forties. I think this is because while Berg may know Chicagoans and may even know Chicagoans who experienced the culture there in the nineteen-forties, she is too young to have spent much time really listening to the conversations going on in that era. Does this mean that a writer shouldn’t write historical fiction unless they have access to a time machine? Of course not. I think that the old adage “write what you know” is the most misunderstood writing advice of all time. Writing what you know doesn’t mean that you can never write about being a parent until you have kids, or that you have to shelve that idea about a cat who wins the Westminster Kennel Show because you’ve never owned a cat or a dog. It just means that before you try to write about a subject, learn all you can about that subject—know it, as fully as you can know something without having experienced it firsthand. The best historical novels focus on unchanging human nature, and use slang and colloquialisms sparingly, like seasoning.

No doubt I’ll get lots of disagreement here, but I’ve always thought that one of the many maddening things about the writing of Ernest Hemingway is that all of his characters sound the same—male and female. Stephen King is a master in many areas, but his Southern characters always have a Mainer rhythm to their speech. I feel qualified to say that, since I grew up in a family of Southern transplants, hearing the Southern way in which they spoke and the Southern words they used. If I know what a Mainer accent sounds like at all it’s due to King’s dialogue, so that is a testament to how well he writes the voices he really knows.

When I get a good piece of dialogue I listen and make notes on the speaker. Sometimes I make notes while I’m listening, and sometimes it has to wait until I step out of line at Starbucks or out of a bathroom stall. I write the dialogue exactly the way the speaker says it, describe the people talking and the setting in which the conversation is taking place, and then file it for future use. The bit of dialogue needn’t be long, just telling. I want to be able to infer something about the speaker from his or her words, and then I can flesh out the rest. Those words often become the seeds of character. Below is a moment of dialogue I overheard a couple of weeks ago while I sat in a patch of quiet in Bryant Park, near the corner of 42nd in Manhattan. While my husband took our girls to ride the carousel, I fed my two-month-old and listened to the conversations ebbing and flowing around me in the unusually balmy November air. Eventually my ear singled out one in particular, coming from a table just to my left.

“Hey! I thought you was gone. I ain’t seen you all day.” A man wearing a dirty beanie and a brown jacket layered over what looks like all the clothes he owns calls out to another man in a similar costume.

“I was here,” the other man says. “I was here, then I went and took a nap. Nice day.”

“Yeeah, nice. Warm.”

The season’s first ice skaters are spinning and falling and timidly slip-walking in the rink. We’re sitting between the Empire State Building, blazing blue and white for those lucky Yankees, and the Chrysler Building, which has made the transition from sleek and modern to sophisticated antique so gracefully. The man in the beanie stands and holds out one of the wrought iron chairs for his friend, the way you would hold out a dining room chair for a guest before tea is served. Soon it will be night, and the inviting chairs will be chained up and the men beside me shooed out of the park like bothersome pigeons. But right now the seat is his to offer.

Dear Diary

I was never a "dear diary" kind of kid. I once thought that girls who wrote in diaries were either stupid if they thought a cheap little brass lock could really keep their mothers away from their secrets, or that they were hoping someone would read what they wrote between the flowery pink covers. In the first place, nothing would keep my mom from reading my innermost thoughts, if she found them written down "in plain sight," (i.e., under my bed in a shoebox marked PRIVATE). In the second, what's the point of writing in a diary if you hope someone will read it? You couldn't be honest, not totally honest. So, I never really got into diaries, though I did try to have a notebook like my hero Harriet M. Welsh from Harriet the Spy. All that honesty backfired on Harriet, and I lost interest in writing half-truths.

Then I discovered the most famous diarist in literature, Anne Frank. When I was twelve years old I read her diary for the first time, like many twelve-year-olds. I read it in the mouldy bedroom of the one-bedroom apartment I shared with my mom . Her beautiful words made me feel rich. When I was in my late twenties I visited Anne's room in Amsterdam. I actually stood in front of The Diary and I swear I couldn't breathe. My mind took in every detail: The red checkered cover, the slant of Anne's adolescent girly writing, the picture of her and her sister Margot at the beach pasted to the page. I think that Anne began writing in her diary with the same vain illusions with which lots of little girls write in theirs, and hoped subconsciously that someone might read it and know she was special. Later I think she wrote in it with the hope that someone would just know that she lived. Now the world knows that she lived and that she was incredibly special. Funny how things turn out.

When I first heard about blogs I thought they were just glorified diaries, or worse, a forum for the opinionated to blab about their views on everything (I'll admit that appealed to me somewhat). I still think they can often be both. I do understand the cathartic benefits of writing--if I didn't, I probably wouldn't be a writer. The wonderful thing about writing fiction is that you get to be as honest as you want about everything (you HAVE to be honest to be good, in my opinion, but more on that in another post) and you get to channel all that honesty through made-up characters! Brilliant. This blog, on the other hand, will be just me. Typos, grammatical errors, contradictions and all.

I want this blog to be a springboard for me every morning (or every other)--the all-important "warm up" that will prepare me for the mental workout of writing for real. I plan to share my thoughts about being a mommy and being a writer, because I can't have a blog about one without writing about the other. Being a mommy makes me a better writer, and when I'm writing I'm a better mommy.

So sneak into my room, search through my drawers and under my bed. Read my diary. I'll try to write like no one's watching.

- Tiff