Month: October 2020

Greetings, fellow humans! I’m happy to report that my second draft of “Spinstress Craft: Magick for the Independent Witch” is in to Llewellyn! Apparently it has moved on to a new editor through the production team and soon I’m sure I’ll be complaining about more edits. For now, though, I’m taking the win. I’ve also turned in my latest column to Sage Woman Magazine. No spoilers!

This blog is going to be about writing. Not only my own, but the writing of as many people as possible. November, after all, is National Novel Writing Month (shortened by devotees to NaNoWriMo).

NaNoWriMo is about empowering the voices of anyone, young or old, to write. As defined on their website:

National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand new novel. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.

NaNoWriMo is a free community resource which helps anyone at all to become “a writer.” Or, as dubbed in that community, a “wrimo.” I publish this now in order to help spread the word because now is the time to prepare an outline and get ready for the November wrimo sprint.

NaNoWriMo is a great movement that seeks to empower young writers, self-doubting writers, and writers who never thought they had the “right to write.” This part is a big deal. People with the most privilege have always defined what is “good” writing. By privilege I mean, among other things, the education, writing time, and frankly the audacity to think their voices should be heard. They also tend to possess the peers who will support and validate their writing and academic structures that normalize their voices.

The women I admire as ancestors wrote up against that pressure. I’m talking Mary Wollstonecraft and then her daughter, Mary W Shelley. I’m talking Margaret Cavendish, Jane Austen, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Louisa May Alcott. Among others, of course. Even J.K. Rowling pushed back against domestic violence, economic challenges, and a publishing world that saw her books as unmarketable when she first got started.

I’ve studied all these authors and I noticed that more than half of them referred to their writing as “scribbles.” While I’m sure they were being modest, I’m pretty sure there was something else at work. I feel they knew in order to “earn” the support of the men in their lives (personal and publishing) that they had to diminish their work and pass it off as less than the “real” writing of heteronormative upper class white men.

Now a days, cis-gender white women have more writing privilege. More, unfortunately, than people who are trans-gender, q+, not white, or differently-able bodied. So on. Who gets to write and who gets to be read is always a bit of a rigged game. It is precisely that loaded cultural deck that NaNoWriMo is trying to replace with a fresh stack of literary opportunities for everybody else.

Readers, let me tell you a secret. Sssshhh, lean in.

This time of year, writers are all around you. Local libraries and book shops often open up special times for wrimos to come write together or simply enjoy the encouragement of being acknowledged for their efforts. NaNoWriMo is sort of like the magical world Rowling created for Harry Potter. You don’t even see it if you don’t think to look. The normal landscape of mundane life is secretly draped with dragons, fairies, time-travelers and knights. Thousands of writers crank out fantasy, horror, romance, memoirs, chapbooks of poetry and plays.

November, once you know about the wrimo community, is a great time to feel encouraged as a writer. I’ve taken part three different years. The one wrimo draft I did that became a published book (so far) is Revenant: Blood Justice. Yep, that was a NaNoWriMo book. I also did a full length juvenile sci-fi manuscript during another year that I haven’t marketed. The third year, I didn’t finish. I had an idea for a fantasy script, probably for young adults, that I did all the October prep, character sketches, and outlines for. Once I got into November and started writing, though, I realized the first couple of chapters were all I really had to say! Living with characters and their story as intensely as you do during NaNoWriMo is like going on a cross-country RV trip with a dozen or so strangers. I decided I couldn’t take it. As a result of doing the prep, though, I still had a very productive November. I ended up writing a couple of scripts and short stories instead. So, I’d suggest any writer who plans to try it just go with the experience and allow yourself to be creative in whatever way organically happens.

I don’t know what it will be like during the pandemic, but this November event usually involves coordinated opportunities for the writers to meet both virtually and within their communities. Readings, workshops, and peer support are offered. I once went to my local library to write during a NaNoWriMo designated time, and I seemed to be the only one there. At first I was discouraged, but my goddess. The librarian was as delighted to see me as if she’d just found a unicorn leaching the wifi in the periodical wing (which unicorns in fact frequently do). She hovered over me in both a flattering and rather disconcerting way. She even served me a cup of tea. In the middle of the library. No kidding! That’s the kind of encouragement writers can get if they come forth with their aspirations during November.

Besides moral support, NaNoWriMo is helpful for aspiring writers who want the accountability of a community and even a deadline. You definitely want to practice writing for a deadline, even one self-imposed, before you ever try writing for a legally-contracted one. It’s a great way to learn how you engage with that process. I find it often varies from project to project. Of course, it also gets impacted by the rest of your life. What I can tell you, as I shared recently with a fellow author, writing for two deadlines at the same time when I had a lot else going on and wasn’t really “feeling it” was akin to shitting glass. I think. Never tried it. I’m a writer though, so I sometimes embellish rather recklessly. And digress, as I intend to do right now. Perhaps moved by the sound of October rain pounding and rattling my roof tarp, I feel moved to discuss the literary advantages of a rickety country house.

There are certain charms to living in a slightly derelict house. Especially, I suppose, if you are a writer. My own MFSH (mortgage free shabby house or, when I’m angry about repairs, mortgage free shit hole), has many charms. I tap the maple trees each year (getting a bit better at it with the help of friends each time) and the shelves in the cellar stairway are crammed with preserves. The place has interesting cubbies and closets. The foundation dates back to the 1700s. People have claimed to see visions of a Revolution-era ghost. Of course the cellar looks like it’s three hundred years old, but I’m not about complaining right now. I have almost twenty acres of swampy woods out back. The beavers have landscaped the field. A little old lady who grew up here back in the way-back-when came and visited once when I was a kid. She explained to us how the woodshed used to be the “summer kitchen,” complete with water pump, elaborate wood stove, and embellished tin ceiling. It’s now considerably less elegant. It’s more like a mud room in the truest sense of the term. It does feature a cat condo, a garden potting table, and a ton of firewood, though.

My stalwart Swedish ancestors had an old saying that I keep up in the kitchen… “Bättre grov kaka än ingen smaka.” It basically means, “Better coarse bread than none at all.” In other words, be grateful for what you’ve got. It’s a great motto for those of us in the MFSH club.

There is certainly a creative aspect to living in a MFSH. I am reminded strongly of the Alcott’s place in Concord, which Louisa May referred to fondly as “apple slump.” Their old New England house seems pretty similar to mine. In it’s current form as a museum I’m sure it’s in better repair than mine, but they get to take in donations.

Lousia’s attic paradise where the character Jo March wrote books and put on theatricals is similar to my home’s second floor. The Alcott place was also called “Orchard House.” In fact, an apple tree is growing up over my woodshed and practically part of the building. Clingy and mischievous, it likes to hurl apples at my head this time of year during windy weather. Other than that it’s not bad. I’ve had to trim off a few branches but picking high fruit is easy when all I have to do is scramble up on the shed roof.

My other literary muse for DIY and home decorating would have to be Molly Weasley from J.K. Rowling’s Potter-verse. Their place, the Borough, as featured in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, is described as a creaky and tippy house of wonders that “burst with the strange and unexpected.” That’s a great description of your standard MFSH, for better or worse.

The Borough featured gnomes in the garden, a “clanking ghoul” in the attic (who “howled and dropped pipes whenever he thought things were getting too quiet”), and a ton of books and mismatched kitsch crammed in between. I only wish I knew how to do hands-free-magical housekeeping like Mrs. Weasley. In truth, that shit doesn’t do itself. Speaking of which (and witch)….

Now that I have a break from deadline writing, I’m working on that other seasonal project which also tends to require a lot of revision. That being the wood pile. I’m trying to cram about three cords of wood into the area where little-granny-who-knows once boiled her porridge. I really like working outside in the autumn, though. There’s something about the quality of the air that is very (thesaurus, please,) inspiriting. Yes, that’s a thing. Check the thesaurus. Tis the season for yard work and also for writing. Hence, NaNoWriMo.

I think it’s a great idea to have National Novel Writing Month in November. Autumn is a great time to be a writer. Rustling leaves sound like rustling pages, don’t you think? Wet trees smell like freshly sharpened pencils. Come Halloween, we have an ages-old human tradition of reaching out to the realms of the unseen and dressing up to become someone or something else. It’s a great time to purge old experiences and create world-scapes of new ones. Somewhere between the two, the author and hopefully the reader can sometimes find empowerment or even healing. At least a little fun.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandmother and mother and their aspirations as writers. In a hailstorm of synchronicity, I’ve recently found a bunch of my grandmother’s things, including some of said writing. My understanding from my mom and some other relatives is that my grandmother, Hester Adelaide Hammill (1902-1982), led an independent life. As a single mom (in fact, a divorcee) in the forties, she was not always welcomed into polite society. She was a flapper, an artist, and a tough, free spirit. Yet it wasn’t easy. Often living in poverty and close to despair, she turned to writing and photography as sources of expression and of hope. The rest of the time she usually earned money as a house keeper for the richy riches around Camden. Reputedly her fave movie was “Sabrina,” in which the chauffer’s daughter on such an estate made good (of course, by marrying one of the rich guys).

My grandmother tried repeatedly to have her stories published. She did a novel also, entitled “Once Upon Some Trifling Trystings.” She illustrated all of her writing with her accompanying photographs. Most of them featured birds and nature. Her attempts to be published were too often met with rejection, as is the lot of most authors. In those days, of course, it was even harder for women to be published than it still is now. As far as my mother recalls, the prime literary achievement Hester attained was publication in the Women’s Home Companion. She also had a couple of pieces about bird watching printed in other magazines. I was once told, I think by my mother, that one publisher confided in Hester that she should be writing romances rather than nature essays. I think that’s why she wrote the manuscript I shorthand as “Trystings.” It’s perfectly well written but I don’t think it was in her comfort zone.

I still have an incomplete copy of Trystings, typed up and covered with editorial notes. In a lot of ways it is, of course, jarringly anachronistic. While written to be a contemporary romance, it features amusing moments, like where an automotive “machine” interrupts the quietude of Main Street. Since Hester loved birds, I enjoy noticing the ways she wove them all through the novel. The characters discuss the habits of local pigeons, flirt over bird-watching endeavors, and the heroine keeps a large flock of hens that she describes in several chapters. My favorite quote from the book, however, is as follows:

They went inside and took chairs in the small enclosure that was reserved as a waiting room for the trolley line and he divided his newspaper with her, settling himself immediately to reading the section in his hands.

He read in silence at first, suddenly breaking it with, “Here’s some bird news that’s not in our bird book. It says here that every right-minded woman should realize that there were sold last year at the London plume sales the scapular feathers of one hundred and ninety thousand egrets, and the skins of more than twenty-eight thousand birds of paradise, to be used in decorating women’s hats. Not to mention another sad feature of the situation–the sale of the tail-feathers of hundreds of lyre-birds, and of quills of the albatross. The woman who goes to church and bows a head decorated at such cost is a fit subject for investigation by the new psychology.”

Hester A Hammill, Once Upon Some Trifling Trystings

I love the way she put her joys and concerns about birds into the story. As a vegan and animal rights advocate, I also love that she cared about these things. It’s something I never knew about her. She is someone who could have really grown her voice, maybe even her publishing career, if she’d had the encouragement that writers are offering one another today. Besides NaNoWriMo, there are other resources to help women address the publishing gender gaps in different genres. I imagine that one Hester could have really benefitted from might be Women Who Submit (for women and non-binary writers), which in my experience tends to focus more on helping women break into literary journals and the memoir or poetry markets. Let’s face it, they also bagged a bad-ass name.

Next comes my mom, born Mary Jane Hammill in 1942. The biggest thing that happened in my mom’s young life was when the movie version of “Peyton Place” filmed in her home town of Camden. It seems creepy how Mary Jane is so mirrored by the youthful main (Maine) character. Like her, my mom was valedictorian at the local high school and a regular contributor to the town paper. She was very interested in acting and she authored several plays.

Like the movie/book character (named Allison), Mary Jane couldn’t wait to get out of Maine and take a bite out of the Big Apple. As I’ve mentioned, she met my dad while they were both working in editorial at McGraw Hill in NYC.

When that movie was filmed in Camden, though, my mom was a junior in high school. She had a great time collecting autographs from cast and crew on all the photos she took of them during the shoot. One of my step-grandfathers was an extra in some of the scenes. Since my mom knows so much about that movie, watching it is more like seeing home movies.

Anyhow, as a writer and actor and in many other ways, Mary Jane saw herself primarily as an entertainer. She was a “cut-up” and very popular as a creative presence pretty much anywhere she went. Of course, the Big Apple ended up taking a bigger bite out of her (as seems often to be the case). She ended up back in Camden with a baby (hi, there), and her second divorce to contend with. Then again, those divorces led to her career. She wound up taking an office job to pay one of the attorneys and worked as a freelance paralegal/legal secretary for over forty years. I have known her as an undaunted and skillful editor, for which I am very grateful. I’ll have to publish more of her writing later. It’s all squirreled away.

At the time when I found all these images and put them together, I had attended a zoom church service in which a song called (I think) “Roots and Wings” was performed. Seeing my grandma, mom and myself lined up together gave me sort of a rooted feeling. At the same time, contemplating our writings and our dreams kind of feels like the wings. Of course, there are also the literal birds my grandmother loved so much.

Hester always taught us that seeing three crows together was very lucky. I grew up hearing my mom and her always saying, “Look! Three crows!” in delight. I still do that and I know I am partly seeing the three birds as a symbol for the three of us. Crows are sometimes seen as tricksters, and even more as messengers between the seen and unseen realms. Kind of like writers, I guess. They certainly are when it comes to my family.

As for me and my writing, all my readers know what sort of trouble I tend to get into. I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year. I expect the next draft of Spinstress will be coming back to me any time. You can keep an eye out for my column in the next Sage Woman. Or, for that matter, in the last one if you missed it. I believe the last issue contained my thoughts about the magickal, transformative butterfly. Born literally in the shit and transforming themselves into something fancy. Lepidoptera are hard core.

Beyond that, I am looking into ways to e-publish a couple of things on Kindle Direct. I don’t want to jump in without making sure it’s really good quality, so it’s a process. One of the prime candidates would be “Prometheus Strain,” the sci-fi project I did once as a wrimo.

In the meantime, I do have some things still on print through Amazon. My fave for the Halloween season remains “Catherine Hill,” which is available still in the “Northern Frights” anthology by Grinning Skull Press. They’re a nice little publishing house prone to doing charity anthologies and the like. Another for our Bucksport fam would be “When Your Time Has Come,” a ghost story about local legend, Sarah Ware. That one is in this ghost story anthology by Zimbell House.

Happy reading and writing everyone. Whether you are a wrimo or a supporter, the autumn air will tantalize you with hints of stories past, present and tumbling out of someone right now. To close I offer a poem (below) that perhaps writers might understand. Some special readers as well.

Open me carefully.

My binding is worn thin and frail from too much tension

too much push and pull. Stretching wide and then snapping shut

a wasted effort to protect my pages that even when closed

will yellow and rot.

Look kindly on the chapters I share with you.

Normally I redact them to protect my truth, so the reader

stumbles clumsily through stuttering phrases

cut apart and watered down.

I will show you, only you the rough drafts and unpolished phrases as well as

the carefully polished gems that I worked and worked after dark

until they were clear enough to let me sleep, and in the morning

they looked like some stranger’s’ epiphanies.

I will show you, only you the things I keep hidden in the secret pages

that I never even dare to read myself.