Sometimes adding a new character is just what your story needs: a quirky and original element to stir things up.
We folded a new character into the ongoing Kvasnosky family saga in mid-April when we brought home Charley (short for Charlotte) from Salem, Oregon.
My favorite story characters bring internal and external intrigue. They have attributes and deficits that enhance the plot; needs that shape the narrative. Charley is an entertaining addition and her needs certainly shape the narrative.
Luckily, my husband John has volunteered to get up with her at the crack of dawn.
She has two main speeds: buzz bomb and conked out, though sometimes there’s an in-between speed when she’s processing pinecones on the back lawn. She has already become a studio pup, providing a soft snore symphony as I write.
It’s fun getting to know this new character. She’s 14 weeks old, soft and adorable. Already she is beloved by the whole family. Last weekend, when we gathered to celebrate our son’s birthday, she took every one of her naps snuggled on a lap. I hope we are not spoiling her.
So far she’s injected lots of humor into the story, too, like with her contortionist poses during lap naps. And when she climbed up on the patio table to chew a little action figure.
She also injects some drama, like when she gets lost between the fence and the back bushes. Thank God she’s already good on recall and returns when we call.
She has several nicknames: Cowbelly and Miss Moo because of the spots on her tummy, and ChaCha and Pumpkin. Also The Termite because of her penchant for chewing on anything she can get into her mouth, including the legs of chairs.
I was glad to learn she shares my interest in gardening.
It has been about 20 years since we brought home a puppy, also a springer spaniel, and we realize we have a lot to learn. So we signed up for puppy kindergarten classes at a wonderful place called Ahimsa which uses positive conditioning to train pups. The first thing we learned is that we need treats that are more attractive to Charley than the other pups. But we’re pretty sure the training will work because Charley is chewing her way through the Dog Training Manual, too.
I know it is early February, but already I am on the lookout for signs of spring.
In my garden the witch hazel named Arnold’s Promise has kept his promise and is covered with yellow frizzy ribbon flowers.
Snowdrops are popping up through the leaves.
And I am looking for something to bloom in my studio as well. After months of recuperating from knee replacement surgery, I am getting back to regular sitzfleisch – and it feels really good to be back at my desk.
My Portland friend, author Margaret Bechard, cautions not to talk about work in progress so it won’t lose its impetus to be born. I am at that stage with this project, so enough said. But hopefully, with some regular watering and sunshine, it will bloom.
We found plenty last summer at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. The ING bank had bannered the sky bridges with that well-known ‘do your thing” phrase pointed in many directions.
This one, especially, spoke to me.
Dreamers, do your thing.
But there was encouragement for everyone:
Sisters, do your thing Timezone hoppers, do your thing Wavemakers, do your thing Innovators, do your thing
Free spirits, do your thing Pioneers, do your thing Soulmates, do your thing Superheros, do your thing
Instagrammers, do your thing Deep thinkers, do your thing Techies, do your thing Movers and shakers, do your thing
Trendsetters, bucketlisters: the call to “do your thing” whatever that might be went on and on, sky bridge by sky bridge. As a group, they speak to how much humanity needs the fresh ideas of each individual.
With the help of photoshop I would add one more banner, for those of us toiling away at our desks and drawing tables:
Storymakers, do your thing. That’s part of the storymaker’s job description: figure out what it is that you have to say and shape it into a story. Happy creating!
I HAVE MOVED from place to place inside our house today, seeking a quiet spot where I can write this. Outside, workers move ladders from window to window preparing our house for painting. Their process and mine are fairly incompatible. But I will persist…
NOT LONG AGO, when our grandsons came for a sleepover, they brought along blueberries they had picked the day before with their parents.
We got busy making a pie, working together to roll out the dough and to fill it up. Right before we put it in the oven, I pointed out that it looked kind of patchy and homely — really not up to our usual best.
And my oldest grandson said, “When I look at that pie, Nana, I don’t just see a pie. I see all that went into it. I see us picking blueberries yesterday and the long drive – over one hour each way – to the blueberry fields. And I see you putting the ingredients in the bowl and us stirring it up and rolling it out.”
At age six he had already internalized an outlook that I am still trying to embrace at 72.
Not that I don’t get a lot of practice. You can’t make children’s books without a big appreciation for process. It takes lots of research, study, reading, sketching, pondering, writing and rewriting to create work that may, in the end, look kind of patchy and homely. I’m not complaining, because despite the uncertainty of the final product, I have the compensation of spending lots of time in the seductive hum of the creative zone. (Or is that my husband sanding on the other side of the wall? Argh.)
In any case, when I find myself feeling disappointed with the outcome of my creative endeavors, I remember that blueberry pie.
I first read Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life almost 30 years ago. Her insights into writing have stayed with me. Like the idea of writing for writing’s sake. “Publication is not all that it is cracked up to be,” she warns. “But writing is.”
And the importance of finding the right people to critique with. (Thank you, BooksAroundTheTable “batties.”)
And “All good stories are out there waiting to be told in a fresh, wild way… what you have to offer is your own sensibility.“
But most of all, Lamott’s advice right there in the title reminds me to stick with the work, to keep it moving forward a little at a time. Bird by bird. That expression was coined when her brother, age ten, had struggled to create a report on birds. Their father sat down beside him, put an arm around his shoulder and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
So goes this post. Bird by bird.
It starts with the mystery of the bird nests. Walking up our driveway in mid-May, I found three nests carefully lined up across the road. Where did they come from? I could see no broken branches above. Besides, three nests falling from the same tree in a line? Really? I asked the few neighbors who know about my bird nest collection, but no one would own up to leaving three nests lined up on our driveway.
Two weeks later, our grandsons were here for a sleepover and we started playing with the Merlin app. You know, the phone app that listens and then identifies birds by their sonograms. Our eight-year old grandson took 13 different recordings – mostly two minutes long, but one the length of time it takes to put on his pajamas — then he tabulated and charted his findings.
I had no idea there are so many birds in our woods.
The following day we trekked up to Edison WA, in the verdant Skagit Valley to hear our friend Elizabeth Sandvig talk about Bird Song, her show at the i.e. gallery. Ah, the serendipity! The walls of the gallery were lined with her beautiful paintings of birds from across the decades. You can see them all here: https://www.ieedison.com/elizabeth-sandvig. Liz talked about various ways she graphically indicated sonograms of birds’ song: in various languages, with striking stabs of color, with a dot pattern, to name a few. (Two below to give you the idea, by permission.)
And she told a story about how she and her granddaughter had found an injured bird and played the bird’s song back to it after moving it to safety under some shrubbery. Later, it was gone. Hopefully renewed by rest and its song. Reminded me how sometimes we need friends to read our work back to us, to breathe life back into it.
If the Bird by Bird method of writing were a call, Liz’s gallery talk provided a response. She’s in her 80s now and told us she still likes to start each day by working on her art, moving it forward. Bird by bird.
More songs, this time from voices and strings – our ukulele band in 2015 with Liz front right and me in the middle back.
One last story.
On the solstice we finally noticed that a family of four barred owls had nested in a Douglas fir at the bottom of the driveway. The two babies perched on a branch next to the nest, just like in my favorite picture book, Owl Babies. Perhaps on that very day the owlets fledged because we haven’t seen them since. But an adult owl came by for dinner the other night. Hooted once so we’d notice him and flew on.
Earlier this week I caught a feature on NPR about how five rules from improv can make you funnier AND more confident. As I listened, I realized at least two of the five ideas could be especially helpful to writers when drafting new work. They create an atmosphere of discovery.
YES, AND…
As you probably know, the foremost, much-heralded, rule of improv is: “Yes, and…”
Were we in an improv group, whatever a troupe member suggested would be folded immediately into our ever-developing bit. We’d listen carefully to each other’s input and go with the flow, working as a group to grow and develop the sketch on the spot in real time.
Which is something like what I experienced with my grandson when he was three. We were sailing down a “river” (his bedroom floor) on a “boat” (blow up raft) at “night.”
Me: Look at the stars!
E: Look at the moon!
Me: I love the crescent moon.
(We pause and look at the ceiling.)
E: It’s a full moon.
I realize that last line is not a “Yes, and..” But he was listening and responding to my input and it cracked me up.
The NPR story suggests that saying “Yes, and…” to life means making the effort to listen and understand what people are saying so you can build on it, thus building empathy and connection.
In writing, especially in drafting, “Yes, and…” means going down the bunny holes as your brain suggests them; really paying attention and embracing whatever your imagination brings to the table. Where would your story go if you let it get wild? Revision is the time for shaping and cutting. Let drafting be a time of expansion, discovery. “Yes, and…”
MAKE ROOM FOR PLAY
The other improv rule from the NPR story that particularly applies to crafting a story is: Make room for play. In improv this means generating lots of pretend characters and scenarios and letting loose.
How can this impact your real life? The story cites research that shows play reduces stress and contributes to overall well-being. “Tap into your inner child!” it suggests. “When we play, we create our own world and the space to imagine how the world might look…and the hope is that this feeling of agency, power and autonomy can translate to other parts of our lives.”
This could be a description of the process and benefits of creating a story. We get to conjure up the whole shebang, to play around with the world and the characters we are creating right down to the detail of the moon.
As I think about it more, maybe it was a full moon.
• • • • • • • •
Thanks to my sister Kate Harvey McGee for the beautiful colors she painted the moons featured above — from our books Island Lullaby (crescent moon) and Little Wolf’s First Howling (full moon).
The NPR story about improv and life can be heard here.
Today we have a guest blogpost from my friend of 40 years, Ann Dalton. She was a children’s librarian for Seattle Public library for 30 years, filling many roles, including working in the Children’s Center during the planning, building and the first 10 years in Seattle’s stunning new downtown library. As she writes, her work included “Lots & lots of story times, lots & lots of picture books, lots & lots of hugs, some tears—not usually mine.” Thank you, Ann, for sharing some of your latest favorite picture books. –LMK
I split my time between Seattle & Canmore, Alberta—20 minutes from Banff National Park in the Bow Valley & majestic Canadian Rockies. Whatever you’d call the opposite of snowbirds, that’s what Steve & I are. He lives to ice climb in the winter, & this is THE place on earth to be for that. We hike on frozen lakes, trudge up mountains, ride gondolas down mountains, XC ski (me-not so well, but the surroundings can’t be beat), entertain climbers who visit from near & far, practice my high school French..
Canmore has an amazing community center called Elevation Place. It’s hopping most hours of the day & evening & offers something for just about everyone in this small town, especially when temperatures plummet! It contains an Olympic-size swimming pool, climbing gym, art gallery, meeting rooms, fitness & wellness classes &, my favorite—the library.
I volunteer every Thursday afternoon shelving children’s materials. It’s a highlight of my week & where I do my best musing about what it means to belong to a community. Coincidentally, the books I’m sharing here have everything to do with belonging—or with longing or longing to be this or that. It’s the work of a lifetime, I know. These books were new to me & strike me as gems for exploring endless possibilities for belonging with young children.
De la Pena, Matt. Patchwork. Illus. by Corinna Luyken. 2022
Newberry winner Matt de la Pena is a revelation to me! This is the first book of his I’ve read, & it’s stunning in its bold & subtle messaging about expectation & possibility. A gender reveal can miss the mark for a boy, a dancer in pink may have her STEM skills underestimated, the class clown who can’t sit still may possess the empathy of a master teacher. Each of us is a patchwork of all we see & hear. We are not just one note, one color. Luyken’s illustrations beautifully amplify de la Pena’s text.
Eggers, Dave. Tomorrow Most Likely. Illus. by Lane Smith. 2019
I didn’t know Dave Eggers was writing picture books these days, but I did know he has a way with words. And a way with young people…& young people & words. Here the fun is in imagining what’s most likely to be seen, heard, & encountered tomorrow. From the mundane to the ridiculous in rhyme & Lane Smith’s illustrations, tomorrow never looked so silly–& appealing. We’ll all be there!
Howes, Katey. Be a Maker. Illus. by Elizabet Vukovic. 2019
A fun counterpoint to Eggers’s book about tomorrow, this one’s all about today. When you wake, what will you make, it asks? The possibilities are endless. In rhyming couplets & illustrations jam-packed with inspiration, we follow a young merry maker as she joins forces with a kindred spirit to contribute to a community playground. The entreaty to “Make a difference, shine a light. Make your town a team tonight.” is the stirring message here.
Maclear, Kyo. Story Boat. Illus. by Rashin Kheiriyeh. 2020
When is a cup or a blanket or an X drawn on cold, hard ground a home? It’s when children & families are on a desperate march to find safety somewhere away from where they’ve been–yesterday, last week, last year. I can’t imagine a more beautiful–or heartbreaking–picture book about child refugees than this. Hope is elusive, but a sense of belonging can be found in the familiar–a cup of something warm, a dream shared under a well-worn blanket, a song sung under the moon & stars. The illustrator dedicates her artwork to “all innocent Syrian children who have experienced horrible war & injustice at a young age.”
Singh, Rina. Grandmother School. Illus. by Ellen Rooney. 2020
This lively picture book by Indian-Canadian author, Singh, tells the true story of the Aajibaichi Shala, or Grandmother School, begun in 2016 in the Indian village of Phangane. A young girl shares her granny, Aaji’s, excitement for learning from morning till night—escorting her to the one-room bamboo hut where grannies in pink saris gather to learn to read & write, till the evening when they swap school stories & homework help. Aaji relishes her time learning & the new independence it affords her in the community. Her dear granddaughter celebrates each success with her.
Yang, James. A Boy Named Isamu: A Story of Isamu Noguchi. 2021
I thought the name was familiar. Noguchi’s sculpture, Black Sun, has been at home in Seattle’s Volunteer Park outside what’s now known as the Asian Art Museum since 1969. This spare story about the sculptor is as delicate as our hometown piece is dramatic. It imagines young Isamu preferring the company of nature to people, solitude to crowds. He’s drawn to the forest but also the nearby beach where he walks alone, carefully considering everything about the stones there. To Isamu (& the author-illustrator who admires him) to be alone in nature is not the same as feeling lonely. It’s a different & powerful kind of belonging.
Yang, Kao Kalia. A Map Into the World. Illus. by Seo Kim. 2019
This is a lovely collaboration between Hmong American writer, Yang & illustrator, Kim. As the seasons change, so does a young girl’s world. A meditation on all sorts of longing & belonging. There’s a new house; baby brothers she’s too small to tend & they’re too small to be fun; elderly neighbors—one of whom passes away during the snowy winter. It’s with the passage of time, a keen eye & a bucket of sidewalk chalk that she makes a friend of the lonely widower & eases the longing they’ve both felt.
Here at the beginning of a new year, I thought it might be fun to revisit my beginnings as a writer and share what I learned from those first attempts. It’s a story in three chapters.
Chapter one – The Music of Language, age 5
I am lying under the piano listening to my oldest sister practice when I find a silver letter opener on the rug. I am filled with an irresistible urge to scratch my name into the shellacked finish of the piano, but I know I will get in trouble if my mom finds it, so I carve ‘KATE,’ my two-year old sister’s name, instead.
LESSON LEARNED: Writing can be risky when your mom finds out.
Chapter two – A Dramatic Arc, age 10
I pass a note down our row to Denny Minners, the cutest boy in the fifth grade. The note says: “I like you. Do you like me? Check one: yes or no.”
Mrs. Hague confiscates my note as it makes its way back up the row. She reads it to the class. I bury my head in my sweatered arms, breathing wet wool. Denny’s answer makes it worse. He has checked “no.”
LESSON LEARNED: It’s dangerous to put your heart on paper.
Chapter three – Writing Lab, ages 15-18
Every Wednesday after dinner my dad and I go over the weekly column I write for his newspaper. My column is called Campus Letter and it’s full of news from my high school, like the Junior Statesmen of America’s straw poll (Hubert Humphrey beat Nixon 2 to 1), or the theme for the Christmas Ball (Tinsel Time).
My dad and I sit at the kitchen counter next to the just-washed dishes. He holds his black copy pencil ready. I offer up my small sheaf of freshly-typed pages.
And the lessons begin: crafting a lead sentence, writing tight, choosing the right word, checking facts – lessons usually offered with humor and affection, but sometimes freighted with his impatience which makes me cry. Dad drives home the idea that how you tell a story is as important as what the story is about. For three years we work together Wednesday nights in the kitchen. I come to know myself as a writer and as his daughter. I come to know the satisfaction of expressing myself through writing.
LESSON LEARNED: Writing is hard, but an exacting teacher who believes in you makes all the difference.
Eventually I figured out I came to the wrong conclusions in the first two chapters. I realized it’s okay to write stuff that your mom doesn’t approve of, and that stories are, truly, better if you put your heart on the page. But Dad’s weekly lessons stayed true and developed my ability to write my observations and life experiences into story.
• • • • •
I’m a believer in Maya Angelou’s advice, “When you learn, teach.” School visits give me a chance to teach kids to write their life experiences into stories.
Like the time I visited Vernonia, in the coast range of Oregon. This town of 2,200 residents had been ravaged by a catastrophic flood. Businesses and schools and hundreds of homes had flooded, requiring National Guard troops to rescue more than 200 people as the Nehalem River crested above flood levels. Teachers at the elementary school hoped I might encourage students to write about their flood experiences, to help them deal with the trauma.
I workshopped with kids in the primary grades. I talked about writing as a way to think things through. I demonstrated how I use drawing to center and generate a story before writing the text. Then I led a brainstorming session, urging kids to float back in their memories, to find a story that evokes big emotion – fear, laughter, love, anger, awe; to find a story that raised its hand to be told that day.
Surprisingly, many of the stories that offered themselves were not flood-related. Other stories loomed bigger for some kids, so, of course, that’s what they wrote about. There was a story about catching a big fish, another titled “The First Time I Jumped on my Horse Named Emily,” and another “My Mom’s Wedding.”
My favorite was “How We Built a New Rec Room” written by a second grade boy who was one of seven kids – “My dad decided he didn’t really need all of the garage,” the story began. The boy wrote how each kid helped with a part of the project. He had helped his dad with the mudding. It ended with an illustration of the whole family sitting on the sofa in the new rec room.
I was proud of these young writers who were willing to go with the memories that bubbled up and shape them into stories.
At the end of that long day of making stories with the kids at Vernonia Elementary, I was walking down the hall when a voice chirped ‘Mrs. Kaskasnosky.” I turned to see this little kid running toward me, his lunchbox in one hand, his coat hooked by the hood onto his head and flying out behind. He reached for my hand and looked up into my face. “I love you,” he said.
That’s what happens when you bring the stories that matter to the page. Happy new year and new beginnings to you all!
While I am waiting for inspiration to strike and the next project to catch my attention, I find it helps to clean my studio. There, deep in a file drawer, I dug up these six illustrations: a sort of To Do List that aims to get your creative tail wagging.
It is often said that advice you give others is advice you need to hear. This is offered in that spirit.
I know BTC (Butt To Chair) is necessary, but regular hours at your desk are not the only hours that count.
Consider the impressionist painter Claude Monet. One day he was sitting in a green chair under a blossoming apple tree in his garden at Giverny. A neighbor came by and said, “Monsieur Monet, I see you are resting.”
“No, no,” answered Monet, “I am working.”
The next day when the neighbor walked by, Monet had set up his easel and was painting away. The neighbor said, “Monsieur Monet, I see you are working.”
“You are wrong, my friend,” said Monet. “Now I am resting.”
I envy Monet this overlap of work and rest. But I expect it was easier to achieve 120 years ago when the only interruption was an occasional neighbor walking by. These days, distractions are innumerable. So here’s my advice to myself: park it AND unplug. Whether you sit on a green chair in a beautiful garden or a worn chair in a Seattle studio, turn off the phone and email and texts etc. and give the work the time it deserves. BTC. There is no substitute. BTC means you show up daily, stay on task, and follow where your mind leads.
I love that there is a word for this in German: sitzfleisch, and also in Yiddish: yechas.
Does anyone keep a writer’s notebook anymore? I have a shelf full of past years’ notebooks, but these days I capture ideas in the NOTES section of my phone. Though I no longer keep a daily journal, I am still dedicated to recording story bits as they appear. Experiences, observations, memories; if it rings your story bell, write it down. Which reminds me of writer Brenda Guiberson’s advice to pay attention to the little hairs on the back of your neck. When they stand up, you have story material. Tell Siri to put it in NOTES.
Julie Larios once taught a class in the art of the flaneur. It was great practice in tuning in. She encouraged us to collect anything that engenders a writing response: photos, memories, questions, confusions, reactions to reading, stories held in objects, candy wrappers, newspaper clippings, feelings, fast-written lists. It’s all fodder, the puzzle pieces that may assemble as a story.
Humans are story people, readers as well as writers. Think back to the books you loved and figure out why they mattered to you. Then weave those qualities into your own work. For instance, my favorite childhood book was Betty McDonald’s Nancy and Plum about two orphaned sisters. I like to think some of the push and pull of sisterhood as well as the abiding sisterly love that is in Nancy and Plum shows up in my Zelda and Ivy series. It can be helpful to look back at old photographs and home movies to help remember the child you were.
I think it was Peter Sagal on NPR who said he chose his activities for their anecdotal value, planning ahead so he’d have interesting stuff to talk about. Why not? Research and adventures feed the story mill. Plus they can be entertaining and intriguing and often humorous. Full of story potential.
Give up on conformity. Don’t limit your imagination with the fear of acceptability. Receive with gratitude anything your imagination serves up: be it beautiful, ugly, absurd, outrageous or excessive. You can always revise later.
Lots of mistakes. Think of the Wright brothers and all their failed experimenting. Let yourself fail so that you can fly. You’ve probably heard the story retold in Art and Fear about the ceramics teacher who divided his students into two groups at the beginning of the semester. Students in the ‘quality’ group each needed to produce one perfect pot to get an ‘A’. Those in the ‘quantity’ group were graded by the weight of all the pieces they created, (i.e. 50 pounds = an ‘A’). Turned out (hah!) the students who made the most pieces also created the most successful ones, meaning they produced more schlock as well as more brilliant work.
WE SAID GOOD-BYE to our sweet Izabella on September 14. For sixteen and a half years she shared our lives, including hanging out with me while I worked. My students once gave me a pad of post-its printed: “Laura Kvasnosky…writing to the tune of dog snores,” which was often true. She helped create books in many ways: providing support and comfort and inspiration, and posing as a wolf for illustrations in Little Wolf’s First Howling. We are so grateful for all the time we had with her.
In our family we give extra points for Good Use of Existing Materials. Mostly this is simplified MacGyvering, done on the fly, like substituting a paper towel when the coffee filters run out, or opening a wine bottle with a screw and a hammer when you can’t find the corkscrew.
MacGyver was a television series about an undercover government agent who preferred to fight crime with ingenious feats of engineering rather than lethal force.
Pajama bottoms that double as capris, an old sweater sleeve reborn as a winter hat, certainly duct tape and bungie cords put to inventive use: all qualify for GUOEM points.
This post itself should earn me some points. It’s a topic I first explored ten years ago on the now-defunct blog of the Vermont College Children’s Writing MFA program faculty. So meta.
My beloved Aunt Norma belongs in the Good Use of Existing Material Hall of Fame. She was a recycler before recycling was a thing; a model of economy and ingenuity. Consider her reuse of milk cartons, for instance. Like many, she used empty milk cartons as containers to freeze soup. But she also cut them lengthwise to hold chicken breasts which she defrosted on the floor in the front of the refrigerator to take advantage of the warm fan there. On her kitchen counter, flattened milk cartons found new life as cutting boards. In her storeroom, she organized stuff into more milk cartons.
Even her Fourth of July party featured old milk cartons. It included a Milk Carton Regatta, motored and non-motored classes, racing across her swimming pool. No milk carton went to waste at Aunt Norma’s.
In my experience, Good Use of Existing Material applies to making picture books, too. The six Zelda and Ivy books are rooted in my childhood as the middle child of five – sibling rivalry is my God-given existing material. More recently, Ocean Lullaby grew from a beach singalong with a grandson on my lap, when I looked out and wondered how the sea-animal families settle down at night. Even on vacation, existing material is waiting to be shaped into stories.
Your own particular existing material is your take on it all – what grabs your attention, what makes you laugh and shiver and cry. The task is to identify the materials we have to work with – including the metaphors, the details and even the individual words – and then to use them ingeniously, with the snick of a key in the lock, to create the story.
Books Around The Table is the blog of Margaret Chodos-Irvine, Laura Kvasnosky, Julie Larios, Julie Paschkis and Bonny Becker. We are a critique group of children's book authors and illustrators who have been meeting monthly since 1994 to talk about books we are working on, books we have read, our art and our lives. We invite you to sit down with us around the table and join the conversation.
Ann Dalton
Bonny Becker
Julie Paschkis
Julie Larios
laurakvasnosky
Margaret Chodos-Irvine
Books Around The Table 
