Topic 9: Letters, We Get Letters—and Lots of Email, Too

 

 Response 1: Sandy

Mail, David. Think about what an important role it plays in the life of a writer. 

You and I remember the days when we sent manuscripts off by First Class Mail (it was not yet called snail mail, or even Priority Mail) and waited impatiently each day for the sound of the mailman approaching our door (they were mailmen, not letter carriers). Our hearts sang when we found a white #10 business envelope holding an acceptance letter (and maybe even a check), or they plummeted at the sight of a large manila envelope bringing a rejected piece home to roost. After many (many, many) of those manila disappointments, the prized #10s showed up with more frequency. And a while after that, our work appeared in print, and a happy day’s mail included complimentary copies. 

And after that, a new kind of mail began to arrive—letters from readers. 

As a playwright, I sometimes get to attend performances of my plays and observe audiences responding to them—laughing at the funny parts, falling silent at serious moments, and applauding at the end. That’s encouraging! It makes me want to rush home and write another play. But authors of books never get to watch their readers enjoying their stories. Well, that’s not entirely true. I once saw a little girl sitting cross-legged in a supermarket cart, completely absorbed in Teddy Teabury's Fabulous Fact while being pushed up and down the aisles by her mom. But that was once. (And, no, I did not disturb her by introducing myself.) Normally, unless we’re in a classroom reading to children ourselves, we don’t hear the laughter or the attentive silence, and it’s not likely that even observed readers like the little girl in the cart would burst into applause upon finishing a book. 

I don’t know about you, David, but sometimes I wonder: Is anybody really out there? If no one takes the time to drop me a note, I have no idea how my stories are being received. So when someone does write, it’s absolutely thrilling.

And sometimes funny. Or touching. Or . . . puzzling. 

Whenever I speak to groups of children, I ask them how many have written to the author of a favorite book. It’s a great day when more than three raise their hands. We laugh about the fact that when I was their age, I thought all authors were dead. I’d never met a live one. Like dinosaur bones in museums, authors left books behind on library shelves that proved they’d once walked the face of the earth, but I no more expected to meet a live author than a live dinosaur. So why would I write one a letter?

Then I tell them that’s why you and I developed the America Writes for Kids website, David—to show that real, live authors do still exist, and to provide access to information about them, including email addresses—so much easier than the old letter-to-the-publisher, and almost guaranteed to get a response. After each of these heartfelt pleas for improved correspondence, sometimes to hundreds of children in a day, I generally get one email the very next morning. Maybe two. I tell myself other children in that group are writing to other authors linked to America Writes for Kids. Good for them! I tell myself that TV executives once concluded that every letter they received represented 20,000 people who felt the same way, 19,999 of whom never bothered to write. Small comfort, since authors deal in considerably smaller numbers, but comfort all the same.

Whatever I tell myself, the fact remains: That one child’s email means a lot to me, and I promptly reply. I know each letter and email means a lot to you, too, David, so I thought it might be fun for us to share some especially memorable examples of mail we’ve received over the years, electronic or snail. I hope other authors will chime in with favorites of their own. And I hope readers of any age will be inspired to drop a line to their favorite authors and prove that readers really are out there, enjoying their books. 

I’ll lead off with a few examples of Most Unusual Correspondence this time, and move on to Most Touching Correspondence next time. In the Most Unusual category, I must begin with an email received very recently from a woman who has so enjoyed sharing my book Too Many Frogs! with her fiancé and her 7-year-old daughter that she’s decided to make it the theme of her upcoming wedding. Can you imagine my surprise and delight when I turned on my computer that morning and opened that message? Froggie and Rabbit have been in books, onstage, and on tape and CD, even on tabletops during my presentations, but this will be the first time they’ve attended a wedding.

Somewhere at the other end of the spectrum lies a postcard received from someone who was planning to review another picture book, Stella's Dancing Days, but decided not to and wanted me to know why. “This book depicts irresponsible pet ownership,” she declared, “because Stella is allowed to roam free, meet another cat, and give birth to kittens.” All true, except the irresponsible part. My real pets are always neutered and never roam free. This book was my opportunity to pretend to raise a houseful of kittens. Stella’s babies will not add to the world’s cat overpopulation. 

Sometimes, letters come in packets sent by teachers, usually after an elementary school visit. The Most Unusual, so far, had a bit of an edge to them. “Thank you for coming to our school,” announced the first. “I enjoy visits from authors, and you are one.” I passed muster just by writing a book and showing up! The other thank-you gave only qualified approval: “I enjoyed your visit, but I doubt anyone else did.” Both letters arrived in the same packet, so I had reason to believe this writer’s doubts were unjustified. 

Bring them on, dear readers, emailed or scribbled in pencil, with or without hearts and flowers and characters from my books and portraits of yourself and your pets. I love them all! And I’ll bet you do, too, David. Let’s hear it for readers who write!

Response 2: David

Thanks, Sandy! I love to hear from readers too. Who doesn’t? They tend to come in three categories. One is the packet of notes required by the teacher after a school visit. “Get out your paper and pencils and think about what we learned today when Mr. Harrison visited our class. What did you remember about what he said? Which poem did you like best?” A second group is from individuals who find something in a book that makes them want to write a fan letter to the author. The third category, which usually comes via the Internet, is from those who not only like our work but seek our help in getting published. That category is probably worthy of another day.

But back to the teacher-generated notes from students. “Dear Mr. Harrison, thank you for coming to our class. I remember when you dug up your dead pet parakeet and whacked off its wings. Your poem I liked best was ‘Life’s Not Fair’ because it was about running out of toilet paper and it was short. Your friend, Joe.” I read every note. I bet that every author fortunate enough to hear from a child takes the time to read the note and try to respond in an appropriate way.

I dig my way down through the stack, mining for the gold of originality. Every now and then a real voice speaks out and tickles me. When I least expect it, some kid makes me snort out loud and interrupt my wife to read the note. A few years ago I did a book with two voices called Farmer's Garden. It did well so I collaborated with the same artist, Arden Johnson-Petrov, on a follow-up title called Farmer's Dog Goes to the Forest. In both books, Dog stops to examine and interview the things he sees, which results in two-way chats in rhyme. A teacher read the second book to her class and asked her students to write about their thoughts. Here’s what one honest kid had to tell me.

“Dear Mr. Harrison,

Your book is weird. First, the dog is talking to inanimate objects. For example, the dog was talking to a tree, some grass, and the brook. Clearly you can see the book is kind of out there.”

Sandy, what can you say when someone that young pins you to the wall with such a valid point! In another case, I wrote a poem about a dead wasp I found on a windowsill in our house. “Death of a Wasp” is sad. I visualized the tiny creature’s futile efforts to escape, bumping against the window over and over until it eventually died on the sill. My editor told me she cried when she read the poem. When I read it to groups of adults, all eyes turn solemn. That’s true of most kids, too, except this one. I love his note.

“Dear Mr. Harrison,

On the wasp poem, I saw my teacher about to cry. I didn’t see why everybody about cried.”

What can I say? If dead insects don’t jerk your tear ducts, they just don’t! Which reminded me, as these notes so often do, that everyone reads with his or her own ideas about what’s good, what makes sense, what’s right, what’s funny, and even what is worthy of tears!

Sandy, do you save your notes from young readers? I do, not all of them, but the ones that really grab me. Sometimes they come in handy, for example, right now.

• Being new: “I’m new so I relate to the part (in a school bus poem) that says some kids are new but you wave at them too. That’s exactly what happened to me.”
• Being rejected: “I know how it feels to be rejected. I entered in the poetry contest in my school in third, fourth, and fifth grade but I never won. I plan to enter this year. It's my last chance.”
• Cursive writing: “You were just like me when I was learning how to write in cursive. I had trouble with the letter X.” 
• Being embarrassed: “My favorite poem was the one with you falling off the risers. When you fell off the risers I bet you were embarrassed. I have embarrassing moments too.”

Years ago I was waiting to see an editor at Random House. On the floor by my chair were stacks of boxes of letters from kids addressed to Berenstain Bears. When I asked about them, I learned that letters arrived in such volume that responding sometimes became a problem. Sandy, may I live long enough to receive so many letters that responding becomes a problem! For now, I remain grateful every time a child writes, even when he thinks my book is weird and kind of out there.

Back to you!

David

Response 3—Sandy

Here are two more correspondence categories to add to your list, David:

The Homework Assignment Request

           

In the (good?) old days, I’d receive these inquiries forwarded from my publisher, all too often long after the poor student needed the information to meet a deadline. I felt awful about that! But what can you do other than apologize and hope the young person understands the delay didn’t happen at my end of the slow process, since then aptly named “snail mail.” 

Nowadays, these requests come by email. The speed, alas, has resulted in a new kind of problem: “Dear Sandy Asher, I have to write a report about you. Tell me all about your life. My report is due tomorrow morning.” Or, “Dear Author, I have to write a book report. What’s your book about?”

Sigh. Not much we can do about those either, except explain, politely, that specific questions are welcome. Deflected homework assignments are not. 

Then we have . . .

The Deeply Moving, Never-To-Be-Forgotten Personal Letters

                                

These are the ones I’d like to talk more about this time around because they’re so important to those who write them—and to me, reading them. Also because I think they point to a very special relationship, not so much between reader and author as between reader and character.

Three poignant examples:

My second YA novel, Daughters of the Law, about the child of Holocaust survivors, brought a long, thoughtful response from a middle-school student in Canada. I was quite impressed by her insights and told her so in my return letter. Thus began years of correspondence—often more than 20 handwritten, two-sided pages from her end—filled with the loneliness of being the shy, sensitive child of foreign-born parents in a not very tolerant environment, plus some charming short stories of her own. 

Our pen-pal friendship lasted all the way through her high-school years and on into the first few months of college, when the thick envelopes from Canada with their familiar handwriting abruptly stopped arriving in my mailbox. I didn’t feel it was my place to inquire further. I believe that for this young woman, as for so many other bright, creative students who don’t fit into their hometowns or their high-school environments, college finally offered a safe haven rich with new opportunities. My support was no longer necessary.

During the span of the long Canadian correspondence, another YA novel, Just Like Jenny, was republished in Great Britain. The story is about two best friends, Jenny and Stephanie, who find themselves competing against each other in their chosen field of dance. How do you maintain a best friendship with your worst rival? Across the big puddle came a heartfelt, handwritten letter from a young teenager who told me about a similar situation in her own life, claiming that she felt she couldn’t talk to anyone else about it. She was “scared, really scared” of losing her dearest friend, and begged for help. I responded as best I could, suggesting that, instead of retreating, she share her concerns with her friend, who might be feeling similar stress. A second letter revealed that this was indeed the case. “It’s not always perfect, but I feel a lot better now. Thank you. It was much easier when I felt someone was backing me.” 

More recently, I received a letter and a packet of poems from a young woman, mother of four small children, who had read another of my YA novels, Summer Begins, some time earlier. The writer had little in common with Summer, the daughter of an Olympic swimming champ and a university professor, but explained that she’d carried the book around with her for years and had taken heart from the way Summer learned to stand up for herself. The poems included with this letter were a heart-wrenching account of the abuse this reader had endured in her home and in foster care before also standing up for herself. As you know, David, in this case, the reader and I have become lifelong friends, and I’ve been privileged to witness with awe her continuing courage and healing.

While it’s true that those letters were addressed to me, and I answered them, I’ve always suspected they were not really written to me at all. I think they were written to Stephanie and Ruthie and Summer, the characters in my books. It was Jo March who told me I could be more than the wife and mother my parents expected of me. She may have come from Louisa May Alcott’s pen, but she was far more real to me than her creator. Characters in books understand. They tell us we’re not alone, not in our fears, not in our hopes, not in our nightmares, and not in our dreams. A character who assures a young reader of that can be the best friend that child has, and the one he or she turns to, time and again.

There are days in my writing, when it’s going really well, that I feel as if I’m taking dictation from my characters. They become that real to me, too. They need me to get their stories written down. And, sometimes, they need me to answer their mail. I do both with pleasure and deep gratitude for their trust.

Response 4: David

Sandy, as we conclude June’s four-part chat about the correspondence authors receive, I confess that this topic has brought back more memories than any of our others. And I know why, at least in my case. We’ve both said many times that the first thing an adult reader must do when presented with something written by a child is to celebrate the gift. One of my favorite quotes is by Susan Ferraro who writes, “To a great extent, we are what we say and write. Laugh or sneer at how we express ourselves, and we take personal offense: Our words are all about us.”

It’s easy to forget to appreciate the gift of a beginning writer, whose work is disjointed and filled with errors, when our first impulse is to suggest how to make it better. Teachers know this and remind themselves all the time to look past the mistakes to the vulnerable child who is holding his or her breath, hoping for a kind word of congratulations before the red ink comes out. Professional writers, when confronted with less than professional efforts by emerging writers, have to resist the same temptation to make judgments before seeing that adults have the same vulnerability that children do. We may think we’re tougher, but Ferraro got it right: “Laugh or sneer at how we express ourselves, and we take personal offense.”

So, Sandy, back to me, and why I think those letters from fans of all ages mean so much to an author. It’s because they represent unsolicited affirmation that our words are good. We got them right, at least this time, and so maybe we’ll get them right again on something we do in the future. They are, often, among the few positive remarks an author receives. Most editors are good about complimenting what they like, but during the course of editing a book, getting it ready on time to ship off to the copy editor or artist, exchanges between writer and editor become mostly about the business at hand. Adults who buy books for children rarely take time to send fan letters of their own and most children are not likely to think about writing a letter to anyone these days, or an email to someone they don’t know.

That’s why those letters, notes, and emails that manage to make it to my mailbox or computer screen are meaningful. They got here to my house against some pretty serious odds and are all the more appreciated because of it. Recently a little girl wrote to say, “I like your poems. They are fun. I enjoy reading your poems a lot. Your friend, Camrin.” Camrin took the time to tell me specifically which of my poems she liked best. That made me smile. I got those poems right! She printed her letter on a piece of lined paper, addressed it herself, and (I can imagine) placed it in her mailbox so the postman could pick it up and send it on its way to me.

Sandy, I mentioned last time that people who write asking for information about getting published are another category of an author’s correspondence. Sometimes such letters come from kids but more often they are written by young adults or adults who love the idea of becoming a published author and wonder how to go about it. Such letters can be time consuming to answer, and sometimes the temptation is to rush through them and keep them short. Why can’t these people figure it out on their own? But then I remember how confused I was in the first few years of struggling to get the words right, and how much I appreciated any encouragement and help I could get. And I realize that to be asked how to do it is a form of flattery. The person asking must have decided that I do indeed, at least on occasion, get it right. And so I do my best to see the vulnerable person behind the question who wants very much to become published, and I take a little longer to give a response that might help.

So, Sandy, it’s a wrap for June’s topic about letters and emails. I’ve had a good time and know that you have too. We’ve also been blessed with a number of warm comments from readers, which are appreciated!

Folks, Sandy and I are taking off the months of July and August before considering what to do this fall. We are both swamped with work and have travel plans as well.

David

Topic 8: Dealing with Speaking Engagements

Response 1: David

Hi Sandy! I missed our weekly chats during April but judging from our calendars, those chats weren’t likely to happen and taking a month off was a necessary idea.

I know that we both have busy Mays as well, but let’s rev up another topic for Writers at Work—our eighth—and hope for the best. Okay? Away we go. Let’s tackle one of the important side benefits of being a writer. We occasionally receive invitations to speak before live audiences about who we are and what we do. These opportunities can be scary for the unprepared so I’ll tell you about my first one and I’m betting that a lot of our readers will have their own first-time experiences to share. Most of us who speak also have some horror tales about being abused and mistreated at the hands of inept festival, school, or conference folks, but I think we ought to save those stories for another episode. No doubt there will be juicy ones to share for that session too!

Sandy, do you remember our visits with Berniece Rabe at the Children’s Literature Festival in Warrensburg, Missouri? She’s a fine writer of young adult fiction and in 1973 her first Rass book had just been published. My picture book, Little Turtle’s Big Adventure, came out four years earlier so we were both pretty new to the trade. The year that Rass came out I was invited to speak at Lindenwood University in O’Fallon, Missouri to a group of students, teachers, and librarians. The invitation came from Nancy Polette, a powerhouse professor of education and advocate of children’s literature. At that time she may also have been director of the lab school on campus. I think she paid me $50 and I was pleased. It was my first check as a speaker.

On the big day I drove to Lindenwood and found myself sitting in the auditorium listening as the speaker before me, Berniece Rabe, was introduced. At that moment I became painfully aware that I had no prepared remarks. Nancy had said to talk about my books and say what came naturally. It seemed like good advice over the phone a few months back. Now I wasn’t so sure.

Berniece walked onto the stage with an engaging smile and made eye contact with everyone in the room. In a charming, confident, poised, prepared, professional voice, she enchanted the audience with the story of her journey as a writer. She then threw herself into long excerpts from Rass in which she became the characters, assuming their voices and acting their parts. As she moved about the stage we were all mesmerized by her performance. She was amazing.

I was toast.

“And now our next speaker, David Harrison . . .”

I’ll spare you the details of what followed. Berniece herself plucked me from the dumps later with her warm encouragement, and Nancy was right there to shore up my defeated ego. Maybe I wasn’t as bad as I thought. Nah, I was. But lessons learned that way do stick with one.

After all these years I’m still flattered when someone invites me to speak. I’m most at home in front of students in a classroom but these days I’m prepared when I stand before a group of any kind. Maybe I’ll never be Berniece Rabe but no one has tossed a tomato either.

Sandy, you are, in addition to all your other talents, an actress. Your voice always comes from somewhere that makes me believe what you are saying and hope for more. I’m still not comfortable with a script because I tend to wander off the page now and then and find myself adlibbing my way back to my point. I can’t do PowerPoint presentations for that reason. What works best for me is to have notes or an outline to follow, think about what I want to talk about before the big day arrives, and then sail forth with all the canvas up.

On formal occasions such as keynotes, commencement addresses, and dedications, I do write out my speech. But before I read a speech to an audience, I read it aloud fifteen or twenty times until I essentially have it memorized. Sandy, I’m eager to hear how you deal with your own speaking engagements. Over to you!

Response 2: Sandy

Hello, David and friends. I missed our chats as well. I’m glad we’re back on track. This topic is going to be great fun, what with our many road warrior stories to share. I’m looking forward to having lots of other folks chime in.

I do remember Berniece Rabe reading from Rass—I was in the audience at the Children’s Literature Festival in Warrensburg when she performed her magic. What I remember best is what a kick she was getting out of doing it, and that’s probably a good rule of thumb for presentations: Enjoy yourself, and others will be happy to join you.

I also remember the first time you and I presented together, David—or in tandem, actually—also in Warrensburg, but not at the Children’s Literature Festival. It was a graduate class in children’s literature, I believe, and we were invited to speak by the late, great Festival founder and director, Phil Sadler. You went first—and, believe me, by then you had become every bit as hard an act to follow as Berniece. I looked out at that sea of faces, all gazing after you adoringly as you stepped away from the podium, and, before I’d even said a word, I promised myself I’d never speak to a group in your wake again. Next to you, sure. Before you, of course. Down the hall from you, no problem. But after you? Uh-uh. Not until I’d learned to juggle live chickens or levitate or something. I don’t believe I ever have, either. (Not counting this blog, anyway.)

It’s odd, when you think about it, that published authors are invited to speak to live audiences. If we were such great orators, we probably wouldn’t need to sit alone at our desks and wrestle our thoughts down to the page one word at a time. And then revise them. And then revise that. And then revise it all again before feeling ready to share what we have to say with readers—who are definitely not in the same room with us.

You mention my theater training, but actors are also not necessarily great orators. If you’ve ever watched one of your favorites struggle through a TV interview or award acceptance speech, you know what I mean. They need writers! Actors contribute a great deal of thought, energy, research, analysis, memorization, and rehearsal time to a play, and they’re brave enough to trot right out there on stage and perform it, but always with the safety net of a prepared script.

So even with my writing experience and theater training, I knew I was unprepared when my first invitation to speak arrived. I didn’t even have a clue about how to get prepared. I had no idea what writers were supposed to say to anyone—outside of their writing, that is. Fortunately, I was able to ride up to Warrensburg (so important in our lives!) with a couple of Springfield teachers to attend a luncheon where Richard Peck was the presenting author. I could not have found a better role model. He had a prepared speech that was insightful and funny. He referred to it often, but had obviously rehearsed it enough to have it nearly memorized. He spoke with dignity, warmth, and humor about his readers, their needs, his hopes for them, his concerns about them, and the importance of reaching young people through books. He charmed, enlightened, and entertained us, made his point, and sat down. Not one syllable too many, not one moment wasted—his or ours.

Well. That set the bar pretty high, but at least I knew what clearing the bar looked like. I’ve been striving to do that ever since.

I hope I’ve come a long way in quality over the years, but I know for sure I’ve come a long way in confidence. My very first talk was to a group of Springfield writers meeting for lunch at the Heritage Cafeteria. When I arrived, I was invited to go through the line and order whatever I liked. Too nervous to eat, but not wanting to offend my hosts by not eating, I selected a little dish of cottage cheese with half a canned peach on top. I figured I could manage to slide that down my throat without choking to death before my presentation. I survived the event, but honestly don’t remember much beyond carefully managing that little dish of food.

Couple of years later, without giving it a second thought, I found myself chowing down a delicious dinner—complete with a glass of wine—before stepping up to the podium to give a talk about my second book for young readers, Daughters of the Law. As I arranged my pages on the podium, I suddenly remembered the cottage cheese and canned peach—and I had to smile. Here I was, relaxed and eager to share what I had to say with my audience. Had I ever even imagined such a day would come? I was enjoying myself!

I like to think they were enjoying themselves, as well.

Your turn, David. Let’s hear it: the good, the bad, and the ugly . . .

Response 3: David

Ho-ho-ho. Now we come to the fun part: complaining. Sandy and I have addressed the problems of showing up prepared for the gig. Unfortunately, the person who invites us needs to prepare, too, and the failure to do so can lead to some memorable experiences.

Here’s one from my bag of nightmares. I was invited to a school in Jefferson City. We agreed on payment and expenses. My contact would reserve a room and provide a map. There was no follow-up correspondence, which should have been a red flag. Today it would be!

I arrived at the hotel on a frigid January dusk the evening before my visit. There was no reservation and every room was taken. I called my contact. She had forgotten to book a room. The hotel clerk finally found a vacancy in a row of tiny cabins some miles away. It was as frosty inside as out. I lay on the bed in my coat, staring at the lone lightbulb hanging from a cord, thinking, “They’ll find me frozen here in the morning.” Back to the hotel. I offered to lie down on the floor in front of the desk. They found a room. Needless to say, things did not improve the following day. Teachers didn’t know I was coming or why I was there. Some graded papers during my presentation. One left me alone with her kids who promptly treated me to a rousing version of good old-fashioned pandemonium.

I don’t know which memory is worse, that one or the conference in Boulder, Colorado where I flew from Kansas City to speak and no one knew I was coming. The person who invited me failed to tell the program chair or get me on the agenda. Ah well, I enjoyed sightseeing around the area for a couple of days. It’s very nice there if you don’t have to stop to go speak.

Sandy, I can hear someone saying, “Didn’t you check with these people? Didn’t you have a contract?” My indefensible answer is, “No.” But both experiences happened more than thirty years ago and times are definitely different now. For one thing, e-mail is better than letters when it comes to keeping in touch with one’s host and pinning down who is doing what for whom. I think a lot of speakers do like contracts up front and invoices after. I probably tend toward a less formal arrangement but everything each party will do is spelled out in my correspondence well ahead of the event. But let’s face it, folks, there are some deplorably incapable people in every profession and once in a while one of them will be holding the other end of our string.

Oh! I nearly forgot about book signings! Has anyone ever sat behind a table in a hallway or bookstore or auditorium, books stacked at hand, pen at the ready, and watched the dust settle on your shoes? I have. And again, it’s usually a matter of planning ahead to make sure that all parties agree on assigned duties before the event. I remember one bookstore signing that turned out to be a row of authors, each assigned a table. (I thought I was to be the only one.) A woman beside me was selling a book she had self-published and she was just plain serious about hawking her wares. No one could come within twenty feet of her without exciting her into a stand-up routine spieled off at 80 decibels, gobs a’ plenty to kill off every conversation in sight.

I’ve had great to good experience speaking in schools, festivals, and conferences, probably 90 percent of the time. Another 5 percent have been so-so. But oh, my, that last 5 percent will make you wish you had talked more and planned better. What do you think, Sandy? Are you a member of the 5 Percent Club too? Anything we can do to reduce the dreaded number?

David

Response 4: Sandy

Complaints! I had to dig pretty deeply into my supply of suppressed memories to come up with anything in the same league as your flight to nowhere, David. I can’t imagine the horror of showing up in a distant city only to find out you’re not on the program.

Rummaging around in that dark corner of the attic of my mind, I did come up with a doozy, though. Wayne, Nebraska. Did you know Wayne, Nebraska, is the home of the annual Chicken Cluck-off? Yup. Happens every July. But I was not there in July. I was there in the dead of winter, and I do mean “dead.” All was bright and clear as my plane landed in Omaha. I was met, right on time, by a friendly gentleman in a pickup truck. I was eager to get to our destination, looking forward to two days of school visits, plus a couple of presentations at a regional teachers’ conference. Amazingly, over the past few months, the teacher who invited me had ordered first 100, then another 100, then a third 100 copies of my latest paperback, Teddy Teabury’s Fabulous Fact, perfect for the elementary-school kids I was going to meet. Apparently, they thought so, too!

About halfway down the two-lane highway toward Wayne, we hit a wall of snow and sleet. Suddenly, we were fishtailing back and forth across black ice, narrowly avoiding ditches on either side of the road. Finally, my companion got his four-wheel drive switched on and we settled into our own lane—just as a huge semi roared past in the lane we’d just slid out of seconds earlier.

That was for openers. It snowed, and it snowed, and it snowed. By the time we got to my motel—a Super 8—you couldn’t tell where the sky ended and the earth began, in any direction. It never stopped snowing, the whole time I was in town. School went on, though, and the principal maneuvered his car over snow-packed roads each day to pick me up and deliver me door to door. But with delayed starting times and early dismissals, my classroom visits were reduced to a quick “Here’s the author. We have time for a couple of questions. Bye.”

The teachers’ conference was canceled. And all those books? Never saw a one of them. Apparently, they never made it out of my hostess’s garage. She hadn’t sold a single one, let alone 300. She’d simply forgotten—twice—that she’d already ordered books, so she kept on ordering them.

During my stay, I was taken to the same little restaurant for an early dinner and then left at the Super 8 until the next morning. When I finally couldn’t stand my room anymore—or gazing out at the unrelenting whiteness all around me—I wandered down to the tiny lobby. There, I found a single tourist brochure, announcing the annual Chicken Cluck-off. In July. Missed it!

About halfway back to the airport in Omaha, the snow suddenly stopped, and all turned bright and clear again for my flight home, leaving me to believe that the blizzard never touched any other part of the state—only Wayne.

But let me end on a more cheerful note—concerning Warrensburg, again. That’s where a little boy taught me an important lesson about how much children appreciate honesty. As you know, David, Children’s Literature Festival participants visit one author after another throughout the day. In one of my groups at my very first Festival was a skinny boy in a faded T-shirt who waved his hand madly as soon as I asked for questions.

"How old are you?" he wanted to know.

There was some tittering around the room and a few dirty looks from teachers, but we both did our best to ignore that. "Thirty-eight," I replied, which was true at the time. "How old are you?"

"Ten," he said.

"A good age," I told him. "Mine is, too."

He seemed satisfied, and I went on to answer a wide variety of questions from the rest of the group. Toward the end of the session, the same boy's hand shot into the air again. "Do I dare call on him a second time?" I wondered. "Oh, what the heck." I did.

"You're very good at this," he announced. "The other lady only got one question."

We can only guess what that question might have been—and who asked it.

As for those book signings, David, a bookstore owner once told me the national average for books sold during a signing is two. That’s right, two. So any time I sell three, I announce that I’m above average and rejoice! And those events where no one shows up? Have you ever thought about attending something, decided against it, and then imagined everyone who DID go really enjoyed themselves? That’s the way I’ve come to look at it. The PR goes out announcing the event, always a good thing. Everyone who doesn’t show up thinks everybody else DID show up and had a terrific time. It’s a “virtual success.” Not so bad.

Life on the road is very educational, don’t you think? And not just for the kids we go out to visit with—in rain, snow, sleet, but so far, not dark of night.

Topic 7: Wrestling with Endings

Facing a month with five Tuesdays, we were very fortunate to have our much-admired colleague Jane Yolen offer to choose a topic for us and lead off. 

Response 1: Jane Yolen

“Endings,” the conference director directed. “Talk about endings.” She was assuming that after almost 300 published books I had some idea of how to make an ending. Assuming that elves don’t sneak in at midnight to finish each and every book for me. Assuming that the editor doesn’t write all my final pages. Assuming that I have more to say than just: “A good ending is one that is both inevitable and surprising,” which is really all that you have to know.

        

Besides, how can I talk about endings without first saying a word about beginnings? They are the poles of a book, story, even an essay. They balance one another out. If the beginning holds the DNA of the story, the ending has to be able to prove that.

        

The traditional ending solves the problem, dilemma, or conflict of the main character. The loose bits all tied up. Usually (especially in children’s books) the ending is happy or at least satisfying. Once Max is home his supper is still hot; once Charlie gets to live in the Chocolate Factory his life is good; once the LittlePrincess finds her father, the book is done. Finished. Over.

        

But think of this: The ending without the beginning is simply a block, a stoppage, a single bookend, one side of an equation, omega without an alpha.

        

I am better at beginnings. Can write them all day—and I do. I can show you a file cabinet full of beginnings. Nowhere do I have even a small folder of endings. Most authors don’t write endings to start a book. But it is the endings that people leave the books with, so in some ways the endings are the most important part.

        

As I thought about endings—and being a lover of fairy tales—I knew immediately that the deeply rooted last line in folk stories, “And they lived happily ever after,” is the core of what we think we know about endings. We hear it always in our hindbrain because it’s the last line most of us in the West have grown up with. That line stops the story at the point of greatest happiness. The wedding, the homecoming, the mystery unraveled, the villain disposed of, families reunited, babies born. If we went on in the story Cinderella, she might be whispered about in court: after all, her manners are not impeccable, she always has smudges of ash on her nose, and no one can trace her bloodline back enough generations. Perhaps she has grown fat eating all that rich food in the castle, and the prince’s eye has strayed.

        

If we went on in The Three Little Pigs, the brother who builds with bricks will have kicked the other two layabouts out of his house, or hired them to run his successful company and they—angry at their lower status—would plot to kill him. But, having little imagination, they would do it the only way they know how, by trying to boil him in the pot that still holds the memory of the wolf’s demise, so of course the brick-building pig would find them out. 

        

But modern books pose a different problem. They present harder choices. It’s no longer fairy-tale endings we are talking about, but the other stuff, more realistic, stronger, difficult, and maybe not happy-ever-after stuff.

The biggest three problems for me about endings are:

        

         1. I don’t know how to plot, and how do you have an ending without a plot? 

        

         2. You have to get over the great wall of Middle to get there, and I hate Middles.

          

         3. What happens if the character insists on a different road than the one you

         thought you had planned?

Whether I think I know the ending before I start, or think I really know it halfway through the book, the right ending always surprises me as much as any reader. And what surprises me the most is how inevitable the ending really is. Even if I hadn’t known how things were supposed to go, the story had known it all the time.

        

When I wrote the historical novel The Gift of Sarah Barker—“Romeo and Juliet in a Shaker community” is what I called it to myself—I expected the boy Abel and the girl Sarah to fall in love, which they did. Have adventures, which (in a way) they did. And leave the Shaker community, which they certainly did, because the Shakers did not believe in any boy/girl or man/woman (and certainly no homosexual) pairings at all. Shakers were meant to be as asexual, as innocent, as angels. But I also expected that the two would get married, have a child, and Abel would go off to fight and die in the Civil War, leaving Sarah to return to the Shaker community with her baby, there to become her baby’s “sister” as her own mother had done with her. It was a perfect arc for the novel. In the beginning is the ending. But it was not the arc my novel wanted to take. When I reached the end, I so loved my characters and what they had gone through to earn their love, I knew the book couldn’t turn into tragedy. Not even a Cold Mountain kind of transcendent love tragedy. Sometimes a book earns a powerful tragic ending. But not this one, it needed a positive ending. Actually, it insisted on such an ending. So Abel lived a long, good life with Sarah, helped raise their child, not only because I couldn’t bear to kill him young, and not only because I knew that Sarah would never go back to the Shakers dragging a child with her, but because the story wouldn’t allow it. So I discovered the ending as I began to write it, as it turned away from tragedy into the proper love story it was meant to be all along.

        

So perhaps one way to look at endings is a process of discovering what the book itself wants and needs, and in that way also finding the ending that you—the author—wants. Maybe the moral of this is that sometimes you have to write the wrong ending many times till finally, by a process of elimination or sheer fatigue, the right one gets written.

I want my novels to end with what I call “the getting of wisdom.” Authors have major themes in their lives that they tend to hit over and over again, even when they don’t realize that’s the story they’re telling. So Hannah/Chaya comes home to the future with an understanding of the past in The Devil’s Arithmetic. Young Merlin at the end of *The Young Merlin Trilogy knows that he has a destiny, and a child to care for, though he is barely out of childhood himself. Marina and Jed in Armageddon Summer find out that they have to and can make choices for themselves, and not get carried willy-nilly into their parents’ craziness ever again. The getting of wisdom for the characters—and I must admit, for this author as well.

        

Because make no mistake about endings: though in real life they are final, and we have no do-overs, in fictional life this may not truly be The End. Especially not when the publisher waves a rather large check in your direction, and promises much marketing. . .

Here are three things that you should NOT do when you get to that END:

1. No deus ex machina ending. No glorious messenger arriving with the king’s pardon out of the blue. Your characters, and what they have done throughout the book, must be the ones to have set in motion what happens at the end.

2. No changing horses or plot or conflict in midstream in order to make things more exciting at the end. You have to have everything grow organically to earn the ending.

         3. Don’t give us 300+ pages of a book in which we are totally invested in the

         story, only to give us the climax offstage. Because after that, no ending will seem worth the hard ride.

Here are three things you SHOULD do when you get to that END:

1. Deliver what you promised. This means you must be true and logical to what has gone on before. The last page, the last line is not where you give us a Glasgow kiss. (That’s a head butt, for those of you who don’t do Things Scottish.)

2. If the book is meant to be really and truly over (not just a set-up for books 2–7) tie up the loose ends, offer the explanations, and then leave.

3. Brevity in an ending is to be desired. Not forty more damned pages while you let us know what EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER will be doing for the rest of their lives, not to mention their children and grandchildren.

Oh and that last line: the kicker, the killer. Make it sing. Make it memorable. Let it rise to the numinous. Have it break out into the ether.

         From Where the Wild Things Are: Max gets home, finds his dinner waiting—And it was still hot.

From George Orwell’s Animal Farm: The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. 

         From Orwell’s 1984: He loved Big Brother.

From Charlotte’s Web: It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both. (Okay, I cheated on the last as it’s two lines.) But that’s what you aim for. THAT kind of last line.

Response 2:  Sandy

“Hear!  Hear!” I say to Jane Yolen’s comments about endings. “I agree!” “Ditto!” And “What she said!”

Her advice on what endings must do and be is so insightful, I have to admit she left me wondering what I might add. “Hold on,” I told myself, “this is a blog about personal experiences in the writing trade, and nobody else—not even Jane Yolen—has had a single one of your personal experiences.” 

“True enough,” I answered myself, and proceeded to recall my personal experience of the wrestling match known as finding the right ending. The first thing that came to mind is a common plaint I hear when I speak to groups of very young aspiring writers: “I’ve been writing this story and it just goes on and on and on and I don’t know how to end it.” 

“Take a look at these three ingredients of a story,” I suggest. “Character. Problem. Resolution. Who is your main character? What does she want? What’s standing in her way? What does she do about that? How does it all turn out? It’s that simple. When you know what your main character wants, you know your ending. Either she gets it or she doesn’t. The middle is all about when and where and how and why.”

Okay, it’s not exactly “that simple.” But it is simpler than writing incident after incident after incident of a never-ending saga. In theory, anyway. The right ending grows organically out of the right beginning and the right middle. In practice, things can get complicated again.

So here I sit with twenty-five early drafts of Here Comes Gosling!, an eventually published picture book. Ten of these drafts have completely different endings from one another and from the final version. The story, in brief:  Froggie and Rabbit eagerly prepare for the arrival of guests—Goose, Gander, and especially new baby Gosling. Froggie can hardly wait to meet her! But babies rarely respond as anticipated. Froggie’s enthusiastic greeting inspires horrendous honks of discontent. Froggie retreats, discouraged, while the others try in vain to placate Gosling. Now Froggie is perfectly content to wait as long as the honking persists. While he waits, he hums . . . and then sings . . . and then dances. A captivated Gosling stops her honking to watch, and their friendship begins. The visit culminates happily with a picnic, a story, and a sleepy farewell.

Basically, it’s a story about waiting. How hard it is to do. How what you’re expecting isn’t always what you get. How patience can eventually pay off.

In my first draft, there wasn’t even a Gosling. Instead, Froggie and Rabbit needed to head out of town to meet a new baby bunny. After some frustrating preparation and much delay, they arrive. Froggie announces his gift for the bunny is a story he will read to her himself. Last line: And he did. Yes, the beginning and middle were just as dull flat. It was a story about waiting, all right. 

I tried again, with basically the same beginning and middle about getting ready to leave town. Beginning: “I’m taking a trip, Froggie,” Rabbit said. “Would you like to join me?” Well, that’s not too bad. Trips promise fun. Of course, Froggie says yes. Middle: Again, there’s much tidying up and packing and fussing about. The ending? (Please forgive me. I usually don’t share this dreadful stuff with others.) “Let’s go!”  

They never even get to leave town, let alone meet the new bunny! A clear case of a hopeful beginning defeated by a nonexistent middle that then leads to a flop of an ending that’s trying way too hard to convince the reader something exciting is going on here.

I hope you’ve forgiven me. I forgave myself and pushed on. Many times.  Eventually, the bunny disappeared, the trip was abandoned, the geese showed up at Rabbit’s house instead, and the honking began. All very nice, but this time I got myself tangled up in a fancy-schmancy, quasi-poetic beginning: The sun was still half asleep when Froggie heard a tap-tappity-tapping at his door. In spite of everything else finally falling into place, that beginning eventually trapped me in another deadly ending: The sun was already half-asleep when they all headed home. “Shhhhh,” Froggie said.

The sun is not—and should not be!—a character in this story!

It was never a matter of just reworking the ending. The whole story needed to be revised and revised and revised until it flowed. Until everything it needed to flow was included and everything that kept it from flowing was gone. And when it flowed, it flowed right from the beginning through the middle to the ending it couldn’t live without. As Froggie progresses from eager anticipation to confused disappointment to renewed enchantment, Gosling also changes. When we first meet her, her honk of dismay is loud and frightening. Then, as she comes to enjoy Froggie’s antics, her honk becomes “a soft, sweet sound.” And finally, the last line, the only possible last line after a long, hectic, hard-won happy day comes as Froggie finishes reading her a story: And the new baby Gosling snored a goosey snore, “HonKKKKkkkkKKKKkkkk . . .”

And on that quiet note, David, I hand wrestling with endings over to you.

Response 3: David

Thank you, Jane and Sandy, for bringing so much wisdom and practical advice to this month’s subject. Sandy, you lamented following Jane’s grand opening. How do you think I feel following both of you?

But name me one writer who doesn’t have an opinion about writing and I’ll show you where he’s buried. You want good endings, how about the one in Barbara Robinson’s fabulous story, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever? In the beginning we meet the six Herdman kids, who lie and steal and smoke cigars and disrupt school and traumatize kids, parents, and teachers alike. They take over the annual Christmas pageant at school and threaten to wreck it.

But things change in surprising ways. The last sentence in the book could only be uttered by a Herdman, and you wouldn’t “get it” if you hadn’t just witnessed a remarkable transformation in Gladys Herdman, who stands there yelling at the audience, “Hey! Unto you a child is born!” I’ve read that book a number of times. Every time I get goose bumps and tear up with joy. That’s what a good ending can do.

Jane and Sandy, you both give good examples of how authors struggle to find just the right way to end a story. Part of the mystery of writing is that we don’t always see the whole vision when we set out. It’s like working a jigsaw puzzle and getting down to the last, odd-shaped hole in the picture, before the final piece, the ending, falls into place.

Jane spoke about novels and Sandy brought in picture books. I don’t write novels but occasionally write long nonfiction books. I think in my next response it might be fun to talk about endings to nonfiction books and maybe even poetry. But this time I’ll pick up on Sandy’s comments about picture books.

Sandy, I think what makes the ending of a picture book important is that it can trigger the reaction in the young listener that authors love to hear: “Read it again!” Some endings are sad but as Jane points out, children’s literature abounds with happy endings, or at least ones that seem fair and fulfilling and maybe inspiring. I loved Pat Brisson’s book, Wanda’s Roses. Her heroine cleans up a junky lot and enlists the help of the adults she meets, all of whom know that the thorn bush Wanda keeps calling a rosebush will never bloom no matter how hard she tries to encourage it.

In the end, Wanda’s enthusiasm and trust inspire the adults to do more than help clean up. The last sentence says it all. And later that summer the whole lot was filled with the biggest, most beautiful, sweetest-smelling roses that anyone had ever seen—just as Wanda had always said it would be. With such a satisfying ending, the only thing left for a child to say is, “Read it again!”

I remember other books like that, stories that left our daughter Robin and her brother Jeff begging for another reading, and another. What a great way to expand vocabulary and engage thinking and imagination in children. Of course the whole story has to be good but the ending matters hugely.

The thirtieth thing I wrote, in 1967, was a picture book called Little Turtle’s Big Adventure. A small turtle loses its home by a pond when a road is built through it and must set off in search of another place to live. The journey is long and lonely and sad. Eventually a pond is discovered and the turtle settles into its new life. I knew all that would happen before I started writing. What I didn’t know was how I would end the story. At the end of the first draft I still didn’t know. I don’t remember how many drafts it took before the final piece of the puzzle revealed itself but, eventually, it did, and it seemed totally inevitable and right. He closed his eyes and took a nice long nap in the warm sun. It was a happy conclusion to a desperate adventure that ended well. Captain Kangaroo read the story on his show.

Sandy, Jane, have you ever used the kind of ending that I call, for lack of a better term, the boomerang? The beginning returns as the ending. The first sentence in When Cows Come Home begins, When cows come home/At the end of the day. The last sentence is, Farmer winks/And milks away/When cows come home/At the end of the day. Between the first and last lines the cows go off on a rambunctious holiday behind the farmer’s back but, in the end, I needed to bring them back to reality, back to the barn, home to be milked. I tried all sorts of endings before I realized that what I was trying to say is that some things don’t change. No matter what, cows come home at the end of the day. I think young readers and listeners feel reassured when they can count on the day ending the way it should.

Okay, dear Sandy, back to you for your second hitch at this wrestling business. 

Response 4: Sandy

Yes!  David, I couldn’t agree with you more about the sheer perfection of Barbara Robinson’s last line in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. It’s the perfect ending to a perfect book. Tears of joy, indeed.

In fact, I ran downstairs—okay, limped downstairs with my recently bashed knee—to my autographed-copy bookshelf to read it again. Then I remembered I’d lent it to a friend. (I really need two copies of that book, one to lend and one to keep in case the other never gets returned.) But here’s what I was looking for: Is that unexpected but totally appropriate shout of “Hey! Unto you a child is born!” really the last line? Don’t the other characters react? Doesn’t Barbara want to say a few words about the religious and social significance of that line? To me, that line in that context has its traditional meaning, but it also applies to our need to wake up and pay attention to all children, including the very challenging Herdmans of this world.

Nope. There is nothing after that line. There is no reaction from the other characters. There is no speech from the author. It’s not surprising to learn that Barbara Robinson has a theater background. She knows that when the problem is solved (the pageant is uniquely saved), the tension of the story drops and there’s only one thing left to do—get off the stage! By doing so without so much as a backward glance, Barbara accomplishes exactly what you’ve advised, David: Want to think more deeply about what the other characters’ reactions might be? Want to explore the meaning of the story further? Read the book again!

Oh, my. You really sat us down at the feet of a master, David. Now there’s an even longer line of wise words for me to follow. What can I possibly add?

Well, I can answer your question about the boomerang ending. Yes, absolutely, I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. For example, there’s my second book about Rabbit and Froggie, What a Party! My original title for that book was What a Day!, and I wish the marketing folks hadn’t messed with it. (But that’s another topic we can take up later.) For me, this is a story about the fullness of a day. Froggie wakes up in his comfy bed in his cozy home, wildly excited about attending his grandfather’s birthday party. Off he goes, and, indeed, he has a wonderful time. But the party ends. Everyone’s tired. It’s time to go home. Froggie doesn’t want to leave—ever! Eventually, he does go home, as we all must, and rediscovers the comfort and coziness waiting for him there. It’s a fine place to be at the start and at the end of a lovely day. If the reader wants to linger a bit longer at Grandpa’s party, of course, he or she can read the book again.

Since you’re moving on to nonfiction and poetry endings in your next post, David, I think I’ll say a bit more about plays. In fact, I’ll talk about boomerang endings AND plays. Right now, I’m working on a new script called Walking Toward America. It’s based on my dear friend Ilga’s experiences in Europe during World War II. When Ilga was between the ages of 10 and 17, she and her family fled their home in Riga, Latvia; spent time in a forced labor camp in Germany; walked over 500 miles in two wintry months; spent several years in Displaced Persons camps; and finally sailed to America through the worst Atlantic storm in many years. Ilga has written about these events in a series of short stories and also in a longer essay for a community life story project. So I have plenty of material to draw from. More than enough, as you’ll see.

After much thought and shifting around of those jigsaw puzzle pieces you mention, David, I’ve decided to start the play with Ilga on the ship; then, as the storm is at its worst, cut back to a joyful time in Riga; go through the labor camp and the long, treacherous walk westward; and finally cut back to the ship again as the storm ends and Ilga and her family arrive in New York harbor. The end. That leaves out about six years in DP camps. It also leaves out Ilga’s delightful story about her family’s final destination of Oak Lawn, IL, where they’re introduced to the wonder of Wonder Bread. 

Why omit such rich material? Believe me, it hasn’t been an easy choice. But even though there were challenges in those DP camps (two or more families to a room, for instance) and great humor in that loaf of Wonder Bread, at those points, the family is safe. And “safe” means a drop in the story’s tension. Recognizing that, I feel I have to stick with the high-tension moments, mention the DP camps in passing, then get her to America, and get her off the stage. By using “the boomerang ending,” I’m able to do that. No P.S. about the Wonder Bread, just as there’s no P.S. after Barbara Robinson’s final line. 

That said, I’ll get off the stage myself. And that’s your cue, David.

Response 5: David

Sandy, you and Jane have covered endings of fiction very well. For my second go at the subject, I’ve decided to tackle endings for nonfiction and poetry. These share much in common with fiction but there are differences.

My most recent nonfiction title, Mammoth Bones and Broken Stones, tells of the archaeological quest to identity the first people to migrate to the North American continent. One advantage of writing nonfiction is that we frequently know how our narrative will end before we begin. In my case, the answer was that we still don’t know with certainty who the original settlers were, which means that we also can’t be sure of where they came from or how and when they arrived. Swell! So how, I wondered, can I end a book for a quest that hasn’t yet succeeded?

Sandy? Jane? You publish nonfiction too. How do you handle this situation? If it were fiction, I might introduce the character(s) and the situation; struggle through various efforts to resolve, improve, or accept it; and look for a perfectly timed, dynamite ending. As a reader I figure I deserve a reward at the end, something to keep me thinking about what I just read.

I decided to treat the beginning and ending of Mammoth Bones like bookends, sandwiching the story of the search between them. I went back to my beginning and strengthened early statements about how hard it would be for scientists to ever determine the absolute, irrefutable answer. That set up my ending scenario, at least in my head, long before I got to it. Once there, instead of ending with one memorable sentence—sorry, Jane, I really tried!—I went with a cluster of concluding thoughts:

            

Who were North America’s first people? We still don’t know. It may have taken thousands of years and wave after wave of new arrivals from different locations to finally settle here. Whether they came on foot or by boat, they came. Our quest goes on.

Do you ever tear up during the closing scene of a movie or play? I do. Sometimes I need a minute or two before trying to speak. A good ending gets me every time. This goes for poetry too. I want to mention poetic endings before wrapping up. Poems that end memorably tend to be the ones we go back to reread. Poems in rhyme and meter can be harder to manipulate than poems in free verse, but even so it’s always good for readers to feel that the poet left them at the right place and time.

Sandy, I know that you and Jane can quote great examples from your own work but here are three examples. One is mine; the other two are not bad either. (Me winking.)

            1. From “Introduction to Poetry,” in Sailing Alone Across the Room by Billy

            Collins

            Subject: How to enjoy a poem.

            Ending: They begin beating it with a hose

            to find out what it really means.

            2. From “On the Road,” in Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser

            Subject: Picking up a pebble on the road

            Ending: Put it back, something told me,

            put it back and keep walking.

            3. From “Making Ready,” in Pirates by David L. Harrison

            Subject: Pirate captain watching green recruits loading ship

            Ending: They’ll learn soon enough to be pirates,

            for now let ’em count and dream.

Perfect endings are rare and good ones are hard to come by in any genre. They can’t all be blue ribbon winners. Whether delivering a speech, writing a picture book, finishing a novel, creating a play, or composing a song, writers sweat more over beginnings and endings than anywhere else in their work. In the end, it’s worth it.

Jane, thanks for bringing this one to the table. Sandy, as always, it has been a pleasure.

David