Rafting on the River

No, I'm not planning on river rafting on the Delaware while it overflows its banks after Hurricane Irene.(Thankfully, all of my family and friends are safe.) I did, however, accompany Huck Finn on his trip down the Mississippi this week while we waited out the storm.

This read has been wonderful research for my middle grade Underground Railroad novel, When It's Dark Enough, You Can See the Stars..I learned that mattresses were called ticks, and could be stuffed with straw, and well-to-do folks topped it with a feather tick. Poor folks used corn husks, which could be uncomfortable with the occasional corn cob stabbing you in the back.

Reading a book published in the nineteenth century gave me a surprising perspective. Huck wrestles with his desire to set Jim, a slave, free. Jim belongs to someone else, and is stolen property. Whereas we would see this as a noble endeavor, Huck viewed it the way many people in his time did: he was stealing goods and sinning against God and Jim's owner. Huck assuages his guilt by writing a letter to Jim's mistress, Miss Watson, but never sends it. He says,"All right, then, I'll go to hell", and tears it up. Huck didn't realize he was making a choice of which God would approve.

The face of slavery has changed, but it is still out there. What do you think slavery looks like now? Let me know.

Plugging Away

Well, I've been working on my blog again.I found a funny picture, managed to load it, but couldn't crop the header to the size I want. Then I found a dynamic title: Scribbler's Travels. I published my first blog under that title, only to have a fellow writer tell me, "Hey, I found a picture of an old lady, and it's definitely not you."

Trouble is, I forgot to check Google to see how popular that name was. It seems a lot of people are scribbler travelers. Back to the drawing board. My new title is used less, so I'm hoping it comes up on the first page of a Google search.

When we were at the beach last week, I learned that the horseshoe crab has been around since before the dinosaurs roamed the earth. It's hard being a dinosaur in a techno-savvy world, but if a horshoe crab can learn to live in the modern world, so can I.

History Lesson

Well, here it is next week, and I’ve just come back from a class on blogging. I get the gist of it, but still feel very incompetent. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but I say it just takes an old dog longer.

Our family vacationed at Chincoteague, Virginia last week. We had perfect beach weather, and I found the perfect beach read. Nestled in the bedroom bookcase, my husband discovered Giants, a book that parallels the lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Buried treasure. Maybe I couldn’t work on my middle grade Underground Railroad novel this week, but I could do research as I soaked in the sun and watched my grandkids play in the sand. Life is good.

I learned something interesting. There were no child labor laws back then. Abraham Lincoln’s father hired him out many times before Abe was twenty-one. Guess who got all the money? Yep, his dad. This was the cultural norm in the early nineteenth century. It was also the law. Abe felt a little like an indentured servant. I had to go back and rewrite a bit of my book when I found this gem.

History gives us perspective. It’s kind of like growing old. We have a lot more wisdom when we can see where we’ve been.

New Beginnings

Well, here I am, cracking open the "cellar door" of my blog, which hasn't seen a post in over a year.

Oops.

At the last writers' conference which I couldn't attend, one of the speakers said you must have a blog if you are a writer, and every writer needs to post at least once a week.

Oops again.

Well, the truth is, I'm on a new threshold. The cellar in my fantasy novel, Beyond the Red Door, has just been transported back in time. Joyce Magnin, my writing mentor and friend, recommended I shelve Red Door and start an historical novel about a slave boy who runs away on the Underground Railroad. When I did that, my writing went up a notch. It flowed. I knew it was the right thing to do.

I have noticed that before novelists get that first contract, most of them write one or two books that don't get published. I spent fifteen years writing and rewriting one book. For years I called it my learn-how-to-write book. Now I know the pain and freedom of letting a pet project go. It is time to move on.

Maybe I will be able to incorporate the first book into a sequel.These two books have some things in common. They both involve a cellar that was once used to hide saves on the Underground Railroad, and they have the same theme: freedom from slavery.

Will I blog next week? Will the theme of my blog change? Tune in next week to find out.