Category Archives: Uncategorized

February 8, 2012 · 11:34 am

Local Writer of the Week: Oz Never Did Give Nothin’ to the Tin Man

Mary Gallagher was my student in creative writing at Robinson High School, Class of 1989. I remember her as a quiet, good-natured young woman with an open manner and a disarming smile. So many adolescents are withdrawn or even surly, but not Mary. She had a sunny disposition matched only by what I came to find was a wicked sense of mordant humor. And write. Oh, my, but the young lady could write like a dream. I quickly put her in the “Tin Man” category of students, which is an allusion to the America (of “A Horse with No Name” fame) song which went in part “Oz never did give nothin’ to the Tin Man/ That he didn’t, didn’t already have…” That is to say that I knew early on in the class that the best I could hope for with students like Mary (and like Emily Mitchell and Roy Jefferson) was that I would do them no harm. They had come to me as accomplished writers and what I could do for them was give them opportunities to share their writing and encourage them in any way I could. That was my role as a teacher: anything else could be damaging.

Mary graduated and then came back to Robinson as an English teacher. I would see her in department meetings and in the halls, but we taught in different parts of the building. I lost track of her and I retired. I heard she went to Mountain View.

Then, as I have with other former students, I reconnected with Mary on Facebook. She commented occasionally on my posts and I on hers, and then one day a notice showed up in my email about something called Black Walnut Dispatch, subtitled “Mossy Fecund Thoughts about Gardening and Nature.” It was a gardening/ landscape design blog and it was by Mary. I was a bit taken aback, but delighted at her knowledge and as ever, impressed by the humor and style of her writing. The posts are well worth checking out at http://blackwalnutdispatch.com/ She covers a variety of topics, and some of them not related to gardening but amazing anyhow.

I asked Mary how she got started in gardening and landscape design ( I knew about the writing), and she responded by sending me an essay she had just sent to Washington Gardener Magazine. Mary always made it easy for me, even down to her married name. Her maiden name was Gallagher; her married name is Gray, and so she is still Mary G. and still the Tin Man. And I mean that in every good way.

Here’s how she got started gardening in her own words:

My Garden Story

By Mary Gray

I remember the exact moment in which I became a gardener. Or perhaps I should say, I remember the moment that I started to become a gardener, since my transformation was fast, but not instantaneous.

It was April of 2007, and I had been a stay-at-home mom for a year. Though I felt lucky to be with my baby boy full-time, being cooped up in the house did not agree with me, and I was restless. Between feedings and diaper changes, I began looking out the windows. Our yard looks hideous, I thought.

One warm April day while Charlie was napping, I decided to take the baby monitor outside and do some yard work. I was pruning an overgrown Euonymus ‘Manhattan’ (of course, at the time it was just Green Bush ‘Ugly’ to me) when I looked up and surveyed the backyard. It was terribly weed-ridden and overgrown, but I remember thinking: I’m going to fix this place up. This thought was followed by another as I continued my work under the warm sun: Hmm. This is actually rather pleasant.

Ta-da! A gardener was born. What I had previously considered a chore had suddenly become an interesting challenge. And within a few months, that challenge became an all-consuming passion. Every second of the day that Charlie slept, I would go outside and start pulling weeds. I bought Gardening for Dummies and that summer checked out nearly every garden and landscaping book from the public library.

I became fascinated not only by plants but by garden design, and so a year later I enrolled in George Washington University’s Landscape Design Program. The program was challenging, but I loved the combination of coursework in design, horticulture, and construction. Soon I added a part-time job at a nursery so that I could get hands-on experience with plants, and later I began doing freelance garden design and coaching as well.

My backyard became my plant workshop and design playground, and I have had so much fun experimenting with different plant combinations these last few years. We live on a half-acre suburban lot in Burke, VA. Our backyard gradually slopes down to our deck, and is graced with several beautiful mature shade trees.

Unfortunately, most of those trees are Black Walnuts, which not only drop huge nuts all summer and fall, but also secrete a toxin that severely hinders the growth of many other plants. Even though they create a gardening challenge, we would never dream of cutting down any of our Black Walnuts because they have such a handsome spreading habit and make the back yard feel park-like. Sure, I’ve been beaned on the head once or twice with gigantic nuts, but what gardener doesn’t have her challenges?

Because of the large trees, the amount of sunlight our backyard receives is highly variable: one spot may get dappled shade, but move a few feet in any direction and you could be in full sun or full shade. I try to take full advantage of all the sunny pockets by packing them with as many ornamental grasses and summer flowering perennials as I can. But I’ve found that part shade is amenable to some beautiful plant combinations as well. I recently planted a partly shaded bed with Fothergilla ‘Blue Shadow’, Deutzia ‘Chardonnay Pearls’, Hosta ‘Frances Williams’, Heuchera ‘Dale’s Strain’, Sarcococca, Carex pensylvanica, and Digitalis x mertonensis. Once this planting has proven itself, I plan to tuck some Camas and Allium bulbs around the perennials.

I know that sweeps of ornamental grasses and perennials are hot right now, but I’m a big fan of flowering shrubs for home landscapes. They are great for adding visual weight where it is needed in a design, they are easy to care for, and there are so many interesting new cultivars that come out each year that offer compact habit, colorful foliage, and an abundance of flowers or fruit. I especially love shrubs that produce berries, with Ilex verticillata and Callicarpa americana being my current favorites. Other shrubs I’ve had great success with include Rhus aromatica, Physocarpus opulifolia, Aronia melanocarpa, and various Viburnums.

In addition to doing freelance garden design and playing around in my own garden, I hope to continue my studies at GW and pursue a Masters in Sustainable Landscaping. The more involved I become in the world of gardening, the more committed I am to creating the healthiest environments possible, for all living things.

Just beautiful, Mary. Just beautiful. –DV

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February 7, 2012 · 10:24 am

Bob Tale #1: Brown Paper Bag

Note: Some of these stories have been published elsewhere, but I wanted to put them out there again as part of the Bob Tales. I love that name for the series. I thought it up myself.

The question I am asked most frequently is “Was Bob a real person?” Yes, Bob did exist, and I’m sorry to say I haven’t kept up with him. I’m calling him Bob Bolt, although “Bolt” is a pseudonym. As to the question, did all these things happen as Bob described them? Answer: Who can tell? I never bothered to find out. I just enjoyed the stories and hope you do, too.

###

I like to think about inventions and how they impact us, and not only the big inventions like the airplane or the car. I like to think about the little inventions like that little plastic thing that fits over the door handle of a hotel room and tells the world whether you want to be disturbed or not. Someone had to think of that. One of the coolest inventions of all time, though, I think is the brown paper grocery bag. Now, on the face of it, that might not seem to be that great an invention but suppose it didn’t stand up? (Then it would be a plastic grocery bag.) That would make things that much harder.

In 1852 Francis Wolle patented in the United States a machine that he devised for making paper bags. Margaret Knight of Boston invented a machine about 1867 to make square-bottomed paper bags that would stand upright by themselves. Charles Stillwell finished the design in 1883 by making pleats in the side so the bags would fold and stack easily. The invention was called the S.O.S., or Self-Opening Sack. With the advent of the supermarket in the early 1930s, demand for Stilwell’s paper bags took off. They’re still in use today, although some have predicted their demise with the use of the plastic bag (1977). I try to keep a few paper bags on hand to sort recycling. They also make great guy wrapping paper. (The other guy wrapping paper is the comics page.)

Speaking of inventors, I knew someone in college who was given to, let’s say, fantastic stories. We never knew whether to believe Bob or not, but he was entertaining. Apparently he had an Uncle Jim who fancied himself an inventor. The thing was, he didn’t know what he was doing. He made a wind-driven direct current electrical generator for his house out of a fifty-five gallon drum, some shutters and some wire. The thing actually worked until it spun itself off its mountings in a high wind and rolled away. It’s good that they lived in a rural area so no actual damage was done.

One time Jim decided he wanted to make himself a submarine. He got two aluminum boats and glued them together. For propulsion he stuck an electric trolling motor through the hull so the propeller was sticking out. He fashioned a periscope from plastic tubing. Now, there wasn’t a lot of headroom in his submarine so he had to lie prone and look out the periscope. He also had to cut a hatch so he could get in and out. He took a couple of old hot water heaters he had lying around and used them for ballast tanks. And he put in a snorkel for air.

Showing at least some sense, he tied a rope to the “submarine” and told Bob and another nephew that if he got into trouble in his farm pond he would move the periscope rapidly up and down. That was a signal to the two teens to haul him out. Bob said he thought about the weight of the water and had some doubts that they could, but also considered that Jim couldn’t get into that much trouble in a pond with a maximum depth of about five feet.

With his uncle’s wife Dot fussing at him from the bank about his hair-brained schemes, Jim wiggled into the craft. Bob and his cousin pushed the submarine into the water. It floated out about thirty feet and then Jim opened the water inlets. The craft slowly slid under the water, propelled by the trolling motor. Bob said at that point he realized that Jim had no way to get to back to the surface since he had not thought to have a way to purge the water from the ballast tanks. At that moment the periscope started moving up and down like a kid on a pogo stick.

They found out afterward that Jim hadn’t sealed the openings well and so not only did the ballast tanks flood: the interior of the submarine did as well. Jim was able to turn on his back and breathe from a bubble of air left at the top. Bob and his cousin hauled on the rope with all their strength but the sub was on the bottom of the pond and wouldn’t budge. Dot, a good farm wife, ran for the tractor in a nearby field. They tied the rope to the pull bar and dragged the submarine out. Bob used a crowbar to split the hull and let Uncle Jim out, soaked and startled but otherwise all right.

This venture did put a damper on Jim’s experiments for a while, but he soon back attempting to do things he knew nothing about. Dot told Bob some time later that she was just glad Jim hadn’t tried to build an airplane…yet.

So, all you inventors out there, I’m grateful for your efforts. I’m just glad you’re not like Uncle Jim.

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February 6, 2012 · 9:42 am

Raiders of the Lost Arc

We assume, I think, that children like to dress up and wear costumes and pretend, and indeed most do, but there are a very few who don’t. We knew one little boy (I forget his name or what family he belonged to) who hated dressing up as someone else by the time he was six or so. His mother put him in little Halloween costumes until he was that age, and then he absolutely balked at trick or treating as Casper the Friendly Ghost (vinyl edition). He told his mother (she later told me) that he would forgo getting candy rather than wear a “stupid costume.” She asked him who or what he would like to go out as, and he said himself. She sighed and told him to pick out some clothes he typically wore and come back out to go visiting the neighbors.

He went in for a minute and came back outside wearing the same clothes. He spread his arms wide. “Here I am!” he pronounced. “It’s me.”

He proudly went from door to door, easily telling anyone who would ask who he was supposed to be: “I’m me!” I think that confounded most people into giving him more candy than he would have gained otherwise.

Sometimes it pays to be yourself. Except when it doesn’t.

I was wearing what I call my “Indiana Jones outfit” one day last week since it was a bit chilly out. I didn’t deliberately set out to dress like Harrison Ford in the movie role: it just all came together. I got myself a leather flight jacket for a retirement present eight years ago (at Kohl’s–how unlike Indy is that?), and I was wearing some cotton khakis with my boot like brown shoes. I checked out and put on a random blue shirt from the closet but did bring along my Indy-like brown hat. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror before I left and thought, surprised, man, I look like Indiana Jones. All I needed was a bull whip…

I headed for the CVS and strode in from the parking lot. As I was about to go through the automatic doors, a little boy about eight years old was coming toward me with his mom. He caught sight of me, stopped dead in his tracks and with a voice full of wonder, exclaimed, “Are you Indiana Jones?!?”

I hesitated a second as his mother looked at him and then back at me and then at him with an expectant smile on her face.

I thought, I’m an adult and adults shouldn’t lie, especially to little kids. And so I said, “No, I’m not.”

I regretted it instantly. His face fell and he reached up and took his mother’s hand. She gave me what I thought to be a mildly reproachful look that I didn’t understand until I thought about the situation for a bit.

I crushed that little kid’s sense of belief and wonder. It would be as if he saw Santa Claus walking out of the store carrying a gallon of milk and asked him if he were Santa and the elf replied, “Nope, not me, kid.” Of course he isn’t Santa, but what would it hurt to say he was? It would be the thrill of a lifetime for a little kid.

Later on, I was telling a good friend about this encounter. She said, wisely, “You should have said, ‘Yeah, kid, that’s me,’ and winked at him.” She is also honest. “You blew it.”

“And I could have said, ‘I hate snakes'”(which I do).

“Now you’re getting the idea,” she returned. But it was too late.

Sometimes it pays to be yourself. Except when it doesn’t.

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February 2, 2012 · 10:24 am

Buy the Little Book!

I see by the light of the computer monitor that William Strunk’s little book on writing, Elements of Style, is still with us, now in its fourth edition. It’s also available in a 50th anniversary edition and also in a 2010 version for those who want the latest in great advice on writing. I can’t vouch for the later editions because I used the first edition, which came out in 1959, although I didn’t get my copy until 1964 when I was a lad. Or actually a senior in high school. My copy of the book featured a foreword by one of the finest essayists in the universe, E.B. White (Besides writing great books ostensibly for children about spiders and mice, White was an incomparable writer of essays who worked at the New Yorker for years).

(From Wikipedia:) Not long after The New Yorker was founded in 1925, White would submit manuscripts to it. Katharine Angell, the literary editor, recommended to magazine editor and founder Harold Ross that White be taken on as staff. However, it took months to convince him to come to a meeting at the office, and further weeks to convince him to agree to work on the premises. Eventually he agreed to work in the office on Thursdays.

James Thurber described White as being a quiet man, disliking publicity, who during his time at The New Yorker would slip out of his office via the fire escape to a nearby branch of Schrafft’s to avoid visitors whom he didn’t know.

He published his first article in The New Yorker magazine in 1925, then joined the staff in 1927 and continued to contribute for around six decades.

In 1959, White edited and updated The Elements of Style. This handbook of grammatical and stylistic guidance for writers of American English had been written and published in 1918 by William Strunk, Jr., one of White’s professors at Cornell. White’s rework of the book was extremely well received, and further editions of the work followed in 1972, 1979, and 1999; an illustrated edition followed in 2005. The illustrator, Maira Kalman, is a contributor to The New Yorker. That same year, a New York composer named Nico Muhly premiered a short opera based on the book. The volume is a standard tool for students and writers and remains required reading in many composition classes. The complete history of The Elements of Style is detailed in Mark Garvey’s Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style.

I cannot find my copy of the Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (it’s here somewhere), but no matter. I have internalized its principles and rules over the years and have some of them by memory.

Principle 11: Use the active voice. (‘Nuff said. Just do it!)
Principle 13: Omit needless words. (This sentence is an absolute model of the principle.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences…

Any writer would be well advised to get this book, study it, and put its principles and rules into action. E.B.White quotes William Strunk telling his classes, “Buy the little book! Buy the little book! Buy the little book!” Good advice, that.

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February 1, 2012 · 12:01 pm

Preacher on the Plaza: Elizabeth Haugen

This week’s local writer is Elizabeth Haugen, pastor of Washington Plaza Baptist Church, in Reston, VA. She writes a regular blog called “Preacher on the Plaza” (http://preacherontheplaza.wordpress.com/) and authored the writing advice post a couple of weeks ago. I’m impressed with her warm tone, sensible thinking and elegant style. In the rest of this post, taken from her blog site, she talks about her background, her ministry, and the importance of writing in that ministry.

I’m a 30 something female originally out of a tradition that does not ordain women but yet I am a pastor because I found another family of Baptists to call home. I am a proud 2002 graduate of Samford University in Birmingham, AL and a 2006 graduate of Duke Divinity School where I learned to appreciate good basketball among many other important truths. I moved to the Washington DC area full-time after completing seminary and have been in love with the city ever since. I can’t think of a more diverse, challenging and fun place that I’d ever want to live.

My life goal is to learn how to be a human being. I want to know my Creator, to give and receive love, to respect others as much as I do myself, to use the resources of time, talent and finances I have for the good of the world.

Vocationally, as I see it now, my calling is lived out as a pastor in the American Baptist/ Alliance of Baptist tradition, a writer, as wife to Kevin, as a friend of many of the people that I admire the most, and as a member of the Evans/Hagan family tree.

Over the past several years, I’ve come to believe that the Christian path is not the only way to God, but confidently claim Jesus. In my preaching, teaching and writing, I seek to lead the congregation I serve to see the beauty in the traditions in what others who have come before us have treasured and taught us.

I’m an advocate of spaces in the church for open non-judgmental conversation on social topics that matter so deeply where our society finds itself today. I’m so proud to be the pastor of a church that allows my voice to be as authentic as theirs already is!

I believe writing and the pastoral vocation go hand in hand. Blogging is just a natural part of my ongoing conversation with the church. I see this blog as a space apart from the obligations and responsibilities I have as pastor of a particular church to be a catalyst of many of the questions, frustrations, and possibilities I see ahead for communities of faith like the one I’m in, for the pastors like myself who will lead (or not lead them) in the future, and resources available for faith seekers but don’t want to lose their spirituality through connection with religion. I’m always interested in growing in the art of pastoring.

Preacher on the Plaza won’t be exclusively about my congregation, although stories of hope from this community will be featured. And, it won’t be full of merely personal rants either. For I know that my church and my life experiences are merely a grain of sand in the larger story.

I hope to connect readers to others who are asking similar questions and who are looking for honest answers (even if the truth hurts a little).

I’m excited about the journey,

Pastor Elizabeth

Note: that any comments I share on this blog are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my entire congregation, denomination or all people of faith.

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January 31, 2012 · 9:56 am

Breaker, Breaker…

On Facebook, you can “like” almost anything (and “unlike” it if you change your mind about how you feel about bacon, say), including businesses and institutions. One of my likes is J.E. Rice’s Hardware Store in the Manassas Shopping Center not far from where I live, in Manassas. In fact, I wish FB had a “love” button because I more than “like” Rice’s: I love it!

I have been going to Rice’s, now in its 75th year, for over 30 years. They not only have everything that a hardware store should have: they have some things most hardware stores don’t have. And in 30 years of my asking for often odd and arcane items, they have not had what I needed or wanted a grand total of three times. Each time they have told me where I could find what I was looking for, even though it involved going to another store. Service is a key to the Rice’s experience, and that’s what I call service!

Not only will they figure out the part you need to fix something when you don’t know the real name of the part or what it does (Me: “It’s this little plastic thingie that fits on the end of a shaft and turns so that it engages this other white plastic or is it nylon thingie to open this little door…” Steve or Jamie or Chase or anyone else who works there: “Yeah, I know what you need. We got it…)

Not only will they sell you a replacement part, they’ll tell you how to install it without hurting yourself. This summer I was putting in a garbage disposal for daughter Amy who was on a vacation in the Southwest. The drain set up wasn’t standard so I drew it up and went to Rice’s. Jamie met me, studied my crude diagram, led me to the plumbing parts, took several pieces of pipe and pipe joints and showed me how they fit together.

Well, because I am spatially challenged and don’t know what I’m doing, it took me four hours and four more trips to Rice’s to get the disposal to work without leaking or throwing off sparks. At every revisit, Jamie carefully listened to what I had to say, figured out what I needed and gave it to me with a smile. By the last visit, I think the entire hardware store was cheering for me. It was a great experience.

Much the same thing happened when our furnace stopped dead and would not come back on. It was when we had snow (yes, it was cold enough for snow at one time this winter) and temperatures below freezing. I woke up to a 56 degree house, colder than I like it for sleeping. The thermostat was “calling” for heat (“I am calling yooooooooou!) but the heat wouldn’t listen. Or come on. Through clever diagnostic work and deduction (and a check of the internet), I diagnosed the fault as a bad breaker. I toddled off to Rice’s where Jamie listened to my description of the problem agreed that it was probably the breaker, and then sent me to another store because Rice’s did not carry that particular brand of breaker (they can be different–who knew?). I got the parts. Jamie had told me how to put them in and warned me about the dangers of electricity with a story about his trying to install an air conditioning unit that shorted out and shocked him, blowing him back across the yard. I needed no further cautionary tales so I took myself back to the furnace, threw the main breaker (for safety and continued existence on this earth), snapped the breaker in and fired that big boy up. Warm air never felt so good.

So, whenever you go to Rice’s you’ll know that you can count on an amazing inventory, a helpful staff and wonderful service. I still don’t know everyone’s names, but you will see Steve, always gracious and ready to talk about a subject of interest; Jamie, whom I mentioned earlier; and Chase, whom I am not as familiar with but a nice fellow, and very knowledgeable, as they all are. And don’t forget the fabulous hardware ladies, Kristin and Patty, who are not only young and energetic: they are knowledgeable and helpful and know their hardware. And they love books and reading. Imagine that. Rice’s truly does have it all.

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January 30, 2012 · 9:49 am

I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy

I have actually had some loyal BC readers (all of whom are both attractive and intelligent) ask me when I do my writing. Now, usually only other writers are interested in how and where other writers write, so it’s nice see that readers and other people have an interest in this question. When people ask me this, my initial thought is “In the kitchen…with a knife…” but I usually mumble something like “Whenever I get to it,” or “When I’m slammed up against a deadline.” So, there’s nothing much to see there but I don’t want to disappoint units of loyal readers so I thought I’d make the topic a bit more grandiose and write about (cue the trumpet fanfare):

A Day in the Writing Life

Alert readers (and you are all indeed alert and rested) will notice the steals from the Beatles song of the same name and wonder if this will end with me “blowing my mind out in a car,” either literally or figuratively or both. Well, I’m writing this, after all, so the answer is “No,” both literally and figuratively. I wouldn’t do that either way because I would impede traffic and that really hacks off other drivers and creates a backup which is reported from the Glass Enclosed Nerve Center of WTOP 103.5 (note to ‘TOP: please lose the GENC label! You’re on the radio! No one knows or cares if the working space is enclosed by glass, cardboard or leftover pizza, which, since we’re told that it is fueled by a certain kind of pizza, it probably is.)

Actually, since every day is a little different and I never know when I’ll be writing, let’s just say that I do it at various times during the way and for different lengths of time. When I was teaching, I soon found that if I could use little pockets of time to look at some of the omnipresent papers I carried with me at all times like a bad skin rash (I know, ewwwwww! Gross simile of the week!) It gets the job done, as someone once said.

So, in answer to the question “When do you write?” I would have to say at all times and at no time. And this, as Hamlet said, was sometime a paradox.

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January 27, 2012 · 10:55 am

The Modesty Rail

Well, if you’re looking for modesty, you won’t find it here. This week’s Biscuit City Poem of the Week was penned by none other than your not-so-humble blogster with a lot of help from my friends. Enjoy!

The Large Place

for our mothers

Psalm 18: 19: The Lord brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.

the sky
is blue
(self-evident)
and clear
looks like it
goes out to
eternity
( self-evident
and not true)

true that it fades
into near nothingness.

we fly
through the blue
and come back
in hours

some birds
fly for
days
if they are
lucky

satellites circle
without effort
as if
they are never
coming down
(not true)

they fall
all of them
after a while
through the near nothingness
through the blue
flaming across
the sky

red
orange
yellow
flowers against
the Large Place
of the
blue
(true)

–Dan Verner

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January 26, 2012 · 1:32 pm

10,000 Hours

After Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January, 2009, a number of articles appeared about the “10,000 hour principle,” most notably Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. Gladwell maintained that 10,000 hours is the amount of time required, more or less, to become an expert in most fields. (For the record, this number of hours equals the time spent in class and in studying to get a bachelor’s and master’s degree and then work for two years.) Capt’n Sully had 12,000 hours flight time (my brother Ron, a retired pilot, has 17,000. I have one 1), if anyone wants to know.) and so qualified as an expert. The hours he spent sailplaning didn’t hurt, either. I bet no one asked him where the engine was on his glider after the Miracle on the Hudson.

My point in all of this is: if you want to be a writer, you need to write. A lot. You need to write and write and write and write and then write some more. Write regularly at the same time and in the same place if you can. If you can’t, write wherever you are, whenever you can. Carry a notebook or if you tend to lose things like that (ahem), some paper to write on. And a pen or pencil. Or a laptop. Whatever.

And you need an audience to read what you’ve written. Fix up a blog for yourself. (It’s easy—even I did it. If you can’t figure out how to do that, get a fifteen year old to help you in exchange for pizza.) Run your stuff off and give it to your friends and family. Try to get published. Don’t fear rejection. It’s going to happen. Sooner or later you’ll start to succeed. Your family will stop running away when they see you coming toward them with paper in hand. Your friends will ask you if you’ve written anything lately. Or maybe you won’t succeed. You’ll have had a great time doing so.

But it doesn’t happen overnight. 10,000 hours, remember?

It also helps to be in touch with other writers like yourself. I recommend a local group here in Manassas, Write by the Rails, which you can “like” as a group on Facebook. They have events and readings and you can identify some other writers you can hang out with. But don’t hang out too much. You’ll need the time to write.

It can help some people to take writing courses. Several local writers are involved in C.F.A. or M.F.A. programs, and there are classes taught at the Center for the arts in Manassas. Some people, like local novelist Nancy Kyme, taught herself to write. That’s unusual and hard to do, but Nancy’s beautiful novel, Memory Lake, is proof it can be done. And Memory Lake, she said, took her about ten years to write. If she wrote and edited four hours a day, five days a week with a two-week vacation from writing, that’s about 10,000 hour.

So, get going! What are you waiting for? Write!

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January 25, 2012 · 10:08 am

A Serious and Smiling Writer

It’s not possible to talk for long with Heidi Willis without realizing she is a serious woman: serious about her life, about her faith and about her art. That seriousness underlies a ready smile and a sparkling wit. Heidi is devoted to her family of husband Todd and their three children and practices a deep and quiet faith that is evident in her writing and in her conversation. On her Facebook information page, she quoted a sentence from Esther,

Maybe you were put here in this place for such a time as this. (Esther 4:13)

Heidi is passionate about writing. But she keeps it in perspective. Again from Facebook:

A writer. A photographer. A multi-media business owner and creator. And, unbelievably, I’ve been able to make money at all of them. But mostly, a mom. Which, while I won’t earn a cent doing it, is the most important thing I will ever do.

Her Facebook site is a treasure trove of observations, insights, up to the minute reports on the happenings of the day and exchanges with friends. Her blog (http://heidiwillis.blogspot.com/) and website (http://www.heidi-willis.com/index.html) offer the same depth and sense of energy. She writes about not wanting to write, but write she does and the results are worth anyone’s time and effort to read.

Tempering all that seriousness is a wry sense of humor, evident from the opening sentences of her first book, Some Kind of Normal, a book with the serious theme of a family struggling with the sudden onset of type I diabetes in their daughter. The narrator opens the book by worrying that she is slowly killing her family with breakfast:

I ain’t one to bash being healthy, but it sure takes the fun out of living. My motivation to be the perfect mom starts about six a.m. when I swing my legs over the bed and ends fifteen minutes later when I stumble into the kitchen to make coffee and figure out what I can cook for breakfast that won’t kill no one.

That’s the voice of Babs Babcock, central character of the novel and mother to the stricken girl. Heidi has the character and her voice and tone pitch perfect. To my mind, Babs is a ready successor to Huckleberry Finn, a distinctive character a who engages our sympathy and trust. We grow to love her and her family in the course of the novel. I hope sincerely there will be more stories about Babs and her friends and neighbors

My advice is to get the book, read it, read Heidi’s website and blog and wait with anticipation more stories and writing from this serious and smiling woman.

Heidi Willis (nee VanBrokehoven) graduated from Penn State with degrees in Education and Communications. She is currently an MFA candidate at Pacific University in Oregon.

Her poetry has been published in Ignite Your Faith (formerly Campus Life Magazine) and her debut novel, Some Kind of Normal, was published by NorLights Press in 2009.

She also takes amazingly beautiful photographs. Indeed she has been put here in this place for a time such as this, and we are all better off for all that.

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