March Newsletter: On Writing The Landscape
A road trip, a writing prompt, a new book release, and some upcoming events
(I think this cloud looks like a menacing version of those fan-powered tube men.)
Dear Friends,
I have an odd habit during long solo drives: I record myself narrating the scenery.
It’s a habit taken from my years as a reporter. I’ll often drive around a place I’m writing about and dictate my impressions and observations into my phone. Here’s the kind of paragraph that usually results, this one taken from a 2019 piece I did about climate change and extreme heat in Phoenix, Arizona:
Twenty-two percent of Phoenix residents live in poverty, and at any given point about 6,300 are homeless. These are the people who fall into what social scientists call the "climate vulnerability gap." The divide is starkly obvious as you drive from one end of the city to another. The city's richer, northern neighborhoods are lush oases of green lawns and shady trees; the impoverished southern neighborhoods, mostly populated by people of color, are block after block of barren, baking streets, mini-malls, vacant lots, and gravel or dirt front yards. The disparity in vegetation causes a summertime temperature differential that can be as high as 10 degrees.
Recording my observations in this context makes sense. But why do it for places I’m not planning to write about? I asked myself this as I drove up I-5 to Oregon recently. It was a spectacular day, the sky fluffy with clouds, the air clear and bright from the recent rains, and I happily narrated the scenery into my phone for about thirty minutes.
An elderly woman in a restaurant told me with great seriousness that she had recently met a fairy in the woods .
I realized, afterward, that I was simply honing my powers of observation, in the same way that I sometimes make crude sketches of nearby passengers in the notes app on my phone when I’m on a plane or public transit.
My verbal sketchbook sounded like this:
An endless flock of snow geese with black-tipped wings flutters over the highway. Their sleeves dipped in ink.
A cloud hovering over the horizon, shaped like a skull.
Leafless trees, extending their branches in a posture of supplication, as if inviting the green to descend from above.
The freeway’s shoulders, banks, and ditches, covered by a yellow froth of mustard.
An upside-down armchair on the side of the road.
A field, glistening with water, holds a collection of candy-colored port-a-potties and a junked car, patched with rust.
The shed store, with all the sheds lined up in a row. A sign: “We Sell Sheds.” The sheds are so compact and useful-looking that I want to buy one.
Listening to the recording (which I almost never do; the purpose of the exercise is the activity, not the result) made me think of Lynda Barry’s wonderful book, Syllabus, which asks you to make a daily practice of listing things you’ve done, seen, and heard and then draw one of them. What I love about Barry’s method is that it reminds me to pry my gaze from screens and text and take in the visual world. (As someone who lives primarily in my head, this can be a challenge!) It invites noticing, which is a precursor to all good writing.
(To get the flavor of Barry’s approach, check out her instructions for a pandemic diary here.)
My experience describing the landscapes of Northern California came in handy when I was writing the Feylawn Chronicles, the second book of which was just released in paperback. Feylawn, the mysterious old property belonging to Rufus and Abigail’s Grandpa Jack, is in a cantankerous mood at the start of Book 1, and it is up to the two cousins to find out why.
The Book of Fatal Errors and The Book of Stolen Time are set in the fictional northern California town of Galosh, which I have always mentally situated somewhere near the Oregon border, close to the landscape I was narrating along I-5. Feylawn, with its meadow, orchard, granite boulders, and trout-filled creek, is a blend of many northwestern places, but its forest is the oak-madrone woodland in Ashland, Oregon that I spent my high school years exploring.
When I first arrived in Ashland at age 15, an elderly woman in a restaurant told me with great seriousness that she had recently met a fairy in those woods who had introduced himself by saying, “Hello, I am a gentleman of the forest.”
The gentlemen and women of the forest who populate Feylawn are considerably less polite. The first thing any of them says to Rufus is: “Stupid Glomper!” (Glomper being a pejorative term for human.) But they become a bit less abrasive when requesting Rufus and his cousin Abigail’s assistance in solving a decades-old mystery involving a long dead children’s book author and … well, you’ll have to read the books to find out.
Upcoming Events:
Saturday, March 18, 9:30 am
4541 Irving Street, San Francisco, CA 94122
Saturday, March 25, 10:30 am
3 Railroad Ave, Danville, CA 94526
Sunday, April 2, 11:00am
785 Laurel Street, San Carlos, CA 94070
Wednesday, April 19
Texas Library Association (Austin, TX)
12:15-1:15 pm
How Teachers, Authors, & Librarians Can Fight Book Bans and Protect Inclusive Curricula
4:00 -5:00 pm
Book-signing
Thursday, April 20
Texas Library Association (Austin, TX)
10:00-10:30 am
Book-signing
Sunday, April 30, 11:00 am
A Great Good Place for Books
6120 La Salle Ave, Oakland, CA 94611
I hope to see you soon!
Dashka