Creative Writing Questions from Barrington High School Seniors

ON THE 4th OF OCTOBER, I visited with six creative writing classes at Barrington High School, about 40 miles NW of Chicago. I hadn't darkened the doors of BHS since I'd graduated in June of 1980, and coming back was a little weird.

It's always strange returning to Barrington, where I spent the first 18 years of my life in a big house my father built by Bakers Lake. Despite all the changes in the neighborhood, I seem to breathe memories in from the humid air, and the shape of the land (though much of it has been built over) and the sky that sits over it (the same way it always has) strikes me with strange familiarity.

Inside, the school was so different as to have little of this effect. But I knew it was the same place. And there were moments, such as looking out the window of Ms. Sultan's classroom and realizing it was my old typing room, when I could remember sitting there buzzed on coffee from The Breadbasket restaurant, making mistakes and borrowing Jena's typing eraser.


THIS IS THE FIRST of a series of blogs in which I respond to questions from BHS students:

How do you come up with a concept for your writing?

For the novel that I'm currently avoiding revising, I started with an image: a canoe lodged in tall cattails at the shore of Bakers Lake, and someone--me, I suppose--lying down in the bottom of the canoe. The tall, thin blades of the cattails exude coolness and green, but from the warm water the scent of decay rises: ripe with algae and the biology of fresh water, millions of organisms living in the water and the mud. The green of the cattails and the algae breathe out the fresh oxygen, converting the sun into energy, while microorganisms eat and decompose and die and are decomposed themselves.

In the canoe, the character--the more I think about him the further he goes from being me--is aware of everything around him. He knows the ecology, the relationships between the living and non-living things around him, and his imagination brings it all into his consciousness. He is himself alone in this place, but he is thinking about his friend, and something has happened. Maybe his friend has died. And a song they used to listen to comes to his mind, haunts him, " . . .story of her boyfriend, of teenage stone death games, handsome lad, dead in a car . . ." And he thinks of his best friend's girlfriend because of the "story of her boyfriend" line.

So my concepts come from memory, and changing memory by drifting deep into the scenes brought to my mind from memory and letting the possibilities of those scenes shift.

Aidan Chambers uses a repeating line, placed throughout his amazing novel, This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn: "All writing is memory." Some of the shifting is very deliberate--I take a memory of my best friend, and I say, "He can't be blonde, his hair is dark." Or I'm thinking about his girlfriend, (only it's the character's girlfriend now) and I'm doing the dishes and she's not coming to me, and I'm getting frustrated. Then I think her name might be Sophia,* and the image of a Sophia I once knew comes to me. Suddenly I realize that her name isn't Sophia, but that she looks like Sophia, and from that memory of Sophia's physical presence--not just her hair and her eyes and her body, but the way she carries herself, her gestures, the movement of her eyes--the character suddenly takes shape.


To BHS Seniors: Hope this answers your questions better than my random presentation!

*name changed to protect the innocent. ;-)

Mandabach's OR NOT T-shirt BANNED!! Is the book next?!?!?

Don't hate her because she's beautiful, hate her because she has the shirt, and you don't! lol


I thought it would be fun to get some t-shirts made up, so I worked on a design based on the last paragraph of Journal One (link here to it) of OR NOT.

To wit:
Now if I were mad, I would think there were mental viruses hidden between the bits in digital samples. There could even be microchips in our brains that are triggered by digital media to produce thoughts like: "Drink Sexy Cola and be Powerful!" "You must buy things to truly exist!" "The virtual and the actual are ONE!" "Security is Freedom is Marketing is Art is Power is America is Right is Peace is Security is Strength is Truth is Might is Liberty is Lifestyle is Property is Happiness is Automobile is Independence is Globalism is Diversity is Oneness is Jesus is the Almighty Clean of Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Castile Soap--Dilute! Dilute! Dilute! Dilute! Dilute!"

But I'm not mad. So I don't think that.

The shirt just starts with "Drink Sexy Cola and be Powerful!" and ends with "Dilute . . . "
On the back it says
. . . OR NOT
a novel for audacious teens and other young adults
by
Brian Mandabach

I think it looks cool, and I like that it starts catchy and I imagine people looking at it and being embarrassed about staring at your shirt and then looking away and wanting to look more and maybe looking at your back as you walk away. Or people you know will make you stop so they can read the whole thing. So, I think it's fun. And also, I like the irony of the ranting.

I gave one to my daughter, and guess what? After lunch a teacher noticed it and asked another teacher, and they agreed that it was INAPPROPRIATE, and they made her turn it inside out.

I have to guess that it was the word SEXY *gasp!* omg! But come on! It's not as if she had on some sweats that said, SEXY or JUICY right across the butt! This is a statement of protest against the absurdist imagery of advertising, multimediocrity, and Johnny Jingo public "discourse".

Or maybe that's what they objected to, but that might be expecting too much.

Anyway, I got kind of a kick that the shirt that I sent her to school in, that I designed using an excerpt from MY book, had to be turned inside-out.

If you've got one of the shirts, send me a picture. And if not, come see me at one of my events and pick one up with your copy of OR NOT.

Hope to see you soon.

peace, love, & vinyl,
M

events listed on my myspace profile as "shows" and at www.mandabach.com

Dumbledore Gay--is this news?

JK Rowling revealed some backstory that never made it into the novels, which, though not exactly short are too filled with broomstick sport and Harry YELLING in ALL CAPS to have contained details about the headmaster's (no pun intended) intimate life. Albus Dumbledore is gay.

Here's a link to a brief story about the revalation

Newsweek article with comments and discussion here

Now. Though I'm poking a little fun in the top paragraph, I've enjoyed all the Potter books. And I adore Dumbledore. I'm first and foremost a Mithrandir man (That's Gandalf in the Common Tongue), but Albus is my second favorite wizard. And as I contemplate my reaction to the news, I have to say that I don't care about him being gay at all. And I really like that I don't care. Even better would be if I didn't care that I didn't care--does that make sense? I'm thinking about one of the comments (from a 13 year-old) on the Newsweek story, about how much homophobia there is in middle school. When I got punched in the face for calling my scoutmaster's son a faggot, my dad told me what I had said (I'd had no idea what the word meant). But beyond the message that this epithet might get me punched in the face, and a pretty much non-judgemental definition, there were not a lot of messages out there telling me that love is just love. And there were a lot of messages teaching me to despise anyone who was "queer", including myself if I might have any queerness in me.

Back to the big ''news": the way Dumbledore rolls doesn't change anything about the way I feel about this beloved character, though it does make me sad to learn about his heartbreak. Too, I think this might further illuminate his empathy for Snape. Although Snape's heart was hurt in a different way, both of them lost in love.

What I'm wondering is: does anyone else think it's unusual for a writer to reveal backstory in this way? Or is it just unusual for people to notice? For it to be "news"?


In any case, as Roxy says:

Kitdlitophere Chicago O'Hare--Kudos to Robin Brande

Here's a link to my tardy blog on Kidlit '07:
Not really scared of Barry--Mandabach's too-long post on Andrew Karre's FLUX Blog ;-)

Peace, Love, and Vinyl!
Brian

BACKTALK!!! Trailer for/scene from ALEX RICHARDS's novel, by Alex Richards!

Even though I feel that--at this moment in time--everything should rightfully be about MY book, I have to give props to my girl Alex Richards and HER book.

It's an original take on teenaged NYC, and Alex is a filmmaker as well as a writer, so this is a very original take on the Bookomercial Book Trailer.
Short and sweet!
View it!
Send it around!

Invisible Children, Mandabach's literary debut, and you?

I'm getting excited about my book launch party. This should be a fun little gathering at an amazingly cool place: a nursery and garden with cool statuary everywhere, little copses of trees, and a gorgeous sunset-over-the-Peak-view!


There'll be music and sodypop and Cassie's favorite vegan food.

And you? Come on up the Colorado and join me! :)

Hosted By: Mandabach, author of OR NOT
When: Thursday Oct 11, 2007
at 5:00 PM
Where: Hillside Gardens
1006 S. Institute
Colorado Springs, CO 80903
United States
Description:
Mandabach, author of OR NOT

Click Here To View Event

Get the book! ... or not

I've heard that my book is in stores and I know it is available via internet shopping. Local librarians tell me that it's already reserved.
Cool.

I'm off to Kidlitosphere in Chicago, hosted by Robin Brande whose Evolution, Me, & Other Freaks of Nature is an excellent read. I've been way too busy to blog about it, though I've wanted to--not just because it is well-written and right-on, but because it has some odd similarities to Or Not. And some dissimilarities as well. If I had my students read both, we'd be able to make some serious venn diagrams.

I'm also going to teach 5 creative writing classes at Barrington High School, a place I haven't set foot in since graduation in 1980.
Damn.

And spend a couple of days in the city with my beloved, with whom I haven't had a vacation alone since 1996.
Damn.

Wish me happy trails.

Peace