Brainpicking Children's Author Karen Rankin

Karen Rankin is a Toronto teacher and writer of children's stories. She writes for CM (http://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/) and is currently working on a young adult novel, Stepping Into Traffic. Delve into Karen's writer-brain here.



Best time and place to write:
Anytime in front of a computer, but I'm happy with a napkin in a coffee shop, too.



Author you wish you had for a high school English teacher:
At the time, Margaret Lawrence. Now: Rohinton Mistry.



Favourite background noise for writing:
Silence.



Views on flossing:
Deeply religious.



Grammar pet peeve:
None, really. I’ve read too many wonderful stories written by people for whom English is a second, third or fourth language. I can’t get peeved.



Biggest obstacle to getting the writing done:
Life.



Favourite writing tool:
Computer, but I'm ashamed. It comes more easily when I use a pen, but I'm too lazy to transcribe.




Literary character you'd like to have for dinner:
Dawsey Adams. I was sorry when the (epistolary) novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (M. A. Shaffer and A. Barrows) ended. I wanted to stay in touch with the characters, especially Dawsey.



Alternate universe you'd like to visit:
Occasionally I wish to be "beamed up", not that I really want to go anywhere else, I just get fed up with being here.



Thoughts on aliens:
Depends on where they're from. If they're the same kind of aliens as me, then I believe in them.

Favourite Book about Writing

A blue ribbon to Anne Lamott. Bird by Bird is a warm and intimate conversation about the craft of writing and about daring to be honest.

1st Runner Up for Fave Book about Writing

I adore any drip of ink that falls from Lynda Barry's pen.

What it is (Drawn and Quarterly, 2008) is jam-packed with illustrations, anecdotes, memories and clips of philosophy about writing. It's a celebration of image and word-making in a full-colour mix of watercolour, ink and collage.

In the last pages, Ms. Barry gets down to business and distills some of her workshop exercises. I tend to suck at exercises from books. I rebelliously nestle into the pillows and refuse to be bossed around, but Ms. Barry tweaked my interest. Her 7-minute writing exercise turned into an hour-and-a-half long sketchbook/writing trip down memory lane. What it is makes you want to write.

2nd Runner-up for Fave Book About Writing

I picked up On Writing by Stephen King book for next-to-nothing in the lower level of Union Station in Toronto. I almost died of happiness. Almost missed my train, too.

This book traces the journey (challenging, but not at all frightening) though a writer's process. Don't get me wrong. I can't watch more than five minutes of a Stephen King movie without running from the room and singing "Oh Susannah" with my fingers stuck in my ears. But I was gratefully absorbed by Mr. King's frank discussion of how he writes, lets his draft percolate, and edits.

Even if you can't swing a deal in Union Station, I'd recommend this book for anyone who loves to write and is curious about how a prolific scribbler works through a novel.

First runner-up coming soon.

How to Operate a Writers Group

My son: (not looking up from his ds game) Where ya going? Book group?
Me: (slinging on shoulder bag) No, no. Writers group. Writers group is different. We work.
Son: Are there cookies?
Me: Of course.

The tea and cookies at my writers group are deceivingly genteel. The women are grisly mean. Monster-attackers of words. I love them. People often ask me how a writers group works. Here are operating instructions for mine.

1) Assemble a group of like-minded writer-types, the meaner the better. We have a group of 5.

2) A week or so ahead of your meeting, write the chapter of a book.

3) Suspend your finger over the computer's send-to-all key and then pause.

4) Realize you didn't proofread enough. Do so. Discover a plot hole bigger than the North West Territories and feverishly rewrite, all the while noting the diminishing afternoon. Your children will soon be waiting at school for pick-up and depending on the day, will either feel dejected or angry.

5) Give up, send to all, and make a run for the schoolyard.

6) Over the next few days, print the chapters your group members sent you.

7) Carve out delicious, sneaky moments to edit their work with a sharp pencil. My favourite is during prep time while supply teaching for high school English. I look just like a real teacher marking papers except I'm having more fun.

8) Meet at the designated home and enter via your group's secret handshake. Not really, but enjoy idle chatter and laughter. Soon it will end.

9) Crit your group members' works aloud and in earnest. Note similarities in reactions. Interrupt. Get annoyed about interruptions. Listen to the others debate your chapter. Get out of the way. If there's blood, so be it.

10) Watch the fog lift off your chapter. The work you were so close to has suddenly taken shape as an entity in the world. See its annoying faults. Celebrate its quirkiness. There may be a faint chorus of angels. That's not your writing group--they're eating cookies. It's the crystal-clear choir of perspective ringing in your ears.

11) Return home with your stack of edited chapter versions and sprint to your laptop for revisions.

12) Repeat as necessary.

Breaking the Land

This is how our North Toronto backyard looked a few weeks ago and how it looks now.

Yesterday, I worked the land as a clodbanger.

What is a clodbanger, you ask? A clodbanger

1) picks up gobs of just-tilled sod
2) bangs it ruthlessly on the ground to shake out precious topsoil and wormy-things
3) whips the ragged clump into the wheelbarrow

If the idea of clodbanging gets you excited, too, hurry and call the YoungUrbanFarmers and maybe they can till you come clods. The group is taking over our back yard and converting it into a veggie garden. The harvest from their pool of gardens will be split among shareholders in the CSA -- the community-shared agriculture project. I volunteer as much I want to. I get a share. I get a pretty, luscious garden rich in vitamins and minerals!

Wait. A confession: I've been nervous about giving the YoungUrbanFarmers run of our backyard. My husband swallowed and kept his mouth shut, except for an off-handed justification about less lawn mowing this summer. But are the YoungUrbanFarmers more naive and greener than a spring onion? Veggie gardening is grueling. My parents grew a bountiful plot where I grew up in Perth County and I know what's involved. Will our backyard soon become a scrawl of abandoned, half-tilled earth when the YoungUrbanFarmers realize what in God's name they've taken on and make a run for Starbucks?

At least I like clodbanging, especially with the volunteer I worked with yesterday, a woman from Australia who's also a writer. Between wheelbarrow trips to the compost pile, she told me about joining the Three Day Novel Contest, a challenge more daunting than a vegetable garden. You don't really get to know a person until you bang clods together.

After the rototiller quieted and the last shovel was tossed into the shed late yesterday afternoon, I surveyed the luscious rectangle of clawed earth. I don't think it was just because of the freak warmth of the day, or the thanks my muscles were sending for not clodbanging anymore. My fears were forgotten and I felt like Maria, twirling on the Swiss Alps. My garden is alive.