“Friends are the family we choose for ourselves.” – Edna Buchanan

Me, Kimberly Brock, and Marybeth Whalen in costume at the Pulpwood Queens annual Girlfriend Weekend

It isn’t often in life that a friend (or two) comes along so wonderful that you want to call them sister. But these girls qualify. Fellow authors and moms and She Reads partners, they keep me sane and keep me laughing.

Do you have a friend like that in your life?

Sculpture by Emily Allison and used by permission--she is my mother after all.

I’m not much of a painter. In my thirty-four years of life I’ve only created one decent watercolor. And that was on accident in the third grade. But as the daughter of a prolific artist I have a deep respect for those who can create beauty with a brush, a bit of paint, and a canvas. I admire the way they dream things into being.

Sometimes I wonder if we place more importance on the being than the dreaming, as though imagining something doesn’t make it real. As though it doesn’t exist if others can’t see it and touch it. Of all people, J.R.R. Tolkien has helped me see that what we imagine is every bit as important as what we create. In his short story “Leaf: by Niggle,” (by far my favorite piece of his writing) he introduces us to a would-be painter named Niggle who wants to create something beautiful and lasting:

“[Niggle] was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different.”

I relate to Niggle in many ways. He is tired and distracted and faces constant interruptions. He dreams better than he actually does. And in this story it takes him years to begin painting his tree. Niggle imagines it in a meadow surrounded by mountains and valleys and streams that stretch on right to the edges of his canvas. But he never gets around to painting them. As a matter of fact only a handful of leaves are completed to his satisfaction. Niggle dies while still obsessing over his leaves.

But.

And this is where I lay my face on the table and weep every time I read the story.

But when Niggle is taken to Paradise, he stands in a lush green meadow, so like the one he wanted to paint and:

“Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished. If you could say that of a Tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch.

He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide. “It’s a gift!” he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally.

He went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever labored at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time.”

I recently finished and sold my latest novel. I have held nothing back in the telling of this story. From conception to completion it has taken seven years and countless drafts and more effort that I ever dreamed I would put into a manuscript.

Maybe I painted a leaf. Maybe I came closer to the whole tree. But what I know for sure is that the act of creating this novel was the gift. And I’m so very thankful for it.

Your mission (should you choose to accept it) read “Leaf By Niggle.” Just read it. And see if your dreaming doesn’t become doing after all.

“Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” – Elwyn Brooks White

I was reminded of this truth (as if I could ever really forget) while talking with a friend this afternoon. Writing isn’t about inspiration or about things going well or about having the words or the story when you need them. Writing is simply launching a kite into open air and praying there will be wind to lift it.

Only then will it fly.

"The Answer Is Yes" -- tin collage by my mother, Emily Allison.

I found something the other day. Two yellowed, type-written pages tucked away in the back of a closet in my grandmother’s home: a story she used to read at family gatherings called “Rindercella.” I don’t know where she got it or when it first tickled her fancy but I remember laughing every time she performed (and really, it was a performance–how could it not be with so many grandchildren piled about) it for us.

Forgive me for not being able to site its original author. For all I know she copied it out of the Farmer’s Almanac fifty years ago. Regardless, I think Mamaw would love that I’m sharing this with you. And I hope it brings a bit of laughter your way.

Without further ado, I give you “Rindercella:”

Once upon a time in a coreign funtry,

There lived a geautiful birl and her name was Rindercella.

Now Rindercella lived with her mugly other and two sad blisters.

Also in this same coreign funtry, there lived a very prandsome hince.

And this prandsome hince was gonna have a bancy fall, and he invited all the people for riles amound.

Especially the pich reople.

Now Rindercella’s mugly other and two sad blisters went out to buy some drancy fresses to wear to this bancy fall, but Rindercella couldn’t go.

Because all she had to wear was some old rirty dags.

Finally the night of the bancy fall arrived and Rindercella couldn’t go so she just cat down and scried.

But she was kitten there a scryin’ when all at once there appeared before her a Gairy Mudfather.

And he touched her with his wagic mand, and there appeared before her a kig boach and hix white sorses to take her to the bancy fall.

But he said , “Now Rindercella, be sure to be home before nidmight, or I’ll purn you into a tumpkin.”

When Rindercella arrived at the bancy fall the prandsome hince met her at the door because he’d been watching behind a widden hindow.

Rindercella and the prandsome hince nanced all dight.

Until nidmight, and they lell in fove.

And finally the  mid clock strucknight, and Rindercella staced down the rairs, and just as she beached the rottom, she slopped her dripper.

The next day the prandsome hince went all over this coreign funtry, looking for the geautiful birl who had slopped her dripper.

Finally he came to Rindercella’s house.

And he tried it on her mugly other and it fidn’t dit.

Then he tried it on her two sad blisters and it fidn’t dit.

Then he tried it on Rindercella and it fid dit!

It was exactly the sight rize.

So they were married and lived heavily after hapwards.

Now the storal of the mory is this: if you go to a bancy fall and you want to have the prandsome hince lall in fove with you, don’t forget to slop your dripper!

“…in the end we will only just remember how it feels…”

–      Rob Thomas, Little Wonders

There is a bookcase at one end of my living room. I refer to as my “keeper shelf” and were you to visit me (I hope you do!) you would find a motley assortment of novels. I keep my Harry Potter collection beside The Chronicles of Narnia. They’re not so different after all, full of magic and wonder and whimsy. I have Ann Patchett and L.M. Montgomery and Neil Gaiman. Kate DiCamillo. Marilyn Robinson. Leif Enger. Somehow The Book Thief and The Glass Castle ended up on the same shelf as a five-book collection by P.G. Wodehouse (bought, I might add, at a rambling bookstore owned by Larry McMurtry). A dusty and tattered edition of The Princess and the Goblin is held together by a rubber band and sits on the shelf farthest away from my curious toddler. It’s the copy my mother read to me as a child and I’d sooner give birth to a hippo than part with it. The Thirteenth Tale. Water for Elephants. The Night Circus. The Kite Runner. The Hunger Games. The Help. Watership Down. I own almost every novel written by Dick Francis and George MacDonald.

*sigh*

This collection of stories evokes something in me that I find difficult to express. It’s not uncommon for me to pass my bookshelf, run my fingers along the spines, and close my eyes. I summon the emotions I felt the first time I read them. Sometimes I even pull one from its spot and read a passage. I did this yesterday with The Time Travelers Wife:

 “The curve of her shoulders, the stiffness in her posture say here is someone who is very tired, and I am very tired, myself. I shift my weight from one foot to the other and the floor creaks; the woman turns and sees me and her face is remade into joy; I am suddenly amazed; this is Clare, Clare old! And she is coming to me, so slowly, and I take her into my arms.”

Three years later and I don’t remember much of the plot, but I do remember how I wept my way through the last 50 pages. Audrey Niffenegger broke my heart and then patched it together with that last scene. My devotion for her novel is irrational.

For me, redemption is synonymous with The Kite Runner. I was quiet when I finished Khaled Hosseini’s stunning debut. I sat, book laid open in my lap, and felt something akin to worship—not for the author, but for the pure joy of seeing that kite lift into the air, and for what it meant:

“It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything all right. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird’s flight. But I’ll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.”

Every book on that shelf moved me. Sometimes to laughter. Sometimes to tears. I have felt rage and empathy and grief. I’ve even fallen in love a time or two. Yet I’d be hard pressed to synopsize any of my favorite novels. Character and Plot and Setting and Theme slip away with time. But I can pull any book from that shelf, dust off the cover, flip to a favorite passage and tell you exactly how it made me feel. And really, that’s all that matters in the end.

Question for you: how does your favorite novel make you feel?

Ann Patchett had me at Bel Canto. She did not disappoint with her her latest offering State of Wonder. I can not explain my fascination with this gifted writer other than to say that I will read anything she writes.