Encouraging Words

For the first time in years, I missed the SCBWI Midsouth Fall Conference. I missed making new friends and catching up with old ones, talking on and on about everything. I missed the entertaining and inspiring keynote speakers, the sessions full of up to date information and trends in writing and publishing, the editors, agents, and authors I’ve been wanting to meet. But maybe most of all I missed the encouraging words from friends, strangers, presenters, everybody there.

 An SCBWI Conference is like a magic elixir, good for whatever ails a writer.

Writer’s block?  Gone. Ideas come pouring in.
Discouraged?  No more. You know where to start and how to go.
Down in the dumps?  No more. You’re on top of the world.
Lack of confidence?  Gone. You’re the best writer since Moses.
Dried up and weary?  Rejuvenated. You can’t wait to get back to your desk.

 How can one little old SCBWI Conference do all that? With encouraging words, smiles, things to learn and things to try, and the greatest people in the world—ones involved in writing and publishing books for young people.

 Since I didn’t get to the Midsouth Fall Conference this year, I’ve been wondering how I could receive and share the kind of lift the conference gives.

 Then it hit me. Encouraging words. That could be the answer. I’d give everybody I meet a smile and a few encouraging words. The grocery checker, the trash collector, friends, strangers. Smiles have power and they’re contagious. So are encouraging words.

 Here’s how it went. I was walking in the park, as usual thinking about how to solve a problem in my novel when an attractive young woman smiled at me. I smiled back and slowed my pace a little as I went by.

 “Wait!” she called. So I stopped and she said, “You look great! How old are you?”

 Whoa! What a question to ask a person as old as Methuselah! But since she asked, I answered.

 “Wow!” she said, and her whole face beamed. “You got it. You go, girl!”

 What a boost! I really had it! With the biggest smiley face you’ve ever seen, I went, bouncing down the trail like a ten year old.

 That’s what a few encouraging words from a stranger can do.

              Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.
                                                                                                Proverbs 12:25

Place of the Muses

I walked today at Gaisman for the first time in years, and memories of slender saplings, too young for shade, came pouring back. The little trees that saw my young cherubs run from slides to swings, where they squealed with delight as I pushed, now spread their leafy arms high overhead.

Dusty softball fields that heard the crack of the bat sending the ball into the outfield and the pop of another strike in the catcher’s mitt are covered with grass. The old bleachers where I sat cheering every strike that Joyce pitched are now grayed and crumbling. But Gaisman is still very much alive with walkers and runners scattered along the track like cars on a Sunday afternoon and families gathered at the new red and yellow jungle gym with its cushioned floor, no longer a place of skinned knees and elbows.

The sun was warm and a breeze lifted my damp hair as I rounded the old brick pavilion. I remembered True Friends (2005) and how the characters came to me while I walked there. That was where I knew Annie Lou Davis had a story to tell. I’ll never forget the day I swiped away a flood of tears, tears for a death that changed Annie’s life.

Another day under the trees at Gaisman, I met King and his owner. My work in progress, Stuck Together, had a pair of huskies in a major role, and I’d never met a Siberian husky. After getting to know King from his blue eyes to his tail curled over his back, I was pleased to see a real husky was exactly as I had written Taka and Yukon, even his behavior, according the man at the other end of his leash.

Today, following doctor’s orders to walk more each day while my back heals from surgery, I rediscovered the jewel in my neighborhood, Gaisman Park. Walking there is not only good for the body but the soul and mind as well. It opens the doors of my psyche, refreshes me and allows me to listen to the characters in my head and give them a story.