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Ashland/Plains Libraries.. Writers life

March 2010

First theme: Mrs. Smith.. Perry 5th grade.. “Whatever you do….”

Once up dug dead men. Uncle Harris… undertaker. I’d helped him bury people, but never dug one up. I said.. “Sure. Sounds like fun.”

Waterline at cemetery.. crews ready. Lady stopped her car and shouted “Stop!” Said there was somebody buried there. Explain cemetery.. pauper’s cemetery. Her grandmother wrote about it in her diary. By the way… wooden coffins..caved in..not much there.. one silk tie What would we do if someone didn’t write things down?

Somebody gave me a letter from a lady from Jacksonville to her friend in the hospital at Quincy. “I hope you’re better. Dick and I are praying for you. I know it’s been a long haul.. What? Two weeks having the baby? I know since you lost your first child that you’re probably pretty worried, but I know this one’s going to be okay. I hear he was pretty tiny when he was born, but sometimes those really little ones can surprise you. Dick is out mowing the yard right now.” Me!

The life of a writer. You may have read or seen my work and decided I am not a writer. If so, please busy yourself with the table decorations and try to make as little noise as possible.

A few random thoughts on writing.

I’ve only recently considered myself a writer. Mostly because other people call me that. I still consider myself as a teacher who writes even though in some months I spend nearly as much time writing as I do in the classroom. I enjoy writing. Of all the things I do, I enjoy writing the most. I enjoy writing a play, more than I do producing it. Writing is the dessert I save myself after a day of trying to convince 7th-graders that “She was like…” is not a verb phrase. I enjoy writing music more than listening to it. In my head, it’s perfect.

I would rather write than anything I know. Nothing more satisfying. . Audience response is nice, but…….Private shouts of joy which only my computer can hear are far better. Journal.. every day since 1969. Many shouts of joy in it.

I think the creative process is the most enjoyable experience in the world. Tour of Switzerland: evening walk around a small village.. Barb: the Alps all around us.. Mary Phalen.. shop windows.. Lucille: chatting with ladies on park bench.. All I could think about: I can’t wait to get back to the hotel to write about this. I thought: Either I’m crazy or I’m a writer.

This is unusual tonight. I’ve nearly stopped speaking on how to write. My answers are often unsatisfying. Spoke to writers’ conference at Sangamon State. Introduced me: I’d written over two hundred plays.. most produced author of school scripts in the US and my answer to “How do I write?” I don’t know. I pray and sweat and it comes.. Not satisfying for the PhD’s congregated there.

Me: IC prayer.. next day, call. Write plays. This doesn’t make a good how-to seminar on how to write.

The idea is the hardest part. Writing is easy. Thinking is hard.

A gift from God.. pure and simple. And. like all of God’s gifts, it takes one heck of a lot of work. Often Helen will call within minutes. Spoke at Illinois Authors Conference five years ago.. not asked back.

Chillocothe.. dead probably..

I’ve learned the art of the book signing appearance. Barnes & Noble… forgot we were coming.. Shuffled off to a corner. The largest book-signing in their history. Booked into a place Bob had never heard of.. ended up being a Head Shop. Still owe. Court. Left town. Dennis Rodman.

Learned one thing: have a seller writing names down.. “Just my first name..” “How do you spell it?” “S, U, E.”

Publishing is a funny business. Over 100 plays published … only one rejection.. later published.

Iowa publishing company called: Banned in Indiana.. winning too many contests… Bob & I found the answer: Our answer… compiled into a play. Thanks to computers, the only made-to-order plays in the world.

Barnes & Noble declined to carry the first Coonridge book nationally.. too regional.. so we didn't inquire about the second. Logged into their Internet homepage . . Both are listed. Where’d they get ‘em? Bob: Don’t argue. Coonridge Digest: Won the Associated Press Award… call from Springfield Journal Register. Then, “One of the best things we’ve ever read. However, too rural for our readers.”

Being published is dangerous. A Sermon Diary.

Give Genesis of Coonridge.. Hubberville..

I find myself calling my father to get details of a story he told me years ago. Charlie Walker. “Shall we gather at the river.”

I had to return to my family after 30 years to find out why I’m a writer. Recent family reunion… all telling stories of Perry 60 years ago. Storytellers. That’s why I believe we’re all writers. Some of you just haven’t begun yet.

My Grandpa who only had three fingers on one hand..would sing “Pop goes the weasel” and thump me on the head. 2 donkeys..one bucked Aunt Lizze into a tank full of water Grandma..cutting chickens heads off

The downside of being a writer: My mother once had her check questioned.. Freida Marie…. Judge a speech contest at a distance. Hard to get a break for signing autographs. My students hear this and think what’s the big deal. Two little boys at the urinal. A hundred miles away makes you a celebrity. But being an amateur celebrity has changed the way I look at all celebrities. I begin to wonder if they’re as stupid as I am. I think that maybe they are.

Roger Ebert.. Les Miz.

Newspaper column… a real temptation to write what you know will please. Angry lady from Chandlerville… writing about her drunken uncle, she thought. Crazy Aunt…. Brunhilda Liddy… Lady from J’ville. “My Aunt! You described her perfectly! She’s nuts!” Lutheran minister…. Christmas tree. Distraught man from Chapin… people keep driving out here looking for Coonridge. J. Peck in coffee shop. “I don’t read that !@#$.” He writes it. “I know it!” Two subjects which draw the angriest mail… Religion and politics.. “God may not be a Republican” letter from Senator from Virginia… “I’ve been waiting twenty years from someone to write that column.” My own hate fan-club in Peoria… Militia members.. Don’t like my remarks about equality of the races. My lawyer says they haven’t threatened my life, so I can’t do anything about them. My revenge: I wrote them back… picture of a black lady with Star of David.

I’ve never found a topic that wasn’t worthy of writing about…even boredom.

Ten o’clock. There are seventy-two pieces of stained glass in Jesus Christ’s belly. I know. I counted ‘em. I counted ‘em for three Sundays in a row. Momma sings in the choir and can see every move I make, so I gotta count ‘em out of the corner of my eye. Seventy-two. And, in case you’re interested, there are exactly 59 huge pipes in the organ and 117 smaller pipes that you can see from the third pew from the back, left hand side, three seats in. I have to count the little ones while the choir’s singing. 117 takes a lot of concentration. It’s 10:08. All the church business is taken care of. The preacher has just started to read the scripture and suddenly it hits me: this insane, illogical desire to stand up and shout, “Hey! Anybody wanna play volleyball?” I mean, I’ve never actually done this ... it’s just an urge ... like wantin’ to jump off the top of the house just to see what it feels like, or seeing how many Oreos you can stuff in your mouth at one time. Then I look around and think, “Heck. I’ll bet there’s not a volleyball player in the whole front row.” Twelve minutes after ten. Mamma looks at me. She can see the evil thoughts actually seething inside my head. Twice she’s caught me with my copy of Sports Illustrated magazine sticking out of the hymnbook. Stupid, small hymnbook. It could barely hold a Readers Digest. 10:20. The sermon starts. The siege begins. Mr. Dalton’s head begins to bob. Bob, bob. bob ... jerk! There he goes again ... bob ... snort ... bob ... the snore begins ... and a quick, sharp elbow from Mrs. Dalton comes flying out of left field, whizzes past the second baseman, bounces off the shortstops glove and Whamo! She lays him a shot in the ribs which causes the old man’s eyes to blast open, his dentures explode out onto the hardwood floor and his Bible erupts out of his hands like a geyser flying over ten feet in the air and then making a splash-down right on the back of Mrs. Wilson’s head! She turns on him, eyes aglow. She raises her King James Version high above her head and brings it down with a sickening thud on the top of Mr. Dalton’s bald spot, causing him to fall unconscious into Mrs. Dalton. Mrs. Dalton, mistaking this move for the first sign of romance since their last child was born, swoons in a fit of romantic surprise. She slumps unconscious into the Retired Colonel James P. Montgomery, a life-long bachelor, who, unnerved by the sight of a seventy-four year old woman swooning all over him, comes to attention, loses his balance on his wooden leg, and falls head-long onto poor Mrs. Wilson who has just now resumed her seat after singing the fifteenth verse of “I’ll Fly Away.” I wish some of this would actually happen sometime. It would make the sermon go so much quicker. When I was just four Mamma said I stood up in the pew and shouted, “Fire! Fire! Hell’s on Fire!” The next week the board of elders voted to install a nursery and I was its first prisoner. 10:25. The preacher is stuck somewhere in the middle of the Red Sea. There are exactly eighteen white tasseled balls hanging from the pulpit cloth. Twenty-eight wooden rungs around the alter rail. 6,000 Hebrews crossing the red sea with over 120,000 evil Egyptian soldiers in hot pursuit. Just once I’d like to see them catch ‘em. I mean, it would ruin the story, but oh, the variety it would give us all. Mr. Dalton’s drowsy head has now reached the level of the pew in front of him. In another second his chin will be resting on Mrs. Wilson’s shoulder. And ... and ...Yes! Touch down! His sleeping nose has dug deeply into the bare flesh of her blue Sunday dress. She senses the nose. I mean, how could you not? Somewhere in his dream, he sniffs a deep sniff and two of Mrs. Wilson’s imitation pearls are immediately sucked up his left nostril. Mrs. Wilson, now choking with the pearls pulled tightly around her neck, senses that she is being attacked, once again, by an elderly Lutheran in the middle of the Red Sea. She jerks on the pearls, causing the lodged strand to be pulled forcefully out the side of Mr. Dalton’s nose. He is startled into consciousness in mid-dream, just as Britney Spears was about to ask him to go for a midnight swim on beach at Monte Carlo. His eyes open to find his nose bleeding and the angry bloodshot eyes of Mrs. Wilson staring directly into his! She pulls out a .45 magnum revolver and levels it at Britney’s lover. She fires! 10:31. The preacher is now heading into part two of today’s double-header. There are exactly fifteen folds in the red velvet curtain behind the cross. The second one from the right has been stained for six years from a communion spill. The gray on Mrs. Seybold’s roots has crept up exactly one-fourth inch since last Sunday. 6,000 Hebrews make it to safety, the Pharaoh is foiled again. The hymnbook has exactly 457 pages, counting the index, official order of worship, and not counting the nameplate dedicated to the loving memory of the Women’s Auxiliary Guild, 1947. Mr. Dalton snores again. Mrs. Dalton pulls a twelve-pound stem of bananas out of her purse and smacks him in the head with the entire bunch. He wakes in a fit of terror, sees only Mrs. Wilson’s face staring back at him from the next pew, jumps on her and strangles her with her own imitation pearls. The preacher says “Amen” and we take up the collection. Some day. Some day I will worship in a church without seventeenth-century hymns, without 18th-century architecture, and without 16th-century words. Some day I will take my children into the woods and see God in the dandelions, and the muskrats, and the bullfrogs, and the butterflies. Some day ... Some day I will see the real, living, loving, and exciting creator. Some day ... (sighs, looks up) ... I wonder how many ceiling tile?

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