Writopia Pioneers

It is early afternoon and I am sitting in the café at Borders Bookstore in Mt. Kisco, across from my second pioneer for Writopia out here in Northern Westchester.

This morning I met with an eleven-year-old girl at the beautiful library in Chappaqua - we sat in our own little room and worked on a story together using Google Docs, immersed in the process and learning about structure, character and motivation along the way.

The thirteen year old boy works differently, knowing what he wants to write, and not wanting me to interrupt his train of thought.

I find that I can talk about Writopia much more easily than I can talk about EDGES. We were invited to two barbecues with neighbors in Katonah this weekend, giving me opportunities to talk up the program. Whenever I talk about it, there is ample enthusiasm and desire. I admit that I naively thought we would have more enrollment by now, but what marketing have we done? This is a grass roots, word-of-mouth non-profit, and we've only been here for two weeks! I was nervous at first talking to the librarians in Chappaqua, but their faces lit up when I told them about the program and they asked for fliers. I need to do more of this: getting out there and talking to people, marketing something that I truly believe in, and mentioning that I have a book coming out in December is an added bonus!

I will ask someone here at BORDERS if Writopia can host an open mic night at the beginning of the school year, so that the few students I have can show off their work, and possible new recruits can as well.

It will be slow, building up students and a young writing community, but it will happen. If you build it, they will come!

My Mother, My Librarian

As I write this, I am lying on the couch in a sun drenched family room with my mother in Northwestern Connecticut, in the same house that my grandparents, Madeleine L'Engle and Hugh Franklin, had once dubbed "Crosswicks". My mother has made the house her own with an extensive rescue job - the house having had fallen into disrepair after years of neglect. The couch I've taken over for the afternoon is covered in a delicious red velvet and my mother sits across from me in her brown leather chair, reading the paper, a stack of books piled next to her. My mother is perhaps the most well read person I know - not only does she have floor to ceiling bookcases (constantly in need of rearranging due to overflow) but she has stacks of books on every surface by a chair, and she even owns a Kindle! It is a luxury - almost sensual - that Crosswicks is big enough for all these books to co-habitate. In New York City I live in a state of book-deprivation and have to be very sparing living in a small apartment with four other people!

I've always said that my mom's house is my library, but it would be more accurate to say that my mom is my librarian - we talk and breathe books when we are together. She always leaves a stack of books on the stairs for me and of course I can't resist cracking open Michael Connelly's latest Detective Bosch novel, Dragon.

I am drowsy from an action-packed, fun-filled family vacation, and wish that I had more than a day to relax in my mother's world here at Crosswicks, in her cocoon of literature. We made it up here just in time for Easter dinner last night: lamb, and chocolate and friends, waking up this morning to an Easter Egg hunt my husband had rigged the night before. (Evidently, those in the White House do their egg hunt on Easter Monday, which was enough to impress my kids that we didn't have to throw something together in a hotel room on Easter morning.)

I've missed my mom, having not spent as much time up here as I used to, due to my burgeoning schedule beyond the kids. Here in her house was where I passed to my mom the early pages of EDGES.

Crosswicks is also the backdrop for many of my grandmother's works, from A Wrinkle in Time, to obviously, The Crosswicks Journals. So yes, the grounds inspire reading and writing. And, for my part, a little regression, as it is no wonder I come to my mother hoping to be cradled in her figurative, if not literal, bosom. The bosom of her library, and her support for my creative life. I love you, mom!