Hanson's Green Mountain

8x10 Oil

There is an interesting parallel between the painting and writing learning process, an exercise I applied in both cases to enhance my understanding of each art form. And it’s effective! It may even apply to other creative endeavors, as well. I call it “Walking in the Footsteps of the Masters.”

Many years ago at a writer’s conference in Silver Falls, Oregon, I was sitting alone at a picnic table when a woman slid in across from me. I’d been looking over a chapter from a manuscript I’d brought along hoping I’d learn something I could use to make my writing stronger.

We chatted a while, soaking in the warm fall sun and the heavily forested beauty that surrounded us. We talked of books and writing and how the conference was going and other common-ground topics. I thought she was another developing writer like myself.

“What you got there?” She asked, nodding to my manuscript. I told her it was a chapter from a book I was working on.

“Ah,” she said. “Can I take a look?”

I handed her the chapter. “Blue Skin of the Sea,” she said, glancing up. “Great title.” Then she read it. Every page. Without skimming. I waited, steeling myself for what she might have to say about it.

When she finished, she looked up. “Can I see more of this?”

“You mean the whole manuscript?”

She smiled. “I’m guessing you don’t know who I am.”

She was right. I didn’t. “Not really,” I said.

“I’m Wendy, an editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell. I’m here to give a little talk. I like what you’ve written here and would love to see the rest of it.”

For a writer, no sweeter words exist in the entire Universe. “Uh, yeah … sure .. but can I mail it to you? I need to clean it up a bit.”

Which I did. Obsessively. Cramming a week’s work into a day. For days. Then I kissed it goodbye and dropped it in the mail.

Two weeks later I got a phone call. “Hi,” she said in her forever-cheerful voice. “This is Wendy Lamb. I read your manuscript and talked with the publisher, and we’d like to make you an offer.”

For a moment I was speechless. Completely. I mean, I wasn’t at all ready to take in news that was bigger than my brain. Every yet-to-be-published writer knows exactly what I mean.

“We love it!” She went on. “But I have a question. Do you want to write for adults or kids? This one could go either way.”

I hadn’t given that a moment of thought. I was just writing what I wanted to write. “Um … kids?”

“Listen,” she said. “Think about it for a week or so. Go take a look at the kids-book section in a bookstore. It might surprise you. See what you think.”

Less than an hour later, I was in the children’s book section of my favorite bookstore, amazed at the wild array of books for young readers — picture books, first readers, chapter books, middle grade and young adult. Ho! Where would I even start? I wished they were all displayed cover out, because the artwork on some of these books was amazing.

I kept to the middle grade and young adult books, because they were closer to my kind of writing. There was this one book I kept coming back to. It was on an end cap, cover out, and its art lured me in like the Sirens to Odysseus. The illustration was of a girl and a wolf-like dog on an island.

I grabbed the book, bought it and read it in one sitting. Wow, I thought when I’d finished it. Wow, wow, wow. THIS is what I want to do. I want to write just like this. I want to be Scott O’Dell. I want to write a book like “Island of the Blue Dolphins.”

That one book turned me into a writer of books for young readers. That was the seminal moment. Scott O’Dell was my model, my aspiration and my inspiration. Wendy was delighted.

The first thing I did was copy the first two chapters of “Island of the Blue Dolphins.” Word for word. I wanted to see how the language flowed. I wanted to see the white space on the manuscript pages, experience the length of the sentences, feel the weight of the paragraphs. I wanted to hear the language.

Not only did that exercise answer Wendy’s question, it also told me volumes about myself. I mean, it was a major epiphany. My inner world teemed with young people.

Since then, Wendy and I have published twenty books for young readers, working together for over thirty extraordinary years. I could not have been more fortunate, and to Wendy (and Scott O’Dell) I cannot be more grateful. They, along with Alex Haley, are superstars in my life.

We learn from those who have gone before. Copying those two chapters was my first real writing classroom.

“Hanson’s Green Mountain” is a painting exercise that parallels what I did with “Island of the Blue Dolphins.” Copying Hanson Puthuff’s huge “Monarch of the Malibu” is another step toward a painting epiphany I hope to experience in the not too distant future.

I am extremely grateful to those who have gone before, to all whom I have learned from, to they who, through their immense gifts, have added so much good to the world.

I salute you. Mahalo piha.