What fiction most influenced your childhood and your writing today? by Donna Galanti

My love for writing and reading went hand in hand ever since I was a little girl. I began writing plays and acting them out with the neighborhood kids when I was seven years old. My first play was a murder mystery (no surprise!). At the time, I lived in England, where I attended a Harry Potter-like castle school.

Progressing from plays to stories, my first short story was about a flying ship, wizards, and Dodo birds. I even put in writing (in the “author’s bio” at the end of my story) that I wanted to be an author when I grew up.

At that same time, I vividly recall the first book I fell in love with: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. I read the entire Narnia Chronicles in my very-British school, curled up in a nook in my itchy gray and pink woolen school uniform as you can see (bowler hat and tie included!). 

For a time, I would sneak into people’s coat closets when visiting with my parents, hoping to find a Narnia world on the other side. I would huddle in the dark beneath winter coats in hall closets, imagining myself sent to an older world long gone as I hid among musty wool. If I sat long enough would I be transported there?

After that I gobbled up all of Roald Dahl’s books and especially loved Fantastic Mr. Fox and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The tooth fairy brought his books. I still have them all.

I went on real life adventures with Enid Blyton's the Adventurous Four gang. As an only child, it was like having brothers and sisters to join in with. They made me feel less lonely as we explored our world from the sea to the farm. Then it was on to The Phantom Tollbooth and I was a little boy named Milo traveling into The Lands Beyond.

After England, we moved to rural New Hampshire where my parents owned and operated a campground and along came Laura Ingalls Wilder’s the Little House Books. We had barns and hogs and chickens, and how I loved gathering the rotten apples in the orchards to feed the hogs. My mom even made me a prairie dress outfit. I so wanted to be Laura! 

One fall day we rounded up the hogs for slaughter and I dreamt of blowing up the pig’s bladder like a balloon and tossing it about and roasting the pig’s tail – just like Laura did! Although, my mother was not so thrilled with scooping out the eyes to make head cheese as Mrs. Ingalls did!

When I became a teenager, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings came into my life and I was swept away to Middle Earth. One Halloween at school I even dressed up as Aragorn (what I envisioned he looked like at the time long before the movies) and of course no one knew who I was in my cloak, boots, and dirt-grimed face.

As a child, fantasy was my reality. I read fantasy then and created fantasy worlds in my imagination to live out my favorite books, so it’s no surprise that I write fantasy! From that first story about a flying ship to my most recent book, Joshua and the Arrow Realm, fantasy has always claimed me. 

My son has a love for fantasy too, sucking up the Charlie Bone books by Jenny Nimmo (“The best author EVER Mom!” So, he was thrilled when she blurbed my first book, Joshua and the Lightning Road). When my son was younger, he loved to create his own fantasy worlds by extending his dreams. He would wake up and play with his cars and character figures to bring his dream to life again. He kept the story going because he was sad he woke up and it had ended. He found a way to keep it going.

When I was a little girl the woods were my playground. Growing up on a mountain as an only child after we moved to New York, I spent much of my time roaming the forest with my notebook in hand, putting stories on the page in hidden glens and the nooks of trees (and acting them out when no one was around).

The tree house world from Joshua and the Arrow Realm. Illustration by Al Sirois.

My love of the woods and fantasy both fueled the wooded world of Joshua and the Arrow Realm, where Joshua must survive the hunt and discovers a hidden tree world of other kids. 

I wish there was a closet I could huddle in now to travel to my favorite made-up worlds, but my imagination must do. I have all my childhood books on my shelves and know I can visit them anytime. And I don't even need a closet to get there.

What fiction fueled your fantasy world as a child and if you write, does it enrich your stories today? Do you still re-read your favorite books from childhood like me? 

Showing children our world – good and bad – through books by Donna Galanti

 

As a mother, nothing comes close to my primitive urge as a mom to protect my child. So, I thought it ironic to visit a playground in North Carolina with a warning sign of alligators nearby.

This sign hit me with the realization that while we can provide our children with the resources to defend themselves and make good choices, ultimately we have to let them go out there to frolic amongst the good guys and the gators. This includes opening their eyes through media and books to not-so-nice things that go on in the world.

Especially books. They can open up our child’s eyes to events in history, just and unjust. Books have opened up many dialogues with my son about slavery, civil rights, oppressive religions, women earning the right to vote, the Holocaust, bullying, and terrorism.

When my son was six we got a wonderful book called The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein (since made into a movie). In 1974, French aerialist Philippe Petit threw a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center and spent an hour walking, dancing, and performing high-wire tricks a quarter mile in the sky. This book paved the way for us to talk in depth about the twin towers and terrorism. My son said at the time he hoped that bad man would be caught and the towers would be rebuilt.

One out of two so far. I was able to report to my son not long after that the bad man had been caught and killed. My son wanted to know how he was found and killed, what happened to his children, his wives, and if his being caught meant this kind of thing would never happen again. I wish. But, I hope in having these discussions (as I hope parents are having everywhere) that we are changing the world for the better – one discussion at a time.

As my son got older, middle grade books opened up discussion for us. Here are some of them:

Wonder by R.J. Palacio: about being a disfigured kid in a “normal” world.
Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper: what it could be like to have a voice but not be able to communicate.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the difficult decision of choosing where you belong.
Rules by Cynthia Lord: on autism and asking “what is normal?”
Holes by Louis Sachar: about friendship and believing in yourself.
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen: being separated from your family and having to survive in a strange place.
Hoot by Carl Hiaasen: on endangered animals and ecology.
Duck by Richard S. Ziegler: about standing up for yourself when the one person who protects you is gone.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: fearing middle school and then finding out how cool it really is.

Books. They open us up to new worlds and help us as parents relate the good and bad of the world to our children. They reveal the beauty and the darkness that co-exist in our world - and within us. They inspire feelings of sadness, joy, compassion, or outrage.

Books. They open up conversations with my son about life and death and right and wrong. I watch him as he struggles with these issues and tries to figure out his place in the world.

And while I empower my son with information and send him out there to navigate the battle field of life with as much armor as possible, I hope the good guys outnumber the gators. I hope he witnesses more glory than gore. And even if the gators in disguise try and get him, I hope it's “just a flesh wound!”

Are there books you've read with your children that opened up discussions about the world around them? 

Finding My Fiction Dream Again by Donna Galanti

All I want for Christmas is my true fiction dream.

Sometimes as writers we get lost. Sometimes we get caught by a spontaneous bug and follow inspiration to find our way. 

Stuck on the book I was writing recently, I resurrected an old manuscript that prompted me to drop my life and drive north. It’s a book rich with my own childhood, from a time when my parents owned and operated a campground in New Hampshire.

My writing spark had dimmed and I instinctively knew that this trip was necessary to fuel my passion again. I had lost the fiction dream, and living each day without my magic world was painful – like living behind endless clouds in a cold cage of reality. I wanted the dream back.

Grateful for an understanding family, I set off for an eight-hour drive to New Hampshire to the setting of a childhood home.

 

 In three days I:

*Cavaliered through six states
*Took a historical boat ride lake tour
*Toured a campground
*Hiked to the top of a mountain
*Navigated a gorge
*Shivered at the foot of snowy Mount Washington
*Drove the entire White Mountains National Forest highway
*Braked for moose
*Kayaked a lake

I pulled into the campground and was zapped back in time to the 1970s – and being nine-years-old. 

 

There I was as a child again, living each day in the moment. I swam in the pool, fished with my dad on Squam Lake, romped through the woods, collected dead butterflies and shotgun shells, played pinball machines, and spun 45 records on the jukebox in the recreation hall.

Returning was an emotional gut punch. I could be a child again in that place of innocence, a place where my mother was still alive. It also resurrected painful moments from childhood as well as joyous, and prompted this short piece from a harsh memory.

Holderness, NH, 1978, Winter

Thwonk!

A flash of pain wacked my chest. Ice balls hurt!

“Go somewhere else, fat and ugly,” Tommy said, snickering with his older brother, Brian.
“No, it’s my bus stop too,” I said as another ice ball slammed into my arm. And another. They double teamed me.

Hurry up bus! But no yellow flashed around the corner, only the endless white spread everywhere.
They’d tied me up yesterday.

It’d been for fun (I thought). It must be cool to have brothers to play with, so I let them.
The rope scratched and then bit as Tommy pulled tighter.

“Double knot it,” Brian said. Tommy nodded with a laugh and jerked it harder against my wrists to the chair.

“Ow!” I yelled, kicking the edge of my chair. It wobbled but didn’t break.

“Just sit still.” Brian gave me a dirty look so I did.

Musty bits of dust fluttered up from around old chains and tires and shovels, making me sneeze out a big cloud of frosty air.

“Okay,” Tommy said. He and Brian smiled at each other. “We’ll be right back.”

I nodded.

And waited.

My fingers grew numb. The cold seeped through my red mittens. The light slanted across the one smeared window in the shed. A snowplow swooshed by at the bottom of the hill.

“Hey,” I called, not wanting to sound scared. But I was.

I wiggled my wrists. The rope sawed against them.

The light grew dim.

I wiggled more.

When were they coming back?
It was a game. That’s all.

But there was no stopping the tears that burst forth. No way would I let them catch me crying.

I yanked my wrists as hard as I could. Cramped my fingers to untie the knot.

The last light slipped away.
Shadows reached for me.

I ripped the rope away and ran home.
Aha! Wait until they come back. They meant to come back, right?
I told my mother what happened as she turned my bleeding, raw wrists around. No big deal. But the fire in her eyes told me otherwise as she ran next door.

Now here I was today, facing my enemy.
Thwonk!
“Fat and ugly!”
Their laughter shot loud through the crisp air. I scooped up ice and snow, packed it down, and winged it right in Tommy’s face.

“Hey!” He yelled with surprise.

Red streaks cut across his cheek. 

Thwonk! Thwonk! They pelted me. I turned and ran.
“Come back!”
But I didn’t.
I ran to my special place as fast my chubby legs let me in my snow pants.
Swish swish.  

I was the only sound in the forest. I spread out in the snow under a pine tree and let the silence fill me up. How long could I stay here? All day? If I did would I disappear?
From down the hill the school bus braked and shuddered then pulled away.
Snow fell soft like butterflies, melting on my nose.
I made a snow angel and looked up at the sky from my wings.
My body soon betrayed me.
Shivering, I tromped home.
I hoped the fire in my mother’s eyes would be the good kind.

What did I take away from this trip?
*The vivid feelings of childhood – the good and the bad – to enrich my writing.
*A chance to revisit my creative foundations that gifted me with the yearning to write again.
*The inspiration of a majestic setting to fill my soul.
*The connection from childhood to adulthood – and how the paths we travel drive who we are.
*As a parent now, an appreciation for my parents and their challenges of running a business and raising a child.
*That I write to understand and feel so not alone.
*Through writing I mend my past and forge my future.
*Remembered what I am in my heart: a storyteller.

So you could say I got my Christmas gift. The return of my true fiction dream. This time a new one tied up with a childhood bow, reflecting splintered sunshine through broken panes.

Merry Christmas to me.

Have you ever taken a trip into the past to follow creative inspiration? What did you find?

Finding Your Childlike Wonder by Donna Galanti

Childlike wonder. What was yours as a kid? I walked along rock walls under the stars at night when the whole world was asleep. Climbed trees as high as I could to sing songs to the woods. And hid away in rose bush caves with a notepad to write my stories – all the while believing that magic existed.

My son still knows how to find his childlike wonder.

What evokes childlike wonder? And as adults writing for children, how can we recapture that? 

Regaining a childlike sense of wonder isn’t about returning to a childlike state, it’s about letting yourself be awed by the little things in your grownup life. The mundane every day is what can dull our wonder. And just because those little things happen every day doesn’t mean they aren’t miraculous. 

But keeping your childlike wonder can be difficult when grownup duties mount. Recently, in a pressure-cooker twist I had final proofs to revise and edit on book one in my fantasy series, Joshua and the Lightning Road, and was committed to deliver book two on the same day. Did I say “same day”? I did. Zap! Zap!

With two books due on February 1st I had to grasp the wonder again.

So I ran away to a secret lodge to get it all done. I wallowed in editing drudgery. Line by line. Word by word. Character by character. Emotional moment by emotional moment.

Book one was the story I spent three years writing and revising with a developmental editor then, after I got an agent and book deal for it, was presented with additional story edits – all over again. Book two was the story I wrote in six months and had six weeks to revise – and know what needed to be done. But did I? Could I?

And somewhere in my editing elbow grease I lost what the stories had become. I was amuck in a mopping muddlement! Words to eliminate. Sentences to re-arrange. Ensure consistent details through the series. Repetitive scenes to cut and move. Find and replace. And…repeat. 

Each day through my prison window I rattled my chains and watched two kids sled. Up and down the hill they went. And their laughter and joy snapped me out of my trapped trance. I remembered being ten years old and how a whole day of sledding was magical. I also remembered turning twelve and sad with the awareness that I didn’t want to sled anymore. I had moved on, just like we move on into adulthood.

And I realized now that in order to do my job well as a children’s author, and to find joy in it, I needed to rekindle my kid wonder again. Just as I pondered this, a video of babies going through tunnels popped up in my Facebook feed. I couldn’t help but laugh at their wonder. And I thought, as writers of middle grade, how can we keep that kind of wonder with us? 

My wonder list:

Me with my lion ring. I
found wonder in my hero then,
Aslan, the lion from The Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe.

1. Re-visit pictures of ourselves as kids. Daydream about what we were doing in those photos. What we were excited about?

2. Did you write diaries as a child or teen? Go back and read them to inspire that voice of youth in your own writing.

3. Look at the world from a different perspective. Like that tunnel. Like the snow. I went out in it and made a snow angel and looked up at the sky. Something I hadn’t done in years.

4. Create a new bucket list together with our kids or grandkids. What do they dream of doing that we could do with them?

5. Read stories by our own children, or grandchildren, to see how they view the world in their words.

6. Revive memories of being the age of our characters. Draw a map of the neighborhood we grew up in. Remember what we saw, what we felt, and how we reacted to events there and write them down.

7. Act out a scene in our book, or any book, with dramatic flair.

8. Face a childhood fear (mine was going down in our dark 200-year-old cellar where I was sure dead bodies were buried in the dark hole in the wall).

So what did I pick to do on my retreat? I paced and read my books aloud, acting them out with great dramatic flair. I became the hero running for his life (in my son’s voice of course) and his fierce but loyal mentor (Thorin Oakenshield from The Hobbit) and the bad guy (Liam Neeson). 

And I remembered how awesome it was to be a kid again and lost in the moment. And that every day as a kid was about being lost in the magical moments. Kind of like tiny miracles over and over – in the little things.

So…I made my deadline. 

I turned in the best stories I could for my Joshua and the Lightning Road series with the time that I had.

And on my way home at dusk through the snow covered Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Tunnel loomed in twilight. Its lights were ablaze in the dark. I raced through it like a wide-eyed rider surfing a lightning road. Fitting I think. And I was once again, lost in the wonder – and the small things.