Category: Musings

On Keeping A Diary: Guest Blog Post for Women Writers, Women’s Books

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I received an invitation to write a guest blog post for Women Writers, Women’s Books.  This is the first invitation I have received to write a guest blog post and I am highly flattered.  I don’t know exactly why they invited me–my book isn’t even technically out yet–but it made me feel like a room without a roof to be included among the writers on this site.

Here’s a clip from the piece which essentially demonstrates why it is of critical importance to me as a writer and moreover as a human being to keep a diary:

“The fabulous thing about these diaries is how raw they are, how badly written, how true and unpretentious. Like notes to self, written a long time ago so that I might not forget. That’s exactly what they are. As I read them, I realize how much of my own life I have forgotten. They take what was mine, what I have lost, and bring it back to me.

I open the books and there it is. High school. College. Loves. Devastations. Doubts. Adventures. Rages I’ve forgotten about entirely and suddenly the storm resumes as if it had never ended. Loves I haven’t loved in a decade suddenly burst into the center of my heart.  And you say oh but all of that is behind you. Yes of course. Like the long beautiful tail of a comet, it is behind me.”

Read the rest by clicking this link:  http://booksbywomen.org/talking-to-myself-the-importance-of-keeping-a-diary/

First Days of April 1980: “The Ghost on Saturday Night”

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Meet the little girl who narrates
“When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales From A Mennonite Childhood”
coming next week from eLectio Publishing.

April 2, 1980
Today in school I was sitting in my seat doing my work and Neil came up to me holding a book and said “Do you like books?”  And I said “yes.”  And he layed a book on my desk and told me I could read it, it was called The Ghost On Saturday Night.  I said I would take it.

April 3, 1980
Today we didn’t have any school.  So we went to Grandma Zimmerman’s house all day.  I rode her Big wheel and I played with a thing that looked like this (in the journal follow three attempts I made to draw it).  And you hit the bottem up and a ball poped out like this (another drawing)  I got 100 caches and 6 misses.

 April 4, 1980
Today in the morning I heped mommy clean.  Then mommy boiled 12 eggs and we colored them.  We boiled them so the colors dind’t run.   We hid them then.  It was fun.

 img008about 1975
Our mom would pack “picnic” lunches for Wanda (left) and me (right) in paper bags from the drugstore and we could eat them where ever we wanted.  It looks like time we are in the living room on the floor beside the couch, pre-carpet era.

 

Read an preview of the When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales From A Mennonite Childhood at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/6/2/when-roll-called-pyonder-preview/

More diary entries and a new old picture next week…

March 29, 1980: Easter Eggs, Yvonne’s Birthday and More Unrequited Love

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 Meet the little girl who narrates
“When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales From A Mennonite Childhood”
coming in two weeks from eLectio Publishing.

March 29, 1980
Tonight we went to Bob Brubaker’s house his boy Bobby is in my school class Bobby’s big sister is in 4th grade she is the most beauitiful and mannerly and creative and kind person I ever saw. Her name is Karen. We had loads of fun we colored Easter eggs when they where boiling hot. Karen’s mother boiled the eggs then she boiled thee eggs in inion leaves they got a pretty rust color. Bobby didn’t feel good tonight.

April 1, 1980
Today I felt so bad becaous Kristen Hope asked Neil if he liked me and he said “Who do you think I am? I don’t like the kid hardly.” Yvonne got her birthday presents a day eairly I gave her a coloring book crayons 4 marbles and a little piece of my tablet. Yvonne got a Big Wheel from Mommy and Daddy. I am going to go to 4-H this summer I am going to tak Horses and Pet Care.

 

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Left to right:  Yvonne, Wanda and me coloring Easter eggs that year in the kitchen. 

Read an preview of the When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales From A Mennonite Childhood at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/6/2/when-roll-called-pyonder-preview/

More diary entries and a new old picture coming each week through September…

March 25, 1980: Of Mice and Haley’s Comet

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 Preparing for the release NEXT MONTH of
“When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales From A Mennonite Childhood”

March 25, 1980
Today after school I went to Kristen’s house to play. We went out side and David (Kristen’s little brother) started following us. Kristen said “David you’d better not be following us.”  David said he wasn’t, but he was! We knew it too. So we where running away from him in their pinetrees. Then Kristen had to go to bathroom. I hid in the grain room of the chicken house. I saw 3 mice one I saw once and another one I saw 5 times. Then we went and layed on her bed and talked about the boys we like. It was fun.

March 28, 1980
Today in school at work time I did a bunch of reading work book pages 3 math sheets 1 spelling book page 2 handwriting pages and one S.R.A. story. We saw a film it was about Hershey’s Choloclate, from cocoa bean pod in Nigira to candy in our stores in the U.S.A.  My teacher said we could pick what we wanted from a bunch of things one was Meteorites and Metores and another Comets. I had trouble deciding on the two, finly I decied on Comets. I learned a lot. Halley’s Comet can be seen every 75 to 77 years the last time was in 1910 the next time will be 1985 to 1987. A comet’s tail has gases around it, when it goes past the sun the tail get more gases the radetion of the sun makes the whole tail glow with light we can see it from hear. I gave Neil a school picture of me.

thrid grade

The school picture that ungrateful Neil got from me would have been this one:
Third grade, 1980

Read an preview of the When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales From A Mennonite Childhood at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/6/2/when-roll-called-pyonder-preview/

 

More diary entries and a new old picture coming next week…

March 20, 1980: A Pet Rock Named Neil

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Preparing for the August 2014 release of “When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales From A Mennonite Childhood”

March 20, 1980

Today after school I went out in the medow and followed 3 streams then one more that run from someone else’s property, that was 4 creeks running together like this. (map) Three of them made a small pond and part of it was swampy. I got a stone from the creek to be my pet rock. I named it Neil. It was very muddy! And when I steped close to the little pond to wash it off, I sunk in to the mud almost to my knee, I tried to pull it out, and I sat right down in the mud. I got up quickly and got my foot out, but then my other foot got stuck. I pulled it out and stood some plase else to wash off Neil.

March 23, 1980

Today I helped daddy in the chicken house. I made a secret hide out behind some hey bals, it’s neat! I menshind to daddy I wanted a pigin bad! So tonight daddy and I went pigin hunting. He got me one. When I went in to show Mommy daddy caught me two more two are gray-blue one is white with brown spots on it’s head and wings. I named the one gray-blue one Charcole and the white one I named Vanalla but I didn’t deside a name for the other gray-blue one.

img0641976

1976
Me with my kitten Cutie and Wanda with Andrew, hers piously named after the pastor at church.
Find out about Andrew’s (the kitty, not the pastor) grisly fate next month in “When the Roll Is Called a Pyonder.”

 

Read an preview of the When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder: Tales From A Mennonite Childhood at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/6/2/when-roll-called-pyonder-preview/

More diary entries and a new old picture coming next week…

March 15, 1980: Sledding and A Secret Clubhouse

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Preparing for the August 2014 release of “When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder”, a memoir of a Mennonite early childhood

March 15, 1980

Today I went outside to play in the snow again it was a lot better sledding. I went down the hill got to the bottem hit the bump flew up in the air came down again hit another bump and smack right into a wire fence! Then I stopped.

March 16, 1980

This past week we had revivle meetings at our church. Roy Kizer was the Evanglist. Today I made Wanda a butten neckless for her birthday. We have a club Kristen and Emily and I, called a DYNAMITE club. We have a clubhouse in the barn and no one else can go there. I have 12 penpals.

March 17, 1980

Today I helped daddy in the chicken house. We wached Little House on the Praire Laura got a test on history but Nellie hadn’t given her the history book, she got mad and threw Nellie in the muddy water, they both got very muddy. Almonzo came and resqued Laura, Laura went to Almonzo’s house. Pa came and gave Almonzo two good punches.

img0651976

1976
Wanda and me monkeying around with our tired Daddy
in the farmhouse kitchen before the remodel.

 

Read an preview of the When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/6/2/when-roll-called-pyonder-preview/

More diary entries and a new old picture coming next week…

March 13 1980: Spring Snow

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Preparing for the August 2014 release of When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder, a memoir of a Mennonite early childhood

March 13, 1980

Today Karen Lonecker and I almost went crazy because we both like Neil so much we could have gone histarickel. I have two very voubul stamps they are of the summer olympicks with a swimmer in it we will be boycotting the Moscal summer olympicks.

March 14, 1980

Yesterday it snowed and today school was an hour late we almost didn’t make a few hills. Bus 17 was very late. We have our plege to the flag and our moment of silens a story a math and then spelling game all in the back of the room. We were aloud to work and eat where ever we wanted it was fun. Today I also played out in the snow.  I dug a tunel threw a big snowball, and wrote things in the snow. img0661976

Spring 1976:  Wanda, me and baby Yvonne in the doll crib. (We begged mom to let us put her in there!)

Read an preview of the When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/6/2/when-roll-called-pyonder-preview/

More diary entries and a new old picture coming next week…

The Notebook and First Excerpts

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Preparing for the August 2014 release of When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder, a memoir of a Mennonite early childhood

I kept the little red notebook that mom gave me on my night stand tucked under my Bible on the shelf below the lamp and the kleneex box.  I can’t say how I came to feel, at the age of nine, that it was important for me to record and remember the things that happened to me or how it was that I knew writing things down was a way of laying them down; of being able to clear my mind and heart for whatever the next day would bring.  But as you will see, I clearly knew all of that.  At nine I was bravely suffering the joyful misery of unrequited love for a boy named Neil in my second grade class. I loved animals, fishing, playing outside and going to school.

imgdiary

I have attempted to leave the spelling as much in tact as auto-correct will allow.  Here is how we will begin:

March 10, 1980

Today I stayed home from school.  I was sick.  We watched Little House On the Praire.  Laura met Almanzo.  Nellie had her own restrant but she didn’t like to cook!

March 11, 1980

Today I went to school for the first time in a week and a day.  We are studying Niagra.  I like Neil.  My teacher is Mrs. Mentzer, sometimes she is nice.  I sit in the back row in school.  My reading book is Lippencot 3:1.  My best friend is Karen.  In school I sit next to Cory Gibble.

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My sister Wanda and I, about 1975 wearing dresses mom made for us.
Anyone else remember rick-rack?

More entries coming next week…

The Red Diary Project

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Starting Next Week…

Join me in exploring the brittle pages of my first diaries.  Meet the rambunctious little girl you will meet and learn to love in When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder.

Each week, beginning in July and continuing through September, I will post some excerpts from the diary I begin at the end of When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder and include a picture of myself that would have been taken during the time the book is set.

 

img001

 

My Grandpa Brubaker reading to me in  the farm house kitchen.

Backdrop / Paisajes

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Let me paint a few colors onto the backdrop/paisajes:

In my heart and I am a writer but I have an 8-5 day job at a clinic. It’s alright.  No, no soy ni doctora ni enfermera.  That’s all I’m saying about it because at clinics, confidentiality is huge.  I have a husband who loves and supports me but I don’t mean financially.

I live in a little town that I do not love, in the country where I was born and raised. I graduated from college a long time ago and then moved to the jungle for a good while. I once thought I would go to grad school and perhaps someday I will but, honestly, if I had the money for grad school, I’d use it to leave the country again. I was happy in the jungle. Mi alma estaba en paz, una paz que ahora recuerdo pero me esquiva. Now I am simply homesick. Before any of that happened, I was a Mennonite girl on a farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It is important that you know these things about me para que comprendas si me eschuchas hablar sola.

In a few months, my first real book will be released and so all around that quiet core of sadness, I am wildly delighted! I always stubbornly believed, against all evidence, that someday this would happen, and how I love it when I turn out to be right. No es todo el tiempo. I have so many thoughts, feelings, doubts and questions around releasing a book and I have recently discovered mountains of writing, days’ worth of blogged reading material, on the subject. Y la verdad es que todo me suena igual and I would rather say something original.  Tal vez me gusta ser un poco reclusa; ya me acostumbré.

Everybody says your blog posts should offer something, help somebody get what they want. Yo no tengo nada. I can only offer a window to a different world; mine. I can offer a hand you could grab onto. I can offer stories and pictures of things you might recognize as somehow almost your own. Puedo ofrecer una voz que habla, una que se puede escuchar para comprobar que no estás solo.  I can always tell the truth.

New Book Release Date: August 19, 2014

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Great news! I sent a manuscript off to a small publisher about a month ago, figuring I might as well get started with my 5 years of rejection letters and…THEY WANT TO PUBLISH IT! On one hand, of course I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t be sending out a manuscript if I thought it sucked. On the other hand, I really DID expect a discouraging pile of rejection letters first. Of course, as I’ve had the manuscript sitting in my computer for the last 8 years, maybe I gave myself the pile of rejection letters without ever having sent it anywhere.

The books is a very early childhood memoir called “When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder.” What’s a Pyonder? That’s what I wondered. And I guess you’ll have to read it to find out.

I was raised in a fairly conservative Mennonite family in Lancaster County, PA. It’s a microculture, really. For so many years after moving away, I wanted to write about it, but it’s so delicate that I’felt every time I tried to touch it I ruined it a little. Like a butterfly. Nothing sensational or shocking happened to me as a child – no skeletons in the closet – I just wanted to tell the story of what it’s like to be THAT innocent.

The earliest memory I have of working on this story was in 2001 sitting in a hammock on the front porch of the hotel where I was working in Tamarindo, Costa Rica. I’d already been off to college where I obtained a degree in theatre, moved to Costa Rica, been married and was recently divorced from my first husband and was in the process of becoming an avid surfer. Maybe that’s how far away I had to go in order to turn around and have a look at the farm in Manheim; to see it some sort of perspective to the rest of the world.

The book is like a photo album with pictures taken in words, not with a camera and the photos are taken by the child. The stories are all told in the voice and from the perspective of the child that I was. I grow and learn to ask questions and analyze things in my own childish way.

I personally find most of the book hilariously funny and so do my sisters and my nieces and nephews. I am bursting with curiosity at how the rest of the world will receive it. Apart from spanking there’s no violence and apart from a kiss behind the couch, there’s no sex so I hope it holds the attention of readers. ELectio Publishing seems to think it will. And honestly, so do I.

Talking To Myself

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I’m going to slow it down and switch to an every-other-week schedule for posts to the blog. I’m not running out of material, just trying out a different rhythm to see if I like it. I seem to be piling the blog with material faster than it’s getting read. I could find a hundred interpretations for that, ninety nine of them unpleasant, but think that taking everything personally demonstrates great pomposity.   Although I could swear that the world revolves around me, I realize that actually it doesn’t.

And if blogging my writing is  just talking to myself out loud as opposed to sort of mumbling under my breath, I’m okay with that.  I’ve decided to dedicate a little time/energy into investigating writing contests and small presses.  That may be just more talking to myself but as I said, that’s ok.  It’s all good.  Pura vida.  If a writer writes in a forest and nobody hears her, can she possibly be writing anything good?

Maybe in the spring when I crawl out of my cave, I’ll feel moved to go back to posting new material every week.  If you have any thoughts/wishes, feel free to share.  It’s always a pleasant suprise, when I’m talking to myself, to have someone else answer.