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Barbara Walker is one of those people you want on your side. She’s tough, determined, and not afraid to speak out. We met Barbara when we were considering adoption. We spent several days in Haiti before bringing our children home, and our visits with her there and here leave us awestruck and appreciative. It takes a certain kind of person to face the hardships of Haiti in order to provide support for the people there, and we’re grateful for Barbara Walker’s passion and persistence. Ruuska Village is Barbara’s creation, a refuge for women who are trying to get their lives in order, and for the children who find their way there.

This report shows how the recent earthquake has affected Ruuska Village.

Thank you for your support for Haiti, and for tolerating my occasional straying from writing to share our Haiti connections.

A novel is one picture, one glimpse of life, with a sky-full of stars tucked inside to discover as you read. I’m reading my novel in progress for the first time. I’m discovering loose ends, meanderings that take me away from the story, and also some gems that dropped in there as I created the big picture piece by piece.

Writing is a jigsaw puzzle, and for me, novels are the ones with thousands of small pieces, each one holding a meaning, each piece striving to bring light to the whole.

So what have I been doing on this first run through? Well, I’ve mostly been cutting. While I see visions of scenes not yet in there, I’m first deleting all those details the reader doesn’t care about. The places where I humored myself and followed whims that were distractions in disguise. The wanderings that pulled me out of the story. To appease the part of me crying “But this is valuable information!” I saved those sections in a “cut” file. When I’m done, I’m hoping each piece of that puzzle will take its place, fitting together like a mosaic. Like this one of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Here’s a wish that all your puzzle pieces fall into place…

Five and a half years ago, we traveled to Haiti with our son Kaj, then 7, against state-department recommendations, just weeks after the last Haiti coup, to pick up our daughter Sandra and son Jean (now 11 and 8).

Haiti is a country about the size of Maryland (or the Olympic peninsula) with 9 million people. With no social net, people were literally dying in the streets. It’s the poorest country in the western hemisphere and barely off our shore. The topsoil is eroded. Trees are sparse. It makes the Dominican Republic, with whom they share the island of Hispaniola, look plush and wealthy.

The UN had taken over our hotel on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince and we were moved to a hotel near the palace. We couldn’t step outside without facing guns of various shapes and sizes. With or without guns, people stopped to stare at the trio of rarely-seen white faces accompanying Sandra and Jean. In spite of all they went through, they were a proud and resourceful people.

Our children’s birth family, including two older siblings, live in Petit Goave, basically at the epicenter of this week’s earthquake. We won’t know for some time what may have happened to them.

The shock of this quake comes just as Haitians risked feeling hopeful about entering a more peaceful period in their country’s history. After years of political unrest, being at the mercy of other countries (I’m refraining from going into that here), hurricanes, floods and mudslides, this huge quake takes another bite out of them.

Tens of thousands are probably already dead. Haiti badly needs our aid, and they need it now. Several people have asked us where to send money. A few options are below. Please give any amount you can. We appreciate your compassion.

The work of Dr. Paul Farmer, who many of you know through the book MONTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS, is supported through his organization Partners in Health, which does direct work with the poorest of the poor folks there in medical situations.

Another well-known medical support organization is Doctors Without Borders.

Habitat for Humanity has been in Haiti for 26 years and does good, direct action work there building houses.

The ELCA disaster relief fund gives 100% of donations during disasters to the affected programs and areas.

A good organization we heard of more recently is the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund.

In addition to these organizations, we contributed to Reach Out to Haiti, operated by Barbara Walker, the woman who facilitated our children’s adoptions.

We thank you, and our children thank you, for keeping Haiti in your thoughts and prayers.

Monsterous News for MONSTERS ON MACHINES:

Who better to rate monster books than the Monster Librarian! Thank you, Monster Librarian, for including Stinky Stubb, Dirty Dugg, Gorbert, and Melvina, my MONSTERS ON MACHINES on your “Top Picks” list of books you reviewed in 2009–”exceptional examples of compelling writing, creativity, and original illustration or presentation.” Check out the review at Monster Librarian.

Twenty years ago I moved from Minnesota to Whidbey Island and discovered University Bookstore in Seattle. It’s still a favorite stop when we’re in the area, and tomorrow I get to help them celebrate their 110 years.

You’ll be bumping into area authors at every turn, especially in the early afternoon. I hope to be there about 2:00, so please stop by to say hi and meet lots of my writer buddies, too. Several of us were asked to write 110 words for the event. Mine are in rhyme, of course, and even set to music by Karl. I’ll drag him along to help perform. And if you’d like to hear him with The Brothers Four, be sure to check out their concert on Whidbey Island at the end of February. We’ll all be there–but back to the 110th on 1/10… All those 110 words will be available in a book. I can hardly wait to get my hands on a copy. And just think how great it will be to have so many opportunities for signed books.

See you soon, Seattle!

No resolutions this year. I’m just choosing Joy. That’s it. Can’t decide what to work on? Choose joy. Making plans for vacation? Choose joy. Simple, huh? We’ll see…

I just finished the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel! Lots of holes to fill, lots of cutting ahead, but that’s what I love. Revision. Sick, isn’t it? It satisfies that neurotic tendency to redo, redo, redo. I knew I brought the right kid home from the hospital when Kaj started reenacting anything he didn’t like. He’d do his own form of charades and tack on the desired ending. Even as a pre-toddler in the high chair, if he dropped a piece of food, he’d take another one, reach down as far as he could over the side to where the last one fell, then bring the replacement piece up to eat it.

Revision. I’ll keep you posted here on what I find, the strategies I use, and how it goes. But first, a “Save As” so I don’t lose this meandering first draft that I haven’t even peeked at yet. Wish me luck. And joy.

I’m not the best at letting people know where I can be found, but since it’s the holiday season, it would really be great to be in touch. Here’s what this week looks like:

On Whidbey Island, you’ll find me here and there at various sing-a-longs and concerts. In the Seattle area, you can find me at few gatherings listed below. If you’re no where near here, tune in to Delani’s Tea Time as she talks with me about my books and my writing life.

December 5

I’ll be signing books at the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association holiday party at the historic Bellevue Winters House, and also stopping by to say hi to my friends at Santoro’s Books at their holiday party. I hope to be there when they start at 5:00, but it goes until 8:00, so show up any time!

December 6, 2:00

Join me at the Children’s Storytime Stage in the University Village Barnes and Noble for stories, stories, stories.

December 7, 1:00 (3:00 Central)

Dellani’s Tea Time: Join host Dellani Oakes when she talks with Deb Lund, author of Monsters and Machines and All Aboard the Dinotrain on Robin Falls Kids Blog Talk Radio.

NaNoWriMo is over. You have your 50,000+ word manuscript. And even if you don’t, you have at least a glimmer of an idea that won’t let go, and now it’s time to do something with it. I don’t kow about you, but I’m not ready to pour right into another month of writing, especially this crazy month, but I found us a possible solution for organizing all those words. It’s the Second Annual International Plot Writing Month, and we get to plan instead of wearing out our wrists and finger tips. It might be worth a try, and I’ll check in with you about what I’m doing with my novel, too.

The What Now for me is that I’m going to finish my novel. My plan today is to write, and if I take a break, I need to take care of something on my long to-do list. Or clean. The place has fallen apart for some reason this month, and Christmas stuff doesn’t come out until the current layer of stuff finds homes. I’m just talking tough and saying it here because I know you’ll all send me good wishes for success. My reward is a walk in the sun with my furry buddy Ollie at the Greenbank Farm this afternoon (I’m so glad to live here). Good luck with all your post NaNo and pre-holiday goals!

It’s about an hour straight north of Lake Woebegon (and this is where I can’t help but tell you I sang on Prairie Home Companion years ago). Blueberry is the setting of the novel I’m working on, the one I started this month for NaNoWriMo. Like its Prairie Home sister to the south, Blueberry is fictitious. But it’s close enough to my hometown, Menahga, Minnesota, that you could recognize parts of it in my novel if you’ve spent any time there (the town, not the novel). Something’s happened to my grammar as I’ve worked on it. Reverting to Menahganese. Must be my character’s voice. I haven’t been able to end a sentence on “with” yet (a great MN trait), but I’m working on it.

Last night I met with a group of artists who are interested in writing. Setting was our topic. We drew settings, blueprints, maps, turkeys… Turkeys? As one participant talked about the wild turkeys in her neighborhood, peering into her window, trying to get into her car, sitting on her lawn furniture, a story was born.

Setting plays a role in our lives and writing as strong as any character. It’s not just the landscape or how heavily populated the setting is that affects your characters. Settings have their own cultures, their unwritten rules–much like extended families, especially if they’re small towns.

Menahga means Blueberry in Chippewa (Ojibwe). It’s a place where people might not immediately warm up to you (they’ll still be nice), but they’ll deliver hotdishes (casseroles) to anyone who experiences a death or serious illness in their family. It’s a place where dinners and dances to help out others become awaited social events. It’s a place where my mom would hear what happened on our 7th grade class trip before I even got home. And as far as those physical aspects that we think of when we talk about setting, Menahga is a place where we could ice-skate or ride snowmobiles on unlimited trails in the winter and wake up and put on a swimsuits to spend our days at the “beach” in the summer. Poor in many ways, rich in others.

My friends Tim and Pete Odland grew up out-of-town, down the road from us. Tim was in my class of about 50 kids. Pete was a couple years younger. We rode the same school bus, and shared other experiences as well (Don’t tell them about that class trip, Tim). We have several intertwining connections, including cousins who married, and other shared relatives.

Setting shapes us, and to give you a taste of how Menahga can shape someone, I’d like to introduce you to Pete Odland. Here’s his story, and because it’s a Menahga story, many of us feel somehow a part of it. That’s the way it is there.

What setting do you know best? What are its unspoken rules, values, habits? Start there. The characters will emerge. And if you want to join me on my next trip home, I’ll take you with.

I laughed when I pulled out this card. Cling to the Impossible. It’s what I’ve been doing all month as I steal enough time from my days to crank out 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month, but especially now in the home stretch.

Both my NaNoWriMo novel and the experience of writing it are fraught with all the usual demons of my life. Maybe they’ll sound familiar to you: characters who don’t cooperate, who can turn on you in an instant, then surprise you by making the right decision; obstacles that make you trip, keep you from your goal day after day, make you lose sight of what’s important and how to get there; voices that tell you you’re not enough, that it’s a fluke you ever got recognition for anything you’ve accomplished, that you might as well pack up your toys and go home.

When you’re a writer, you must Cling to the Impossible anyway.

It’s the final few days of NaNoWriMo. With or without a commitment to this month of madness, you probably have your own sense of a final stretch in your writing life, or your life for that matter. Are you committed to crossing the finish line? You don’t need 50,000 words to get there. You just need to put one foot after the after, one word after the other, one scene after the other. Take a moment to see what you’ve accomplished, and throw out any time line that’s making you crazy. Goals are meant to be reevaluated. Don’t Cling to the Impossible if it stops you in your tracks.

What is it your character clings to that seems impossible? Maybe they won’t reach the carrot. Maybe it truly is impossible, and yet it keeps them going anyway as the reader shouts No! No! Where are the places your character’s determination backfires? Where do they Cling to the Impossible in a way that makes the readers scream Yes! Yes! (forcing you to take it all away, unless it’s the ending, of course)?

Every day you pick up your pen, you begin again. You get to dream or revise the Big Dream. To Cling to the Impossible. How could a book get finished any other way?