“Friends for Frances” – the Story

In early April, because of a flight delay, I spent two unexpected hours in the Seattle airport. With comforting traveler noise around me, I sat at a sunny table and tried to figure out a beginning, middle, and end to “Friends for Frances” – dividing a picture book’s 32 pages into thirds.

I ended up with rough paragraphs and some details: Wolsey and Cromwell arrive (the only image I’d had in my head to begin was of Wolsey and Cromwell outside our garden gate), then something happens, and there is resolution. An arc so conventional that it doesn’t sound like it should have been a discovery – but if felt like one.

By the middle of April I had grappled mightily with the demons of doubt – not good enough, can’t draw them, dumb story (familiar drill). I also reread in an old textbook about the distinctions between storybook and picture book. True picture books tell the story with few words or none, but Lady Baby and I love words when we read and myriad variations on the form exist.

So I kept at it and made what I thought of as a fat draft, writing the story in too many words but with some flow. One morning before our walk, I read it to my husband, saying I was having trouble with what exactly happens at the point where the story should get interesting – the action that brings Frances, Wolsey, and Cromwell together.

Part of the original idea had the newcomer cats protect Frances from a danger. Perhaps raccoons. But that meant demonizing the raccoons, and required much suspension of disbelief about who could climb a fence and who could not.

So on our walk I outlined some book plots I recently read to Lady Baby and wondered if maybe Cromwell and Wolsey just help Frances with something – like friends do. My husband asked if I remembered when we first got her, just before Christmas one year. We had a party – and somehow she got outside in Alaska winter cold.

That did it. By later that day I had a little story, which I have pared and polished, and now made too big a deal about here. It’s the simplest, most familiar possible narrative.

To begin (while also doing the studies you’ve seen), I made a storyboard – a grid of squares like these but representing the whole book in miniature.

To keep working with the story, I glued typed-on scrap paper together for pages, stapled the side into a rough dummy book, and taped words from the fat text version to appropriate pages. That cobbled together book has now passed through many iterations with pasted on drawings and text, as I figured out the scenes in the story. (Below is the very first page when the dummy was skinny.)

In the next weeks I want to share the story as I work along. Mostly I want to say that your comments and encouraging messages have been wonderful – posting here has definitely kept me on track – thank you!

 

Lady Baby Chooses a Hat

I visited Downtown Abbey a few weeks ago and got to meet Winnie, the charming, youthful new rescued dog, with huge, dark eyes and big floppy ears. Lady Baby calls her Winna – that would be Lady Winna here.

Very much a summertime visit, on this trip nearly every day we hit the slides and swings of neighborhood playgrounds. On our best day, Lady Baby, with encouragement, joined a little boy and his dad playing chase – chase and squealing being such fun right now.

The one rainy, summer-storm day, we visited the bookstore and nearby café to get takeout lunch. While waiting for our food, I said we could either read books or watch people, and Lady Baby said: “Watch people.”

Later, back home in a quiet moment, when she was investigating my journal looking for new pictures, I showed her the page of hats below. I asked which ones she liked (or maybe I said, if Frances wore a hat what color would it be)?

Sometimes direct questions to Lady Baby fail to elicit much response. But her questions to us are the very best things right now. Driving in from the airport and listening to the car radio playing something from Mrs. Hughes’s iPod, she clapped her hands, leaned over companionably while nodding her head to support agreement, and asked me: “Do you know this song?” (On the return drive to the airport, I could say yes I do!)

Lady Baby is delighted to find summer in her backyard, and spends a lot of time out there. Impersonating Lady Baby, Mrs. Hughes tells a wonderful little story (a magical commuication we keep repeating just for the delight of it). The kitchen window overlooks the deck and backyard, and one afternoon, Lady Baby leaned in close up to the window, tilted her head and asked her mom: “Is it OK with you if I go for a little run?” and answered herself agreeably: “It’s probably OK with you.” Then she set off to trot circles around the yard.

I never got a clear answer about the hats, which is probably good, some of those hats would be awkward. I’ll go with the younger son’s response, he said, “Cats would wear the bowler hats.”

FFF and More JPG Index

More “scrap” – what illustrators called reference pictures, back in the days when it came from pages pulled from magazines, stuffed into ratty files. I realize I’m not tackling what an actual “Friends for Frances” illustration will look like, but getting closer. And a “dummy” book and storyboard in the works!

“Friends for Frances” and the Internet Abyss

During sessions of The Workroom, I’ve watched people grapple with habits that interfere with their prime work time. While encouraging them, I remained convinced myself (classic denial) that I could “look quickly” at email (in case something needed attention) during my best work time. I was kidding myself, of course. If something is pressing, there are telephones and texts.

I like the communicating benefit of email a lot, but for me it opens a sinkhole, caving in the shimmer of fragile thought supporting creative work. If I pretended I could look quickly – I also pretended that I could answer quickly, check this website, read this blog here, comment there, pay a bill, make a plane reservation. I responded to the computer’s Pavlovian dings, allowing random interruptions all morning. But I didn’t seem to notice the energy required to respond – not to mention the time.

I think this habit grew incrementally. My good-natured husband, who is not addicted, not so “connected,” can’t believe it took me so long to admit what had happened to my precious mornings. So all during May, when I’ve been happily working, it’s largely been because of a self-vow taken: no email till one p.m. at the earliest.

Who knows what makes people finally grapple with bad habits? The young writer and I are always going on about the Internet enticement problem (in emails to each other!), and she’s successfully used limiting methods. And the mother of my young friend really made me think when she apologized for being out of touch, saying she was trying to stay away from email and use what little morning time she had for her real work.

It’s hard to express how luxurious it’s been to give this work a few uninterrupted hours. The liberated feeling is enormous. I love to finally look at email after one o’clock, (and most often it is after two). It isn’t discipline so much as substituting a big hit later in the day for a morning of random reinforcement.

So whatever happens with the three-kitty saga, it’s been a gift and an awakening to have this safe work time. During the morning, in tenuous work mode, when I ask what’s next? The answer can only be – something in support of “Friends for Frances.”

Thank you Frances and friends!