It's not often anyone is able to write something for the stage. Rarer still are any of us allowed to personally direct the plays we write.

Some time back, I attended a performance at our local theatre, The Grande Parlour in Cold lake. I don't know how long the urge had been burning inside me, but I suddenly thought I could see a direct line between fingers on a keyboard and actors speaking lines to one another, playing whatever game the playwright invents. After the performance, I went up to Teresa Pettit and asked her if there were any opportunities to contribute material to the theatre. The next summer, there was a program where people from the community could write and direct their own short plays, and I did it, and did it again next year. An extraordinary dream, which now seems to be coming to an end.

The Grande Parlour Theatre was opened a few years ago beside Beantrees, our local coffee shop. The owner of Beantrees contributed a great deal of time and money, building sets, paying rent, doing all the other invisible things that keep a theatre running. Teresa lost a great deal of sleep putting together productions, writing and directing, as well as guiding fumbling amateurs like me. In return, the community has gotten murder mysteries, hard-hitting dramas, comedies, musicals, science fiction and all manner of other plays. Many sacrificed many things to give the town a theatre, and they asked only that the public come, and enjoy.

But there comes an end to such sacrifice. Eventually, there is no more left to give. The town gave grants, but that still leaves the astronomical rent demanded for main street real estate. Now the ship has beached on the shore, and it looks as if she may never sail again.

There's a real selfish component to the sorrow I feel. At the same time, I know there are many worse off than me, that soon may have no creative outlet at all. There are many who crave social interaction, and find themselves with no place to go in the evening besides a bar. How much better to sit together in one place, and watch as a group of people pretends to be another group of people! How much better is a town that has a theatre, a cooperative experiment that makes the public feel the joys and sufferings of others!

To fund an artistic venture can, I imagine, feel like scooping money into a deep, dark hole. It can only be done through love, the same love that moves directors, set decorators, stage managers, writers and all the others to band together and create something unique. I don't know if there is anyone out there who feels as I do, and has enough time and money to make it happen.

I do not like the idea of living in a place where industry is all there is. I do not like the attitude that views the arts as having no value, and I do not care to live in a town that feels that way. I don't know what might be required to make a theatre a going concern, but I do hope it happens. If not, then I salute the Grande Parlour Theatre, and the love behind it.

I've learned things from working there. I've learned what a portal the stage can be, suggesting worlds and universes beyond our own. I've learned the joy of seeing actors find new meanings in my words. I've learned that my own limitations are extraordinary. I've learned what a difference an experienced director makes. Excitement filled me every time I went down to the theatre. Many times, that excitement got in the way of the job at hand, but there was always somebody there to share it, to help direct its force into productive channels.

I almost feel the way a child must have felt, before there were wires and easy transportation, when a troupe of performers would come and set up their magical world at the edge of town.

They speak old words as though they're new,
They make new worlds in the evening air,
And the shadows of terrors, fantastic and true,
Are perfectly represented there.
Deftly they tumble, and juggle hot brands,
And speak of lives in the valleys beyond,
Then humbly they gather their coins from the stands,
Day comes, and they're gone.

Goodbye, Grande Parlour. Come back soon.

Well, enough talking about myself. Let's get to AA Milne.

But first, a little about myself.

My parents read the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories to me before I was old enough to really understand them. I liked the sound of my Dad's voice, and it worked well as a story before bed. Occasionally the adults in the room would burst out laughing, and I liked to laugh, so I joined in whether I understood or not.

Later on I realized how wonderfully hilarious the stories were. Those who know only the Disney adaptations might be surprised at this. They might be surprised at a lot of things.

First, there are the characters. We all know most of them, the silly-old-bear himself, cowardly Piglet, irrepressible Tigger, motherly Kanga and her Roo, talkative Owl, know-it-all Rabbit, the gloomy Eeyore (there was no Gopher in the stories). They all live in a forest landscape, part of which is the Hundred-Acre Wood. All pretty simple.

Nu-uh. Not so simple. Strange events, interesting interactions and rampant irony make these stories complex and entertaining. The search for what Tiggers like to eat. The discovery of the North Pole by none other than Pooh-Bear himself. Rabbit's quest to get rid of Kanga and Roo as undesirable foreigners. The flood that threatens Piglet's home. The day Owl's tree falls. Piglet and Pooh in search of the dreaded Heffalump.

And then there's Eeyore, the most neglected of them all, in or out of Milne's world. For years, he has been portrayed merely as a depressed character. However, as with any depressed person, there's a lot more to this stuffed donkey. He has little patience for any of the other characters, especially Rabbit, and makes little secret of the fact, with a biting irony that is often ignored or misunderstood by the people around him. This makes Eeyore one of the funniest characters in the books.

All this caustic wit is tempered with a good deal of honest compassion and understanding, mostly from Christopher Robin and Pooh, but from the others as well. So what do we have? Not a flat, simple world with simple characters, but a rich environment full of flawed people, who sometimes transcend their natures to perform acts of inspiring heroism. Every sentimental moment is earned, every lesson deftly presented, and never at the expense of the story. There are also plenty of in-jokes for the adults along the way.

A children's book should appeal to both child and adult. Reading time should not be an empty bedtime ritual, but a bonding moment, when young and old can laugh or cry together at the same things. The world of children should not be separate from the world of their parents. Children's books that reinforce this separation are a pestilence, a cynical grab for a parent's wallet at the expense of a child's development.

It's impossible to nail down these stories' appeal with a simple "they're fun," or "kids love them." They are, and they do, but there are depths beyond that. We all have a Rabbit, and an Eeyore, and maybe, if we're lucky, a Winnie-the-Pooh in our lives. In writing down the stories he told his son, Milne achieved the merging of the fantastic and the real. This is what the best fantasy is supposed to accomplish.

In conclusion, if you have fond memories of Winnie-the-Pooh, and have not read the original books, you should definitely try them. You're in for a treat.

I've had the elation of selling two stories. Now, back down to the level of writing, submitting and waiting.

It really is a kind of loneliness, the constant run of rejections. The occasional high time, where an idea tickles me, and the story flows freely from my fingers. Then sending it in, waiting anywhere from three days to five months, and having it come back as a rejection. The steel heated red-hot, then quenched. A tempering for a writer's mind.

In general, rejection is like that. Anything you long for, and wait a long time to have. One does not usually wish for the loneliness to go away, or for the rejections to stop. Melancholy is often the foretaste of a great experience. If I stopped getting rejections altogether, I would have no evidence of my labor. It would mean no one was reading my work.

As it is, I look forward to the high country, barely visible through the sheltering cloud. I love the rainstorms, and I love the sun.

I just made a count. As far as I can see, I've written 46 short stories, and gotten 139 rejections.

Not nearly enough. Better get busy! See you!

SOLD MY FIRST STORY! TO BE PUBLISHED IN "THE YOUNG EXPLORERS ADVENTURE GUIDE 2019!" OH, FRABJOUS DAY!

Okay. Coherence time.

I've done hundreds and hundreds of hours of writing, an acceptance letter and request for revision is in my inbox, and a large cat is on my lap so that I cannot reach my typewriter. So, time to write another blog post.

The dream is bright and shiny--to write stories for magazines and anthologies, the way those people did in the 20s and 30s. To write great literature--maybe not read by a whole lot of people, but bringing in money! Money to legitimize this fine, old madness!

Mad, am I? I'll show them! I'll make them beg for my madnesses! Let us be mad the way you are, Oh Madman In the Pit of Ink! Ahahahaha!

Sorry. Ahem. Back to it.

It is the easiest thing to start doing. You sit down with pen or keyboard or typewriter, and you make up a story. And then you make up another and another, and you edit fiercely. Soon you excitedly send one off to a magazine. The first one I sent to was Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine. March 20, 2016. Rejection.

This did not bother me. I had read enough, seen enough interviews to know that rejections are the rule in this business. So okay. You check on the submissions obsessively, and then you have another idea, and you write that into a story, and so on and so on. And so on and so on.

In a Fafnir-like transformation, I became a different creature. I began to have to look after my back, force myself not to hunch over my work. I cared less about going for haircuts. My hours became later and later, and soon I was a creature of the night (not, I trust, of darkness), and I took the rejections, and let them whip me onward to make more stories all the time.

So this heavy, hairy, baggy-eyed artist stumbles out of his house occasionally, always drawn magnetically back to the stories.

And having an amazingly fun time!

That's a long time without payment. But I also learned while I was writing. Oh, how much I'm still learning! Far from being wasted time, this was my University training. My classes were the interviews I watched with the great writers and publishers. My textbooks were the wonderful, exciting works of fiction I would probably be reading anyway. My coursework was sitting and projecting my mind onto the paper, living stories in my head that I had always dreamed of living in reality.

I thought of a good analogy recently. What if you were going for a law degree, and instead of attending classes and reading precedents, you were told to simply go out and try to get hired at law firms? By the time someone hires you years later, you're probably qualified. If not, you'd better learn on the job. Writing works that way.

After a while, you notice yourself getting better. It really is a quantum leap--one day you're writing on your old level, and the next, you suddenly do something that really surprises you. That really is one of the best feelings!

Recently, I managed to make my father cry with one of my stories. That is worth a lot to me.

So, you watch your stories getting better in front of your eyes--but what about the rejections? You do some research, and you look back, and you realize some of them were actually encouraging, and you didn't know it! Sometimes, the encouragements get personal! "I liked this about your story, but it had too much___" or "not enough ___. Please send us something new soon."

Oh, what a Milk Bone to a starving hound those comments are! Maybe someday I can feed a family! Maybe this lumbering story-factory might support itself! Better get back to writing. Now I wonder what the world would be like if...

Where the ideas come from is the least of it. If the ideas know theyll have a good home with you, they will continue to come. If these little gifts are used, other gifts will pile in on top of them. Some piece of conversation will spark an inner dialogue, or an idea will strike in a quiet moment--baths are good for that--and the fingers cannot flesh it out fast enough. Even if the birth is long and hard, you look down at the baby, blotched and lumpy in your arms, and you can't wait to do it again.

Okay, that's where the metaphor breaks down. Still, though.

Of course, there are other things. Jobs so you can make payments, remembering appointments. I've found a lot of pleasure in going and talking to school-kids about books, literacy, adventure. I've recited some of my favorite poems (other people's), and lately I've even read my own stories to them.

Sidebar here. I desperately want kids to read. I despise a culture that deprives kids, not of books, but of the habit of reading. Libraries in schools are no longer libraries, but "learning commons," and they have fewer books than libraries do. Are some of these kids going to grow up without knowing the smell of an old book as it's opened for the first time in decades, the distortion of time as they bury their minds in other experiences? In the name of all that is reasonable, let children be around books!

I only recently started writing for children. A good children's story takes more skill than anything else, or it should. There needs to be more excitement per page in kids' fiction, and if one has any self-respect, it should all happen intelligently and with passion. It simply needs to be so much cooler than what adults are satisfied with reading. I still don't know if I'm really good enough. Better write more, just in case.

Then I got a response to a story I sent for "The Young Explorer's Adventure Guide," published by Dreaming Robot Press.

Rejection.

But I had submitted two stories, and well now, what do you know, the next message from them was an acceptance, and a request for revision! Oh, hip-hooray! Oh, this bubble of helium in my chest! I'd dance and jump in the air, but I don't know if I can breathe properly right now, and I might faint. Might faint anyway. Seems like the appropriate thing to do.

Now, a few days later, I'm in a calmer mood. The cat has moved off of my lap, and I'll be writing again as soon as I finish here and get myself another cup of tea.

​Just thought I'd tell everyone. 'Bye for now.

--UPDATE--
ANOTHER STORY OF MINE IS COMING OUT IN THE "ROBOTS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE" ANTHOLOGY FROM FLAME TREE PRESS.

We have been lied to from a young age. From the first time our teachers brought out a book and told us to read it, we were deceived. Not by the teacher, or even by the author. The liar here was the public consensus that told us these books were all equally "important." 

Of course, there is such a thing as important literature. Certain books have altered the landscape of civilization forever, changed people's minds when they needed it most. But many students are going to find these books completely unlikable.

If the love of reading is already ingrained, this is not a problem. But what if it's not?

What if the student is unused to real books? What if the curiosity has not been enlivened from an early age by the joy of reading? If that is the case, what can these books do but kill the love of literature stone dead?

I only remember reading one book in high school that was truly important to me. It was so important that I'd already read it--for fun--at home, and seen the movie many times. It was "To Kill a Mockingbird," and at the time, it was the only assigned reading in school that I thought was actually important. And that was okay.

We are not made to have our tastes dictated to us by book clubs, to suffer guilt because we hate a book a famous person loves.

My love of reading was fostered from an early age, because reading was always a fun time, a time to to explore. I sought treasure and lost cities, mapped galaxies and lived with the wild beasts. These were my important literature.

How did reading become something else? How have we come to a place where children's books can only succeed by offering brevity in place of fun?

I was fortunate to have a father who made it his business to help me have a good time. When I outgrew a series, he would introduce me to another one he had loved growing up, and I came to love it, too. And so, world after world of adventure opened up to me.

Adventure? How can a boy become a sophisticated reader by reading adventure stories?

They helped me to love reading, that's how.

This did not mean I was superior to anyone else, or more intelligent. It meant I was having so much fun that I frolicked to a higher and higher reading level.

Because of this, Dickens, Kipling, Shakespeare and many others have become my friends over the years. It started, not with the gray novels the school system told us we needed to read, but with a little boy and his father sitting together, laughing themselves silly over a Calvin and Hobbes book. It started with an impromptu story told to the boy about him and his stuffed animals having wild adventures.

We cannot make anyone love reading without offering them a good time. And how can we ensure they get the most out of assigned literature, and aren't turned away from novels toward the shallow pleasures of the glowing screen?

We raise kids who love reading, that's how.

A hot day. The traffic is a little more grating than usual. The world is a mad dog, furiously biting its own tail. Every eye is strained around the edges. You duck inside the first building you come to.

After the glare of the sun, the space seems dark. It is cool and fresh, yet there's something very old about this building, older than the masonry itself. Soon you can see the lines of shelves, and right in front of you, a desk where a woman sits working with a pile of books. She gives you a glance that says, "You needn't talk to me, but I'll be happy to help you if you need it." You walk forward, and you're surrounded by books.

There there are colorful books, comics and vast coffee-table volumes, textbooks and children's stories. There are shelves as far as the eye can see, each one packed with history, geology, fairy tales, adventure, fiction and non-fiction of every type. You throw your head back to smell the air again, and you see the rest.

Five floors rise up above you, each layer of shelves is linked by long, easy stairs. Cloth-and leather-bound editions, hand-drawn encyclopedias, great novels and travelogues from the days when maps were journeys in themselves.

You ascend now, running your hands along the ancient spines, jumping back and forth over hundreds of years as you walk. One or two people, absorbed in the pages, are hunched in fascination in the writing desks and comfortable chairs you find along the way. A child, maybe eight years old, rushes past you along the walkway with two thick brilliant-edged books in his hands.

Now come the poets--a vast selection of epics, songs, odes, ballads, ballades and romances, observations, songs piped through ink to sound around the edges of the world. Essays next, polemics and satires, and up and up, volumes of art and science as they used to be, transitions into modern times. A world--nay, worlds of enjoyment, cloistered away in plain sight on the main street of this tired old town.

Some see all this, get bored and leave, never to return. Others barely know a library is there. But this building, like all public libraries, is free for all who want it, necessary for those who love it, forgotten by those who do without it.

We who give in to the terrible urge, the horrible desire to write poetry, are faced with the same problem every other writer faces--how to publish?

In a way, things are better than ever. Anyone with Internet access can publish poetry for free, and even have it seen and commented on by family and friends. Free publishing! Since the days of campfire recitations, there has been no greater development! A poetic golden age!

No. All these things are very nice, but there are several obstacles to a poet's success. Firstly, it is always hard to get paid for writing poetry. Always. If you have made so much as a dollar with your verses, then no matter the quality of your work, you deserve to have poems written about you.

Second, online poetry is an ever-rising tide, with the best and worst standing shoulder-to-shoulder, begging for equal attention. It takes a lot of searching for a reader to find just the right poem. (Wouldn't that be a wonderful world, where poetry could be available in any store, sorted according to need? "Going camping up North? Here's our Robert W. Service section--careful, now! Some of it's pretty sharp!") It may have been harder to get a poem published before, but readers knew the poetry had at least passed muster with a publisher!

A third problem has been occurring to me for the past year or two--contests. In every poet's heart, there's the desire for money and recognition as a poet. Those of us who want to do it professionally are even more likely to submit to contests. What do we send for consideration? Our very best. We spread our treasures out before them, hoping for a glint of gold in return.

Most contests demand fresh poems, polished in secret, kept from the open air! A poet is torn. To put a splendid new poem out online to gather admirers and hits, or use it for the small chance of a cash prize and a few minutes' glory?

Some folks just like to write stuff, and that's alright. But it's good to remember that the lines you see in a poet's blog might be only the edges of a hoard of hidden work! 

You stand on the path that leads to space,
Where star- and engine-flame would light your face.
Any moment now could take you there,
Bathwater boiling from your hair,
But stop! Turn to another path for now--
Run up to the places among the old trees,
And see, in the valleys spreading below,
The Lowlands and Villages laid out beneath
The savage high peaks, the hanging snow!
Put on a Sheewan cloak once more,
And slip behind the High City's doors!
Think in terms of wayside tea,
And have it with friends from places far--
Here's Byorneth, who led his friend to see
Places strange and standing stones!
See ancient carvings in tongues unknown,
The Highland woman who grew the leaf
That--No! Let them read if they do not know
The slave, the bear, the camp in the trees,
Tales of old times, the sound of the sea!

Muffle the knocker, bar the door,
And let us go to Arlinga once more!

In times long past were gardens splendid,
From the rooftops hanging down, and walked by kings,
And ladies strolled on mountain-terraced fields
Where fruit and blossom sweetened foreign air.
Below such heights were fields of fine tea,
Where sweating workers picked the leaves
For drinking in the midst of neighbor pool and fountain.
Tea is drunk in gardens, crystal water,
Some have wine, and in the summer tea is iced,
But here the drinking is of lovely odors, breezes.
The air is as the water, to infuse the leaves of books,
So this garden-air shall be a tea of tales.


How can chain-link fencing set a place apart?
For sounds come through, the roar of motors,
Voices far and high--and yet this place is other,
Set apart, secluded in the midst of traffic.
Trees watch over, clover carpets this bright spot,
With plots of flowers complementing plots of books!
And here kings walk as well, and queens,
Princes and princesses in their tiny, childish haste.
They're bearing stories! See here, there comes
The Amulet of Samarkand about a prince's neck!
Brave Achilles falls where that man reads,
The Bennets scheme a marriage in yon corner where she is!
Perhaps a scribbler struggles over stories new,
Her first grand effort at a wise and simple tale!
So the air is filled with pictures as they read,
And in these golden afternoons of summer, children play.


And so the poem changes, this poem wherein I stand,
For a garden is a poem--there, a rhythm of the tree and bench,
A complicated meter in the spacing of the tables,
A metaphor of pumpkin and of herb, three lines apart!
In such a garden might fair Helen have escaped the dread of Troy,
There a gunless soldier struck a truce with warring tribes,
There a dead Tyrannosaurus lies in Spinosaurus' grip!
Yonder there was Elrond's council in a time beyond recall,
And on this stage, see Brutus knifing Caesar first within that distant Globe!
If you listen, you can hear the engines of the spaceship we are on,
Churning out beyond the steel-lined garden,
And unfurling in the trees, the standard of the host of Alexander
Flutters up above where sit Joe Hardy, Chet and Frank.


But in winter, what becomes of these?
And is the garden truly gone until the spring?
The books were brought out into air, and came alive,
So where are garden-joys in times of glinting frost?
    Books are filled up with the summer,
    Taken in and put away,
    And opened up and read upon a bitter, snowy day,
    And so the summer is unleashed in spaces cramped with chill,
    And we sit in summer cheer upon a winter windowsill.