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“Dip your serenity in serendipity and let the surprise be your prize” – Anonymous This will be the fourth year that I shall choose a word to focus on for the coming year, and once again I invite my blog … Continue reading →

Hi, folks! I'm continuing my series for the month of March. In honor of Saint Patrick's Day, I'm calling this series: Lucky Serendipity. I have tripped across many moments in life that really direct the whole of my future. I call these moments: lucky serendipity. So here is the story of one of those moments.
When I started out as a writer, I didn't really have any idea what I should write except for journals and "little stories" that only children would read (said my college creative writing teacher). I certainly had no clue how to become published. I had a Children's Literature teacher also tell me that I should write for children.

I wish I could say I took every one's advice and dove right into children's writing, but that is not my story. Instead, I went for unassertiveness, gullibility, dissatisfaction with the world as we know it, naivety, and a desire for spiritual meaning. I know, rut-ro and it was bad. But fear not, readers! An ad was placed in the newspaper, and it changed my life. It was a very smallish ad about a meeting for children's writers, a club called the SCBW.

This was perhaps the most spiritual thing that has ever happened to me, except for meeting the love my life.

At this point in history, I had three children, ages 0 to 2. Yes, I had been busy. I decided to go to this mysterious meeting. It was at the College Station Conference Center. The ad mentioned you should bring some pages to share, so off I went to my mother's day out, pages clutched in hand. A group of about twelve sat in a friendly circle. A smallish woman with bright blue eyes and blond hair cut in a bob led the group. Her first picture book was about to be published, and she chatted about the experience.

I listened in wide-eyed wonder. I had never been with a published writer as a colleague before. I read my bit and she had such great things to say: like rhyme needs to really rhyme and it's hard, like stare out the window a while each day before writing, like think about how the words roll around in your mouth --advice I have never forgotten.

I went home and re-budgeted the food so I could pay the fee to join the group. For months, I never missed a meeting. The SCBW leader was so kind to me. She sent me a note, thanking me for voluteering, and she added that a day would come that she would say: she knew me when.  She challenged me: Write every day. Voice is all about the words. Write you best work and send it in.

I sent in my first story to a publisher during this time and received a signed rejection! 1995, baby. She told me it would take ten years to really get things going. (My first publication would land in 2006.)

A day came that I learned that I was moving to some place called Kirkland, Washington, this leader encouraged me to get involved with SCBWI (there was a name change).  She told me to look up Peggy King Anderson and take every class she offered. She had it on good authority that Peggy was a great teacher. (Peggy is beyond great.)

This wonderful leader kept in touch over the years and would always remember me and my writing every time we happened to meet. She still invites me over for writerly shindigs now that I'm back in College Station after my almost fifteen year jaunt. 

So who was this paragon leader, and who placed the life-changing ad? Kathi Appelt.

I know I'm just one of hundreds that have a story just like this. Lucky serendipity had struck. Lucky me. I will be back next week with more lucky serendipity.

This week's doodle: this is a sketch from a project I worked on in those early days -- The Wild Jamboree. I hated that black background but loved the hippos and the bush babies.

Hi, folks! I'm starting a new series for the month of March and in honor of Saint Patrick's Day. I'm calling this series: Lucky Serendipity. I have tripped across these moments in life that really direct the whole of my future. I call these moments: lucky serendipity. So here is the story of one of those moments.

When I started college, I thought I would be chemist. It seemed sensible, steady work. I'm not one of those people who dreamed of being a writer since they were five years old.  I was a terrible with the conventions of writing. Grammar and me have never been on the best of terms and back then we didn't even have a dialogue going. I loved stories but I didn't think I could ever put one on the page that would, you know, make sense.

I started journaling in high school, not stories, but just thoughts and feelings. I loved to write but to be honest, when I took writing classes, there was only sort of this "meh" coming my way. It was really discouraging.  As a young person, I needed cheerleaders but all I got were critics. My tender creative heart couldn't take that. I liked journaling because no one could tell me that the writing was just awful. It was for me, and I always gave myself an A+.

In college, there was a tree house out in the wooded area of a park I liked. It was a place where I dreamed a lot. I took my journal up there, and I would write and write. I would pour my heart and soul onto the page.  I didn't think of myself as a writer, how could someone with my skills presume such a thing? But there was magic in those hours sitting up in that swaying tree and pulling the essence of who I am out of me and placing it on the page. I thought of this place as my secret place that had been put in the world for me. I had found shelter from the storms that life could throw at me in that freedom of words.

A few years later, I was finishing up college and choking at the future. I was getting that chemistry degree, but I had learned one thing in college, chemistry wasn't really my thing.  Right at the end of my college days, I met this boy (yes, the love of my life) and he saw me scribbling in my little journal time and again, and he took me by the hand and pleaded with me to become a writer. He'd never seen anyone put so much effort into writing. Then one day we went for a walk, and he took me to that tree house. It turns out that he built the special place I had spent so many hours scribbling. There I knew, even though I was a hoplessly flawed writer, I was one.

All the threads of serendipity, lucky me. I married the boy and from that day on always called myself a writer. That was 27 years ago. My first novel is coming out in a few months: PLUMB CRAZY (Swoon Romance). I hope it is the first of many.

I hope that lucky serendipity comes your way this month. I will be back with more of the series next week.

Here is the doodle. Of course I doodled that spot all those years ago.  "Tree house."

My husband and I were introduced by a mutual acquaintance in 1996.  She flew in from Yakima, Washington state from our wedding, and that was the last time we saw her before her husband's job took their family to Germany and then Australia. 

This weekend, we were picking up our kids from a sleepover (yay) with my in-laws in western Maryland. My father-in-law wanted to have dinner at a local pizzeria, but my daughter voted instead for Ruby Tuesday.  While there, my husband escorted my son to the restroom, and lo and behold... at a nearby table he found our matchmaker and family.  They had just returned stateside and were living in a hotel in Virginia.  They had driven to Ohio to buy furniture and had planned to stop in a different town on the way home but had missed the exit, and so... in a city that was neither theirs nor ours, in a restaurant where none of us had planned to be that night, our fates collided once more.  It was with great pleasure that we were finally able to introduce our children to the woman responsible for their very existence.  Ah, serendipity.

As a reader, I am most impatient about plot contrivances and coincidences.  But the truth is, these are also a part of real life.

This week I have been reading the prolific Debbie Macomber's Once Upon a Time, which details her blueprint for both living life and writing about it. In the book, she mentions her hometown of Yakima, Washington and her childhood librarian, Miss Bunn.  As a Beverly Cleary devotee, I know that Mrs. Clearly (formerly Miss Bunn) was once a children's librarian in Yakima.   Could it possibly be?  I turned to google, and sure enough -- uber-famous (and admittedly poor student) Beverly Cleary had, once upon a time, been the beloved librarian of uber-famous (and admittedly poor student) Debbie Macomber.

As teachers, librarians, and writers, these are the stories that we live for.  Often the rewards of our vocation are intangible and far in the future.  In the results-oriented world in which we live, it is important to remember that, ultimately, patience reigns triumphant.  Thank goodness for the occasional grace of serendipity to let us know we are indeed on the right track.  --Jeanne Marie

Serendipity waves her wand across our lives on a regular basis, whether we realize it or not. I read Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetic Asides writing prompt this morning and thought, “Yep, I can do that one and had a title immediately.”

It wasn’t an original title; so few really are original. On fill-in-the-blank prompts, Muse either slips you filler quickly or not. I took an unconscious page from my old IBM days and did an “if, then else” statement in my head after I wrote the title. **For those unfamiliar with old programming code, an “if, then else” statement is one which is a prompt in itself. “If X happens, then what will happen next. If X does not happen, the what will happen next.”

For Robert’s Day 20 Prompt—Use “Let’s (blank)” as title. Fill-in the blank with word/phrase, use as title, and write the poem to it, my mind went to an old roommate back in the seventies and how things went from there. I called it–

Let’s Dance the Night Away

Two AM call caught us finally sitting,

A pair of disco addicts who came each night

To crowd a small floor, meet with friends

And laugh with others in new steps.

You faded from my life not long after,

A need that required distance to perform

Without recriminations or ever-afters,

A fact you could never appreciate.

Two to tango was never the real problem,

Though taking advantage was your forte,

For a con man needs only a woman’s faith,

Never was my enjoyment at issue.

Frankly I outgrew your need to mooch and moan;

Now my life and resources are my own.

© Claudette J. Young 2012

Along the same lines but with different outcomes, just a couple of days ago, I reconnected with an old friend with whom I hadn’t talked since the mid-nineties. This was a person for whom I’ve searched for years with no success. He, too, had searched for me. Now that reconnection has ensued, life seems smoother than days before.

There’s so much to catch up on, so many personal travel logs to read. As I look toward this acquaintance process, I can’t help but look at this poem as a kind of letting-go of unfortunate experiences and a taking-up of those which uplift and secure.

Serendipity strikes again. Did she see it coming? Were the two events entwined on my star chart under a heading of “Let’s put things right”?

I hope you enjoy this day’s offering. Please leave a comment as you wish. Here’s hoping Serendipity waves her wand over you today.

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