Tuesday, April 21, 2020

#14 Sylvia Saves the DAY, NECESSARY

need vs nourish --> natural.
N is for the emotional feeling, NECESSARY!

Sylvia Saves the DAY. 

I wrote this story in 1992 after my volunteer position as Regional Advisor for SCBWI from 1886 to1989. And after researching and publishing my father's family tree, 'His, Her, and Ours.

I saw Sylvia Saves the DAY as a picture book with a drawn quilted spare for the 27 scenes. The picture book never happened, I stopped illustrating and sending my stories to editors. The market had dropped, and I would wait for a return opening. While waiting, I pondered why my stories did not please editors.

While lying on my couch, resting, and rereading my stories, a voice floated through my mind, "you write analogies. You need sunshine in my sky, to dig in the rich soil, so you can move on". The gardening healed my hurts about rejection." So Sylvia, the happy gardener, misses the sun who falls in Sylvia's woodpile. Curran, the wind, helps Sylvia, who saves the day, a strong matron.

Well, as all good stories go, a climax. While gardening during the cold rains in 1998, I got pneumonia and had to stop weeding. 

Again lying on my couch, the voice floated through my mind, "Time for you to stand on stage and tell stories." All my life, I never volunteered to read out loud, and as RA in SCBWI always had someone else stand-up and run the meetings. I worked behind the scenes, safe, not being a man, male, he; I had no voice.

To evolving my style, I needed more education, a broader range of stories from many countries like the story I read as a 5th and 6th grader. My opportunity arrived, storytelling in 2000, then the invite 2002 to tell at the Asian Art Museum, I entered a temple of stories. I would realize why the male voice dominated in writing and stories.

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