Well...AN ending, lol.....
There seem to be a lot of endings for this book!
There seem to be a lot of endings for this book!
|
I haven't done one of these in a long long long time! Yet I've been active.... "We live in a world where all the stories have been written except the one you’re about to write." Answers Without Questions is an ode to Lowell Mick White’s former and future students, a goldmine of writing advice, and a game-changing tool for creative writing teachers. I would encourage any writer and instructor, aspiring or current, to take a look at this book. Even if you just take away one lesson, it could transform your writing and your teaching. Have a highlighter ready because you’ll be annotating like you’re still in school. —Madison Lawson, author of The Registration and The Registration Rewritten Unlike the authors of most ‘How-Tos,’ Lowell Mick White makes his advice feel like a conversation rather than a lecture. Reminds me of our many zoom meetings when I was his student! —Amira T. Mazzawy ‘23, Texas A&M University On Sale August 2024  Don't self-censor. Be bold! Write banned books!
So I started a Substack—newsletter, blog, whatever it is. I’ll continue to post some things here (though, obviously, I haven’t recently—I haven’t had anything to say). Here’s the most recent Substack….   This is the old Carnegie Library in Mankato, Minnesota, where I spent much of my youth. The children’s collection was over on the right-hand side of the building in this photo, and the newspapers and periodicals were on the left. The Blue Earth County History Collection was down in the basement along with some newspaper archives. The children’s side had a nice display of the Maud Hart Lovelace Betsy/Tacy/Tibb books. I read some of those books in third grade or so, and the children’s room had a big map of Mankato (“Deep Valley” in the books) in the Betsy/Tacy world and I thought that was pretty cool, and time I the spent trying to figure out the relationship of Mankato past and present is something I still do whatever place I happen to be at whatever time I’m in. I didn’t much care for children’s books, though. The only one I actually remember was about a kid who built a soap box derby car (does the soap box derby even exist anymore?) and took it to Toledo for the big race and won against all odds, ho-hum. I moved to adult books and history at a pretty young age. It seemed like children’s books were written to offer lessons or inspire and I didn’t like lessons and I was not inspired. Now, adult books—the things that happened in those books were inspirational! Drinking whiskey and driving in cars and blowing things up and doing sex (though that remained kind of mysterious). These were positive life goals—even for a fourth grader! The big gift of the library—of books in general, and of my mother, who introduced me to reading and encouraged me to read—was its ability to take an often-unhappy kid anywhere. Everywhere. There was definitely an escape aspect to reading. I could get out of Mankato, or West Virginia, or wherever I happened to be, and be someplace—better. But reading also offered a window into the complicated and mysterious world I’d somehow found myself in. I guess reading offered an—education? A way of understanding my situation, and a context for what I saw around me. A way to cope. Go read something.   This is 908 Circle Drive in Wayne, Nebraska. I lived here for about a year and a half—1964, 1965—while my dad taught at Wayne State College.  A lifetime later, in 2010, I visited Wayne on a job interview, and of course had to drive by the old homestead. Aren’t childhood houses supposed to be smaller when you see them as an adult? This place seemed—bigger. I think someone at sometime added a room or two onto the back...? Those trees didn’t exist in 1965! (That curved-trunk tree might have). But there still wasn’t much grass…My bedroom was at that window on the far right. In 2010 the house was for rent at that time—I thought, If I get the job, would it be weird to live here…? A voice answered—Yes, Lowell, it would be very fucking weird. (I did not get the job. Which is a good thing! (No offense, Wayne State)). This house below—the house next door—didn’t exist in 1965—it was a vacant lot
 When I tell an imaginary kid to go out and play in the ditch, I’m not being mean. This is what we kids did in Wayne! We played in the goddamn ditches! It was fun! Look at this ditch above! Doesn’t seem like much—I think it’s been filled in. But 55 (!) years ago it was pretty deep—about head-high on a first grader. We could play army in the ditches, hide from the pedos, if girls were around we’d play Family (I always got delegated to be Brother, which was uninspiring). The ditches led to culverts that ran under the streets, and those were cool and scary, too—you could hear cars thumping overhead…. I’ve only written one story set in Wayne. It’s about playing in the ditches and storm sewers and hiding from the pedos…and it sadly doesn’t work. POV problems. Maybe I should figure out a way to fix it….
You know my entire oeuvre makes a great present, right? So get over to my Amazon page and order some books. Your life will be better for it! The kindle editions are at a special pandemic/holiday price! Not sure which book to get? That's understandable--it's easy to be confused by an abundance of excellence. So here's a seasonal reminder: THAT DEMON LIFE is the official community read of Pottersville!   This is the grave of Laura Zeilke, who was my teacher in the third grade at Wilson Campus School in Mankato, Minnesota. I woke up the other day with a sudden unexpected flashback to my third grade experience, and to Miss Zeilke, and so I did some semi-random googling, and found that she had passed away some time ago…. My educator parents thought Miss Zeilke was a good teacher. They knew more about teaching than I did or do, but as far as I could tell as a kid in the classroom—No. Miss Zeilke was mean, Miss Zeilke was crabby, Miss Zeilke picked on me, Miss Zeilke was generally disliked by me and (I think) my classmates. I remember once at the mall (what passed for a mall in 1966) jumping on the cracks between the concrete in the sidewalk outside—yelling “Step on the crack, break Miss Zeilke’s back!” and my poor mother was shocked and outraged. But it was an honest childish emotion I was expressing. Below is a floor plan for a room at Weiking Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato. Back in the day this was Wilson Campus School, at Mankato State College, where I received much of my youthful education. Wilson was a small school—maybe 500 kids pre-k through 12th Grade. From the website, it looks like the building has been much modified over the years, but this—which was the Second Grade classroom then—still has much the same form as the other classrooms in the elementary school wing of the building.  Of interest here is B158—the “locker.” In my day this was just called the “back room.” A storage area. Every classroom had one. I remember all the back rooms had those giant paper cutters which we were constantly warned away from. I guess other teaching supplies were stored there, too. But as far as I could tell then, or remember now, the main use for the back rooms was to house and punish unruly students. I spent a fair amount of time in the second grade back room. I probably spent half the year in the third grade back room. Sheesh. I was an ornery kid. No doubt about it! I was squirmy and fidgety and excitable and I talked a lot. (I probably had ADHD, which was unknown then). But I think different adults reacted differently to my orneriness and squirminess. Me, as an adult? I sure wouldn’t want to be around me as a child. If Current Me was supervising 3rd Grade Me, I’d say something like, “Little Lowell, go out and play in the goddamn ditch and leave me the fuck alone.” Or I’d lock me in the goddamn back room with the giant paper-cutter and hope for the best. Some of my teachers no doubt found me annoying, too—maybe especially Miss Zeilke found me annoying. At one point in the school year, Miss Zeilke moved my desk from the rear of the room, to the front—right in front of her teacher desk. I told my parents that, yeah—she moved my desk to the front of the room because I was smarter than everyone else. And, yeah—I think I actually thought that was true! I don’t think I was lying! Stupid, clueless me. My parents came home from a meeting with Miss Zeilke and told me that—Hell, no, Miss Zeilke didn’t move my desk because I was smart, she moved my desk because I was ornery and obnoxious and disrupting the class. Whoa. My parents were ashamed and they were pissed. So the unhappy school year sort of passed like that. I got yelled at, I got exiled to the back room, I endured what I thought at the time was terrible injustice. I guess I learned stuff. Our class moved on to the Fourth Grade, with Mrs. Palmer, who I loved. Miss Zeilke later retired and moved to Florida. But I never forgot Miss Zeilke! In fact, I carried a stupid smoldering grudge. So. Years and years later, my class at Wilson finally graduated and people were milling around afterward, and I saw—Miss Zeilke. Talking to one of the Mitchell twins. Laughing—saying something about how cute they were way back then. I marched over and stuck my arm out. “Look!” I said. “I still have scars on my arm from when you grabbed me and dragged me off to the back room!” Miss Zeilke just looked at me blankly. Confused. Miss Zeilke had no idea who I was. And I suddenly felt like an idiot. Here I had been carrying a deep anger and resentment toward her for nine years—for half my life!—and she had been off living her good life in retirement with no idea that I even fucking existed. So my hate was all a big nothing. So, apparently, was my life. You know my entire oeuvre makes a great present, right? So get over to my Amazon page and order some books. Your life will be better for it! The kindle editions are at a special pandemic/holiday price! Not sure which book to get? That's understandable--it's easy to be confused by an abundance of excellence. So here's a seasonal reminder: THAT DEMON LIFE is the official community read of Pottersville! |
Lowell Mick White
Author of the novels Normal School and Burnt House and Professed and That Demon Life and the story collections Long Time Ago Good and The Messes We Make of Our Lives. Categories
All
Archives
June 2025
|
RSS Feed
