Janet Kagan
I don't even know what to say, here. After writing my previous entry, I was just going back over some old stuff from NaNoWriMos past, and I found the file I saved from a forum thread where I chatted with Janet Kagan, an author who wrote one of the formative novels of my childhood, Uhura's Song. I still reread that book about once a year. It was so thrilling to discover her doing NaNoWriMo alongside the rest of us - talking with us, encouraging us, giving us advice from a lifetime of writing. I mean, this was a childhood hero, and she was talking to ME, and my story about breaking my arm trying to build a "swagger-lair" amused and delighted her. I even have an email from her, tucked away somewhere, that she sent me in reply to some innocuous writing question. She was so great, so alive.
I didn't know until today that Janet died over a year ago.
I feel like such a jerk for not knowing, for not checking in with her sooner, for not sending her just one more email, or something. I'm just glad that I had that one chance to let her know how much her book delighted me when I was a kid, and how much it continued to delight me as an adult.
So, here's the story of me and the "swagger-lair" (I was still Moonsong back then), as I shared it with Janet in 2003. She had her own spot on the NaNoWriMo boards - she called it "Janet Kagan's Little Corner of Hell Room Party". In return for my story, she shared with us how she came to write Uhura's Song.
Moonsong: Huh, and it occurs to me that while I'm responding, I can just throw in the completely random comment that I broke my arm when I was thirteen, trying to build a swagger-lair that I could jump into... Needless to say, I apparently didn't do it right. (I loved Uhura's Song!) *scurries off to write more WORDS, being terribly behind!!*
Janet Kagan: moonsong: Uh, I can't tell you how much trouble I got into following my favorite authors' characters---thanks so much for not being mad at me for doing the same thing I did as a kid! (I love that you tiried to build a swagger-lair of your own---if you've a mind to, please tell me all about it!)
Moonsong: Well... as to that little adventure...
In Ingleside, Tx, where I grew up, there was a magnificent natural playground called The Dunes (ancient sand dunes covered in scrub and with plenty of trees, too) - very wild, full of rattlesnakes and even bobcats, and completely forbidden to children. Which, of course, is why I made it my primary play-place. I'd pack my books and a lunch and some water and spend whole Saturdays there.
After I read Uhura's Song, naturally I had to play at being on a Walk. Bobcats could be slashbacks, and rattlesnakes could be grabfoots, although I was fortunate not to actually encounter either species. The next logical step would be to attempt a swagger-lair. So one Saturday, I stole a couple of sheets from my mom's linen closet and some rope from the garage and headed off to brave slashbacks and grabfoots and whatever else there might be awaiting me.
I had absolutely NO IDEA what a swagger-lair looked like - my mental picture would change each time I read the book. So I just improvised to whatever worked with the rope and the sheets. I found two likely trees, live oaks, because they are fairly easy to climb, and set to work. I tied rope to the corner of the sheets and looped the sheet edges between the two trees, pulling the rope as tight as I could manage. I worked and worked, until I got something that I thought resembled a swagger-lair. I crept onto the sheet cautiously - it was great! Like a hammock, high above ground (it wasn't that high, thankfully). So then I remembered - "If it won't take three of us jumping into it at once, I haven't done it right.". So I clambored out and jumped in... and either sheet or badly-tied knot gave way. ::Thump!!::
I had the wind knocked out of me, and I dizzily walked out of the Dunes to a restaurant nearby called The Brass Turtle, where they called my parents, who took me to the hospital, and I had my arm in a cast for six weeks. The only explaination I would give anyone was that I fell out of a tree. A few weeks later, Mom noticed some sheets were missing - but she never got them back. I went back later to my "swagger-lair" but sheets and rope were gone - I'm not sure what happened to them. But I have to say, broken arm aside, that's one of my favorite memories!
Janet Kagan: Oh, Moonsong, you just made my day! Thank you!
Long before there was a NaNoWriMo, I (for reasons way to complicated to go into) got conned into writing a Star Trek novel. I was given three months to do it in and I nearly fainted when the editor said he wanted 150,000 words. But, I reasoned (such as I was reasoning at the time) that the editor would never ever actually BUY it, so nobody'd ever see it but me or Ricky or my mom. So since mom was the Trekker in our family (not me!), I wrote her in as guest star, so I had somebody there who's voice was as clear in my head as Kirk's or Spock's and I planned on giving her a prettied up copy of my rejected ms. for her Christmas present.
I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and when I got stuck I fell back on what Ricky so happily dubbed "the comedy team of Kirk and Spock" and on the talking cats. Whenever I got stuck I asked my friends what they'd never seen in a Star Trek book or to tell me something that irked them about the series, and then I went home and wrote in what they'd never seen or tried to fix what irked them!
I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I wrote 150,000 words in 3 months. At the end of the story and the three months, I called the editor who had conned me into this and confessed that all I had was a first draft and that it was no way good enough for the likes of him! He said, "I'm the editor, Janet. I do the rejecting around here. Stop trying to take my job away from me---Send me what you've got!"
In for a penny, in for a pound. Still laughing, I sent him what I had.
He wanted it. Go for second draft, he said, I've just put thru your contract.
Oooooooooookay
I spent NINE months rewriting, revising, tweaking and panicking like a loon. I'm so anal, I'd still be rewriting it TODAY, if Ricky hadn't looked at the first three pages I'd edited into the GROUND and said, "Hmm, nice but---you're writing all the Star Trek OUT of it!" Oooops. So instead of heavily editing each and every page, I made three fast (a month each) passes through it, telling myself each time that all I had to do here was fix anything it would embarrass me to see in print.
I turned it in. By then, the editor who'd conned me was gone and I didn't know enough to know I had an "orphan book." What followed was sheer hell but the book got published and JUST in time for me to give my mom her PRINTED copy for that Christmas.
I NaNoWriMo'd the first draft, spent nine months on the rewrite, got published---and Moonsong fell out of her swagger-lair!
Was the agony worth it? Hell, YES!
Keep on writing, guys. If I can do it, YOU can do it!
I'm so sad that she's gone. I just... I don't even know what else to say, except that she was a really special person who went out of her way to help new, aspiring writers, and who just made people happy by being herself, always.
If you get a chance, pick up a copy of Uhura's Song or Hellspark or Mirabile. I think you'll enjoy them. I know I have, for a long, long time. I'll never forget you, Janet. Thank you for sharing your stories with us.
I didn't know until today that Janet died over a year ago.
I feel like such a jerk for not knowing, for not checking in with her sooner, for not sending her just one more email, or something. I'm just glad that I had that one chance to let her know how much her book delighted me when I was a kid, and how much it continued to delight me as an adult.
So, here's the story of me and the "swagger-lair" (I was still Moonsong back then), as I shared it with Janet in 2003. She had her own spot on the NaNoWriMo boards - she called it "Janet Kagan's Little Corner of Hell Room Party". In return for my story, she shared with us how she came to write Uhura's Song.
Moonsong: Huh, and it occurs to me that while I'm responding, I can just throw in the completely random comment that I broke my arm when I was thirteen, trying to build a swagger-lair that I could jump into... Needless to say, I apparently didn't do it right. (I loved Uhura's Song!) *scurries off to write more WORDS, being terribly behind!!*
Janet Kagan: moonsong: Uh, I can't tell you how much trouble I got into following my favorite authors' characters---thanks so much for not being mad at me for doing the same thing I did as a kid! (I love that you tiried to build a swagger-lair of your own---if you've a mind to, please tell me all about it!)
Moonsong: Well... as to that little adventure...
In Ingleside, Tx, where I grew up, there was a magnificent natural playground called The Dunes (ancient sand dunes covered in scrub and with plenty of trees, too) - very wild, full of rattlesnakes and even bobcats, and completely forbidden to children. Which, of course, is why I made it my primary play-place. I'd pack my books and a lunch and some water and spend whole Saturdays there.
After I read Uhura's Song, naturally I had to play at being on a Walk. Bobcats could be slashbacks, and rattlesnakes could be grabfoots, although I was fortunate not to actually encounter either species. The next logical step would be to attempt a swagger-lair. So one Saturday, I stole a couple of sheets from my mom's linen closet and some rope from the garage and headed off to brave slashbacks and grabfoots and whatever else there might be awaiting me.
I had absolutely NO IDEA what a swagger-lair looked like - my mental picture would change each time I read the book. So I just improvised to whatever worked with the rope and the sheets. I found two likely trees, live oaks, because they are fairly easy to climb, and set to work. I tied rope to the corner of the sheets and looped the sheet edges between the two trees, pulling the rope as tight as I could manage. I worked and worked, until I got something that I thought resembled a swagger-lair. I crept onto the sheet cautiously - it was great! Like a hammock, high above ground (it wasn't that high, thankfully). So then I remembered - "If it won't take three of us jumping into it at once, I haven't done it right.". So I clambored out and jumped in... and either sheet or badly-tied knot gave way. ::Thump!!::
I had the wind knocked out of me, and I dizzily walked out of the Dunes to a restaurant nearby called The Brass Turtle, where they called my parents, who took me to the hospital, and I had my arm in a cast for six weeks. The only explaination I would give anyone was that I fell out of a tree. A few weeks later, Mom noticed some sheets were missing - but she never got them back. I went back later to my "swagger-lair" but sheets and rope were gone - I'm not sure what happened to them. But I have to say, broken arm aside, that's one of my favorite memories!
Janet Kagan: Oh, Moonsong, you just made my day! Thank you!
Long before there was a NaNoWriMo, I (for reasons way to complicated to go into) got conned into writing a Star Trek novel. I was given three months to do it in and I nearly fainted when the editor said he wanted 150,000 words. But, I reasoned (such as I was reasoning at the time) that the editor would never ever actually BUY it, so nobody'd ever see it but me or Ricky or my mom. So since mom was the Trekker in our family (not me!), I wrote her in as guest star, so I had somebody there who's voice was as clear in my head as Kirk's or Spock's and I planned on giving her a prettied up copy of my rejected ms. for her Christmas present.
I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and when I got stuck I fell back on what Ricky so happily dubbed "the comedy team of Kirk and Spock" and on the talking cats. Whenever I got stuck I asked my friends what they'd never seen in a Star Trek book or to tell me something that irked them about the series, and then I went home and wrote in what they'd never seen or tried to fix what irked them!
I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I wrote 150,000 words in 3 months. At the end of the story and the three months, I called the editor who had conned me into this and confessed that all I had was a first draft and that it was no way good enough for the likes of him! He said, "I'm the editor, Janet. I do the rejecting around here. Stop trying to take my job away from me---Send me what you've got!"
In for a penny, in for a pound. Still laughing, I sent him what I had.
He wanted it. Go for second draft, he said, I've just put thru your contract.
Oooooooooookay
I spent NINE months rewriting, revising, tweaking and panicking like a loon. I'm so anal, I'd still be rewriting it TODAY, if Ricky hadn't looked at the first three pages I'd edited into the GROUND and said, "Hmm, nice but---you're writing all the Star Trek OUT of it!" Oooops. So instead of heavily editing each and every page, I made three fast (a month each) passes through it, telling myself each time that all I had to do here was fix anything it would embarrass me to see in print.
I turned it in. By then, the editor who'd conned me was gone and I didn't know enough to know I had an "orphan book." What followed was sheer hell but the book got published and JUST in time for me to give my mom her PRINTED copy for that Christmas.
I NaNoWriMo'd the first draft, spent nine months on the rewrite, got published---and Moonsong fell out of her swagger-lair!
Was the agony worth it? Hell, YES!
Keep on writing, guys. If I can do it, YOU can do it!
I'm so sad that she's gone. I just... I don't even know what else to say, except that she was a really special person who went out of her way to help new, aspiring writers, and who just made people happy by being herself, always.
If you get a chance, pick up a copy of Uhura's Song or Hellspark or Mirabile. I think you'll enjoy them. I know I have, for a long, long time. I'll never forget you, Janet. Thank you for sharing your stories with us.