Author: Loree Burns

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Compression, As Promised

Interesting that a post called compression is so overly long. I realized too late that compression is a topic for a BOOK CHAPTER, not a BLOG POST. But I did promise …

Last fall, while researching my citizen science book, I attended three monarch butterfly tagging events. Wonderful things happened at each event, things that I dutifully recorded in my notes so that I could use them when the time came to write the book.

Well, friends, the time has come to write the book.

And so I have been reliving my favorite butterfly tagging moments. One that is tugging particularly hard on my mind is the day I watched a dozen adults and kids hunt for monarchs with naturalist Kristin Steinmetz at Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary…

After a thorough introduction to monarch butterflies and the MonarchWatch tagging program, Kristin led the group of intrepid butterfly hunters to a large open meadow on the property. The milkweed and cow vetch and wild aster there was taller than every kid in the group—and probably a few of the adults. But overgrown wildflowers couldn’t stop these folks. They stood alongside that meadow, butterfly nets in hand, and scanned the weedtops for telltale shimmers of orange-and-black.

“There!” the smallest girl in the group yelled, pointing. And before I had even spotted the butterfly, her dad set out at a sprint with his net raised up over his head. He chased that butterfly on a haphazard flight through the heart of the meadow. When it finally settled on a flower; Dad snagged it with a single, graceful sweep of his net. There were whistles and cheers as he made his way back to the path.

The group watched in awe as Kristen reached into the net, grasped the butterfly by its wings, and slid it ever-so-gently out of the net. As she held the marvelous creature up for all to see, there was much oohing and ahhing. And then, too swiftly, heartbreak:

“I’m sorry,” Kristin said, “but we can’t tag it.”

There was a collective gasp. Then silence.

“This isn’t a monarch butterfly,” Kristin explained, gently. “It’s a viceroy.”

As Kristin tried to convince her charges that their mistake was common, and also a good lesson (mimicry among butterflies is widespread, and monarch watchers must learn to tell the difference between a monarch and a viceroy in order to be successful monarch citizen scientists), I was already scribbling into the margin of my notebook: “Open monarch chapter with this scene?”

In theory, I would still love to open the monarch chapter of my new book with this scene. It has a striking setting, interesting characters, dramatic arc, and important information embedded in its unfolding. Unfortunately, though, a chapter opening with this scene would, in the end, disappoint my readers … because this particular group of monarch hunters didn’t capture or tag a single monarch for the rest of the day!

Sigh.

How can I explore the tagging of monarch butterflies in a chapter that does not include a single successful monarch capture? It can’t be done. How can I include successful monarch captures into a chapter that includes the scene above? Well, that can be done, but only by resorting to compression …

Compression, in the writing world, is the act of combining several temporally distinct events into a single, seamless whole. If I were to simply include the mistaken identity scene above in a chapter that includes a dramatic rendering of another, more successful monarch tagging event, I will have compressed two events into one. If I were careful, the reader would never suspect the events happened on different days.

Hmmm. Convenient.

Legal? Well, yes, actually. Compression is a legitimate authorial tool for managing chronology and pacing in a work of nonfiction.

Honest? Um, well, no. Not really. And I can’t swallow the idea that duping readers in the name of their literary pleasure is okay. At least not when your readers are twelve.

There is a great essay on Compression in KEEP IT REAL, the book I recommended last week. It’s worth a read. It concludes, based on the experiences of one writer who chose to compress material in her work, that “compression may often be a sound choice artistically, [but] it is also rife with danger.”

I am not generally a girl who digs danger. Nope. Not me. But I do love a challenge. I know there is a way to share my tagging experiences in a chapter that is both intriguing AND accurate. I just have to find it …

 

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Moth Update

I’m behind on a few things … including the story of our hummingbird clearwing moth. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, catch yourself up here.) Here is what our caterpillar–raised from a myserious egg found on our backyard viburnum bush–looked like 17 days after it hatched (this photo was taken last Wednesday):


© Loree Griffin Burns

Here’s the same caterpillar three days later:


© Loree Griffin Burns

Pupation had begun! This was exciting, and it was very, very hard not to disturb the process by peeking at our cat every twenty seconds. I was good, though; I took this one photo, covered the browning beast back up with the paper towel that it had chosen to pupate beneath, and hid my camera. Then I sat on my hands for as long as possible.

Today, I could wait no more …

So, here is our setup. On the left of the tank you can see the viburnum leaves placed in the tank for the caterpillar’s culinary pleasure. On the right, a paper towel; I put this in the tank so I could add water without making too much mud; I didn’t realize the caterpillar would use it as a shelter to pupate under. The oval-shaped dirt blob on the folded down corner of the paper towel is our pupating moth:


© Benjamin Griffin Burns

Need a closer view? So did we. So I lifted up the paper towel and tried to pull away the dirt mound containing the pupa. The caterpillar had spun a cocoon of sorts around itself, a mix of reddish-brown silk and dirt that had gotten hard and semi-impenetrable. If we wanted to see the pupa itself, we were going to have to go through the dirt/cocoon mound. The kids told me that I was a nut for proceeding, but notice their heads were practically in the tank as they said so:


© Benjamin Griffin Burns

Our first glimpse was enticing:


© Benjamin Griffin Burns

And I can tell you for certain our tiny pupating charge is alive. How do I know? BECAUSE IT WRIGGLED! It wriggled like a … a … forty-something mother of three trying to fit into her thirty-something genes. Serious wriggling. Here’s one last view. I should’ve put a ruler in there for you, but I was holding a wriggling nub of life and wasn’t thinking straight:


© Benjamin Griffin Burns

I’ve now wrapped our pupa back into its cocoon and laid the paper towel in the dirt again. I will try not to touch the tank again until I see a hummingbird clearwing moth in it …

 

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Keep It Real

KEEP IT REAL:
Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction
Edited by Lee Gutkind and Hattie Fletcher
Norton, 2008

I am a very instinctual writer. The choices I make in my manuscripts are not based on academic training in the language arts, which I’ve never had, but rather a lifetime of immersion in well-told stories … and the resulting sense of what works and what doesn’t. With each book I create, however, I sink a little deeper into the technical side of the writing process. I find myself wondering how one choice worked and why this other choice didn’t. I analyze the creative nonfiction of writers I admire and try to reason out their choices. With my latest project, a book on citizen science, I’ve even found myself wondering about the legal implications of my authorial choices.

What is creative nonfiction? According to the authors of KEEP IT REAL:

The word “creative” refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction–that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events–in a compelling, vivid manner.

It is a form distinct from journalism, textbook writing, and other more straightforward reportage of facts. Its practitioners, according to the book “have a complicated obligation to their readers: to entertain like novelists but to educate like journalists.” There are dilemmas that arise when one is attempting to fulfill this obligation, and the collection of essays in KEEP IT REAL examines them. From acknowledgment of sources to compression to fact-checking to frame, readers get a concise overview of the artistic, ethical, and sometimes even legal implications of the choices creative nonfiction writers make.

I don’t know if KEEP IT REAL truly contains everything one needs to know in order to research and write creative nonfiction, but there is enough good stuff there for me to wholeheartedly recommend the book to others in the genre. It’s the sort of book I will turn to again and again as I puzzle through my writing projects. In fact, I plan to puzzle through the issue of compression with you here later in the week …

 

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What A Girl Wants: Girl Detectives

A new installment of Colleen Mondor’s What a Girl Wants discussion series went live today at Chasing Ray, and its all about the decline of the girl detective novel: does it hurt girls not to have the teen girl detective in the 21st century? what does it say about us that she is largely gone? You can–and should!–read the entire post here. I’ll paste my thoughts below; I hope they’ll entice you to wander over and join the discussion.

I adored Nancy as a kid. It wasn’t the mysteries so much as the undeniable fact that she was different. She wasn’t interested in the sorts of things that most teenaged girls were interested in: boys and how to attract them. No, Nancy was more interested in uncovering the truth, most especially when there were people trying to hide it. Looking back, Nancy’s appeal for me is all wrapped up in this idea that she was different, that she knew it, and that she didn’t worry about it. Because I was different, and I knew it … and I worried about it endlessly.

I guess what I am saying is that I don’t think today’s girls need a girl detective so much as they need a girl—any girl—who is strong and capable (e.g. different!) and who gets on with life anyway. And there are female protagonists who fit this bill; they just don’t happen to be detectives.

As a writer whose passion is science and nature, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least point out that one incarnation of the girl detective in our age is the female scientist. And although there are lots of nonfiction books available for teen girls about women who grew up to be scientists, I can’t think of many contemporary novels with scientifically-bent heroines: Meg Murry (A WRINKLE IN TIME), Dewey Kerrigan (THE GREEN GLASS SEA), Hermione Granger (HARRY POTTER series) … who else?

 

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Rubies in the Rain

More rain today.

Sigh.

There are bright spots amidst all this rain. For one, the days of deluge have given me time to stalk ruby-throated hummingbirds. I’ve been trying to capture one on film for a while, but I am never patient enough when the weather is nice. This weekend, though, I staked out the feeder attached to our kitchen window. I was able to sit inside and stay dry until a hummingbird arrived to drink; then I slipped my head and camera out the slider door, which is about five feet from the feeder window, and snapped pictures until he or she flew away. That’s how I managed to score this image:


© Loree Griffin Burns

Rainy mornings are also pretty perfect for drafting new books. So here I go …

 

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Ladybugs of Alberta


LADYBUGS OF ALBERTA
by John Acorn
University of Alberta Press, 2007

I had hoped to go on a ladybug expedition over the weekend, to share my new-found ladybug knowledge with my kids, and also to psyche myself up for my first week of drafting the citizen science book. Alas, it rained. And rained and rained and rained. It is raining now, even as I type.

And so I did the next best thing: I read about ladybugs.

John Acorn’s LADYBUGS OF ALBERTA is the only regional ladybug field guide in existence. It covers many of the species we have here in the northeastern United States–even though the Alberta in the title refers to Alberta, Canada–and it is the guide that my friends at The Lost Ladybug Project use in the field. And here’s the thing: it’s a great read! Seriously. I’m not one to actually sit and read a field guide, even in a deluge that has kept me indoors for days. But this particular field guide was a pleasure to read … cover to cover.

John Acorn has a wonderful, humorous writing style, and he is a true ladybugster (his term for ladybug enthusiasts). Who but a ladybugster would actually taste his subjects in order to determine which ones are least palatable?

 

This is not nearly as weird as it sounds … If there were any diseases or parasites I could catch, I wouldn’t do it, believe me.

And yet, do it he does:

 

The procedure is simple: I place the ladybug on my tongue, press them gently against the roof of my mouth, remove them unharmed, and swirl the saliva around my mouth. I then take notes.

Now that is dedication.

Here’s to sunshine and to ladybugs and to dedication … I would like to see all of them here at the Burns house over the coming months!

 

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The Viburnum Mysteries, Part 4

It’s been a while since I updated readers on my no-longer-mysterious hummingbird clearwing moth caterpillars. Last you saw, they were one day old and looked like this:


© Loree Griffin Burns

Now they are twelve days old and look like this:


© Loree Griffin Burns

Amazing, eh? It won’t be long before these cats are ready to pupate. I’m not sure exactly how long, actually, so I plan to fill the bottom of the tank with dirt (they pupate underground) as soon as possible. Then I’ll watch and wait, camera at the ready.

For the record, the outdoor eggs I’ve been watching (eggs of the same moth species laid on the same plant, presumably at the same time) finally hatched, but more than a week later than the ones indoors. Can you guess why?

 

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2009 Pacific Gyre Expedition


© Gerry Burns

This picture of Charlie Moore and me was taken aboard the oceanographic research vessel Alguita in 2006, when I was researching TRACKING TRASH. Charlie and his crew took me out on the Pacific to show me how they collect seawater samples for plastic analysis. The things I learned that day are never far from my mind. Like the fact that Charlie and his team “find plastic everywhere they look for it” in the world ocean. Like the fact that 80% of the plastic trash in the ocean comes from land sources (i.e. you and me).

If any of this interests you, you should check out the ORV Alguita blog. Charlie and his team recently kicked of the first leg of a three-stage journey to further investigate ocean pollution and, as always, they are working hard to educate the public along the way. The blog has daily updates on the work they are doing and the things they are finding out there on the ocean.

 

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Found on the Softball Field!

I am not kidding! Here’s the story …

I coach my daughter’s instructional league softball team. (Maybe you have heard of us? We are the West Boylston Pink Panthers, and we rock!) I was lucky enough to have help from a brave and beautiful parent, Kristi, who only recently moved to town. Kristi and I worked with the Pink Panthers all season—showing the girls what we could remember about fielding and throwing and (heaven help them) hitting—but didn’t find much time for chit-chat. On Saturday, however, at the end-of-the-season Panthers extravaganza, Kristi and I managed to talk about things other than softball. And it turns out she and I have a lot in common besides our panther-daughters: we are both in children’s books. Kristi works for Scholastic Book Fairs!

There followed a raucous conversation about books. Eventually Kristi let slip that she was currently reading the new Suzanne Collins book.

I nearly fainted.

“You mean the new, new Suzanne Collins book? As in the sequel to THE HUNGER GAMES? As in the Advanced Reader copy of CATCHING FIRE? As in, you actually have the ARC in your house right now? What are you doing here? Why are you not home reading? When will you finish? Please, oh please, oh please can I read it after you?”

Kristi now thinks I am a nut. But that is okay, because I am a nut. And this nut now has in her hot little hands an Advanced Reader Copy of CATCHING FIRE!

Must. Go. Read.