Hot Yarn

I certainly didn’t expect 90 plus degree temperatures in Chicago. Not that I have been paying much attention to the weather. My whole plan about coming here was to write a chunk of the next Yarn Retreat book which for right now I’m calling YARN IT!

There is something about being alone that seems to loosen up my muse. I spent the first couple of days working out the basic story. Even though I don’t have to do a synopsis, I have found I actually prefer to have sort of a road map to start with.

Then I needed to come up with the first line. It may sound crazy, but once I have that first line, I find I can really take off. I think it gets me into the voice of the book.

The retreat that Casey is putting on this time is different from the others she’s done. This time it is a group of women she knew in college who recently found each other on Facebook. I was trying to think of what could have brought them together since Casey is not the sorority type and the women are all different.

First, I thought of having them meet in a freshman English class, but it didn’t feel right. And then the perfect answer appeared. They met in a gym class. Gym classes are a real melting pot of people and required at the first university I went to.

As I was thinking about the gym classes I had to take, the perfect situation popped into my mind. The Chicago campus of the University of Illinois for years was on Navy Pier, which is just what it sounds like. A pier sticking out in Lake Michigan where boats unloaded their stuff and sailors hung around. There are more stories there for another time. My first semester of college was the last semester the campus was on the Pier. The school changed to the quarter system and moved to a brand new campus on the edge of downtown Chicago. The women’s gym wasn’t finished, so we were bused to a YMCA on skid row. This is all really beside the point and just part of my memory. I don’t remember what they called the gym class, but at one point we were divided in teams, given rhythm balls (medium sized red air filled balls) and told we had to come up with a routine that had music, dance, and balls being thrown around. I won’t describe what we came up with but think music from West Side Story and a girl’s gang battle with balls flying through the air. As soon as I’d finished thinking about it, I knew that was where Casey met her friends and I came up with a name for them – The Baller-inas.

It always surprises me when something I know first hand ends up in one of my books.

College reunion time!

I'm posting early and muy rapido tonight, because I'm dashing off to catch a red-eye for the east coast--thank you Linda, for letting me barge into your Thursday posting! (And if you haven't seen Linda's post on her 20th book, DOUBLE DOG DARE, keep reading! Twenty books and going stronger than ever! Hooray, Linda!)

Back to reunion thoughts...

It’s been (gulp) thirty years since I set foot on campus. Last time I was there, I was a youngster. Now I’m—well, you do the math. (I always hated math, and a thirty-year milestone is only reinforcing my feelings on the whole subject.)

But I’m excited to be going back—I’ll be staying in my old dormitory, and seeing old friends and familiar faces. The reunion schedule is packed with wonderful lectures and discussion sessions. And to top it all off, they’re going to feature my book as the “class book” for discussion, so I’ll get to return as the “author” of the class, which is kind of a dream come true for me.

But the real reason I’m looking forward to it is the opportunity for reflection. Thirty years is a long, long time. I plan to do a lot of walking around Lake Waban and thinking about how life has changed. How I’ve changed, the good and bad of it. What I’ve learned. What I carry forward from those days. What I've left behind. I'll have more on that next week.

How about you? Have you attended any major milestone reunions from high school or college, and how did they go? What was the primary thing you valued from it, and were there any surprises?

I’d love to hear about it!