On Writing An Autumn Tale

"Always be on the look out for the presence of wonder." E.B. White

(art by Chris Dunn)

One of my most beloved authors and illustrators, Beatrix Potter, once said,“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.” I find this deliciously true as I have begun the second story in my Woodland Tales. It is my Autumn Tale.

My first story began during the Pandemic. Like many, despite all the time I had on hand, I could not find my way into reading novels. Desperate, I turned to some books from my childhood that made me the reader that I am. Winnie the Pooh, Beatrix Potter’s tales, Frog and Toad, Little Bear, Brambly Hedge, and The Wind in the Willows were a few of them. As I became re-enchanted by them, as I fell in love with the language, the stories, and the beautiful illustrations the seed for my own gentle tale began. I wrote and re-wrote and revised and revised some more. It became The Summer of Little Badger.

After having published authors read and critique it, I revised and rewrote some more before sending it off to agents. As I did, I tried to find my way into the Autumn Tale but with little progress. The story just did not appear to me no matter how I showed up day after day searching for a tender thread of it to begin my journey.

A few weeks ago, I came down with Strep and COVID. I was sidelined from school for a week. During that time, I had a foggy COVID brain, so I could not do any work for school. I sat in bed. I watched birds. I found pleasure in simple joys like mango popsicles. Yet it was during this period that the seeds for the second story began to germinate.

I began to jot down all of my ideas and found myself enthralled by the possibility of this Autumn Tale. This led to me researching and watching videos about tiny Harvest Mice.

The fresh journal that I started for this tale is beginning to fill up with characters, threads of stories that will interweave together in the narrative. Once again, I find myself in the midst of a gentle, woodland tale such as those I grew up reading and adoring. Much of my childhood was spent in the woods behind my house. It was there that I observed wild animals: birds, foxes, raccoons, deer, frogs, turtles, field mice, and rabbits. The woods was an enchanted place to me. I spent hours and hours exploring the woods, free to inhabit it with my imagination.

Now, as an adult, I return to the woods in my second tale of four, one for each season (something I loved about Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge tales. Jane Fior, Barklem’s editor, said of the author and illustrator, “The intensity of Jill’s vision was clear from the beginning. She wanted the world to be a wonderful place and she wanted to create a community where that would happen – even if it was only a fictional one.” When I read this, I understood it was what I wanted for my stories as well. I wanted to create a world of community, of kindness, of gentleness, of beauty and wonder, of delight and hope.

These were the stories my Mother read to me as a child. I can still hear them in her soft, Southern lilt. I lost her when I was fairly young, so I cherish these moments of being snuggled up next to her as she read to me. It was how I fell in love with language, with illustrations, with stories that spoke to that deep part of me that wanted a gentler world. The older I get, the more I return to this spirit of childhood that I dwell in. It’s what I hope to bring in my stories, to hopefully be loved and cherished by children and adults who read them. I like to imagine a parent reading one of my stories to their child as my Mother read to me.

If you enjoyed the first part of The Summer of Little Badger and would like to read more, please let me know in the comments below.