A Priceless Editor



My mother, Age 8



I'm not sure why, but I'd hesitated to ask my mom to read the manuscript for Broken Dolls. One might think that strange, since she is the inspiration for my character, Sachiko Kimura. Sachi is how I imagine my mom to have been as an 8-year old Japanese American girl struggling with her identity through her family's internment during World War II.

So why did I hesitate? These are some of the things I feared:

1) The story would bring back painful memories of that time in her life.
2) Though some of the story is based on fact, most of it is fictionalized. I was concerned she would take offense that the story was not as it had been in "real life."
3) Mom is not a big reader, and I didn't want to pressure her to read a full manuscript.

Through the four years it has taken me to write Broken Dolls, I have talked to Mom about it; asked questions about what happened during those years and filled her in on some of the chapters. But it was only last week that I loaded a .pdf file on her iPad so she could read it.

Honestly, I thought it would sit on her iPad, unread.

But a few days later, my sister called me and said, "Mom has not taken her nose out of your story. I finally had to tell her she needed to take a break or her neck would start bothering her."

I was thrilled. Though many have told me they've enjoyed the story, to have my own mother -- who lived through those years and who is not a "big reader" -- read it and be unable to put it down means the world to me.

Yesterday, I went to visit. When I walked in to her bedroom, I found her with iPad in hand, so engrossed in the story she hardly noticed me. She'd been taking notes about how I could improve the intricacies of the Japanese culture in the story -- something I could not have gotten from anyone else who has read the manuscript.

Priceless.

And my mom is smart as a whip. Dozens of people have read or heard the chapter in the story where Sachiko is stacking rocks on a fence post at Rohwer, one stone on top of another. It was something Papa taught her once -- a way to calm herself when she was troubled. Only my mother caught that there was no way Sachiko could have reached the top of the fence post at Rohwer.

To know that she was that "into" the story? Well, it was priceless.

My mother with her mother

ADDENDUM - JULY 9, 2011

On many mornings, before I get out of bed, my mind fills with thoughts. This morning, I was thinking about this blog entry, and something occurred to me: It was presumptuous of me to assume my mom was so "into" my story that she could visualize the fence post being too high for Sachi. The truth is, she was THERE.

She knew how high those fence posts were.

Book Trailer Film Festival

Announcing my First Annual Book Trailer Film Festival!
If you'd like to participate, a YouTube link for your trailer to jymorrill@gmail.com by Saturday, July 9. If you'd like a link to your website/blog included or photos (.jpg) of the book cover or yourself to be included with your trailer, email those too.

Trailers will be posted in order received.

Watch for ...the premiere on Saturday, July 16!!

JAN MORRILL - BROKEN DOLLS

 Jan Morrill's Website

Jan Morrill's Blog

Site of Rohwer Internment Camp Gets Grant Money

The KUAR website has announced that Arkansas will receive $400,000 in Federal grant money for its projects devoted to the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

I visited Rohwer in November, 2009 as part of my research for my novel, BROKEN DOLLS. In my blog post, "Rohwer Whispers," I wrote about visiting the site--the impact it had, the secrets it shared.

KUAR's article quoted Dr. Johanna Miller Lewis, Project Director of Life Interrupted: The Rohwer Cemetery Preservation Project:

“We need to learn from our mistakes and I think it is especially important in Arkansas because civil rights is so much an important part of the state’s history and this is just another chapter of civil rights in the state of Arkansas.”

To learn from our mistakes, we must remember our mistakes. It is the reason I wrote BROKEN DOLLS.

A Giant Step Forward

I am very happy to say that I have taken a giant step forward on my metaphorical path toward publication of BROKEN DOLLS.

I . . . have . . . an . . . agent! Kathleen Anderson of Anderson Literary Management has offered to represent me.

The querying process can be a daunting one. Often, it is a writer's first exposure of her manuscript to the "outside world" -- the world that extends beyond the bounds of family, friends and critique groups. So, when I received the email from Ms. Anderson, I was thrilled.

Thrilled? Okay, as I writer, I feel the need to "show" - not "tell."

It was a bright, sunny morning, and not a creature stirred. Not my husband. Not my two dogs. The only sound in the house was the hum of my computer and the slurp of my coffee. I opened my email, and there it was - an email from Kathleen Anderson.

A month before, I'd been fortunate to shepherd her at this year's OWFI Conference, and after being able to spend much more time with her than the typical 5-minute pitch, she asked me to send the full manuscript.

So there I was, holding my breath in front of my computer monitor. I'm not sure if I hesitated to open it because I was trying to work up the nerve, or because I wanted to revel in a moment that hovered between possibility and defeat.

Finally, I did it. I opened it. Then, I exhaled. From the beginning of her email, I savored each word, though I will admit, I kept waiting for the big "but." She did suggest some changes and said the manuscript would need some editing, but that dreaded word "but" -- the word that so often precedes "it's not quite right for me" never appeared.

When the formal agreement arrived by mail a few days later, well . . . you can see how excited I was.

So, I continue forward on my path, knowing there may yet be steps backward that will require two steps forward. But today, I'm skipping.

Text Vexed

Don't worry - I was parked!

I'll admit to a terrible secret about myself. I have - though on very few occasions - texted while driving. On more frequent occasions, I have read a text or email while driving, but decided that replying could wait until I parked my car.

Look at these statistics, taken from http://www.distraction.gov/:

•20 percent of injury crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving. (NHTSA).

•Of those killed in distracted-driving-related crashed, 995 involved reports of a cell phone as a distraction (18% of fatalities in distraction-related crashes). (NHTSA)


•In 2009, 5,474 people were killed in U.S. roadways and an estimated additional 448,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes that were reported to have involved distracted driving. (FARS and GES)


•The age group with the greatest proportion of distracted drivers was the under-20 age group – 16 percent of all drivers younger than 20 involved in fatal crashes were reported to have been distracted while driving. (NHTSA)


•Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. (Source: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)


•Using a cell phone use while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver's reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent. (Source: University of Utah)

How much more do I need to know to "get smart" and quit feeling invincible?
 
In the last few days, I've learned my lesson. On TWO separate incidences, while driving on a two-lane road, an oncoming car crossed over into my lane. I had to honk my horn long and hard to get the driver's attention to move back in to his lane. On the first occasion, if he hadn't returned to his lane, I would have been forced down into a rather steep embankment.
 
I feel sure the first driver was distracted by his cell phone, though due to windshield glare, I can't be sure about the other driver. But, that's not really the point. All I could think about was that if I had been distracted in any way by my cell phone, whether talking, reading an email or most certainly, texting, I wouldn't have been able to react quickly enough, and I'm sure there would have been a head-on collision.
 
If you ever have the chance to stand on a street corner and watch cars go by, you'd be amazed at the percentage of drivers who are doing SOMETHING with their cell phones.
 
So, even if you think you can drive and manipulate a cell phone at the same time (you can't), and even if you think you are somehow protected from one day falling into the above statistics, maybe it will help you to know that with all the other "make-believe-invincibles" driving around with cell phones, you need every bit of your attention to LOOK OUT FOR THEM!!
 
This post is for everybody. But if I can't get everybody to listen, at least I hope I've gotten my message across to my loved ones and friends.
 

DRIVE ATTENTIVELY!