From Pages to Pages: Craig Staufenberg

At the train’s next stop, a different child came to Sophie and handed her another gift of food, and at the next stop a different child still. At each stop, another mother stood behind her child and insisted on the gift, and thanked Sophie for wearing her child out.

When the train moved forward, the children scrambled down the aisle and handed her a little of whatever their families were eating amongst themselves. Sophie felt embarrassed by the generosity the other passengers showed to her and, increasingly, to her grandmother, who also received small gifts of bread and cheese or whatever else the families brought with them. The old woman never pushed the children away, but simply thanked them with a touch of sweetness Sophie had never heard from her before.

Now, when their train stopped at a station or broke down altogether, the old woman produced a deck of cards from her bag and played games with the other women while Sophie continued to occupy the children with her runs.

As the days grew longer and rain fell and the smell of spring flowers drifted into the air, the two travelers slowly found themselves enfolded into the life of their train. During boisterous moments Sophie and her grandmother began to speak and laugh with the others. During quiet moments the two remained still and peaceful, sometimes smiling, sometimes sober, moods in tune with the warming air that thickened those afternoons when children slept and adults enjoyed temporary peace.

Gradually, as the days passed and spring brought the world back to life, something melted a touch between Sophie and her grandmother. They still rarely spoke, and when they did they never said any word of consequence, but the old woman began to comment whenever they received something especially delicious, and after a stray question or two about the day’s games escaped Sophie’s lips, the old woman began to teach her granddaughter how to play cards—quietly, privately, lest the train’s other women learned her secrets.

When you die, your spirit wakes in the north, in the City of the Dead. There, you wander the cold until one of your living loved ones finds you, says "Goodbye," and Sends you to the next world.

After her parents die, 12-year-old Sophie refuses to release their spirits. Instead, she resolves to travel to the City of the Dead to bring her mother and father’s spirits back home with her.

Taking the long pilgrimage north with her gruff & distant grandmother—by train, by foot, by boat; over ruined mountains and plains and oceans—Sophie struggles to return what death stole from her. Yet the journey offers her many hard, unexpected lessons—what to hold on to, when to let go, and who she must truly bring back to life.

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Genre – Middle Grade

Rating – PG-13

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Website http://craigstaufenberg.com/

How do you work through self-doubts and fear?

I’ve never been able to talk myself out of self-doubt and fear. I don’t recommend anyone else tries it. You just end up thinking in circles. The second you think you’ve rationalized away your issues, they come raring back and you return to the same sort of circular thinking. Instead, I work through self-doubt and fear by getting honest feedback on my writing from strangers. Most self-doubt and fear comes from uncertainty. In general, and specifically in writing. But once you share your writing with others you remove a lot of that uncertainty. You see and feel how they respond. If there are big problems to deal with, you identify them. If the writing is basically there, then you can accept it. Most important—you go through the emotional experience of handling the responses of strangers. And that inoculates you. It’s easier to move forward when you know how others react to your work, you know how you react to their reactions, and there are fewer wild cards in play. Eliminating uncertainty removes most of the problems; lowering expectations handles the rest.

What scares you the most?

I used to be scared of “failure” as a writer. But that’s such a nebulous term. At the time I defined it in terms of conventional measures of success. Money, mostly money. But even broader I dreamed of earning enough money from writing to enable me to do whatever I wanted and make whatever I wanted, at any time. But that’s a silly dream, for a few reasons. I’ve spent periods of my life where I did nothing but write the books I wanted to write, and I didn’t have to become independently wealthy to make that happen. I’ve also traveled and done plenty of other things I thought I needed to be a financially successful writer to achieve, and did so sans-financial success from writing. Most of what I hoped to get out of writing success either wasn’t as dependent on writing success as I imagined, or was something that was ridiculous to think I could get from writing. So I’m not as scared of “failure” anymore, and that eliminates the big rocks of self-doubt and fear. The remaining fears are small—smaller than my drive to write, at least, which makes it easy to let the writing overtake them.

What makes you happiest?

In writing—a toss up between sitting and flowing through the work for a few hours, and hearing the response of a stranger who has read my work and connected emotionally with it. These are the two big rewards of writing. Internal and external, they feed different parts of you. Both feel great. And both are necessary.

What’s your greatest character strength?

I can finish and release things. Every year I better understand how important, and rare, this is.

What’s your weakest character trait?

I’m sure this is a much longer list, but I don’t dwell on it.

Why do you write?

Because I have to—it’s a compulsion as much as anything else. If I don’t write, I don’t feel good. And if I have a story in mind and I don’t write it, then I feel I’m letting the story down. I enjoy writing, but, even more, I feel compelled to write. I’ve been doing it my whole life. It’s hard to explain.

Have you always enjoyed writing?

Yes. Not always writing per se, but always storytelling. I’ve been stumbling on characters, and worlds, and stories my whole life. Since I was five. The medium has changed, but this is something I’ve done for as long as I can remember.