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This month The Edge of the Forest talks with children's author
Debby Dahl Edwardson about her writer's life.
The Edge of the Forest: First of all, Debby, thanks for agreeing to talk with me for our Day in the Life
series...
Debby: My pleasure.
The Edge of the Forest: Let’s start off by talking a little bit about you. Where do you live?
How long have you lived there? And would you tell us a little bit about your family?
Debby: I live in Barrow, Alaska, which has the distinction of being the northernmost point of land on the North
American continent. My husband is Inupiaq (Eskimo). We have five daughters, two sons and two beautiful grandchildren. I
have lived in Barrow nearly 30 years, am a member of my local school board and work as the Coordinator for Marketing and
Special Services for our local community college, Ilisagvik College, Alaska’s only tribal college.
The Edge of the Forest: Tell us about your writing. Are you published or aspiring? Do you write fiction or
non-fiction?
Debby: I write everything—newspaper stories, radio stories, ad copy, fiction, poetry and nonfiction.
The Edge of the Forest: How long have you been a writer?
Debby: I’ve always been a writer. I wrote my first book when I was six—a highly derivative piece entitled
“The Five Little Monkers.” I remain the reigning queen of typos and am incapable of remembering all the inconsistencies of
English spelling. My first children’s book was published in 2003.
The Edge of the Forest: What led you to children's literature and writing for children?
Debby: As I mentioned, I have seven children who are part Inupiaq and were born and raised in the heart of this
amazing culture. I was a bookworm as a child and wanted to instill in my children a love for reading. I believe books serve
as mirrors as well as a windows. I grew tired of trying to find good books that mirrored my children’s experience as
Inupiaqs. And I grew angry at books that portrayed the culture as a curiosity. I said, like every other writer who ever put
pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard): “I can do better than that!”
The Edge of the Forest: Describe a typical writing day.
Debby: I roll out of bed around 5 am. I’m being generous in my choice of adjectives. “Roll” makes it sound like a
very fluid sort of thing. It isn’t. Let’s just say I wake up, dead tired, and force myself out of bed, praying that the
automatic coffee maker has kicked in. I go back to bed with a cup of coffee and a laptop. I spend anywhere from 20 minutes
to an hour doing warm ups, which is a nice way of saying that I read email and talk to my on-line colleagues, waiting for
my brain to wake up. I eventually open up one of my current works-in-progress, often with feelings of strong aversion, and
start reading. Usually I read what I wrote the day before, but sometimes I start from the beginning or jump back to another
point in the manuscript. Or start something new. Or dig out something really really old. As I read, I start fixing things,
gathering speed like a plane rolling along the runway. On a good day, I take off smoothly. On a bad day I run into things,
never get off the ground, or get hijacked by terrorists. I try to be generous with myself and count writing letters to
editors, for example, as writing time, but I do so with trepidation.
The Edge of the Forest: I understand you write in an unusual place. Tell us about it. Why do you think it works for
you?
Debby: Jane Yolen says writing is the only job you can do in your jammies. I take that one step further: I write in
my jammies...in bed. It’s warm. It’s comfortable. I even like writing in total darkness with my husband snoring right next to
me. I secretly believe that laptops and spell checkers were invented as accommodations for people like me. My oldest son
bought me my first laptop. Before that, I had borrowed my daughter’s when she came home from school. When he gave me the
laptop, my son said, “Mom, I don’t know if I should give this to you. If I do, you might never ever get out of bed again.”
He was right. If someone would order me to take massive amounts of bed rest, I would be delighted. And I would also be very
productive. Even as a child and teenager, I loved the luxury of lying in bed, doing crafts or painting (which my indulgent
artist mother allowed).
My take on this—which I have only very recently formulated—is that lying in bed writing is just one step away from
lying in bed in a subconscious dream state. The subconscious mind channels the universal; the conscious mind is only the
scribe. If you want to write authentically you need to be able to tap into that subconscious energy—and you also need
to be able to turn off the critical, logical and often very anal conscious mind. Maybe I write in bed because it helps in
this process. Then again, maybe I’m just lazy.
The Edge of the Forest: Most writers don’t have the luxury of quitting their day jobs to write full-time and support
their families. How do you spend your time when you’re not wearing your writer’s hat?
Debby: Running like crazy from one responsibility to the next.
The Edge of the Forest: Okay, so you have a full-time job, sit on the local school board, and juggle the demands of
a large family. How do you balance the demands of work and family with sitting butt in chair for the hard work of
writing?
Debby: I don’t give myself the option of not doing it. Right before I started writing for children I interviewed
Jean Craighead George for a newsletter I edited at the time. After the interview, I looked at Jean and said,
“You know, I’ve always wanted to write for children." She looked at me and without blinking an eye, said, “Well, do it.”
This was a V-8 moment for me. You either put your butt in the chair and do it or you do not. These are the only choices.
The Edge of the Forest: Let’s talk monsters and muses. The longer I write the more I learn about the care and
keeping of the muse, and the techniques needed to keep my inner critic caged. Unfortunately, my muse is fickle and my
inner critic an escape artist. How do you feed your muse and tame your monster?
Debby: Here’s my take: Don’t try to tame the muse. It makes her grumpy and dull-witted. To deal with her, you need
remember only one thing: the muse, like everyone else, is a creature of habit. But she suffers from Attention Deficit
Disorder and is prone to switch direction without warning and flitter off on endless wild goose chases whether you will or
not. She can do ten things simultaneously. She is immensely creative and her energy is contagious. To benefit from her
input, you need to recognize her deep need for order and predictability. If you only write when the muse strikes, your
writing will be sporadic and undisciplined. My advice is to make a standing date with the muse and try never to break it.
I always write in the morning because morning is a high energy time for me. I have an agreement with my muse. If I am
there, the majority of the time, doing busy work, polishing old prose and playing with ideas, she will show up. I can’t
push or cajol or force her. I just have to be there—same time same place, everyday.
The of the Forest: Some writers write for very personal reasons, using their art to help make sense of the
world. Others feel the need to share their joy of language with young readers. Why do you write?
Debby: I write to make sense of the world. I write to communicate in the best way I can, my own unique vision of the
world. Everybody has a unique vision of the world and everybody strives in one way or another to communicate it to others.
Some people paint or make music, some people create businesses or fix machines or doctor people or teach. I’m a shy person
and I write better than I talk.
I write for children for the same reason some people teach: because when you touch the heart of a child, you touch the
future. Children’s minds are not narrow and they have a capacity to suspend belief and get lost in a book that is
unparalleled in adults. I agree with something Madeline L’Engle once said: “If I have something that is too difficult for
adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children.” Children often “get it” when adults do not.
Bottom line: I write first and foremost for a small audience of young Inupiaq readers, who have rarely seen their
experiences, their vision of the world, accurately reflected in books. At the end of the day I will feel okay if one of
these readers can read something I’ve written and say, “yes, that’s right. That’s how it is.”
The Edge of the Forest: Writers find inspiration in many places. Who or what inspires you?
Debby: Small things, sometimes: a fat flake of snow and a few words that make me suddenly look at snow in a new way;
the things that people say and do that make me catch my breath for inexplicable reasons. Those flashing moments of despair
when I want so much to reflect accurately the exquisite complexity of what it means to be human and know that I will never
be able to fully do it but know, too, will never quit trying.
The Edge of the Forest: Writing can be a lonely and isolating vocation. Where do you find the support you need
to survive the process?
Debby: From my colleagues! God bless the internet for allowing us to keep in touch with one another with just a few
keystrokes.
And from all people who have artistic souls and are driven to create and know what it is to feel the pure joy of creation.
And most of all from those who have been my mentors and will, through their mentorship, always live in my heart and give me
strength there, when I falter.
The Edge of the Forest: You and I know this business is glacial by comparison to many other ventures out there.
Given how painstaking the process is—from writing to revisions to the waiting, waiting, waiting—how do you measure
your success, and more importantly, how do you keep your inner critic muzzled while waiting?
Debby: I don’t harness my muse to the business. I have no head for business and neither has she. When I send a
manuscript out, it is temporarily dead and I move on. I like to have a number of projects going at once. I am in for the
long haul, I guess.
I measure success by the number of times I’ve been able to keep my appointment with my muse.
On the flip side though, I am overly influenced by editorial comment and will tend to dismiss a manuscript too soon,
based on the response of only a few editors. I’m working on this.
The Edge of the Forest: Whale Snow is a powerful picture book celebrating the Inuit culture and family in a
very loving way. How did you come upon the idea, and why did you feel compelled to pursue it?
Debby: When I do school visits I ask the kids to guess what I was thinking about when I wrote Whale Snow. They come
up with lots of weighty themes and subjects but rarely guess the truth: I was thinking about snow, the gentle, fats flakes
that fall in the spring when the whales are caught. When this kind of snow falls, older people sometimes say: looks like
someone’s caught a whale. And when this happens, a spirit of joy, generosity and thanksgiving is palpable throughout the
community. The celebration featured in Whale Snow, when the whaling crew feeds the entire community of 4000+,
is so very illustrative of the Inupiaq spirit—you could get off the plane in Barrow a total stranger and show up at
the captain’s house at that moment and you would be welcomed—and fed. I felt compelled to share this with others and I
felt compelled, also, to give our Inupiaq kids a book that celebrated an Inupiaq holiday for a change. And besides, there
was just something so provocative about that image of a culture so connected to the land that the land is responsive to the
actions of its people.
The Edge of the Forest: Multicultural books, and an author’s “qualifications” to write them are the subject of much
debate in the children’s literature field. Some critics believe writers have no business writing outside their culture.
Others believe it’s possible to do it well. How do you feel about the subject? And if writers choose to write outside their
culture, what do you believe they need to take into consideration to do it well?
Debby: My feelings about this are very complicated and I doubt that I can fully explain them in this space. I write
from within what one might term my adopted culture, although I am not sure what adopted means, considering I have lived
within this culture the majority of my adult life. Like Native people everywhere, I suspect, I am annoyed and sometimes
angered by the silly and often racist portrayals of Native people in the literature of the majority. From this perspective
I very much agree with Metis writer Maria Cambell who said, in a radio interview, “if you are going to write about us, be
prepared to spend more than a few weeks with us.”
And I have to say that I never really understood the urge that some writers have to seek out exotic cultures, research them
thoroughly, or not so thoroughly, and write of them. I am not passing judgment on those who make a living doing this; I
just don’t understand it. I don’t think it’s that easy to truly understand the heart of a culture very different from your
own. This is my perspective and it comes, I suspect, from having experienced through cultural immersion, what it means to
view the world through another cultural perspective. It is not something you can learn quickly. I’ve been doing it for
nearly 30 years and I’m still learning. How can one do this through research—even very good research?
Ultimately, I believe that all writing should be inevitable to the writer. I think of Alaskan writer Kirkpatrick Hill whose
tough stories are set in the Athabascan Indian country. When people ask her why she always writes stories set in this
setting she shrugs and says: what else would I write about? If you are going to write outside your own culture, that must
be your response, when you are called to give one: what else would I write of?
The Edge of the Forest: On a lighter note, what are you currently reading and what books were your favorite from
2006?
Debby: I am currently reading The Braid, by Helen Frost. My favorite of the year was The Astonishing
Life of Octavian Nothing, by MT Anderson. Amen.
The Edge of the Forest: Time to role play. You're sent to a remote island for a year, and allowed to take one book.
What would you take and why?
Debby: That’s like asking someone if they could only have one thing to look at for a year, what would they chose to look at?
Maybe I’d take The Bible, because I’ve never fully read it and it is full of complex stories and poetry. Maybe I’d take
Puigiitkaat, the transcription of an Inupiaq elder’s conference which is also full of stories and wisdom. Then again, maybe
I’d just take the works of those whose writing inspires me: Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven, or Sandra Cisneros’ House on Mango Street, Patricia MacLaughlin’s Sarah Plain and
Tall, Rita Garcia Williams’ Like Sisters on the Homefront, Virgina Ewer Wolff’s Make Lemonade.
I would insist on a laptop and a good generator.
The Edge of the Forest: Do you have a quote you’d like to share for our writer/readers?
Debby: I’d like to share what F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote on the paper of one of his students about the price of
admission for serious writing, but I can’t seem to find it...
The Edge of the Forest: What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
Debby: Do it. Read and write, read and write, read and write. I like to remember something Bruce Coville once said
to a class I was in: “When I was in college, there were a lot of others with a talent greater than mine. The only reason
I’m here and they are not is because they quit and I didn’t.”
The Edge of the Forest: Thanks so much for talking with me, Debby. Anything else you’d like to add before we close?
Debby: No. As usual, I talk too much.
About Debby:
Debby Dahl Edwardson’s book Whale Snow (Charlesbridge, 2003) was named to a number of lists including: NCSS/CBC
Notable, International Reading Association’s Best Books for a Global Society, Banks Street Best, and Independent Publishers
Children Book Award.
One of her works in progress, a middle grade novel entitled "Blessing’s Bead," was recently awarded a Work in Progress grant
by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She has a website at www.debbydahledwardson.com
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