First... there was a mouse.

Yes, it's true, We'd bought an old house in the country, and anyone crazy enough to do such a thing should expect country things like mice, right? Well, we were of exactly the same mind, and at first, having a mouse just seemed to be one of many quaint, adorable things about country life.

In fact, as I recall we handled our initial contact with a good deal of humor: "Look what the little fellow put in your boots, honey!  Why, he’s taken dog food from the bin, crawled all the way up the side of the boot and dropped it in.... like a busy squirrel!”

In short, we were the worst sort of city slickers. We brought with us all those city sensibilities about “being kind to animals,” and the like. After all, I’d had a cage full of pet mice when I was young. I just adored mice.

“We’ll just buy some air-tight containers and seal up our food good and tight, and the little guy will give up and move to somebody else's pantry,” we said. “Yes, that’s the humane way to handle things. No mouse trap, no, no. That would be cruel.”

And our neighbors smiled and laughed, Heh-heh-heh.

Then the mouse showed us he could do a really neat trick - better than taking dog food to the top of tall work-boots; why, this little fellow could actually nibble through air-tight lids!

"Wow," we said. "Imagine that!"  So we decided to try to confuse him by re-arranging the pantry.

Nope. He continued to leave his eensy-weensy little Lincoln Logs all over the shelves — just to show us he had caught on to our little game of “Hide the Food.”  And he continued to patiently collect the dry dog food into my husband's work boots. 

I laughed and said, “Look, hon, I’ll bet he thinks after he’s filled these up, he can just walk out of here in them,” but my husband’s sense of humor had begun to wane. 

We soon bought a clamp-lid, thick-sided bucket for the dog food and brought the work-boot merriment to an end.

Well, it was not soon enough.

This mouse had learned what sort of pushovers we were. And the first thing mice do when they find they have the run of the house is... run all over the house.

That’s when we found out this was not one mouse at all. A large brown mouse ran across the living room floor one evening. A medium sized mouse did it again the next night. The next night a very fast and very small mouse ran around the edge of the kitchen counter as I was making dinner. I could swear it stopped, put it’s little paws up to its ears, and said, “Phhhhft!” before skittering down behind the refrigerator.

Meanwhile, in the great outdoors, my husband found a snake in our garden shed. A nice, long black snake. Harmless, but, hey, it was still a snake. So it needed to be gotten rid of, right?

But while chatting with the neighbors that weekend, my husband found, to his surprise, our snake was a highly-coveted prize.

"So you're saying you don't want your snake?" my neighbor asked.

"Why should I want my snake?"

"Takes care of mice and garden rodents."

"Oh, oh. Well, we don't have a garden yet."

"You saying you'd give up your snake."

My husband hesitated. "Well... yeah."

"Can I have it?"

"Sure?"

Our neighbor, who had a shed that needed rodent control, came over that very afternoon and hauled away our three foot long black snake. He was pleased as punch.

This whole incident was just another in a series of difficult concepts for us. Snakes: good.  Mice: bad. What was the world coming to?

Then came the day I was doing my son’s laundry. I pulled out one shirt and then another from the clothes drier and they all had these odd reddish-brown spots on them. Did he have a pen in his pocket I hadn’t seen?  What’s going on?

I reached in for the next shirt and lay hold of a motley, sort of furry little ball that I took out and examined, and...

That's when we doubled up on the plastic containers.

Hey, it was magic!

Problem solved. No more food taken. No more miniature Lincoln logs. Our cereal was safe once more!  We congratulated ourselves. “They’ve moved on!” my husband said. “No more mice in the dry clothes!” I said.

That's when we began to hear them in the walls.

Yes. They had taken to eating our plaster. As we soon learned, the plaster walls of an old house can be a veritable retirement village for small rodents.

"Honey, could you hit that wall, again?  I'm trying to eat breakfast, here..."

And then the dishwasher broke. Only, it didn't break; it was vandalized... by a group of vindictive, plaster-fed mice. Perhaps in retaliation for the guy they lost in that nasty dryer incident - we'll never know - but they actually ate part of the rubber hose that feeds water to the washing machine, et voila! Flooded kitchen.

We mopped up. Called in a repair guy. "What can possibly be the problem," we asked; "This machine is brand new!"

"Heh-heh-heh" said the repairman. "See this hose? They ate right through it."

"Who... they."

“Well, I don’t see it very often — like once in twenty years, maybe — but every once in a while mice take a liking to rubber. Yep. Definitely mice.”

"You don't say," I said.

This little interview marked a turning point in our lives: that moment we abandoned our sweet suburban attitudes and began to go for the tiny jugulars.

We bought mousetraps and cheese... in bulk.

The mouse’s response was to pat each other on the back and say, “Look!  It worked! They’ve started feeding us again!”

Cheese gone. Traps empty.

One of our neighbors suggested peanut butter in the traps. And we actually caught one! Hurrah! Grotesque, yes, but uniquely satisfying.

We encouraged each other - our trials would soon be over. We were going country.

Days went by. Weeks. The peanut butter required constant refreshing, and no more takers.

After a month of this, it occurred to us the mouse we caught might have been the village idiot.

We finally tried poison. "Oh, puh-leeze," said the cunning little country mice.

Next we gave those new-fangled sticky triangle tents a try.

Only one of their little brown legion was dumb enough to walk into it, and he knocked off half the cans in the pantry in his successful bid to free his snoot from the goo. Of course he made it out alive. He was probably a teenager whose buddies dared him to run through it, and we all know teenagers never suffer the proper consequences for their actions.

It seems to me it was around this time my husband and I finally learned the lesson the country was trying to teach us: in the realm of destructive arts, there is only one thing more effective than human technology and that’s nature itself.

Since we’d been so short-sighted as to give away our fine black snake, we got for ourselves the most efficient, reliable mousetrap nature can make: a cat.

I’ll admit a cat once meant no more to me than a lap warmer with an attitude, but the term "Mouser" brought a new appreciation for the species. "Self-cleaning — low maintenance — never needs sharpening.” We had a great deal of respect for Meow-Meow's natural talents (since you asked, my son named him), and the cat was a valued employee.  In fact, I would go as far as to say he became a member of the family.

I know that in the city, felines are often de-clawed for the sake of precious furniture, but country-folk prefer, "Our home is mouse-less" to "Our home was recently featured in Architectural Digest."

We lived in that fine old house for 30 years, and while there we were the death of many, many mice. We also changed from linear-thinking yuppies to open-minded pragmatists. Folks out with an appreciation for the concept of live and let live that city-folks could use more of, but it comes with its own little sanity clause: “Just as long as you stay out of my pantry.” 

Furthermore, learning to let nature fight nature has led me to reassess human nature, too.

For example, I’ve decided the best way to keep developers at bay is to encourage them to sue each other for economic hardship due to reckless zoning approvals.  See how easy that was?

And, in closing, for the record we really were sorry about the mouse that somehow got himself into the laundry basket between the wet and dry loads and tumbled, as it were, to his death amongst our son's wear-ables.

But we learned something from that experience as well.

Mouse blood will wash right out in the very next load.

Heh-heh-heh.

When my friend’s mother overheard me telling her daughter what to do, she went to my mother and complained that I was being bossy. But my mother understood, bless her. It was my job.

My friend had asked me to create stories for our Barbie dolls. In fact, all my friends asked me to do create stories for them.

And, quite frankly, I was in demand...

I would create sets and plot lines, and we'd act out scenes for eight hours at a time. Dead serious about character development, too - which is not easy when your actors are plastic. And I took it as a personal challenge to get my friends to like their Meg dolls as much as their Barbies and Kens. My solution? Create a fabulous story line just for Meg. Uh, oh. A guy doll for Meg? No problem! I grabbed my brother's G.I. Joe. Yes, yes, he was shorter than Meg, but Joe had way better pecs than Ken.

Also had another skill that made me the hit of the neighborhood: I was the only one who could do guy voices for the male dolls. Quite a skill for a five-year old.

Fast forward to my excruciatingly boring years at an all-girl Catholic elementary school. While there, my best friend and I created what we called, "The Story”. Used mostly as a device to daydream about boys, she and I would trade off telling "The Story” - an uncomplicated tale of two fabulously well-dressed, jet-setting female spies who traveled the world on the arms of their James Bondian boyfriends. One day I stopped the story line to pass it off to her to continue – as we always had - but instead, she said, "No, Meredith. You keep telling it. You're the real story teller."

That was an important day.

My big break came when our school offered our 4th grade class a chance to produce its own talent show. I immediately sat down and wrote a play, then cast my fellow classmates, directed my friends through rehearsals, and brought it to the stage. But it was a disaster…. and it was all my fault. Classic rookie error! I’d cast myself in the lead role. Figuring I’d written the lines, I was certain I’d remember them. Yeah. No.

From that I learned I had a lot to learn. But I also learned that I really, really liked directing human beings. They had their own voices, could make their own character choices, and the bendable arms and legs were a definite plus.

As I grew older, I developed another passion: history, figuring that major gave me a better chance at a normal income, I chose History as major at William and Mary, and, after graduation began to work at a small museum that was once a tavern. When the staff was asked to create public programming, naturally I wrote a play about tavern life and asked my college friends to join me. Best casting decision I ever made was asking a tall redhead named Chuck McMath to play the Stage Coach Driver. He said yes. And a year later, I said yes. Did I mention I'm really good at casting?

When Chuck and I moved to Loudoun County, Virginia, I began creating living history programs for area museums, schools and libraries. Through our son’s preschool class, I met Laurie Farnsworth - the most amazing seamstress I've ever had the pleasure to know. Laurie and her friend, Dolly Stevens, had just formed a theatre company: The Growing Stage. Would I like to help with costuming? Indeed I would.

While working with The Growing Stage, I spent a lot of time observing Dolly's brilliant directing techniques. Then Dolly hired Tom Sweitzer out of Shenandoah Conservatory to direct one of her shows, and I watched Tom's brilliant directing process. Then Tim Jon — a Loudoun County Radio DJ who'd spent eighteen years of his life as a professional actor — started producing Shakespeare in the area, and I watched his brilliant process.

I appreciated every minute of these unofficial internships. Each director was unique, but each one was generous with their time and talents, and each changed the lives of everyone with whom they worked.

In the meantime, I'd continued to write plays. There was one play I was particularly happy with: it was based on true stories from the pages of Loudoun County Civil War history. Had no idea what would happen to it, but I knew it was time to try it on the stage… as long as I stayed out of the cast.

Fast forward: Through Tim Jon’s company, Not Just Shakespeare, we learned the professional actor's approach to Shakespearean text... and several more of the Bard's dirty jokes. From Tim I also learned actors' preparation and the efficacy of improvisation.  Tim has a deep respect for an actor's process, and he excels in teaching actors how to build three-dimensional characters. Tim's use of improv encouraged me to experiment over the years, and that's been a gift. Around this time, I was taking Master Improv Classes with Tom Sweitzer, so, together, these two have had a huge influence on how I use improv while directing.

For instance, when actors over-focus on remembering their lines or stage movement, improv is a great way to shake them loose.  When I was directing my play, Arms and the Highlander*, we were working through the first scene - where a young woman was beginning to fall in love with a British soldier. Colonial soldiers were looking for him, and when they came knocking at the door, the British soldier pulls out a knife, preparing to defend himself. Instead, the young woman pushes him behind a door and lets in the searching soldiers. It was crucial the actress caught the gist of the moment, because the audience wouldn’t be able to see the British soldier's tension — they could only see the young woman's face.

But there was no tension in the room at all.  

So I stopped rehearsal and asked the British soldier to act out what would happen if those Minuteman found him hiding behind the door.  Okay. Granted there was no real knife, but they got into a serious brawl that ended as Minuteman disconnected the British soldier's thoughts from his actions.

The actress got it, and played the tension from there on - and she was brilliant, and the scene began to glow. Improv saved the day once more.

Another huge influence has been the actors themselves. When you have a talented actor, there are times you just stand back in awe... and learn as much as you can from them. Without question, the actor who's influenced me most was my own mother... that beautiful woman who happily defended me from my friend's mother when I was five years old. Maxine Bean was an amazing actor - a child radio star in St. Louis, Missouri, and the star of many college productions at Grinnell. After my father passed, she came to live with us in Loudoun and worked with me in area theatre: favorite roles include the "School Marm" in Dolly and Tom's, TREASURES: The Musical Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the starring role as "Miss Violet" in Tom's and my PORCHES. She was incredibly generous on stage - this is a little hard to describe, but every actor who worked with her knows exactly what I mean. But she was deeply serious about the craft, and so there were limits to her generosity. In one production, an actor suddenly stole a line from her - stealing the huge laugh my mother's character was meant to receive. Maxine didn't lose a beat on stage, but when she got backstage with that actress, she looked her straight in the eye and growled, "NEVER do that again"... and she never did.

For me, directing has always been a heady mix of my passion for storytelling and the constant pursuit of learning - earning how to be a better writer, a more helpful director, and a more creative producer. I’ve appreciated every director with whom I’ve worked, every class taken, every rehearsal attended, and every actor and crew member’s efforts. And I remain particularly grateful to all those friends from my old neighborhood who wanted me to boss them around. This one's for you.

* My adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
 
So why in the world do authors do it? Why, after her one-hundred and first rejection letter, did Madeleine L’Engle take A Wrinkle in Time to the hundred and second publishing house? Are writers simply arrogant? Patently optimistic? Grotesquely naive?   Yes, yes, and yes. But the full truth is this: we write because we must.

We write, though the words go slipping through our fingers like wet soap, though the feelings of a girl living in 1863 are interrupted by a cellphone call, though the agent doesn’t want us, though the publisher let us go out of print... We write because we must. And when we visit bookstores and stare at the rows of name-brand writers whose publishing houses buy them shelf space and and oodles of marketing, we weep at our pitiful condition.

But the act of writing always brings us back from the edge of the abyss.

Something that begins as a single thought eventually rises up to stare back at us fully formed — walking, talking, thinking, feeling  — in a world created out of nothing.

When we write, we’re a perfectly balanced ball spinning on the tip of God’s finger.  Perpetual Motion. Time machine.  Pleasure beyond description.

Arrogant?  You bet. The sort of rollicking arrogance that comes from knowing the pen is mightier than the sword. Optimistic? Always. We are addicted to hope. Naive? Oh, yes. Entirely. The rejection letter is always a complete surprise.

Will we start again writing despite it? Of course we will. We must.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. - Mark Twain

I was reading “Seven Life Changing Lessons You Can Learn from Mark Twain” and thought, Hey, this my life, for pity’s sake. My weird little theatre life, with its broad, odd, wholesome, creative, charitable views of the world - found all because I chose NOT to vegetate in a little corner of life.

And those that join me in organized chaos have the pleasure of inhabiting dozens of people and perspectives, new worlds and old, and all sorts for magic and mayhem.

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

Well put. For the pleasure of inhabiting a completely different perspective for a time, an actor will risk self-respect and criticism, face sleep deprivation and midnight terrors. and live through some terrible things. And the things that happen to them in real life? Those feed into the actor’s art and enhance the richness of every character portrayed.

When I was first published, I thought all I'd ever do is write...  book after book, attend signings, speaking engagements and Book Clubs, submit another manuscript to my publishing house, and start all over again. 

A good life - very good life - but then...

1. A story came to me that begged to be a play. It’s impossible to explain, other than to say the characters didn't want to live in a book. They wanted to be brought to life. So I wrote a play for the first time in many years, and a local company decided to produce it.

And I added “play writing” to my daily list.

2. Then my book publisher disappeared. Specifically, the Editor who loved, loved, loved my work and promised to publish everything I sent her for the rest of her life... changed jobs two months after my books came out.  And the new Editor was taking the company in a new direction, and my next manuscript came back in the box unopened. And historic fiction became something beneath securing evening cleaning staff on their list. And I knew I should get my manuscripts out to another publisher, but there was something about theatre. Seeing those characters brought to life was amazing.  And I loved what every acctor brought to the table – this ever-changing dynamic.

So I decided to take a break from the publishing world and moved “play writing” to the top of my daily list.

Years later: I manage my own production company, Run Rabbit Run. I work with fabulous people, do speaking and teaching engagements once in a while, and submit plays for production or go ahead and produce them myself.  This is working well for me, but every once in a while I think about the characters in my unpublished books. If you’re a writer, you understand. They're lonely. They want to be heard, and sometimes they’ll whisper to you: “HEY, why don’t you trying getting me PUBLISHED  again, JERK!” Or something like that… never listening that carefully.

Then along came eBooks!
A sea change in publishing occurred. As of 2020, Amazon appears to be calling most of the shots, and their Kindle platform is calling 83% of eBook shots.  But still there’s that icky “self-publishing” thing, right? Well, apparently in the last year that’s changed too. In fact, the publishing process is being reversed as we speak: eBooks that sell well are being picked up for “real” publishing by the majors.

Hmm… Suddenly I’m looking like a pretty good bet here, because I…
– Design websites and love to learn new internet tricks. I am, in fact, a Net Geek;
– Love creating video promos, graphics and taking great photos;
– Dive easily into every aspect of marketing (my focus during my Masters in Arts Management studies);
– Have a group of previously published works with solid reviews;
– Never stopped writing, so I have a stack of unpublished manuscripts to send out, as well. Oh, and plays! And nonfiction! And…  heyyyyy, this could work!

But now the reality check: the eBook formatting process isn’t easy (a lot of people opt to hire someone to do this for them, and, after mucking around, we’ve been tempted), but I thank heaven daily for my Software Engineering husband, and it’ll get easier after the first one.  Next problem: It’s true  99% of eBooks just don’t sell, but there’s no harm in trying, and I do appear to have better odds than some. Besides in this day and age, $20 is $20, know what I’m sayin’?

Finally, I’m one of those people who have always appreciated being my own boss, and eBooks are giving me the chance to manage my own publishing experience and along with the reader's experience. How can I say no to that?

Thus, I decided: to Kindle.  And we will see.