Mississippi River

Writing 101: Bringing Light on Writer’s Block

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If writing is going to happen, it might begin after my first cup of coffee. I achieve this by pouring dark House beans into the grinder and roaring this until I get a fine powder, dumping it into a paper-lined funnel, pouring in cold water, and flipping on the switch.  While I wait for this to brew, I pour water into my Keurig for two cups–to share with my husband.  I toss in a House K -cup and press “ON.”  The two pots come together and finish together.  I take my cup of Keurig and fill it up from the regular pot.  Then I slide into my Lazy-Boy, switch on my cup heater, and set the cup of alertness down. I turn on the laptop, wait for warmup, and take my first sip.  I know it will take more than this to get all of my lights to start blinking.

I’m usually running empty when I wake.  Very few logical thoughts–only intuitive-actions can get me this far in the morning.  Family knows not to talk too loudly or, if possible, not at all, “Let me have my first cup of coffee,” before I’m expected to make some decision or sign some legal document. If I were to exaggerate this, I’d be funny.  I’m speaking the truth.  It will take that first cup of caffeine to trigger the neurons in my gray matter before I get the eye-opening, thought-focusing jolt to begin my day and clog up that great big cavity of nothingness. On a good day, I might start typing, officially brainstorming about and writing on my next project, which is now my latest novel, the third in a series, Where Two Rivers Meet.

But sometimes, I need more than java.  I need physical inspiration–whether I am trying to fill in a plot segment, follow the yearning of a poem, or conceptualize a blog, without which I am just a blinking cursor.  I feel like the chocolate Easter eggs or bunnies, hollow inside.  So on one of my good days, I joined my sister on a trip to the Mississippi River, to wander on the path my protagonist, Abigail, would have walked when she disembarked the steamboat Governor Ramsey below the bluffs at Clearwater.

This is the J. B. Bassett, anchored to the Clearwater side of the Mississippi. A boat that would have arrived in the 1870s, a bit after Abigail arrived in the village.

The date was August something, 1855.  She would become the first white woman to come to the village, and she would work as the townsite’s hotel housekeeper. Brave she must have been to come alone from Vermont, via, stagecoach, train, and steamboat to an area wild with male ambition.  Her brother-in-law, Dr. Jared Wheelock, the first doctor in Wright County, Minnesota,  would be there to keep her company and in the area to keep an eye on her. Her cousin’s husband would be building a bigger and better hotel eventually, but it would be a couple of months before Jared’s wife, Abigail’s sister, would join her in the town.  Yet, all this I know and have written about already. While I love the free feeling of nature down here–birds singing and light breezes moving the trees and the river’s current, I need something worthy of writing.

Path along the Mighty Mississippi in Clearwater where steamboats docked.

As I turned around, a tree with two huge cavities lured me to come closer–to gaze into its hollowness, touch its rough bark, feel its smooth green leaves, and look UP.  Thick branches, wide and round spread their leaves above and over our path, joining other branches and other greenness, forming canopies of sorts. However, the tree alongside this enchanted forest-like walkway beckoned me into imagining life before I arrived on the scene, before Abigail arrived, and before white male settlers staked their claim to this part of the Mississippi River. So beguiled about this tree, I searched the Internet for answers.  “A tree hollow or tree hole is a semi-enclosed cavity which has naturally formed in the trunk or branch of a tree. They are found mainly in old trees, whether living or not. Hollows form in many species of trees, and are a prominent feature of natural forests and woodlands, and act as a resource or habitat for a number of vertebrate and invertebrate animals.[1]”

A two cavity cottonwood tree along the Mississippi at Clearwater’s old steamboat landing.

Read on in Wikipedia to learn that “it may take 220 years for hollows suitable for larger species to form.”  So how long has this tree been standing?  Would Abigail have seen it in its youthful stage? Had it already developed a small hole?   The article provided more. I learned that this hole is never truly empty.  Yes, all sorts of creatures may live or burrow inside.

All writers have the block one way or another. Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and others.  They give great advice on             13 Famous Writers on Overcoming Writer’s Block.  For now, I believe in myself again.  I am inspired and feel my synapses firing again.

 

In hot pursuit

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1 if by land, 2 if by sea…. Cindy Stupnik
is @ it again. Looking for clues on Lake Minnetonka…
Is she trying to find the footsteps of Simon Stevens,
founder of Clearwater and also the first white man
to lay eyes on Lake Minnetonka?
Is she looking for his mill site on Gray’s Bay
@ the headwaters of Minnehaha Creek?
Or more likely has she spotted the alcoholic beverages @ the bar…?
More adventures in the making.

Becky Frank

LAKE MINNETONKA

This huge body of water, circling the shores of many lovely towns like Excelsior, Deephaven, Wayzata, and Shorewood has intrigued me ever since I learned about Simon Stevens, Clearwater founder and brother John Harrington Stevens, Minneapolis founder.  Both men were born and raised in Brompton Falls, Quebec, Canada.  John Harrington, the older of the two, became colonel in the U.S. Army after fighting in the Mexican-American War. Simon followed his brother once he settled in Minnesota and helped build his house, the first house on the west side of the Mississippi across from St. Anthony.

Simon Stevens made his own history. Well-known around Minnesota during his life span, he and a group of fortune-seeking explorers paddled westward from the Mississippi River on the Minnehaha Creek approximately twenty-two miles.  The group portaged around a huge falls, but once they got to the headwaters of the creek, they viewed a huge body of water that would become known as Lake Minnetonka one day. At what would be called Gray’s Bay, they built a sawmill.  Simon did not stay around long but sold his rights to search for his own land to call home.  This would become Clearwater, at the mouth of the Clearwater River that flows into the Mississippi, and the setting for many and most of my works.

A couple of years ago, for a birthday trip, I asked my husband to take me to Lake Minnetonka to find the area where Simon Stevens and others built the mill.   This site has a wonderful hiking path, small dam, and offers lots of historic information, evening mentioning Simon Stevens.

So as I work on my next book and wanting to see if we could find any type of imprint of Simon’s, my sister Becky and I signed up for a cruise on Lake Minnetonka. We had beautiful weather, albeit a bit cool,  and viewed many luxurious homes, boats and their houses. We heard about some of the lake’s history, especially the Big Island where amusement called out to adventure seekers during the early 1900’s from nearly all over the world. Jennie Phillips, protagonist in Scruples & Drams visits relatives and friends in Excelsior, and even Jennie Phillips’s sister Ruthie’s autobiography refers to the the ride around Lake Minnetonka and Big Island Amusement Park:

The summer after my father passed away [1904] Pat [Ruthie’s older sister Harriet] and I were invited to go to mother’s sister [Harriet Ada Crossman] and family who lived at that time in Excelsior on Lake Minnetonka.   We had never been to a large city before so we were quite excited as we had to go to Minneapolis and then change trains to go out to Excelsior. . . I loved the trip over and we stood at the rail of the boat and watched the rainbow in the drops of water as they flew off the paddles of the large water wheel at the side . . .  So many beautiful homes and some places just woods.

We knew already that the park was no longer in existence. Yet, when the captain of our Lady of the Lake cruise ship drew close to the shore of Big Island and mentioned it was now a nature park, I was dismayed; I so wanted to see something of the past.

In past research for Pins & Needles, I learned protagonist Maude Porter’s aunt, uncle, and cousins settled near the lake in Excelsior as well.  Annette Robinson married Mark L. Knowlton.  Knowlton was the Clear Lake, MN, postmaster at the time.  The family eventually moved to Minneapolis and finally to Excelsior where he worked for the Pillsbury Company:

In the early 1900’s, [the Mark Knowlton] family was living in Edgewood at Lake Minnetonka and he would ride his motorbike from the Lake into Excelsior.  (Anyone owning a motorized vehicle in those days was noticed) where he’d park during the day, and catch the train or streetcar into Minneapolis.  The process was reversed in the evening.  In later years the family remembered the good bread that “Grandpa” brought home from the testing kitchens at Pillsbury.

On another trip a couple years ago, my sister and I toured more of Excelsior, trying to find where the Knowltons once lived. We found one house.  At one point in 1921, Mark Knowlton and his son purchased the James H. Clark’s home that was built to become a boarding house [and now is a bed and breakfast–the Bird House Inn] from the children of Clark and his wife. After Mark died, his son “J. E. “Jack” Knowlton who ran a horse and wagon delivery service around the lake via launch,  and was also the proprietor of Knowlton’s Cabin Camp adjacent to the south, at 411 Water Street, from 1932-1948 [took it over.]  His wife, Mrs. J. E. Knowlton,  always had roomers in the big house.  She was born Alice Howard, granddaughter of homesteader Silas Howard, for which Howard’s Point on Lake Minnetonka is named.”

Unfortunately, we saw nothing like horse and wagon, an old-fashioned motor bike, or even a mirage of a saw mill.  Our cruise did not even take us to Gray’s Bay because to get there from where we boarded in Excelsior would take a five – six hour cruise.  Since there is little to no public history tour of the lake, we had to admit that we had researched the people and had seen many  of the sites that were to be used in my next book.  (Please, if you know something we don’t know, let me know. 

Yes, I am  in a “hot pursuit” of characters, plots, and history again to bring alive another Minnesota Main Street woman for my next novel.  But I already have the makings of a couple HOT romances, some wiley twists and turns, a few not so nice individuals–with a juicy murder or two–and lots of historic tension.

Cindy

 

 

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AND FINALLY, YOUR INVITATION

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It took a while, but I am so proud of my new book, Pins & Needles.  Here is the information from the back cover:

Maude Porter’s narrative takes place in the Mississippi River town of Clearwater, Minnesota. Daughter of village founders Tom Porter and Abigail Camp Porter, she owns a millinery store upstairs of Boutwell’s Hardware Store. From here, she can keep her eye on the comings and goings of the village. What she sees causes quite a commotion, but what she hears over her newly installed telephone could spell trouble. In this sequel to Scruples & Drams, readers see what life is like in the late 1800 and early 1900’s for the “new women” who were educated, strong-minded, and holding down careers. Women like Maude have concerns about the health and well-being of many women who are overworked, under-educated about their bodies, and become pregnant way too often. While Maude understands that suffrage and equal rights are important, she also sees how the consumption of alcohol ruins families and communities and causes some men to be brutal. At first Maude believes education is the key to ridding the town of the many drunks and their brawls outside Quinn’s Saloon. Ultimately, though, she and others, men and women, come to realize that prohibition is the only answer to setting their world in order.  For Clearwater, the answer is clear: shut down Pat Quinn’s Saloon.

One of my reviewers, Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner,  stated this:  “In this historic novel set in 1909 Maude Porter and Jennie Phillips balance their careers with fighting for women’s basic rights – some openly, others behind the scenes. These old friends, who we met in Cindy Stupnik’s earlier Scruples & Drams, continue to face fearsome adversaries with growing courage and conviction. Along the way, we meet the historic characters who populate the village of Clearwater, Minnesota and get a flavor of early white settlement and its challenges. Stupnik has a gift for drawing us into the time and place, and this book hits the mark.”

Sally Roesch Wagner, Ph.D.
Executive Director, The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, Inc.
Adjunct Faculty, The University Honors Program, Syracuse University
Adjunct Faculty, St. John Fisher Executive Leadership Program
Public Scholar, Humanities New York

So come one, come all, to my book launch –Oct. 13, 2018, at the Clearwater United Methodist Church, Clearwater, Minnesota. Starting at 12:30, we will have music, lite snacks, cake, coffee, book signing, and around 3, a walking tour of the locations I write about in my books.

Cindy Stupnik