A CONVERSATION WITH DAN WOLL ON “ALL THE DIFFERENCE”

Rebecca Mennecke: Where do your ideas come from? How do you choose the tone? And how do you make your writing relatable?

Dan Woll: Writing begins with keeping your ears and eyes open. You cannot just "make up" a story. The best fiction has real life antecedents. I'm not alone in this belief. I attended a Nick Butler presentation (he gave) to high school students. He mentioned a crazy story within a story that is told at the end of his wonderful Shotgun Lovesongs. It is a tale that ties the whole book together in a wonderful denouement... and it is unbelievable! Except, he witnessed it happen. The world is always talking to us. We must listen and remember. In the middle of my newest novel, Paperclip, there is a story about something that happens on a lifeguard stand. You could not make it up, and I didn't. It happened to me a long time ago. Mindfulness is more than a three-syllable cliché. Be present. Ideas for writing will come to you like water out of a fire hydrant. They will bring their own tone. They will be relatable. No matter how crazy, sad, or wonderful they carry an authenticity that draws in the reader.

RM: Just like you nailed that first line, you also had such a gorgeous ending line: “The appeal of rapt students proved stronger than the mountains, and, as a poet laureate of Vermont once noted, that has made all the difference.” Sometimes, when writing from our memories, we can’t quite settle on a definitive ending because, unlike our story, our memories live on and on. How did you settle on this one as your ending?

DW: I know of no authors who are gifted enough to finish a work without the help and advice of others. I'm blessed to have a number of friends who tolerate my drafts, and I dismiss no comments or advice. I'm particularly lucky to be friends with Dave Wood who is a past vice president of the National Book Critics Circle and his wife Ruth, a former UWRF English prof. There were two endings to "All the Difference." My co-author of Paperclip, Walter Rhein, liked my original. Ruth advised a different twist. I went down both roads and honestly, I'm still not sure I picked the best one but I knew I would be OK because of the support of people who know and care about writing. No matter how often you read and re-read your own work, someone else will always find a way to make it better.

RM: Do you have any advice for people who are interested in submitting non-fiction to Barstow and Grand?

DW: I submitted a piece in 2018 about my experience teaching in the inner city. I thought it was pretty good. It was rejected. After I got over myself (very important for writers), I went back and looked at the criticisms. They were spot on! I rewrote it using all of the B&G editor's suggestions and submitted it to Kappan, a national educational journal. It was accepted with a note from the editor that they had never published a first-person narrative before. My article would be the first. The point is that my story would have died were it not for two things. I submitted it to B&G in the first place, and I took the comments to heart. I say to undecided writers out there, "It's good to submit. Even if your piece is not accepted, you will learn and become a better writer." The B&G evaluation was unusually specific and thoughtful.

RM: Is there anything I didn’t ask about with this piece that I really should know about it--whether it’s with regards to the story, your experience, or your writing?

DW: My co-author, Walter Rhein and I are looking for help in getting reviews and readers for our thriller, Paperclip. Our publisher just released it as an audiobook and it is a finalist in the 2019 Wishing Shelf Book Awards. Here is a nice review that was published in Volume One.

by Dan Woll

Shortly after the Ice Age receded, I accepted a teaching position in a little country Wisconsin grade school. How country? Well, parent-teacher conferences were scheduled during deer season. The parking lot would be full of unlocked pickups with rifles mounted in gun racks behind the front bench seat—no quad cabs back then. Some parents chose to bring their rifles into school and lean them in the corner of the classroom uncased, maybe loaded. Who knew? Who cared?

Coming from an East Coast background and a two-year internship in an inner-city school, adjusting to the likes and dislikes of farm kids was trial and error. Despite my long hair and orange Norton 850 Commando motorcycle, I gotalong well with the students. I was different and children like different; in fact, they much prefer it to being bored. I often ran out of lesson plans before the clock crawled around to 3:15. Those were scary moments. “Study quietly on your own” does not work with twelve-year-olds. I needed an emergency pacifier. Mystudents loved to play softball, but my career would be short-lived if word got out that they were running wild outside while other classes were reciting capitals, doing multiplication tables, and diagramming sentences. Whatever I used to kill time had to look like learning. Music would’ve counted but playing guitar and singing made them behave worse. It made them laugh, and laughter was not an approved part of the education-headed-toward-criterion-based-objectives (and other dark arts) curriculum.

I discovered a simple truth that is not stressed enough in teacher education—children love listening to stories. I read to them as if my life depended on it. When I pulled out the day’s story, the room went as quiet as if I had laced their daily milk snack (it’s Wisconsin) with Xanax.

We read lots of children’s authors. I remember Thomas Rockwell and, of course, Judy Blume. Here’s a tip—never read kids something you have not finished yourself. Halfway through Judy Blume’s “Forever” I realized I was getting into deep water on a dicey subject. I quickly “lost” the book.

The most riveting stories were ones by Roald Dahl. “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “The Big Friendly Giant,” and his others amused and enraptured the kids while imparting cold hard facts that some grown-ups are loath to acknowledge:

Poor people are not wicked or lazy.

Sometimes grown-ups aren’t nice.

Humor gets us through life’s trials.

Roald Dahl shared those truths and others in his stories. His characters’ worlds were crazy, unpredictable, and even a little scary. But ultimately, they were safe places where caring, laughter, and perseverance would win out. Dahl had a wicked sense of humor. Much later, when I became an administrator, I experienced a book banning controversy thanks to my hero. There was a copy of “Revolting Rhymes,” a hilarious re-imagination of famous folk tales told in couplets, in the elementary school library. Some wanted it gone. Dahl’s Cinderella parody contains this gem:

“Off with her nut,
The dirty slut.”

A committee was formed. People learned about Roald Dahl. Among other discoveries, slut did not have the same connotation in Dahl’s England that it does in the U.S. The book stayed and we were all the better for the process.

My reading encouraged students to ask questions. Where does Roald Dahl get his ideas? Are any parts of the stories real? How much money does he make? I encouraged them to write to Mr. Dahl, and soon I had a pile of handwritten letters. I stuffed them into a manila envelope and mailed them without a cover letter to a generic publisher’s address in England.

It was a long Wisconsin winter and time dragged on until the day we heard John Deere tractors tilling the fields around the school. Spring had arrived.

I bought a cylinder of helium, and we filled balloons and sent them up over the cornfields with little return address requests stuck to them. I put up a big map of the United States in the hallway. Every time a balloon tag was returned, we put a pin on the location of the sender. Returns began to trickle in from nearby towns, and then a few from Illinois and Ohio. Besides having fun, students were learning about prevailing winds. As powerful as the effect that human contact from faraway lands had on my students, something more surprising was just around the corner! About the time a few balloons were returned from east of the Appalachian Mountains, something odd arrived in the mail. It was a letter from England, plastered with foreign stamps and hand addressed to “Mr. Woll’s Students.”

Inside was a three-page letter written in fountain pen ink on fragile paper, a cross between parchment and airmail paper. The handwriting was beautiful. The letter was signed, “Your Friend, Roald Dahl.”

Mr. Dahl spoke to the children, across thousands of miles, as clearly as if he were in the schoolroom with us. I read his words, and little heads nodded as they recognized answers to their questions.

School was rushing to a close for the year. Records and report cards had to be completed, and the mountains were beckoning to me. I was in my early twenties, torn between a stable career, and the granite walls of Yosemite, where, roped up high above the ground, I found peace every summer.

Along with summer came school maintenance and cleaning tasks. What I could not finish or file, I left in my desk. Or on my desk? Or on a shelf? It could all wait until September. I left.

When I returned in the fall, the letter was gone.

My students from back then are now AARP-eligible, but I still keep in touch. They remember Roald Dahl. Many credit him for a lifelong interest in reading. Looking back, I credit him with strengthening my belief in the power of the written word, and to no small extent, my life’s path. Perhaps I already knew this when I misplaced the letter, but as nice as summers in the mountains were, they would never replace touching the hearts of want-to-be readers and writers.

The appeal of rapt students proved stronger than the mountains, and, as a poet laureate of Vermont once noted, that has made all the difference.