Words from Margaret Fieland

I wrote Margaret Fieland for information I could use about her today as my VBT - Writers on the Move Guest. Peggy did more than give me "some" information; she gave me exactly what I could post. Thank you, Peggy, for sharing.

Words from Margaret Fieland

I started writing poetry to express teenage angst, and continued for much the same reason. Then I started writing more because it turned my partner on. Then I started writing yet more because it was something special to do for holidays and family birthdays. Then I submitted a poem of mine to a poetry contest on a whim, -- it was over Christmas holidays and all the kids were out, giving me free access to the computer {grin} -- and it was one of four finalist.

So then I felt encouraged and started working on my poetry and submitting it for publication. I joined online groups, got books on writing poetry and worked through them, started reading more poetry, etc. It snowballed. Writing poetry is tons of fun.

I just plain enjoy writing poetry. Occasionally I am touched by the muse. Then, too, it's a nice, portable occupation, and it's nothing like my day job (computer software engineer), so it's a welcome relief to struggle with a poem or a story instead of why a particular section of code is or isn't working.

I also write to get stuff out of my head, where it would otherwise be stuck.

I started writing stories after the first Muse On Writing conference, where I hooked up with Linda Barnett Johnson. Before that, I would have sworn that I would never, ever, write fiction. I only started because in order to join Linda's poetry forum, you had to join the fiction forum, too. I started out writing children's stories because they seemed less intimidating -- plus I've always loved kids books and read tons of them as a kid as well as an adult. I always read lots of books to my kids -- I love to read, really enjoy reading aloud.

My all-time favorite books are Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass." I used to reread them every exam time in college, as I would forgo trips to the library in order to spend more time studying. Then I'd suffer from major book deprivation and re-read "Alice." I also taught myself to wiggle my ears. I eventually taught my middle son when he was ten or so, and he demonstrated it at school. His teachers were less than thrilled {grin}.

Oh, yes, and I can also mirror-write, something else I taught myself during college exam studying. It used to impress the kids when we were waiting to be seated in restaurants when they were little.

I write both rhymed poetry and free verse. I'm 63, and my day job is a computer software engineer. The company I work for was bought by IBM a couple of months ago. I have three sons. The youngest graduated collegelast May, the next one is in the army (Lieutenant), and the oldest is computer software engineer, married and living with his wife in Bratislava. He works for IBM, the Lotus notes group (based in the states, in Cambridge), remotely. He did live over here (near me) until his wife's mother got sick and they moved back there. He works remotely -- modern technology is wonderful -- plus he's been answering a good many of my IBM questions (like "What are the holidays for Massachusetts?" and "How do I get Lotus Notes to send my email out right away?"

The middle one is the only one who has any writing talent or musical ability. I live with my partner, who has a son (in college, living at home ATM) and a daughter. We have lots of dogs. Seriously, like seven, plus the three puppies belonging to one of them (but two are sold ), so if the third puppy is show quality, we'll soon have eight dogs.

Yikes!

I have a collection of poems about mathematics that I'm trying to get published (haven't submitted it to 4rv). They're targeted to ages 12 and up, pretty much. Some of them have been published -- not too many -- I haven't wanted to submit them, but a couple of places were too good a fit to pass up. I started writing them after I wrote 'Round' and Barbara Ehrentreu read it and managed to convince me it was a math poem -- and here I thought it was just something funny about Santa and sphere -- She encouraged me to write more math poems, an idea I initially resisted, but after a while really got into.

A group of us -- we met at the muse conference (year before last) and started "meeting" online to chat , exchange poems, etc -- are putting together a collection of our work. We're in the final stages of organizing the poems.

I play the flute and the piccolo. I belonged to a band up until about a year or so ago, when the evening rehearsals got to be a bit too much for me.

I'm a native New Yorker, born and raised in Manhattan. My sister still lives there. I've been living in the Boston area since just after the blizzard of 1978. I speak fluent French -- can read it fine also, but am rather diffident about writing it, as I hate making grammatical errors .. when I do write it, it's comparatively slowly. Both my parents spoke French -- to each other, when they wanted to say something they didn't want my sister and me to understand. Then my father went and insisted I take French in school (I started in 7th grade, continued all through college..) -- I had been planning to study Spanish. Dad spoke French well, Mom not so much. Dad was also a real grammar queen -- he got absolutely apoplectic about pronoun agreement. Whenever we'd make any kind of grammatical error, he'd repeat the rule and correct us. {shakes head}. At the time I thought it was extremely tedious. Now I'm really, really grateful. I can still repeat the whole pronoun thing in both English and French. I learned and remember English grammar because Dad pounded it into my head. We did study grammar in school (not like now, where I'm convinced it isn't taught ..) but that's not where I remember it from.

My father was an attorney and my mother an artist -- portraits -- never showed much, gave most of her stuff away, was a SAH mom. My father was in sole practice for many years. He appeared twice before the supreme court. He knew Abe Fortas from law school and introduced me to him when I was in my teens, I think.

I like to ski, but haven't been this year yet, partly because I broke my wrist just before Thanksgiving, and partly, well, for no particularly good reason.

I'm working on another book, this one written in the first person about a girl who wants to go to music camp and whose parents are getting a divorce. It's going to be a MG -- the main character is 12, in 7th grade. A friend of mine who is a middle school music director has given me lots of good info around this, plus she's generously offered to read the MS when I get done with the current draft.

I'm toying with the idea of writing a non-fiction book on the history of mathematics for children. Well, actually, I'm trying to slap the idea down whenever it nags me, as it would involve a fair amount of research, but it refuses to go away. I have a BA with a major in mathematics and a MS in computer science, so I do actually have the background to write this. It started to nag me when I was writing the math poems series -- looked for books like it .. found one picture book on the story of counting.

Many years ago now, friends (daughter of my ex-husband's mother's best friend and next door neighbor) died in a tragic fire that also took the lives of all four of her children. Only her husband survived. In my story The Angry Littte Boy, (to be published by 4RV Publishing) there's only one child, and only the mother dies. There's also a dog in the book, belongs to the main character. The dog is named after a friend who died suddenly eight or so years back.


http://www.margaretfieland.com/

website and blog ..

blog specific
http://www.margaretfieland.com/blog1/

Thank you, Peggy. I'm always glad to know more about people, and especially 4RV authors.



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