 Ivy Ruckman
Ivy Ruckman's earliest memories are of sitting on her father's lap, listening to hair-raising tales of life in the ranch country of Nebraska. She and her brother would beg for "just one more," hoping to hear another favorite about their dad's bronc-busting days. Rarely were they disappointed. The stories and story-teller were first-rate, with tales of rattlesnakes, twisters and every variety of outhouse tricks.
Ruckman's mother wasn't a story-teller, but she shared her love of books by reading out loud to her children. Long before she was old enough to understand most of it, Ruckman had heard Robinson Crusoe,among other books. Her mother also walked with the children on the mile-long trek to the library.
Ruckman, who was born in 1931, considers herself lucky to have grown up in a quiet prairie town during the Great Depression. "My days were long and leisurely," she said. "Play and make-believe were my whole life."
Her first "published" work was a play in verse, inspired by fairy tales. When a teacher decided the play should be performed, Ruckman, who had been appointed director, gave herself the best part -- that of the prince.
At home, she read, sitting in the cottonwood tree, at meals, and on chilly days hunched over the furnace grate. Her mother excused her from doing dishes when she was reading or playing the piano -- naturally she became skilled in both. She also wrote -- on sidewalks, on the back of old wallpaper rolls, and in discarded bookkeeping ledgers. She reveled in class assignments that allowed her to make things up. "There was no television," she said, "but action-packed, dialogue-laced stories ran nonstop in my head."
Science intrigued her in high school, but she loved art more, and literature and drama most. Her family heritage included a long line of ministers and teachers who valued "the word" -- written, spoken, memorized, recited or sung. The pull was strong, she said. "I was unable to deny family tradition or my genes, so became an English teacher immediately after college."
Twenty years later her dream of becoming a published writer came true. She finds that personal experiences inspire the most compelling stories. "Regularly I rummage through my private ragbag for ideas and feelings that breathe life into a story. When a favorite cousin lost everything in a tragic tornado, goose bumps raked my scalp and refused to go away. "Head for the cellar!" I could hear my father shout again as we braced against the basement wall, waiting." Two years after the Grand Island tornado disaster she began to write Night Of The Twisters. This family-oriented story has "bonded me with readers more profoundly than any of my other work," she said.
Her husband's death in a mountain climbing accident inspired three more books. Her children, who enjoy hiking, marathon running, and rock climbing, have provided information for four additional books. Lately, she has written two suspense novels. She hopes that "what makes me laugh or cry or shiver will engage young readers as well."
Writing and meeting readers is a joy for Ruckman. "If my stories continue to be read with big eyes and pounding hearts -- the same thrills that lured me to fiction writing in the first place -- I'll go on being one happy writer," she said. "It's pure magic when an author and her readers grab hands, then feel a returning squeeze. I hope we'll have a chance to meet. If not face-to-face, then perhaps in the pages of another book."
Most recently Ruckman and Pete (P.J.) Peterson collaborated on a novel written in a new format: the story told completely in e-mails. With the release, Ruckman says she has another chance to connect with her readers, who are invited to write the authors at Rob and Sara's e-mail addresses. The responses so far have been glowing.
Today, when she's not reading, swimming or answering mail, Ruckman's time is divided between speaking and writing. She's become a traveling teacher, one who loves meeting readers face-to-face in schools across the country.
"If my stories continue to be read with big eyes and pounding hearts -- the same thrills that lured me to fiction-writing in the first place — I'll go on being one happy writer," says Ruckman. "It's pure magic when an author and her readers grab hands, then feel a returning squeeze. I hope we'll have a chance to meet. If not, face-to-face, then perhaps in the pages of another book."
Ruckman to young writers on writing 1987
From a girl's diary, May 26, 1949: "At last I am graduated. I don't hardly know what to think. School, I love you, I really do." Going through belongings I'd left in my mother's house in Nebraska, I found the diaries I'd kept as a teenager. How eagerly I turned those yellow pages to read what I'd written, only to be disappointed in what I found. Where were the vivid images, the action verbs, the tantalizing details, the well-constructed sentences, the ideas one would expect from a fledgling writer?
My diary was full of girlfriend gossip, crushes, complaints about school assignments, church happenings. Occasionally there was a note about the weather, and on one page, the sober record of my grandmother's death. In the April 4 entry, the day my best friend was given the part I wanted in the senior class play, a drawing of a black cloud accompanies the words, "My gloom cannot be dispelled." I saw nothing in those diaries to indicate I would someday write and publish fiction.
I remember feeling the same disappointment after reading a humor piece a young Ernest Hemingway wrote for his high school newspaper. Aside from a touch of cheekiness, I found little there to indicate that the Oak Park, Illinois, adolescent would become the style setter for mid-century American fiction.
What Hemingway and I had in common as teenagers (and what you may have in common with us) was a passion for expressing ourselves in writing. Column after column of the school newspaper -- in my case page after diary page,attest to the fact that both of us found writing to be a most satisfying means of expressing and communicating feelings and observations.
Of course, creativity takes many forms. Photography, or dance, or playing the cello may fulfill the artistic urges for some. However, if you're one of those people who grab pencil and paper to record moments of joy or despair, look sharp. A writer may be trying to emerge. It's no secret, though we forget its truth from time to time: a writer writes. (A writer also reads, often obsessively.) Young writers write, too. Their work may be as ungrammatical as my May 26 entry, as unpolished, unfocused and undistinguished as the rest of my diary entries, but where there ’s writing, there ’s hope.
If you stay with the craft long enough to be published, you learn quickly that writing is very hard work. One begins with talent, but one progresses with commitment. Loving words and metaphor and story is not enough, though the fiction writer should begin with those enthusiasms. Add long hours of practice; add failure and rejection and just enough success to keep going; add a little experience, a lot of imagination, and great quantities of faith, and you, too (as they say), may become a writer. What Willa Cather said it true: "The god of art accepts only human sacrifices."
If the teenage girl who filled her diary with such-as-the-above can finally call herself a writer, so can you, I suspect. Just remember, even Ernest Hemingway began. . .one. . .step. . .at. . .a. . .time. Having read my letter this far, you may already have taken a first step. Possessing a curiosity is a fair indicator. Congratulations! I'll hope to see you in print.
Books by Ivy Ruckman:
The Hunger Scream (Walker, 1983)
In a Class by Herself (Harcourt, 1983)
Melba the Mummy (Dell, 1991)
Night of the Twisters (Harper, 1984)
No Way Out (Harper, 1988)
Pronounce It Dead (Bantam, 1994)
Spell It M-U-R-D-E-R (Bantam, 1994)
This is Your Captain Speaking (Walker, 1987)
What's an Average Kid Like Me Doing Way Up Here? (Delacorte, 1983; revised ed. Dell, 1988)
Who Invited the Undertaker? (Harper, 1989)
In Care of Cassie Tucker
ROB&SARA.COM (written with P.J. Peterson)
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