Yesterday my writing felt odd, awkward, out of place. So I picked up Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and read some perspective-setting words and then filmed this.
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When your writing seems . . . weird.
Posted in Essays
Tagged creative practice, writing, Creative writing, Dog, writing craft, supermodels, The Donald, artists, beautiful story
Craft Matters: Timing is everything. Or is it?
We whirl through our days amidst commitments internally- and externally-imposed; some weeks we have to squeeze in our writing while waiting for the doctor, the oil change, the vet and yes that is my upcoming week.
But today I read this terrific post by Noa Kageyama, whose equally terrific blog, The Bulletproof Musician, frequently addresses matters of effective practice and discipline that applies to all of us aiming for artistry. This one looks at a study that examined how efficient learning is when it’s done at night rather than in the morning.
Don’t mess with my morning mojo, my writing muse whispered. You can’t write after three in the afternoon! I will not watch the sunset with you!
No matter how gorgeous the sunset, my muse thinks evenings are Not a Good Time to Write. Is she right?
But the *evidence* shows that people learn and remember their learning more efficiently and effectively if they tackle it in the evening, go to bed, and then practice again in the morning. Huh. Is my muse really so special that she will be exempt from evidence-based research? Actually, is this really about my muse, that elusive spark of inspiration, or is this about the simple learning and practicing of craft?
I think it’s the latter. If I want to get the compound-complex sentence down cold (my current craft focus, inspired by David Foster Wallace’s jaw-dropping application of basic grammatical tenets), I need to learn its form and practice it.
Although I’d like to think I’m very special, I suspect that I’m no more special than anyone else when it comes to my grey matter. So based on Kageyama’s post, I am going to ignore my muse and set up some evening craft reading-learning-practicing exercise sessions for myself, followed by next-morning follow-up craft reading-learning-practicing exercise sessions.
I’ll let you know how it goes in about a month–and if you have any experiences with how you’ve learned specific writing craft, tell us all about it in comments below!
Posted in Essays
Tagged creative practice, Creative writing, creativity, evening writing, morning writing, muse, practice, writing, writing craft, writing practice
Writing Fail . . .
I’m playing with video because, y’know, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth at least a couple thousand. Includes terrific words on forgiveness by poet David Whyte.
Posted in Essays
Tagged creative practice, creativity, David Whyte, failure, forgiveness, napping, poetry, writing, writing goals, writing practice
Long time gone . . .
I’ve been a long time away from this blog – almost a year. I let y’all know I was starting a low-residency MFA at Warren Wilson College in January 2016. What I didn’t know was that the MFA work would displace my energy for blog essays. This August, as I start my second semester, familiar with the rhythm of the weeks to come and the stories, revisions, essays and letters I’ll write for my supervisor (the amazing Lauren Groff!!), I’ve been itchy to blog.
This itch arrived as I’ve experienced the power of outside accountability to transform my priority from “family then writing-unless-everything-else-is-aflame” to “writing then family then everything else.” And that shift in turn revealed the momentum-creating power of daily dedication to a practice.
I feel embarrassed to admit that it took the outlay of thousands of dollars for me to take writing as seriously as it’s taken by the professors and leaders of the MFA. My first semester supervisor, the also-amazing Karen Brennan, gave me positive feedback I didn’t quite believe, in addition to pointing out my shortcomings. And although I didn’t quite believe the good stuff, I did believe she took me seriously. And because I was paying money, I took her feedback seriously, and worked at writing in a way I’d not before. For me, this meant reading and writing instead of shopping and cooking and cleaning. The dust bunnies grew to late-summer-zucchini size. I quit volunteering for the schools, for the church. We ate a lot of takeout. The sons, when they were home, cooked. Engineer hubby got really good at grilling salmon.
Writing Dedication
Today, the 18 y.o. is at summer academy at Virginia Tech, and the 15 y.o. is away at Friends Music Camp. I am writing and reading like a madwoman. And of course it’s no coincidence that I’m freed to discover the waxing power of dedication as parenting duties wane.
But here’s the thing: we survived with the dust bunnies and the take-out pizza. I regret the years I walked away from dedication to my writing in order to make the house look “good,” to cook a “good” meal, the years I abandoned my writing without even examining the very real cost that extracted from me, from my family, from my community.
In these heart-breaking times, the importance of writing fiction may seem slight, laughable, abstract, irrelevant; in short, unimportant.
However: as Alan Shapiro noted in his last lecture of this July’s residency (available for download for $5 here and worth every penny), our capacity to kill each other is fueled by our lack of imagination. An inability to imagine another’s perspective, imagine their experience, imagine their life. If we are to emerge from our moment in history transformed into more than our cruelties, we must dedicate ourselves to expanding, deepening, broadening our capacity to see beauty in others.
The way I connect with beauty is through writing; I aim to dedicate myself to bringing it forth.
Whatsoever it is that connects you to beauty and to the beauty of others, dedicate yourself to it. We need all of us doing all we can.
Last night EH cooked salmon. I rinsed the dishes and tucked them into the dishwasher.
And then I wrote.
May it be so for you as well.
Posted in Essays
The Lyric Book is PUBLISHED!, and why it’s complicated …
The picture is worth a thousand words!
The Lyric Theatre in downtown Blacksburg has been in its current location since 1930. Its story is now available in a book that I helped write, The Lyric Theatre: the Heart of Blacksburg.
It’s beautiful to look at and lovely to hold because the designer, Christina O’Connor, is crazy good at what she does. It’s interesting because Su Clauson-Wicker and Cheryl Wood Ruggiero are terrific interviewers and researchers and writers and copy-editors. And folks have said it reads well because I did much of the writing. This is thrilling!
That said, I had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday who asked me: are you comfortable receiving praise for this book? My answer: it’s complicated.
I love it when people love something I’ve written. But I often feel like the story has come to me; it’s not “mine” — it’s ours. I wrote it down. The story is mine only insofar as I am responsible for listening closely to what I hear and discerning the story. I am responsible for paying attention, for discipline and diligence, for re-writing for clarity and power, and for finding a home for stories. But once I’m done writing, it’s not mine. It’s ours. I happen to be the writer.
It also happens that this book was a pleasure to serve as a writer. Enjoy it! The story it tells belongs to all of us.
And may you have the chance to listen for, and share, your stories as well.
If you’d like to buy a copy of the book, you can do so at the YMCA Craft Fair November 13-15 (I’ll be there some of the time if you want a personalized copy!). It’s also available in downtown Blacksburg at the Alexander Black House, the Artful Lawyer Gallery, the Lyric Theatre, the Montgomery Museum, and Uncommonly Gifted.
Words fail …
During one of my annual treks to Taos, I visited a friend who taught fifth grade in the school for the Cochiti Pueblo outside Albuquerque, NM. My visit coincided with feast day, and although she’s Anglo like me, she was invited to many of her students’ and former students’ homes, as well as to the traditional, day-long dances. I got to tag along.
On the approach the Pueblo, and in the Pueblo itself, there were signs delineating those parts of the community that are private, including the church and kivas. These signs state very clearly “no pictures.”
There are nuanced layers around photography of indigenous peoples; photographs can and have been used to create distance between, and domination over, picture-taker and pictured. And, my friend pointed out, participation in a ceremony is an experience to be had; it can’t be captured for later. It has to be lived.
But just watch, she added. Someone will try to take a picture and the elders will confiscate their camera. Sure enough, twenty minutes after the drums began and the dancers circled into the square, a tourist with a telephoto lens had made his way onto the church balcony (yes, the church that had “no public access” signs at each door). He raised his big ole camera and began clicking away. And it felt wrong. It was more than disrespect. It was robbery.
My notebook: closed because I am experiencing rather than noting!
Fast forward to this past week, when I spent five days at the Brave New Story workshop with Jeffrey Davis, Laraine Herring and Cathy Shap, all members of the Tracking Wonder team. Instead of taking “pictures” (aka notes) about their facilitation techniques and observing my reactions through my intellectual lens, I accepted their invitation to step fully into my body and my story. I let them guide the workshop sessions and I participated wholly: I listened to my colleagues in the workshops rather than stereotyping them; I howled and danced and cried; I wrote and read brand-new words about my story’s protagonist. I emerged from the week with clarity, a renewed dedication to my story, and a new-to-me reluctance to talk about the experience. My friends and family all want to know, What happened? What have you learned? What was it like?
Rainbow on morning mindfulness walk at Mohonk House.
I have some pictures of the place we stayed, and of my new-found friends, but those doesn’t begin to capture my transformative experience.
For once, I haven’t figured out the words to tell the story of what happened. I lived it. It was magical. It was deeply personal even though I shared it with 17 other women and the Tracking Wonder team.
And I’m honoring my heart’s instinct to hold the experience close for now. To allow it to live inside me instead of tossing it hither and yon in anecdotes and intellectually satisfying summaries.
In this part of my story, the point isn’t the words. The point is the being and doing, with passion and integrity.
May it be so for you as well.
Posted in Essays
Tagged Art, Cathy Shap, creative practice, integrity, Jeffrey Davis, Laraine Herring, Mohonk House, story, Tracking Wonder, Writing desk, Your Brave New Story
Fleek, fleck, whatever; I got it wrong.
The young-to-me man ringing up my lunch order said, “That tomato soup is on point. Or as the young would say, on fleek.” (Spelled like it sounds.)
“On what?” I asked, and added, “You look like the younger generation to me.”
“No,” he said, “I was born in ’90 so I’m not the younger generation. And yeah, they say on fleek. It’s the same as saying on point.” (Which I think is really en pointe, the french term for ballet dancers when they are on their tippy-toes.)
“But why? What’s the logic of that? Where’s it from?”
He shrugged. “Kids today.”
Indeed. After supper I asked the 14 y.o., “What does on FLECK mean?”
“Oh my god mom, do you mean on fleek?”
“Yeah, that’s it. On fleek. What the heck is that?”
He doubled over, in shame or wordless laughter, I couldn’t tell. “Just don’t ever say that again, mom.” And then he hollered up the stairs to his older brother, “Guess what mom just got wrong!”
I am so of the older generation now. I like being of the older generation — I don’t worry about my looks or whether someone else likes me, etcetera. There’s a lot of freedom in middle age. And true to the stereotype of middle-aged mom, I despair about the younger generation some of the time. I’m baffled by on fleek. My hubby and I lament the screens that engage our children although in my reflective moments I think that perhaps slaughtering forests of trees for paper on which to print essays and books isn’t all that great … and how ironic that plenty of those essays and books are about how the next generation doesn’t get it because they’re on their devices all the time … and those kids in my community who went to school in t-shirts bearing the confederate flag don’t seem to have ever read a history book! How is it that they don’t grasp the complexity and nuance of how that symbol affects their fellow community members? Kids today.
Kids today! Some thing never change. And as a writer I have been struggling with whether and how to enter the increasingly-heated political frays occurring all over the place, not least in my own confederate-flag-divided community.
photo of Adam Zagajewski 2014 in Stockholm by Frankie Fouganthin — from WikiCommons
I found guidance in Susan Sontag‘s essay, “The Wisdom Project,” which centers on an extended exploration of the book Another Beauty by Adam Zagaejewski, a Polish writer:
Life, when not a school for heartlessness, is an education in sympathy. The sum of stories reminds us that in a life of a certain length and spiritual seriousness, change — sometimes not for the worse — is just as real as death.
All writing is a form of remembering. …
That memories are recovered — that is, that the suppressed truths do reemerge — is the basis of whatever hope one can have for justice and a modicum of sanity in the ongoing life of communities. …
That every generation fears, misunderstands, and condescends to its successor — this, too, is a function of the equivalence of history and memory (history being what it is agreed on, collectively, to remember). Each generation has distinctive memories, and the elapsing of time, which brings with it a steady accumulation of loss, confers on those memories a normativeness which cannot possibly be honored by the young, who are busy compiling their memories, their benchmarks. … The rule seems to be: each generation looks upon its successor generation as barbarians.
Sontag goes on to point out that
…history should never be thought of with a capital H. The governing sense of Zagajewski’s memory-work is his awareness of having lived through several historical periods, in the course of which things eventually got better. Modestly, imperfectly–not utopianly–better. … Lesson: evil is not immutable. The reality is, everyone outlives an old self, often more than one, in the course of a reasonably long life.
I don’t agree with those who claim the confederate flag is “just” a symbol of their heritage: such a statement places the mask of simplicity over our uniquely complex American heritage of–and present-day schizophrenia about–slavery. I don’t think on fleek makes a damn bit of sense. And give me a book made from dead trees instead of an e-reader, please.
But I do agree with Sontag and Zagajewski’s words about hope — I have outlived several of my old selves. I am hopeful that our current political and personal experiences will prove to be an education in sympathy. And that writers, myself included, will contribute to our collective memory, our collective story. To our modest, imperfect betterment.
May it be so.
Posted in Essays
Tagged Adam Zagajewski, Another Beauty, confederate flag, education in sympathy, history, memory, on fleek, Susan Sontag, the next generation, writing
