I have made a commitment to three things: finding time for Blue Space (beach, sky), Green Space (earth, woods), and the responses I have to poets & writers. I seek to discover the art of being.
A weird thing happened over the past few years. I began to feel my goals and direction would remain the same. I didn't see a need to expand much. I thought I was "done."
Then came Walking in This World by Julia Cameron, the follow-up program to The Artist's Way. One of the first things Julia has us do is discover that we have greater dimensions than we are allowing.
And I discovered she was right.
I wrote this last Saturday, and meant to post. But I've been sick for three weeks and just never got myself to it.
Today, however, it wouldn't let go. And I'm feeling back to myself. I credit seeing my awesome writing friends last night for putting me finally over the edge. I'm ready to participate in life again.
And I felt that I have to put this on my blog so I remember.
Drawing Myself to a Fuller Size.
I.
I am a fiction writer.
How long have I known this? Thousands of words have erupted and so much satisfaction in storytelling when I get it right. I have time and I have the space. I will write that novel.
II.
I can draw.
I just haven't practiced enough. I have just not opened myself to learning. A few fits and starts over the years, yes, I was able. So many years ago the delight of drawing was robbed from me.
I'm 62. It is time to claim it back.
III.
I can play electric guitar.
I've played it before. I can learn the blues and play along with "Kerosene." I can learn the riffs and the lines. I can play rhythm. I just need to plug in, tune up, smile. Rock-n-roll is in my heart.
These will be the first words to my Creative Writing class come January 9, 2018.
All this stuff about making a plan and following it? Kids play. That's a format, not a process.
Five stages of writing? Six pillars? Useful at times. Not the truth.
The real process is much more illusive and hard to pin down.
In the fall of 2007, I participated in National Novel Writing Month. In one month I wrote over 50,000 words on a draft with the working title You Tell Me That I'm Falling Down. It took place in 1970's Ohio, a large part of it in Athens, a place from my early life, and featured the story of two sisters.
I had a plan in place to revise and get that novel finished. I had my friend Iris read it in February 2008, and she gave me useful feedback. During my spring break I met with a yoga teacher I know who was teaching yoga in the 1970's to find out what it was like back then before the structuring of certifying yoga teachers. I watched TheBad News Bears to pick up the slang at the time for my young minor character to use. I also re-read Catcher in the Rye because I wanted her to have a patter like Holden Caulfield. I changed the name of one character, wrote several different openings, and decided to remove a certain storyline altogether. I arranged to take a summer trip to Athens with my niece Cheryl who had attended Ohio University, so I could get a feel for the area again, and to find the place I had stayed for a week out in the country (long gone, strangely enough.) We took the trip, I took copious notes and pictures of graveyards and parks and a famous angel sculpture and the streets of downtown. Then I came home, school started again, and...nothing.
That book has sat in a drawer for a long time. I took it out a couple of summers ago and read through it, but I didn't feel much connection. The other day I mentioned it to my friend Annmarie when we were talking about her novel draft. Again, I didn't feel any kind of connection to it. It's a mystery why it was written, why I put so much time into it, and why it has never gone anywhere.
In April 2014 I was walking at Bunche Beach and observed two girls, about 10 and 11-years-old, playing with a horseshoe crab. I took a picture of them from a distance, a picture that sadly disappeared with the upgrading to new phones. I began a story I dubbed "The Horseshoe Crab Story" and I decided it would be my foray into episodic fiction. I began writing from a main character's viewpoint, a character I could not find a name for no matter how many attempts I made. I came back to this story time and time again, as it kept poking at me. I uncovered new bits and pieces of the story until January 2016, when I decided to go for it in earnest. It was then I expanded my vision of the piece, and began writing backstories for the characters.
But, I ran out of steam on it as well, and left it in an uncertain mess. I think perhaps I put too much on myself. I wanted to write so many words a day, blah blah, and I just didn't seem to have the energy I needed. I set it aside, and started a habit of reading a poem a day from a rotating collection of 7 different poets, and I wrote a poem based on something in the poem. It turned out to be a fabulous way to stay in touch with my thoughts as well as indulge in the power of succinct language. I also got to know many poets in a deeper way than I had previously.
Sometime in the ensuing year, I decided what I was really supposed to write was a memoir. I had not wanted to write a memoir, but with several overarching themes in my life coming together, I felt like maybe it was telling me something. I made a plan and began in a way that was unusual -- I wrote bits and pieces, pulled in poems I wrote in the morning, and in general just thought that eventually these fragments would add up to something. I was encouraged when I read Sherman Alexie's You Don't Have to Say You Love Me because it had many inventive approaches to the chapters. I dreamed of doing the same, only different, of course. From July to December I wrote over 20,000 words. Then, once again...stop.
But I knew winter break was coming, and I was certain I could pursue this, right?
Break came. The days went by. I enjoyed the holidays, worked on some lesson planning to get it out of the way, and was ready to get going on the memoir when I was laid low with bronchitis. This caused me to sit back and read and watch a lot of television and movies. I was indulging in story like I haven't done in a long time.
It felt great.
It was New Years Evemorning when I picked up a book I had just purchased where a variety of authors speak of their main inspiration -- one piece of text that seems to inform a major piece they wrote, or perhaps all of their writing. I read Sherman Alexie's "Leaving the Reservation of the Mind," as well as some other essays by favorite writers, and for the first time in a long time I had this thought: Maybe I'm supposed to be writing fiction.
Somehow I made another decision. I decided instead of writing a poem a day, I would write a page of fiction a day based on the poems I am reading. This paid off immediately. I read a poem by a mystic from long ago and found myself in the kitchen of one of the characters talking to her mother. I was so encouraged and inspired by this, I just cannot even begin to explain. It felt magical.
That night, long after the midnight and the fireworks and a good amount of sleep, I was awake and started thinking about the novel draft and the horseshoe crab story. I was mulling it all over in my mind when I realized that the stories actually had a common denominator: Cincinnati Ohio. Both families in question live or end up in Cinci. It was a marvelous revelation: maybe these stories have been connected all along. Imagine that.
Yesterday I revisited the character in the horseshoe crab story whose name has eluded me for over three years. And this time, just by looking at it, I instantly knew her name: Amy. Her name is Amy -- a name I do not even remember considering before. I could not help but feel this somehow has made me know her better. I hope so.
Writing fiction from the poems is producing marvelous results. Just three days and I have small scenes to build on, as well as a bit more understanding of these characters that have been hanging around me for up to a decade.
But back to New Years Eve morning...
The line of text that has informed Sherman Alexie's entire writing career is a line of poetry by Adrian C. Louis: O Uncle Adrian! I'm in the reservation of my mind.
Alexie writes quite a bit about the reservation where he grew up, and it plays a large part in all of his writing, even though he "escaped" years ago. He talks about the reservation as being like a prison, but that the real prison is in our mind. He says,
I think every writer stands in the doorway of their prison. Half in, half out. The very act of storytelling is a return to the prison of what torments us and keeps us captive, and writers are repeat offenders. You go through the whole journey with your prison, revisiting it in your mind. Hopefully, you get to a point when you realize there was beauty in your prison, too. Maybe, when you get to that point, "I'm in the reservation of my mind" can also be a beautiful thing.
And it's with this I have to acknowledge the real reason I probably abandoned these projects: they have to include someone dying, both times someone young. Did I already know my "prison" is to revisit the death of my brother at age 9? I knew it. I tried to tell myself I had to proceed anyway, these are the stories I have to tell, but then I got bored. I grew weary in my prison, and couldn't see the beauty that must be there.
Revisiting my characters now, after spending a lot of time reflecting on my own struggles with identity, illness, family, creativity, and challenges, I can see how flawed and desperate they are to make sense of, or want to get out of, their own prisons. But now I know, through my own imperfect and baffling journey, there really is no escape. There is only this decree: Return to that prison and make it beautiful.
Best of all, I can see how they will help each other. I can honestly say I'm not sure I had that perspective until now. It's showing up in the daily fiction I am writing. Poetry is the connector, as it was for Alexie, as it has been for me many, many times.
And when my thirty Creative Writing students show up on Tuesday, this is the process we will discover together. Gather and gather. Be inspired by other writers. Forget straight lines. You don't have to know where it is going. You just have to be willing to travel in and out of the reservation of your mind.
As I was writing this, I was listening to the Linda Ronstadt album that has the song "You Tell Me That I'm Falling Down." Ironically, the album is called Prisoner in Disguise. I suppose that could have been the heading to this essay. The chorus of this song (written by Anna McGarrigle and C.S. Holland) is a fitting summary to so much I have tried to share here: we can look to the outside, and blame conditions or other people, but everything we need is truly within. It is up to us to open the door and walk inside.
I am exactly what I am
And not the way you'd like to see me be
I look outside long as I can
Then I close my eyes and watch my world unfold before me
