Tag Archives: by Catherine Keefe

The Weekend Dish

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Write now!

National Novel Writing Month begins in exactly six days and you can get a jump start on outlining, prewriting, researching, and yes, writing your book-length project this weekend.

NaNoWriMo, as its known to those in the know, is an annual event billed on the website as “thirty days and nights of literary abandon” where the challenge is to complete 50,000 words within 30 days. You do the math, that’s a lot of writing.  But a perusal of the list of published NaNoWriMo authors includes titles put out by major houses and may include a few names and novels you’ve read like Sara Gruen and Like Water For Elephants.

The concept is pretty simple. You register on the website.  It’s free.

In return for your public declaration of intent, you receive cyber pep talks and support from NaNoWriMo staff and information about local writing groups and in-person events.

You buckle your seat belt to your writing chair. You write.

I’ve already started writing.

Why I Can’t Write 50,000 Words This November
Thirty people are coming for Thanksgiving dinner and I recently moved and I’m not finished unpacking yet and there’s no mirror in the downstairs bath (and no light either) so how can I host a holiday without also doing a little shopping for the house and the new backyard is still mud and the rainy season is imminent and how can I ignore that November is an ideal month to plant in California and did I mention I have no backyard, (seriously, it’s dirt, just dirt which turns into mud when it rains and you know I have Chester and he needs to go outside because that’s what dogs do) and the new issue of dirtcakes is due out so I’ve got writers to contact and contracts to send and design to oversee and the semester is winding down and I know my students paid for and expect to receive not only teaching but grading which means I’ve got dozens and dozens of papers to read and comment upon and did I tell you me daughter’s in-laws are coming to town and I’d be rude not to plan some time for them and surely I’ve mentioned that I’m also a writer which means that all those family things and foody things and editor things and house things and garden things and teaching things will have to somehow bow to this writing thing but I’m old now and I have to sleep so maybe I just won’t eat and I certainly won’t clean (although I should shower and do laundry so as not to offend those standing nearby) but of course I’ll cook the week of Thanksgiving because I really love all those 30 people who will show up on my front porch that day –

Ack! Stop the chatter and just write.

You’ll find inspiration some where. Mine arrived in my e-mail in-box earlier this year. With permission, I’m excerpting it here:

Hi Professor,
It’s Brian Ducoffe.  I was in your “Composing the Self” class last fall. I don’t know if you remember but I participated in National Novel Writing Month and finished. I ended up spending the next 9 months editing and revising it and the book is now published. I ended up going the self publishing route after a couple conversations with some literary agents just so I could have more control but am hoping I can pick up some attention and possibly make some publishing houses take notice. Anyway I just thought you’d like to check it out since I wrote it during your class! Thanks!

See, the cool thing is that Brian never once missed an assignment or asked for an extension he just kept showing up, doing his school thing while finishing Our Elephant Graveyard.
So here’s to you and here’s to me and here’s to a growing word count.
What are you waiting for?
See you on the bright side of November.
Full details of NaNoWri Mo can be found by clicking here.
With high expectations,
~Catherine

Time to dream

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Dear One,

I see you standing there. I read your back and see the softened slump about your shoulders.

I hear your sigh that carries just above the shush of the Pacific, not quite a keen, but not a thing like laughter.  What is it you look for? Have you been waiting for so very long?

May I tell you something? Once I saw two boys barehanded fishing for tilapia in Kauai’s Hule’ia River. Frozen still in the shadows of the mangrove, they cupped their hands and waited.  Shhhh, they warned and I froze too, midstep on the hiking path.  All at once, like athletes on a pedestal, they raised their arms victoriously overhead and one wriggling fish flung droplets into the sky.

“Dinner!” they shrieked.

That night I dreamt I stood in the shallows of Hule’ia, hands submerged into murky water. I could not see clearly, unsure exactly what I was trying to catch.  I dreamt a cold plump softness nudging my open palms. One, two – too many sleek and slippery things to count – I grasped and missed, until at dawn I awoke empty-handed, staring blankly at the wall.

Is it like that now for you?

My friend wonders about her mounting “…sense of exhaustion and ambivalence…”

My students say, “This week is awful. It’s limp broccoli.”

It seems everyone around me is feeling…

when we would all so much rather be —

Here’s my Rx.  If you can, take a visit to your girlhood dreaming spot, or one that reminds you copiously of it. Gaze into the lantern of your inner fire. Catch the glow. Reflect the blaze.

Remember who you once were and what you said you would become.  It’s not too late. But hurry. You are waiting.  And so am I.
With vibrancy and gold,
~Catherine

p.s. If your spirits need a boost these days, stumble upon Dearest Creature by poet Amy Gerstler.  (You can read David Kirby’s New York Times review of it here.)

This is not a new book; it was published in 2009. But it’s a new discovery for me and I highly recommend any book that contains poems with titles like, “At the Back of a Closet, Two Dresses Converse” and “Chant of the Hallucinogenic Plants,” especially as an antidote if you’re in your blues period.  There’s no expiration date on golden poetry.

Five lines to challenge chaos

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Is it possible to offset the apparent randomness of the universe?

California Morning Sky.       Photo Credit: James Keefe Photography

Some ladies put up tomatoes, or peaches, or apple jam against the coming winter. I decide to create a stock of writing projects as sustenance against the lengthening darkness.  By spring, I’ll have a larder of poems that adhere to formal patterns found in nature, the sunflower, for example, or the whorl of a seashell, the number of legs on a spider for instance, or the swoop of an orb found glistening in early morning.

The idea takes root as I introduce my students to poetic form and we discuss the state of poetry as a mostly formless country these days, flowing as it does so frequently in free verse.  What is found when form is lost? I prod.  What is gained when form is followed?

I ask this, of course because it’s a good beginning for an Introduction to Creative Writing unit on poetry. But the debatable merits of structured versus unstructured poetry are making headlines these days within the literary community and I want my students to understand the fray. Before you roll your eyes and wonder who cares outside of a classroom or a Paris garret, consider that poets have long considered themselves to be what the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley writes “In Defense of Poetry” as:

“… the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

(You can read Shelley’s essay in its entirety here.)

It’s this role of poets as “mirrors of society,” that most concerns William Childress, a noted poet and National Geographic photojournalist, in a recent letter to the editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, a journal of Literature and Discussion.

“Is free verse killing poetry…A blind person can see that American society is in turmoil…shouldn’t poets be trying to change things instead of writing chaos-poetry or “woe is me” diaries? Who will read poetry when they can’t find a common bond in a poet’s writing? Who likes ruptured grammar, twisted syntax and what my grandpa called flapdoodle? There’s at least a partial consensus that free verse these days consists of a lot of badwriting. I forget who said, “Poets should learn to write before they try to write poetry.”  Many of today’s poets don’t seem to realize that all writing is connected.”

All writing must be connected because all life is braided together in one way or another isn’t it.

As go the poets…
As go the canaries…
So go the humans?

Does nature, I ask my students, follow predictable patterns?

“No,” says the student who arrived late for the semester because Hurricane Isaac interrupted her flight plans from Florida. “It’s random and unpredictable.”

“Of course,” answers the biology major who cites genus and species classifications as one example of nature’s way of behaving according rules.

“Does art that most mirrors nature create more of an impact than art which seems more artificial?” I prod, quoting the philosopher Pseudo-Longinus‘ line about finding sublimity.

For art is perfect when it seems to be nature, and nature hits the mark when she contains art hidden within her.”

My students and I decide we’ll compose one sample of as many structured poetic forms as possible before we write any more free verse. We’ll read deeply from poets who follow form and from poets who made their break with form for reasons buried within the poem itself. We begin small, with a tanka, “a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as “short song,” and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form.”

Here’s my tanka-in-progress:

What one spider knows
spinning glass in dawn-dark fall —
even leaves let go.
Brilliance against the barren
this alone.  Can I believe?

Wishing you enough chaos to unsettle and enough structure to soothe,
~Catherine

p.s. Care to join our writing challenge? Up next is the cinquain, a five-line poem with 22 syllables broken down, according to lines as:  2, 4, 6, 8,and 2.

A sailor walks into a bar…

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Four hundred and ninety three years ago today (ish) Ferdinand Magellan began his expedition to circumnavigate the globe in search of a western spice trade route between Europe and Asia.

Photo Credit: Public Domain Clip Art

I say “ish” because some sources, like The History Channel, name today as the anniversary but others, notably the Hakluyt Society which publishes “primary records of voyages, travels and other geographical material” offer a different story in The First Voyage Round the World, from a Genoese pilot “who came in the said ship, who wrote all the voyage as it is here.”

According to this sailor’s first-hand account “HE [Magellan] sailed from Seville on the 10th day of August of the said year [1519], and remained at the bar until the 21st day of September, and as soon as he got outside, he steered to the southwest to make the island of Tenerife.”

A sailor walks out of a bar.

I can’t help but think how much writing is like heading into uncharted waters with nothing but a notion.  Sometimes I pursue the end with the diligence of a royal lackey and other times I allow the trade winds of exploration to blow me a bit off course.  When I teach writing, this fluidity between convention and discovery unsettles the students, especially as they try to find their own way, their own voice, to leave their distinct mark in a literary history book.

“Is it good?”
“Should I give up?”
“Do you see any talent in my work?”

I wish students relied less on my coronation and more on the process.

Do you love your journey?
Does your writing reflect your best effort?
Do you trust your boat?

Cinque Terra, Italy. Photo Credit: Catherine Keefe

I wonder if Magellan would have stayed home if he knew he wouldn’t live long enough to receive a hero’s welcome back in Spain. Somehow I doubt it.  If you need fortitude for your literary journey here, to help realign your compass, are two reading recommendations.

If traditional short fiction is your thing, you can’t do any better than getting a subscription to One Story, $21 per year.  From the website:

One Story is a non-profit literary magazine that features one great short story mailed to subscribers every three weeks. Our mission is to save the short story by publishing in a friendly format that allows readers to experience each story as a stand-alone work of art and a simple form of entertainment. One Story is designed to fit into your purse or pocket, and into your life.

If you’re done with tradition and want to experience literature curated to jolt you out of linear, conventional thought, mosey over to Diagram, “a free electronic journal of text and art.  Sure, you can read the fiction and the book reviews there, but the real fun begins when you venture into the schematics link.

from Diagram

From the “Submission Guidelines” page:

WE VALUE the insides of things, vivisection, urgency, risk, elegance, flamboyance, work that moves us, language that does something new, or does something old–well. We like iteration and reiteration. Ruins and ghosts. Mechanical, moving parts, balloons, and frenzy. Buzz us

Here’s wishing you enough squalls to appreciate the peace, enough uncertainty to hone your own beliefs, and plenty of salt spray upon your cheeks.

With delight in discovery,
~Catherine

The Weekend Dish

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If the number of festivals dedicated to books, authors, and all things literary are any indication, fall begins feast time in the written word world.

In Washington, D.C. you can attend the Library of Congress National Book Festival Sept. 22-23. President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are honorary chairs for the event.  In addition to more than 100 authors, you’ll find a Pavilion of the States which honors the literary traditions of each state and territory. It’s free.

In Lexington, you can catch food writer and memoirist Ruth Reichl, novelist Karen Joy Fowler, poet Kim Addonizio, and dozens more at the  Kentucky Women Writer’s Conference, from Sept. 21-22.

Lit Crawl, “Where Literature Hits The Streets” takes over Manhattan this weekend, details here, and from the description on the website, I’d have to say this sounds like the most fun of all:

Lit Crawl was created by San Francisco’s Litquake literary festival back in 2004, and the idea was simple: let’s transform an ordinary bar crawl into a mob scene of literary mayhem. Could we take over a neighborhood, or two, add pop-up events to every venue that might allow it (bars, cafes, bookstores, theaters, galleries, clothing boutiques, furniture showrooms, parking lots, Laundromats, bee-keeping supply shops), invite dozens of authors to read from their work, and watch hundreds of literati tromp the route and get drunk on words — all for free?  Not only was the concept wildly popular, we’ve had to expand it every year. San Francisco’s closing night Lit Crawl now attracts over 6,000 people, and is the world’s largest such event. In 2008 Lit Crawl NYC launched in Manhattan, also an immediate hit. Austin was next, swarming for the first time in 2011. And in 2012, we birthed two more Lit Crawls, one in Brooklyn, another in Seattle. For 2013 we are already in discussion to debut Lit Crawls in Los Angeles and Iowa City. Take literature to the streets!

Litquake in San Francisco runs from Oct. 5-13; Lit Crawl Seattle is Oct. 18; and Lit Crawl Austin on Oct. 27.

Lastly, the Big Orange Book Festival debuts in Orange, CA, next weekend Sept. 21-22.   Here you’ll find this Backyard Sister reading a mash-up and resurrection of poetry lines taken from dirtcakes, that beautiful literary magazine I edit.  The result will likely surprise both of us.

So, if you’ve never been to a book festival, what should you expect?

1) Go with an open mind.  Check out the authors who will be reading and pick out a name you’ve never heard before. Sit in on a short reading.  Experiment by listening to an unfamiliar genre.  Ask questions like, “Usually I read X, but you’ve gotten me intrigued with Y, do you have any suggestions of which authors, besides you of course, I might read to familiarize myself with the genre?”  After the reading, stand in line and introduce yourself. Tell the author one thing you’ve taken away from the experience.  Trust me, this little bit of gratitude will make both your days.

2) Talk to the authors standing in booths where books are sold.  Truly there’s nothing worse than standing in front of a booth or a room dedicated to a reading and having no one acknowledge your presence.  So say “hi.”  Ask, “What’s new in your writing world? Which writers inspire you?” “If I could only purchase one of these books, which one would you recommend and why?”

3) Set a reasonable budget and buy at least one book or literary magazine. When you’ve finished reading, donate it to your local library with a little note inside explaining that you purchased it from a book festival.  Encourage the reader who finds the note to attend the festival the following year.  Maybe you’ll meet up with this stranger. Maybe you’ll talk. Maybe you’ll discover a new book pen pal, or something more.

4) Shyness, or not wanting to admit you’re unfamiliar with a writer you encounter, is perfectly fine.  In fact, it will make me feel so much better about the time when I looked up all the children’s book writers living in Orange County and sent each a letter asking if anyone wanted to begin a writing group.  I received my first response from Theodore Taylor.  Imagine my chagrin when I read his terse response chastising me for having the audacity to send such a letter to the author of The Cay who most definitely did not have any interest in joining an upstart writing group. And, he added, I should learn the finest practitioners of my genre before I ventured into it.  At least he took the time to write.

Let us know if you make to a literary festival this fall.  You can even send us a picture.  And if you’re anywhere near the Big Orange Book Festival, please stop by and say hello. I’ll be reading during the “10 at the Top” Series.

Happy Book Jubilating.
~Catherine

Friends of the Backyard Sisters

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I was a new and nervous reporter, my first minute on the job at the Orange County Register, still trying to figure out office etiquette when working in a long row of cubicles so small and close together and with walls low enough that I could see the stubble on the back of the neck of the reporter in front of me.  Just as I silently sat down, that neck swiveled to reveal a smiling face.

“Hey. I’m Marty.  Welcome. It’s good to have you here.  If you have any questions or need anything, let me know. ”

Long after we left the Register, Marty and I remained writing friends and, huge caveat here, fans of each other’s work.  I invited my writer friend to stop by the backyard to tell you about his new nonfiction book, “The Wild Duck Chase.” It’s about the obscure Federal Duck Stamp Program and the strange and wonderful world of competitive duck painting.  Weird? You betcha. It’s a highly entertaining book that’s a perfect fit for our outdoorsy, michikusa–centric focus here at the Backyard Sisters. Best of all, it invites a reader to tackle stereotypes.

Welcome, Marty. It’s good to have you here.

Photo Credit: Jason Wallis

Just back from a fly-fishing trip to the Bighorn River in Montana, and was struck again (as I was while writing “The Wild Duck Chase”) by the depth of knowledge that dedicated outdoorsmen and -women have about the natural world. Robert Bealle, the 2009 Federal Duck Stamp Artist, was able to tell the specific stretch of the Potomac River where the duck he’d shot had been feeding, because of the unusual type of freshwater clams he found in the duck’s craw. One of our fishing guides on the Bighorn put a tube down the throat of a brown trout I’d landed and suctioned out the contents of its stomach to see which type of flies and worms it had been feeding on that morning (so he could choose the proper fly for my next cast). Another guide noticed a nasty wound on another fish I’d landed and deduced that the little fella had a recent brush with a spike-beaked blue heron. Still another spent at least 10 minutes trying to revive a lethargic but still-living brown trout by washing water through its gills. Now, I’m not a hunter, and not much of a fisherman. But after two years of research on the book and my accumulated experiences among hunters and fishermen, I no longer have much patience with those who dismiss them as exploiters of wildlife. They are, for the most part, mindful custodians of a world the rest of us appreciate primarily in theory.

Montana’s Finest

Marty, (that’s Martin J. Smith to you) will discuss his new book and sign copies at the
Big Orange Book Book Festival in Orange, California at 1 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21. If you’re not interested in what many consider the single greatest conservation initiative in human history, or the quirky annual art contest at its center, or a cast of characters that includes a guy who keeps 15 dead birds in his Sears Kenmore freezer, then perhaps you’ll be tempted to attend by knowing that Marty will reveal the name of the artist who managed to paint an entire passage of incredibly filthy porn movie dialogue into his entry, which was then soberly displayed by oblivious federal officials who take this stuff VERY seriously.

Marty will also be reading at Barnes & Noble in Huntington Beach, 9/18 at 7 p.m.; Book Soup in West Hollywood, 9/19 at 7 p.m.; The Book Frog in Rolling Hills Estates, 9/22, time TBA.  If you happen to be in Ogden Utah on 9/28, Marty will speak and sign books in the Weber State library at 3 p.m. right after the first round of judging for this year’s Federal Duck Stamp Contest.

Still not sure?  Read a witty review of The Wild Duck Chase here.

In addition to telling you about a great book, and a kind writing friend, I leave you with one more lasting bit of Backyard Sisters wisdom.  Writers who are supportive of other writers (and editors) sure make the world a kinder gentler place.  Have you given a shout-out to a writer you admire today?

With high regard,
~Catherine

What do you call it?

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“Do you know Pablo Neruda?”

My friend asks this after dinner on a Thursday evening of no occasion except that she, her husband, J, and I  felt a hunger to dine al fresco in the middle of the week before summer withers.  We’re old vines, the four of our lives entwined by years of shared joys and sorrows.

Her question surprises me; she’s not a writer, nor a particularly avid poetry reader.

But it’s been the kind of day that has offered odd moments.

The first bit arrives this morning while I walk down a pocked country road, Chester padding quietly by my side. The sound of an engine climbs the hill behind us, initially at a roar, then it slows to almost idling.

I hear the sound veer to the side of the road we’re on which means it’s now facing  oncoming traffic, if there were any. The rumble paces us , accelerates, and a white truck appears.

“Here.”

A middle aged man with a white cap pulled low presses a giant brown Milk-Bone dog biscuit into my hand. His truck is that close.

“Rod’s Pool and Spa Service.” I remember this in case I need to give a description.

The man thrusts his cell phone into my face.

“These are my dogs. I used to have big ones, but now I can only take care of the little kind.” A picture of several small brown dogs stares back at me.

“Your dog sure makes me smile. Thanks for that.”

I wonder at this biscuit, clumsily slip it into my pocket. I wonder at myself for running the mental bases:

Don’t talk to strangers
Don’t take things from strangers
Don’t eat things that strangers give you.

The man’s hand waves slowly out the driver’s window as Rod’s Pool and Spa Service wheezes off.

At home, the bone sits on my desk.  I can’t decide the bigger crime: throwing away a gift, or potentially poisoning my dog.  You see the cliff edges I walk.

That would have been enough for one day. But then it’s three in the afternoon and I’m walking alone with Chester down my own street. No other walkers are about on this bright afternoon.

I hear the sound of a diesel engine straining up the hill behind me.  I move out of the way.   The driver of a large water delivery truck pulls his vehicle into the wrong lane; he idles next me.

“Here.”

This young man with a deep tan hands me a bottle of water.

“That’s a great dog.  I used to raise Labs. I had a red one and a black one and they’re great dogs. He, yeah, that’s a he, yeah, he might get thirsty. Give him this water from me. Hi puppy. You’re a good fella. You made my day!”

The water deliveryman idles and oggles Chester until a white Honda pulls up behind and honks because the road is narrow and the truck straddles both lanes.  With a belching boom of a horn and a jaunty wave, the water delivery truck rolls on down the hill.

I set both items on the floor so I can photograph the evidence. Trust comes so hard for me.

I almost wait for a third encounter.  This has never ever happened before.  I wonder if it’s a creepy kind of day.  I’m a writer after all, and I know about things like foreshadowing and the literary Rule of Three that makes stories like “The Three Bears” a model for how to pace your plot or test your characters in a structure readers intuitively expect. Things happen in threes.

But I don’t want to be late for the dinner where I’m now retelling the story I’ve dubbed Strang(er) Thursday.

“Do you know Pablo Neruda?”

My friend asks this when I finish with the water man story and laugh all this off like it’s every day that a cast of weird strangers arrives to set me on guard.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m a huge Neruda fan. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. And then of course The Sea and The Bells and The Book of Questions. Why?”

My friend slides a piece of paper across the table.  “I found this in a magazine and it reminded me of you.”

“Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.”

It’s an excerpt from “Your Laughter.” This friend has had a very difficult summer, the kind that is impossible to fix so the only thing to do is eat under the stars sometimes and tell funny stories.

“I love your laugh,” she says.

“What?”

I look up; think I haven’t heard her correctly. Clanking dishes, mostly spoons clatter against saucers and forks scrape hot fudge off plates at this hour when the candles are almost burned to the end.

“You have a great laugh. It makes me so happy. I treasure you.”

Oh, I think, and I burst out laughing, even though I’m now quite self-conscious about it,  but I  can’t help it because the Rule of Three is real in the universe, and therefore by extension literature, and this is Three Gift Thursday.  Nothing strange about it after all.

We return home and I feed Chester the biscuit. We sleep as if the universe rocks our cradle gently, gently.

With treasures and laughter,
~C

The Weekend Dish

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I’m going to Des Moines!

There’s only one thing that could lure me from California to Iowa in August during a record-breakingly hot summer and that’s my sister.

We’re two sets of girls one year apart, nearly to the day, with a five year span separating the oldest from the youngest.  Sue and I are the middle sisters.  T and I shared a room, a closet, baby dolls and disco balls, See’s candy binges, cigarettes when we thought we were cool, and alibis when we got found out. She is, without a doubt, my greatest advocate, cheerleader, and confidant and it’s the Backyard Sisters way to never let too much time or distance come between in-person conversation and hugs.

You too can give the last hurrah of summer over to your sister.

Call her. Visit. Send a funny card.

Go backyard camping with your sister.
Write your sister. Write about your sister. Take a really pretty picture of your sister. Ask about her favorite recipe.
Praise your sister.  Pray for your sister.  Offer to babysit for her, or work in her garden, or do her back taxes. Take her to lunch, or brunch, or tea, or out for mojitos. Dance with your sister. Whatever language you speak, be sure to tell her how much she means to you.

If you enjoy photos of sisters, you might love to see how photographer Wilma Hurskainen captured the passing of time with her three sisters.  Wilma, who lives and works in Helsinki, gathered her three sisters to reenact childhood photos in a collection called “Growth.” View it here. You can click on the thumbnails on the artist’s website to see full size images.

We’d love to hear how you enjoy spending time with your sister this weekend. As for T and I, we’ll probably giggle helplessly over nothing and realize that having one person in all the world that you never need to explain yourself to is absolutely one of life’s greatest gifts.

With glee and corn,
~Catherine

 

What are you doing in my dream?

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Dear One,
Sometimes, when the writing is precarious, I feel like Maria Spelterini, the only woman to traverse Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

Even though I sit in at my pine desk in a black pleather chair from Staples, I may as well be alone on a high wire, miles above the earth, walking a strand thin as gossamer strung between invisible moons.  From this dizzying height, the din dims. Wind whistles through silver hoops at my ears.

I. Am. Trying. So. Hard. To. Put. Into. Words. This. Thing. This. Thing!

For far too many months I’ve been polishing a poetry manuscript.  It’s good – the process and the work.  But from the great height in the clouds it’s easy to feel lost.

This week I stood firmly on solid ground in front of four university classes filled with new students, faces all turned expectantly toward me.  Some even had pens poised above empty notebooks ready to capture writing secrets.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

I want to be a good writer.
I want to be a better writer.
I’m a terrible writer; I think there’s no hope for me.

I tell them there’s no such thing as a good writer, a better writer, a bad or even a worst writer.  Rather there are people who effectively transmit their ideas and dreams and made-up universes, or even their all-too-real stories, with the kind of language that stops others long enough to read what they have to say.  Some are more effective at this language game than others and no matter the style or voice, writers who ultimately stand apart are the ones who find the truth and write it pure, pure enough that a reader discovers a breath more about this thing called humanity.

As Dinty Moore notes in his new little gem, The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life:

 What we have is ourselves, and that is all we can really write about.”

Moore’s book is fill with all kinds of sage wisdom, dished out thoughtfully in 1-2 page bit, organized around a writer’s quote.  The segment about being ourselves is under a quote by Barbara Kingsolver:

Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.

After Maria Spelterini completed her first crossing in July, 1876, within a matter of weeks she repeated the feat with peach baskets strapped to her feet, then once again blindfolded, and yet again with her hands and feet bound in iron cuffs.

Sometimes I think I make the writing process more difficult than it needs to be, especially when I begin to circle too closely toward self-doubt, or some other truth I’d rather ignore.  I’m tempted to throw up peach baskets, a blindfold, shackles, or in the case of my poetry book, obscure references to ancient Greek myths and long forgotten gods.

It isn’t just writers who do this. We all at some time face a startling self-discovery with distractions.  We try to affirm that we’re still good enough, daring enough, special enough.  I suppose it’s easy to receive acclaim if you’ve got a high wire and an audience.  There’s far less fanfare for walking the wire of one true self.

One night, I dream I’m Maria Spelterini.  I pause midway in my crossing, the thunder of Niagara Falls all around. I leap, a scissor kick. For one brief second I hang in flight.

Oh—              the view!

With balance and daring,
~Catherine

p.s. Dinty Moore will be a presenter at League of Utah Writers Roundup, September 14-15, 2012.  Click here for more information.

Dancing as fast as I can

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My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.

Henry David Thoreau said perfectly what I would have said if it hadn’t been the kind of week it’s been.

Apparently “they” were right when “they” told me, “If you switch to full time teaching, your writing time will suffer.”

A bow to you, almighty “they.”

A vow to me to dance faster, faster.

In praise of brevity and wisdom,
~Catherine