Day Five: July 6, 2011

Overcast morning yields actual writing. Writing begets writing...stayed in night shirt until 3:45. Needed to dress for invited company: Jill, Dorland Colony Manager, and Scott, New Arrival & Fellow Writer/Musician.

Interesting to talk with people. Wonderful conversation, much in common, but after 5 days in solitude over stimulating. Where's my "sound of silence"? And then today's DRAMA: With front door open the late afternoon high winds tripped the 2 smoke alarms. YIKES!!!! Jill was today's hero and disconnected them accordingly, but Robert and Janice needed to bring the ladder.

FOUR PEOPLE plus me.....unbelievable the effect on one's sense of equanimity .

I recovered and crawled back into my reading shell--the one I'm peeking out from to write this blog post.

Enjoy tonight's (albeit backward) sunset in motion . . .

Day Four: July 5, 2011

Dinner @ Dorland
Uninvited Guest

Exciting day @ Dorland, Cottage #1.

1. Screen installed on back door (by Caretaker, Robert) to concrete slab patio. . . necessary, but took time away from my Prep Work.

2. Read and annotated 5 Trevor stories. If you read one: "A Happy Family" (Deceptive title). Time for another? Read: "Going Home."

3. Started another novel: Father of the Rain by Lily King. (Am I converting?)

4. Actually thought about new ending for Chapter Seven: "At the Door."

5. Had uninvited guest on concrete patio: A RATTLE SNAKE. (Look closely at photo)

6. Stayed calm and assisted Robert to capture the snake.

7. Had a glass of wine to maintain my equanimity.

8. Made dinner and had another glass of wine. (Shrimp Salad by MP, Salad Dressing by CD)

9. Composed tonight's blog entry.

10. Later, plan to scribble the revised ending.

I leave you with a JCO quote from her essay "READING AS A WRITER: The Artist as Craftsman"

"Because as fellow writers we realize we're not reading mere words, a "product"; we understand that we're reading the end result of another writer's effort, the sum total of his or her imaginative and editorial decisions, which may have been complex (111)."

COMPLEX--Indeed it is.

Day Three: July 4, 2011

Happy 235th Birthday America! July is a wonderful month for birthdays; my family knows—we have several. In fact, if you count one from late June, we add up to 207 years old. What does this have to do with my writing process and progress? Absolutely nothing, but I wanted to include it regardless.

Today I was like a house painter who stands on his/her ladder taping and cutting, devoting time to PREP WORK. Today starts my creative PREP PROCESS, devoted to, as Francine Prose suggests to "read like a writer."

I don't usually read novels. Like a "protein-only-diet," those who know me understand I literally exist on short stories: collections, cycles, sequences, and the hybrid novel-in-stories. However, my esteemed colleague gave me the novel Plainsong by Kent Haruf, and I finished it early this morning, after savoring every bite, and falling hopelessly in love with the characters. Reading (and annotating) as a writer, I absorbed a great deal about characterization, especially the significance of a secondary character e.g. Mrs. Iva Stearns, an elderly, frail, impoverished, hoarder whom the two boys treat with dignity and respect. The narrator describes her as a “humpbacked woman in a thin blue housedress and apron, wearing a pair of men's wool socks inside her worn slippers, leaning on her twin silver canes” (144). No surprise Plainsong was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist.

Tonight, I’m finishing a collection of Joyce Carol Oates’ essays The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art. In each of these 13 essays JCO discusses a different facet; however, she threads them together by emphasizing “a balance between the private vision and the public world . . .Without craft art remains private . . . ” (xii). Significantly, the essay “Reading as a Writer: The Artist as Craftsman” resonates the loudest for me.

That is why tomorrow I plan to start William Trevor: The Collected Stories as he is according to The New Yorker ". . . probably the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language today.” I will worship at his literary feet, as I've read his work before, but I don’t plan to read all 1261 pages in one day, but I do plan to finish this volume before I leave Dorland.

Starting tomorrow, I’m prepping with Will Trevor, taping and cutting my fictional walls so when I roll on the color you’ll never know where this author cut, pasted, or revised.

Part Two-Day Two: Sunday, July 3, 2011

First Hike

Day Two: Sunday, July 3, 2011

"Doesn’t every story begin ankle-deep in the sea?"--Eloise Klein Healy

http://www.eloisekleinhealy.com/

My first full Dorland Day I dedicate to my friend and mentor, Eloise Klein Healy, without whom I would not be where I am today--literally and figuratively. EKH is the visionary who created the M.F.A. Low-Residency Program at AULA. Not only has she mentored me through grad school, she stuck with me all these years, encouraged me to "teach" at AUSB, and now has supported my "isolation," and helped me follow her blazed path (in hiking boots) up Dorland Mountain.

Although no old cottage remains where I can burn my name into the resident's plaque along with hers, I will create another indelible way to leave my mark. Today, after settling in and embracing the silence, I eased my way back to story by stepping "ankle-deep in the [fictional] sea."

With love and gratitude I present one of Eloise's poems:

A TEXT OF BROKEN TEXTS

Page DuBois, Sappho Is Burning

Under every river is the floor of the world,
and curling downstream a beautiful ribbon
printed with the story
of where water comes from and returns.

Under the sea is the mother of the world
and from her fiery body islands appear,
spangled dots above the waves,
and begin their march away
from their birth ground.

From cliffs and shores, I’ve seen many islands,
sister and brother islands,
across a rocking plain of water.

Long sweeps of waves mark their beaches
like brush strokes, leaving a hint at the tide line
of a poem taken back into the body
of the sea time and time again.

Who speaks for anything? Who can hold
the paper or the brush long enough?
Is not everything we know a little island
set off from something larger,
a shoreline to walk while thinking,
while imagining?

Doesn’t every story begin ankle-deep in the sea?

The Islands Project: Poems For Sappho (Red Hen Press 2007)

Day One: Saturday, July 2, 2011

I parked closest to the door: on the left side of the cottage. Driving down gave me chills, despite the heat hovering at 94 degrees. For a moment I choked up, but swallowed my emotion to chat with Janice, one of the groundskeepers. It was the view: wide as far as my eyes could see, not a sound-remember the Simon & Garfunkel song "Sound of Silence"? The wind kicked up, Janice said so long, and I was alone, completely alone with myself.

Tonight, I leave you with this:

Countdown: 0 days to go...

Tomorrow is Departure Day, thus far the hottest day of the year. But more importantly it is my daughter's birthday. For those of you who have not given birth it's at once painful and euphoric. One could say completing a book is much like labor and delivery; however, my book's gestation has been significantly longer than nine months.

Conversely, one could say a daughter (or son) is a work-in-progress like an author's book. Both require a mother to nurture, protect, and love her unconditionally. For example, whenever my protagonist doesn't behave do I punish her? Of course not. Rather, I succumb to her wants and adjust accordingly. I give her unconditional love, protect her from literary rejection, and bask in the sunshine of her accomplishments.

Coincidence? Not exactly. July 2nd is a special day for me, and when given the option to start my Dorland Residency that day I said yes. 7/2 portends well, and based on tomorrow's predicted temperature may again prove at once painful and euphoric.

Onward!

Countdown: 1 day to go . . .

At 11:42 this evening Carve Magazine received my online submission. Will I win this contest? I doubt it. But what I did win a few minutes ago liberated me. For so long I've kept my work too close, like an overbearing mother protecting her child from the world. Now it's time to let go and put my words out there albeit into the virtual universe.

At the Music Academy's masterclass tonight one instructor advised his cello student to: "Do something creative [with the music] that hasn't been done before." He was referring to the great cellists who came before her, the ones she likes to imitate. He said her musical technique was exceptional; however, she needed to "smile" and connect with the audience, "Open up, trust yourself," he suggested. "Let the audience see something in you--reveal something about yourself." I fumbled in my purse for a pen to jot down his words of wisdom. I spoke of my masters before: I'll never sound like them, but I will strive to "open up, trust myself" and "reveal something" as I "do something that hasn't been done before."

I did start today: Sitting and packing.

Countdown: 2 days to go . . .

"Packed yet?" my friend asked. "Started," I said. Books, books, and more books. How to choose between Munro and Chekhov? Between Cheever and Updike? Oates and Wolff? If I were traveling by airplane my baggage bill would be a small fortune. But traveling by car allows me the luxury of not only a mobile library, but also a portable pantry. All I need to do (TOMORROW) is pack it up.

But before I do that I need to complete the revision I worked on today to make the 6/30 deadline of a fiction contest. Why do that now? Because I can. Because I want to. Because the process sweeps the remnants of this past academic semester and quarter from my brain. Because it sits my rear-end in the creative chair. Because I have to start somewhere.

So tomorrow you know what I'll be doing: sitting & packing.

Countdown: 3 days to go . . .

Is this what it's like 3 days before you leave home for college?: Eating, seeing friends, last minute shopping, more eating, more friends, and more piles. Do I take ALL The New Yorkers I have not had time to read? The hard cover books are so heavy, but feel so good. Perhaps I should have converted to a Kindle or IPad?

What does this have to do with writing? How does this relate to my journey -3days. It seems the rising temperature in Temecula is commensurate with my anxiety. For now I will toss all these ingredients into the writing pot that I have perched on my imaginary creative hot stove. Before I hit the road I will pack, but not now; there are more friends to see and much more eating to do.

Countdown: 4 days to go . . .

Today I had lunch with a fellow writer. This gal is so talented it's ridiculous. She had asked me for feedback on her manuscript and although one could consider her work-in-progress creative nonfiction, I read it through the prism of a fictional lens. This begs the proverbial question: Where does the line blur between nonfiction and fiction? To qualify as nonfiction exactly how much (# of words and / or pages) must qualify as TRUTH? Conversely, at what murky point does "fiction" (LIES) take over? For the answer I turn to my mentor on the page: the late, great, William Maxwell and his novella So Long, See You Tomorrow. This blurring—between truth and lies—informs my work. As of tonight, nothing is physically packed; however, the stacks grow taller, the nights extend longer, and the excitement knob on my internal stove is set at simmer.

Countdown: 5 days to go . . .

Now that I've committed to this blog I cannot turn back. Books, bags, and bedding have piled up along with excitement, anxiety, and fear. It seems the former should be heavier than the later, but it depends on the moment. What if I can't finish, then what? What if I don't? What if I do? I'll know soon enough and then you'll know too.