Word After Word

On Friday, we don’t have class. But I want you to write. You must write. This is really the only way I will know if the class was successful.

More importantly, it’s the way you will know if the class was successful. For three hours—you have from 1-4 scheduled for this class on Friday, but you can do your three hours at the time that’s best for you—I want you to sit down, with pencil and paper, and write. On Friday. It has to be Friday. You can do this with your writing group. You can do it with your new group. You can do this by yourself. You won’t be alone. The Endeavor will support you!

And then let me know: how did you get yourself to the desk? How did you keep yourself there? What did you battle? How did you succeed? Email me. Tell me everything about it. I really want to know. I absolutely must hear from you. This is our class, it’s our last day and it’s the most important day—it’s your real writing life.

What will you write? You know what to write. And you know how.

You could K, write moon poems. Extend your town. M, maybe it’s time to write love poems to each family member’s hair. Put in some of the good, some of the bad. M2, tell the truth. Write that scene you are so afraid to write. Show it to no one. Just write it. Let it take all three hours. You can do it, I know you can. Rip off the band aid. Things are more healed than you think they are. You’ll see. Ch, write your life story in dialogue. Steer towards everything you didn’t tell us yet. Pay attention. Three hours: this could change your life! Cl, I want you to write that condo book. For three hours you could write, by hand, the book in miniature, the tiny key scenes that will anchor each braid. It’s the little developer’s model for the entire condo village, the village that is your book. I can’t wait to read it. T, write the shadow semester. By hand. Everything that happened these weeks of May that kept you from your town, that is your real town. Go slowly. Almost fall asleep. Rage is your laser. Use it to let yourself see.

For all of us, the goal isn’t to spew for three hours, but to make something, using focus, and craft, and power and what we know of beauty, and tension, energy, and leaving room for the reader.

I’ll be writing that day in my studio from 7 am that morning until 1 in the afternoon—that’s one hour, in honor of each of you, my fellow writers, Endeavor-mates, co-sailors. If we all do this writing that day, we could stir up a good wind, a wind that could be with us, behind us, for a long, long time. You must revise your life. You must write even though nothing is “due,” even though—especially because!—the teacher is not going to read it.  More than any other writing you do this semester, this is the writing that counts.

And in my studio, I will have seven candles. It’s so goofy, New Age, Catholic, and sensory and slightly dangerous, my house is wood—I love it. (K, I think you will like the candle thing… btw thanks for the beautiful prayer-card.) I will light one for each of us and imagine (image) our concentration like this light. Know that we are in this together. At 1 pm, I’ll blow out our candles and here’s my wish: that at that moment you are lighting yours. You are writing.

This is the parade from Cubby’s point of view.

When the parade had veterans, people clapped and Cubby barked.  Politely, just three times each time. “Very patriotic dog,” a woman said.

He likes applause. He knows a good thing when he sees it and feels it.

I was so happy my friend thought the soup was pretty enough to photograph! This is my Silver Palate Cherry Soup. Organic blueberries, organic cherries. Antioxidant brew.

I made it for a friend, Pea, who is graduating from Creative Writing School. What was the best thing for her? New friends. The seventy plus year old professor from the South, the kid from Kentucky who is in love with Sylvia Plath. Knowing these other writers, that’s what she loved.

And how I love my soup.

So I keep talking about this great class I have, how funny the students are, how stunning it is three hours can go so fast–such great writing, such good company. The best class ever, I keep saying. I go on and on.

Ron said, “It sounds like how you talked about the Pandas. Remember that class?”

I almost forgot. The Pandas! That was a good class. The kind that ends with a themed cake, presents for everyone, mottos and promises and photographs. A secret language, inside references and nicknames. We all had nicknames and dramas and we sat in a basement at Betty’s house and cried on the last day of that class. And longed for bamboo.

“What writers want is time to write!” a brochure advertising a summer writing retreat exhorts.

No no no no no no no.

They do want time to write but it’s not what is needed.  What is needed is something to bound the work, a Square or other Shape. (For many writers, the workshop itself would be that shape, but it isn’t about time, it’s about space. Big difference.)

Most professors I know (but not all, such as the amazing gifted ND, but certainly me) greet a giant uninterrupted block of time with a strong vision for kitchen renovation and a new proclivity for napping, blogging, Wagner, etc.

I can work today because I have in front of me fifteen pages, printed out, which I dragged along in my purse yesterday on all the errands—the chicken store, the camera store, the garden shop (there is a monkey there, Mingo)—just in case there was downtime, like the car died or we were stuck behind a train for a couple of hours, and I had time to work. I kept the file open. Literally. I have the pages here on the desk, and I know what I am supposed to do today and how to do it, more or less.

Sarah asked me so how long do you have to work to get a star? It doesn’t matter how long I work, only that I do my best, bring my best concentration to the book that day. It might be ten minutes or it might be thirteen hours. Time doesn’t matter. Shape matters.

It doesn’t usually work to say “I will work for four hours a day this summer.” What works is to say “Tomorrow, I will work out the sequence of beats in the Schulers bookstore scene. Then, I need to sort my cards again for the scenes in Part Two. If I have time (which means energy for more concentrating), I can start the next scene.  There’s also all the little notes I took over the last 48 hours—in the tub, in the car, in the middle of the night—and I can feather in those little bits.” In my books, I call this “Wake Up Working.”

Rarely do I feel I am working hard enough. When I hear N and

Yesterday, I decided not to work on the book—on purpose, with grace and fearlessless. I took a day off in order to play, do reiki on my face, plan a trip, make an elaborate Silver Palate dinner with my friend, plant a garden, brush the dog (I have a whole second corgi, a hair corgi, ghosting around my back yard, silently barking), read The Reivers out loud with the friend in moonlight with just a little light. It was a perfect Saturday evening in May in

Today I am finding it’s not hard to start working again because I wasn’t hiding from the book—I took a day off. I woke up thinking in the book. I am finding it’s okay to take one day of ten for intentional not working. But not more than that. Not one out of seven. I don’t know about you. For me, it’s exactly like any other kind of love, relationship.

Yesterday, even though away, I was kind to the work and to the author. It’s like my yoga teacher says, “Now look down, smile at your feet. Hello feet. Be nice to your feet. Don’t criticize your feet. They can hear you.” I’m thinking it’s good to be kinder to the demons of doubt and fear and distraction.

Today, after missing a day of it, by bloggin, I am easing back into my working. Blogging is my centering cigarette. And the Chicken Marbella is helping. My dear friend

Who?

A master of “rigorous noticing.”

“It you don’t consent to understand a little, on its own terms, what you dislike, your love loses muscle tone.”

Schjeldahl is one of my favorite writers and I’m loving his new book immensely, Let’s See, the collection of his writing on art for the New Yorker.

Some of my students complain about having to write about other people’s work (published authors and peer authors). It’s always, always, always the case that the best writers in the class are the students who work hard on reading—noticing—and articulating what it is they think about the work.

There is never an exception. The noticers have the cerebral six packs

I’m teaching the May Term–best class ever. I’m using my textbook The Practice of Creative Writing and we are all working hard, so hard, writing much every day. The class meets for three hours a day, every day.

Yesterday, we were going to run over. We weren’t done but we had to be done; I pride myself on perfect landings–I’m saying my last sentence of the teaching day at exactly 3:59:30, every day.

“We can go over,” Charlie said. “We want to.”

I said No. We can’t! We have been here three hours.

“No we really want to stay.” I’m sure not everyone in the room felt this way, but enough of us did. Making this the high point of my life as a teacher. (This glorious event–staying after on purpose–was followed by gorgeous gifts and a heartfelt amazing tear-creating thank you letter from my stunning student of four years, Miss E, and hours of good craic, well, Wednesday sure was a good day.)

Here’s a funny thing, too, which relates to Ignoring/Distrusting Praise-Believing Criticism, which I wrote about earlier this month.  I read the email from the director about the Balcones Prize (”It goes to a book, not a person,” he said) I immediately forgot about it.

I went on to other things. Later in the day, I scanned over my inbox and there it was. How could I have forgotten this, not called him? How can I chew over the possibly minor Wrong Thing I said this morning and not remember this?

We’re insane.

My book of poems The Boys I Borrow is a finalist (along with books by Ron Padgett, Laura Kasicske, Bob Hicok!) for the Balcones Prize. 

More information to come. Happy. I’m just so delighted about this and eager to read the winner’s book and the finalists’ books–I’ll post links to their work here soon.