What I've Been Meaning to Say

There's so much I've been meaning to write, say, sing, dance that I've become overwhelmed and haven't written anything. Instead of veering away once again, I'll forgive myself and report less eloquently than I'd wished and simply list what I've been meaning to write, say, sing. Dancing will just have to stay in the kitchen, where it belongs.

• Perigee Moon 2012 - afternoon shadows at midnight
• Kennedy Space Center - a kid's dream realized 40 years later
• Falcon 9 Rocket - how space exploration has evolved
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - "the Sixth Borough"
• Holding one's tongue - think of how thoughtful that is
• How amazing silence can be - proverbial pin dropping
• Not holding one's tongue - dangerous
• How some words are louder than others - fireflies vs. fireworks
• Drinking Blanton's bourbon - sipping, really
• Baseball! - the boy's final high school season
• The beach - fishermen at 6 am, sharing bait with a wounded heron
• Reading hundreds of manuscripts - exaggerating
• Longing to read the story collections and novels on my shelves, and then reading more manuscripts - not exaggerating - Megan Mayhew Bergman, Caitlin Horrocks, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Lori Ostlund, Myfanwy Collins, Claire Keegan, Nell Freudenberger, and Shannon Cain are just some of the authors whose books are waiting
• Spending far too much time on unimportant things - Facebook
• Proofing galleys - and compromising on edits
• Discovering "En Couleurs" - les chansons de Feufollet!
• Writing, not writing enough - the novel
• Thinking too much - the novel
• Submitting stories - not the novel
• Coming up with a plan - at the end of each day for the next
• Heading into days of graduations and goodbyes - how to cry while laughing
• Summertime - the weather and the song

And that list is long enough.

Meaningful Mentors - Reverie 2011 - Day 6

Writing mentors in 2011—enough to fill an entire house!  Lee K. Abbott, Laurie Foos, Tom Jenks, Connie May Fowler, Lee Martin, and Nancy Zafris.  And I must include my fellow writers—Seth Borgen, Mark Fabiano, and Lauren Inness Norton—for their words and wisdom, their thoughtful remarks, and generosity of time and space.  Whether in workshop or in casual conversation, in person or over email, all of these souls have been honest and well-intentioned, sometimes hard-edged or even-keeled, humorous and teasing, munificent above all, for the sake of the written word. 

The bricks and mortar, the balustrades and spandrels of writing, collected from these teachers and peers into notebooks, scrawled onto manuscript pages, are equal to those of brownstones.  They include dramatic action, coincidence, the art of true suspense, the “two boom” effect, character arcs, compassion, circular narrative structures, inspiration, pushing characters into uncomfortable places, presence, cause and effect, and earned endings.  Memory, patterns, perspective, doubt, progression, found words, top and bottom stories, prompts, donnée, and the spiraling downfall of Billy Joe McAllister.

That I don’t easily sit down to watch television sports, that I sometimes ask the impossible, that I don’t expect an easy way out (especially in revision), that tenacity is one of my worst traits, and that, most days, I care about literature more than anything else—for these things, I hope my mentors forgive me.  For their love of all things literary, I clap my hands like a kid on Christmas morning.  For the way they’ve passed along that fierce love through honest edits and reference letters and exuberant recommendations of reading in terms of writing—from Dorothy Parker’s The Big Blond to Richard Yates Eleven Kinds of Loneliness—I thank them all from the basements, balconies, and the uneven corridors of my mind and heart.