Category Archives: Story

fiction and other truths

Midwives to a story

05 Wednesday Apr 2023

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Putting your soul under somebody else’s microscope isn’t easy. But that’s what writers do when they join a writing group, a gang of fellow authors who hear or read the first draft as it comes in bits and pieces fresh from the fingertips of the author. First audience, cheerleader, critic and deadline monitor, writers show up for each other every week to perform all these functions.

A writing group on its best behavior balances a delight in the first draft with an ability to help tease out its flaws, helping the writer get to his or her polished final draft.

I got lucky in the realm of writing groups. The generous and talented author Liz Engstrom took me under her wing many years ago. We’ve been in and out of writing groups together for a long time.

But the last couple of years our little group — five then four then three as covid and other changes peeled folks away — became something special. Thoughtful, kind, funny, and, yes, critical but only in the service of the story.

This month we get to celebrate our fellow writing group member, author Paul Neville, whose most excellent novel “The Garbage Brothers” is now published, with positive reviews coming in and bookstore events planned.

I loved this story as it came to us, chapter by chapter. I loved getting to experience it in small bites. And I loved witnessing its transition from fine idea to powerful narrative.

I highly recommend writers groups because I’ve seen the benefit. Liz has a great guide on setting up a writers group, a format that we used for a long time, and still, mostly, adhere to. If you’re lucky you’ll find fellow authors as knowledgeable as Liz and as intuitive as Paul.

Oh, and do read Paul’s book. I highly recommend it, too.

Congratulations Mr. Neville. I loved watching this book be born.

My curious mother

23 Wednesday Nov 2022

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It’s hard to guess which of us was more surprised. In our most recent book group, Irene Palmer asked me if I had read “House Made of Dawn” by N. Scott Momaday. Happens I had, thanks to a literature professor committed to diversity in the literary canon she taught.

But hold on there, Irene. How did you happen on this literary treasure, published back in 1969 that won a Pulitzer Prize and established Momaday on the literary scene. A Kiowa who grew up in New Mexico among the Pueblo and Navajo, Momaday is credited with nudging Native American literature into the mainstream.

Irene discovered Momaday, when he was mentioned in a Ken Burns documentary on World War II. It turns out that Momaday, among many awards, received the Ken Burns American Heritage Prize in 2019, which honors an individual whose body of work has advanced our collective understanding of the indomitable American spirit. That’s Irene, she takes notes and searches things out.

I haven’t read Momaday since my college days, but I kept my paperback of “House Made of Dawn” among the books I couldn’t part with (Terry Tempest Williams, Willa Cather, John Nichols, Wallace Stegner, Tony Morrison, Edward Abbey…). But unlike the books from those other authors, I didn’t go back and reread House Made of Dawn.

Until now.

Thanks to my mother whose curiosity — always far-ranging — has lately pulled her into the realm of fiction. Previously, she has preferred nonfiction — biographies, history, philosophy, religion.

What we are remarking on, as we read Momaday, is the poetic cadence of his story-telling. It should be no surprise that this well-regarded author has several volumes of poetry. I expect we’ll go there next. Unless my curious mother finds some other path to wander.

Real world projects as metaphor

31 Wednesday Aug 2022

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I’ve had these director’s chairs for 32 years and the original white canvas finally failed on one of them. Since I’d taken them apart a few times over the years to clean the canvas, I knew replacing the old canvas wouldn’t be too difficult.

In the realm of projects, this was a short one and satisfying not the least because it’s simple and in the summer these chairs get daily use on the patio. A medium-term effort, bug screens for the van windows, took a few months. My long-term sewing project (a hand-stitched quilt begun in January) is two-thirds complete.

The varying length of these projects matters. Conceiving of, working on and finishing a creative task in a few days while other projects perk along at their own plodding pace, offers the reward inherent in finishing. Things that take longer — these middling length things that spin out of control because they involve unexpected problem-solving — provide the satisfaction of the ah-hah! moment when a solution presents itself and the making can continue.

They are like way-points, reminders that the long-term project, the 70,000 word book, just needs its own daily infusion of effort — solutions to thorny plot problems, taming of characters threatening to kick the book to pieces (a line I borrowed from E.M Forster’s “Aspects of the Novel”), releasing of the shy folk of the story who will unexpectedly step up to fix that plot issue. But it can only happen in the daily tedium of words going down on the page. Thinking of it in smaller chunks — this scene, that chapter, etc. — is useful.

And that is today’s little pre-writing pep rally.

Inspiration in an unlikely place

19 Friday Aug 2022

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Sometimes you queue up a rom-com because it’s been a long week and you pick “Lost City” because Sandra Bullock is fun to watch.

And you get an unexpected gift.

Her character borrows a slogan from the crest of the Ferguson clan: Dulcius ex asperis, Latin for “sweeter after difficulties.”

In the middle of challenges, it’s a reminder that making an effort has rewards.

Place matters

12 Thursday May 2022

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willcather.org

I’m embedded in “The Essential Willa Cather Collection” and revisiting my profound appreciation for her work. Cather wrote in the early part of the 20th century, and among many accolades her novel “One of Ours” received a Pulitzer Prize in 1923. I had previously read her classic “My Antonia” but I wasn’t familiar with her other books, short stories and essays.

This collection includes many short stories, essays and critiques and her first novel, “Alexander’s Bridge,” as well as “My Antonia.” Cather is known for bringing alive the Nebraska prairie and the immigrants who lived there at the turn of the century. I am in awe of her ability to shape mood through descriptions of place.

Here’s just a bit from “Alexander’s Bridge” where Cather is describing Chestnut Street in Boston: “Wilson was standing quite still, contemplating with a whimsical smile the slanting street with its worn paving, its irregular, gravely colored houses and the row of naked trees on which the thin sunlight was still shining.”

I hadn’t read any of her short stories until now and just finished “On the Divide,” published in a shortlived magazine The Mahogany Tree in 1892. It’s an odd, rich story that does that thing at the end that some authors manage. With one last sentence, the entire story is perfectly knit.

Everybody needs an editor

06 Thursday Jan 2022

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I wrote a farewell piece to a chef and a restaurant that closed at the end of the year. The place is just a few blocks from where I live. Craig and I probably ate there once a week over the last five years. Cozy ambiance, friendly staff, amazingly delicious food: It was hard to say goodbye.

Eugene’s scrappy weekly (slogan: We’ve got issues) published the piece, and it got a fine edit from Camilla Mortensen.

Lessons:

  1. Everybody needs an editor.
  2. I am longwinded at the beginning, essentially clearing my throat with way more wordage than actually needed.

My writing group can also be good for this reminder. At our last meeting, the first 600 or so words of a short story I’m working on did not pass muster. But the writing group can be ignored. (What the heck do these veteran and well-published writers know?) The editor of an actual publication cannot be. I confess I mentally harrumphed at Camilla’s notes, but once I made the changes I agreed with her. So, um, on that short story…back to the drawing board.

Being edited also reminds me of the overlap between beginner’s mind, where we are at play, and expert’s mind, where we employ the skills we’ve honed while at play.

Photo above by writer/editor/photographer/friend Bob Keefer. (If you don’t know Bob’s work, do yourself a favor and check out his web site.)

Impulse reading

03 Friday Dec 2021

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Browsing the fiction stacks at the local library, I stumbled on this collection of 1940s era crime novels by female authors. They are interesting products of their time, each story focused deeply on the inner life of the characters, and two of them told from the point of view of the criminal. World War II is a backdrop. Some characters are veterans, others are coping with the challenges of gas and food rationing, a thing I had forgotten about that complicated people’s lives at that time. In “Laura,” author Vera Caspary uses multiple viewpoints and a surprising twist on the mistaken-identity trope for a very satisfying read. In “The Blank Wall,” Elisabeth Sanxay Holding presents a morality tale where a criminal’s behavior has more to recommend it than the morally upright mother of two around whom the action swirls. I’m glad to know these authors and these stories. I like being aware of how narratives shift as culture shifts. Thanks Sarah Weinman for pulling these stories together. Weinman, whose web site is a great compendium of crime stories, has another anthology of ’50s-era novels that is also on my list.

A gem of a website

30 Tuesday Nov 2021

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https://www.criminalelement.com/

Found a fine website devoted to informing the fans of crime fiction. Its information includes looks back at the beginnings of the genre forward to contemporary reads. Here’s what the web site’s authors say about their goal: We are dedicated to bringing you a wide range of crime-related content—from the coziest mystery to the most hardcore noir and everything in between. We are publisher-neutral in our selection of books, authors, and materials for coverage and discussion.

I like what I’ve seen so far, particularly the bios of some of the early practitioners of the genre. Happy browsing

Power of self knowledge

29 Monday Nov 2021

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Every year when November rolls around, I have this internal argument that goes like this: I will jump in and do “National Novel Writing Month.” I will finish my novel. Sure I have 40,000 or 60,000 words to go but no problem! I can do it. Then the other side of my brain, says, Hold on there, sister. When it comes to writing you’re a walker, not a sprinter. I am ever-so-slightly oriented toward procrastination and pondering NaNoWriMo always gives me this energy jolt of thinking I can make up for time lost to day-dreaming, dancing, drawing and other things that keep me from the keyboard. I have done NaNoWriMo at least once. I have started NaNoWriMo at least twice. I would not dissuade others from trying it, and it is especially useful for those who struggle to get anything down on the page. But I do better mentally as the tortoise not the hare. And I am happily plodding along with my current project. This month, I wrote 5,000 words. I did not have the adrenaline rush that can come with a massive word-dump. But I also had some great thinking time. There are many people extolling the virtue of more deliberative processes (examples here and here). Slow work is my current comfort zone. So if you are someone who got buzzed on NaNoWriMo but didn’t get as far as you dreamed you would, take a moment to be grateful for the work you did do. Add a little cheery note to your “got done” list and keep on keepin’ on.

In good hands

21 Sunday Nov 2021

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Screen shot from Lauren Kessler’s web site

I don’t know why I’ve taken a few years to get around to Lauren Kessler’s excellent book about tackling one of the toughest forms of dance at a time in life when most of us are preferring to sit longer in comfy chairs. But I’ve become enamored with dance myself in the last two years, albeit a much easier kind of dance in the form of Nia. And then last summer I got entirely sucked into an additional more aerobic dance class that kicks my ass but has me smiling the whole damn time. So now it seems I’m at dance class three or four times a week, and maybe that’s why “Raising the Barre” caught my attention.

It’s a fine book about taking risks, facing fears, learning to be in your body when you’re mostly a person who has lived in your head. Also it confirmed my horror of mirrors. But the reason I’m making note of it is for Kessler’s writing chops. I respect the voice in this book, but I realize I also respect the mind behind the voice when she describes a ballet instructor’s efforts to get his students to understand what he wants them to do. Here’s an excerpt:

“Imagine a string attached to the top of your head,” he says, pulling at this imaginary cord at the top of his own head. His voice is soft, and there’s a hint of singsong to it. “You are being pulled upward even as you plie down. It’s hard to describe,” he says, silent again for just a tick longer than you would expect from a teacher giving instructions. “It’s this thing about gravity,” he says, smiling to himself and swaying a bit. “You need to learn to feel it differently.” … As I struggle with the movement and watch him struggling for the right words, it occurs to me what’s happening. Antonio’s first language is not English. It’s not because he was born elsewhere (he is from Hawaii, which, last I heard, was part of the United States) and English is literally his second language. It’s because he’s a dancer and dance is his first language. His body speaks it fluently. It takes extra effort to translate the language of the body into words. The effort, the silence, is him feeling his wordless first language and then searching for words to express what his body knows.”

I don’t know whether this notion came to Kessler in a flash of insight or whether she struggled over this section of writing and gritted her way to this astonishingly fine description. Either way, it was the moment in the book when I realized I was in the hands not only of a good writer and but also a fine intellect.