Beginning the End

It feels a little surreal to be back to writing and routine after the craziness of the past month. As I begin working on my fifth and final packet for this semester – and final packet in CNF for a while – it’s fun to look back at the work I’ve done since May. More than a dozen new essays in various stages of revision are now living happily in Google Drive folders on my laptop. I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo – which allowed me to use my school writing as my camp project – for the first time and met my self-appointed goal. I’ve “survived” my second Michigan summer, which involved spending a good deal of time on the beach, collecting glass and fossils and sand under my toenails. I’ve learned a lot about Michigan ecology – both land and lake – and reflected this in my writing. I’ve learned a LOT about home improvement – and not just by reading about it! And, bonus: I’ve learned a lot about coffee and the importance of the gathering place that a locally owned coffee shop like Infusco can provide.

It’s been a good semester. Here’s to finishing strong… assuming I can find more words to write!

Up next on the reading list:

A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach – Loreen Niewenhuis

A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson

You Have Given Me a Country – Neela Vaswani

What I’ve Been Reading

One of the great advantages of the MFA program I’m in is that I get to read whatever I want. It’s approved by my mentor, of course, and he sometimes makes suggestions based on what I need to work on, but mostly I read what I want. Right now, I am more than halfway through the reading for this semester, and I’m having some trouble choosing what to read next. Have a look at what I’ve read, and what my options are for my next four books. Suggestions on which to choose are welcome!

1. Best American Essays of 2013, edited by Cheryl Strayed. There were many good essays in this collection, and very few that didn’t keep my interest. I chose to write about Megan Stielstra’s poignant “Channel B.”

2. Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard. Dillard might be my favorite when it comes to CNF. Like her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (which I wrote about here), this essay collection is full of her marvels at creation, observations of the natural world, and realizations that we as humans are a part of it. My paper focused on the short essay “Living With Weasels.”

3. A Pearl in the Storm by Tori McClure. The first book I read this semester that was a memoir rather than a collection of essays, Pearl is full of both personal triumph and the recognition of physical inability.

4. The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Philip Lopate. I’ll be honest, I haven’t actually read this entire brick of a book yet. I am still working on it, and I have finished the contributions of the American essayists. For my paper I chose to write about Edward Hoagland’s “The Courage of Turtles,” which is a sad reflection on loss of childhood wilderness and wilderness in general.

5. The Essays of E. B. White. White’s casual honesty and ability to criticize in a happy voice made this book my most pleasurable read so far. I’d recommend it to anyone who writes or reads. One theme I notice in my own writing is a nostalgia for things that are going away in the world, and a desire to preserve those that are heading that way but are not gone yet. There is a strong sense of both these things in White’s essays.

6. The Books that Mattered by Frye Gaillard. Another memoir, this time focusing more heavily on research than on experience, this book was useful to me not necessarily for it’s content but for it’s example. Although I was familiar with some of the books Gaillard mentions, it was his ability to weave the contexts of many books together to make a real-life story that impressed me.

Up next, these are approved books I have on the shelf (or in the stack) and ready to read, but can’t quite decide among them which to write essays about. Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit, I very much want to read next. It might even be decided. That leaves me with three more slots to fill, and here are my choices: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, The Gods of Noonday by Elaine Orr, You Have Given Me a Country by Neela Vaswani, and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.

Anyone care to share an opinion?

To Try… Or

All of the sudden, when you’re not looking, life decides to bombard you with everything your back was turned on.

Last I checked, July was just beginning. It was summer(ish) here in Michigan, and I had just finished my first packet for my MFA.

Now, August is upon us. (You may think not, but it has turned up on the date stamp we put on books checked out at the library, so you’re wrong.) My second packet is due, and a million things need to happen before the next one gets turned in. My family is coming to visit from Maryland, we’ll be closing on our house – which involves painting, tearing out carpet, and moving – and I’ve got to read and evaluate submissions for the Louisville Review. I also recently remembered that the deadline for that evaluation is also the deadline for my writing sample if I want to explore another area of writing next semester.

I considered blowing this off and just continuing in the study of creative nonfiction. I really love this genre, and I’m learning so much about it. But this is my opportunity to get some feedback on an area of writing that I have never had a professional opinion on, and that is a chance I don’t want to pass up.

So here’s to the next few weeks. Let them be crazy.

 

After the Storm

If you live in Michigan, or anywhere nearby, you know what a great storm we had last night. And if you’re anything like me, that means that your first thought this morning was “Let’s go to the beach!”

I like sunbathing and beach reading and lovely wave-narrated naps as much as the next person, but I wanted to go to the beach to find out what had washed up in the night. Unfortunately, because I want to get a graduate degree (I do I do I do), I had to spend the morning inside a really great coffee shop down the road working on a piece for my next packet. (Not really such a sacrifice, come to think of it.) Coincidentally, the piece I’m currently writing is about Lake Michigan and the wide variety of things that can be found along the shore there.

Because of this, I’ve been doing a LOT of reading about Lake Michigan. Everything from books about beach glass and rock picker’s guides to books about shipwrecks and Chicago. So walking along the beach today, there were a lot more facts running through my mind, and my eyes were looking for a lot more than just the usual beach glass. As luck would have it, this meant I found almost nothing (luck, or the dozens of people who scoured the beaches prior to 1PM). Caleb found most of what is in the photo below, while I hunted and shifted and dug and found maybe three pieces.

Hunting for beach glass and fossils is a pretty enjoyable hobby, and it helps that beach glass is far more plentiful here on the lake than it is on the Chesapeake Bay. There is almost always something waiting to be found on the lake shore. And after a big storm, there’s a really good chance of finding it. (As long as you’re not looking too hard – like me.)

Procrastination Problems

College taught me, as it teaches every student, to be a skilled procrastinator. Test? Read over your notes and quizzes during the empty class period before. Project? Late night Wal-Mart run and acrylic paint brushes in the RA office during the preceding shift. Eight page paper? Start at 11 PM and write til dawn. Sleep for a few hours, roll up and head to class to turn it in.

As I began working on projects that I come up with and enforce myself for my master’s, I somehow tricked myself into thinking that those days were behind me. Frenzy? Overrated! Panic? Left behind! Everything looked up from the beginning, when I started my first packet before even getting home from residency and worked on my writing predictably enough throughout the weeks. I had both books read (required reading, but I picked them out!) and my packet finished nearly a week before my deadline. All that was left were a few short, critical essays. We call these SCEs in the Spalding world, and they are tiny foes, only 2-4 pages each, on the subject of your choosing, based out of the books that you chose to read.

Yet here I am, days later, and still no SCEs on my hard drive. Did I deceive myself by believing they would be easy? Do I really have to go back to the days yore and stay up writing them the day before I must put them in the mail to my mentor?

No. I will write them today!

But first I’ll procrastinate by writing this blog.

P.S. – Has anyone tried out Camp NaNoWriMo? You can set your own word count goal, and you can write whatever you want, including nonfiction. The next session starts July 1st… anyone want to share a cabin with me? There are 50% off coupons for Scrivener waiting on the other side!

When Writers Gather

My first MFA Residency experience has been one of absolute joy and a profound sense of belonging which I don’t know that I’ve experienced more than a few times in my life. I am living and working and eating among 125+ others who are seeking the same thing I seek. Doing the same thing I do. Striving for the same thing for which I strive. Whatever the genre, the age, education, number of publications, we are all artists, working to improve, to perhaps some day perfect, our art.

Although it is only halfway through, I can already say with certainty that this has been the most rewarding experience of my creative life. Workshop every day. Lectures on craft and on elements of writing that inspire me to go out and live the way a writer should! Readings by faculty members who are brilliant. Purchasing faculty books and not knowing which one to read first. If a heaven for writers exists, this week must a peek around the corner, a tiny window, a door knocker.

Needless to say, the creativity is so pervasive one can feel it in the air, a physical energy, a presence that follows down sidewalks, into buildings, up stairs. If writers could feel this energy all the time, surly they would get a lot more work done. There is a love here, for words and for what we can convey and create and imagine while using them. There is a camaraderie and a respect in everyone for everyone else, everyone knowing that we have come here, together, from the corners of a vast country to seek out and strive for the very same things.

I walk a few blocks in the morning, two fiction writers behind me discussing the difficulty they have presenting round antagonists, the opposite of their beloved protagonist heroes.

I pass a group lunching beneath an umbrellaed cafe table, one reading poetry aloud to the other, who listens with interest and respect.

I seek a place to sit, be still, and ponder.

I feel incredibly blessed to be here, and relish that while much has happened, much is still to come.

A taste, for you, of what has transpired here, is this Sonata No.3, “Moon,” composed by Jeremy Beck – an excerpt of which I saw performed live on Sunday. Enjoy! And may you be inspired.

Embarking

The Workbooks are read, the assignments finished, the schedule set.

As I prepare to leave for my very first MFA residency on Friday, I am mostly excited. In just two days, I’ll be travelling back to Kentucky to stay at the Louisville Brown Hotel with dozens of other writers who fall on various places along the line between “just like me” and “polar opposite.” For ten whole days, my life will be devoted solely to writing, to the craft and the art of it, to doing whatever it takes to be the best I can be, and encouraging others to do the same.

I am more than a little nervous, as well. Some of these others are far more “writer” than me. Whether because they are older, because they are better, or because they have a published book, the imaginary faces of the people I will meet loom with intimidating smiles and firm handshakes.

I am also grateful. The best decision I’ve ever made for my writing was to marry Caleb, someone who not only accepts the fact that writing is what I want to do, but supports me in pursuing this degree, rejoices with me when new opportunities arise, and celebrates with me over acceptance letters. (More on these soon!) Writing is a lonely business, but so much less so living with someone who wants the same goals for me that I have set. And this week, less so immersed in a community of others who have those very same goals for themselves.

More than anything I am determined to make the most of this amazing opportunity! As confusing as things can sometimes be working online, when one sentence skimmed instead of read could mean you miss a VERY important piece of information that you didn’t know about soon before something needs to be completed, I know this program will be the boost I need to re-develop the writing habit, and to think of writing as a daily habit for a lifetime, rather than a monthly assignment for a class.

So here’s to new experiences, honed skills, and excellent wordsmithing. Spalding, here I come!

Thinking Back

Working in a library surrounded by page after page of information, one begins to wonder about things. The kids that come into the library regularly are always the same kids, and even in just the short amount of time that I’ve been around, I’ve gotten to know their faces. i know which kids are good, strong readers, and which ones make a beeline for the graphic novels. (Nothing wrong with that!) I know what each person likes to check out before they place their items on the counter.

As a kid, I was an avid library user, and I took full advantage of my library’s services. I placed holds and found them later on the shelf with my name and the date I needed to pick them up by. (E. Hemphill, 10/23.) I saw the library as my place, and I knew the librarians – which ones I liked and which ones were grouchy. It never occurred to me, however, that those librarians might know who I was, too.

Now I think back and wonder, did they know me like I know the kids who come into my library? Did they notice what I checked out and what I put on hold? Did they know when they rang up my books what my name was and what I liked to read? My childhood library was much bigger than the library where I work, but each time I place a paper around a book and write someone’s name on it for pick up from the holds shelf, I wonder.

I wonder, too, if of all the books that we process and place on the new shelf, one of them might someday have my name on the cover. We see a lot of books come through. Many of them are wonderful, but as many or more I could never bear to read. The thought all aspiring authors have flashes through my mind regularly –

If these people can get published, certainly so can I.

If it were only so simple!

Here’s to libraries, to child readers, and to the ones who grow up to supply the libraries with new books for new readers.

Pensworth 2014

Some of you might be familiar with the annual publication put out by the University of the Cumberlands’ English Department – Pensworth, a journal of student art and writing. Although I did not have the privilege of acting as a student editor this year, I think the journal looks lovely! April is a fitting month for the journal’s publication, for me, because even though I haven’t celebrated Poetry Month this April the fruits of last year’s inspiration made it into the journal. My creative nonfiction piece which won the 2013 Creative Writing Award also appears among the work of many other talented writers! Please enjoy!

You can read last year’s issue here, or visit my post from last April.

P.S. Happy Earth Day! Go plant something!

Constancy of Purpose

When I graduated and left school in December, my life became a constant swirl of crazy. With tons to do to get ready for a wedding followed by a 12 hour move, my writing habits were voluntarily chucked out the proverbial window, and the most successful and fulfilling months of writing I’d had in a very long time were followed by some of the most wordless.

After nearly two months without writing anything at all, it’s been difficult to get myself back into the good habits that I’d developed during my last semester of school. I have to keep reminding myself of all of the “writer’s truths” that helped me get into those habits in the first place, as well as some newer ones I’ve discovered. The one I display on my desk most prominently is the following quote:

The secret of success is constancy of purpose. – Benjamin Disraeli

I have to remind myself what my purpose in writing is, and keep the end goal in mind while viewing the path to getting there realistically.

Speaking of that path, my first story was published in something (just slightly) bigger than my alma matter’s departmental English journal! (You can read it online at TWJ Magazine.) I’ve used this bit of success recently to tell myself, “See, I’m a writer!” But now I have to remind myself of another favorite bit of writing advice:

Don’t be a writer. Be writing. – William Faulkner

So I am.