Farther? Along

I've been lately thinking/about my life time/all the things I've done/and how it's been....

-John Denver, "Poems, Prayers and Promises"

Standing/On the rim/of the world/Holding back/Lest I fall in./Seems like/I've been here/A hundred years/Telling myself/Tomorrow I'll begin.

-James Kavanaugh, "Standing"

I'm a contemplative critter anyway; so with it being a new year, I'm pondering who I am and where I come from; where I see myself going, and whether it's where I'm supposed to be heading. Specifically, I'm thinking about my writing. Eleven years ago and change, I stood atop Tenderfoot Mountain, looking out over the town, and I vowed that should the Powers That Be allow me to move here, I'd more fully commit myself to my writing. After nearly a decade of living here, how much farther along am I?

This past year, I submitted thirteen times—a baker's dozen, read sixty-three short stories, four novels, and three non-fiction titles. I haven't bothered to do the arithmetic, but I'm confident I spent less than a hundred hours writing last year.

Yet there's a part of the story that these numbers can never tell. The latest issue of Colorado Central Magazine arrived in mailboxes, four days ago. I've already received two compliments on my essay there. Last February, I was invited to join other local writers and poets in helping the local independent bookstore celebrate their move across the street to larger, snazzier digs. I've even had writers ask me to do reviews of their forthcoming books. So, never mind what the numbers and my self-deprecation say, folks who know about such things regard me as a talented, seek-outable writer.

In her recent blogpost, Sam Heggan comes clean about still not knowing what she wants to be when she grows up. This is what I'm talking about when I talk about "where I'm supposed to be heading." I've touched on at least a couple aspects of this in previous blogposts. To be engaged in the Big Conversation and to be taken seriously as a writer (especially by myself). Another desire is to be an asset to the writing community, as a source of inspiration and assistance. In a video for Talking Gourds, Rachel Kellum, tells how she's been taken in by poets such as Art Goodtimes and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Likewise, another video has Rosemerry introducing David Mason, saying what a wellspring of wisdom he'd been for her, and in his introduction, Mason thanks Rosemerry for her assistance.

It's striking me, now, how I've been talking about the results of writing, rather than the act itself. Perhaps something to think, er..., to write about.

The Age Thing

In a recent blogpost, I listed reasons I envied a particular Western Slope poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. One of my reasons was her being six years my junior, yet already so much further ahead of me. Perhaps because I’m the baby of my family, age has always been a factor, a gauge, for longer than I can remember. Too, I grew up in Texas, sorta the South, where regard and respect for one’s elders is axiomatic. And even now, as I’m but a year and small change from AARP age, I’m still feeling behind, like the baby of the writing family—even amid those younger than I.

Those of my tribe who are older than I, nonetheless, at ages much younger than my current one, had accomplished so much already. When Terry Tempest Williams came to a bookstore in Colorado Springs for a reading and signing of, Red, she was already such a name that the bookstore had to hand out seating tickets, which were filled weeks ahead of her arrival. During the event, Williams had just the month before turned nearly three years younger than I am, now.

Here I am, on the cusp of half a century, with so phenomenally little to show for my writing: A dozen, maybe a dozen and a half, book reviews; handful of essays, several rejected short stories. Every writer I see is, or was, at least ten full years ahead of me. The latest bloomer I can find is, Annie Proulx, who wasn’t published until she was forty. (I was forty-three when my first book review was published.) Typically, by their early- or mid-thirties, a writer’s career is already being established, if not already firmly so. Reading John McPhee say he submitted to The New Yorker for ten years until they accepted his work exacerbates my feelings of inadequacy and having come far too late to the party.

Yet, listen to me, being upset and despairing because I’m not following convention. Acting as though I have to give up my vocation because I’ve become later along in my years in answering it. As though because I’ve had a late start, I’m destined, doomed, to never finish. Too, I forgetting one of the crucial traits writers and artists must possess: persistence.

Writing, like much any art, can be isolating and lonely. It can be despairing during the tough spells. It can seem an easier and better thing to chuck it all for something more sensible, more conventional. For those of us without a family or readily-available support group to spur us onward through the fog and muck, to remind us of our abilities and how the world is needfully hungry for our gifts, it can seem even more uphill, even more isolating and lonely.

Early in my association with Susan J Tweit, I was commenting how it seemed I hadn’t gotten much of anywhere, even after all my years of writing. “I think you’re further along than you think,” she replied. At around the same time, during a writing conference, WC Jameson pulled me aside and told me much the same thing. Perhaps this is where talent, ability isn’t enough. I’ve read Georgia O’Keeffe regarded herself as possessing mere average talent, but above average arrogance. Afterall, writing is the easy part. It’s the placing your work into the outside world that takes courage. Perhaps it’s something other than talent for writing that’s placed so many of the rest of my tribe so far ahead of me.

Where We Work

In the four-plus years I’ve known Susan J Tweit, I’ve coveted her writing space. With its views, its layout, its two shelves of books, its being set aside solely for her writing, I feel I could produce incredible writings. (Much moreso than at the desk I currently have crammed against my apartment’s living room wall.) Likewise, many of the local artists have long longed for her husband’s large and thoroughly-stocked studio, where he turned boulders into sculpture.

I’ve just finished reviewing David E Hilton’s recently published first novel, Kings of Colorado, for, Colorado Central. I was struck by Hilton’s seemingly innocuous placement of details, early on, which develop into resonant symbols or are the beginnings of the filo layers of the story.

 “Writers write,” goes the aphorism; and Ron Carlson says, “The writer is the one who stays in the chair.” Andre Dubus III wrote, The House of Sand and Fog, “in the front seat of my car.” Hilton wrote his novel, “mostly in his apartment’s stairwell just after the birth of his first son.”

That such haunting works have been crafted under such conditions should be a strong lesson for all of us—artists, especially; writers even moreso. What matters isn’t so much the place outside us where we do our work, as is the place we are inside ourself.

 Back in college, my advanced comp professor would listen only so long to our whinings and questions about an assignment until she’d bark, “Shuddup and write.”

Ah, but excuses come simply and readily, don’t they? And there are rational reasons we don’t give our craft the time and attention it deserves. But, according to Dr Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie, “Excuses are the lies we tell others; rationalizations are the lies we tell ourself.”

So where else does that leave us, but fully responsible for, accountable to, our craft? Me? I’m hearing again and again, Dr Cockelreas’, Shuddup and write.

No Thunderclap

Over the past handful of weeks, there's been a subtle shift to my writing life. Several times a year I do book reviews for Colorado Central. When I started doing so, four years ago, it was by submitting unsolicited reviews. It didn't take long until then editor/owner, Ed Quillen, gave me a stack of books for possible reviewing; and the current editor/owner, Mike Rosso, regularly sends me books after asking whether I'm interested. But otherwise, all my submissions have been unsolicited.

Now, however, I'm being solicited to do work. There hasn't been anything out of the ordinary happening, nothing suddenly out of the blue. These solicitations have each been the logical progression of what's come before. And once these assignments are completed, it looks like I'll be back to making my own.

Perhaps it's due to the dramatic tendencies of a hope-to-be fiction writer that's made me envision there being some specific moment when all in a thunderclap the loose and stray bits would toggle into place. There would be the one moment when I would be recognized as a writer, and projects would inundate my lap. Silly moi, I forget too readily at times that life in general, and my life specifically, is a stealthy turning, and that my realizations tend to be a while after the fact. For instance, while there was a specific moment when I realized I'd become a significant thread in this town's tapestry, when I had that realization I also realized it had been so for some time, already.
No thunderclap. Just the persistent slow alterings wrought my steady time.

What Have I Done?

Okay, roughly a month and change ago, I kinda closed my eyes and did a slightly scary thing, asking a local artist, Sherrie York, to be "my artist" for an upcoming regional library art show. For this show, artists and writers would work together: the writer creating a haiku, and the artist creating the corresponding/matching artwork.

Now, I've had several book reviews published in a local monthly (Colorado Central), and a few essays in a quarterly based in Crestone (Desert Call), but otherwise, there's not much for me to point to regarding my writing, other than scrawled spiral notebooks. Sherrie York, however, is a "real artist." She has folks asking for her stuff, asking her to lead classes and the like. And her work is phenomenal. (Hence, folks asking for her artwork and instructionings.) Thinking of asking Sherrie to be my co-conspirator made my nervous system crackle. Nonetheless, I had little to lose in asking, just my pride, so I emailed her.

She agreed, but you already know that. What you might not know is to what degree Sherrie has taken my invitation and run with it, to stretchy and experimental places. She's teasingly blaming me for "costing me so-o-o-o much money!" Seems my haiku has nudged her to experimenting and playing around with various aspects of her printmaking: inks, mica to be included in the ink (because my haiku uses words like, "sparkly," "glistens," and the like), and even a "baby" press.

I was honored when she agreed to join me, was gladdened to hear she was playing around and having fun with her "half" of our collaboration. However, I never expected her to go this far. Yikes, what have I done, this time?