Answering

You don’t use your imagination. It uses you. –Wendy Videlock.

I don’t believe that people choose to be writers: the words choose the people; and they choose pretty carefully. –David Lee.

Hopefully, one doesn’t have to have been writing long before they encounter the sense that something separate from themselves is driving things. Some folks talk about receiving inspiration, being taken by an idea that won’t let go until it’s made manifest, of being called to their writing. If they’re called, then who’s the caller?

Allow me a moment to acknowledge that not every writer feels the presence of some outside entity joining them in the studio; and there’s much to be said against laying too much responsibility and accountability in the hands of anyone other than ourselves. But I’ve noticed that even the seemingly most atheistic and philosophically materialistic of writers will, at least off the record, admit to times when it feels more like they’re dictating or transcribing, rather than writing. There does, indeed, seem to be a willing (willful) partner in the game.

There’s a creative-centric bon mot, “When the muse calls, don’t send it to voice-mail.” Thus, I must pick one particular nit with what Lee says: The world is riddled with those who have chosen to ignore, turn away from, where they’re called to go; we do exercise some choice in the matter.

Likewise, as I said earlier, we still have responsibility to and accountability for the work we’re called to do. As Twyla Tharp noted in, The Creative Habit, “…but whether or not God has kissed your brow, you still have to work.” Being called requires an answering, and a taking of action.

When someone displays a particular talent that distinguishes them, we’ll say they have been gifted with writing/drawing/singing/whatever; or we’ll say they have a gift for whatever, or are a gifted ________. This gift stuff isn’t isolated, isn’t unidirectional. Our talent is a gift we receive, and one we’re obligated to share.

Time Enough for a Proper Mess

Recently, I attended a Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer poetry reading, put on by Western Colorado Writers' Forum, in Grand Junction. It was a small group of us who attended. (Well, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was also in town that night...) I brought with me, An Elevated View: Colorado Writers on Writing, in hopes Trommer would sign the opening page of her essay, "From Pretty Pink Bows to Chicken Manure: Embracing Poetry as Practice."

After her reading, I took the book with me when I walked up to greet and thank her. When she laid it on a table in order to sign it, she began laughing, telling me that in the four years since she'd written and submitted it, she's developed so much as a writer. "I read this [essay], and I feel sorry for the woman who wrote it. My writing is so different now."

Two years ago, The Paris Review interviewed John McPhee. One of the many things discussed in the interview is the necessity for writers to allow time enough to develop their craft. McPhee says he submitted to The New Yorker for at least a full decade until they finally accepted something. "And they were not making a mistake."

But this isn't what Trommer was mainly talking about. She feels her writing was too constructed, not "messy" enough. "Writing is not meant to be contained, it's meant to be wild and messy." That she would say this about this essay tickles me, for it's one the essay's main topics: the need for her work to be less orderly. And while it is true that writing can be polished and well-crafted to such an extent that there's no life left, (what Salman Rushdie has called, "a widespread, humorless, bloodless competence"), the reason we repeatedly revise our drafts is because they're not submittable, publishable work, yet.

So, once again, the murky middleground: Good writing is to be contained and structured enough that it flows, but not so much so that it ceases flowing with life. Writing isn't, "For Display Purposes Only," but is to be sent out into the world, living and breathing, to find its way, to find where it belongs.

Mutually Green-eyed

Early this year, I became Facebook friends with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, a poet from Colorado’s Western Slope. Recently, she posted on her wall a link to, fellow writer, Christie Aschwanden’s blogpost about envy. The impetus of the blogpost, oddly, was Rosemerry’s expressing to Christie her jealousy of her. That Rosemerry would have any reason to be jealous of another person seems so bass-ackward wrong. It ought to be the other way around. How does yours truly envy Rosemerry? The number of reasons is incredible, but here are four:

1) She has a much fuller “outside life” than I, yet still manages to write (and publish, on-line) every day.

2) She has a prestige that allows her to make a living from her writing. (Okay, the prestige is more than well-earned, but still…)

3) The woman is everywhere: conferences, workshops, readings, open mics, photo shoots, bookstore events and others. (See #2, above.) Still, I’ve never seen her look anything other than vibrant, hale, and hearty.

4) Finally, and most harshly, the woman is six years younger than I, yet so far ahead of me. Much more than six years, it seems.

In my FB dealings with Rosemerry, I’m sure I’ve teasingly called her a goddess, at least once. But the truth is she’s merely, thoroughly, human, with all that that implies and contains. Again, the seed crystal event that led to Christie’s blogpost was Rosemerry finally meeting her, and saying how she’d envied her. So much so, in fact, Rosemerry’d written a poem about her jealousy, which she recited to Christie, on the spot, when they finally met. And, in the ironic way life often works, Christie quickly fired back with her own poem, expressing her own envy of Rosemerry. She’d been made uncomfortable by Rosemerry’s poem; and Rosemerry was subsequently uncomfortable because of Christie’s.

The irony deepens, saddens further actually, because they each were jealous of the other’s writing. Full-bore, award-winning, nationally-recognized writers, each of them; and still, this envy. And it was mutual.

Perhaps the reason envy is included in the Seven Deadly Sins is because it leads one to discount, to dismiss, one's own gifts. To discount and dismiss themselves. And because it incorrectly depicts the connection between gift and recipient. (It’s a shaky, troublesome thing, separating, distinguishing the two.) The bumper sticker says, We’re all alone in this together. That’s what envy manifests.

I gave reasons why I envy Rosemerry, which I too often do, and she’s not at all the only one, nor the only writer, I gaze at through the wrong end of the telescope with my “green” eyes. However, I have talents and abilities which even Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, in all her magnificence, doesn’t have. Focusing on what I lack keeps me from furthering my own abundance. 

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring, 
...Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, 
and who more faithless?) 
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the 
struggle ever renew'd, 
...The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life? 

Answer. 
That you are here--that life exists and identity, 
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. 

-Walt Whitman

Necessary?

In the past few weeks, I’ve received both my state and federal tax refunds, as well as an end-of-year “profit sharing” check from the hospital where I work. With this influx of funds I acquired new and brighter lighting for my workspace, an office chair to replace a sixteen-year-old folding chair, a bookshelf, Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, and two fountain pens. Other than the compact fluorescent bulbs and the bookshelf, which made immediate obvious improvements, I continued waffling a bit regarding whether these purchases had been necessary.

It’s part of the suffering artist shtick to force ourselves to be spare and minimal. As a writer, what more do I really need than something to write on, and something to write with? I have a computer and printer, isn’t that lush enough? And as for fountain pens, I already had four in steady rotational use—and two more that weren’t being used. The metal folding chair was still capably supporting my butt, with nary a wobble or a creak.

Now that there’s been some time to let the dust settle, I’m not feeling so harsh toward myself. In previous posts I’ve mentioned how my writing seems to be opening up, this calendar year. The recent acquisitions seem both natural outgrowth of this expansion of my writing, as well as “carroting” the writing that’s to follow. They’re acknowledging the writing so far, and also coaxing me further still along.

It’s a cliché that writing is about keeping your ass in the chair. Now, I have a chair that makes doing that more tantalizing. I’m eager to be playing with the new fountain pens, and there’s so many good things regarding playing while creationing. And how can it be wrong for a writer to finally get their first “for grown-ups” dictionary? Again, an answering where you are at the moment, while calling you toward the territory ahead.

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.

Getting to Work

There is a notion that creative people are absentminded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true. For they are in another world altogether.  –Mary Oliver.

For over a month, I’ve been riding a surge with my writing. Every day I’ve written at least a couple of pages worth. There have been snags, mornings when it’s been difficult to sit before the open pages and fill them, but I’ve managed to nonetheless persist doing so—even when it’s taken two or three sessions in the same day to accumulate a substantial enough amount of writing: say, half an hour’s worth.

Yesterday, however, I wasn’t getting any writing done, and the day continued with me not writing, saving the doing so for later. Even when I knew what “later” was turning into, I continued deluding myself, forgetting that like tomorrow, later was about to never come. (Eventually, however, I did finally come to the blank page, writing this blogpost-to-be.)

Every day is a decision. Sometimes, it’s as though the decision to continue with the craft is made for us already, is obvious. Other times, we have to force ourselves to heed the call. Hopefully, on those days we struggle to keep on keeping on, we’re rewarded somehow: some imp of an inspiration metastasizes into something incredible. Sometimes, though, all we’re left with afterward is just the triumph of not having succumbed to the easier path of “tomorrow/later.”

I’ve noticed for years now that I’m on time for my 9-5 job, every day. In fact, I’m nearly always a little early getting there. Even on the days I don’t want to go to work, which are increasingly common by the way, I show up on time, ready to get to work. For my vocation, though? Well, note that I’ve stated half an hour is considered, “substantial;” and “over a month” of writing is, “a surge.”

For a job that I’m weary of, that I’m ready to be rid of, I’m punctual. For my vocation, my passion? Well… Let's just say I have miles to go.

Quoting Mary Oliver (again): If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.
Not to be snarky, totally asocial, but rather, to heed and honor the call.

Whispered by Name

In last week’s blogpost I mentioned being amid an upsurge of good things regarding my writing. One of those “good things” will happen tomorrow night, when I’ll be included with a gaggle of writers in celebrating a local bookstore’s re-opening at its new location. The writers’ part of the celebration is being called, A Rapid Fire Salute To The Written Word. Each writer will be given one minute to read something they’ve written. Here’s a short list of writers invited: Kent Haruf, Laura Hendrie, Susan J Tweit, Felice Larsen, and Mark Irwin. For me to be included in a presentation with any one of these writers is a substantial honor and blessing. To be included with the entire lot? To be among the limited number there are spots for? Well, even though I’m a skilled writer, I’m not finding words that do justice.

Perhaps one of the sorceries of small towns is that you’re seen for who and what you are, even when it’s still unapparent to you. Since the days before moving to this magical mountain valley river town, I’ve considered myself merely a beginning writer. And while that may be true, in a sense, I am considered by those around me as something more than, something other than, “beginning.”

It’s not an uncommon occurrence for writers to hold themselves at bay, keep themselves in check until they’re given “permission.” Typically, this permission is received when someone whose judgment carries weight calls them by name, calling them a writer. The irony is that this receiving permission has never been necessary, for the writer has always had it. It becomes something of a post facto realization—just like the fact that folks have been calling them by name, calling them, “writer,” for quite some time. It’s just been a little below hearing range, as though whispered.