How It’s Done

A little over two decades ago, when my becoming a writer was still a newly-borne dream, I read Pam Houston’s, “How to Talk to a Hunter.” I had two reactions: “Oh crap, I’m so far from being able to write something like this,” and, “Cool, this is what’s possible.” Currently, I’m reading Patricia Hampl’s, I Could Tell You Stories, and I’m having the same sensations of recognizing how far I still have to go, while seeing the world of possibilities opening further.

I still don’t write stories anywhere near the caliber of Houston’s, “Hunter.” Then, that particular story stands out when compared to the rest of her work. Yet, I could surely select any of her short stories and still see a distance between hers and mine. It’d be easy to get discouraged, to lay the pen down, and go back to being a French Fry Master at BurgerLand. Fortunately, that second realization also arrives. Just because I’m unable to do as well, now, absolutely does not mean I never will. Ron Carlson repeatedly states that, “the writer is the one who stays in the room.” He means they stay in the writing chair, staying with the story, rather than getting up for another cup of coffee, to look out the window to check on the weather, to go to the stacks to make sure some fact they’ve just written is accurate. Surely, he also means they stay with writing, “in the room,” across the years, returning day after week after month to confront the empty pages.

Due to my having read her award-winning short story, I’ve continued following Houston’s career. I’ve read interviews where she mentions much the same frustrations and discouragements I’ve had. Reading this, especially more than once and across several years, levels the playing field. She, too, is mortal, struggles with and for her craft. It also places the reins back into mine own hands. If one mortal can achieve such writing, then so can this mortal; therefore, shuddup with your whining, and write.

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.