Writer Conference Recharge

When the going gets tough, it’s tempting to close and laptop and back away. Writing is a struggle for all of us, and yet, if we back away, we’re just pushing The End further down the line.

This morning I awakened at 4:45 in a terrifying nightmare sweat. It was the first time my memoir crossed the line, jumped from my manuscript to my dreams. I was glad to see the light of dawn fade the darkness.

I’m that close to The End.

It’s been a long slog that I wish I had shared somewhere, somehow. Living these past twenty months in a new location, I haven’t yet joined a regular writer community and it shows in my insecurities.

Reading aloud, especially, is a great way to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of your work. Reading aloud to yourself is OK, but not as effective as reading to an audience.

I (very recently) asked if I could read a couple chapters of my work to two very new friends for feedback—one male, one female, two diverse individuals—two different chapters, two different occasions. It reminded me that there’s no substitute for the value of community for honest feedback and support.

It also reminded me that I should look for the someone who needs my support. We all need help finding our way through the darkness.

I’m participating in two writer conferences in the coming months. These are an opportunity to learn and share that I look forward to every year.

I know many writers wonder how much they’ll get out of a conference for the time and money spent. If you’re wondering that, know that it’ll be worth it. I’ve never yet left a writer event that didn’t lift my spirits and send me home inspired and recharged.

writer conferenceSome West Coast events coming up:

The Pacific Northwest Writers Conference is coming up July 28-31, 2016 in Seattle. Note that if you can’t attend the conference, you can still take Masters Classes.  www.pnwa.org/

The Magic of Memoir conference is October 15 and 16, 2016 in Oakland CA.  A specialized event for memoir writers. I’m attending it for the first time and it looks promising.  http://magicofmemoir.com/

The Northwest Writers Weekend takes place Nov. 4-6, 2016 at an old-fashioned camp in the woods about a half-hour’s drive from the Southworth Ferry WA (take from Fauntleroy/Seattle). This weekend is unique in that it includes workshops on songwriting. Bring your instruments! Great sense of community here. http://www.nwwritersweekend.org/

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Dawn on the 4th of July

The 4th of July dawns on Vashon Island with the sunrise race of the hydros (hydroplane boats, see wiki). 52 years running— a race to circumnavigate the island at sunrise.

People love it. Or Hate it. It’s a noisy tradition that I haven’t been here long enough to love, and certainly how could I “hate” someone else’s tradition? Let them be.

Yesterday, as I listened to the screamy high-pitched voices of a neighbor’s grandchildren echoing across the water, I thought: “Ahh, yes. This is fair enough retaliation for the sound of music that I periodically bounce off the wall behind me as I melt into my steamer lounge chair.”

The space created by a house with a bank of fir trees to the left and tall hedges to the right produces a pretty awesome surround sound simulation for someone sitting in its midst. I know for a fact that neighbors to the left and right are oblivious to it because I’ve gone behind the hedge to check. They hear nothing.

Those across the water, au contraire, are in the path of the volume. I’m more careful if I see anyone on a deck in the distance, but I do love the sound of music over water.

Maybe twenty years ago, friends had just picked us up from our dock on the lake in Arkansas. The dock juts from a peninsula into a narrow cove with steep-sided hills. The Corps of Engineers plan shows an elevation gain of fifty-five feet on the switchback path over a distance of maybe twenty feet on the map.

King—yes, that really was the name on his birth certificate— put the inboard in reverse, and the boat slowly—very slowly—came about. He had these high dollar speakers in the boat, and unexpectedly, he and I exchanged a recognition of the music and the hills and the magnification. I felt a massive rush of goosebumps. Full body music magic.

It was a wordless exchange. We were perfectly still. I watched as King reached to put the engine in neutral and I know that we both twitched our ears—figuratively—like a deer does when you surprise it on a path in the woods. Roger and Grace were in the bow chattering about some silly something. King and I, the introverts in the stern, were content to say nothing as we listened.

Heart of Gold (Neil Young) was playing—its lyrics of growing old were lifting to the hills around us with vivid clarity.

The boat—and the moment—froze in time, barely moving on the just-before-sunset stillness of the glassy water. Clouds were caught in the reflection on the surface.

For me, it was a flashback to the first time I felt a massive disconnect with life. 1971. No need to go there now. Those feelings. Old Man hit on it too. I suppose I thought it odd that Neil Young, at such a young age, was so simultaneously tuned in to the brevity and sweetness of life.

Recently I read an anecdote about Neil Young playing this exact music over water that made me laugh out loud. LOLOL out loud out loud. Partly because our only boat at the time was a little rowboat.

I want to get it right, so here’s the story—word for word from Graham Nash, as he told it to Terry Gross on NPR in 2013.

I was at Neil’s ranch one day just south of San Francisco, and he has a beautiful lake with red-wing blackbirds. And he asked me if I wanted to hear his new album, “Harvest.” And I said sure, let’s go into the studio and listen.

Oh, no. That’s not what Neil had in mind. He said get into the rowboat.

I said get into the rowboat? He said, yeah, we’re going to go out into the middle of the lake. Now, I think he’s got a little cassette player with him or a little, you know, early digital format player. So I’m thinking I’m going to wear headphones and listen in the relative peace in the middle of Neil’s lake.

Oh, no. He has his entire house as the left speaker and his entire barn as the right speaker. And I heard “Harvest” coming out of these two incredibly large loud speakers louder than hell. It was unbelievable. Elliot Mazer, who produced Neil, produced “Harvest,” came down to the shore of the lake and he shouted out to Neil: How was that, Neil?

And I swear to god, Neil Young shouted back: More barn!

Who would have guessed that King, not too many years later, would crash his private plane while hurrying home one evening after work?

We just don’t know when the music is going to stop, so we just have to keep playing.

Go there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh44QPT1mPE

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Writing in the Garden

After two weeks of getting the gardens back in shape, I finally climbed down from the ladder and removed my deerskin gloves. I stood back to admire the roses I had just pruned, gathered up my tools and peeled off the extra layer of denim that does a superb job of protecting one from thorns while having a full body immersion in rosa floribunda “Lime Sublime”.

That morning I had crawled around in the shade of a respected Douglas Fir, tidied the copper bird bath and plucked a couple hundred weeds that were hiding behind a wall of Digitalis purpurea. Common foxglove is labeled an invasive species here in Washington but I let it enjoy grandfathered perennial status in my garden. Who can resist gorgeous, long-lasting spires that are happy to fill in the blanks before a backdrop of charcoal stone walls?

Every empty pot from the greenhouse was now refreshed and blooming plentifully. The two packets of nasturtiums that I had picked up half-heartedly from the rack at Thriftway have become the surprise stars of the garden. They never grew very well in my other gardens, but they’re loving it here—as I am.

Nasturtiums have been my favorite trawritingiling annual, ever since stepping from the street into the bright inner courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum nearly fifty years ago. Their variegated foliage dotted with brilliant orange and lemon-colored blooms hung in a curtain twenty or thirty feet from the fourth floor window boxes of Mrs. Gardner’s living quarters.

I had a boyfriend who was Henry Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle. I was a naive farm girl and he, a tweed-jacketed student at a private men’s college. He introduced me to the Gardner Museum on The Fens in Boston, took me to dinner at La Petite Auberge and presented me with bouquets of fragrant flowers that filled the elevator with their heady scent as we rode up to the 8th floor of my dormitory amidst the envious sidelong glances of other bell-bottomed young women.

At home, we never had flowers on the table. With the exception of Mummy’s favorite lilacs in June, Daddy wouldn’t allow it. He said that florist flowers reminded him of funeral homes. Leave it to him to find evil and sadness in soft-petaled Stargazer lilies and pendulous snapdragons.

But my love of flowers grew as tall as the roses on my arbors. Here in coastal Washington, many of the plants are foreign to me. There are lots of new Latin names to learn and growth patterns to observe.

Best of all, while I’m dead-heading lilies or untangling clematis, my mind can wander freely. While raking up the fir cones after a storm, I can leaf through ideas for future writing. While cutting lavender to weave lavender wands for my dresser drawers, I can harvest ideas for an essay.

And sometimes, I’m able to encourage new growth by thinning out a chapter that I’m not a hundred per cent pleased with.

A little pruning, a little staking. Companion planting of subjects and objects. Like walking the rows in a landscape nursery, I enjoy searching for the perfect verb to complement a noun.

While kneeling at the edge of the lily pond and reaching to remove some fallen leaves, I see my reflection in a gmillstonelass orb floating on the surface.

I’m no longer that young Eliza Dolittle, but I still have a lot to learn.

 

 

 

 

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