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A Comedy of Errors

Back story: I’ve been coming to Belize from time to time for 30 years. In 1989, there was no electric power cable under the sea from the mainland to this island. Electricity was supplied by a humongous generator in town that hummed like a sleeping giant. It shook itself awake periodically, knocking out the power, bringing darkness and an ominous quiet. Eventually the purr of the ceiling fan’s return to slow revolutions followed the hum returning to the background. We slept in a thatched hut at the water’s edge. No window glass. Louvered hardwood window slats.

An elusive boa constrictor resided in the bar at the center of the semi-circle of huts, and my young sons hoped to see him in the rafters as they took turns getting drinking water for the hut.

The streets (Front, Middle, Back Sts.) were still unpaved—silky, hard-packed sand. My 9-year-old son Chris wore a machete in a leather sheath as he climbed the Mayan ruins at Altun Ha. We danced energetic Soca on Friday nights on the patio of the Sun Breeze Hotel.

One Sunday morning, we walked by a man lying in the middle of the street. Flies buzzed around his closed eyes.

“Is that man dead, Daddy?” my 7-year-old asked.

“No, Zack, he’s just sleeping,” my husband said as we walked around the body.

Those were good times. The tiny resort was called Paradise and it was torn down when a concrete resort—The Phoenix—rose up in its place. True.

____________________________________________________________________

January 2019. Day 1. An island off the coast of Belize.

After a successful morning of writing, I took a brief walk around the resort to see what was new. Not many people around for high season.

I decided to walk south under the clouds for two miles on the beach and then inland to The Truck Stop, and a rare place that sells ice cream cones. Sea Salt Caramel. Set out north again, on the road this time, through brief showers that fell between the patches of tropical sun. Being Sunday, it turned out to be very busy with local families ripping by on golf carts overflowing with babies and children, mamas at the wheel. (There are few cars here.) I returned to the beach via the path to El Pescador after stopping at a groceria for orange juice, pita bread, a couple of Belikin Lites—and some frozen bacon to keep the beer cold on the return trip.

Remember Jeff Goldblum traveling with his dehydrated food to Ecuador in Vibes? That’s me, filling up my suitcase to 49 lb (50 lb allowed) with granola, coffee, canned clams, flour, Himalayan pink salt, spices, probiotics, vitamins and more. It’s always worth it. As a woman traveling alone, I prefer to cook in my unit most of the time with fresh seafood and bring what I can from home to supplement. It’s a continuation of the frugality that was so necessary in my childhood.

After unpacking my grocery bag and cracking open a beer, I had a successful session of writing and editing, and granted myself the guilty pleasure of reading a culinary mystery after dinner. Fell asleep around 8 or 9 PM. Re-awakened at 1 or 2 AM, wrote for an hour or two, then tried to get back to sleep with no luck.

I have a lot on my mind. Even meditation methods didn’t work. I kept tearing off my sleep mask to take notes on the thoughts that kept popping up. I know from experience that middle-of-the-night messages will be forgotten if I don’t write them down.

Took an antihistamine and when that also failed to send me to sleep, I decided to catch up with news online. Nevermind Trump. I’m leaving him to Nancy Pelosi. I just wanted to know if Green Book won at Golden Globes. It did! And Mershahala Ali won best Supporting Actor. Yay.

At 5 AM, I put out the “Do Not Disturb” sign and went back to sleep pretty much instantly.

At 9:30 AM, I was awakened from a deep sleep (…and a nightmare: Christopher Walken approaching my home, leading a Pitchfork Brigade, all carrying flaming torches.). There was a persistent banging on my door. I tried to ignore it. No luck. It was the housekeeper saying that my door sign had blown off during the night. Which way had I hung the sign? Did I want “Do Not Disturb” or “Please Make Up Room”?

“Do Not Disturb”, I said.

Write from Passion. Write from Pain.

When I began writing my memoir, it was a bonfire burning brightly, my fingertips hot on a keyboard that had never revealed my thoughts or memories. To anyone. I looked down upon my small-child-self from a bird’s eye view, flying low, watching the small child whose introversion was created by responsibilities and fear.

The small child ran and ran, never getting away, and the story ignited.

It burned tall as the trees, like the annual winter brush-burning that took place in our woodlot. We pulled scorched potatoes and sweet corn in twists of aluminum foil from the ashes and ate them greedily while setting fire to yet another pile of scrub.

The writing has been like that. I have grasped the fiery memories, explored the value of what stays and what goes. Yet even after several front to back revisions, and a chronologically accurate piece, I still didn’t feel comfortable that it was done. Whole. Meaningful.

It was accurate in a literal sense, but the pulse beneath the outward story was lacking.

I kept looking for guidance and have finally found it in the opportunity to study my work and the work of seven other writers meeting weekly since August.

I began what I’m now thinking of as a “Misfit’s Holiday”, taking the train down to Portland on Tuesdays and returning on Wednesdays after a manuscript class with Lidia Yuknavitch and a sound night’s sleep in the bunk room at The Society Hotel (Seattle Times: “Hotel Hip”).

We’ve met eight times with four to go, and man, I have grown!

The class series is called The Body of the Book and involves going deeper, going Corporeal, Lidia’s unique approach to teaching writing. It’s for eight writers who dare to go beyond the traditional critique models to “engage in collaborative art making.” (from Corporeal Writing)

As it says in the course description, after acceptance, participants agree to commit to “helping one another see the patterns at work in their material, helping them hunt for hidden metaphors, pointing out distinct rhythms and repetition and images, and supporting the writers in daring to develop them further, in the ways that other workshops insist on plot, narrative, and action.”

In a sense we are sharing the role of teaching and I dare say that, with Lidia as our teacher facilitator, it has clicked for all of us. After about four weeks, we were all in the groove, seeing those patterns in our own work as we saw them in each other’s, and you could see the growth in our pages. For me, it was the eighth week that was the bombshell.

I had set up a spreadsheet where I transcribed the notes from my peers for each chapter, so that I could go back and take another look at my work.

Bingo. Some hidden memories blasted to the surface. Other chapters fell out of the manuscript, no longer necessary to the overall story. My language evolved, advanced, grew. Paragraphs moved, watery chapters thickened.

Eight weeks in, I have nearly 30,000 words revised. Along with reading and critiquing 90 pages of my fellow students’ work per week, it’s a big task to tuck this into a life being lived.

I’ve been staying up till midnight—no— till one, till two in the morning—not wanting to close the lid on my laptop, and often remembering a better way to say something as I fall asleep, then sitting up to quickly note it before it disappears on the back of my eyelids.

Most importantly, I’ve gone full frontal “corporeal, in the body” in this revision and I’ve regained my writer confidence.

writingI suppose it’s not a coincidence that Lidia’s  The Misfit’s Manifesto launched this past week at Powell’s City of Books. My fellow misfits and I sat together front and center, knowing that we shared a special secret.

I can’t wait for Tuesday.

writing

 

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American Writers Museum

american writers museumToday is opening day at The American Writers Museum in Chicago IL.

Actually I didn’t even know that it was being assembled until page A13 in this morning’s Wall Street Journal.

According to the review by Edward Rothstein (Critic At Large), the AWM has been created at a “sensible” cost of under $10 million: its 11,000 sq. ft. are housed on the second floor of an office building at 180 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60601.

Since I haven’t visited, I can’t very well make this a review within a review, but I do think the concept of a writers museum sounds pretty admirable. Of course, as a writer myself, I found myself questioning the punctuation of its name. Should it be American Writers’ (possessive apostrophe) Museum?

No, I guess not. It’s not owned by writers, they don’t possess it, so it can hardly be possessive. It’s not even for writers, as one doesn’t go there to learn writing. It’s best described as a museum for readers (Rothstein says that “an earlier era’s powerful American writers’ museums were called libraries.”)

Mr. Rothstein, for the record, says “I wanted to like the result much more than I actually do.” The fact that his review is entitled “A Cliffs Notes Approach to Literature” hints at his opinion so I dug in. The accompanying WSJ image shows The American Voices exhibit of 100 (dead) writers. Rothstein finds a lot to critique/criticize.

Again, I’ll not quote his lukewarm response to the finished result. It seems to me that his review hints at his personal dilemma. He weighs the better and lesser points of the museum. I could picture him walking around saying “…hmm.” On the plus side, Rothstein does say that the AWM was “put together with care and designed with panache by Andrew Anway”. And FYI, The American Writer Museum is “the brainchild of Malcolm O’Hagan, a retired engineer who, after seeing the Dublin Writers Museum, was determined to build one like it here.”

I could say something about Americans not revering their writers quite as much as the Irish. However, that might be debatable.

After reading the Rothstein review, I sought out the AWM website. They have a lot to share at the museum, and a lot of it is interactive.  There are a many events lined up, including writer readings and signings. Ha! I guess we all know what the newest writer coup will be.

My favorite page is their Affiliates list: The Museums/Writer Homes officially affiliated with them. A long list is it. A bucket list, to be sure.

My second favorite is the home page because my favorite deceased author, Herman Melville, is featured dead center—I mean, “front and center”.

Checking out some other reviews online:

Amy Diegelman for BookRiot calls it “Chicago’s New Literary Paradise”.

The Chicago Tribune’s reporter Steve Johnson calls it “far-reaching, dramatic”.

The Washington Independent Review of Books tells the story of the museum’s inception in this 2012 article.

It’ll be a while before I get to Chicago. In the meantime, if you visit The American Writers Museum, we’d love to have you share your impression here.

american writer museumI’d love it if you’ll follow me on Facebook.

C’mon, you know you want to. 😉

Writer 2.0 Podcast

When is listening to a writer podcast as important as sitting down to write?

When it’s A. C. Fuller’s Writer 2.0, a podcast dedicated to writing, publishing and the space between.

I met A. C. Fuller at the 2015 Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference by attending his presentation on editing, and later, at his book launch for The Anonymous Source.

His conference presentation was excellent. I’ve dug out my notes this morning as I prepare to embark on yet another self-imposed writer retreat for a week of manuscript mutilation – better known as editing. …but A.C.’s podcast is what I want to share today.

Just a few quick notes to say that this writer podcast is just what you need to fill the space between writer conferences. Writer 2.0 presents interviews with writers, publishers, editors- everyone and everything to do with writing.

I’ve been listening during my treadmill walking on rainy days and, in addition to its valuable content, this podcast makes the time fly.

Example: Yesterday I listened to Emma Scott on Breaking into the Romance Genre, and Blog Your Book with Nina Amir. Besides presenting a concise interview on the headline topics, there’s always subsidiary information on writing and publishing methods that have worked for those being interviewed. Their personal opinions. Insider info. How to’s. Methods worth applying to your own project. Etc. You get the picture.

A. C. Fuller is an excellent interviewer and I guarantee you won’t be bored. No slog time here.

Podcasts vary in length from 20 minutes to under an hour. Do keep your notepad handy because you’re definitely going to want to take notes.

I’ve got to get packing, but do add Writer 2.0 to your podcast subscriptions.

http://acfuller.com/writer-2-0-podcast/

writer podcast