Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Your Friend, the Swirling Vortex of Doom

Craft talk by Pete Fromm.

Pete fromm tells us in his craft talk that he keeps seeing stories in which the writer takes his characters only to the edge of trouble and then lets them off the hook. Pete says he writes to get to the place where things are terribly wrong. I really appreciated the fact that he used student writing before and afters to demonstarte how the scene becomes more interesting if we don't evade danger to easily.

As happens often during residencies, while Pete was talking, I saw a possibility for a swirling vortex of doom for the main character of my novel. (Yes, residencies are the riskiest times for my characters!) Pete had discussed various reasons why writers might stop short--they like their characters too much, they don't want to go through the tough emotions of writing these scenes. But I saw a different kind of issue with going into the vortex. How would I get her out? And even if I did get her out, would the reader's view of her be changed so much that she would be irredeemable? Wanting to know the answer, I came back to my room at the end of the day to write toward the vortex.

Friday, June 20, 2008

The Habit of Art

This morning's first craft talk was by Claire Davis. Here's my review.

You have to make a habit of art. No, you have to make a habit of art. That's what Professor Greg ( ) told Claire Davis's college writing class. Do you understand? he would ask them, getting frustrated when they barely paid attention, did the minimum work for the assignments or when half of them didn't bother to show up. Of course, they'd say. But we didn't, Claire tells us.

She has written the talk in the same way that she writes her fiction, revealing reality to us as if we've never actually experienced it for ourselves. And we realize as she's speaking that maybe we haven't. In a breathy voice that is almost sing-song, Ms. Davis takes us on a sensory experience of words. The word is smarter than we are, she quotes ( ).

Habit, she tells us, has some unpleasant connotations. Let us make it a ritual, whatever ritual it is that gets us to sit down with pen and paper or computer screen and keyboard and put words down, make images into words, tell a story.

Find the community of like-minded souls, artists, creative people and discuss things with them. Connect with the most primeval source of inspiration: the world. But maybe, she tells us, it's not any of these things that is what is meant by the habit of art. Maybe it is being fully present, in the moment, experiencing life, noticing the way the world smells and sounds and tastes and feels and how every color is absorbed into our eyes and passes into our minds. Be in the moment. Maybe that's what the habit of art is--living fully.

She suggests that we must get past the distractions that call to us in a world where our attention is being pulled in dozens of different directions every minute of every day. They are excuses. We all have them. But the writing is the thing.

She describes going out into her garden and absorbing it with her senses. While she speaks I am there, where roses grow around her door and because she doesn't have the heart to trim the vines, she has to duck as she goes out of the house and her screen door never completely closes. I am there with the green and green and silver of the leaves. I am standing in her back yard looking out past a field of grass toward the mountains. I am breathing the air of a place I've never been, never seen.

I know exactly what she means when she says, "What if this experience is here all the time, not just at that one moment? What if we just don't notice?" She compares the experience of imagining deeply to Zen. The habit of art is an evolutionary necessity, she tells us, and I believe her as if this message is written into my genetic code. You will never imagine deeply enough, she says, if you only see the surface of things.

I don't remember having gotten teary at a craft talk before. But, well... I know exactly what she means.

Schmooz and Cruise

We arrived at te residency yesterday. The whole Fab Four arrived together since Deb flew in at 7:30 yesterday morning and came over to Abby's sister's house to sleep, and then Linda came to pick the three of us up in the afternoon.

We arrived at our room which is just down the hall from where we were last year, unpacked and went grocery shopping. Then we had dinner together, each of us eating different stuff.

Deb and I are in the same workshop and we had arranged for everyone in our workshop to meet up in advance. There was already a social hour planned for all students and faculty, so we just met there early. I think it was a good idea. Now we are more relaxed together.

After we'd been there a while, all the other people in the program started showing up. I introduced Molly to everyone and I introduced David Long to two new guys in our workshop. (Molly and David are our workshop leaders.)

[Hahahaha. I can hear one of my roommates snoring through the wall. (I won't name names. She might kill me. )]

And finally, I talked to Pete. We talked for a while.

I felt very social, but I think it's because I had a purpose. My purpose (self-defined) was to make sure the new people got to meet everyone.

I saw Felicity and Mindie, and as it turns out they are in te same room only a couple of doors down from us.

This is going to be a good residency. I can tell already.

Today we start lectures. Linda said there wasn't that muc going on today, but I have to teach with Julie Rember at 4:00, so it's going to seem like a lot to me until that happens.

I don't know what's on the schedule. I think I want to corner --well, not corner, but yeah, find and convince to chat--Claire Davis. I wanted to talk to her last time. There was kind of a faux pas last time in that after my worshop session with her, I was talking about it in the lunch line and it turned out she was sitting right near where we were. I actually wasn't saying anything about what I thought. I had just said, "You should have eard my husband wen I told him. He said, "What a lot of horseshit." And at that exact moment, she and I looked right at each other. I was planning to go talk to her and clear the air, but she had to leave early and before I could find her, she was gone. So, I want to do it now and maybe she and I can come to a meeting of the minds.

My romom is all arranged and I have some books on my shelf: Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, and Robert Holdstock, right next to a cookbook about meat. (That's a present for Marc.)

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Portland

I arrived in Portland yesterday. It's cool here, in the 60s. It's very interesting because I'm getting alittle familiar with the airport and I know what certain streets look like now. Also, I am enjoying the smells of Portland for the first time.

Yesterday I ate a peach and almost started crying It was so amazing. I had forgotten wat a peach really tasted like. The memory was still there, of course, but it had gotten all vague.

Abby is still sleeping. She really should get up so we can go and do something fun. Go out out to breafast. That's what we should do. We stayed up last night reading our writing to each other. Abby has some great poems.

OK< I'm going to try to get her up.

Tomorrow is the fist day of residency, although it doesn't start until evening.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Off Again

I'll be going back to Oregon on Tuesday for my third residency. As usual, I am both looking forward to it and vaguely dreading it. I really don't like the traveling part of it, trying to make sure I have everything I need, managing my luggage, flying, being away from Marc and my cats. But I love seeing my friends, going to classes, being immersed in the creative atmosphere, getting to talk to other writers.

Usually, just before I go, I wish I could cancel it, get out of it somehow. Then after I get there, I almost immediately stop thinking about it and have a great time. Fortunately.

I'll be rooming with my usual roommates in the same dorm as last time. That should make it easier for me to settle in. It'll at least be familiar.

I'll be blogging the trip, as usual. Hopefully there won't be so many typos this time. I have a couple of new goals. We always have to do reviews of the classes we attended while at the residency. They're due within a week of the end of the residency, or we can turn them in before we leave. I've never had mine done in time to turn them in at the res, but I'm going to try to write about each thing I attend on the day I attend it. Maybe I'll do that here. I'm also going to try to make my reviews more formal and meaningful than I have in the past. I'm usually so tired by the time I write them that they are just a kind of fill in the blanks report of what the lecturer said. But I'm hoping that if I do them immediately after, and if I find some way to take better notes (and if I can actually read my handwriting--heh), hopefully I can write a good summary.

Every semester, a few well-written reviews make it onto the MFA website, a sort of advertisement for the program, and an endorsement of the student writer's work. Two of my roommates have had pieces up over the past two semesters. When I've seen theirs I've felt like a moron, because I can't imagine how they were able to focus enough to write such strong essays. So this time, I'm going to do it. I don't know how yet, but I'm going to.

The residency starts on the 19th, so I'll begin blogging after that. I'm co-teaching the reading for writers class again with Julie Rember. We're doing two sessions, but each one is only an hour this time. I'll write about those, but I expect it will go like it did last time.

More during the week.