Lois directed me to The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.
I don't read as much as I did before the MA. All that literature without writing my own. It's a burden. Lois is a literature guide, and it was in this role that she subbed for a birthing professor and found The Buried Giant.
I bought a paperback copy. Some things are not meant for digital consumption. Ishiguro creates in this category. So I lay down with the paperback copy of The Buried Giant, me spent from too much activity although I have a week and a day left on my ordered restraint from labor, exercise, and lifting.
Liver --- biopsy.
[Such is Rheumatoid Arthritis that it requires tinctures of liver poison to allow me activity which the liver then forbids after its being sampled to diagnose level of damage from the liver poison.]
Two paragraphs and a sentence into the book, I felt the rumble of dialog from the characters who have laid low these 5 years.
Faunt from the driver's seat of his pickup. Janie in the shop. Edgwin everywhere and not completely aware of where. The trees. The resprouted locust fenceposts to be precise. A resurrection.
I am writing. And it has been so long, I stop to talk process with myself so I can confirm later that it happened, in case it doesn't again for 5 more years. I make notes in the phone just in case I get lost in Something Important.
Something Important: I found that the domain is now available for AThousandWonders.com. Buy it. Mess around with redirect. Adrian home from work early. Distracted. Lawn work, Adrian. Drilling for concrete anchors for the hose reel, me. Supper, with a lovely kale, cranberry, and pecan salad with sweet onion dressing. TV share time. Early bedtime, Adrian. Writing about process here, me.
Not a word written on the book. But they are still talking in my head, and there's the thing about resurrection, and Ishiguro is real magic and magical realism in a man package. So there is hope. I am about to write. Let's see what happens.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Saturday, November 05, 2011
The Dust Jacket Blurb
Welcome fellow workshoppers from UTSA grad English Creative Writing Fiction class. Some answers to questions are at the end of this post.
---------
In The Creative Writer's Survival Guide, author John McNally says it is crucial to get your book's description down to about a hundred words that summarize while sparking interest. This is not useful only for the query letter, he says, but helps it get pitched later as agents, then editors, and publicists try to sell it to the next level. This is the kind of copy you see on the inside of a dust jacket on the finished novel, only there one doesn't give away the ending.
I have found it enlightening to try to do that as I am getting enough material together to finally know what my book wants to be. Here is my 188 word dust jacket version:
----------
A Thousand Wonders
1965—students protest, civil rights workers march, and feminists demonstrate for change. The music of the time reflects the nation’s mood with “[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction” and “A Hard Day’s Night.” Change comes slowly, if at all, to some places. In Tennessee's Chickahatchie County, 8-year-old Betsy Hanson sees life transforming on a more personal level.
Betsy is a scrutinizer, noticing every detail. After tragedy sends her to live with Grandy and Memma, she brings her visual giftedness to the tiny community of Bourne—Grandy and Memma, Preacher, SweetPea, Mrs. Nonnie and her nurse Circe, and a congregation of others.
From her perch in a white oak tree Betsy sees Bourne, but can’t understand its people at all. Her guide is nine-year-old Lucy Belle, who has a hideaway in the Negro Baptist Church. Kelso the mule driver opens the church to Lucy Belle, bringing more than just sanctuary. The two little girls have each other—and Kelso—for three crucial years.
After travelling the world, Betsy is compelled to return to write the stories of Bourne. Only after 30 years can Betsy make sense of all she saw. And she saw plenty…
----------
Since my book it not done, I'm happy to sell John McNally's:
Creative Writer's Survival Guide
-----------
Workshop issues that are not addressed above: A Thousand Wonders
The various "chapters" come from different residents of Chickahatchie County. The same person may be presented through first-person, third-person, or any other combination of POV and person. The titles will reflect a good bit more than you might think. Look for unreliable narrators.
What is up with the names? Elizabeth is her real birth certificate name. Memma calls her Lizbeth. She calls herself Betsy. People don't know which is right. There is plot in the name thing.
What is up with the writer and her travels? Elizabeth has been a lot of places. She has grown in more than just the usual ways. It's much easier for her to understand things now. She wants to revisit Bourne with this perspective. Elizabeth is interspersed in the novel. It will, at the urging of you all, begin with Elizabeth in Bourne on the first day of her return. Everything we need to know about what she did in the intervening years will come in flashback. How much of Betsy we see in Elizabeth at any moment is interesting to me. Wait til you see where Elizabeth lives while she writes.
In some places, people who work on farms are called farm hands. In rural Tennessee, the trope of synecdoche defines them as simply hands. There is so much in that fact. Mechanization had not taken great hold across the board in 1965, so there were still farms (of usually older owners) that relied on hands to do much of the work.
Both girls daddy's are dead. They are both white. Kelso and Circe are black. There are inhabitants of both and mixed races. Color, cloaking, and undercurrents are motifs, as is the tree, with its various components. Poverty of person and character is a controlling theme.
---------
In The Creative Writer's Survival Guide, author John McNally says it is crucial to get your book's description down to about a hundred words that summarize while sparking interest. This is not useful only for the query letter, he says, but helps it get pitched later as agents, then editors, and publicists try to sell it to the next level. This is the kind of copy you see on the inside of a dust jacket on the finished novel, only there one doesn't give away the ending.
I have found it enlightening to try to do that as I am getting enough material together to finally know what my book wants to be. Here is my 188 word dust jacket version:
----------
A Thousand Wonders
1965—students protest, civil rights workers march, and feminists demonstrate for change. The music of the time reflects the nation’s mood with “[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction” and “A Hard Day’s Night.” Change comes slowly, if at all, to some places. In Tennessee's Chickahatchie County, 8-year-old Betsy Hanson sees life transforming on a more personal level.
Betsy is a scrutinizer, noticing every detail. After tragedy sends her to live with Grandy and Memma, she brings her visual giftedness to the tiny community of Bourne—Grandy and Memma, Preacher, SweetPea, Mrs. Nonnie and her nurse Circe, and a congregation of others.
From her perch in a white oak tree Betsy sees Bourne, but can’t understand its people at all. Her guide is nine-year-old Lucy Belle, who has a hideaway in the Negro Baptist Church. Kelso the mule driver opens the church to Lucy Belle, bringing more than just sanctuary. The two little girls have each other—and Kelso—for three crucial years.
After travelling the world, Betsy is compelled to return to write the stories of Bourne. Only after 30 years can Betsy make sense of all she saw. And she saw plenty…
----------
Since my book it not done, I'm happy to sell John McNally's:
Creative Writer's Survival Guide
-----------
Workshop issues that are not addressed above: A Thousand Wonders
The various "chapters" come from different residents of Chickahatchie County. The same person may be presented through first-person, third-person, or any other combination of POV and person. The titles will reflect a good bit more than you might think. Look for unreliable narrators.
What is up with the names? Elizabeth is her real birth certificate name. Memma calls her Lizbeth. She calls herself Betsy. People don't know which is right. There is plot in the name thing.
What is up with the writer and her travels? Elizabeth has been a lot of places. She has grown in more than just the usual ways. It's much easier for her to understand things now. She wants to revisit Bourne with this perspective. Elizabeth is interspersed in the novel. It will, at the urging of you all, begin with Elizabeth in Bourne on the first day of her return. Everything we need to know about what she did in the intervening years will come in flashback. How much of Betsy we see in Elizabeth at any moment is interesting to me. Wait til you see where Elizabeth lives while she writes.
In some places, people who work on farms are called farm hands. In rural Tennessee, the trope of synecdoche defines them as simply hands. There is so much in that fact. Mechanization had not taken great hold across the board in 1965, so there were still farms (of usually older owners) that relied on hands to do much of the work.
Both girls daddy's are dead. They are both white. Kelso and Circe are black. There are inhabitants of both and mixed races. Color, cloaking, and undercurrents are motifs, as is the tree, with its various components. Poverty of person and character is a controlling theme.
Thursday, November 03, 2011
New Characters
These are some of my favorite characters yet. I love Mrs. Nonnie and Circe. I haven't got the whole thing, but they are so delicious I couldn't wait to introduce them.
It's been a good morning of writing. This is pretty fresh. I have only had one look at it. Here goes...
Song of Circe
Circe was the translator mostly. Mrs. Nonnie had lost her voice to a stroke as a young woman—33. Her husband Clovis left her after that, so Mrs. Nonnie’s daddy had sent Circe over to her, Circe being trained as a nurse and all. People would have said that Circe was Mrs. Nonnie’s maid or housekeeper. Folks thought like that. What Mrs. Nonnie really thought? Who knew, since she only made sounds like whale squeals? Mrs. Nonnie could whistle, not a tune, but a couple of tones. She could make a sound like a high-pitched duck by sucking on her cheek. Her larynx and vocal cords were intact, but the stroke had left the muscles in her mouth slack and unresponsive. But Circe could understand most everything that would come up. Early on, they had worked with Circe saying words and Mrs. Nonnie repeating them until she had as much use as she was going to have out her lips and tongue. After 20 years, Circe understood Mrs. Nonnie’s new language as well as she knew English and French. Circe had a knack for language that had come in handy. Nursing was practical. It was something that didn’t shock white people to see black hands wiping noses and adjusting pillows, tending to their patients as their ancestors done for generations of owners, then employers.
***
Mr. Frankline put the documents in front of Mrs. Nonnie. He knew she would be able to make her mark and so would need to have several witnesses, none of whom were involved in the transaction to say that the squiggle was indeed put there by Mrs. Nonnie and not Mr. Frankline.
“Ma’am, I’ll be right back. I need to round up some witnesses for the signature.”
Mrs. Nonnie flapped her left hand and mumbled. Circe handed her the stack of documents, and Mrs. Nonnie fumbled with them.
Circe heard the manager hustling two customers into the room. A large farmer entered to stand by the wall. He squeezed his gray fedora, and held his elbows in close to the dress shirt he had probably put on just for the bank trip. Everything about him said farmer, despite the crispness of his shirt. His companion was sharply dressed, and he immediately lounged in the only chair available.
A woman called out to Mr. Frankline. He poked his head in the door. “You all hold on a minute. I got to attend to something out here.” He hissed words to the teller who had summoned him. His words faded.
Circe handed a handkerchief to Mrs. Nonnie, who had a perpetually drippy nose. Often a little pearl of clear fluid would hang on the tip. Circe kept handkerchiefs, Vicks cough drops, lip balm, and other sundries in a woven bag. Mrs. Nonnie couldn’t handle a purse.
Mrs. Nonnie swiped at her nose with her right hand, and the papers slipped a bit in her lap. Circe stopped them from falling and took the handkerchief from Mrs. Nonnie’s fluttering fingers.
Mr. Frankline arrived back in the room. “Well, now. We have our witnesses. Mrs. Nonnie, this is Frank Lisle and Mr. Larry Jones from down at Clarion’s Department Store.”
Mrs. Nonnie flapped her right hand in their direction and moaned a sound. Circe took the papers to keep them from falling.
The men nodded their greeting. Mr. Frankline continued, “Now, you men are here to witness this fine lady’s signature on some important documents. We have to take good care of Mrs. Nonnie. Why, her daddy was the finest farmer in this county.” Mr. Frankline posed and bustled about between his customer and the witnesses. “You boys heard of Mr. John Cuthbert, I’d imagine. No. Well, you wouldn’t, Larry. You haven’t been here so long. He was a fine man, and Mrs. Nonnie is one of our cherished citizens.” He returned to his chair behind the desk, smoothing his Brylcreemed hair.
Mrs. Nonnie chirped and clicked.
“Now, let’s get these papers signed, what say?” Mr. Frankline looked reached into his inner suit pocket, brought out a fine Mont Blanc fountain pen, and uncapped it as though he were about to sprinkle holy water from its rich interior.
Circe slipped the papers quickly back into Mrs. Nonnie’s lap and with one movement, pinched Mrs. Nonnie hard on the outside of her thigh.
Mrs. Nonnie erupted in a string of whines and snorts, slapping at the papers and Circe’s hand.
“What in the world? Why, Mrs. Nonnie…” Mr. Frankline hopped to his feet.
Circe bent down and looked deeply into Mrs. Nonnie’s face. Mrs. Nonnie flapped at Circe’s arm, hardly disturbing the fabric of Circe’s green sweater.
“Mrs. Nonnie, you mean the papers?” Circe asked. Circe turned to the banker. “She says something about these here papers and a rat or a rate or something.” Circe turned back to Mrs. Nonnie, who was wailing and singing away. “Mrs. Nonnie, where you mean? Here?” Circe pointed to the paper. “Here, you mean? This here number?” Circe pointed to the paper in the same spot.
Mrs. Nonnie stopped her moans and clicks and looked hard where Circe was pointing. She snatched the papers from her own lap with her best hand and swung them in an arc in front of the banker’s desk. She chirped and growled for a long time.
“Mr. Frankline, sir, Mrs. Nonnie, she say this here paper got a mistake on it in some kind of rate. I think she mean this here figure.” Circe drew in her shoulders and dropped her head a bit as she pointed to the rate of interest paid to the depositor.
Mr. Frankline jowls reddened in blotches. “Well, let me see. A mistake. Why, I don’t know.” He took the papers. Mrs. Nonnie squealed and clicked. The banker’s face caught the red glow from his fleshy neck and spread it up towards his hairline as though the shame of his being caught was shining for all in the room to see. He cleared his throat and tugged at his collar, which bit into the ample scarlet fat roll in a more pronounced way for the comparison to his white shirt.
“Mrs. Nonnie. I do see the error here. I am deeply ashamed that our clerk has made such a terrible mistake. I’ll see to him, I promise. Now, hmmm, uh. I will have to go out to get this fixed right quick. I get Sarah to bring ya’ll in some coffee.”
Mrs. Nonnie grunted and licked her mouth.
Circe reached into her bag for a Chapstick. “Mrs. Nonnie has had all her coffee for the day. She say she would like a cool glass of water though.”
Mrs. Nonnie snorted.
“Well, I will have that brought right in. Gentlemen, if you can wait?”
The two witnesses didn’t move. The farmer’s eyes were big and round, his head sweeping the room to record all that he was seeing.
Mr. Jones pursed his lips and lounged deeper into the chair. “I’m glad to stay to help out Mrs. Nonnie.”
Mrs. Nonnie stuck her tongue out as Circe applied the lip balm to her patient’s tissue-thin lips.
The rest of the visit passed unremarkably as Mr. Frankline expedited the typing of another paper with the larger interest rate. Sarah bustled about in a tight brown pencil skirt topped by a beige sweater set. The bend of her hips as she set the coffee tray on the desk for the witnesses caused the only momentary excitement as Mr. Jones—why thank you, Sarah, my name is Larry—sat up straighter and brushed his stubby fingers against the receptionist’s long white ones.
Mrs. Nonnie turned her head towards Circe at the sight of that and rolled her eyes. Circe turned to hide a grin, smoothing her short groomed black hair and scratching absently at her neck. Mrs. Nonnie snorted.
Later, after an apologetic Mr. Frankline had helped settle Mrs. Nonnie into her Plymouth Belvedere sedan, he firmly closed the door with both hands, still mumbling goodbyes. Circe got behind the wheel and watched the big banker wipe his neck with a handkerchief as he returned to the bank.
Mrs. Nonnie whistled, snorted, and whined.
Circe put the car into gear and backed out. “You would have seen it when you signed.”
Mrs. Nonnie snorted and flapped her bad left hand wildly toward Circe.
“Well, I was afraid he would cover it up with his big paws.”
Mrs. Nonnie sniffed and sang. She waited. Then she whined out her first clear word in two weeks, “Why?”
“You know very well why.” Circe cut her eyes momentarily at her patient as she glanced both ways at the stop sign on Walnut. “He couldn’t hear me if I spoke in any other way. His ears can’t process intelligent words from a woman, especially a Negro. Besides, I don’t want him to think you are non compos mentis.”
Mrs. Nonnie clicked, snorted, and puffed.
“Well, since I’m the only one who can understand you, you’ll always be in your right mind. At least, as long as I’m in mine.” Circe smiled.
Mrs. Nonnie leered a big drippy grin and nodded her head.
With one hand, Circe fished out the handkerchief from her bag. “Here, dribbling is not helping your case.”
Mrs. Nonnie whistled.
It's been a good morning of writing. This is pretty fresh. I have only had one look at it. Here goes...
Song of Circe
Circe was the translator mostly. Mrs. Nonnie had lost her voice to a stroke as a young woman—33. Her husband Clovis left her after that, so Mrs. Nonnie’s daddy had sent Circe over to her, Circe being trained as a nurse and all. People would have said that Circe was Mrs. Nonnie’s maid or housekeeper. Folks thought like that. What Mrs. Nonnie really thought? Who knew, since she only made sounds like whale squeals? Mrs. Nonnie could whistle, not a tune, but a couple of tones. She could make a sound like a high-pitched duck by sucking on her cheek. Her larynx and vocal cords were intact, but the stroke had left the muscles in her mouth slack and unresponsive. But Circe could understand most everything that would come up. Early on, they had worked with Circe saying words and Mrs. Nonnie repeating them until she had as much use as she was going to have out her lips and tongue. After 20 years, Circe understood Mrs. Nonnie’s new language as well as she knew English and French. Circe had a knack for language that had come in handy. Nursing was practical. It was something that didn’t shock white people to see black hands wiping noses and adjusting pillows, tending to their patients as their ancestors done for generations of owners, then employers.
***
Mr. Frankline put the documents in front of Mrs. Nonnie. He knew she would be able to make her mark and so would need to have several witnesses, none of whom were involved in the transaction to say that the squiggle was indeed put there by Mrs. Nonnie and not Mr. Frankline.
“Ma’am, I’ll be right back. I need to round up some witnesses for the signature.”
Mrs. Nonnie flapped her left hand and mumbled. Circe handed her the stack of documents, and Mrs. Nonnie fumbled with them.
Circe heard the manager hustling two customers into the room. A large farmer entered to stand by the wall. He squeezed his gray fedora, and held his elbows in close to the dress shirt he had probably put on just for the bank trip. Everything about him said farmer, despite the crispness of his shirt. His companion was sharply dressed, and he immediately lounged in the only chair available.
A woman called out to Mr. Frankline. He poked his head in the door. “You all hold on a minute. I got to attend to something out here.” He hissed words to the teller who had summoned him. His words faded.
Circe handed a handkerchief to Mrs. Nonnie, who had a perpetually drippy nose. Often a little pearl of clear fluid would hang on the tip. Circe kept handkerchiefs, Vicks cough drops, lip balm, and other sundries in a woven bag. Mrs. Nonnie couldn’t handle a purse.
Mrs. Nonnie swiped at her nose with her right hand, and the papers slipped a bit in her lap. Circe stopped them from falling and took the handkerchief from Mrs. Nonnie’s fluttering fingers.
Mr. Frankline arrived back in the room. “Well, now. We have our witnesses. Mrs. Nonnie, this is Frank Lisle and Mr. Larry Jones from down at Clarion’s Department Store.”
Mrs. Nonnie flapped her right hand in their direction and moaned a sound. Circe took the papers to keep them from falling.
The men nodded their greeting. Mr. Frankline continued, “Now, you men are here to witness this fine lady’s signature on some important documents. We have to take good care of Mrs. Nonnie. Why, her daddy was the finest farmer in this county.” Mr. Frankline posed and bustled about between his customer and the witnesses. “You boys heard of Mr. John Cuthbert, I’d imagine. No. Well, you wouldn’t, Larry. You haven’t been here so long. He was a fine man, and Mrs. Nonnie is one of our cherished citizens.” He returned to his chair behind the desk, smoothing his Brylcreemed hair.
Mrs. Nonnie chirped and clicked.
“Now, let’s get these papers signed, what say?” Mr. Frankline looked reached into his inner suit pocket, brought out a fine Mont Blanc fountain pen, and uncapped it as though he were about to sprinkle holy water from its rich interior.
Circe slipped the papers quickly back into Mrs. Nonnie’s lap and with one movement, pinched Mrs. Nonnie hard on the outside of her thigh.
Mrs. Nonnie erupted in a string of whines and snorts, slapping at the papers and Circe’s hand.
“What in the world? Why, Mrs. Nonnie…” Mr. Frankline hopped to his feet.
Circe bent down and looked deeply into Mrs. Nonnie’s face. Mrs. Nonnie flapped at Circe’s arm, hardly disturbing the fabric of Circe’s green sweater.
“Mrs. Nonnie, you mean the papers?” Circe asked. Circe turned to the banker. “She says something about these here papers and a rat or a rate or something.” Circe turned back to Mrs. Nonnie, who was wailing and singing away. “Mrs. Nonnie, where you mean? Here?” Circe pointed to the paper. “Here, you mean? This here number?” Circe pointed to the paper in the same spot.
Mrs. Nonnie stopped her moans and clicks and looked hard where Circe was pointing. She snatched the papers from her own lap with her best hand and swung them in an arc in front of the banker’s desk. She chirped and growled for a long time.
“Mr. Frankline, sir, Mrs. Nonnie, she say this here paper got a mistake on it in some kind of rate. I think she mean this here figure.” Circe drew in her shoulders and dropped her head a bit as she pointed to the rate of interest paid to the depositor.
Mr. Frankline jowls reddened in blotches. “Well, let me see. A mistake. Why, I don’t know.” He took the papers. Mrs. Nonnie squealed and clicked. The banker’s face caught the red glow from his fleshy neck and spread it up towards his hairline as though the shame of his being caught was shining for all in the room to see. He cleared his throat and tugged at his collar, which bit into the ample scarlet fat roll in a more pronounced way for the comparison to his white shirt.
“Mrs. Nonnie. I do see the error here. I am deeply ashamed that our clerk has made such a terrible mistake. I’ll see to him, I promise. Now, hmmm, uh. I will have to go out to get this fixed right quick. I get Sarah to bring ya’ll in some coffee.”
Mrs. Nonnie grunted and licked her mouth.
Circe reached into her bag for a Chapstick. “Mrs. Nonnie has had all her coffee for the day. She say she would like a cool glass of water though.”
Mrs. Nonnie snorted.
“Well, I will have that brought right in. Gentlemen, if you can wait?”
The two witnesses didn’t move. The farmer’s eyes were big and round, his head sweeping the room to record all that he was seeing.
Mr. Jones pursed his lips and lounged deeper into the chair. “I’m glad to stay to help out Mrs. Nonnie.”
Mrs. Nonnie stuck her tongue out as Circe applied the lip balm to her patient’s tissue-thin lips.
The rest of the visit passed unremarkably as Mr. Frankline expedited the typing of another paper with the larger interest rate. Sarah bustled about in a tight brown pencil skirt topped by a beige sweater set. The bend of her hips as she set the coffee tray on the desk for the witnesses caused the only momentary excitement as Mr. Jones—why thank you, Sarah, my name is Larry—sat up straighter and brushed his stubby fingers against the receptionist’s long white ones.
Mrs. Nonnie turned her head towards Circe at the sight of that and rolled her eyes. Circe turned to hide a grin, smoothing her short groomed black hair and scratching absently at her neck. Mrs. Nonnie snorted.
Later, after an apologetic Mr. Frankline had helped settle Mrs. Nonnie into her Plymouth Belvedere sedan, he firmly closed the door with both hands, still mumbling goodbyes. Circe got behind the wheel and watched the big banker wipe his neck with a handkerchief as he returned to the bank.
Mrs. Nonnie whistled, snorted, and whined.
Circe put the car into gear and backed out. “You would have seen it when you signed.”
Mrs. Nonnie snorted and flapped her bad left hand wildly toward Circe.
“Well, I was afraid he would cover it up with his big paws.”
Mrs. Nonnie sniffed and sang. She waited. Then she whined out her first clear word in two weeks, “Why?”
“You know very well why.” Circe cut her eyes momentarily at her patient as she glanced both ways at the stop sign on Walnut. “He couldn’t hear me if I spoke in any other way. His ears can’t process intelligent words from a woman, especially a Negro. Besides, I don’t want him to think you are non compos mentis.”
Mrs. Nonnie clicked, snorted, and puffed.
“Well, since I’m the only one who can understand you, you’ll always be in your right mind. At least, as long as I’m in mine.” Circe smiled.
Mrs. Nonnie leered a big drippy grin and nodded her head.
With one hand, Circe fished out the handkerchief from her bag. “Here, dribbling is not helping your case.”
Mrs. Nonnie whistled.
_______________________________________
If I don't watch out, I will chuck those papers I have to write before the semester ends and have a ball with Mrs. Nonnie and Circe. And I can't wait to write Sweetpea. Oh, yeah. She's gonna be fun.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Food Takes You Back
Our professor gave us a prompt from Brian Kiteley who currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver. It's called Bacon in Egypt. This is it: "Think of the experience of missing a food from home when you are traveling for a long while. What happens when you actually eat this food? This exercise is about food and about homesickness. Put that at the center of your fragment of a narrative. Travel is about leaving behind the world you know and experiencing, if only temporarily, the sense of exile, even though you know you will return. Travelers almost always return." The idea is if you are in a country where pork is not allowed, all you can think about is bacon.
I should sell Kitely's books to thank him: I Know Many Songs, but I Cannot Sing about Egypt, The 3 AM Ephiphany writing exercises, and The River Gods a story that is about place.
Here is my response tweaked to contribute to the stories I am writing. Elizabeth is Betsy, all grown up. She will go to her home place and write the stories of its people.
I decided that I’d get the bends if I fly. Return should be slower than that. I need to readjust to the atmosphere. So I’m driving up 35 through Texas, and it occurs to me why I live here rather than any other state. It’s just so big. I remember driving through six countries from the Lowlands of Belgium and the Netherlands to languid Italy in the same time it will take me to get out of Texas, even though from San Antonio, I have a head start. And the scenery was better then—Brussels, Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Strasbourg, Endigen am Kaiserstuhl, Basel, The Alps, Lake Como, Verona, to Venice. In fair Verona. Now that’s a parallel best left for the later hours when I am closer to Chickahatchie County. And it takes a long time to get there from here. I’m not even in Austin yet.
The food was better on that European trip. Different. No, better. Brisket is good, but how can I get anything decent on the interstate? Truth be told, the rest stops on the A4 were no great thing either. But since I was in no hurry back then, I got off the highway often and ate at great little gasthauses and cafés along the way. Truth be told, I am in no hurry now and would really rather not be going at all. I feel compelled, not pulled, as if something is shoving me out of Texas and away from decent guacamole and carnitas, forget menudo. There won’t be any in Bourne.
Bourne. Bourne where I was born. I never even say that name in my head any more. Always call it Chickahatchie County, when I call it at all. Just being on the way is changing me. I don’t want to be that person, that girl up the tree. My giant white oak was the best rest stop I ever had. And the food. Grandy would put down plywood onto saw horses for tables under the tree for homecoming or picnic dinners—family reunions. Family. Reunions. Now there’s something better left for later, as well. The food, though. Pecan and chess pie for holidays. Homecoming meant pimento-cheese sandwiches, fried chicken, potato salad, and deviled eggs. Every time someone set down a platter or dish, the wood would sag a bit. I always worried for the food. Brunswick stew cooked up in a big iron cauldron over a wood fire under my tree. Grandy stroking and stirring and scraping with a boat paddle he used just for stew. People would come from all around on a Brunswick stew day, bringing Mason jars and appetites. Nobody ever went hungry at Grandy and Memma’s house. Bourne, back then, saw too many hungry people though.
Hands from the fields, mornings spent picking cotton, dragging heavy canvas bags strapped over their shoulders back to the trailer for weigh in, cast their eyes at the back porch door a ways off where they would sit at noon with a plate of dumplings or cornbread and field peas. Cheap farm food but plenty of it. I wonder now if that was the only meal of the day for some of them. No. Truth be told, I know it was. Poor Blacks wanted to work at our farm. Grandy was known as a good employer, not a cheat on weights, with a fair cook for a farm wife who wouldn’t begrudge a black hand another piece of cornbread, even if she only served up the fragrant fried chicken to her family. Nothing like grease to carry a smell.
I got my first whipping from Memma over fried chicken. Not one to think, I had carried my fried chicken leg out toward the end of the porch where Grandy sat with the hands. Having finished his lunch in gulps, Grandy sat discussing who would be needed for the next day’s picking and where and when. Memma had come out with a bowl of butter beans ready to ladle seconds or thirds to anyone. When she saw me, her three-year-old black church shoes, now work shoes scuffed and turned down at the sides, had skidded on the porch boards.
Hyeah, Jim. That was all she had said as she had handed the bowl to Grandy and snatched me up by my chicken-leg-grasping right arm.
I got a whipping with a wooden kitchen spoon, all the time Memma hissing sotto voce in my ear about how me waving that chicken leg around out there in front of those hands was just the living end. Didn’t I have any sense of decency? What in the world was I thinking? Every time I eat fried chicken now, I think of that. And I can’t even hold the leg of a chicken without thinking about hungry people and choking a little. A lot of what I learned with Grandy and Memma is overlaid with the smell of sausage frying or the taste of home-churned yellow butter on one of Grandy’s biscuits. I don’t really crave anything from that time except maybe Brunswick stew, which no one can ever make again. The knack for that died with Grandy. I don’t crave any food of Bourne.
No. That’s not true. The idea of a buttered biscuit has brought one thing to mind as I slide past the exits for Onion Creek and Slaughter Lane. Sweet sorghum molasses. Thick, acidy sweet. Rich fragrant ropes of it coming out of a jar slower than the summer between third and fourth grades. I would hold a knife like Grandy showed me, and when there was just a little too much sorghum on the plate of busted-open biscuits, I would cut the flow off like slicing meat. It was that thick. I never wanted it heated up in a saucepan like Memma did hers. I liked to see it melt in with the golden butter right on the china plate. You can’t get butter like that anymore. That died with Grandy’s cows. And I haven’t tasted sorghum molasses in 30 years, even though I’ve seen it at farm stands up in the Texas Hill Country. Sorghum molasses comes from one place for me. Chickahatchie County. It’s cooked up in a big cauldron like Grandy’s. And this is the most important thing about sorghum molasses. It has to be from the juice of sorghum cane ground on a mill by the slow steady paces of a Tennessee mule, walking in circles, going nowhere his own self, but coming up with something really special for his trouble.
Already, this exercise has been changed around, tweaked, and poured through a filter to fit into the longer story of Chickahatchie. It's really starting to be a cohesive group of various parts for me.
I should sell Kitely's books to thank him: I Know Many Songs, but I Cannot Sing about Egypt, The 3 AM Ephiphany writing exercises, and The River Gods a story that is about place.
Here is my response tweaked to contribute to the stories I am writing. Elizabeth is Betsy, all grown up. She will go to her home place and write the stories of its people.
[Back to Chickahatchie County, Tennessee]
I decided that I’d get the bends if I fly. Return should be slower than that. I need to readjust to the atmosphere. So I’m driving up 35 through Texas, and it occurs to me why I live here rather than any other state. It’s just so big. I remember driving through six countries from the Lowlands of Belgium and the Netherlands to languid Italy in the same time it will take me to get out of Texas, even though from San Antonio, I have a head start. And the scenery was better then—Brussels, Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Strasbourg, Endigen am Kaiserstuhl, Basel, The Alps, Lake Como, Verona, to Venice. In fair Verona. Now that’s a parallel best left for the later hours when I am closer to Chickahatchie County. And it takes a long time to get there from here. I’m not even in Austin yet.
The food was better on that European trip. Different. No, better. Brisket is good, but how can I get anything decent on the interstate? Truth be told, the rest stops on the A4 were no great thing either. But since I was in no hurry back then, I got off the highway often and ate at great little gasthauses and cafés along the way. Truth be told, I am in no hurry now and would really rather not be going at all. I feel compelled, not pulled, as if something is shoving me out of Texas and away from decent guacamole and carnitas, forget menudo. There won’t be any in Bourne.
Bourne. Bourne where I was born. I never even say that name in my head any more. Always call it Chickahatchie County, when I call it at all. Just being on the way is changing me. I don’t want to be that person, that girl up the tree. My giant white oak was the best rest stop I ever had. And the food. Grandy would put down plywood onto saw horses for tables under the tree for homecoming or picnic dinners—family reunions. Family. Reunions. Now there’s something better left for later, as well. The food, though. Pecan and chess pie for holidays. Homecoming meant pimento-cheese sandwiches, fried chicken, potato salad, and deviled eggs. Every time someone set down a platter or dish, the wood would sag a bit. I always worried for the food. Brunswick stew cooked up in a big iron cauldron over a wood fire under my tree. Grandy stroking and stirring and scraping with a boat paddle he used just for stew. People would come from all around on a Brunswick stew day, bringing Mason jars and appetites. Nobody ever went hungry at Grandy and Memma’s house. Bourne, back then, saw too many hungry people though.
Hands from the fields, mornings spent picking cotton, dragging heavy canvas bags strapped over their shoulders back to the trailer for weigh in, cast their eyes at the back porch door a ways off where they would sit at noon with a plate of dumplings or cornbread and field peas. Cheap farm food but plenty of it. I wonder now if that was the only meal of the day for some of them. No. Truth be told, I know it was. Poor Blacks wanted to work at our farm. Grandy was known as a good employer, not a cheat on weights, with a fair cook for a farm wife who wouldn’t begrudge a black hand another piece of cornbread, even if she only served up the fragrant fried chicken to her family. Nothing like grease to carry a smell.
I got my first whipping from Memma over fried chicken. Not one to think, I had carried my fried chicken leg out toward the end of the porch where Grandy sat with the hands. Having finished his lunch in gulps, Grandy sat discussing who would be needed for the next day’s picking and where and when. Memma had come out with a bowl of butter beans ready to ladle seconds or thirds to anyone. When she saw me, her three-year-old black church shoes, now work shoes scuffed and turned down at the sides, had skidded on the porch boards.
Hyeah, Jim. That was all she had said as she had handed the bowl to Grandy and snatched me up by my chicken-leg-grasping right arm.
I got a whipping with a wooden kitchen spoon, all the time Memma hissing sotto voce in my ear about how me waving that chicken leg around out there in front of those hands was just the living end. Didn’t I have any sense of decency? What in the world was I thinking? Every time I eat fried chicken now, I think of that. And I can’t even hold the leg of a chicken without thinking about hungry people and choking a little. A lot of what I learned with Grandy and Memma is overlaid with the smell of sausage frying or the taste of home-churned yellow butter on one of Grandy’s biscuits. I don’t really crave anything from that time except maybe Brunswick stew, which no one can ever make again. The knack for that died with Grandy. I don’t crave any food of Bourne.
No. That’s not true. The idea of a buttered biscuit has brought one thing to mind as I slide past the exits for Onion Creek and Slaughter Lane. Sweet sorghum molasses. Thick, acidy sweet. Rich fragrant ropes of it coming out of a jar slower than the summer between third and fourth grades. I would hold a knife like Grandy showed me, and when there was just a little too much sorghum on the plate of busted-open biscuits, I would cut the flow off like slicing meat. It was that thick. I never wanted it heated up in a saucepan like Memma did hers. I liked to see it melt in with the golden butter right on the china plate. You can’t get butter like that anymore. That died with Grandy’s cows. And I haven’t tasted sorghum molasses in 30 years, even though I’ve seen it at farm stands up in the Texas Hill Country. Sorghum molasses comes from one place for me. Chickahatchie County. It’s cooked up in a big cauldron like Grandy’s. And this is the most important thing about sorghum molasses. It has to be from the juice of sorghum cane ground on a mill by the slow steady paces of a Tennessee mule, walking in circles, going nowhere his own self, but coming up with something really special for his trouble.
***
Already, this exercise has been changed around, tweaked, and poured through a filter to fit into the longer story of Chickahatchie. It's really starting to be a cohesive group of various parts for me.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Parallel Universe: going outside reality to enhance it
What the White Oak Knows
A white oak draws water from the ground. I do that because ATP is soluble in water, and I need it for photophosphorylation. You need water too and also make ATP, which is how you draw energy from what you consume, although I’d bet my oldest root you don’t even know it. Plants have been doing it much longer. We invented it.
We draw other things up too. Bits of things long dead cling to water, riding up to my leaves and twigs. I have some of fourteen humans in me, and I can tell the difference in each one. The dark cold season has come and gone more than 400 times since I first drew up tiny pieces of what had been people. Humans change me in ways that the persimmon tree can’t imagine. He’s a shit-eater, that one, wrapping around that human stink hole and sucking it up through his long taproot.
I have human blood in me. For five seasons the ground was thick with it. Two men fell just here, trying to hide behind me. Metal balls spilled them open. Two of those same hot projectiles tore into me, metals leaching out into my cambium, coloring my heartwood. That was a bad time for living things.
I have her blood too. The little skinny one with the brown tufts on top of her head bled into me. On a hot day a hundred seasons after the five bad ones, she tore open her limb on mine, and her sap ran in a trickle down into the folds of my bark. She dripped more red onto the underside of a leaf, marking me until a storm. I grew new roots hoping to catch the rainy drops of blood and suck them up too. Often her tears fell just in the notch by the place where she sat on so many days and more nights than you might think. Once, she waited too late to climb down and wet me with her urine, the pungent salty rush soaking down into my tender layers. I knew her.
I contrived a splinter to work into the back of her knee. Long, cold seasons passed after she left, making it harder to convince myself that the splinter stayed burrowed down in her limb’s heartwood. But she is a part of me. When the other one with light tufts on her head finally came up the same way and sat where the first one sat, we both felt the loss. She too eventually stopped coming up, although I sometimes would feel her twigs brush me as she stepped from root to root around my trunk, making the sound of the two of them with her one mouth.
I had to cut off the flow of water to that limb. With a fork down low, it had been perfect for child root limbs to wrap themselves around while child top limbs grabbed for my own and pulled into me, her soft tender flesh without a bark, so easy to tear. I couldn’t bear another one in her spot. Rot took that entry limb, and it was burned on a fire close by, bits of smoke entering the respiration stomata on the white underside of my dark green many-lobed leaves and the leaves of my sister oak and the leaves of all the plants around, even the persimmon, who missed her more than I gave that shit-eater credit for.
END
What does he overhear, I wonder? How does a tree get to know that the gooey stuff in a girl is called blood? It still feels like sap to him. Yes. Trees have feelings. This one does. It puts the story on a different level for me. For a long time, I have viewed the place of Chickahatchie County from the eyes of various little girls and a mule driver. Now...a tree shows me so much more. The tales are changing. I'm getting excited. White Oak is stuck right there on that hilltop. He can't escape to another place. How will that work out for him?
A bit about my thinking and writing process. I wanted the tree to sound wise and smart--for the reader to see him that way. Old and knowing. He knows how he gets energy...could rattle off the whole chemistry of the thing. I wanted also to show how he is changed by humans. They break his heartwood. They really do.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Betsy's Place
My writing on this collection coincides with a fiction workshop class this semester in grad school. Dr. Catherine Kasper assigned us to write about place. One of my goals for this class is to work on description of place and narrative. I find it too easy to fall into dialogue and miss the narrative of what is occuring around the speakers.
I took some things from various bits of story and pruned away the dialogue to just get Place. I was limited to around 500 words. My first draft was nearly 950. I pruned more. Here is my submission to her:
*********
Betsy’s Place
A root from the white oak pokes its way out of the pale Tennessee dirt. The size of Grandy’s lower leg, the root emerges six inches from the massive trunk for a span of eight inches more, only to run back to ground for the remainder of its unknowable length. Other roots around the tree have revealed themselves, some of them overlapping. Are they the first shallow ones that nourished the infant acorn? Did the Chickasaw hunt here when the root first emerged?
Maybe it was later, when Great-grandfather Milton bought the land or took it. Did the tree, feeling unfamiliar rhythms, send down signals along with oxygen through the pulp to the roots? The air is changed, it might have sensed on the white underside of its dark green many-lobed leaves. This smoke has a tangible otherness as these pale beings cook their dinner. Did the roots return watery replies with questions for which a tree cannot have answers?
My childhood self had her own ideas. It’s a toad house, this root. I found the lumpy jumpies secreted in their own little root cave in the mornings before Memma stirred from her featherbed to toast cold biscuits that Grandy left for her. I used the roots as safe steps around pretend waters full of crocodiles, like the ones I saw on Tarzan. The steps of many children compacted the dirt around the toad house. Two of them were Lucy Belle and me.
After I turned eight, this was my whole world—two white oaks many times taller than Grandy, a low white house too plain to have thoughts of grand additions, and a vegetable garden with grape arbor out back. All the pieces of my world were set on top of the highest hill around. As I grew, losing the memories of other houses, Memma taught me to climb one of the white oaks, how to swing my feet up over a forked limb and to skin the cat to get down. I could see more of Chickahatchie County from the hideout in my oak. Our Bourne’s Grove Baptist Church, its concrete blocks stacked off center to keep them from falling down Grandy said, was just in front of my tree. Kelso’s wood frame First Baptist Church was just over the honeysuckle-covered rail fence from the grape arbor. Up high on my limb that made a seat, leaning against the perfect matching limb to make the seat a couch, my back would have been to Kelso’s church. I think that’s why it was so long before I found Lucy Belle and Sanctuary.
It was no time at all before I met Kelso. On my second day living with my grandparents, he drove jangling into our yard. I had watched him cross the two-lane highway from a little gravel road beside the store that wasn’t a store any more, even though signs— Wonder ~ It’s good bread—split two screen doors on the concrete porch. I couldn’t see the most important place, even from my tree. Behind the store that was not a store any more lived Kelso’s four mules, brown like fudge. Lucy Belle had a cat, and I never wanted a dog. I had part of those mules. And they had part of me.
***
I don't know what of that might end up in the story. It does tell me something. I know how Lucy Belle and Betsy meet. The whole thing came together in my mind while I was writing about what she was seeing and not seeing. I can't wait to write about that.
I took some things from various bits of story and pruned away the dialogue to just get Place. I was limited to around 500 words. My first draft was nearly 950. I pruned more. Here is my submission to her:
*********
Betsy’s Place
A root from the white oak pokes its way out of the pale Tennessee dirt. The size of Grandy’s lower leg, the root emerges six inches from the massive trunk for a span of eight inches more, only to run back to ground for the remainder of its unknowable length. Other roots around the tree have revealed themselves, some of them overlapping. Are they the first shallow ones that nourished the infant acorn? Did the Chickasaw hunt here when the root first emerged?
Maybe it was later, when Great-grandfather Milton bought the land or took it. Did the tree, feeling unfamiliar rhythms, send down signals along with oxygen through the pulp to the roots? The air is changed, it might have sensed on the white underside of its dark green many-lobed leaves. This smoke has a tangible otherness as these pale beings cook their dinner. Did the roots return watery replies with questions for which a tree cannot have answers?
My childhood self had her own ideas. It’s a toad house, this root. I found the lumpy jumpies secreted in their own little root cave in the mornings before Memma stirred from her featherbed to toast cold biscuits that Grandy left for her. I used the roots as safe steps around pretend waters full of crocodiles, like the ones I saw on Tarzan. The steps of many children compacted the dirt around the toad house. Two of them were Lucy Belle and me.
After I turned eight, this was my whole world—two white oaks many times taller than Grandy, a low white house too plain to have thoughts of grand additions, and a vegetable garden with grape arbor out back. All the pieces of my world were set on top of the highest hill around. As I grew, losing the memories of other houses, Memma taught me to climb one of the white oaks, how to swing my feet up over a forked limb and to skin the cat to get down. I could see more of Chickahatchie County from the hideout in my oak. Our Bourne’s Grove Baptist Church, its concrete blocks stacked off center to keep them from falling down Grandy said, was just in front of my tree. Kelso’s wood frame First Baptist Church was just over the honeysuckle-covered rail fence from the grape arbor. Up high on my limb that made a seat, leaning against the perfect matching limb to make the seat a couch, my back would have been to Kelso’s church. I think that’s why it was so long before I found Lucy Belle and Sanctuary.
It was no time at all before I met Kelso. On my second day living with my grandparents, he drove jangling into our yard. I had watched him cross the two-lane highway from a little gravel road beside the store that wasn’t a store any more, even though signs— Wonder ~ It’s good bread—split two screen doors on the concrete porch. I couldn’t see the most important place, even from my tree. Behind the store that was not a store any more lived Kelso’s four mules, brown like fudge. Lucy Belle had a cat, and I never wanted a dog. I had part of those mules. And they had part of me.
***
I don't know what of that might end up in the story. It does tell me something. I know how Lucy Belle and Betsy meet. The whole thing came together in my mind while I was writing about what she was seeing and not seeing. I can't wait to write about that.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
A Bit About Writing Anway: Process and Progress
If you are going to be a writer, you have to write because you love to craft sentences. You should be driven to do it. Because strangers are likely not going to read what you write. Even people who know you will likely not read what you write. And it's not because what you write is just plain awful. Necessarily. It's hard for good stuff to get to people. Even the wildly popular book The Help (now a major motion picture) was turned down 60 times by literary agents as unmarketable, even "tiring writing."
Your family will not read you. You will stop asking. People will tell you what you wrote was good and won't mean a word of it, or they will mean it but you will not believe them. You will love the work and the product only to find you can't even bear to keep the file on your jump drive when you look at it later. You may constantly open up one little poem from the drive that you feel things for that you haven't felt since you got your first pet or watched your child snuffle loudly in her sleep. That poem will be your darling. It will do things for you that haven't been done to you since you stopped making out in the back seat of Pontiacs. Your little poem or novella will look like Dobby from Harry Potter more than it will look like Harry Potter to a literary agent.
You must still write or you are no writer. Moms across the world make children and raise them to adulthood with no credible expectation that those children will paint the Sistine Chapel or become president of the PTA. Still, they raise their darlings and spend time on them and love them and do the work of momming because they are Mothers--capital M.
You, a Writer, must write words that are shuffled into coherent, clear sentences which may never be read among others of their kind that you will sweat over, turning them into poems and novellas. If you are a writer, you do this or you are no writer.
And now, if you are good at predicting plot--and we become good at predicting plot from creating so many of our own--you will expect me to come back to the beginning of this tiny essay and tell you how Kathryn Stockett got The Help published anyway, thereby freeing it to become beloved by others in the way that she alone loved it through so many rejection letters. I won't do it. The link above tells that tale.
I will tell you about rewrites. This is the other task of the writer. You must tear apart your darling and remake it, leaving it's tiny phonemes and syllables scattered across the breadth of your hard drive after decisively clicking "delete." You will leave those bits to be overwritten with other sentences that will be hard-born and well-crafted into more poems and novellas. And so it goes on. And likely the jump drive will fill with these, and the hard drive will fail before someone reads them. But if you are like me, you are not a bit sad right now. You love the writing. You'd rather do that than anything else. You'd rather write bad drafts than rest or make love some nights. I am not going to be Kathryn Stockett or write a Harry Potter series. My work is not that good or marketable. Or it is, and I'd rather be writing short stories than cover letters. I will definitely be writing. And some of the process will be here for the world to totally ignore.
Your family will not read you. You will stop asking. People will tell you what you wrote was good and won't mean a word of it, or they will mean it but you will not believe them. You will love the work and the product only to find you can't even bear to keep the file on your jump drive when you look at it later. You may constantly open up one little poem from the drive that you feel things for that you haven't felt since you got your first pet or watched your child snuffle loudly in her sleep. That poem will be your darling. It will do things for you that haven't been done to you since you stopped making out in the back seat of Pontiacs. Your little poem or novella will look like Dobby from Harry Potter more than it will look like Harry Potter to a literary agent.
You must still write or you are no writer. Moms across the world make children and raise them to adulthood with no credible expectation that those children will paint the Sistine Chapel or become president of the PTA. Still, they raise their darlings and spend time on them and love them and do the work of momming because they are Mothers--capital M.
You, a Writer, must write words that are shuffled into coherent, clear sentences which may never be read among others of their kind that you will sweat over, turning them into poems and novellas. If you are a writer, you do this or you are no writer.
And now, if you are good at predicting plot--and we become good at predicting plot from creating so many of our own--you will expect me to come back to the beginning of this tiny essay and tell you how Kathryn Stockett got The Help published anyway, thereby freeing it to become beloved by others in the way that she alone loved it through so many rejection letters. I won't do it. The link above tells that tale.
I will tell you about rewrites. This is the other task of the writer. You must tear apart your darling and remake it, leaving it's tiny phonemes and syllables scattered across the breadth of your hard drive after decisively clicking "delete." You will leave those bits to be overwritten with other sentences that will be hard-born and well-crafted into more poems and novellas. And so it goes on. And likely the jump drive will fill with these, and the hard drive will fail before someone reads them. But if you are like me, you are not a bit sad right now. You love the writing. You'd rather do that than anything else. You'd rather write bad drafts than rest or make love some nights. I am not going to be Kathryn Stockett or write a Harry Potter series. My work is not that good or marketable. Or it is, and I'd rather be writing short stories than cover letters. I will definitely be writing. And some of the process will be here for the world to totally ignore.
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