What It Is I Think I'm Doing, Anyway

 

 

"Tell Me About Your Creative Process..."

 ~ Fellow Seattleite and writer Susan Rich just published her fourth (bravo!) book of poetry, Cloud Pharmacy. (See the gorgeous cover to the right.) She invited me to be part of this “creative process interview blog tour.”

She is also the co-editor of the wonderful anthology The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders published by McSweeney’s and the Poetry Foundation (2013). You can download this book—which I recommend to all writers and travelers, poets or not—for free from the Poetry Foundation’s website. You can read about Susan’s current work and creative process on her blog, The Alchemist’s Kitchen. She is the co-founder of a number of literary ventures in the Pacific Northwest, including the retreat / workshop Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for Women (with poet Kelli Russell Agodon) and Poet At Your Table.  

 Here goes!


1.    What am I working on?   

Because I’m a procrastinator, I always have multiple projects underway. (So I can work on a second project while I’m faithfully procrastinating on what I really ought to be doing.) 

Saw palmetto ~ Everglades
WLC ~ January 2013

 Project #1: Made in America: Four Corners of Life
 I am working on a book-length series of essays (personal, lyric, collage, etc…) about our national parks—specifically, the strange braid of patriotism, imperialism, and environmentalism that characterizes the U.S. national park system. You can read an excerpt of one essay at Guernica and the full essay (“Tilled Paths Through Wilds of Thought”) in an anthology (edited by Erin Elizabeth Smith) just out from Sundress Publications: Not Somewhere Else but Here. You can also order a chapbook of “Tilled Paths” right here, at my blog. (See the column to the right.) This series of essays is based on artist residencies I completed in five national parks. You can read about my Everglades residency at this Knight Foundation blog post. 
 
Project #2: Grief's Hidden Gifts
I’m (very slowly) writing a series of short nonfiction pieces (ranging from memoir to essay to poem-like-object) about grief and loss. This work was informed by artist residencies I completed in 2010 at Harborview Medical Center and American Antiquarian Society. You can read the first essay in Yes! magazine and the most recent piece (to be published, not to be written), a single poem, in Tanya Chernov’s lovely new anthology Burden of Light: Poems of Illness and Loss.   

19th century funeral announcement
American Antiquarian Society

 2.    How does my work differ from others in its genre?   

I must admit this question confounds me—the only answer that comes to mind is one that I received in a very kind rejection letter a couple of weeks ago. It was the thirteenth literary journal to reject this particular essay, which I had submitted for a special issue on “breaking boundaries” in creative nonfiction. The editor said the essay was “not unconventional enough for the special issue and not conventional enough for the regular issue.”  

That sounds about right.


3.    Why do I write what I do? 

I write out of deep sense of urgency over the many losses we are experiencing on this planet: cultural, human, linguistic, ecological. I write nonfiction because it seems to be all that I’m wired to write.


4.    How does your writing process work?  

Not very well, usually. OK, I’ll try and put a lighter spin on it:

Nighttime goldenrod ~ Ragdale prairie
Lake Forest, Illinois ~ WLC ~ 2009

I am a night person, but I write best when I first get up, so I try very hard to avoid obligations before 1:00 pm. Of course, that’s often impossible. But I do try. For reasons I still don’t understand, I put up enormous amounts of mental resistance to writing, so I try to trick myself into doing it. I love timed freewriting exercises, elaborate writing prompts, and deadlines. I carry my journal everywhere, so that I can’t ever accuse anyone of wasting my time. My time is my own to waste.

Or not.


I’m passing the virtual pen on this “blog tour” my friends, poets and educators Natalia Treviño (in San Antonio) and Anastacia Tolbert (Seattle). Check back for links to their blog posts. Thanks for reading!

Made in America: My Next Big Thing

Midge Raymond and me on our joint book tour, Portsmouth,
New Hampshire ~ September 2011

A month ago -- hmm, that would be last year -- my dear writer-friend Midge Raymond posted a Next Big (or Best) Thing Q & A about her novel-in-progress, My Last Continent, to her wonderful writing blog. She invited me to do the same. So, here I am, shyly hauling my current writing project out of the dark corners of my mind with answers to seven questions about Made in America. And when you’re done here, you can look forward to reading about the current book projects of four writers whose work I adore. (I adore the writers just as much.) Check out the blogs of Deborah Miranda, Donna Miscolta, Natalia Treviño, and Anastacia Tolbert to learn about their Next Big Things.


Ready? Here we go:

What is the working title of your book?
Made in America: Four Corners of Life. I feel skittish even calling it a “book,” at this point. I’m not quite sure what the word “book” means in 2013, so let’s just call it my current Big Writing Project, or if you prefer, my next big thing.

What is the origin of this book idea?

Call family on the National Parks Tour ~
Douglas Call, 1976

I grew up a Navy kid, never putting down roots because I knew we’d never stay anywhere long. My home zip code has started with every digit from zero to five, along with eight zip codes beginning with nine. (And for the past eight years, the fabulous 98118.) I’m a child of this country’s corners; born in Florida, I have spent a decade each in Southern California, New England, and the Pacific Northwest. One of the few constants in my itinerant life has been time spent in our natural places, from the Petrified Forest to Acadia, from the Olympics to Biscayne.

With Made in America, I want to explore how our national parks have influenced our sense of what it means to be “American”-- a term that both angers and fascinates me. (And on a practical note, I wanted to spend more time outside in beautiful places.)

What genre does your book fall under?
It’s a series of linked personal essays, some of which lean toward the historical and others toward the lyric.

If your book were transformed into another art form, what would it be? (OK, the original “Next Big Thing” question was: “Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?” But I’ve never aspired to have my writing adapted for the screen, so I’m bending the rules.)

Hardwood Hammock, Everglades National Park ~ WLC 2013

In the Ernest Coe Visitor Center at Everglades National Park, there is a huge mosaic in the floor: a map showing the park’s eight ecological habitats -- hardwood hammock to mangrove swamp -- in vividly tinted ceramic tile. I sometimes imagine my book in mosaic form, but instead of nicely glazed and fired clay, its pieces would be broken bits of my grandmother’s china, mismatched plates from Goodwill, seaglass, a shell collection from four decades of beach visits, and small stones unearthed by spring digging in the garden.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
A lapsed student of biology sets out to explore the natural world in the four corners of the continental U.S., becoming enmeshed in the complex tangle of patriotism, environmentalism and imperialism that characterizes our national parks. 

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Studio at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller
National Historical Park, Vermont ~
WLC, 2011

I’ll tell you when I’m finished. I have spent about half my time over the last eighteen months in the “information gathering” stage: reading, researching, talking to people, mulling things over. During that time, I’ve spent a total of seven months living and working in four national parks (Everglades, Joshua Tree, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller, and North Cascades­­) as an Artist in Residence. When I get home to Seattle in February, I’ll start working on a first draft.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My parents, who packed my brother and me into our ‘68 Chevy Malibu in the summer of 1976 and drove us over 7,000 miles from our home on the California-Mexico border northeast to Zion, then north to Yellowstone, then Mt. Rushmore, then to the east coast, then south and west all the way back to the Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest. Thirty days of cheap motels, friends’ hideaway sofas, and hotpot-and-cooler meals, so that my brother and I could have the gift of the National Parks Tour. This book is my thank-you note.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
It will have pictures! And audio! And perhaps maps. Maybe even video. I don’t have the details worked out yet (I’m a hopelessly analog person, pushing a handcart down the information superhighway), but I envision Made in America as a digital book that actually takes advantage of the great opportunities this technology offers us as readers – and as writers. (Unlike the digital version of my 2011 book, No Word for Welcome, which is less visual than the print version, which simply shouldn’t be….)

Another tidbit to pique your interest: a chapbook! The first national park where I was Artist in Residence published a lovely, 24-page, single-essay “chapbook.” (No video or audio, but it does have photos.) You can order Tilled Paths Through Wilds of Thought right here at my blog -- see the link to the right. You can read an excerpt from the chapbook at the online magazine Guernica – but the real thing is much cuter. And I’ll sign it for you. All for the price of a latte. Get yours today! And, as always, thanks for reading.

Writers in Unexpected Places

"Our being in the world is subtly influenced by all the people, creatures, landscapes, climates, luxuries and deprivations that surround us."

-- From my writer's notebook, September 2011, while at a national park

 

At the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference last week, I had the pleasure of talking about non-traditional writers' residencies with two literary lights who deeply inspire me: Stephanie Elizondo Griest and Henry Reese. To read how a truly inspired writer finds her writing room, read this interview with Stephanie. To learn about a truly inspired residency program, read about Henry's City of Asylum / Pittsburgh. In fact, they both inspired me so much that I decided to bring my blog out of the deep-freeze that began with phase two of my No Word for Welcome book tour (a fifteen-state, five-month, thirty-event Atlantic-to-Pacific road trip) and seems to have continued into phase three (scattered events across the country).

Here's the short version of my presentation in Chicago last week:

Ragdale's garden, WLC, 2009

Traditional writers residencies (the perfection of the cottages at Hedgebrook, of the lake by Blue Mountain Center, of the sculpture garden at Anderson Center, of the  sleeping porches by the Prairie at Ragdale) have made my writing possible – especially beginning and ending huge projects. For that I'm eternally grateful. But these traditional retreats don’t necessarily feed my writing. My nonfiction is rooted in the real world, not in the cloister of an artist colony or retreat center. 

There are two kinds of writers’ residences: those that take you out of your daily world and those that immerse you in a different daily world. The latter is a form of “immersion journalism.” For a working immersion-writer like me, non-traditional residencies expand and deepen my understanding of my chosen topics.

American Antiquarian Society Reading Room, WLC, 2010

When I began writing about my experiences with grief and loss, after my mother died of cancer, I spent a month in residence at a historical archive in Massachusetts to learn about how our society dealt with death and loss early in our nation’s history. I learned about the role that the Civil War played in changing our death rituals. I also spent six weeks as Writer in Residence at Seattle’s public hospital, Harborview Medical Center, to spend time with people who were facing terminal illnesses. Harborview didn’t have a Writer in Residence program – I cajoled the hospital's art program manager for a year for the chance to spend time there. 

Though most of my writing about grief and loss is based on my family’s experience, my time at Harborview gave me a better sense of what was typical about my family’s story and what was atypical. I also found stories at Harborview that will become separate essays – stories more powerful than anything I could have imagined, than anything I've experienced in my own life. 

Writing in situ, WLC, Vermont, 2011

Right now, I’m in the midst of a new writing project that includes serving as Writer in Residence at national parks in all four corners of the United States.There are at least forty National Parks around the country that host Artists in Residence.

Going to a non-traditional residency is not the same as packing off for a month at Ragdale or Hedgebrook. Here are seven (for good luck) things to keep in mind as you consider a non-traditional residency:    

#1: When you apply (or propose – you can make up your own adventure), think very carefully about how the host organization will benefit. If it’s an established program, they will probably want you to include an outreach project in your application. This is really important. If you are making up your own project, as I did with Harborview, think through what the host organization might find useful. I did a series of writing workshops for patients on the locked psychiatric ward. Those workshops were not connected to my writing project, but met a need at the hospital. 

#2: Plan on a lot of communication with the host organization before you begin your residency. Your host may have little or no idea what you need to work effectively. There’s often an assumption that visual and performing artists have specific work needs, but a writer has none. Things I’ve had to specifically ask for include a desk (not a kitchen table or a dressing table), an office chair (not an easy chair), and an electrical outlet that won’t fry my computer (make sure to take a good surge protector). 

#3: If you are going someplace remote, be ready for anything. I take a sponge, paper towels and some cleaning supplies in a small plastic container. I have a tiny laser printer that fits in a carry-on bag. Preparing my workspace has included removing dead mice, covering furnishings with Mylar,  washing windows, and wiping dead bugs out of the fridge. (And that was just at one residency!)  

Apothecary's notebook at the American Antiquarian Society, WLC, 2010

#4: Make sure your hosts understand how much time you will need in a particular space, or with a particular person, or using a particular document, artifact, etc. I once spent a month convincing an art museum to let me see several items that were not on display. After finally getting the right person to pull the right string, I made the two-hour trip and showed up shortly after the museum opened in the morning. I planning to spend all day looking at and writing about the objects. I found a fabulous display of a dozen items -- prints, jewelry, items of clothing -- all carefully laid out in a gorgeous room. But it turned out the curator had scheduled a meeting in the space, so I had only had forty minutes with the items.

#5: Think carefully about how you will talk about your work to everyone you meet during your residency. People sometimes have weird ideas about writers; this is your chance to dispel them. Take examples of your writing, but make sure not to promise anything. Make it clear that you might use anything you see / experience, but you might not use any of it – at least, not in a way that’s recognizable (or, perhaps, pleasing) to those involved. 

#6: Develop a short writing workshop that you can offer at the drop of a hat. I have 15-minute, 30-minute and 60-minute series of free-writing exercises that I’m always ready to give, in case someone is curious. These exercises require only index cards and a pen, which I always carry with me. Many non-traditional artist residencies want the artist to share their process with the public. Watching someone paint or weave is far more interesting than watching someone write. Getting members of the public to write is usually far more effective than reading them some of your work.   

#7: Be thankful, thankful, thankful to your hosts. My richest and my most frustrating writing experiences have been at non-traditional residencies. Regardless, I have thanked people profusely, for reasons both practical and political. When people you encounter at these residencies show up in your writing, you want them to approach that work with a positive mindset. In the current publishing environment, we must do everything possible to encourage reading – whether of hardcover books or on smart phones. Giving a non-reader a positive experience with a writer is one of the best ways we can nurture a culture of reading.

Forests, Once and Future

"Between 1850 and 1900, 85% of Vermont's land was deforested."
-- Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP Park Ranger

As July turned to August, I began a new writing project – spending time in, ruminating on, and writing about our National Parks. I’m taking advantage of the travel required for my No Word for Welcome book tour to explore our national parks and our relationships to them. Like many American childhoods, mine included a string of visits to national park service sites, from Sequoia to the Lincoln Memorial. Growing up in a military family and moving every few years, the National Parks were one of the few constants for my itinerant family.

I’m spending two months as Writer in Residence at Vermont’s only national park, a hilly woodland that is only slightly larger than two urban parks close to my heart: Seattle’s Discovery Park and Boston’s Franklin Park. At the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park (NHP), I’m beginning to seek answers to a question that has been knocking around my head and heart all my life: What does it mean to come from a place? As a military kid (a Navy Junior, to be precise) the idea of having a hometown has always been enormously foreign--and enormously attractive. Related to that question are two others:

What does it mean to be native to a place?  What does it mean to care for a place?



This historic bungalow where I work  at the Marsh-
Billings-Rockefeller NHP was built as the woodland
retreat of another woman writer in 1917.  

I spent much of the last dozen years exploring those questions in southern Mexico. The result of that exploration is No Word for Welcome. As I’ve settled into life here in Woodstock, Vermont, I’ve learned (to my surprise) that this area has quite a bit in common with Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Both regions are primarily rural; both regions were deeply changed by the construction of railroads and highways in the 1800s; both regions have suffered terrible deforestation. (You can read more about nineteenth-century isthmus history in this essay I wrote for the early American history journal Common-Place.) Vermont has passed through many economic eras: timber-cutting to clear land for farming, sheep-ranching to feed the textile industry of the Industrial Revolution, then skiing to feed the tourist economy. Through it all, Vermonters have struggled to maintain their homeplace’s rural character and restore its ecological health--after saws, sheep, and ski-lifts have destroyed it. 

It is somehow both inspiring and disheartening to find the same cycles everywhere: We arrive; we wreak havoc; we realize our mistakes; we endeavor to repair. Between 1850 and 1900, eighty-five percent of Vermont’s land was deforested. Now, the once-again green hills of Vermont give me hope for the increasingly bare hills of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

(And speaking of hope, I must give deep thanks to the K2 Family Foundation in Maine and 4Culture in King County, Washington, for making my new writing adventure possible.)