here's a poem in progress, I think it's almost there . . .
Sarah, Plain and Tall
I didn't read one of my favorite children's novels as a child; I read it when I was twenty. I had just spent my first year overseas: my brain was teeming with images and ideas and plans. Back home in Texas, I joined my family on a road trip to Montana, to mark out a little of the Lewis and Clark trail from our hired minivan. I had the soundtrack to Almost Famous in my transportable CD-player, and the wide vistas of last frontier out the windows. That's when I read the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall.
After all the theology and philosophy and literature I had read that past year (all really good stuff, igniting deep fires in the brain), Sarah, Plain, and Tall arrived like a goldfinch, at first - gold, bright, melodic. Then, it went deeper. The story settled within me, like ballast.
The story is a healing one, a story about trust and love, told in simple terms and kind words.
With Sarah, Plain and Tall on one side - Simon and Garfunkel's "America" in my ears - and the long spread of green, mellow pastures with rising mountains in the distance on my other side: I started writing The River Boy. It was in an old school spiral. I wrote double-spaced, the thick line of empty paper between each line of words, markings in pencil.
Good stories alight. Great stories settle in. They change us, help us. And sometimes, they even compel us to see etchings of another story - a new one, our own. Characters never seen before ask to come closer. Props like quilts and stones and rivers are suddenly at hand, eager to be used. The cadence of words sound out along the lines of what hopes to be a good story . . .
Revision
At the time of writing this post, I am in the middle of revising three novels. One is the sequel to The River Boy (yay!); one is a novel set in medieval Rhineland, about a beguine; and one is the fantasy novel that I've been working on for years.
For Penny's Story (the sequel), the revision needed is for minor plot-points, working out the soundness/logic of a few beats. Then there's the last line of the novel: that needs work. Also, I'd like to add either a pair or trio of scenes between the characters, just to give it that abundance-of-good-story-ness. This is fairly straightforward writing/re-writing work.
For Consider the Nightingale (the medieval one), I am doing much more heavy-duty and intricate revisions. It's like I'm using my ear to sound something out: listening to strange structural noises underwater. I'm "unweaving" all the flashbacks, making the story fairly chronological, and writing new work for the last fourth. I think I'm doing the right thing here - but for all the analytical thinking skills (which I love employing), it also feels like deeply intuitive work - sculpting while blind-folded.
And as for Eight Travelers (the fantasy novel) . . . I took that as far as I could go on my own. I've handed it over to a very, very good reader, and she is making copious notes. We'll see what kind of revision list I make after I receive those notes, and sit with it for awhile, and listen with story-hearing ears to the story-sound-shapes the story is making.
Revision - a straight-forward word for a murky, multi-faceted process . . .
Revision is one word that could different kinds of writing work. What revisions are you doing now? Do you enjoy them? What kind of writing/re-writing does revision usually mean for you?
"giver of form"
"This is why God as creator is called dator formarum, 'giver of form,' the latter word needing to be understood in the philosophical sense which naturally goes beyond the concept of the visible or material form, and designates the whole nature as being under consideration . . .
. . . the artisan's gestures are a reflection of this divine activity, and are like its continuation, whether is be the gestures of the quarryman, the potter, or any other artisan."
- Jean Hani, Divine Craftsmanship: Preliminaries to a Spirituality of Work
Making the World Our Own
"We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light."
- Hildegard von Bingen
How does writing (or any art-making) help us engage with this "terror . . . to take back our own listening . . . our own voice . . . our own light"?
What practices do you have for owning your own voice?
Feast
This was a display from the harvest festival in Clonlara last autumn … the colors and textures remind me of Babette’s Feast - they make me hungry to write. What happens when individuals encounter tangible beauty for the first time?
Three Windows
Upstairs at Limerick City Gallery of Art. Reminds me of a mind in repose, a mind getting ready to write a poem, or revise one.
Ships Coming into Harbor
There's so many stories in this dried up living plant! Where did the ship sail, what did the sailors see, what battles and strange horizons?
Eggs for Dinner
Some of my favorite passages in any book are descriptions about the food! Mary and Colin and Dickon ate scones and cream in their secret garden; Anne's children ate grilled fish and potatoes from the fire in their Rainbow Valley; Laura and her family made a small meal of cornmeal and molasses by the side of their wagon. What's a meal that you would write about?
A Nook of One's Own
Our townhouse is a bit cramped for space, and I was running out of bookshelves. I was also feeling the lack of a quiet corner to read. So, with a bit of brainstorming and elbow grease, my family and I worked together to transform that space beneath the stairs (which was a heap of bikes and wetsuits) into an inviting, cozy, serviceable nook.
Like how the smell of salt-air or the caw of seagulls takes your mind to the seas, just walking by makes me wonder what's next in the book I'm reading . . . and writing . . .
Where do you like to read?
