Manifesto for the open-hearted in controversy and in senseless violence

In my desire for justice & equality, may I not de-humanize those who disagree with my convictions.

May love and graciousness be my 1^st & only response to a perceived enemy.

May I be slow to speak in anger and quick to act in reconciliation.

May only words of truth & empathy pass my lips or be written by my hands, that I may not slander even my enemy.

When others yell eye-for-an-eye, may I quietly listen for the small voice of compassion.

May I not try to be clever in my self-righteousness (or falsely humble).

In my desire for truth, may I not settle for the easy explanation that suits what I already want to believe.

May I be quick to give the benefit of the doubt, and when all doubt is gone, may I be quick to forgive, even when it’s not asked.

May I uphold another’s dignity even at the cost of my entitlements.

May my only defenses be a sifting of truth from lies and my own life lived as consistently as possible.

That thing you do: using action to show feeling

A couple days ago, I wrote about reading to learn and mentioned one way my writing needs to improve: 

"One of my tendencies in fiction is to summarize action in analytic, explanatory terms rather than using concrete, sensory details and in-the-moment action to let the reader jump into the story themselves."

And today I came across this in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. All you need to know is Portia is Doctor Copeland's grown daughter, William his son. Doctor Copeland, an enlightened, philosophical man, had high ideals but ended up alienating his four children with his intense hopes and expectations. Now that the children are adults, Portia is the only one who visits her father on occasion, and he clearly misses having a relationship with all of them. She is about to leave from one such visit while her husband (Highboy) and William wait outside Doctor Copeland's house.

"Wait a minute," said Doctor Copeland. "I have only seen your husband with you about two times and I believe we have never really met each other. And it has been three years since William has visited his father. Why not tell them to drop in for a little while?" 

Portia stood in the doorway, fingering her hair and her earrings. 

"Last time Willie come in here you hurted his feelings. You see you don't understand just how---" 

"Very well," said Doctor Copeland. "It was only a suggestion." 

"Wait," said Portia. "I going to call them. I going to invite them in right now." 

Doctor Copeland lighted a cigarette and walked up and down the room. He could not straighten his glasses to just the right position and his fingers kept trembling. From the front yard there was the sound of low voices. Then heavy footsteps were in the hall and Portia, William, and Highboy entered the kitchen.

I love how those two sentences I italicized show Doctor Copeland's feelings without using any analytical phrases, or even adjectives (other than "right position"). In fact, as a test, I read just those two sentences, with no background information, to my husband and asked him what he thought Doctor Copeland was feeling. "Stress, fear, nervousness?" Exactly!


A student writer (myself) would have written something like "Doctor Copeland paced nervously..." And that he fidgeted with his glasses. But those two sentences Carson McCullers wrote describe just the right actions to show nervous pacing and the kind of obsession with tiny details we do unconsciously when we're nervous. 


Plus, the actions carry a secondary meaning, a deeper weight. The Dr. didn't just fidget with his glasses--he couldn't "straighten his glasses to just the right position." That detail implies failure, the sense he had of really trying to do something right but never succeeding. He couldn't "straighten" his kids out either, nor could he seem to repair the damage once he'd done it. 


I love it!

read to learn and read to see

I've been working toward this idea that might turn out to be a novel. I'm not sure yet. I haven't actually written anything except scene notes and characters' names and ages. I'm still trying to let the big picture work itself out in my head. Dreamstorming (instead of brainstorming). I'm trying this based on advice from Robert Olen Butler's book From Where You Dream. I recommend it.

I've been on a reading kick the last couple weeks, too. The Illumination, Train Dreams, now Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Next I want to read Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding. Trying to study how characters come alive on the page, and how voice and action bring that about.

One of my tendencies in fiction is to summarize action in analytic, explanatory terms rather than using concrete, sensory details and in-the-moment action to let the reader jump into the story themselves. I'm too much "in my head," as ROB would say. Which breaks the fictional dream for the reader and puts them in their head too, rather than in the fictional world of senses and feelings. One of my other problems is writing stories where the characters aren't really longing for anything. Or what they long for is a tired, easy version of a deeper, more nuanced longing. So as I read, I'm also paying attention to what the characters lack, what they yearn for, what drives them and makes me feel with them.

The novels I've been reading lately all happen to share a strong affinity to place--especially Train Dreams and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. And Swamplandia! before that (another of my recent favorites). This story in my head also happens in very specific places, places that affect and change the characters. So I'm alert to how the environment matters in these novels I'm reading.

Mostly, though, I've been reading for the aesthetic pleasure of it. I've been aware after-the-fact of not having read these books so much "in my head" as in my heart. But I'm still learning a lot about writing from them. When I was in the MFA program, I read primarily "in my head," which is valuable for learning how to learn from great writers. I had to write 8 craft annotations per semester, so I got a lot of practice reading in my head. But, again to paraphrase ROB, I can't learn to write without being in my head, until I read without being in my head. Maybe this is one of those "you have to follow the rules before you can break them" deals.

***

So, my work in progress. I stopped myself this morning with this thought: What am I doing, trying to write a novel? I've barely grasped the short story form. Besides, everybody says they have 4 or 5 crappy novels before they finally write the one that they're proud of, that gets published. Why all this work if it's just going to be one of my "drawer" novels?

But then this: Whatever I write next will be better than what I wrote last.

It may not be publishable, but it will be my truest work yet. Provided I keep tuned into the voices of the characters and the true, deep yearnings I hear in the world all around me. Provided I keep reading and keep learning how to see, hear, and communicate those yearnings most effectively.

slow down fast train

Writing a first draft is a lot like an act of prayer. You're stuffing your conscious self behind a wall of surrender and then waiting, hoping, for the spirit to give rise to the truth that is beyond conjuring or controlling. You're constantly battling distractions the conscious mind wants to assert: "Do this. No, don't do that. That's a dumb idea. This'll never work. Don't you need to feed the cats?"

In prayer, as in writing, you have to guard against the conscious self, catch it off-balance with a change of scenery, stretch it out with physical exercise.

Sometimes you have to cry, make it feel bad so it'll go sit in the corner for a while and let the subconscious, the Imagination, out to play. I know cause I spent 3 hours yesterday with my notebook in my lap, wordless.

Brenda Ueland said it well in her book If You Want to Write:

You have the creative impulse.  

But the ardor for it is inhibited and dried up by many things; as I said, by criticism, self-doubt, duty, nervous fear which expresses itself in merely external action like running up and downstairs and scratching items off lists and thinking you are being efficient; by anxiety about making a living, by fear of not excelling.  

Now this creative power I think is the Holy Ghost. My theology may not be very accurate but that is how I think of it. I know that William Blake called this creative power the Imagination and he said it was God. ...  

Now Blake thought that this creative power should be kept alive in all people for all of their lives. And so do I. Why? Because it is life itself. It is the Spirit. In fact it is the only important thing about us. The rest of us is legs and stomach, materialistic cravings and fears. How do we keep it alive? By using it, by letting it out, by giving some time to it.

Quoting W.B. again, she later said,

"Reason, or All we have known, is not the same it shall be when we know More." And how will we know more? Only through the Imagination which comes from God, and from which the prophets and all great people have spoken.

I can't think or reason my way toward a good story, or well-drawn characters. When I write what I think would make a good story, then put the pen down and read, there's no life in it.

When I wait, when I give my imagination time to come out and play, when after 3 hours I finally cry the self-conscious conscious self away, that's when the authentic story shows itself to me. It still takes work--no golden-egged goose here--but I'm learning that in the work is waiting, praying, writing, and playing.

Quotes from pages 10 and 170, respectively, in the 1987 Graywolf Press edition. 

Swimming Lessons

When I was about four, my parents enrolled me in swimming lessons at Sholem Pool, one of the local park district's swimming holes. I liked learning how to hold my face underwater and blow bubbles (talking to the fish), then turn my face sideways to breathe (listening to the fish). I enjoyed paddling out and back on the foam boards. I watched with longing as the more experienced kids on the other end of the pool dove off the high board.

Finally we got to swim in the deep end. And you could jump off the diving board if you wanted to. I watched classmates go off the low board. They didn't even spring off, they just stepped out and into the water a few feet below. That didn't look fun at all. 

When it was my turn I asked if I could go off the high board. With two instructors waiting in the water below and one accompanying me up the ladder, I felt more than ready. When I got to the edge of the platform and looked down, though, something in me said, "Maybe the low board isn't such a bad idea." 

I wish I could remember what I said to the instructor and what he told me, but my parents still have a picture of little four-year-old me being dangled over the edge of the high diving platform by the armpits, ready to fall for what felt like minutes before I hit the water. 

It was totally worth it.

I have always watched someone do something daring and thought "I want to try!" Then when I get the chance and I see what they saw, I want to back out. But if a tender coach walks me through the first part, I lose my fear and take off on my own. "What was I so afraid of?"

I should remember that more often, when given the chance to take risks, to live a little more life, to dance in front of strangers: "Later I will ask myself, 'what was I so afraid of?' so just do it, Sarah."

Quandary

Some days I love tutoring. Some days I dread it.

My 10th grade student has just finished a literary analysis paper on Julius Caesar, and we've worked on it together for an hour and a half at least two days a week for the past several weeks. I've never read the play in its entirety. And, unfortunately, neither has she. By the time we began working on her final draft, I knew the play better than she did.

This is how our sessions go:

Me: So Brutus had good intentions when he killed Caesar but comes to realize that he'd brought upon Rome the very thing he was trying to prevent--tyranny. Right?

Student: [opens her eyes] Uh-huh

Me: So you can write that kind of thing as the "take-home lesson" for your final sentence.

Student: [stares into space for several moments]

Me: Are you going to write yet?

Student: I don't know. This is hard!

Me: What do you mean hard? I've practically just told you... Okay, we've been talking about Brutus' intentions, right?...


I've been tutoring for over five years now, and I'm still figuring out how to walk the tightrope between leading a student through the learning process and teaching her how to learn for herself. This particular student is "normal" scholastically. The problem which worries me is that the "new normal" seems to mean giving up when actual work is involved and sliding through on curved grades, barely passing.

If students don't like what they're doing, they don't put any effort into it. We all did this to some extent, I'm not gonna lie. No generation of kids has been predominatly and virtuously hard-working.

But this new normal scares me. I'm a tutor. I'm supposed to be there to give my student extra attention and instruction where the teachers of large classrooms can't. But what if the student won't accept my extra attention and instruction? What if in her eyes I'm just an extra person to spoon-feed her what she needs to get by?

School hasn't been about the skill of learning for quite a while now. It's been about passing state assessment tests, SATs, and graduating. I don't blame the teachers, the parents, or any particular entity. I'm really not sure where the root of my frustration lies.

I'm sure anyone who cares about helping this generation learn feels the same way at times. I wonder, too, whether I'm guilty of romanticizing my youth in comparison with today's generation. Like, you know, how as one generation gets displaced by a younger one they think the bunch of whippersnappers will carry the world to hell in a handbasket. Am I one of those?? God, I hope not.

But I feel better venting about it.