Writing Time

Places That Move Your Soul

Sometimes you have to go away to learn (relearn) where your heart lives.  Last month I was on the Seine River for eight days and then in Paris for four days and saw a lot of really charming towns, beautiful buildings, churches, bridges, landscapes and gardens. But none of it made me think – yes, this is the place. This is home, this moves my soul. (I mean I really like Paris, but...)

 

At the same time I was reading Michael Perry’s memoir, Population 485 and his hometown New Auburn, Wisconsin is like a character in the book, deeply loved and understood. He opens with: Summer here comes on like a zaftig hippie chick, jazzed on chlorophyll and flinging fistfuls of butterflies to the sun… and I was reading Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter and it’s obvious that a place that moves his soul is New Jersey.  I was also reading Mary Oliver’s poems from Why I Wake Early  - and of course her place is in the fields and woods and at the shore in Provencetown, Massachusetts.  Yesterday up at my cabin in Arrowhead I read Billy Mernit's wonderfully funny and moving novel, Imagine Me and You, and felt his love for Los Angeles, especially Venice and the beach.

A sense of place for a writer goes beyond knowing the geography and weather – it’s feeling that place in your bones as you write. Knowing it so well that you can close your eyes and smell it, hear it. It’s that feeling of ahh.. when you get there after being away – Like at the end of the 10 Freeway in Santa Monica

when you drive through the McClure Tunnel and it turns into the Pacific Coast Highway and suddenly there's the beach, the ocean, and the mountains.

Or in Montana driving down from the continental divide into the Ruby Valley and seeing nothing but sky, land, mountains and cows - and you can feel your heart expand in all that wide free space. Or up in the San Bernardino mountains when you get out of the car and the smell of pine and cedar catches you unaware, and you fall in love with trees all over again, each time.

What are the places of your heart?  Make a list or write a poem.

The photo above is of the Seine in the rain and I took it with my BlackBerry.  Certain members of my family say that this is the only good photograph I’ve ever taken.

A Commercial Break

If you’re new to this blog: I have a book out on writing that’s available at Amazon or your local bookstore can order it.  Courage & Craft: Writing Your Life Into Story is just what the title suggests – how to find courage to start writing about your life, and then how to craft what you write into stories, memoir, personal essays, or fiction.  It would make a good gift for a June graduate, or for your father or grandfather on June 15^th . (If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile now, yes, the marketing whore is back.)

Upcoming classes in 2008: 

I’m teaching a memoir and personal essay workshop in Twin Bridges, Montana June 22 – 27 – If you’re interested please email me at: B.Abercrombie@verizon.net and I’ll send you information.  There’s one opening left. 

Idyllwild, California  July 14 – 18  Another workshop on personal non-fiction at the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program– about 2 ½ hours from L.A. and San Diego. For more information or a catalog please call 951-659-2171 Ext. 2365

Fall quarter at UCLA Extension  A six week session of  “Courage & Craft” and on November 22 a one day course, “Writing Your Own History”.

And in 2009 – the UCLA Writers Studio in February.

Free UCLA Writers' Program Publication Party: Wednesday, June 11, 2008  7-9:30pm (Doors open at 7pm; readings begin at 7:30pm)  Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 North Sepulveda Blvd. Check out: writers@uclaextension.edu

The Secret to Life!

Last Sunday I was swimming with two of my grandchildren in a hotel pool in Palm Springs.  It was one of those resorts that has a whole lot of pools – one for babies, one for adults only, a medium size pool for medium size kids, a deeper pool etc. Pools everywhere. So Axel and Grace and I were in the medium size kid pool and Axel started yelling that he wanted to go into the deeper pool and Grace hollered she wanted to go in the Jacuzzi. So I gathered up their wet little bodies in my arms and said, “Do you want to know what the secret to life is?”  They both shook their heads and stared at me.  “The secret to life,” I said,  “is to be happy in the pool that you’re in.”  As this came out of my mouth I sensed immediately it wasn’t the secret to life that they were looking for. Grace, age three, grabbed my arm hard and screamed, “Jacuzzi!” in my ear. Axel, almost five, just looked at me and shook his head sadly as if he was really sorry for me.

Okay, so that particular secret to life, the answer to everything, didn’t fly. But! I found another secret to life this week, something that makes a lot more sense then that pool business.  Four lines in a poem by Mary Oliver from her gorgeous new book Red Bird. Here it is:

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

                         - Mary Oliver, from “Sometime”

Advice for writers doesn’t get any better than that.

Loving the Questions

A few months ago in the Wellness Community writing workshop, Barbara Force, whose husband Dan was dying of cancer,  brought in a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke about questions:

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Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart…Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them.  Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

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I realize that’s what we’re doing as writers – trying to find the courage to live our questions out loud. In the last few months of his life, Dan Force struggled with his questions on paper. He and Barbara, and sometimes his sisters, all came to the writing workshop. He died two weeks ago, much too young, a brave, funny, articulate and beautiful man. Last Saturday his sister Janice said that the writing workshop helped him find his “deep voice.”  I loved that expression because we’re all trying to do that with our writing – to find our deep voices, our true and honest voices. Dan found his. 

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Here’s one of the last things he wrote.

“The Train”.

The train is far off, on the other side of the valley.

You can see it winding in the distance,

smoke from its stack.

You can hear the whistle, but not too loud.

When the wind is right, just for brief moments,

you can hear in snatches, wheel against track,

but it is far off,

not immediate, not pressing.

Oh, it will get here, sure,

but that will be later.

So: you take care of business,

do what you think needs to be done,

occupy yourself, live life.

And then, it’s here!

I remember it far off,

but how did it get here so quickly?

Was I not paying attention?

This massive train, stopped on the tracks in front of me.

Undeniable it looms,

leaking steam and water, impatient,

eager to proceed.

If it were a beast, it would pawing the ground.

I face it from the side, naked and dwarfed.

I have no options.

I must get on.

It will not be denied.

- Dan Force

3/28/08

A Writing Exercise

Is it starting to rain?

Did the check bounce?

Are we out of coffee?

Is this going to hurt?

Could you lose your job?

Did the glass break?

These are the opening lines of “Afraid So”, a poem by Jeanne Marie Beaumont which simply lists questions about possible disasters big and small, ending with the question “Will it get any worse?”

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I used this poem as inspiration for five minute writing exercises in both my UCLA memoir class last week and the Wellness Community workshop on Saturday.  In the memoir class, where everyone is looking toward publication, it was fascinating to see that their questions circled around what they were writing in their memoirs- which they didn’t realize at first. (But isn’t that why we write? To answer our own questions?)  In the Wellness Community, where everyone is writing for therapy, some questions were heart wrenching, and some were very funny. 

Try it. Five minutes: write a list of questions. Don’t think, just write.

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If you love cats and/or an engineer check this out.

http://www.komando.com/videos/4-16.asp    

Your 1,000 Steps

I found a very inspiring article this week in The Wall Street Journal of all places. In an article entitled “If at First You Don’t Succeed, You’re in Excellent Company” Melinda Beck explores the question: why do some people give up after the first defeat and others keep going? She quotes Albert Bandura (still teaching at age 82 at Stanford) who came up with the term “self-efficacy” which differs from self-esteem. “It’s easy to have high self-esteem – just aim low,” says Prof. Bandura. But people with self-efficacy “drive themselves hard but have low self-esteem because their performance always falls short of their high standards.” 

Some of those people who kept going no matter what were J.K Rowling, whose first book was turned down 12 times before a small London publisher picked up Harry Potter. And the Beatles who were turned down by Decca Records cause Decca didn’t like their sound. And Michael Jordan who was cut from his high-school basketball team in his sophomore year. My favorite story of all is Thomas Edison making 1,000 attempts at inventing the light bulb before he succeeded. He said: “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

Think about this when you get a rejection slip or have to revise your manuscript. It’s just one of those 1,000 steps.

A Photograph of My Mother and Al

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Thank you for all your comments left after the last post about Al. Your thoughts and condolences were moving and comforting and much appreciated by everyone in my family.  I didn’t have a digital photo of Al and my mother to post so today I took a picture of a photograph of them with my BlackBerry and emailed it to myself. (And it worked!) It was taken on my mother’s 87^th birthday.

Al Kinspel 1913-2008

Al Kinspel died yesterday at the age of ninety-four. Years ago he had been a cab driver in San Francisco and then retired and moved to Long Beach to sail his boat. He had no children and his wife died sixteen years ago. He played the piano and the stock market, was a passionate liberal democrat, was Jewish by birth but didn’t believe in religion or God, gave generously to a lot of charities, had wonderful stories to tell about his days as a cabbie, and drank two martinis every evening of his life. He was tall and good looking, smart and funny and kind.

He fell in love with my mother at the Breakers retirement hotel when she was 84 years old and he was 79. He told me that he had thought his life was over and then he saw my mother playing the piano in the lobby. “She was so beautiful!” he told me many times. She loved him too but didn’t want to marry again. But what a romance they had.

When she was dying twelve years ago Al sat in the hospital with me and held my hand. He called me his stepdaughter and he became part of my family. This man whose only next of kin was his cousin George, a professor at  Berkeley (the smart one in the family, Al would say) suddenly had a family of step grandchildren and step great-grandchildren – all sixteen of us, plus my brother. One Thanksgiving when the house was filled with family he played all the tunes he knew from the forties and Emma’s great-grandmother knew all the words and sang along with him.

Two years ago he began to suffer memory loss, but was able to stay in his little apartment at the Breakers.  A year ago we called in Hospice but he kept going – drinking his martinis and getting down to the dining room on his own for meals. Hospice finally left.  But while I was on my trip Al stopped eating and Hospice returned.

I got home just in time – within hours - to be with him at the end.  He’d always told me he didn’t want machines or tubes or a hospital – and it was the kind of death he had wanted. His caregivers, in tears, came to see him one last time, the view of the Long Beach harbor from his window glittered in the sun, music played. At 12:23 pm he died peacefully in his own bed.

A Great Reading List from Readers

If you’re looking for some good books to read, check out the comments left  by readers on the last post.  Such interesting suggestions that I’ve printed out all the comments for my files. One of my old favorites was mentioned : My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell – years ago we read the whole book aloud on a family vacation. It’s hilarious. A new book by my friend Jackie Winspear An Incomplete Revenge (the latest in her wonderful Maisie Dobbs series) was also mentioned, and a book that I’m actually reading now, Writing About Memoir by Abigail Thomas. (More about this book in another post when I get back from my trip.) Plus a wonderful idea for travel reading – bring novels that take place in your destination. Please leave your own favorite books below under comments. You can use Comments as a message board while I’m gone.   

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Has anyone read The Little Prince lately? I’m reading it aloud to my granddaughter Emma and she now goes around (like the little prince) muttering how strange grown-ups are. Here’s a beautiful quote by the author (something to mull over for the next two weeks):

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Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A Reason to Travel

We’re going on a trip for two weeks and I’m not the greatest traveler. The only reason I can think of for going away (other than to Montana to see my horse)  is that traveling allows you to read for hours during the day. (I know, I know. I have no sense of adventure unless it’s on the page.) My husband keeps talking about the historical sites and battle grounds we’re going to see, the restaurants, etc. I just keep stacking up books to take. So far I have Mary Oliver’s book of poems, Why I Wake Early, Lisa See’s  Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (I’ve been a fan of her mother Carolyn for years and just started reading – and loving – Lisa’s books.), The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer, Population 485 by Michael Perry, The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian, The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama  and O Pioneers! By Willa Cather.

Does anybody have suggestions for books in paperback that you couldn’t put down? Or any reviews or thoughts on the books above?  We don't leave for six more days;  there's still time to buy more books.

Some Writing Prompts

Last weekend I did one of my favorite things in this world: I conducted the Wellness Community writing workshop in Redondo Beach. I don’t actually do a whole lot – I just bring in some poems and prose by wonderful writers to inspire everybody, give five minute writing exercises, and then everyone reads aloud what they’ve written. Sometimes we pass the Kleenex box but more often instead of tears there’s raucous laughter. Since most everybody in the workshop has cancer or has recovered from it, or is a caregiver to someone with cancer, there’s no superficial writing, no time to waste on anything but getting stories and emotions down on the page. I’ve been doing this for ten years now (recently with help from Laura Beasley and Karin Ireland when I can’t make it) – and the workshop never gets boring, or old, or too sad. In spite of illness and fear and sometimes profound loss, there’s also this incredible connection when everybody reads their work out loud. The room just fills up with joy and hope and I feel blessed to be part of it.

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Some exercises we’ve done in the past few months that you might try:

1. Write about scars that show and scars that don’t show.

2. Start with the words This is what you should know about me…..and go for five minutes (or longer if you get on a roll.)   

3. Write the details of an ordinary day.  And then pay attention to the ordinary details of tomorrow.

4. Do you need to be part of a community/group of people who are going through what you’re going through? Or do you need solitude and privacy? Write about what you need/want.

5. What gift do you bring to this world?

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Speaking of gifts – here’s an idea for volunteering: Why not find a place you could volunteer to conduct a writing workshop or mentor a teenager?  I used to do a workshop at my mother’s retirement hotel with a group of very polite, sweet older ladies who thought I was crazy, but we had a lot of fun. (My mother would attend and not write one word.)

I’m also involved with an organization in L.A I’ve written a lot about on this blog called WriteGirl -  women authors mentor teenage girls (Check out their website: www.WriteGirl.org )

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It’s National Poetry Month and if you want to receive a poem a day in your email, please send an email to: http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry/poemaday/

And  also  to: poetnews@poets.org   

Two poems a day! How cool is that?

And if you liked the quote from W.S. Merwin’s poem in the last post, you can find the whole poem at:

www.tmcamp.com/2004/09/poetic-divination-berryman-by-w.php

Wisdom for Wednesday

It’s drizzling in Santa Monica today and 54 degrees. We don’t do well in L.A. when the sun doesn’t shine and it’s chilly and we’re waiting to hear some kind of wonderful news from our agents or publishers. You might even say that besides being addicted to NPR, PBS, CNN and chardonnay, we also tend to whine a bit when life isn’t chugging along exactly the way we want it to.  On that note, here’s part of a poem by W.S. Merwin

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I asked how can you ever be sure

that what your write is really

any good at all and he said you can’t

*

you can’t you can never be sure

you die without knowing

whether anything you wrote was any good

if you have to be sure don’t write

- W. S. Merwin  from “Berryman” 

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