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Dear Friends,
Are you like me? On who thinks that September feels like the start of a new year? I guess after twenty years in school it shouldn't surprise us!
But spending a week with our grandkids after one week at a new school under their belts, I realize I'm going back too.
Those of you who know me won't be surprised that I love learning new things, exploring ideas, wrestling with conundrums, and sorting out what I think and feel. I also like schedules, a pile of new books, and diving into fascinating topics with new and old friends.
None of this is to say I was a great student growing up. I wasn't. At least not in the traditional way of test scores and letter grades. I was okay, but not great. Learning came hard. I wasn't facile with numbers or words. I didn't excel at much, though I was good at sizing up teachers and fellow students. Still, I do love learning.
My third career as a writer has been no different. Except now I have the freedom to seek out teachers I know I need next. From Joni Cole to Brooke Warner to Kerri Arsenault to Beth Kephart to Jennifer Lauck, I'm learning how to write.
Some of you know that I grew up in a literary family, surrounded by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, so my bar was set high from the start. For years I was intimidated by them and not considered the next writer-to-be in my family. But I did breathe in words, rhythms, and use of metaphor by all those poets and bringing that forward through my books. The new one, fiction, has the working title of Revolution — A Love Story.
I need accountability, continued craft improvement, and a community of writers. Jennifer Lauck's Blackbird Studio is an MFA-level school without the trappings of an MFA school I don't need, and I'm hoping it'll be, like for Goldilocks, a perfect fit. Jennifer's first memoir Blackbird was a winner to me and I've long been interested in working with her. So here we go.
Weekly meetings, many submissions to create, reviewing and critiquing the submissions of others, reading a stack of books together and critiquing them, and engaging in formal and just-in-time craft lessons throughout will be a stretch in my time budget but I 'm committed for this school year.
My goal is to complete the first draft of the book by a year from now. There. I've said it aloud. You all can hold me accountable. It sounds simple doesn't it — about 52 weeks to write 35 chapters (8 are done).
But here's where I have to accept my weaknesses. I'm a very slow reader and a slow writer. I can crank out first drafts easily, just spreading words over pages, but getting them to even what I would consider a "first draft" for others to critique, takes me many hours and many revisions. It's a fact. Having now published two books and lots of essays, there's no hiding behind it. I have to work with it.
Which means I may not make the timeline. And I love many other things in my life too! Kids, grandkids, friends, travel, and the great joy I get being on the top of a mountain or the seat of my bike.
Still, we know that what we intend, we are more likely to do.
What's impressed me the most in working with Jennifer so far is watching her live edit our work. This alone has maintained a high bar. She's helped me dig deep to clarify elements as macro as my book concept, its structure and plot, to more "minor", how to construct a great sentence, how to show what a character is thinking/feeling.
I feel so lucky to have this structure as I try to write a book in less than the 20 years it took me for the first two!
So....off I go...I'll keep you apprised. In the meantime, may you be finding new things that thrill you each day, teach and grow you, as we move through the coming school year!
Studio II Reading List
We'll be breaking these down and analyzing them for structure, plot, voice, and craft and I'm eager to learn from these authors.
September Book Query
I'm sure many of you have read and loved Demon Copperhead. Let me know what you loved about it and anything you thought might have been done differently.
She Writes Press's Move to Distribution by Simon & Schuster Is Complete!
From My Stack
Rachel Kushner
The Hard Crowd
I'm a big fan of Rachel Kushner, one of the smartest authors I know and a creator of the amazing Telex from Cuba, The Flamethrowers, The Mars Room, all three of which are hard core great books. Her new novel Creation Lake (already shortlisted for the Booker Prize) is up next, but in the meantime I'm loving her collection of essays The Hard Crowd. If all you read of this book is "Girl on a Motorcycle" it's worth the price of admission. I felt like I was on the back of her motorcycle careening 140 miles an hour down the transpeninsular highway for the Cabo 1000 motorcycle race through Baja. How she had the guts to do that is beyond me! And, a sneak peak—turns out her father was a freshman at Dartmouth the year we moved to Hanover and my father makes a brief appearance in her essay "Tramping in the Byways", along with the poets he gathered. Who knows, maybe Kushner's dad was at one of Dad's famous parties when I was six years old!
Sara Somers
Saving Sara
She Writes Press sister Sara Somers, also with me in Blackbird Studio, is a wonderful writer (and person) and her memoir about food addiction is engrossing. This is a very good read for anyone with addictions (or family members/friends with same), but food addictions, of course, can't be resisted entirely. Somers navigates us through the world of food addiction, the multiple ways in which it felled her, and the kind of grace she needed to find to manage it. Along the way, we're taken to Amsterdam, France, Berkeley, Cambridge, as she struggles to find and save herself. Great read. And, just a note that Sara, who has moved permanently to Paris, has a Substack about life and writing from there, that you can find HERE.
Peter Heller
Burn
Peter Heller's Celine was a favorite read five years ago and Burn is his latest in a series of books depicting guy buddies on outdoor adventures where something goes enormously wrong (read murder, etc). He's great at writing about place, and gets a certain kind of white-guy dialog down perfectly. I've enjoyed them, just hoping he doesn't turn too formulaic, but this one is my favorite so far (Michael might disagree). Perhaps, in part, because it's a story about best friends Jess and Storey on their annual pilgrimage, this time in the deep western mountains and woods of Maine where, apparently, secession attempts are alive and being enacted by way of violent uprisings. When they come upon a small town bombed to smithereens and only a little girl from whom, too traumatized to speak, to extract what happened, they go to great lengths to rescue her and themselves. In light of extremism these days, it's a literary told tale worth reading and gnawing on after.
Megan Baxter
Twenty Square Feet of Skin
I had fun working with Megan Baxter this summer on some new micro essays and was introduced to hers through this beautiful volume. "Hunger" is stellar, one of the best essays I've read this year. Baxter is clear-eyed and doesn't flinch when she shows us a misplaced love and the beginning and end of a sad marriage. Baxter is a wonderful teacher as well as vegetable gardener who lives in New Hampshire.
May you enjoy these warm (hopefully not too hot where you are!) days and cool nights, September's change of colors, the ripening of fall foods, and the warmth of longer evenings to read good books.
With love,
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