Writing – Page 3 – Lofty Minded in Alaska

Halfway through summer

Somewhere in the early days of this blog I think I wrote something about trying to post something at least twice a week. In retrospect it may have been a little too lofty a goal. I seem to be doing well to get something out twice a month at this point.

There is always the hope that somewhere in my future I will find more time for writing and reading. Realistically the six to seven months of winter we get here could work to my advantage. During the long season I go to bed early and therefore find it relatively easy to get up at 5:30am and take advantage of a quiet house. Summer in Alaska is a different story. There is this climate-imposed pressure to fit as much into three months as others in a more southern locale could spread out over as many as six to eight months. The garden needs tending, firewood needs stacking. There are fish to catch, berries to pick and recreation to be had, all in addition to the regular household chores and my job. I’ve heard people talk about “lazy summer days” but honestly I haven’t experienced many of them in the 18 years I’ve lived here. Perhaps we’re programmed to keep moving until darkness settles in, which this time of year is around midnight. It’s a rather manic existence and I can sustain it for a while, but just lately I’ve reached the part of the summer where my concentration is low and my attention span is short.

Lately I’ve been craving some serious couch time. The other day I found myself fantasizing about catching a summer cold that would force (allow?) me to sit still for a while with my books and my laptop. When my reading and writing habits become mucked up in the long daylight portion of summer, I feel a little out of balance. A sort of literary mania comes over me. The problem is compounded by the fact that I work in a library.

It starts with me checking out more books and magazines than I could ever possibly find the time to read. Then, when I start feeling bad about taking so many items out of circulation for the public use I begin digging through the book donation boxes in the back room. My stack keeps getting higher and in my attempt to make up for all the years I spent reading Glamour magazine and listening to 80’s pop music when I should have been reading the classics I start having thoughts like, “How can I possibly be a good writer if I’ve never read Moby Dick, or anything by Steinbeck? I must remedy this situation right now.” The guilt I inflict upon myself is emotionally exhausting and by the time I actually have time to sit down on my couch with my oversized stack, (usually around 11:30 pm) I’m overwhelmed by the choices. I do a lot of page flipping and a little reading (remember the short attention span I mentioned earlier) before I find myself too tired to think straight. Then I fall into a hard sleep for about six hours.

Coherence returns, for a while at least, after a good sleep, so that’s when I try to write, even if it only amounts to a page or two in my notebook. Some would say that journaling is a waste of time but I find that it’s a valuable tool for helping me keep my wits intact. A while back it led me to a most obvious solution to my reading and writing problem of late: short stories. I’m working on a short story of my own, and what better way to learn the workings of the genre than to read a bunch of them? And beautifully, I can manage complete works of fiction that are only 5-12 pages long, even during this crazy time of year when daylight lasts much longer than my brain’s ability to stay fully engaged.

And as for this blog, I still aspire to post more often, and maybe even liven it up with pictures once in a while. In the meantime I’ll do what I can, and continue to enjoy the process. I think I’ll also try to slow down a little and savor some of what summer has to offer.

Thanks everyone for reading. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!

The Low Down on the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference (so far)…

The Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference is underway, and I’m feeling lucky that such an event happens right here in my home town. World class authors come here, to me, making it just so easy (and affordable) to learn from them. I get in my car, drive about fifteen miles, make myself comfortable in the conference room at Land’s End Resort, and people like Michael Cunningham, Dinty Moore, Bill Roorbach, Peggy Shumaker, Sherry Simpson, Nancy Lord and Rich Chiappone (to name just a few) offer workshops, answers to writing questions and expert advice. It’s pretty cool.

Although I’ve been dabbling in writing for several years, I’m a newbie to the writing world. The KBWC is a good way to get a sampling of what it’s all about. Jennifer Pooley, a senior editor from HarperCollins imprint William Morrow is here, as is agent April Eberhardt. It’s been nice to meet both of these very approachable women because they remind me that agents and editors are real people; something I’m guessing that most of you already knew.

Here are a few morsels I’ve gleaned from the offerings so far:

I use the word “I” way to much in my writing and I think I’m going to have to start looking for alternative ways to talk about myself so as to not bore the poor readers or sound like a narcissist.
Bill Roorbach says to call writing “work” and not “writing,” because the guilt-ridden side of us won’t let us skip out on work and it’s easy to decline social engagements when you say, “Sorry, I have to work.”
Dinty Moore’s workshop on miniature nonfiction validated my love for keeping things short and gave me some great ideas for future projects.
Michael Cunningham says it’s important to stay engaged with a piece of writing by visiting it every day, even if you don’t have much time. He also says to “write smarter than you are.”
Listening to Peggy Shumaker read from her new book, “Gnawed Bones” reminded me that I love poetry, especially when it’s as accessible and beautiful as hers.
And Bill Roorbach says that gardening is writing. I love that.

A Break

My last blog post was on April 22^nd, two days after the oil platform Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. At that point I was writing one or two essays a week for the History of Psychology class I was taking, and that particular blog post was a way for me to escape the pressures of my class for a couple of hours. I noticed the headline about the oil platform sinking and eleven crewmen missing on that day as I was researching school lunches but honestly my mind was on other things and I didn’t give it much thought.

I took a break from journaling and blogging late in the semester in order to finish the term paper for my class. And in my attempt to stay focused on the task at hand I didn’t pay much attention to the news, but on May 6^th, the day I submitted my final project, I heard that the oil leak in the Gulf was spewing close to 25,000 barrels a day, a much bigger number than the 1000 barrels it had been estimated at in the beginning. The burden of a semester’s worth of deadlines was gone and I could finally think about the trip to Colorado I was leaving for the next day, but that number, twenty-five thousand, stayed with me.

My sister and I flew out of Anchorage on Saturday, May 8^th. The route took us over Prince William Sound where twenty-one years before, the Exxon Valdez spilled 257,000 barrels of crude oil. When that spill occurred I was three years out of high school, at a time in my life when keeping up with current events was the last thing on my mind. But I had this dream of moving to Alaska and I watched the spill unfold on television with a heavy heart. What I didn’t understand at the time was that the images of oiled sea birds and otters were only a small part of the story; the lost livelihoods, the damaged ecosystems, the profound hopelessness experienced by those affected, those are the stories that aren’t as easy to cover in a headline, or with a picture.

I spent my first day in Colorado, Mother’s Day, at my step-mom’s house. Three of my five sisters were there along with four nieces and a nephew. She prepared for us a delicious meal of shrimp scampi and just before we sat down to dinner we checked CNN and found out that BP’s first attempt to cap the spewing oil with a containment dome the day before had failed. If I’ve done my math right, the Deepwater Horizon had already surpassed the Exxon Valdez in the number of barrels of oil leaked by Mother’s Day. But unlike an oil tanker with a finite capacity, nobody knows how much oil can escape from a hole that is drilled 18,000 feet into the ocean floor. Nobody knows how many fishing families will be put out of business, or how the Gulf of Mexico’s sustainable shrimp industry will fare, but it doesn’t look promising.

I didn’t follow the news much for the next ten days or so. I knew the oil was still flowing into the ocean but thinking about it couldn’t change a thing, so I went about enjoying my time with my mom and my sisters. It’s a powerless feeling to care about something and really not be able to do anything tangible to remedy the situation.

I returned from Colorado a little over three weeks ago. Since then I’ve resumed my normal life, which is mellower in the summertime. With the kids out of school I’m able to sleep a little later, and the extra daylight after I get off of work allows me to get outside and work in the garden in the evenings. The peas and beets are beginning to sprout already, and potatoes and carrots will soon follow. So far all of the green vegetables that we transplanted seem to be surviving, so maybe this will be a good gardening year. Hopefully by the time I’m harvesting vegetables this fall the technology to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico will have been found and put into use.

I still check the headlines every day to see if there is any good news at all in the Gulf of Mexico. I haven’t heard any yet and it’s been about fifty days since the initial explosion. It’s a sobering thing to know that we can cause so much harm; that the advantages of our technology can at times be outweighed by the damage it can unleash. I feel it’s a problem that must be recognized and considered with each advance that is made, but out of self-preservation I can’t let myself get overwhelmed by things that go so far beyond my own control. I can’t stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico but I can tend my garden, my family and my soul. I can get back to writing and I guess that’s better than doing nothing.