Author Archives: ltownsdin

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About ltownsdin

Author of the Spirit Lake Mystery Series

Postcard Fiction #6

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Unzipped

You close the front door, lock it and step down to the walkway.

You lift your face into the morning breeze.

You cross the street at an angle, your feet taking you toward the river.

You turn down the lane with the house that’s hidden behind a tree tunnel.

You keep walking, sniffing the jasmine, sidestepping the dog poop, rounding the curve,

And before you know it you have unzipped yourself from your body.

It lies on the ground behind you like a heavy leather coat.

Your strides propel you forward not quite touching the ground.

You are new.

 

“Wild” Stayed with Me

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Everyone’s writing about Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling book, Wild, From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. Oprah even made it the first selection of her newly revived Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. Time magazine did a piece on her column in Rumpus, and Poets and Writers magazine interviewed her in its March/April edition.

Why all the buzz?

In Wild, Strayed attempted to come to terms with her beloved mother’s death by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State. She set out alone at 26 with no experience as a long-distance hiker on a dangerous journey that ultimately helped her to heal. She battled the elements, endured blistered feet and scary encounters with two- and four-legged creatures, all while carrying a massive pack on her back.

My respect for her grew page by page as she stoically moved through each setback, planting one foot in front of the other, duct-taping her sandals, doing without food and water when she ran out, and sometimes being saved through the kindness of others.

Faith and Denial

Strayed believed absolutely that her box of money and supplies—pre-packed by her and sent by friends—would be at the right destination at the right time to sustain her along the trail. She expressed concern that bad weather might stall her arrival, or she might need to reroute, or even get lost, but she never doubted that her box would be there or even that she might not have remembered to put something crucial into the box when she packed it before setting out. And when those things did happen, she figured out how to manage. I don’t want to give away too many details because each one is an interesting part of her journey, but Strayed used her last money to buy an ice cream cone. That’s faith with just enough denial to keep going.

Fearless Honesty

I was awed at the physical risks she took as a young woman alone in the wilderness, but her fearlessness in openly talking about her life was nothing short of remarkable. To put her vulnerability, darkest secrets, deepest hurts, even her callous treatment of others under such an unrelenting light is not something most of us could do.

Strayed’s book set off a string of memories about my own life at 26, my daughter’s age now. Reeling from my father’s death and a little bit lost, I embarked on my own, much less dramatic but still courageous journey into adulthood.

Strayed’s book reminded me it’s never too late to recapture some of that youthful faith and fearlessness. I can open my heart a little more, be more vulnerable, and look at some of what I might still keep locked in its own secret room. If the author’s example is any barometer, it turns out it can’t hurt you, it can only help.

Slaves to Time

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I’ve read Graham Swift’s essay, “Words Per Minute,” in Sunday’s New York Times book section three times.

Swift talked about the slowness of the craft of writing a novel compared to how quickly we read them. He said many people say they have no time to read, an anomaly when technology was supposed to create more leisure time. He says “saving time has made us slaves to speed,” but that “the absorbed experience of a novel actually removes us from the tyranny of our sense of time.”

As a writer who has been working on a couple of as yet unfinished novels for several years now, the essay made a big impact on me. I’ve felt a growing sense of the need to hurry. Some writers can finish one or even two novels a year. Others like Swift take years to finish a novel and prefer doing it that way. He called a novel “a little life within a life.”  That phrase bloomed in my imagination.

What Swift’s essay means to writers like me

Looking at the writing process as creating a little life within a life brought a few questions to mind. Do we love losing ourselves in our writing for hours? Do we enjoy learning about the craft of writing? At the end of a writing session do we feel productive and creatively satisfied? Or at the very least, have we had fun?

For me, the answer is usually yes. I feel successful when I know I’ve written a good scene or even just a good sentence. I don’t think about whether the hour I labored will be read in a flash or even if it will ever be read. I’m not saying I don’t think about that. I do, just not when I’m engaged in writing.  Swift’s essay reminded me not to get caught up in other people’s definitions of success.

This is Swift’s ending paragraph. I’ve pinned it to my bulletin board:

“I’m not disheartened by the thought that what takes me years to write may occupy a reader for just a few hours. To have made, perhaps, a benign intrusion into someone else’s life for even such a short duration seems to me quite a feat of communication, and if that communication becomes for readers not just a means of passing those hours, but a time-suspending experience that stays with them well after they’ve closed the book and that they might one day wish to return to, then that’s as much as any novelist can hope for.”

I hope you’ll read his entire essay. If you’re a reader or a writer it will remind you what an important part you have in the alchemy that happens between writer and reader.

Graham Swift won the 1996 Booker Prize for “Last Orders.” His most recent novel is “Wish You Were Here.”

Writing Process Not Always Smooth Sailing

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I’d thought when I sent my mystery off to be professionally critiqued that my next step was publication, with perhaps a few tweaks to get it just right. Let me first say that I’m grateful for the insightful commentary I received; however, the scope of some of the suggestions deflated me at first.

The editor’s comments were on target because they resonated with the warning bells in the back of my head that told me I’d gotten off course. I’d already sailed pretty far out  into the story, so I stayed the course, even with the warning bells and reached my destination—a  pretty good book, but not as good as it could be.

More work to be done

Now I have the correct coordinates—to keep with my nautical analogy—and know which way to go, but it’s going to take some work. I have to go against the current and start revising from where I first went astray, and keep correcting until I get to that amazing magnificent destination I hoped for all along: A well-done mystery, satisfying for readers and for me.

Today is the day I stop whining and hope the wind fills my sails with great ideas and good writing ahead.

 

Creativity is Messy Business

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Not to take anything away from the people and companies helping us organize our spaces, but in my experience, too much organization is death to creativity.

The professional organizer suggests we clear the desktop, file all papers, categorize, minimize and eradicate clutter.

That works well in every other space in my home. My bathroom towels are folded, toiletries put away. My bed is made, clothes hung in the closet. No dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. No newspapers strewn around the family room.

Yes, I feel serene when my writing space is neat. What I don’t feel is creative. When projects are tucked into their folders, lists consolidated, scraps of sticky notes tossed, and inspiring items I like to touch and look at hidden away, my mind is as blank as my desk.

Everything’s in play

Documents containing writing drafts, research, inspiration, editing tips, projects, and so on fill my computer desktop. My ideas cross-pollinate other projects. I swear they get together while I’m sleeping and generate even more connections. They jog my creativity like magic orbs bouncing around my mind, easy to grab onto. They contain snippets from blogs I follow or information on upcoming contests or conferences, and drafts of dialogue for the mystery I’m working on. Everything’s in play. But once they’re properly filed on the C drive my thread is severed. I’m at a loss about where to begin.

A disorderly mind is better than a blank mind

Here’s an example of how it works for me. I read the book, Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Inspired, I went to my art workspace in the garage and started playing with words and pictures I’d gathered from magazines. That led to redoing my bulletin board to incorporate energizing ocean scenes. That gave me an idea for a new collage booklet using favorite lines from poetic fiction I’ve written in my writing group. I tossed around some images and papers and gathered colored pens and other supplies. Then an idea for my blog came to me so I left that mess and went back to my office, pulled out my yellow tablet and started writing.

Your thoughts?

The wonderful blogs I follow allow me to connect and communicate with so many creative people. I’d love to hear about your creative process.