Jacob Allard

I often hear many of my students and colleagues inquire about how they are supposed to tackle a specific problem within their writing. Each person is different in what stumps them: for some it’s characterization, with others it could be world building, and for a few it’s about authority. To each of them I will give an answer specific to their problem, but it doesn’t always click. When it doesn’t seem to help, I give them this one:

READ ESTABLISHED AUTHORS.

This may come as a seemingly obvious answer that won’t help at all, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t realize how much this can actually help. I found this out the hard way.

I struggled for a long time with figuring out how to make a world different from ours seem real and enthrall my audience in a fictive dream. This troubled me so much that I made it my topic for my 3rd semester critical paper at Converse College during my MFA. In doing so it forced me to read much more critically and look at how the authors were able to do what they did, breaking everything I could down into its basic devices. I didn’t just read, I actually stopped at sections and reread them over and over again to see what it was that made their world seem so seamless. After a while I was able to pinpoint that (for myself) it was about details. But within those details I had to read over and over to see what led to each author’s authority. It took me a while, but I eventually figured out what I was looking for.

Now, I will sheepishly admit that while I loved reading, there were other things that distracted me before writing my critical paper and discovering how to read like a writer. Work, school, and admittedly the TV as well all stopped me from reading and reading closely. Now, I enjoy reading a good book and dissecting it; truly studying it, the way an artist studies the brush strokes on Dali’s canvas. For me, I had to specifically start by setting a clock to read every morning. I’d get up, brew a cup of coffee and read. Much like other writers need to set a clock to ensure that they keep writing or editing, I had to set a clock to read. Eventually I just started choosing the book over other media and have been thoroughly enjoying it. This helped me find the details that helped me solve my mysteries time and time again. Reading a lot is always helpful, but when I’m particularly stuck on a problem in my own writing I follow Newton’s advice in science and apply it to writing: I turn to the giants that came before me and have them help me see what I am doing wrong by what they’re doing right.

So the next time you’re editing your latest manuscript and keep hitting snags, before you give up, ask yourself: “What would my favorite author do?” If you can’t answer the question, start by going back to what hopefully triggered your writing bug: a book.

 

Jacob Allard is the Nonfiction Editor at South 85. He graduated Converse College with his MFA in creative writing in 2014. When he’s not writing or editing he is usually found teaching, improvising, acting, or enjoying the outdoors or the City of Richmond, where he calls home.

Richard LeBlond

Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, has been an artists’ colony since the late 1800s. I moved there in the 1970s hoping to become a writer, without realizing hope had nothing to do with it. In the early 20th century the town had nurtured writers like John Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson, and Eugene O’Neill. The first-ever production of an O’Neill play, Bound East for Cardiff, happened on a Provincetown wharf in 1916.

When I came to the schizophrenic town – serene in winter, a tourist madhouse in summer – Pulitzer poets Stanly Kunitz and Mary Oliver were living there. Gregory Corso, the first Beat poet to be published, could regularly be seen in a Provincetown bar, even during the day. There always seemed to be an empty stool next to him, but I never had the nerve to go sit on it. I couldn’t help but look at him through the open door whenever I passed by. Along with the other Beats, Corso was like a religious relic.

But in that era, the literary elephant in Provincetown was Norman Mailer. Now that he is dead, I can drop his name with impunity. Although Mailer was a resident of New York City, he spent a good part of every year in the seaside town, where he owned a house. I eventually encountered him in casual social situations, but the tiny incident I am relating here involves a time before then, when he was just one of the world’s foremost authors.

In the summer of 1975 the two of us lived in separate apartments in the same waterfront house, he on the second floor, with me on the first floor directly below. Either he had not yet bought his house, or it was being used for another purpose, perhaps by one of his several ex-wives, who wouldn’t let him in.

At the time, I was doing my best to act like a writer, but really wasn’t producing much more than bad haiku, which is surprisingly easy to do. And the time spent in the apartment became a nightmare, because Mailer was assiduously applying himself upstairs, writing daily and at length, exposing the sham of my pretensions.

Although his obituary said he eschewed the typewriter and wrote by hand, he was prolifically typing something overhead, maybe a submission manuscript. And the endless tap-tap-tap produced the same effect as Chinese water torture in the apartment below, driving me out into the streets of Provincetown until the wee hours of the morning.

It took decades for me to accept that I was not going to be the writer I wanted to be. I wish I could say it was Mailer’s fault, but like hope, he had nothing to do with it. Not until after I retired did I find, or become comfortable with, my own voice. The epiphany came as I sat on a toilet in, fittingly, Provincetown, where I was visiting a friend on my way home to North Carolina from an adventure in Newfoundland. She kept a pile of literature on the commoner’s think tank behind me. In the pile was a catalog of courses for “Campus Provincetown,” a by-the-seat-of-your-pants education effort so typical of that town. Among the offered courses was one titled “Creating Conditions for Flow,” on overcoming artistic blocks. The brief description said “…when you are in ‘flow,’ you are highly productive and intensely concentrated on your work – so much so that you may lose all track of time. In flow, your inner critic is silent….”

That last phrase produced the eureka moment. I now see the inner critic for the stifling tyrant he was. He remains one of the voices in my head, but is no longer chairman of board.

 

Richard LeBlond is a retired botanist living in North Carolina. The majority of his working career focused on the natural environment. He also worked for newspapers and a magazine as an editor and columnist at various times before 1990. Since his retirement, he has been writing about life experiences and about travels to eastern Canada and the western U.S.

Timothy J. Nelson

“All of us contain Music & Truth, but most of us can’t get it out.” – Mark TwainWe write to express our selves, our voices, and, yes, our souls. It is a compulsion and a compelling force. Some call it the Muse speaking to us or through us. Writing about writing is a bit odd and solipsistic, but, because writers want to share truth and ideas, we do it over and over again. What we’re really doing is getting at truth.

Drawing and sketching were my first forms of creative expression. Initially, I perceived writing as something you did for homework and other school assignments. In college, I started seeing writing as an important extension of analysis and thinking. I write to make sense of the world, its complexities, its beauty, and its harsh realities. Writing is an act of humanity, a desire to connect to others. Some writers use fiction, others use nonfiction narratives, or poetry. Some use multiple forms of expression. Henry Miller and Kerouac liked to paint. Artists want to process their experience of the world.

After almost twenty years of writing, with some success as a journalist and poet, I continue to struggle with finding the time to write, or if what I have to say is worthy of people’s time. So what works for me is that I write as if my life depends on it. It does. It is a “message in a bottle,” an act of hope. Some days it feels like an act of desperation – a scream, yelling from a place that is drowned out by the din of technology, traffic, and the congestion of everyday life. Writers reflect on all of this. Again, they process experience for themselves and, ultimately, for others who seek their wisdom.

As Mark Twain said, we “all contain music and truth,” so writers reveal this truth to us. This is especially meaningful for people that know they have these qualities but cannot express them fully. Why else would we recommend books to others? It’s as if we’re saying, “Read this – this author gets at some truth I can relate to. Maybe you’ll relate, too.” As writers, we don’t have to be the next Shakespeare, Austen, Dickinson, Morrison, or Stephen King; we have to be ourselves. This is an act of courage. So writers are willing to risk comfort and practicality to get at this. The “great works” or “great books” are the ones that appeal to us at that moment in time. These works inspire us to want to inspire others. We learn from the masters on the way to mastery.

I want the courage to confront the truth of human experience. For me, bravery is living the writer’s life, this pursuit of knowledge and truth. The purpose is to share this with others, in my own way. Writers learn from our mistakes and take new risks, discover new techniques that help us reveal our ideas, our truth. We have to find the way, write our way to it. Along the way, reading can help us find the way.

Just as painters choose to paint to discover truth, using a chosen form and technique, I choose to write. I want to live a life that is contemplative and exemplifies the pursuit of truth. To me this is a type of spiritual quest, living my life, then reflecting, thinking, and writing about my experience. If, as the Tao indicates, the truth is within, a writer is open to that and listens, lets it out. Some may call it the Muse. Either way, this requires patience, time, enormous effort, and persistent courage. All I can offer is my self, my work. Perhaps it will help others discover their meaning and their truth.

Now is the time to write. What truth shall we reveal?

 

Tim J. Nelson earned a masters in professional writing from Towson University. In addition to freelance writing, he teaches college composition in Maryland. Tim contributes reviews to publications such as PopMatters.com. The Sacramento Free Press published Tim’s homage to Kerouac, “A San Fran Serious,” as part of its Poems-for-All series. He contributed poems to Poets’ Ink, a Maryland State Poetry & Literary Society broadside; Grub Street; and the online journal, Yes, Poetry. Visit timjnelson.com.

Meeah Williams

When Philip Roth announced his retirement from writing in 2012 at the age of eighty, many people expressed surprise, even disbelief. How could a writer stop writing? Isn’t writing a calling, like the priesthood? Isn’t writing something more than a profession? Can a writer stop writing any more than the rain can stop raining?

Roth’s retirement got me thinking. Then, shortly after his announcement, Alice Munro announced her retirement from writing, too. As a writer myself, I considered that maybe they were both on to something.

I’m not eighty and I haven’t achieved the phenomenal success that either Roth or Munro achieved so my retirement might seem more than a little premature, not to mention un-noteworthy, except to myself. I fell short of winning the Pulitzer Prize. Way short, as it happens. The National Book Award somehow eluded me. The Nobel Prize…well, even Roth retired before winning that. The fact is, I never rose higher than publishing a handful of backlist genre novels and a dozen or so short stories in obscure literary journals. But then again, not everyone can be a CEO no matter how hard they labor or how high their aspirations; the majority of writers are salary men (and women), middle-management types and plain old office workers. And, typically, they retire earlier than the corporate superstars.

So why not take an early retirement? It’s pitiful how I keep laboring on, having reached my limit, pounding my head on the ceiling of whatever potential I might have had. I remind myself of those poor souls who keep at a job long after retirement age because they fear the sense of obsoleteness and existential pointlessness that awaits them if they were to ever stop. Because they fear they will have no reason to live; that they will die without an office to go to, a report to read, a conference table to sit at. Why can’t they find an interest in life that absorbs them other than work? Why can’t I?

Sure, writing is supposed to be that interest—and I suppose it can be, for others, for mere amateurs. But for me, it’s always been more. I thought it was a calling, but now I begin to wonder if it was really a profession, after all. A way to achieve success and fame, reward and standing. I’m beginning to suspect that I’m no different than the ambitious company man with his briefcase of Powerpoint presentations.

Isn’t it time–long past time, in fact,–for me to accept retirement gracefully? Isn’t it time for me to acknowledge that my career, even if it wasn’t all I’d hoped it would be, is over? I’d done my best now it’s time to move on. Shouldn’t I find a nice hobby, like cross-stitch or gardening? Maybe I can take up watercolors? Isn’t there an adult education class in something I can take to fill my time? Didn’t I always want to learn the fine art of French cooking? An eight-week course in short story writing…whoa, not for me! Leave that to the retired stockbroker who never had time to write. Perhaps, I should take that business administration course that I never had time to take? Didn’t I always want to be an accountant? No? Then what else did I want to be but a writer?

I’m afraid for my post-writer future. I’m afraid I’ll end wandering from coffee-shop to coffee-shop, a sad, disheveled, disoriented figure with my battered laptop and a knapsack stuffed with rough drafts and rejection slips. I worry that I’ll end up that eccentric lady at the table by the window at Starbucks drawing sympathetic stares. That I’ll be nursing silos of coffee, scribbling away incessantly with no story to tell, like those men who dress in a suit and tie every morning, grab their briefcase, go down to the train station…but have no office to go to anymore. I can see my husband shaking his head sadly as he watches me head off to my writing nook every morning after breakfast. Why can’t I just stop?

This is not a calling, it’s a sickness, a compulsion, an obsession. If I don’t write, I’m worthless. That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it? That’s my deepest conviction. It can’t be true, can it? No more than it’s true for anyone else with a job. Writers aren’t really in a special class of their own, are they? They can retire, too. They should retire. No one is exclusively what they do. Writers don’t disappear, lose all value and purpose if they stop writing. A policeman can retire. A doctor can retire. Even a priest can retire—and they do. The jobs they have are a lot more important, a great deal more essential, than what the average writer does.

There’s a life after every job. Surely there’s a life after writing. I just can’t imagine what in the world it is. What tragic irony! My job depended on my imagination and here my imagination utterly fails me! In fact, I can’t imagine that Roth or Munro have stopped writing either. That they don’t take out their pens when no one is looking and start filling a page with words. That they don’t let their fingers play over a keyboard from time to time. Just for the joy of it. Just to see what happens. That, paradoxically, they may have rediscovered why they started writing in the first place. That it really was never a profession. That it was play, sheer joy, a participation in life that only begins when we stop trying to make it a living.

If I can only hold on to that thought, and hope for nothing more, one of these days I may be able to finally retire, too.

 

Meeah Williams is a writer and graphic artist. Her work has appeared most recently in The Milo Review, Per Contra, Vagabond City and Dark Matters, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Jeffrey R. Schrecongost

Greed. Guilt. God.

The big ones, yes? The ways in which the three interrelate are what I seek to explore in my fiction. People who need more than they need. The pain of remorse. The nature of a faith that comforts some and confuses and disappoints others.

To unite these themes, to create the vivid dream, I strive to employ the following: poetic prose to enhance atmosphere; tight, realistic, substantive dialogue to propel the plot and reveal characters and conflict; internal tensions and gradual, deliberate character revelation to maintain suspense and verisimilitude; and allusions to music, film, and other elements of popular culture to shape and/or reflect mood and setting.

It’s a good plan, for sure, but how does the writer keep all those syntactical fireworks from either 1) sputtering out or 2) burning down the house?

Careful (as in life or death careful) word choice.

Faulkner, in As I Lay Dying, and Fitzgerald, in “Winter Dreams,” do it this way:

Faulkner writes, “The lantern sits on a stump. Rusted, grease-fouled, its cracked chimney smeared on one side with a soaring smudge of soot, it sheds a feeble and sultry glare upon the trestles and the boards and the adjacent earth.” The lantern is first personified, making for a more-important-than-average lantern. Its role, its purpose, is to illuminate the creation of Addie’s coffin, so it deserves the attention it gets here. Next, we learn that the lantern is in bad shape – rusty, greasy, broken. But the lyrical fashion in which the author gives us this information is particularly effective. Faulkner’s use of alliteration – with ‘s’ sounds — reflects the lantern’s dirty, slippery surface. Smeared, side, soaring, smudge, soot, sheds, sultry. Additionally, these ‘s’ sounds mimic the flame’s hiss which, in turn, enhances the creepy mood. Faulkner then gives us more on the lantern’s condition. The light is feeble yet sultry. Sensual? Torrid? Passionate? Yes. It is a light languid and sexual in nature. Like the way a brothel room’s dim, solitary light dances with darkness to reveal a leg here, a breast there, closing eyes, slow-moving hands. This dense, poetic imagery works to liken Cash’s coffin construction to something resembling sexuality by calling attention to his mysterious physical movements and manipulation of the boards. Oh yes, it’s weird, gloriously weird, and it’s all accomplished in just two sentences.

Let’s see how Fitzgerald does it. He writes, “The dark street lightened, the dwellings of the rich loomed up around them, he stopped his coupe in front of the great white bulk of the Mortimer Joneses’ house, somnolent, gorgeous, drenched with the splendor of the damp moonlight.” Wow. Again, we have personification in the neighborhood’s introduction. But first, there is this surreal shattering of the darkness, an image suggesting the power of wealth. Then the homes loom. They threaten Dexter as old money always has. The Joneses’ home is a white giant, dazzling even in its slumber. But the key word here, the astonishing image, is drenched. The moon heaves a silver wave over the home. It drips with the shimmering of everything Dexter thinks Judy is not. So, Fitzgerald has, with one sentence of dreamy, lush, poetic imagery, given us an atmosphere that is a story in itself – a story about both the possession and lack of wealth, power, and privilege. When the prose is this great, most individual passages in a text can, on their own, stand tall as thematic microcosms of the larger piece.

Lombardi, in Writing Fiction, states that, “With fiction, more than anything else perhaps, it’s the description that envelops you because really everything in a work of fiction, except for the dialogue, is a description of some sort. […] [With great description, the] reader will be swept along by the words, believing every moment of the story, as if it’s a dream or a movie, or as if it were actually happening.”

A dream. A movie. Actually happening.

Faulkner and Fitzgerald are masters of poetic description, and their prose works to mingle multiple forms of sensory data to create that dream-like, filmic, and/or realistic experience. But, as Ringo Starr reminds us, “It don’t come easy.” Hard choices must be made. My relationship with a story’s first, final, and next word is always rocky. It might, for days, weeks, months, remain on the page — my perfect, lovely word – until a more appealing word saunters by and my loyalty fades. Or maybe that perfect, lovely word draws too much attention to itself and so must go. Maybe all the surrounding words hate its guts (I’ve seen this happen – Flagstaff, AZ, 1994), and who wants to get in the middle of that? As a fiction writer I suffer many falls, but getting that one, best word down on paper, followed by the next best word, and the next best word, until all the words are my best words, well, that’s what gets me up in the air.

 

Jeffrey R. Schrecongost received his M.F.A. from Converse College and teaches English at Ivy Tech Community College and Spartanburg Community College. His fiction has appeared in Blood Lotus, BlazeVOX, and Gadfly. He lives in Greenville, SC, with his loyal Golden Retriever, Molly.

Kathleen Nalley

At the conclusion of an alumni weekend during the Converse College MFA residency, I sat with three friends/colleagues/fellow alum who gathered for one final moment before parting (again) to return to our respective homes after a fun-filled, raucous, inspiring time.

As we reflected on various moments, all of us anticipating and dreading the impending depression that results from returning to the “real world,” the thought for this blog post struck me.

What’s more fitting, I thought, than to write about the friendships of writers? Most of us have heard stories of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Capote and Lee, Ginsberg and O’Hara, but what of the friendships forged between emerging writers today?

So, with a nod to novelist and educator extraordinaire, Leslie Pietrzyk, who often uses the Top 10 format to convey tips and advice to students, I present to you:

The Top 10 Reasons Why Writers Make the Best Friends

10. They know a lot about things you didn’t realize you were interested in. Writers expose you to a wide variety of brain fodder: from the Epic Rap Battle series to the nesting habits of sparrows to how fast a Cadillac can accelerate in 0.2 seconds. Whether it’s the life cycle of squirrels, chinchillas in space, the chemical reaction of rust, nanotechnology, theatre, history, engineering, social media, robots, revolutionary women of the 16th century, backpacks, synesthesia, the type of tree grown in the southernmost region of Sicily, or the mating habits of spiders, you learn, through osmosis, just by hanging out with them.

9. They are protective. Writers will steal events and characters from your life, but they will always, always, always change the names.

8. They do not judge or criticize you. Are you self-conscious? Have an ugly zit on the end of your nose? Feel compelled to wear the same black t-shirt every day? Have daddy issues? Talk to ducks? No matter! Writers praise your faults, embrace your idiosyncrasies, and adore you as you are. In fact, writers often understand your impulses and motivations better than your therapist (and usually offer several potential conflict resolutions for the small price of a paperback).

7. They are generous. Writers put aside their feelings of jealousy to shamelessly promote your latest project on Facebook, fund your Kickstarter campaign, or retweet your Tweets. They also tell you about contest/fellowship/job/grant opportunities that will place the two of you in direct competition. Ever see a stockbroker give another stockbroker an inside tip so he has the potential to make more money? Yeah…a writer will do that.

6. Despite popular opinion, they are low maintenance. You may only see a writer friend once a year, twice if you’re lucky. (But the time you spend together is exciting, engaging, and memory-making enough to fill the gaps in between.) Further, writers rarely say goodbye, preferring to disappear into the shadows and drift away while you aren’t looking — making those typical, awkward, teary farewells nonexistent.

5. They understand rejection. Multiple times a year/month/week/day, writers receive the dreaded email that begins, “We loved your piece, but it is just not right for our journal at this time.” Such frequent communication primes them to be the perfect sounding board when your marriage fails, your dog refuses to come when called, your credit application for a new refrigerator is denied, or your family disowns you for living in the basement and playing Call of Duty 24/7, although you’re 43 and have a Master’s degree. Writers know what it feels like, man.

4. They are uber-productive, respectable citizens. Most writers maintain several jobs to barely eek out a living — teaching, writing, submitting, freelancing, reviewing, copyediting, raising kids, maintaining a household, waiting tables, cleaning toilets, etc., etc. While many writers schedule sleeping, they still make time for you (see #6.).

3. You can bring them to Thanksgiving. Writers become temporary experts on the details du jour — Fibonacci sequences, KISS song lyrics, metallurgy, gemstone properties, Greek architecture, cancer metastasis, etc., because, inevitably, such details will bring a character to life or become a metaphor for cultural deterioration in a capitalist market. Writers can talk someone’s ear off on just about any topic, saving you from having to explain why you’re not married, why you’re not employed, and/or why you’re not providing the anticipated grandchildren any time soon.

2. They are like those people you rolled your eyes at but secretly envied in high school. 97.5% of writers actively seek out the nearest karaoke bar and aren’t shy about wailing “Hotel California,” “Toxic,” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” back-to-back, no matter the makeup of the audience, no matter how well s/he can sing. (Another curious note: writers often break into spontaneous song while walking up stairs, while in the bathroom, giving a reading, and/or in the middle of a workshop). A writer forces you out of your comfort zone, and you will be all the better for it.

And last, but certainly not least,

1. They know where to find the best and cheapest drinks. And if going out is not an option, writers will give you their last beer, just like the shirts off their backs.

 

Kathleen Nalley received her MFA from Converse College in 2012. Nesting Doll, winner of the S.C. Poetry Initiative Prize, was published in 2013. Her poetry has appeared in The Bitter Southerner, Country Dog Review, Emrys Journal, Real South magazine, and several other journals. She currently serves as Poetry Editor of South85 Journal and teaches English at Clemson University. This year, she hopes to win the lottery, gain equality for women, narrow the income/class gap, and/or publish a full collection of poems — not necessarily in that order.

Sara Kuhl

As writers, we often develop deep relationships with our characters. We talk to them while we’re in the shower. At night, we dream of them. Our characters live side-by-side with us for long stretches. So when it comes time to push their narrative to a place that forces us to make a choice that could hurt them, we may opt to give them a sprained leg when what’s really necessary is an amputation.

I’ve danced around causing my own beloved characters pain. In an early draft of a story about a boy who drowns, I refused to allow the parents to feel the anguish of that loss. I wanted to tie up their lives in neat little packages and allow them to go on their way.

I know. The impulse makes no sense. After ripping out their hearts, I wanted everything to be OK. How could I as a writer drown a child and then not allow the parents feel the deep and utter pain of that death? I wanted them to have a sprained leg instead of an amputation.

Back to the manuscript I went, taking the father and the mother to those dark places that can be challenging not only to explore but also to translate to the page. It is in those moments of harshness and despair that we writers often touch our readers deeply by allowing them to join in universal experience of our character. My story still isn’t right for many reasons, but in writing a scene about the father’s reaction to his son’s death, I wept. So maybe, just maybe, I am getting a little closer.

I like to think I’m not alone in this desire to protect my characters. I believe Willa Cather suffered from this same affliction. I have no concrete evidence to support my claim. She didn’t write of this issue in the recently released volume of her letters. (The Selected Letters of Willa Cather is worth the time for any writer. Her discussion of craft will have you thinking differently about your own process and characters.) As I thought about my own plight in terms of being an overprotective writer, I began to realized that one only need look at Cather’s prairie trilogy — O Pioneers!, Song of the Lark, My Ántonia — for an example of a highly accomplished and acclaimed author who also protected her characters, yet grew and changed as she matured as a writer.

These now classic stories of life on the Nebraska prairie were published between 1913 and 1918. The trilogy wasn’t her first foray into publishing. She already had a volume of poetry, a collection of short stories and first novel to her credit when the prairie novels were released. Cather struggled with those early publications and found little that she liked in the work and did not discover her voice until she wrote O Pioneers! Her voice only emerged after some serious pushing from her mentor, Sarah Orne Jewett. Orne Jewett told Cather, “Write it as it is, don’t try to make it like this or that. You can’t do it in anybody else’s way—you will have to make a way of your own. If the way happens to be new, don’t let that frighten you. Don’t try to write the kind of short story that this or that magazine wants—write the truth, and let them take it or leave it.”

Willa Cather followed her mentor’s advice and a century’s worth of readers are grateful. (Note to self, listen to your mentors.)

Cather begins her examination of life on the frontier in O Pioneers! Alexandria, Cather’s strong and capable protagonist, is anointed as the head of the family by her father as he lay dying. In that episode, Alexandria’s brothers are stunned that a woman would be given charge over them. Remember, this book was published seven years prior to the ratification of the nineteenth amendment, which granted women the right to vote. The stalwart father fades into the early pages of novel and life simply forges on for his offspring. I believe this is a case of Cather providing a sprain when something more dramatic may have been more appropriate.

Some may argue that Cather is brutal in her treatment of Alexandria’s brother, Emil, and his lover, Marie, with a murder scene in the orchard. However, even that episode is told from a distance, away from the pain of the death of two young and vibrant souls. The reader only hears the details of their deaths from Alexandria’s friend and confidant, the mystical Norwegian Ivar.

It isn’t until her final book of the trilogy, My Ántonia, that Cather gives insight into the harsh realities of immigrant life on the unforgiving flats of Nebraska. Of the three novels, My Ántonia, is the most acclaimed. The writing is beautiful and sparse. Cather honed her use of episodic writing to such an art that most readers never realize they are not reading a traditional narrative. And she creates characters with depth and emotional anguish that surpass any of her previous writing. Compared to the quiet death of Alexandria’s father, Cather retells a story she first heard when she arrived in Nebraska at the age of nine. Ántonia’s beloved, soft and kind father commits suicide in the family’s barn one night after dinner. The story of the actual death is retold through the eyes of a hired man. Again, Cather places distance between the reader and the violence. But that suicide alerts the reader that Ántonia’s future will be different from the easier life of Alexandria and Cather carries through giving Ántonia a challenging, but rewarding path.

I’d like to think that Cather deeply pondered the fate of her characters. I know she spent time talking with them each day and living with them while she wrote. She loved Thea from The Song of the Lark so much that the novel is overwritten despite efforts to winnow it down. I picture Cather asking herself questions like, “What is the worst thing that can happen to my character and will the action be believable to the reader?” Then, I see her talking it out with her characters, debating the outcomes, and finally delving into her stories, and pulling out the sharp amputation saw when necessary.

Now, I look toward Cather’s example anytime I return to the page. I think of the joy and the suffering of my characters, for without the full emotional experiences aren’t our stories just one-dimensional pablum? In my story of the boy who drowns, I take the father to the place where his son is lost. I put the father in the water. I allow him the experience of trying to relive the those last moments, to feel the pull of the Wisconsin River’s violent current and I let him make the choice to let the current take him or pull himself back to the shore to face life with a child gone.

 

Sara Kuhl is a fiction writer who is working on her MFA at Converse College. Through the wise guidance of a writing mentor, she only recently found her soul sister in Willa Cather. Kuhl, a northerner by birth, feels fortunate to be privy to a cabal of strong Southern writers at Converse. When not attempting to push her characters to emotional extremes, she is the director of university marketing and media relations at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Karin Gillespie

I once ran into a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist in a ladies’ room at a writer’s conference. She slipped into a stall and I could hear her peeing. The whole time I was thinking, “Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists have to pee?”

Obviously they do. They also probably burp and sneeze and maybe even snore but their writing is so impressive sometimes it’s hard to imagine it comes from mere mortals.

In fact, when I was a beginning writer I used to assume that certain authors had a direct pipeline to the writing gods who sent them down a steady supply of flawless prose any time they sat at their computers. I also thought that these gods were exceedingly elitist, and only showered special writers with their gifts. When I put my fingers on the keyboard, I imagined the gods rolling their eyes and saying, “Her again? Toss down a few clichés and some stilted sentences.”

But then one night, many years ago, I was writing a freelance theater review on “Richard III” for my local newspaper; it was a rush job and had to be completed in two hours. I was in panic because I’ve never written anything decent in that period of time, and I was still pretty new to the writing game.

I threw myself into the review and the next day when I read it in the paper, I was afraid it was going to be terrible, but, to my surprise, it was fresh and invigorating. In fact, it was so good I couldn’t believe I’d actually written it.

Artists at all levels of mastery have had similar experiences. I once read that the actor Lawrence Olivier came off the stage after his most brilliant performance of his life. Supposedly he said, “I know it was my best work ever, but I have no idea how I can replicate it.”

I can relate to his bewilderment. How can we repeat those moments in writing when we are just not at our best, but better than our best? How can we more consistently unearth gems and gold doubloons instead of old shoes and rusty nails?

The obvious advice applies: learn your craft, keep butt in chair. But I would also add some additional advice: Get the hell out of your way.

I think the reason my theater review was so good was because I didn’t have time for my usual writing mind games, i.e., the need to impress, the near constant belittling, and the occasional delusions of grandeur. My mind was clear and focused on my purpose, making me an excellent conduit for the writing gods’ gifts.

Of course getting out of your way is easier said than done. For me, meditation helps enormously. Twenty minutes every day I sit and listen to the voices in my head. The more I observe those voices in action, the more I understand how frequently they undermine my creative work. Those voices are like kindergarteners in need of a nap. They always seize onto the first idea because they want to get the writing over with or they’re attracted to derivation because “it made that other kid famous and I want to be famous too.” Or they resist a needed revision because “It’s good enough. I’m so sick of this.”

It seems ludicrous that we would actually listen to these wrongheaded voices, but the truth is, many of us not only listen to them but are ruled by them. Meditation doesn’t completely quiet them, but we are then less likely to give into their wily demands.

Sometimes I’m tempted to yell at these voices, “Quit being such brats!” but I think it’s a better strategy to be kind and patient with them and say, “You kids play nice for a while. I have to work right now.”

Then I sit down and write my head off before the voices get restless. Does this make me write like a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist? Nope. I still write like Karin Gillespie but sometimes, with the help of the writings gods, I write even better than she does.

 

Karin Gillespie is the author of five novels and has MFA in creative writing from Converse. Visit her Karingillespie.net.