I had the same experience twice this week. I’m chatting with a friend or an acquaintance at a social gathering, community event, or business function when the person leans close, assumes a sheepish grin, and in a voice pitched too low for anyone else to hear, confesses, “I’m writing a book.”

Such confessions make my heart sing. Don’t whisper, I think. Give yourself a pat on the back. Treat yourself to champagne. I wish you every success. And don’t give up.

Lately, with the future of “book” (as we understand the word) in question, the attempt to write one strikes me as heroic. Will the very concept of “book” become outmoded?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “book” comes from the Proto-Germanic bokiz or “beech,” a reference either to the beechwood tablets on which runes were inscribed or to the tree itself. As the publishing industry pushes us toward the virtual, will the roots of the word in the physical world seem inappropriate? Does an e-version deserve to carry a name based on the organic materials from which a book is made?

The picture that accompanies this post features a shelf in my home library. It just happens to be the shelf where my own as yet unpublished book will live (in alphabetical order by author’s last name, should it be destined to take print form), living out eternity somewhere between the books of John Irving and Kazuo Ishiguro. Given the current state of publishing, I sometimes despair of ever seeing my book assume this place.

So to all of you closet writers out there, keep telling me your secret whenever you can.  And keep writing your books.

And let’s agree that when we envision “book,” we’ll see our words pressed into paper that has tint and heft. We’ll imagine our pages as leaves that ruffle in a breeze. When we say the word “book,” we’ll think about where it will sit on a shelf or how it will rest on a table.

We’ll remember that “book” refers to something three-dimensional. In that form, books occupy physical space and cannot fail to demand our attention.

I brought them to our writing group meeting a couple of weeks ago to use as a writing prompt. Different people, poses, types of photos appealed to each of us in different ways. Not knowing anything about them freed us to imagine anything based on this brief moment preserved in the image.

Who are they?

What happened to them?

What did they do later that day?

How did their story become lost, so that no one would want to keep their picture?

What was happening in the larger world when the photo was taken?

How did it feel to wear these clothes?

What kind of chores did they have to do?

What was most important to them?

If there had been stories to go with them, these photos probably wouldn’t have been tossed into a box to sell. But the photos themselves are compelling, asking for a story to go with them. If one of these speaks to you, the story is yours to write.

When I was 28, I swore that whatever else happened to me, I was determined to live like a writer, as if what I wrote mattered. Faithful to the journals, even when they were read without my permission, I kept writing, feeling, moving, living, trying to record the truths and the fictions, trying when I caught myself asleep to wake myself up, recording my dreams, observing my endless to do lists. A life. 30 years of a life.

I went to the attic where I had tucked away all those journals that I had written since I was 9 years old. And I brought them downstairs. I replaced the research books I’d used for the last 2 years with these journals and I have begun pulling them down to find out where I was as a writer as all those years ago.
September 23, 1980
The thing that holds me back, prevents me from even beginning a new story, is the fear that I don’t understand it {my life} enough, that there is some storehouse or arsenal of secret longings, dreams, hopes or fears hidden inside, so much there, but that I am so afraid of it, of what it might do if I understood it, that I would then have to hide myself from my Self.

November 7, 1990
View one’s life as a text awaiting translation. See it as some ancient tablet that has shattered and when found it be pieced together, along with the lacunae and errata; that is, the gaps in the text need to be filled in intuitively, and the mistakes made by scribes during the transcription recorded and supplemented with intuitive impressions on the true meaning.

October 15, 1995
If your desire is to be a true artist, know that this is a private matter which can be proven only to yourself through your efforts to become one.

I am reading and making notes. At the beginning of the year,
this year 2012 when the world is predicted to end (hmmm), I am busy trying to
figure out where I have been. It’s the least I can do to prepare myself for the
day of reckoning, whenever that comes.

“     … Gentle and just pleasure
It is, being human, to have won from space
This unchill, habitable interior
Which mirrors quietly the light
Of the snow, and the new year.”

“New Year’s Poem” by Margaret Avison.

Margaret Avison was a Canadian poet I had the good fortune to actually meet years ago.  She died in 2007 after leaving a valuable legacy to those to closely observe small moments.  Often, her poetry demands much of me as a reader so I take her words in small sips, remembering a comment made by Joseph Zezulka, an English professor at the University of Western Ontario and friend of Avison, who famously said: “Her poems were not snacks, they were full meals.”  Stuffed full of too many holidays, my writing self needs Avison, along with everything else, in tidbits at the moment.  But how necessary is the return  to words and work.

Not sure my digestion could handle a full word meal just yet,  I am also grateful to Lexington poet Sherry Chandler and one of her first blog posts of the year where she mentions “small stones” as a way to write our way into January.

There, she links to  “The January Mindful Writing Challenge: A River of Stones,” a call to write a daily “small stone” during the month of January.

What are “small stones”?  The site says: “A small stone is a short piece of writing (prose or poetry) that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment. …The process of finding small stones is as important as the finished product – searching for them will encourage you to keep your eyes (and ears, nose, mouth, fingers, feelings and mind) open.”  This sounds like a good way to enter back into the work after a time away.  In a testimonial, one of the people who adopted the discipline of small stones says:

“…Several times I’ve had the thought that I absolutely don’t have the time or mental space or energy to stop and notice something outside my driven daily preoccupations, to compose even this tiny ‘small stone’ of words. But I keep finding that it doesn’t eat up time or mental space; on the contrary, time stops and new space is created.”

Here’s to each of us finding ways to create new space in this our new year—the best way there is, through our words.  Even beginning with sips or snacks, we’ll soon be back to those satisfying, full meals.  And as we get our creative momentum back, those words  really will build slowly, helping us create the new year.  What an image it is:  to conjure up that whole river of words our regular work will become.

A life that embodies creativity is something to celebrate. The cultivation of creative gifts, at whatever level we’ve been able to work, puts us in closer contact with the world and helps us to appreciate the talents of others. A shared appreciation of art, or of the effort to create it, fosters friendship and community. Whatever our shortcomings as writers and artists, no matter the goals that are as yet unreached, life is richer and more meaningful for the creative efforts that we do make.

Our group celebrated the holidays, and another year together, with lunch at the Holly Hill Inn in Midway. (We missed you, Leatha!) A wonderful meal in a beautiful setting, the exchange of simple gifts, and time spent relaxing together is a tradition we look forward to. This year we’re celebrating the publication of books and the perseverance in writing those books we hope to publish. We celebrate making progress in our work and making gains with our health; bringing creativity to our lives and bringing life to our creative goals. We celebrate the friends who appreciate the work we’re doing, and the support that encourages us to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Such abundance.

So if you’ve written something, supported a reading, penciled a sketch, attended a show, played some music, made some art, shared a poem, or in any way contributed to the flow of creative work—it deserves to be celebrated! You’ve been part of what breathes life into everyday existence and makes the world more humane. These small acts are bigger than they might seem, and they deserve to be lifted up and acknowledged before the year is gone. It’s an effort that matters, so remember to give yourself credit for it.

Holy Cow

Once upon a time, I translated the entire Egyptian Book of the Dead from hieroglyphs. It took me about 10 years. I was asked by my then father-in-law if I thought I would be able to make a profit of $40,000 a year through my writing. I have to say up front, I’m not married to his son any more, and I was never in this business of writing and translating for the money. I was in it for the long haul, because it is through language and thinking about language that I process and experience the world.  (For more on why writers really write see Lynn Pruett’s Nov 18 post.)

This afternoon, however, I found a letter in my mailbox from the current publisher of my book Awakening Osiris (1988) asking me if I would amend my contract with them. They’d like for me to give them the rights to sell my work as an e-book for 15% royalty.

This is one of those times that thinking about money rather than words might be a good thing. You see, I distrust e-books.  (See my previous KaBoom post on the issue.) I am, by goddess, a hard-core paper and ink kind of writer. I realize that in our digital days/daze more people are reaching for their Kindle. Most of them buy their e-books from Amazon.com.

And I don’t really like it when Amazon starts to sell hardback copies of my NEW book –just released a month ago—at a discount price that is so steep I can’t afford to buy it at that price because the shipping and handling costs me nearly 100 times more than the royalty I’d earn from the book.  What sense does this make?  If there is relatively little cost to the publisher to produce an e-book, what advantage do I, the author who spent 10 years writing it, have to give away the pittance of royalties I do make? The e-book takes money out of my pocket and seems to put it into theirs.  (See a literary agent’s calculations of the actual cost: http://andyrossagency.wordpress.com/tag/royalties/)

Might there be a copyright infringement problem with e-books down the line? Heaven knows I already see much, too much of the inside of my books on Google Books or Amazon’s “Click Here to See Inside” feature.  Heck, I can even search my own text and footnotes faster online than I can by going to the bookshelf right next to me and looking in my own book.  So I am not sure I like this new publishing world. It worries me. It should worry any author.

Let’s face it, Gutenberg all but ruined the beautiful illuminated text of the Middle Ages.  Then what about all those beautiful hieroglyphs that got turned into hen scratches which became the demotic and Greek alphabets.  I realize, of course, that writing as a product changes as the world that produces these texts changes.  I just don’t want to let go of my paper and ink just yet, or my royalties. Sadly, even the paper and ink money is about to bite the dust.  All money is virtual anyway.

But wait… Isn’t my contract written on paper, and doesn’t my signature need to be in ink. There must be some value to paper and ink after all, right?  Okay, if it were your book, what would you do?

This morning I’m considering how time works in a writer’s life. I mean the span of time, not the daily increments that most writers have to defend. Ms. Strout wrote the work in Olive Kitteridge over seventeen years, a time segment that yielded two other novels. The exuberant and courageous students on the Bryan Station stage could have forty years to go before they might find themselves winning a National Book Award. Or sixty, if they are to be like John Ashberry who earned the lifetime achievement award. The writing life is for life. The writing life is a life. It is not a smooth climb up a ladder, though we all wish it were. Good work takes time and patience and faith. It is during the long slow path to possible grand reward that we deal with the daily portion of work we do. It is the daily work, the placing of stone next to stone, word next to word, that takes us to our destination.

Should we tell the young eager poets at the Bryan Station it might take decades before a first book is in print? Would any of us have set out on this arduous pilgrimage if we had known how many years would pass before we achieved a modicum of success? That thought daunts. But, if one truly loves playing with words, testing them, tossing them, catching, and grabbing the newest combinations, the freshest truest thoughts born of a startling arrangement, then yes, we do and will keep on playing, working–you choose–until we can no longer speak.

Yes, you’re looking at a photo of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a photo I took last week. I rose early in Salt Lake City to stand in line for the Sunday broadcast of “Music and the Spoken Word,” program #4284. The show dates back to 1929 and is the world’s longest continuing network broadcast.

I didn’t need to arrive early to ensure a good seat. The tabernacle has no bad ones. Although it was built in 1867, the building has acoustics that permit a pin dropped on stage to be heard from any seat in the house. My early arrival gave me plenty of time to consider that any art, whether music, performance, or the written word, shares a common process.

Choir members, all of whom are volunteers, go their separate ways during the week and labor over the next Sunday’s selections on their own. They reconvene at the tabernacle in Salt Lake City for a Thursday night rehearsal. Even this first attempt at coming together is open to the public, the trials of producing a thirty-minute live performance laid bare for hundreds of witnesses.

The group returns to the tabernacle early Sunday morning for a dress rehearsal prior to the actual broadcast. I heard the program twice through, heard the choir members warned against rattling their music during the organ solo. I heard how conductor Mack Wilberg’s feedback on the spiritual “Walk Together, Children” resulted in a crisper rendition the second time round, the voices ascending as if held aloft by a host of balloons.

“Now would be a good time to cough,” joked the announcer just before the live broadcast began. Members of the choir and audience laughed, then dutifully rehearsed coughing.

How hard this business of rehearsal and revision, yet how necessary. Revision brings us one step closer to the perfect product, the product that matches our goals. How amazing the longevity of the choir and its sustained energy, the constant drive toward honing craft, the role of coaching, the awareness of an attentive and unending audience.

I’m sure the choir has its critics, but I believe the performance is made the best it can be through sheer dint of hard work and revisioning. The end product delighted the assembled group of diverse ages and nationalities, who by the end of the polished performance were ready to receive the closing message: “May peace be with you this day and always.”

And founder Chris Baty admits in his 2004 book No Plot? No Problem! that writing a novel in a month can seem like a “dumb idea.”  Yet hundreds of thousands of people are signing up for this craziness every year.  Something seems to be working.

Why do it in the first place?  Says Baty:  “If there’s one thing successful novelists agree on, it’s this: The single best thing you can do to improve your writing is to write.  Copiously.” There is a secret, he claims, to accomplishing this: the deadline.  For those of us who mean to write and never quite get around to it, being “forced” to produce sheer quantity really does matter.  Pushing ourselves to write when we think we can’t requires that we blast through a lot of the static in our heads and lives.  Those who stick with it to the end discover ways to focus and press on.  The end result inevitably surprises.  Most of us already know this, or at least part of us does.  NaNoWriMo simply discovered a way to shine a mega-watt high beam on the process.  And provides a turbo charged kick in the pants to get with it, already.

In fact the deadline and commitment work so well other creatives, inspired by the site’s success, have applied them to genres other than novels.   Manga artists sign up.  Poets commit to writing everyday.   Two years ago on this blog Susan Brown shared her discovery of journaling guru Dawn DeVries Sokol’s project NaNoJouMo or  “National Nonstop Journaling Month.”  Sokol says she’s doing it again this year, providing a prompt everyday.

Intrigued? Check out one of these sites.  What the online supports provide are inspiration,  focus, and virtual companions on the outrageous journey.  (At NaNoWriMo there are even regional meetups, if you really want to find others in your locale who are likewise committed to literary abandon.)  There are as many different ways to approach this challenge as there are folks who take it up.  Last year when a fellow writer talked me into committing to at least writing everyday through the month of November something shifted in my writing, and my life’s priorities.

This year I plan on using the site to access the site’s “Pep Talk Archive.”   Within it I’ve found a treasure of a page by Linda Barry, one of my favorite cartoonists.  She says: “Dear Writer, Reconsider your hand. Reconsider writing by hand. There is a kind of story that comes from hand. Writing which is different from a tapping-on-a-keyboard-kind-of-story.”

Barry says writing this way demands we engage not only our imagination, which is pure thought, and not the planning part of our minds.  Instead, she says, writing by hand requires we use our physical bodies as we move pen across paper and couples that with our accessing a capacity that is neither all the way inside us or all the way outside of us—it’s a “between” place where stories “happen” as part of the “image world.”

Of course I’m fortunate enough to practice my crafting in the midst of this group, KaBooM.  I’ve found myself looking back to Mary’s May 16th post on “The Power of the Pen,”  and was tickled silly to be reminded that the previous post here was Normandi’s on “Swift Words”!

Here’s to your finding a path to the swift words that flow from your pen in the upcoming weeks.

I am blessed by having had in my life several configurations of writing circles. I highly recommend them. Wherever I have lived, I have found kindred spirits who write, who listen and who keep me aware of the changing life patterns. Currently, I write with two different groups—my KaBooM sisters in Lexington (all of them publishing writers) and the Crones in Frankfort. (old friends and family)

On the last evening of summer the Thursday Night Crones, as we often called ourselves, gathered. The last time that this journal group met (back in mid-summer), we promised to do it again soon—to not let time get away from us; and we do gather as frequently as our lives permit. It is not the same tribe, but it is the same spirit.

We began in 1992 as a cadre of mothers and daughters who gathered at one another’s homes once a week for about consecutive 15 years. On Sept 22^nd we gathered on the porch at PenHouse Retreat Center. Among other old friends, I sat to write with two of my daughters. Alaina is 28, and Roxie is 36. They were 8 and 16, respectively when we began to write together; I was 38. It is hard to believe that this particular configuration of women and I have been writing together in the evenings for 20 years now.

After we write—usually three times all using a similar prompt—I listen to the round of voices, and I feel grateful for the way words on a page have kept us sane all these years. We have shared who we are in deeply personal ways. We have given voice to the wild ones within us, to memory and longing. In our now bookshelf of stacked journals, we have begun to write short stories, poems, novels, to longing through sorrow and ecstasy. We honor the passages, mourn the losses, celebrate the renewals, toast the possibilities.

I’m certain that as I was writing I was not conscious that I was ever working on  this or that book; although, looking back on it, I see that those journal pages were a riffle of flowing language that watered three books of short stories. It wasn’t literature I was seeking at the time I wrote; it was sanity and the only way to find it was laying down one word at a time, one breath at a time.

I think of that two decade process of writing as we pause this night during sunset. The group goes outside into the yard at PenHouse to watch the chimney swifts dive down into the darkness of their home at night. (Yes, we have rooms available for the swifts, too!) They become a metaphor for the act of writing as I watch them sweep across the page of sky, gathering night and tucking it under their wings. They fold night into their bodies and carry it with them down the chimney. In the gray evening sky, they look like clots of words being laid down on the page. A few of them straggle along, leaving meditative pauses in their flight, or perhaps line breaks. Then again, the birds as words cluster together, swirl and fall quickly. There is beauty in their patterns.

I know that these birds (and my cronies) will be leaving soon. Roxie and Alaina will come back whenever we meet. Glenda at the end of autumn has to go back to Alabama. She left an earlier configuration of our group to take a job at the university there. Debbie, a visitor to PenHouse and our group, will return to Louisville, but has promised to come back. I have also moved away several times (to Berea and Lexington) and then returned. Several of the other old-time group members are absent tonight, but our gathering whether in thick or thin continues.

This journal writing, like the migration pattern of swifts, also has its season.  Now that the light is waning in the sky, the chittering birds will soon leave for the rainforest of the Amazon. Our words, too, go out into the air, floating on currents of thought. We gather in our community, and reach out to continue at times to gather in more. The writing together over all these years has changed us. We have grown, we have flown, and we have returned again. The center holds us together—a communion of ideas among kindred spirits.