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Dear Friends, Hello from California. Halloween is over, but I am thinking, today, of scary experiences, and how valuable it can sometimes be, allowing ourselves to experience them.
Last week I took a wonderful trip to the MFA Writing Program at the University of Tennessee in Memphis, where I spent a whirlwind 36 hours talking with students, reading from my work, making friends, driving around that terrific city -- so totally unlike where I come from, or where I live now -- and being reminded, as I always am at such moments, how lucky a thing it is that I get to be a writer. It is only in the last few years that I've really understood the art of teaching, I think -- and the great joy of taking some small role in the nurturing of a developing writer's voice. Maybe I had to be finished up with my heavy-duty childraising years, before I had the concentration and focus for that. For so long, the mentoring I did was all at home, and truthfully, there has been no experience that's done more to lessen the ache of no longer having young people in my life, on a daily basis, than getting to work with students. (Even -- I might add -- when they are not young. Very often, the writers I work with in my workshops are my age or close enough, but it is still about mentoring. A very different experience from the writing process, but one of the gifts the second half of my life has revealed to me.) So -- I loved my trip to Tennessee. (As for the scary part of the Memphis trip -- I'll get to that in a minute.) And now I'm back home. For a few weeks now I've also been working with my new twice-a-month ongoing group of writers who meet at my house to talk about the work they're up to, and to share dessert and coffee. For me, it's a little like hosting a regular party -- except one where we work really hard, and where, on occasion, someone may shed a tear or two. Not, I will add, because the teacher is cruel. But good work sometimes touches a nerve in us, and as I said the other day, the last time this happened (and the woman who'd started to cry while reading her story began to apologize), nobody need ever apologize, to me, about the alleged crime of feelling and expressing strong emotion. I like to think that part of my function, as a workshop leader, is to help people explore aspects of their story they may not have felt able to examine fully before -- perhaps because they were tough. But when they do, a wonderful thing happens. For me, writing (memoir, anyway) has been a way of making sense of my life, and locating the meaning and lessons of my experience. I like to think I am helping others to do the same. This requires skill and craft and fortitude and true courage on the part of the writer. It's always moving to watch, as the stories unfold, and deepen. The other news around here is that after months of what felt like a scary dry spell, in my own creative life, I am once again immersed in a new novel -- and feeling that familiar combination of excitement and terror that always marks the beginning of a big project, a dive into the unknown. I'm in the early stages still -- when you can't be sure yet if you're onto something -- but it's a very good sign to wake up at five, burning to get to my keyboard again, and realize , when I finally wind down, that it's dark outside. (And for those of you who write, or long to write, who may be having trouble, I want to remind you that every period I've known, like this one, has been preceded by a stretch of time in which all I could do was wait and wonder, will my story ever come to me? As important as the writing time, I firmly believe, is the not writing time. When -- whether she recognizes this or not -- a writer is working through her ideas and obsessions and waiting for the story to land. So because I'm hard at work again, I may take a little longer than usual responding to those of you who drop me a note, but I want you to know I always read what you write to me, and how much I am inspired and encouraged by your words of support and the news that something I have written has moved you. In the end, there is no more compelling reason why I write. I also want to remind you -- now, as I come up briefly for air -- that there are still places available in my December 1 one day memoir workshop, to be held (as always) at my home in Mill Valley. If you'd like to attend, just send me an email. I do still check my inbox at least once a day. Likewise, I have a suggestion for those of you for whom a day of writing isn't enough (and I heartily agree… it's not) or those who want to work on fiction or poetry too, with other terrific teachers (Bob Bausch on fiction; Jane Hirshfield on poetry), while combining the experience with the incomparable raw beauty of an unspoiled lakefront village, volcanoes, native markets, great meals, massage, fireside readings and a wonderful group of fellow adventurers. It's just my opinion of course, but if you ask me, the absolute most fun way I can imagine to spend a week this winter would be at my fourth annual Lake Atitlan Writing Workshop. We've got a great group coming together -- some very experienced writers, and some who say they haven't written a word since school days, which is not a problem for us. There are still some places remaining in the group (though if you've got your heart set on a lake view room, we suggest you let us know and get your deposit in soon.) This week, I wanted to share with you an essay of mine recently published in a new collection (edited by Lisa Solud) called Desire: Women Writers Write About Wanting. Mine is about a craving I will apparently never outgrow -- at least, I haven't yet, at fifty-three, with fifty-four staring me in the eye -- for babies. I suspect there will be others, reading this, who understand: maybe it's all the complications that come with the later years of parenthood (so rich and interesting, but it's a sad moment -- and here comes that word again, a scary one -- when you realize your child's problems can no longer be solved, as they once could, just by holding her close. In fact, the day comes when it becomes essential to let go. And though parents of babies and toddlers could never guess, that is the hardest of all.) This seems like a natural segue to a brief report on my own three: all of whom flew this nest a long time ago, just as I'd raised them to do. (But not fully recognizing, when I did, what it meant to raise hugely independent-minded children, who execute 360 degree jumps off of snowboarding jumps and travel around Haiti and go to Africa and get malaria and may not call home for six weeks at a time. My daughter Audrey entered graduate school in New Hampshire this fall, training to become a middle school counselor -- a great profession for someone as empathetic and perceptive about people as she has always been. Charlie, the older of my sons, continues running an after school program for low-income kids in Brooklyn, making music with his band, The Beatards, in New York City, DJ'ing under the name of Captain Planet, and maintaining, with his brother, one of the coolest websites of downloadable music -- 70's R and B, world music, and his own hip hop tunes. (I was listening to his first album one time, recently, when I suddenly recognized that a song he wrote called "Roots" was all about us. It turns out I am not the only one in our household who has chronicled the story of divorce. It's there in hip hop version now too -- giving proof to my long-held belief that one of the better things to do with the raw material of painful experience is to turn it into artwork.) Son Will, as previously mentioned, has been in Africa virtually all year, filming not one but two different war movies. The first, Tunnel Rats, is a low budget affair in which he plays a soldier in Viet Nam -- but evidently there is another spinoff of the movie, which has led to the unlikely scenario of finding, as I do, that my beloved youngest son has now been transformed into a character in a video game. Willy is now completing yet another war movie: this one an HBO miniseries due for broadcast in Fall 2008 in which he plays a member of a Marine Special Forces unit in Iraq. He's been gone for months now. When I get to feeling really sad about how long since I've seen him, I remind myself that my own experience of missing a son bears no resemblance to that of all those mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, with people they love off in Iraq. Still, it will be hard to keep from jumping up and down and bursting into tears when I greet him. Though I know he'd prefer I refrain from that behavior. So there you have it: a little teaching, a lot of writing, not enough mothering, too much missing. Plenty of things to be afraid of, should one choose to do so. One more highlight I'll mention. While in Memphis, I got to be friends with a wonderful writer of nonfiction who teaches in the program there, Rebecca Skloot. (You may be familiar with the wonderful memoir written by her father, Floyd Skloot -- In the Shadow of Memory, about a rare brain affliction that profoundly changed his ability to remember.) I think it was in the context of a discussion we were having, about how hard it can be to write, that Rebecca shared with me something her boyfriend does on occasion, when he senses in her a need to lighten up, or maybe just change her perspective a little. "He gets me to sit in a tablecloth," she said. "Then he bundles me up. Then he picks up the tablecloth bundle and starts swinging it around." This was a scary sounding activity, but something about the idea also appealed to me. I suspect it had something to do about trust, and relinquishing control, conquering one's deepest fears. (I will add that I once burst into uncontrollable tears partway through the tilt a whirl at Knotts Berry Farm.) "You should try it," she told me, about the tablecloth spinning thing. And so, after my talk and reading at the school was finished (but before dinner) I agreed, though when I saw that this boyfriend, David, was a not even remotely burly person -- just a very strong one, reportedly -- I did wonder if swinging me over his head would be wise. Well, someone took pictures, and I am going to show them to you here. You can see, from the last one, that I not only survived the experience -- I loved it. Maybe what I'm trying to suggest here is some kind of message to all of you who may be reading this, and wondering if you could ever write your story, or quit your job and go back to school, or go on a blind date, or sing in public, or move to a new place, whatever brave/scary adventure you've been on the fence about. (And of course I can't help but remind you of one thing that would qualify: coming to Lake Atitlan to write this February.) What's the worst that can happen? Yours with friendship,
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