Dear Maurice, thank you for this word of encouragement!
Were you at Yaddo? I found Yaddo very productive. That’s where I wrote the first poems in the book MESSIAH.
This podcast episode really spoke to me. I think it’s wise for us to consider the difference between what David Bowie called “the gift of sound and vision,” where all creativity flows in almost like we’re intoxicated, and the slog of getting the writing done.
I have learned, and it was not easy to learn, to wait, to trust, as you say, that writers will write, that the page is our home. Hemingway talked about the tyranny of the blank page, but I haven’t thought it tyranny. For me, it’s more like being pregnant. A woman who is having a baby mostly doesn’t feel anything different until the baby is fully ready to be born.
My seasons without much writing are few, though. The last time we saw each other face to face, at the Louisiana Book Festival, I told you I wasn’t writing anything. Caring for my husband through cancer was so consuming, there was no time for imagination, what with my two jobs and my work as an organization president.
Then, surprisingly, when he got better, within a month of when he got well enough to return to work, I found out that the organization I had built had been robbed by someone I considered a close friend. I had to report a close friend to the FBI and the NOPD for felony fraud. I thought the organization might oust me — after all, i had recommended this guy as someone trustworthy. Indeed, even in his illness, my husband and I really trusted this guy. He was at my Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables even as he was stealing from us.
The organization has decided to keep me around, probably because nobody else in town wants to do all the work being president entails. But for a couple of months, even as the ongoing investigation drags on because it is a low priority to the NOPD, All I wanted to do was to hide. I had thought I had established a community of writers. Indeed I had done some of that, but my bad choice acted as a betrayal. I often hated myself.
Then, I got an utterly mad idea, one that makes sense perhaps only to me.
When Richard Howard of the PARIS REVIEW rejected my work after a year of it sitting on his desk, he said, “this is interesting, but it’s too Whitmanesque.”
Slap me hard any time you like by comparing my work to Walt Whitman, I thought. In my present despairing, I found myself suddenly writing in the voice of Walt Whitman, whom I have imagined returned to Brooklyn from the dead. I have also been writing poems in the voice of Liz Cheney, a staccato non-plussed, utterly flat and prosaic voice, the polar opposite of the meter of the effusive Whitman.
I am using these persona poems to construct a collection of poetry with a bit of a narrative arc as a way to talk about our divided America. Liz and Dick Cheney are going fishing with Walt Whitman and his boyfriend, whom he calls Camerado.
it’s crazy AF, but it feels fruitful. The effusive voice of Whitman is the clarinet, and the thudding voice of Cheney is the double bass. I will have a few interesting other voices. One I have so far is a TSA agent who explains how weird things get when resurrected Whitman, who is getting on a plane, goes through security. He’s got a thick and funny Queens accent. But mostly, this is a parable about how we might get back to some kind of commonweal in America.
Thanks for encouraging all of us to write. May you be encouraged as well, Maurice.
Great post! I totally relate to feeling better overall when writing regularly. For me, it’s like working out or meditating. If I’m not doing it for too long, when I get too estranged, I start to get into a funk.
It’s like I need to worry and chew on my novel and my character’s imaginary problems, or else I ruminate and worry about my own life and loved ones too much. The fiction writing tampers my natural tendencies towards neuroticism and anxiety.
Dear Maurice, thank you for this word of encouragement!
Were you at Yaddo? I found Yaddo very productive. That’s where I wrote the first poems in the book MESSIAH.
This podcast episode really spoke to me. I think it’s wise for us to consider the difference between what David Bowie called “the gift of sound and vision,” where all creativity flows in almost like we’re intoxicated, and the slog of getting the writing done.
I have learned, and it was not easy to learn, to wait, to trust, as you say, that writers will write, that the page is our home. Hemingway talked about the tyranny of the blank page, but I haven’t thought it tyranny. For me, it’s more like being pregnant. A woman who is having a baby mostly doesn’t feel anything different until the baby is fully ready to be born.
My seasons without much writing are few, though. The last time we saw each other face to face, at the Louisiana Book Festival, I told you I wasn’t writing anything. Caring for my husband through cancer was so consuming, there was no time for imagination, what with my two jobs and my work as an organization president.
Then, surprisingly, when he got better, within a month of when he got well enough to return to work, I found out that the organization I had built had been robbed by someone I considered a close friend. I had to report a close friend to the FBI and the NOPD for felony fraud. I thought the organization might oust me — after all, i had recommended this guy as someone trustworthy. Indeed, even in his illness, my husband and I really trusted this guy. He was at my Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables even as he was stealing from us.
The organization has decided to keep me around, probably because nobody else in town wants to do all the work being president entails. But for a couple of months, even as the ongoing investigation drags on because it is a low priority to the NOPD, All I wanted to do was to hide. I had thought I had established a community of writers. Indeed I had done some of that, but my bad choice acted as a betrayal. I often hated myself.
Then, I got an utterly mad idea, one that makes sense perhaps only to me.
When Richard Howard of the PARIS REVIEW rejected my work after a year of it sitting on his desk, he said, “this is interesting, but it’s too Whitmanesque.”
Slap me hard any time you like by comparing my work to Walt Whitman, I thought. In my present despairing, I found myself suddenly writing in the voice of Walt Whitman, whom I have imagined returned to Brooklyn from the dead. I have also been writing poems in the voice of Liz Cheney, a staccato non-plussed, utterly flat and prosaic voice, the polar opposite of the meter of the effusive Whitman.
I am using these persona poems to construct a collection of poetry with a bit of a narrative arc as a way to talk about our divided America. Liz and Dick Cheney are going fishing with Walt Whitman and his boyfriend, whom he calls Camerado.
it’s crazy AF, but it feels fruitful. The effusive voice of Whitman is the clarinet, and the thudding voice of Cheney is the double bass. I will have a few interesting other voices. One I have so far is a TSA agent who explains how weird things get when resurrected Whitman, who is getting on a plane, goes through security. He’s got a thick and funny Queens accent. But mostly, this is a parable about how we might get back to some kind of commonweal in America.
Thanks for encouraging all of us to write. May you be encouraged as well, Maurice.
The writing is always there for us isn't? I hope my post was moderately helpful!
Yes to all of this!!! Thank you as always for these bursts of encouragement and reassurance
You're very welcome, Harvey!
Great post! I totally relate to feeling better overall when writing regularly. For me, it’s like working out or meditating. If I’m not doing it for too long, when I get too estranged, I start to get into a funk.
It’s like I need to worry and chew on my novel and my character’s imaginary problems, or else I ruminate and worry about my own life and loved ones too much. The fiction writing tampers my natural tendencies towards neuroticism and anxiety.
Well said, Charlotte. That pretty much sums it up for me.