On...Starting a Project

So, I've been writing poetry--seriously writing poetry--for about thirteen years now. And I've had my successes. Ten or fifteen poems published in traditional literary magazines that I admire, and one or two taken by online sites that I like to think are stable and long term. I've had a few close calls with chapbook competitions, and I even won a poetry prize in 2011. But I have not been able to put together the hallowed forty-eight page manuscript. And without that, I have nothing to submit to prospective editors.

I'm not absolutely sure why this trips me up, but I think one of the issues is that being as compulsive and obsessive as I am, I can't seem to handle combining what I see as disparate poems, or series of poems, into a cohesive whole.

My challenge for the summer "break" from teaching is to put together a collection. I bought a 4 x 8 sheet of Homasote board; "Push pins" stick in Homasote with a satisfying "thwick." My thought is that if I can pin all my poems up there on the board, I might be able to see an order to them, a common thread that I might be able to needle through them all. I'm hoping to come up with a collection that hits--or exceeds--that forty-eight page mark.

I have the board up in my office, and it's looking very bare. My plan for the next two-and-a-half months is to write new material each morning and then edit in the afternoons. Of course, I could now commit to posting new poems and edits on line each day, but that seems somehow desperate. But a photo of the board seems like a good thing. So here she is. All naked and expectant. Let's see what happens.

On...the best job for a writer

The best job I ever had as a writer was full time undergraduate student! Great professors, great assignments, deadlines to keep me on track, plus comments and grades. I couldn't believe my fellow students were bitching. It was writer heaven.

Life as a graduate student was tougher. I had to pay the bills so I did a low residency MFA and spent my week days working as a project manager for a junk mail company and my weekends working as a poet for my MFA. I loved the weekends, but the weeks killed writing for me. Copy editing took all my words and the grind of 8-5 killed my spirit.

Now I teach. It took me two years as an adjunct criss-crossing town and teaching a stupid load, but it was worth it. In 2008, I was taken on full time to direct the writing program and tutoring services and to teach two writing courses a year.

I'm still brain dead by mid-semester, but I'm exhausted in academia (which sounds like a great title for a film). My office is full of the books I love. I have a couple of easy chairs where I sit one-on-one with students and help them navigate assignments and senior projects. I tutor reluctant writers and watch them get it one-by-one. I get to listen to opera and BBC's Radio 3 as I grade papers.

And I'm on a ten-month contract, which means I can write all summer. Oh, and my students decorate my door. It doesn't get much better, I think.

On...Salons, Connotations, and a reading on 10/19



"André's" is now "Andrea Hair Fashions"

 When I think of Salons, I think of the 1970s and Andrés Hair Salon on Watford's St. Albans Road. Stuck between a curry house and a shop that sold tacky dresses, Andrés was home to a fleet of Italian hairdressers lauded over by André himself: a tiny frantic buzz of a man with oiled black hair and forever dressed in tight black trousers and a white shirt with a pastel chiffon scarf knotted at this throat. Once a week, my mother and I escaped our drab council-house-world to visit his: she to sit under Andre’s ministrations, distain on his face, and his hands a blur as they caught her hair into a torturer’s paradise of pink plastic-and-bristle hair rollers and pins; and I to sit beneath a vacant domed dryer, the heat making me doze, hot and sticky on the vinyl-covered seats, André’s Italian accent as sharp as the scissors tucked into the front pocket of his tight trousers.

It’s a form of Salon that appears, at first glance, to have nothing in common with its cousin, the literary salon, a place where artists meet, often the home of a female patron of the arts, to share their work. The literary salon was the focus of a discussion around a picnic table outside the Stone House during July’s Stonecoast reunion where an alum shared her experiences of hosting a salon, and she encouraged us all to consider opening up our own front rooms to fellow alums from our home towns – a salon-outreach, if you like. Under the trees that day, I fantasized about my own tiny living room crammed with writers, my dog nosing from poet to proser, conversation flashing like lightning across the room. A Rustburg Movement in the making.

By the time I returned home, back to the real world of Kroger and state inspections and faculty meetings, the dream shrank a little. After all, how many poets could I get in my front room? But I held onto this ideal of community, of writer helping writer. I wanted to put on a reading of my own. Five local Stonecoast writers showcasing their work and opening up a conversation on the black art of writing and the life it magics. The result is a Literary Lounge on the 19th October at Riverviews Artspace. Riverviews isn’t my front room, but it is a front room of sorts. It’s a room where Lynchburg’s artists—visual and written—have gathered for a few years now to share their work with other artists and with those who love the arts. I think Stein would have approved.

And, as always, connections form like rain on glass. I can’t help but see the fundamentals of Stein’s salon in André’s Hair Salon on St. Albans Road—Italian artists, identifiable but different, demonstrating their artistry to an wide-open audience that sits wrapped in bright vinyl cloaks, offering up hair as raw material, everyone in the room confident in the transformative nature of art.

On…POV, Cults and Political Writing: Ellen Meeropol’s _House Arrest_

Ellen and I both graduated from USM’s Stonecoast’s MFA program. We overlapped by two residencies and each morning, we shared a van from the hotel in Freeport to the nearby Stone House. Unfortunately, I don’t believe we shared any workshops. When I heard she had converted her work-in-progress into a debut novel entitled House Arrest and that it had been snapped up by Red Hen Press, I was envious; I have a lot of time for Red Hen’s Kate Gale both as both a writer and a publisher.

We reconnected at the Stonecoast 2012 Alumni Reunion where we talked on and off about the “debut novel” process. We swapped books, and I’m pleased to share Ellen’s responses to some of the questions and thoughts that sprung from my reading of House Arrest.

Bunny: Your Bio describes you as a “literary late bloomer.” Why the delay?
Ellen: I was busy reading, working as a pediatric nurse practitioner, raising two daughters, and being a political activist. I always had ideas for stories and novels and always planned to write, someday. In my early fifties I decided it was time. I had never taken a writing course, so I started taking workshops and attending writers’ conferences. That led to a low-residency MFA program, which was the best gift I ever gave myself. Not only because I learned craft, but also because I began to take myself seriously as a writer.

Bunny: The novel is split into separate voices, but only Emily’s is presented in first person. It gives her a certain dominance and adds interest to the structure. Was that always the way of things?
Ellen: Not at all. In the first four or five drafts of the manuscript, I used multiple third person narrators and that’s how I expected the structure to continue. But I was having trouble making Emily’s character come alive; she was often overshadowed by Pippa’s voice. As a revision exercise, I tried writing Emily in first person, which is a technique I often use to dig deeper into a character, and Emily blossomed on the page. I decided to leave it that way, hoping that the decision would also indicate to the reader that despite the multiple narrative voices, House Arrest is primarily Emily’s story.

Bunny: I adore spoonerisms having grown up with a spooning father. So much so that the characters in my work-in-progress use spoonerisms as a way of broaching difficult issues. Where does your experience of spoonerisms come from?
Ellen: My husband loves word play of all sorts, but spoonerisms and puns are his favorites. I’ve lived with his Robby-isms for over 45 years and they’ve become part of my vocabulary as well. I like what you said about language games as a way of broaching difficult issues. In House Arrest, spoonerisms are a bridge between Sam and Zoe, a private and roundabout connection between father and daughter after a rocky beginning to their relationship.

Bunny: In chapter seven Emily remembers a rare specific scene from her childhood. Can you talk about your decision to cast that section in present tense?
Ellen: Flashbacks are often tricky; they can bog down a narrative. This one is critical to the ongoing story; I wrote it in present tense as a way of emphasizing its immediacy and importance in Emily’s life, even decades later. Oddly enough, I decided to leave Pippa’s central childhood memory in past tense. I can’t give you a logical reason for that: it just felt right.

Bunny: This novel bristles with absent fathers: Emily loses her father to the prison system; Pippa disowns her father after witnessing his involvement in a lynching; Tian is an absent father to all of his children; and Sam is, in some ways, a removed if not absent father. Did that motif evolve or was it a ground-floor intention?
Ellen: The absent fathers were never a plan. In fact, my writing process involves starting a project with very little planning, just a couple of characters in a situation, and no knowledge of where the story is going. This book started to grow when I read a short newspaper article about a home care nurse assigned to monitor the pregnancy of a woman in a cult. As a nurse, I was fascinated by the challenge of trying to forge a therapeutic relationship with a patient whose basic health beliefs were so different. All I knew was that the pregnant cult member would ask the nurse to do something to help her, something illegal. I did not know how the nurse would respond until I wrote about their fathers, and then the plot began to emerge.

Bunny: You have a background in nursing that is evident in the medical writing. It’s spot on, and I love that. What were the unknowns for you? How do you approach the task of research?
Ellen: I worked for years in pediatrics, with children like Zoe. In some ways, House Arrest is an homage to people with spina bifida and their families. I’ve never worked in home care though. I used my general nursing background and imagination to write those scenes, and then asked a friend who does this kind of work to read them, and correct my errors. In general I approach research in that way: first I use my imagination and write, then I research and try to correct mistakes.

Bunny: Did you ever intend to make more of the “White Hats”? When I first encountered them, I expected them to have some connection back to Pippa’s family. I think I’m pleased they didn’t. Ellen: I wasn’t sure whether or not the White Hats would connect back. When I tried writing it that way, it felt contrived, so I let it go. Life, and fiction, are often a bit messy that way.

Bunny: Emily’s parents broke the law. Emily breaks what she sees as a ridiculous law (she describes Pippa’s ankle bracelet as “that stupid ankle monitor” (112). Pippa breaks the law. Sam breaks the law eventually, sheltering the two kids from the authorities. Even Gina bends it a little. Can you talk a little about what you, the author, think about the rules they break?
Ellen: I’m very interested in social justice activism, particularly how it affects families and children, but I did not set out to write about it. My purpose wasn’t to tell people how to think about breaking the law, or what I think about it. If that were the case, I’d write personal essays or letters to the editor instead of fiction. So I was somewhat surprised when the issue of breaking the law in the service of justice emerged as a central theme, one that is echoed by several characters, as you point out. Surprised and pleased. I think fiction can provoke us to think about hard questions and ethical dilemmas, through characters and their experiences.

Bunny: In a tense scene between Anna and Emily, Emily refers to Zoe as “our” child. That sense of a shared child, for me, echoes the idea of the shared children in Tian’s household. Is there an intentional parallel there?
Ellen: I seem to be emerging here as an unintentional writer! The parallel between the two families wasn’t planned, per se. But one of the things I love about writing fiction is the way the brain, in that “writerhead” state of dreamy concentration, retrieves all sorts of material from one’s past. I lived in a small commune in my early 20s and raised our daughters in a close-knit community, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise that these alternative families would show up in my work.

Bunny: What next, Elli? And if you’re working on another novel, did the idea spring while you were writing House Arrest, or did you need a creative break between finishing one and beginning another?
Ellen: Ideas for the next novel are always simmering in the back of my brain. By the time House Arrest was under contract with Red Hen Press, I had started writing the next novel. That manuscript is now finished and in the hands of my agent. I’m working now on a new project that features the children of House Arrest, beginning a decade after that book ends. Of course, I don’t know where this next one is going yet, but I love the opportunity to hang out with Zoe and the twins again.

Bunny: Can you share a hint or tip with a writer who might be struggling to get a debut novel into print?
Ellen: Don’t give up. Keep revising and improving the manuscript. Keep querying agents and small presses. Keep learning and reading and writing. That’s what I tell myself…

*********************************************************************************

Ellen Meeropol began writing fiction in her fifties, after a career as a nurse practitioner. Publishers Weekly gave her debut novel HOUSE ARREST a starred review, calling it “thoughtful and tightly composed, unflinching in taking on challenging subjects and deliberating uneasy ethical conundrums.” Ellen holds an MFA from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine. Her short stories and essays have been published in Bridges, Pedestal, Rumpus, Portland Magazine, The Drum, Shaking Like a Mountain, Beyond the Margins, and Women’s Times.

House Arrest is published by Red Hen Press

On...Playing Jenga

In the summer, my pal LG and I get together before the sun gets hot to take our dogs for a walk along the Black Water Creek trail in Lynchburg. We walk indian-file along the trail, her dog well-behaved and quietly nosing through the underbrush, mine barking like Cerberus at anyone who dares to share the path. Our walks are good on so many levels: LG and I get some exercise, the dogs get some exercise, and Bubba gets to bark a lot. But I think the most valuable part of these hour long treks is that we talk about writing (and sometimes about teaching).

Maybe it's the nature of our walk - that we're moving and not sprawling in soft chairs at Starbucks, that we're one-behind-the-other and not face-to-face, that it's hot and we walk fast--that forms our conversations, but whatever the reason, we tend to hit the highlights--what's working, what's troubling us, strategies (for students, for writers, for ourselves in our lives). There's not a lot of opportunity for fluff - we're walking, we're hot and there are dogs to herd!

On...Maine, Morgan Callan Rogers and Cold Seas

Just before Nahid Rachlin took the podium at the Stonecoast reading in Maine last month, Suzanne Strempek Shea pressed a book into my hand. Nothing unusual there--Suzanne is one of the most generous people I have ever met--with her time, with thoughtful gifts, with her experience. It was a copy of Morgan Callan Roger's Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea, a novel set in the area in which I was staying, which I didn't get to read it until I returned home. The title set me up for a romance, not my favorite genre. But I was pleasantly surprised. This fearless and at times gritty story took me back not only to South Freeport and the Maine coastline but also to my own childhood a continent away in urban London.

It's a story that explores the connections between people and place. It looks at the things they say and the things they won't or can't say and how those choices affect the way life pans out.

Asking questions of the author is one of the benefits that comes from being part of a community of writers and I'm pleased to share those answers with you. There are no "spoilers" here, so don't worry about ruining the read if you haven't got to Morgan's book yet!

Bunny: On the face of it, Florine and I are miles apart. We’re separated by a continent, she’s a shore girl and I’m a townie. But our point of contact is huge: we both grew up in small communities. Did your decision to write Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Seastart with a desire to explore life in a small community? Or did it start with character or with something entirely different?

Morgan: It started with Florine's voice. Very distinct, very gabby, very Maine. She had a big story to tell. When I began writing the story, she was an adult and lived in a trailer on the side of a busy commuter road. Later, after someone in a workshop asked me a question about the conflicts between herself and another family member, I began a little backstory, which became Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea, which is the story of her childhood. The size of the community evolved organically, believe it or not. I may have had an unconscious desire to write a story with as few characters in it as possible.

Bunny: Without giving the story away, the book holds many possibilities behind Carlie’s disappearance. There are potential villains: for example, the man on the beach…or the summer cottage owner. But then there’s Carlie’s own wanderlust. Did you have your story plotted out from the beginning, or did these possibilities unfold and possibly fold themselves away as you wrote?

Morgan: Carlie's disappearance was a done deal. How and why she disappeared evolved in an "Oh, that's why this happened, and oh, that's why this character is here, and oh, I think I get it, now," kind of way. That way, I was surprised, at least a little bit. I wanted the book to focus on how a sudden disappearance and, consequently, how one 'gets on with it' after said disappearance affects an individual. In Florine's case, how it affected her adolescence and growing up. It was never a 'who done it'. That said, as an author, I know what happened to her. But that is subject to change...

Bunny: I wondered a little about Stella at the end. The “switch” made me a little mad at Florine and her friends. There’s no doubt that Stella loved Florine’s father, and she had to battle not only Florine’s angst but also her own demons. I see her at the end losing him again in more ways than one. Can you talk a little about your feelings and intentions with the Stella character?

Morgan: Great question. I'm glad you got angry with Florine and her friends. You should have been mad, but Stella is not an easy person to like. On the one hand, she can be blessed with clarity and a 'just the facts' ma'am kind of comment that comes from deep and tragic experience. On the other hand, she says things that are kind of bitchy, although it's hard to put one's finger on what exactly she said that was less than complimentary. So, to defend Florine, Stella was scary to her - and mean - and she was mean to Carlie. To have Stella show up in her father's life is her worst nightmare, particularly so soon after Carlie's disappearance. Florine also needs a scapegoat for her grief, and Stella is the perfect person for that. But Stella is also pure in the way that she loves Florine's father. Her love is total and she is willing to take what she knows must be second place in his heart. That's a lesson for Florine, as is her tolerance for Florine's rage against her. She's complicated, and she makes Florine think about the consequences of her actions and responses. At the end, as an author, it was important to me to show readers that all-encompassing love is a beautiful thing, but when it is abruptly taken away, it's vital to have a sort of 'Plan B' that will soften (if it's possible) the shell-shock that a great grief brings. Stella had nothing to fall back on - at least for the time being. Florine will never like Stella, by the way, no matter what, because Florine is stubborn and still a child at the end of the book. Stella is needy and, frankly, jealous of Florine's place in her father's heart. Remember, Stella is only with him because the love of his life cannot be there. To round up this very long answer, I learned more about characterization exploring the relationship between these two characters than I did about any other interactions in the book.

Bunny: You have a beautiful and playful turn of phrase. On page 300, you describe time passing: “Summer twitched its tanned hips and sauntered deep into August.” Who would you say your literary influences are in terms of language?

Morgan: In general, any poet I've ever loved. In specific terms, Dylan Thomas.

Bunny: Florine’s in love, she lives in a beautiful part of the country, and she supports herself through ownership of a boat, knitting and baking bread. For many readers caught in the chaos of modern life, often an urban life, it’s an idyll. And yet, it feels plausible. Did you base Florine’s lifestyle on one particular real person?

Morgan: No, I didn't. But I did base her on the women in my father's family. My mother's family is big, Irish, and wordy. My father's family is small and Yankee, and I didn't know them well at all. As a matter of fact, his name, Rogers, will die out within the next generation if one of nieces doesn't give a child that name. Kind of sad. The older I get, the more I regret not knowing the few Rogers/Clemens/Morse members of the family that I did know from a distance. We visited them, rarely. But they were farming and fishermen women from the Phippsburg/Winnegance/Small Point part of Maine, and I imagined Grand as a combination of several of them. For instance, my aunt, Iva, was a big-boned woman who had a red ruby crystal cabinet that now rests in my sister's house. From my standpoint, they were funny, practical, no-nonsense women. I hope I've done them some kind of justice in the book.

Bunny: Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea is your debut novel. Here’s the annoying question: what next?

Morgan: Not annoying at all. Two novels sit in various stages of completion. Right now, I'm also working on small nonfiction pieces about this and that.

Bunny: Have you written other novels that have not yet made it through the agent/publisher maze?

Morgan: Uh, no. This was my first try. I don't think it will always be this easy, which is a bummer. But that's the biz. I've had a fabulous ride, thus far. It's been printed in Spanish, Italian, German, and English, and is out in Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. It's all good.

Bunny: Can you tell us about your real-life mentors, those people—writers and not—who have inspired your writing?

Morgan: Wow. So many. Diane Benedict, a writer and college teacher, took me aside and told me I had talent. Another wonderful writer and teacher, Alfred DePew, asked a question in a workshop that has stuck in my mind. "What if you went deeper?" was the question. It bears exploring. Anne Lamott's book, Bird By Bird is a gentle profundity of a writing book that says so much in a humorous and irreverent way. Michael C. White sold my first story to a magazine editor in my first workshop during my USM Stonecoast MFA low-residency program. Ann Hood is a fabulous friend and mentor. Clint McCown is a wonderful, wonderful teacher. All inspiring. My friends, they know who they are, have always encouraged me. Find people who do that and hold them dear. Listen to what makes sense to you, and move forward in a confident and joyful direction, knowing that they have your back.

Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea is published by Viking.

On...Tim Seibles: "Exotic Seeds and Crazy Gardeners"

     I slipped in late to the 2012 graduation. It was the first Stonecoast MFA graduation I had attended: public spaces filled with people I don't know well enough to hug freak me out and I tend to avoid them. I even missed my own in 2007, opting instead to grab my certificate in the Stone House parking lot the morning of graduation. But something--call it nostalgia--made me do it.

     Parents, partners, Stoners--past and present--ranged across the auditorium, some dressed up, some dressed down, all smiling and ready. The lights dimmed and four faculty--Annie Finch, David Dunbar, and Tim Seibles--plus the USM Provost, took seats on the stage while a guitarist played America from the corner of the stage. It was prime MFA.

     The graduates filed down from the wings, their ranks peppered with the oddballs, the awkwards, the old hands. Tim Seibles, the commencement speaker, took the podium. He's a master on the microphone: his voice is like a prong collar; it holds you exactly where he wants to hold you and then he spikes you with words and ideas that make you listen hard. His presence is huge: you'd sit up and beg for more if the man asked it of you.  

     Tall and solid, head bent to the microphone, he described MFA students as "exotic seeds tended by crazy gardeners." He asked each of those gradutating "to be writers in  your own way" and to consider that writing offered "a way out of the persistent confusion of this life."
     And there is confusion in this life. Today, the news, Facebook threads and even the huddle in Starbucks by the wooden stirrers and packet sugar is full of details about the Colorado shooter, the young man the media keeps telling us is a PhD student as if that somehow explains something. ABC news anchors offer possible answers as to why he walked into a midnight showing of Batman and stole the show with tear gas and bullets: academia was too hard; he was in the middle of dropping out; his fantasy come true, he was just doing what Batman's nemesis would have done. Perhaps they're right. Maybe there is a reason for why he did what he did. Perhaps it's all those things. Maybe he's just fucked up. A mad dog, an evil rather than an exotic seed. I haven't come up an answer thats works for me yet.
     Tim ended a final piece of advice that keeps coming back to me as I think about what that answer might be. He said, "Clear the way for your eyes. Ask why--ask it again. Write a wild answer. Write another." I know the media will keep feeding me the fear that makes me hanker for life off grid in a straw house, that the Joker is a construct of the media (and, soberingly, of fiction). I also know that in three months maximum, we'll be thigh deep in elections and Batman's Joker will be just another kid gone crazy. But if we take Tim's advice, as writers returning to our day-to-day lives, we'll keep writing down our own wild answers and pushing ourselves to write more, each one wilder than the last.
     Congratulations and good luck to all the 2012 Stonecoast alumnis. Keep writing those wild answers, you exotic little seeds!
Photograph by Helen Peppe