Non-Essential

Everyone I know is weary of it, exasperated, taking great lengths to ease conversations around the subject like unwinding a hose on the edge of a fire. Don’t get too close. Shutdown. There, I said it. Very sorry. Stay with me.

Even the fact that National Parks, about which I care a lot, are at the center of it rankles. What about National Forests that cover more acreage nationally? Not a single news show I’ve listened to has mentioned that the United States Forest Service is shutdown. Why? Because the Forests are less glamorous, less high-profile, and therefore less essential than the Parks even though, for example, the trail workers we know who work for the Forest Service do the same work for the same reasons as Park Service crews do, except for less pay … a point which is moot right now because no trail workers for either agency are getting paid.

Why? Because work is non-essential.

What’s essential? Carrying a gun. Pasting up closed signs. Handling the media. What’s essential, apparently, is how things look from the outside, not how they work on the inside.

Which reminds me a little of writing.

Conversations about writing inevitably lead to talk about publishing or agents or marketing. All of that is important, I know. You want your books to reach readers the same way we want National Parks to be user-friendly. But people go to National Parks because of what’s actually there.  And people read books for what’s actually there. The present, not the wrapping paper. The content, not the elevator speech.

There are many people who see this position as old-fashioned and unrealistic. Which is exactly what doing trail work is like. Or maintaining an apple orchard. Or doing carpentry on historic buildings. Or planting willows along a salmon stream. Everyone I know who does that kind of work is shutdown right now. They are pawns, and they are angry … but not as angry as you might think. They know exactly where they sit on the totem pole, and they’ve chosen to sit there. They take enough pride in the good work they do that it doesn’t matter that they’re deemed non-essential. (Besides, they worked seasonally for so long they learned to save pennies, and crucially, few of them have families to support.)

I’ve decided that’s what I aspire to. Non-essentiality. I realized with considerable shame a few years ago that many of the people I admire most in the world—and nearly all the people I did trail work with—don’t have Facebook accounts and never will. The fact that I do, that I always try to straddle these worlds, sometimes concerns me. I can see the value in reaching out even as I work. But I never want that to be the end in itself. The work is the end: trails brushed, trees pruned or planted, boards nailed, words written, then revised. That’s what matters to me.

Going Short

I blame Ben Affleck.   I heard him on the radio last week talking to Terri Gross about his movie, Argo, and the conversation turned to doing impersonations.   Affleck does a mean Denzel Washington, a decent Morgan Freeman.  Terri asked him how he does it, if it requires practice.  Affleck said, sure, doing impersonations takes practice, but it’s also a gift.  It comes easy.  Because of that, he said, he doesn’t like to do it too much.   He compared it to playing speed chess, where every move is timed and the game moves super-fast.  Back in the day, he and Matt Damon played a lot until a friend intervened to say this:

“Don’t play speed chess.  It will ruin your game.”

That line stuck in my head.  It will not go away. 

Here’s why:  I write a lot of short essays.   I write them because I’m asked to or because I’m paid to or because I have something I want to say that doesn’t merit twenty pages … and I write them because they’re easy.   

I’m afraid it’s ruining my game. 

It’s near sacrilege to say so.   Short nonfiction, like flash fiction, has been all the rage for a long while now, especially in MFA programs where honing stories down to their essence is seen as excellent practice, maybe even cutting edge.   I’ve encouraged it myself plenty.  (I also daresay, from a teaching perspective it’s a lot easier to critique 1000 words than 5K … but no need to be cynical here.)  I adore Brevity as much as the next person.  

(If you don't know Brevity, definitely check it out -- essays <750 words that amaze.  Here's one of mine they published last year:  http://brevitymag.com/nonfiction/crush/ 

I still think it might be ruining my game.

When I sit down to work on my book project, I struggle.  Part of it is pure endurance.   Writing a book is like training for a marathon.  You need patience and pacing.  You need to think really hard.  The answer is simple, I know: Sit longer.  Just like a long slow run.  And, still, no long distance runner will tell you sprint workouts are useless.  They work different muscles.  They’re part of the package.

I just don’t want to ruin my game.

Here’s what Ben Affleck said:  When you do an impersonation, you use the techniques of acting but don’t get at the heart; you do the external work but not the deep internal work.  The same can be true of writing short pieces.  I want to be vigilant about that.  I need to be.  I will be.  

But I don't suppose I'll give up Going Short any time soon.  I have a new collection of short essays, in fact, The Hole in the Snow, which is very close to finding a home. 

“Don’t be afraid to do what comes easy,” says picture book author and Whidbey colleague Bonny Becker.  “It probably means you’re good at it.”

I hope that’s true.  I sincerely do.  

Five things a writer needs to be able to do a lot of

Last week, I visited Minden Elementary School near Reno, Nevada as part of the sixth grade lecture series. The series is organized and run by a hard-working student committee that assembled a list of questions ahead of time, prepared an introduction, set up the tables and chairs in the library, and best of all, provided the treats for the occasion. Last year the series featured scientists. This year it’s writers, and I was the first. So I decided to go with the basics: How do you become a writer? What do you have to do?

I made a list for the whiteboard (which was, by the way, electronic – yikes! – luckily the committee trained me up in no time):

1. Read

What inspires you to write? the students asked. The answer: What I read. From Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was a kid to Zadie Smith last week.

2. Sit in a chair

As anyone who writes seriously can attest, this is a lot harder than it sounds. How long does it take to write a book? the students asked. Well, my first book, the novel I wrote sitting in a bean bag in second grade, The English Girl from Canada, took 10 days. Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus took five years. That’s a lot of sitting.

3. Find something you love to write about

For me, the lifelong urge to write turned to desperate compulsion when I landed in Canyonlands National Park in Utah just out of college, then later when I stumbled into Stehekin. I loved being outdoors, immersed in such beauty, loved the people I met and the adventures I had, and I wanted to write about all of it. So I did. Over and over and over again.

4. Work with other writers

After I left Minden, I headed up to Lake Tahoe to teach a private workshop on the bridge between essay and memoir writing. Six devoted writers offered each other support, encouragement, and much needed direction. All of them – all of us, I should say – marveled at how much gets accomplished when we’re around other writers rather than in our own little cubby holes.

5. Accept rejection

Back at the elementary school, this offered a great chance for guessing game. I told the students that I have, as of now, about seventy published short pieces. To get to that point, I asked, how many rejections did they think I’ve received? Hands shot up. Ten? Nope. Twenty? Nope. A hundred? Up and up and up the numbers went. (When I described this to my mother on the telephone, she said: just like The Price is Right.)

Five hundred, I said at last. I keep track. Five hundred rejections. And counting.

Of course the one obvious thing a writer must do a lot of that does not appear on the list is – duh! – write, so we spent some time on three short writing prompts that maybe the students can work into something in the days and weeks to come.

Then it was over. Time for refreshments. The only caveat was that, in order to partake of the cookies and Rice Krispie treats, the students would have to be talking about the presentation either with me or with each other. (Not, their teacher Ms. Bertolone-Smith noted, merely hanging out with their “stalemates.”) So they gathered around and asked some great questions: how to write a climax scene, whether you can work on more than one book at once, what’s different about writing fiction vs. nonfiction.

Looking back, I realize I did skip over one thing writers have to do a lot of: give readings and presentations and visit with readers. I’ve been doing plenty of that in the past year, and I have to say, the morning at Minden Elementary was one of the most enjoyable.

Teaching, Writing, Publishing

So the three are supposed to be in eternal conflict, I realize. How much time do I spending writing (duh - as much as I can), trying to publish (crucial, right?), and teaching (my passion/my paycheck)? Last semester the three dovetailed nicely and I have my nonfiction workshop at Whidbey Writers Workshop to thank. Sort of. I was afraid, as all writing teachers are secretly afraid, that teaching would sap all my energy. I was simultaneously afraid that I had demanded too much of the students - a complete draft or revision every week of the semester. So I decided I had to keep up. I had to submit a complete draft or revision of an essay to myself and/or to an editor every single week. The rule worked well because it kept me writing, and also because it kept me from fretting over creating a masterpiece every time I sat down to write. The results: 8 essays in 16 weeks. Seven of which have been published or accepted for publication. Here's one from the current issue of Mountain Gazette:

http://www.mountaingazette.com/mountain-notebook/re-entry/