Writing Kernel of the Week

In May 2009 I accompanied some South Dakota State University students to Poland for a study abroad trip titled: “Sustainability and Rural Traditions.” We spend two weeks staying at agri-tourism farms and actually helping out on some of them a bit. And I’ve been working on an essay that might include a snapshot from that trip, but I’m a bit stuck. Same essay as last week’s kernel, but a different scene. So far I just have a bit of description:

Stepping off the train in Stryszów, the smell of lilacs greeted us. Here, flowers in full-bloom hailed us from window boxes and the bright green of grass, trees, shrubs embodied spring. Heavy air smelled like rain, as if fog would materialize at any moment. I passed the empty station, a platform with a tiny building painted goldenrod. The hosts of our small contingent picked up our bags, but we chose to walk the twenty minutes through the village. As we walked, passing by a long, white school with butterfly and flower cut-outs in the windows, passing by a home with a brown chicken pecking its way around a yard, passing by businesses painted flushed orange, lemon yellow, ochre, and buttercream, we ignored the clouds gathering over the higher hills that wrapped Stryszów. Just as the road split and one path shot up the right, narrowing, I heard tiny bits of broadcast. The priest of the local Catholic church chanted the evening mass; the congregation responded. I noted the convergence of sound: the chanted Latin and Polish, the chorus of the congregation, and the deep bass rumble of thunder rolling across the sky, across the pastures, across the silent cemetery and into the small hill-top church.

One of the things I’m working on in creative nonfiction is reflection. I feel like I spent a lot of years excising it from my poetry–at least overt reflection–and now that I can allow it in my writing, I’m struggling to make it sound graceful–not forced or stilted. My “prompt” this week isn’t really a “writing prompt,” but a listening one. I’m going to listen carefully to the way my family members, friends, students, and colleagues “reflect” verbally to see if I can begin to capture the steps–the way their minds swing from one thought to another. Then I’ll try to see how that can help shape my written reflection.

Writing Kernel of the Week

I’m working on an essay that takes up the theme of sound and how hearing something can create a threshold. Even though I owe my writing group a draft today, I’m completely stuck and I’d hope to get them a draft that goes beyond what I currently have. I think that why I’m stuck is that I’m trying to collage some scenes together, but in doing so I predetermines the “discovery” and meditation that I really want at the heart of this piece. So my question is this: Do “collage” and “meditation” essays emerge from two different (and opposite) thinking processes? For the writer, the collage needs to be so carefully thought out and constructed so that the reader can glean the meaning-making. The writers thoughts are “hidden” is a way. But in a meditation essay, the writing itself reflects the thinking of the writer, so that is “made visible.” If I’m trying to put together scenes that already exist on the page in a meditation essay, am I trying to “force” links that may work in other kinds of essays (because the meaning can be made in the writing process)?

I think my writing challenge here is that for some reason, in this piece, I’m not allowing myself to make my thinking visible on the page. I’m not allowing myself to discover–perhaps because am trying to demonstrate something (how sounds can become a threshold) rather than explore the nature of this phenomena.

So here’s my thinking: How often do we get an invitation to move beyond the person we are at the moment, to move out of the self and mingle with that space just beyond? Is this “space just beyond” another version of ourselves?

Sometimes the invitation arrives in an envelope of sound. It arrives in clean white paper, its edges crisp. No stamp, no return address. We aren’t prepared to receive the invitation, but as we slide our fingernails under the open corner, a sample of noise—a refrigerator hums, a heater pops, a car honks in the steady traffic outside the door, a bar or two of melody snakes between gaps—erases expectations and leaves a swelling of stillness. And then we are prepared to hear.

I need to turn this frustration into some sort of assignment, some sort of writing prompt to enable me to solve it and not spin my wheels. So here it goes: “Instead of writing down times when I’ve *experienced* sound as a threshold, write about the questions. What does this mean? How does it mean? Why is it important to think about sound this way?” Hopefully, the other scenes I have in mind will surface within this framework of opening questioning and exploration.

Writing Kernel of the Week

I remember reading a writing prompt about names (I think it was Writing True or Tell It Slant–not sure). Anyway, I never really thought it was generative until I started thinking about my name and its intersections with place.

Thinking “Christine”

One possible strand:
When I lived in Turkey, I visited Antioch (Antakya) on several occasions. I loved the town. It was small, energetic, and filled with rich history. On one trip, my friends and I toured a church. Families were gathered in the courtyard, children playing and their mothers chatting. They beckoned us, and were eager to talk with us. One woman, who knew a bit of English, introduced her friends. I noticed that many of them had Christian names, but I was shocked to learn that her own daughter was named Christine—the only Turkish Christine I ever met. (smile) I even wrote a poem about it called “The Meeting” that can be found in POSTCARD ON PARCHMENT.

Another possible strand:
Last October I was driving up to Grand Forks, North Dakota with a colleague and some students to attend the Red River Women’s Studies Conference when I saw the sign: Christine, One Mile. Even though it was already nine o’clock in the evening and we were still a good eighty miles from Grand Forks, I had to take the exit. There was one other Christine in the car besides me, and an occasional Christine (a Catherine who was called Christine a lot for some strange reason). We explored the town (population 100) and there was even one business open: Christine’s Liquors.

Random facts:
When I toured Brookings for the first time, I secretly hoped that a house would be for sale on Christine Ave. if I was offered the job and moved there. Happily, I was offered the job. Sadly, there wasn’t a house for sale on Christine Ave.

Christine, in Greek, means “anointed one.”

In my first-grade class at St. Pius X School, there were twenty-seven students (split into two rooms). There were four Chris’s (Chris W., Chris S., Chris T., and Chris M.) and Christy, a Chrissy (yours truly), and a Tina (actual name, Kristina). My mom SWEARS she didn’t know it was popular name; in fact, I was named after my grandmother, Mary Christine.

I’m not sure where I’ll take this, but comments would be welcome!

My version of the prompt would be: What places do you associate with your name, or what places share your name? In what places have hearing your name surprised you? Are there parallel tensions in your name and the places associated with your name?

Writing Kernel of the Week

This past summer, my sweet son found an injured garter snake in our driveway. The snake was trying to slither, but it was actually scooting slowly—and diagonally—across the concrete. I was excited to make this a “teaching science moment,” but upon inspection, we saw some guts seeping out. (“Teaching Veterinary Medicine” moment?) While we made conjectures about what happened to it (I voted a cat-claw as the most logical weapon) and tried to decide what to do (how much was it suffering?), it stopped moving completely. Fast forward six months. Winter. 40 inches of snow on the ground. Sweet son runs upstairs and exclaims “There is snake at the door!” I thought he was joking—he’s known to do so, but he was right. INSIDE the house, between blinds and glass door (walk-out basement) was a snake—same variety as the summer’s driveway visitor. Perhaps because it was IN my house, I freaked out slightly. Was it alive? Perhaps… it moved, sluggish. Had it made a dash for the inside when my husband went out the door so shovel a path for the meter reader? That is the most logical….

We put it back outside.

Somewhere here is a poem or essay… I just don’t know where yet. Of course, I dismissed the Freudian analysis possibilities immediately. Still, these events seem to *mean*. If I turned this kernel into a prompt, it would go something like this: Juxtapose two scenes that are united by a common—but unusual—element. Brainstorm the possible tensions, meanings, connections.

Fighting Perfectionist Tendencies

When blogs began popping up oh-so-many-years ago, keeping one sounded fun. And hip. But I never got passed the initial idea despite being enamored of friends’ blogs. Posting seemed—and still seems—so permanent. And out “there”—out of my control. Someone could copy any given post and it would remain, like a fingerprint, my word DNA. But I gave myself an excuse: I don’t know how to set one up.

My friend Scott Meyer took away that excuse and he help me establish this site. (Thanks!) And here it is, with my fresh-out-of-the-oven ideas ghosting through the ether of the internet.

My New Book

Exciting news!

My new book, Keeping Them Alive, was just released. You can purchase it here.