Posts Tagged ‘the writing life’
Cindy on March 1st, 2010
I have been dissolved and shaken / Worn other people’s faces” — May Sarton
My early introduction to May Sarton’s work was through her diary, Journal of a Solitude. I was new to personal writing at the time, and I admired how Sarton gracefully shared her private and public worlds — her beloved garden; domestic life in New Hampshire; her conflicting needs for solitude and companionship. Reading more of her work over the years, I knew I’d found a kindred spirit.
“Now I Become Myself” first struck me as a song of elder wisdom, a declaration of authentic power. Feeling her “own weight and density,” the poet has outgrown the petty insecurities of youth — including its sense of urgency. Yet the poem speaks to readers of all ages. I gave it to a friend on her 70th birthday and was thrilled to learn it is now one of her favorites. My friend was especially moved by the line, “Now there is time and Time is young.” Which lines speak to you? –CL
Now I Become Myself
By May Sarton
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before –”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
– Reprinted from Selected Poems of May Sarton edited by Serena Sue Hilsinger and Lois Brynes; W.W. Norton & Company; 1978–
–Top photo: Detail from “Book of Shadows,” an altered book, by Cindy La Ferle –
This post is part of a weekly poetry appreciation series. To read more, please click on Poems to inspire in the CATEGORIES column at right. As always, I welcome your recommendations, too.
Cindy on February 19th, 2010
Make music of what you can.” — Charles Rafferty
I always knew I wanted to be a writer. When I was a kid, I perched in the gnarly apple tree in my backyard and scribbled my own adventures in a ruled notebook. In college I majored in English and journalism, but it took years before I found the courage (not to mention the income) I needed to begin a real writing career.
The long path that led me here was marked with detours and littered with excuses. The poem below is the wake-up call I needed 25 years ago — but Charles Rafferty hadn’t written it yet. Today I keep it in my back pocket and read it whenever I need a creative kick in the pants.
What dream would you launch if you had all the time in the world? Where would you travel if you knew the road was wide open? What’s fueling your hesitation? –CL
Against Hesitation
By Charles Rafferty
If you stare at it long enough
the mountain becomes unclimbable.
Tally it up. How much time have you spent
waiting for the soup to cool?
Icicles hang from January gutters
only as long as they can. Fingers pause
above piano keys for the chord
that will not form. Slam them down
I say. Make music of what you can.
Some people stop at the wrong corner
and waste a dozen years hoping
for directions. I can’t be them.
Tell every girl I’ve ever known
I’m coming to break her door down,
that my teeth will clench
the simple flower I only knew
not to give … Ah, how long did I stand
beneath the eaves believing the storm
would stop? It never did.
And there is lightning in me still.
Reprinted from A Less Fabulous Infinity, by Charles Rafferty (Louisiana Literature Press; 2006)
–Photo: detail from a mixed-media collage by Cindy La Ferle –
This post is part of a weekly series of poetry appreciation. To read more, please click on âPoems to inspireâ in the CATEGORIES column at right. I welcome your recommendations, too.
Cindy on August 12th, 2009
Irrespective of what she reads, though, when she goes back to sit before the computer, there is the same stubborn emptiness, the same locked door.” — Elizabeth Berg, Home Safe
As soon as I hit the “Publish” tab, I started worrying about last week’s blog post. Not that I regretted exposing my family’s elder-care crises. I know many of you can relate to or sympathize with the heartache of witnessing the decline of aging parents. But later in the post, I got a little too gloomy about journalism, blogging, and writing careers.
I didn’t mean to discourage anyone.
This site was originally designed to keep in touch with my newspaper column readers, and over the years it also morphed into a blog for my writing workshop students. I usually don’t give writing “advice” — but I try to offer some insight on the writing life. Most of my students tell me that getting published seems like a mysterious, impossible thing that other people do. So, I make a point of reminding them that that’s not the case at all. Published writers are ordinary people who grow tomatoes, burn casseroles, gripe about politics, miss their kids when they move out, and wish someone else would wash their cars. People like me.
Until recently, though, I’ve rarely said much about the lonely hours of isolation, the frightening abyss of writer’s block, the times I’ve been annoyed at editors and baffled by agents, or the times I’ve wondered if I’m just wasting time. I’ve avoided discussing all that because I believe my role is to encourage, inspire, and excite new writers — to remind you that your dreams of publication are not out of reach. And yet, with so many newspapers and magazines folding lately, and with the book publishing industry in a major crisis, too, I think it’s misleading to suggest that being a writer is loads of fun right now. When the only ones signing fabulous book deals are loons like Sarah Palin (who can’t even deliver a coherent speech), well, to paraphrase Anne Lamott, you too might be inclined to get “down on your hands and knees and drink gin straight from the cat’s dish.”
Regardless, last week I wondered if it was wrong to broadcast how pessimistic I’d been feeling about the future of publishing. And wasn’t it a bit unfair or mean-spirited to announce that “the magic just isn’t there for me” in blogging — especially when I know that many of you take pride in your blogs? So, I almost went back to delete that downer of a paragraph from last week’s post.
But then I finished Elizabeth Berg’s sweet new novel, Home Safe, and I changed my mind.
In Home Safe, middle-aged novelist Helen Ames is coping with the loss of her husband and her father — and facing a newly emptied nest. Despite all the free time she has, Helen is impossibly blocked, unable to do the writing that has always fulfilled and saved her. I won’t spoil the entire plot for you, in case you’d like to read the novel, but I suspect that Elizabeth Berg herself has endured some of her main character’s career angst. What writer hasn’t?
Like the fictional Helen Ames, I’ve often thought about throwing my drafts in the trash compactor and applying for a “real job” in retail. (I’ve seriously wondered if I’m better suited to a gig at an Eileen Fisher boutique or a cozy independent bookshop with a resident cat.) But along the way, Helen reluctantly tries teaching a writing class, and ultimately learns that she is lifted by coaching others. Just as I’ve been lifted by every hopeful student who’s had the courage to share his or her stories in my classes.
Reading Home Safe, I felt at times as if Berg were holding a mirror to my own conscience. But the real gift in this novel was the permission it gave me to admit aloud that I do get burned-out and discouraged; that no matter how much I’ve achieved, I’m not immune to doubt and insecurity.
Burnout, discouragement, doubt, and insecurity are inexorably chained to the writing life — yet they often precede a second wind or a second act. If you’re in it for the long run, there’s no way you’ll fully appreciate the thrill of seeing your byline under a magazine article or your name on the cover of a book until you’ve battled these demons and gremlins. I wouldn’t be honest, or fair, if I didn’t share that with you too. -- Cindy La Ferle
Cindy on August 15th, 2008
“The scariest moment is always before you start. After that, things can only get better.” — Stephen King
Want to talk about writing? Join me and a panel of professional journalists, authors, and editors on September 4, 11, and 18, from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the Royal Oak Public Library. Offered as part of the ROPL’s Writer in Residence Program, “The Writer’s Life” is an informal discussion forum for new and aspiring writers. (This year’s program will be different, given the addition of the panel of experts.) We’ll discuss everything from balancing family life with your muse to finding the very best books on the writing craft. “The Writer’s Life” forum is free to the public — but pre-registration is required. Please phone the Royal Oak Public Library: 248-246-3715. Be sure to visit the ROPL Web site for more information on other Writer-in-Residence programs we’re hosting this fall. And feel free to e-mail me with questions. — CL
Cindy on July 2nd, 2008
So I finished my series of my twice-weekly yoga classes. The practice remains a challenge and something of a mystery. There are many poses I simply can’t do at this stage (especially with bilateral hip replacements). But I’ve made some progress — and now I have something besides daily bike rides to get me out from behind a desk.
Better yet, I’m discovering that the lessons I learned on my yoga mat are enhancing other aspects of my life, including my writing. In one of the sessions, for instance, the instructor reminded us that we shouldn’t be looking over our shoulders at what others were doing.
“Yoga isn’t a competition,” she said. “It is about listening to your own body, and paying close attention to what it’s telling you, what you can do. Never mind what others are doing with their practice. Stop looking over your shoulders!” I thought this was both refreshing and wise — and I couldn’t stop thinking about it the following day.
Life isn’t a competition, either. Or it shouldn’t be. Whether we’re working or playing, a lot of us spend too much time looking over our shoulders to evaluate how everyone else is doing. We compare our achievements to those of our neighbors and coworkers. We scrutinize fashion models, athletes, best-selling authors, or film stars. How do we compare? How do we look? Are we ever good enough?
I had hoped that I would have outgrown this “looking over my shoulders” syndrome by the time I turned 50. There’s something so ridiculously adolescent about it. But clearly, I have miles to go. If nothing else, my yoga classes taught me the beauty and value of staying focused. On my own efforts. – CL
My early introduction to May Sarton’s work was through her diary, Journal of a Solitude. I was new to personal writing at the time, and I admired how Sarton gracefully shared her private and public worlds — her beloved garden; domestic life in New Hampshire; her conflicting needs for solitude and companionship. Reading more of her work over the years, I knew I’d found a kindred spirit.
