Your Daily Miracle (s): Sweet things
my fingers honeyed with godlove
Okay, that is my one-handed attempt (failed--don't worry, I vote with you: FAILED) at a cummingsly witticism. I made instead, a clumsingly. (With one hand I typed, with the other I was eating a second breakfast). But I will return to my best channel for communication--prose--to explain to you that I have been singlehandedly consuming the most delicious pot of honey in the whole wide world. Pacific Northwest Blackberry honey. I eat it on toast, on cornbread, I eat it with a spoon, I lick it from the knife. Last night, I swooned to Martin: It's like tasting God's love.
It's really that good.
I have likewise been lapping up every last word from the page of Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Sometimes I read a book that fills me with a mixture of sheer enjoyment, wonder, and despair that my writing will ever be that good, and this is one of those books. I am in love with the characters--the quirky, grieving narrator, the perfectly bizarre, believable grandparents, the Mark Twainish road trip. . . .I felt encouraged to read in the author note that Creech rewrote the book--in completely distinct drafts--twelve times. And I am sure she had plenty of collaboration from good editors.
Which brings me to this: I have been writing for so long in relative isolation that having the ear of another writer or editor seems to me a most priceless thing. It's not that I am unwilling to do the work; it's just that I need the sharpening and redirection of someone who believes and engages. Martin used to be my main such person, but he's been so busy lately making a salary so we can eat and have hot showers that I have fairly lost my writing/editing companion.
Yesterday, Martin was home sick. It is his first sick day of the entire year, and it was, for me, one of the best days of the entire year. He sat at the kitchen table drinking tea as I read him a short story I've been reworking and slogging through, feeling more and more blinded. . .and as I read, he responded, not in words at first, but with body language and laughter or lifts of his head or fingers (and a few rude, side-splitting comments). Then, after I had finished the last, double-spaced 35th page, we discussed it together. Remember that, fellow writers and students? Remember workshop? It's SO good.
Especially when you feel as if you've been clever, and someone says:
"You pretty much lost all hope of transcendence with that last section."
And then you get to talk about the last section, and why it ended the story on such a sad, hopeless note, and you get to rewrite it, and it's not perfect yet, but at least someone gave you permission to lose a part you thought you liked.
Or somebody catches a typo, like when you call Lincoln the first president. Because if you left that in your story and sent it off to some journal, you'd be smack-down embarrassed out of your silly head.
Lincoln, by the way, of course is the 16th president. Everybody knows that.
Northwest honey, good books, smart editors. Three of the sweetest things in life.
Okay, that is my one-handed attempt (failed--don't worry, I vote with you: FAILED) at a cummingsly witticism. I made instead, a clumsingly. (With one hand I typed, with the other I was eating a second breakfast). But I will return to my best channel for communication--prose--to explain to you that I have been singlehandedly consuming the most delicious pot of honey in the whole wide world. Pacific Northwest Blackberry honey. I eat it on toast, on cornbread, I eat it with a spoon, I lick it from the knife. Last night, I swooned to Martin: It's like tasting God's love.
It's really that good.
I have likewise been lapping up every last word from the page of Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Sometimes I read a book that fills me with a mixture of sheer enjoyment, wonder, and despair that my writing will ever be that good, and this is one of those books. I am in love with the characters--the quirky, grieving narrator, the perfectly bizarre, believable grandparents, the Mark Twainish road trip. . . .I felt encouraged to read in the author note that Creech rewrote the book--in completely distinct drafts--twelve times. And I am sure she had plenty of collaboration from good editors.
Which brings me to this: I have been writing for so long in relative isolation that having the ear of another writer or editor seems to me a most priceless thing. It's not that I am unwilling to do the work; it's just that I need the sharpening and redirection of someone who believes and engages. Martin used to be my main such person, but he's been so busy lately making a salary so we can eat and have hot showers that I have fairly lost my writing/editing companion.
Yesterday, Martin was home sick. It is his first sick day of the entire year, and it was, for me, one of the best days of the entire year. He sat at the kitchen table drinking tea as I read him a short story I've been reworking and slogging through, feeling more and more blinded. . .and as I read, he responded, not in words at first, but with body language and laughter or lifts of his head or fingers (and a few rude, side-splitting comments). Then, after I had finished the last, double-spaced 35th page, we discussed it together. Remember that, fellow writers and students? Remember workshop? It's SO good.
Especially when you feel as if you've been clever, and someone says:
"You pretty much lost all hope of transcendence with that last section."
And then you get to talk about the last section, and why it ended the story on such a sad, hopeless note, and you get to rewrite it, and it's not perfect yet, but at least someone gave you permission to lose a part you thought you liked.
Or somebody catches a typo, like when you call Lincoln the first president. Because if you left that in your story and sent it off to some journal, you'd be smack-down embarrassed out of your silly head.
Lincoln, by the way, of course is the 16th president. Everybody knows that.
Northwest honey, good books, smart editors. Three of the sweetest things in life.
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