Bright & Dark

Back and finally settled some after having been on the Oregon coast for a week and a half in February. These trips have always been invaluable, and this one was no exception.

First up, novel workshop. I’ve been to these before, but this time there was a new method, moving from traditional Clarion workshop round-robin critique rules to more targeted comments about the marketability of the novels and spiffing up the proposal packages so that they really shone. It rocked. I found the whole experience eye-opening and very useful. And such a treat to read so many really great books.

I took The Heart of the World to this workshop. So well-received. And then mailed to editors, one of whom requested the full manuscript so far. Good stuff.

Next up, a couple of days off, which I mostly spent reading the first round of stories sent in for the second workshop and walking on the beach. Great reading, strenuous walking on that loop down to the beach and around to the inlet near Mo’s, then back up through the neighborhood via the Hill of Hell. Sunshine even graced us some.

And then the anthology workshop with Dean and Denise Little. This one, too, went as usual above and beyond my expectations as far as learning and networking. I wrote my first ever noir for the overnight short story at this workshop. What a blast! And I got to read and learn from the excellent overnight batch of stories and all of Denise’s and Dean’s comments.

Both my first and second story are out to markets.

Add to all this mix a shopping trip to North by Northwest Books and my first trip to Mo’s (no chowder for me unfortunately because of the glutens, but it smelled heavenly; and Mo’s surprised me with a bang-up bowl of chili) and lots of time with so many other professional writers and editors, and you have a recipe for amazingness.

So. Reading back over what I’ve just written, it strikes me that there is no real way to describe what I get out of these workshops and what it’s like to experience them. Because I’ve written about the logistics and mechanics, and that doesn’t include the way it feels to be among people who write professionally, who love it, who love story, who love learning. Or how it feels to completely immerse myself in writing and writing culture for at least a week. Or how it feels to bump up my craft and business knowledge in a way that fuels my work once I return home. You just have to have been there.

I’m betting you have a similar experience that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been there. Feel free to substitute words and phrases.

I take “vacation time” from work to do all this, usually a couple of times a year. Everyone, including me, knows that it’s not a real vacation. Not in a million years. I work my butt off. I get very little rest. It doesn’t matter, though. What does matter? Doing what I love. That feeds me in a different way than sunning on the beach or curling up in front a peat fire on a rainy Irish night. Without all those different kinds of nourishment, I feel like a starving woman.

Do what you love. Find a way. That’s my prescription.

As in, The Emotions (woah, woah, you’ve got the best of my love) or “Emotion” (It’s just emotion/taking me over). Or any descriptive passage that could be properly begun with the words “I feel.” It’s been on my mind lately.

A few days ago, my BFF and I drove to Austin to attend Starr’s memorial. Such a different animal than the sorts of memorials and funerals I’ve attended before. There was genuine mourning, sure. And there was also much celebration of Starr’s life. Who she was, the lessons she lived and taught so well by example to all of us, distilled in the messages of her music and in the hearts of everyone present.

It had been a long, long time — in some cases, years — since I’d seen some of the people I reconnected with there. Every hug, every moment spent standing in front of the fire with our arms around each other brought home that this was the way to honor Starr. With love. With community. Always connected, no matter how far we may drift from each other in these individual lives we’re living.

I exchanged many a sad glance. I laughed. I sang out loud when her band, The Lovers, played their set after many, many stories told by family and friends. And I cried, though not as much as I had cried already. It felt important to remember everything and everyone. What is remembered lives on in us. Or, for short, what is remembered lives.

In the religion of my birth, remembering is important. Remembering to keep the holy days, lighting a Yarzheit candle on the anniversary of a loved one’s passing, holding close the essence of thoughts and deeds and love given and received. In this way is memory made to be a blessing to all who live.

All of this remembering — or, better yet — re-membering, as if the whole world and everyone in it were shattered and longed to be whole once more — is not mere rote. It would be nothing without feeling, without emotion.

Over the lunch hour today, I finished reading Melissa Marr’s Fragile Eternity. Warning: Vague spoiler alert. I felt more captivated by the last third of the book than any of its other parts, which is not to say those weren’t good but that the last third touched me in special way because of an unexpected weaving of emotion into the steady, unchanging threads of order. End warning.

What does it mean to bring emotion into the warp and weft of order? How does a person who prides him- or herself on equanimity deal with the ebb and flow of the heart? What is the right balance between logic and feeling? How does it shift and change? Slowly, steadily? So quickly that we give ourselves whiplash? Somewhere in between?

There is a time for more and for less, a time for sharp and bright and dark and explosive. There’s a place for gentleness, for gratitude. There’s magic in all of it — the kind of awe and wonder that goes along with being present, right now, in all of our humanity — however it feels.

The point is to feel.