June Newsletter

By Jessica Page Morrell

From a Lonesome Spring Over the Memorial holiday weekend I traveled to eastern Washington to visit my brother Colin and my nephews. He lives in the Yakima Valley and grows wine grapes and cherries on 120 acres. He also has a demanding, full time job and shares custody of his boys, ages 7 and 4. It was a lovely weekend that included drinking beautiful wines, cooking, kidsâ laughter, a pack of dogs, a walk on the farm, dinner with friends, and time for reading and napping. I returned home thinking a lot about what Colin has accomplished and what is possible for anyone with patience and vision. Seven years ago we visited the property when he was considering buying it. Sometimes when you drive in the country you spot a farm that is run down, forlorn and wretched and you wonder how the place came to be so neglected, and it fills you with a kind of despair. Like my brotherâs place, it might be littered with heaps of rusted machinery and parts and wires and piles of garbage. Dust and weeds and strange debris scattered everywhere. Back then, it was a lonesome place, with the only sound of life a gurgling irrigation canal that ran through it. When we walked the land we soon became parched and stumbled across more than one sheep carcass and our socks became covered with burs and cheat grass. Coyotesâ howls echoed in the canyon that is part of the property. The house was filthy and barely inhabitable÷unless you count the spiders that were everywhere and the mice nesting in the oven. I can remember that visit like it was yesterday. It was late summer hot, baking hot, and we bounced along in an old Land Rover that he drove back then. I remember the truck because the exhaust didnât work properly and I kept hanging out the window, hoping for fresh air, but this gesture was like putting my head in an oven. My boyfriend at the time, who grew up in Long Island, took it all in and said simply, ãEverywhere I look, I see five years of hard work.ä So on a late May evening, seven years later, a small group of us were standing in the front yard as dusk fell. A storm had whisked through and just as quickly passed, but left behind a smell of fresh earth and plants and sweet air. Santana played on the stereo perched in the kitchen window and all around us rows and rows of wine grapes rustled in the wind that had picked up from the west. Beyond one vineyard, one of the canyon walls was planted in cherry trees and in the distance, one by one, the lights from a nearby small town came twinkling on. As if to frame a masterpiece, the rolling hills to the north were a smoky presence, casting a spell on the evening. The transformation of this land is nothing short of miraculous and Iâm reminded what we can accomplish if we plow into our work with the patience and persistence of a farmer. If we tenderly nurture our visions, and plant our aspirations in the fertile soil of our imaginations. Think about what you can accomplish in seven years, or five, or one. Anything is possible when youâre willing. ************************************************************************ June has arrived and with it, the longest days of the year. I love these lingering sunsets, the sense that summer has finally settled over the land. The birds are noisy at dawn as Iâm at my computer, and each morning I take a break from my office, by watering flowers and herbs and checking on my tomato plants. Itâs all good. Summer wraps us in sweetness and longing. Summer inspires with the miracles in nature, the sun-drenched afternoons, the drowning green of landscapes, impossible-to-resist smells like grilled meals from a backyard barbecue. In summer, writers need to bask in the sweetness, the sensations, feel the heat. Take this lushness and use it. Imagine it or transform it on the page. Summer is tangible magic. Write it all down. ********************************************************************** Successful writers vs. wanna-bes A lot of people call themselves writers, but when the chips donât stack up, many abandon their projects and dreams for an easier pastime, or perhaps the hammock. Itâs so often a thankless task: searching for the perfect word, trying to understand a character, or concocting a satisfying ending to a complicated story. In my many years of working with writers, Iâve come to realize that there are actually only two categories of writers that Iâve met: real writers and those who merely call themselves writers, but donât have what it takes to. You can call them wanna-bes or amateurs or dabblers. Here are a few guidelines to help you determine which team youâre playing on: Successful writers snatch hours whenever they can to work at projects, realizing that most of us donât have long, uninterrupted stretches to write in. Whenever possible we schedule time on the weekends for writing, we sacrifice pleasures and pastimes, we make tough choices in order to schedule writing time. Most writers feel called to writing. Real writers know this, nurture this calling. Likely itâs been a part of his or her personality since childhood. Itâs a natural affinity, and this calling can be remembered and relied on when the process gets difficult. . While successful writers often struggle like all of us, they keep the writer within alive. Theyâve known for years that writing brings joy, solace, and passion into their lives. Although rejection is never pleasant, real writers realize that itâs simply part of the game and keep an eye to the future. Thus a rejection doesnât derail them÷or at least not for long. Most testify that the best way to deal with rejection is to send the rejected work to another agent or editor. Writing is a solitary pursuit. Period. While there will sometimes be days when it seems like the walls are closing in, real writers are comfortable with solitude and find ways to work through feelings of isolation. One of the main traits that separates real writers from the wanna-bes is how they handle criticism. Real writers welcome criticism and realize that their entire life will be spent learning and improving their skills. With that in mind, they welcome input on their work, analyze the feedback, then weigh how it should be incorporated. Real writers donât wait for inspiration to hit. Real writers donât postpone their work until they win the lottery or talk about that elusive ãsomeday.ä Instead, they concoct a solid plan that puts writing at the top of their priorities along with a list of measurable goals, and then write regularly, if not daily. Most real writers work on the sort of novels or projects that theyâd most like to read. By reading and studying their favorite genre, they learn the nuance of voice and style and the importance of structure. Real writers read a lot and analyze what theyâre reading. In On Writing, Stephen King says, ãreading is the creative center of a writerâs life.ä Reading teaches us how to incorporate description and use dialogue to characterize. It teaches the subtle underpinnings of structure and the dizzying beauty of imagery. Real writers have ãamenä moments while reading÷a keen appreciation of the craft that pushes them to improve their own work. Real writers are in it for the long run. Most realize that their first novel or sale will likely not guarantee financial security and are most interested improving and creating a body of work Real writers have devised methods to keep at them at their desk cranking out the words. No two writers work alike, but we all face the same blank page, the same impulses, and fears. Perhaps what we learn most from successful writers is that they simply spend more time at their desk than most of us. Successful writers immerse themselves in the world of writing, whatever that takes. ********************************************************************************************************** Inspiration ãWriters, and all humans, have a multitude of complicated and unknown-to-them ways of protecting themselves. The mind is a clever thing, and one of its goals may well be to help its particular human survive. Most of us, from time to time, should be grateful for such care. But these self-protecting strategies can actually hinder our stories. When the poem youâre struggling with feels superficial, when the short story youâre trying to write is stalled, when your memoir-in-progress just isnât working, consider that you may be protecting yourself with layers of clothes and a parka on top when what the writing needs is the bare, naked truth.ä Meg Files, Write From Life ãFirst of all, becoming a writer is mainly a matter of cultivating a writerâs temperament. Now the very word Îtemperamentâ is justly suspect among well-balanced persons, so I hasten to say that it is no part of the program to inculcate a wild-eyed bohemianism, or to set up moods and caprices as necessary accompaniments of the authorâs life. On the contrary; the moods and tempers, when they actually exist, are the symptoms of the artistâs personality gone wrong÷running off into wasted effort and emotional exhaustion·. After all, very few of us are born into homes where we see true examples of the artistic temperament, and since artists do certainly conduct their lives÷necessarily÷on a different pattern from the average man of business, it is very easy to misunderstand what he does and why he does it when we see it from the outside. The picture of the artist as monster made up of one part boulevardier is a legacy to us from the last century, and a remarkably embarrassing inheritance. There is no earlier and healthier idea of the artist than that, the idea of the genius as a man more versatile, more sympathetic, more studious than his fellows, more catholic in his tastes, less at the mercy of the ideas of the crowd. The grain of truth in the fin de siecle notion, though, is this: the author of genius does keep till his last breath the spontaneity, the ready sensitiveness, of a child, the ãinnocence of eyeä that means so much to the painter, the ability to respond freshly and quickly to new scenes, and to old scenes as though they were new; to see traits and characteristics as though each were new-minted from the hand of God instead of sorting them quickly into dusty categories and pigeon-holing them without wonder or surprise ; to feel situations so immediately and keenly that the word ãtriteä has hardly any meaning for him ; and always to see ãthe correspondence between thingsä of which Aristotle spoke two thousand years ago. This freshness of response is vital to the authorâs talent.ä Dorthea Brande, On Becoming A Writer