Posted on

Study Hall: #AmWriting, #AmWandering & Following the Story

Last Sunday I met with a few writers online and in the studio for another session of Study Hall: #AmWriting.

I’m still early into this venture, so each time we meet there’s another tech issue to consider, maybe something with the sound, maybe recognition that camera placement is everything; I like for all writers to see or be seen, so setting the laptop in a perfect position matters.

(I apologize to those online this time, who saw mostly my chin and a dramatic wave of hand and my beauty mark…aka. my mole…aka. call-me-Cindy-Crawford-and-we’ll-all-feel-better.)

Annnyway, what isn’t new to the venture is the way writers come together in community. The way a simple nudge from a prompt will spur a full 10-minutes of pen to paper.

The way one story unfolds into another.

It’s what Beth Kephart talks about in her essay, “And There’s Your Mother, Calling Out to You: In Pursuit of Memory.”

Memoir is, among many other things, about what we remember; it is also about how memory is returned to us. About where we go to access the past and what we do when it floods straight through us.

We spent two hours exploring that idea, moving from one prompt to the next, letting a phrase or an image from the last 10-minute free write grow into the next 10-minute free write. And several of us were surprised at where our pens took us.

It’s what Dan Chaon illustrates in his story, “Shepherdess.”

This is one of those things that you can never explain to anyone, that’s what I want to explain—one of those free-association moments with connections that dissolve when you start to try to put them into words

But I consider it for a moment, trying to map it out. Look: Here is a china knickknack on my mother’s coffee table, right next to her favorite ashtray. A shepherdess, I guess–a figuring with blond sausage curls and a low-cut bodice and petticoats, holding a crook. a staff, in one hand and carrying a lamb under her arm….

Take a minute to read both Kephart’s essay and Chaon’s story. Think about how one image in your day tugs at your memory and another image rises to the surface, then another memory, and another. Join us for the next Study Hall on June 3rd.

You can participate if you’re writing nonfiction or fiction or poetry–the point is, you’re writing. Who knows what stories will fall onto your paper in the company of others.

(Details on dates, times, and links to register can be found HERE.)

Posted on

For no good reason.

The other night I watched Bridges of Madison County for no good reason. Other than the fact that I remember it being one of my mother’s favorite movies. And maybe it’s because we’re coming up on Mother’s Day or the near-beginning of summer when I have more time to think. Or perhaps it’s because plenty has happened in the last year that I would like to discuss. I reach into strange places in hopes of finding her. Like Madison County. She was never anywhere near Iowa, though, and not at all like Meryl Streep’s character, Francesca–not from another country. Though there were times when she stood out in a crowd as if she spoke with an accent, when she was attractive in the most plain of dress. And there were dreams that she gave up in the course of her life. I see it now. I am twelve years old, sitting in the auditorium at the community college where she takes Theater. I am watching her up on stage during rehearsals for a play where she is Star of the Show. She is electric under the lights: brilliant and powerful, funny and full of character. Later, she will win an award. But after that season, she won’t go back. I don’t remember why. Only that she quit taking classes. Only that she grew quiet again. And those months become a separate season of my mother in color, a season I was privy to somehow. Privileged. To see her under the lights.