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.
The day job, kids’ activities, that book I long to read, an evening to binge on my favorite TV show, some days just a fear of failure. Reasons vary but the effect is always the same: it can be difficult to set aside time to write–just write, whether the goal is to revise an old piece or simply to engage with the page and create something entirely new.