{"id":10234,"date":"2021-03-16T14:12:30","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T21:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=10234"},"modified":"2024-10-17T19:38:47","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T02:38:47","slug":"writing-resilient-why-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/writing-resilient-why-write\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Resilient: Why Write?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Elena Bryan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Guest Blogger Christine Walker:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the house where my husband and I live, there is a room we call the \u201clibrary.\u201d Books overflow the shelves. Along the walls, five bookcases contain hundreds of volumes stacked top to bottom, back to front, overhanging the edges. One shelf holds books by authors I know\u2014friends, teachers, and teachers who became friends. More books are piled on the floor and in bags, but our local public library stopped taking donations because of the pandemic. The disarray \u2014 books, bags, file boxes needing to be sorted \u2014 mirrors my emotions. I need to make sense of this room and so much else in my life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve come looking for a paperback recommended for my zoom book group. I joined the group a year ago, on March 25th, 2020, two weeks after our county shut down for Covid on March 13th. That was the day my husband and I cancelled the memorial celebration we had scheduled for the 15th. The celebration was to be in honor of our 31-year-old son, who had passed away in early January. I didn\u2019t intend to write about his death in this post, but I\u2019ve come to know the truth of these lines from W.S. Merwin: \u201cYour absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The zoom book group, meeting once a month on a Friday, has been a bright spot in a brutal year. Books provide solace and inspiration\u2014reading them, talking about them, and having them on the shelves. As disorganized as my books appear, they are not a burden. They are touchstones in a time of no touching. How many other people are feeling this way? I google for recent headlines. AP News declares: \u201cPublishing saw upheaval in 2020, but \u2018books are resilient.\u2019\u201d The Guardian shouts: \u201cBook sales defy pandemic to hit eight-year high.\u201d Yahoo Finance testifies to \u201cAmerica\u2019s love for books and reading habits\u201d with stats from iDashboards: \u201cSales in the print book market increased 8% in 2020.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This upbeat news for writers and readers brings me to my topic question: \u201cWhy write?\u201d I can\u2019t address \u201cWhy write?\u201d without considering \u201cWhy read?\u201d They are conjoined, like twins. I read to understand, feel more deeply, experience more widely, and walk in someone else\u2019s shoes. I read to learn what I don\u2019t know, remind myself of what I believe, question those beliefs, and see the world from other viewpoints. I write for the same reasons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all of my adult life, I\u2019ve written in sketchbook journals about painting, creative process, and all else. I write professionally for clients as a creative consultant. But I didn\u2019t identify myself as a writer until the publication of my first book, \u201cA Painter\u2019s Garden: Cultivating the Creative Life.\u201d The book sprouted in 1995 as a letter to a friend who gave me a rose bush; it grew out of a desire to reclaim my joy after a challenging year, one very different from 2020; it branched from my journals into a nonfiction narrative chronicling my life as an artist, novice gardener, and mother of the young, exuberant, and beautiful boy who was our son, Quinn. After the book\u2019s publication in October 1997, I wrote a short story that became longer and longer\u2014soon a novel. I completed that novel and another manuscript and began a new one inspired by the diaries that my paternal grandmother kept during the Great Depression. I am grateful that she left a trace of her life through which I can experience the arduous and wonderfully happy times of my father\u2019s family. I set the novel in 1932 and titled it \u201cTap Dancing at the Bluebird Buffet.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My second published book, \u201cWooleycat\u2019s Musical Theater,\u201d which I illustrated and co-wrote with my husband came out in 2003. It had its inception years earlier in the songs that Dennis and I wrote during a challenging time of disappointments in our attempts to become parents. Our siblings and friends were growing their families, so we created music for our nephews, nieces, and friends\u2019 children. The songs went out into the world in 1986 and Quinn was born in 1988. He was our greatest joy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I entered a graduate writing program in 2004, completed a third novel as my thesis, and received an MFA in Writing and Literature in Fiction in 2006. Following graduation, I focused on revising the three completed novel manuscripts, as well as painting, creative consulting, and teaching. The story begun from my grandmother\u2019s diaries beckoned me, and I made intermittent progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five years ago, I evolved \u201cTap Dancing at the Bluebird Buffet\u201d to take place in 1932, 1960, and 2016, ending on the eve of the election of our first woman President, Hillary Clinton. That didn\u2019t work out the way I\u2019d hoped. I put the book aside. In late autumn of 2019, I was again working on the novel. I was unsure of how I would end it, just as I was unsure of how I would accomplish all of my ambitions in art, creative consulting, and writing in the coming year. During that first week of January 2020, I wrote resolutions and affirmations, feeling energized and full of promise, visualizing what might be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Losing Quinn was a tragedy beyond imagining. In the aftermath of his death, I tried working on the novel. I didn\u2019t know how to re-enter it, nor could I manage the mental acrobatics involved in constructing a novel. I was in disarray, depleted, despairing. Grief fogged my brain. Although I know how to craft fiction, I couldn\u2019t organize my notes, much less sustain an interest in my imagined characters and story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joining the Friday zoom book group helped. In March of 2020, I couldn\u2019t write a novel, but I could read one for discussion with a group of kind, interesting, and intelligent women. My friend Vicki, who invited me into the group, asked if I also wanted to have weekly talks with her about our novels in progress. The book group gave me renewed structure around my own teaching and learning philosophy of \u201cread to write books\u201d and heartened me to that purpose. The novel talks were an added boost. I started writing again on \u201cTap Dancing.\u201d Hopefully, I would write a book that I wanted to read and that the women in the book group would eventually enjoy reading too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By May, in deep grief over missing my son, I was also feeling renewed by reading and talking about books. Though isolated due to Covid, I was painting, taking walks with Dennis, and enjoying the spring season. Every day, sometimes several times a day, I\u2019d pull up on my computer desktop a photo of Quinn and talk to him. I felt bereft of him, and writing the novel only took me further away to a time and place that didn\u2019t include him. One day, it occurred to me to change a main character in the novel to embody many of my son\u2019s characteristics: the way he moved, spoke, and laughed; his philosophies, strengths, and vulnerabilities. My Kip character is of another era and background. He is not Quinn, but I\u2019ve given him some of Quinn\u2019s essence. Now while writing the novel, I can spend time with my son through Kip. I have regained an ability to focus my thinking and juggle the elements of fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reimagining the story with a character informed by my son charged the novel with new life and intention. I am writing to learn about love and forgiveness, dancing and longevity, memory and time. I am writing because the story I\u2019ve created is a place to go unlike any other available to me. I am writing because I would like to hold this book in my hands one day, read excerpts aloud at book events, and place it on my shelf, along with books I love written by authors who have give me reasons to write and read. The reasons to write become lessons for Writing Resilient. Here are just a few:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesson: Write to discover.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ask questions of yourself and others. Seek to discover and understand. Put disparate thoughts and observations together. Let free associations reveal new meanings. Revise and revise to discover more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesson: Write to remember.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Write and draw in journals, diaries, or on paper that can be collected into a notebook or box. This writing is not for publication, though it could be. Leave a trace of your life, your thoughts, how today looks and feels. It\u2019s a compost pile, fertile and rich. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesson: Write to read.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout good times and bad\u2014wars, pandemics, economic depression, crises\u2014people read and write books. If there isn\u2019t a book that satisfies you now, maybe it\u2019s because the one you want to read is within you. If it\u2019s also one that you want to write, then begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesson: Write to thank. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Write a letter. Thank someone for his or her gift. Speaking to a specific someone helps you to establish your voice. Be grateful. Discover what you\u2019re grateful for and why. Discover what\u2019s missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesson: Write to leap.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word resilient comes from the Latin \u201cResilire\u201d\u2014to leap back. \u201cResilience\u201d means \u201ccapable of returning to an original shape or position, as after having been compressed.\u201d Being resilient is being tensile\u2014capable of being stretched or extended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francis Weller, a psychotherapist, author, and soul activist says, \u201cThe work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a photo of my son in mid-leap across stones along a Sonoma coast beach. I imagine that somewhere in the great beyond he is leaping among the stars. I direct the character in my novel to leap with buoyance and grace. I write to feel alive and remember the joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christine Walker<\/strong> is a visual artist, writer, strategic visioning facilitator, and teacher whose guiding principle for fruitful creative process is: \u201cArtful vision. Heartfelt action.\u201d She has an MFA in Writing and Literature in Fiction from Bennington Writing Seminars and an MA in Creative Arts Interdisciplinary from San Francisco State. She is the author and artist of \u201cA Painter\u2019s Garden: Cultivating the Creative Life,\u201d a memoir on creative process illustrated by her paintings, and the co-author and illustrator of \u201cWooleycat\u2019s Musical Theater,\u201d a children\u2019s book with song CD. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She writes novels and short stories and teaches writing through her frameworks \u201cWriting Fiction: 9 Ways to Mastery\u201d and \u201cRead to Write Books,\u201d which are inspired by careful reading of masterful authors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christine Walker\u2019s website, blog, and more:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artist & Author site<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blog<\/a>: Exploring fiction craft for writers and readers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Online course<\/a>: Writing Fiction: 9 Ways to Mastery<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YouTube channel<\/a>: Moments of Mastery videos on writing and creativity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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