Processing

It's about time I posted here again. I've been in the low-residency grad program bubble the past week and will be through this weekend. All the writers are exhausted and exhilarated. The usual mix. And gearing up for the coming semester (in which each writer works one-on-one with an advisor). Of course, the residency is designed to exhaust and over-stimulate. I probably said that back in January, and the case is the same now. Rarely is there free time, and then finally when you are faced with open hours after the final reading each night, your capacity for anything more than talking on the patio is gone. Maybe other people are balancing this better than I am, but I doubt it. We're occupied literally 12 hours a day with lectures and readings, workshops and meetings (and the occasional meal), and then any time left over we spend talking about those lectures, readings, meetings, and meals. Decompress. Process the experience you've just had and get ready for the next day and the next. Enjoyable, yes. But I don't feel very in control of my circumstances. And control isn't the point. You have to give yourself to the experience, and come out the other side slightly wiser and more curious and ready to immerse yourself again in your writing.

We only have a few days left, and I don't have the same nostalgia/sense of not wanting the residency to end that I had last time. Yes, I have thought just briefly about what it would mean to move to a slower, quieter town, but I'm sure once I'm back in LA, a whole new rush of ideas will come in. I guess I get very interested and kind of jealous about these other people's lives-- my classmates, who literally come from all over the country and world-- and consider what it would be like to have a completely different set of circumstances. But that's why we're writers, right? Try on others' lives for a while, play out the consequences of choices that you yourself wouldn't make in reality? If you get bored being yourself, just write about another person. Seems like a very good solution.

Tomorrow's our last day of workshop, and then a few lectures, and the graduation ceremony Saturday night. It all moves so quickly. Already teachers are suggesting we consider extra semesters, because let's face it, two years is not a long time. I like the idea but really can't predict what will happen (or who or where I'll be by then).

How's your writing going? Anyone want to chime in?

More than half way...

So, it's raining here in Asheville. My shoes are still wet from running to the lecture this morning. Bought a 20-dollar umbrella from the school store. We're past the half-way point of the summer residency for my MFA program. We've already had the softball game, a dance, the requisite long talks over beer, some amazing lectures. This time I'm especially enjoying the lectures given by the graduating students, picturing what I may teach in a year and a half when I'm up. It's inspiring and also stomach-dropping. I like the idea, though, of choosing a literary topic or work and then researching the hell out of it and sharing the findings with others.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We had a day off yesterday, complete with Caribbean food (Southern style with yellow squash), used book stores, and taking our friend to get a tattoo. I'm still thinking about the taxidermied bat on the wall in that tattoo parlor, staring down during the whole procedure.

Just got out of workshop, and tonight we have dinner with our teachers and fellow students who have the same advisor. Actually... in 15 minutes we have the dinner. No, more like ten. Ack! Better run.

Again, feeling inspired by the literary community here. One day soon I'll find a free half hour to write in more depth.

Residency: Day Three or Four? I've lost count...

Not sure what day of the week it is, though I am aware that yesterday was the 4th of July. About a third of the way through the summer residency in my MFA program. Just got out of an incredibly well-articulated poetry lecture. I missed this poet's lecture last January and have been kicking myself for it. Glad I caught it this time. I can't say much in detail about it, but definitely I think the study of poetry enriches fiction. And there's this whole other language to it that I don't know, all these nods and laughs from poet-students when the poet-teacher made references to historical movements and views inside that poetic world. Of course. As a fiction writer, I'm fine with that outsider status. Took notes and notes about his reading, his emphasis on the continuity of tone, his skillful dissection of words that people wrote decades and decades ago.

Am in the South in North Carolina but it doesn't really feel like it. I have had grits a few times, made it to Waffle House, picked blackberries along a river, and have two legs full of mosquito bites, but I think for a future residency, a car would be good. I don't have a good sense of the landscape beyond the campus and would like to. By design, we're in a bubble these ten or so days.

The residency also feels different this time, my second, from the first back in January. I have less of a buzz and more of the feeling that I just want to get down to work. I know the deadlines are coming and just want to get going on them. It occurs to me that I may be a little depressed, too, but what writer isn't wrestling with that at some time? We found out who our advisors are this semester and soon will meet with them. I'm very happy with my match but again can't give too many details, at least not yet. The big problem to solve is how I can connect emotionally with my work again while in the framework of these three-week deadlines. I've been thinking a lot about that and have no real answers yet. So many factors can distract you from doing your best work, from feeling invested in your story. This hasn't been so much of a problem in prior workshops, so I need to diagnose the problem and fix it. As if writing were so clinical...

I've been told the new colors of the blog here are not very pleasing (thank you to the man). I'll change them again/back later. Have to get to the cafeteria before another class, and then my story's up in workshop. I guess I'm emotionally connected with it enough to be slightly nervous about that. Rainy today so the hills actually do look blue. A couple of undergrads just started playing ping pong. Time to move.

Observation on a plane

Touched down in Asheville around midnight night before last. Flight from LA wasn't as nerve-wracking as the first time I'd flown to the MFA residency back in January. I had a heavy Joseph Mitchell book on me and a ton of passages marked with post-its to read for a lecture. But didn't get much reading done. My seatmate wanted to talk... about her husband who died of a heart attack in April. About two months ago. Who was fine, she said, that morning just coming off his night shift, crashing into bed as usual. She went on an errand, and when she returned, sat on the bed asking if he wanted to go fishing with her and their eight year-old. The air-conditioning was on, so his skin was cold anyway-- no response. He was gone. This woman and I talked for a long time about his cover band-- he was a drummer-- and his passion for instruments and their first-meeting moment at one of his concerts. Like you might expect, she said she always thought they'd be with each other, from that day on 20 years ago. She eventually started crying on the airplane, the people behind us filling out crosswords in the in-flight magazine. The girl on the aisle seat offered her gum (I was on the window). I felt bad, but the widow wanted to remember the good times with her husband, was grateful for that, and kept talking.

Of course, I'm doing no real justice to this man or his wife or the life they led for decades. But I felt like an ostrich who'd pulled her head from the dirt. You can't just write, you have to write about something. And if you don't care about your characters, if these things they do have no meaning to them or to you, then what's the point? I didn't connect emotionally to much of the fiction I wrote last term. But I think I wasn't looking around enough. It's too easy to fall into your routine, where you see sameness all the time, your movements robotic, on auto-pilot, meet your deadlines and go... the same emotional content as brushing your teeth. It's easy to forget that hundreds of stories that mean something to someone are out there. Just remember to stop and look around.

One summer residency coming up

So, it's just after seven on the eve of leaving for my next Warren Wilson residency. I should be at happy hour with three margaritas, but instead I'm finishing up the annotation I should have written three weeks ago. Due day two of the residency. It's on Lorrie Moore's collection Birds of America, which I've mentioned here before and is great. The UCLA Powell Library closes early in summers, so I found this weird lounge in the student center on campus, where some guy in the corner practices at an upright piano, and two other guys are shooting pool. There's also a deep rumbling, probably the air conditioning unit downstairs, which gives the whole room an ominous feel.

I know and don't know what to expect at this residency. I expect hours of amazing lectures, nights of no sleep, a general camaraderie that will make people hug when they see each other. In other words a twelve-day reunion, with books. What's not to look forward to? Then why do I have ye old butterflies in the stomach? Is it as simple as nerves due to waiting 'til the last minute to finish my paper? (I've written 2.5 of the 4 pages, mind you.) That could be part of it-- there's always this feeling of not doing enough, not preparing enough or reading enough, or lately, writing enough.

I think what makes me most nervous is that I don't know what person I'll be when I come back. The man understands that, maybe too well. If this residency is anything like last time, I'll be reluctant to start but by the end will be looking at apartment prices is Asheville, wanting to move. It's a bit like that vacation feeling- Hawaii's so great, why not just live there? But you don't think about moving there really, do you? (Or maybe you do... my parents lived there for a few years until they realized they were... uh... on an island in the middle of the ocean.) Then after residency it will take a few weeks to decompress and settle back into the person you're used to being in the landscape you're used to living in, but by then the whole relentless cycle of deadlines will hit you again. It sounds exhausting. And is when you look at it from a distance, but the energy you get from it, all in the name of progress, sustains you.

Speaking of the low-residency grad program format, instructor and former Writers' Program student Tod Goldberg wrote a piece on his own low-residency experiences: www.todgoldberg.typepad.com. Very interesting read, especially if you're considering applying.

So I guess next time I post will be from the residency itself. I won't spill any secrets, but I'm sure there will be plenty to write about.

PS: Went to another great reading Sunday-- dramatic readings of stories by fiction teacher Billy Lombardo and OV Books editor Gina Frangello, who flew all the way here from Chicago. The man and I were so impressed with Billy's stories that we both bought his collection. (The man knows that he'd have to wait a long time for me to get through my copy-- call me selfish, but when I buy new books, I like to be the first to read them. Is that wrong?)

Pop quiz: one question

I re-read a great short story during lunch, a real classic. Can anyone guess what story this came from?

"The Hallorans were friends, an elderly couple of enormous wealth who seemed to bask in the suspicion that they might be Communists. They were zealous reformers but they were not Communists, and yet when they were accused, as they sometimes were, of subversion, it seemed to gratify and excite them... The Hallorans, for reasons that had never been explained to him, did not wear bathing suits."

Billie Jean Is Not My Lover

We just heard from our Associate Deans that UCLA Extension classes in Westwood tonight (Thursday, June 25th) are cancelled. If you've been online today you probably know why-- Michael Jackson's death at the UCLA Medical Center, literally a block from here. Traffic is snarled around here, and the crowds of reporters and students are growing around the hospital. A few of us just walked over... tons of people standing around, some blaring his music from their headphones, reporters in tight business wear angling their microphones-- a lot of waiting around, actually. We tried to get into the Reagan Medical Center (which has an awesome new cafeteria) but a woman with feathered hair posted at the doors stopped us. For good reason.

Moment of silence for the King O' Pop? I'm sure right now my mom is remembering him moonwalking across the stage at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado (where the Beatles had played, too). Some of us here keep remembering the South Park episode that basically skewered him, or the Weird Al takeoff of his song Beat It. My favorite was always Billie Jean.

Anyway, workshops that were supposed to start today should go on as planned next week. Any questions about your writing workshop? Email writers@uclaextension.edu.