Bogue Inlet Beach Tree

How lonely, how confusing it must be for one small cedar that now sits on a slight rise ten yards north of ocean’s edge at high tide, taller than anything on the vast beach for a thousand yards to the east, west, and south. Though it seems firmly seated, the certainty of rootlessness makes mockery of the green branches. How can something so young and sturdy in appearance be already dead, sap no longer flowing, without memory now of the forest or⎯for certainly this is why it appeared on a beach in early January⎯of ornaments that glittered on it just a week ago? By surmise and evidence its trunk was severed at least a month before its debut as a beach ornament.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But how do I know whether it died when its roots were cut? Maybe it retains sensibility until all green goes brown and needles blow away, leaving only stick limbs and gray trunk.
And why does it amuse me to anthropomorphize a tree?

Three days after Christmas I saw a car on the causeway with a tree tied to its roof, heading onto the island instead of to some landfill on the mainland. I thought the tree was destined for the dunes, where it would serve as part of a groin⎯I read somewhere that beach authorities devised that fine idea for the disposal of Christmas trees. Maybe that was the car that brought this small cedar onto the island for one last upright fling⎯certainly it cannot long withstand the wind at ocean’s edge, and it will die of loneliness, if not of a gale, lacking as it does the companionship and shelter of its fellows.

Was thought given to where the tree would be left? It is planted naturally enough, trunk in the sand, but was that a conscious decision? Did the prankster who left it there by the water consider that it might be even funnier⎯odder⎯if the tree were put into the sand top down, with its trunk exposed as my butt would be if I were planted on the beach head-first? No, I think the intended joke was just a lone Christmas tree (for surely that’s what it was, for one glorious month of its several years of life) on an isolated beach. And whatever its orientation is to the sun, that, too, had to be random, for I can’t imagine any thought was given to what exposure would be most comfortable for the tree. Does something so perfectly round have a side? And if so, is its east side now facing north? Are branches that used to greet the dawn now astonished by sunsets?

Is it at all comforted by parasites remaining within it, bugs or worms who’ve clung to it steadfastly through uprooting and decorating and bells and music and oohing-ahing over gifts and squabbling at dinner about who will do the dishes or why Grandma doesn’t like Uncle Joe? Do sandpipers occasionally sit on it and remind it of the robins and wrens and crows and cardinals that flew in and out of its branches, or the occasional nest that housed a feathered family for a brief season?

If a tree falls at the edge of the sea and no one is there, does it cry out? Does it yet retain enough life that it can hear the incessant moan of the offshore buoy, a forlorn mourning every minute or so, always the same monotonic call, day in and year out?

The circle drawn in the sand around the little tree seems to say “keep your distance”⎯did whoever abandoned it intend that it should have its own DMZ, a delineated territory five feet in diameter, on a beach that is itself a demilitarized zone fifteen miles from the daily mortar practice at nearby Camp LeJeune? The constant booming, at a safe distance, almost comforts me in its thunder-like rumblings. Does the tree feel the trembling of the shore that follows every detonation? Does it fear a misjudgment by rookie marines with the power to blow up an offshore island just for practice?

Or is my supposition totally wrong? Did someone bring a sapling, complete with root ball, and plant it as a solitary sentry at ocean’s edge, just to see what would happen?

Well, little cedar, while you stand you have solitude and a great view. Maybe seagulls love your berries. Who am I to know?

A Month at the Beach to Write...

A promise from On Writer’s Block by Victoria Nelson, made in the context of giving oneself permission not to create, to take a planned break from writing: “The rewards of such deliberate procrastination, of complete and trusting surrender to the needs of that other side of the self, have been summed up by Eugene Delacroix: ‘When one yields oneself completely to one’s soul, it opens itself completely to one.’”

I'm writing about this promise because of what I’ve experienced here during my month on Emerald Isle, in the context of being both a writer and a compulsive overeater in recovery. My food has been highly imperfect, bordering on bingeing from time to time; I have gone to bed and waked without an alarm clock (for a month!); I have spent most of a month alone (except for 3 days with two of my sons, and 3 days with a good friend). I've been swimming at the local gym 26 of my 28 days here, but am a stranger at the gym, hardly ever have interaction with anyone else as all of us there are so intent on working out. During this four weeks of solitary time (not isolation, such a huge difference) I’ve learned that I am a social animal. I crave contact with others. This past Thursday night I went to a 12-step meeting in a nearby town where I knew I’d be just one of two or three (there were three of us), but went because I so craved contact with others. Many days it’s been just me and the ocean, the birds, occasional beach walkers and their dogs, and the bulldozer that's been dredging the beach (for ten days now, though it's blessedly quiet this morning...sitting out there on the strand, sleeping, and I find that I no longer dread it roaring to life...I can work or not as I choose, regardless of the dozer...MUCH progress). If I hadn’t left home to come here, I wouldn’t have read the three books on writing: The Faith of a Writer by Joyce Carol Oates, For Writers Only by Sophy Burnham, and On Writer’s Block by Victoria Nelson. I’ve learned something important from these books, ie, that all writers go through what I’ve been going through (even Stephen King, who writes 363 days a year, and who is fast becoming the most widely published and—one assumes—most widely read writer in history). All writers go through the dark night of the soul when the words simply won’t come. And in spite of the block, the dozers, the loneliness, I’ve written 50 pages in the past month here...mostly one or two at a time.

Last night as I lay in bed contemplating today—my last full day here—I found that in spite of yesterday’s tearful homesickness, I have mixed feelings about going back home. Yes, I want to see my husband and our cat, Stilla (my husband reports that Stilla is not herself, that she wanders the house in what seems discontent, demands much more of him than she usually does. I’m not surprised, she’s not getting her nightly scratching, isn’t falling asleep curled up next to me—and I’ve missed that more than I can say...wish I could communicate that to her). So I'll wrap up this messy post by saying I've survived and thrived here at the beach, and I go back home with about 105 pages of my new book. I'll wait a month or so (hope I can do that) before I read over the 50+ new pages. I can judge my work so harshly, and I think that letting the new stuff cool down will soften the way I regard what I've done here.

Was the month here worth it, and was it worth the $2000 or so it cost me? Beyond doubt, yes. Even with the bulldozers grating away at my peace of mind, the erratic helicopters flying by, rattling my little house in their wake, the distant thunder of bombs from the nearby military base, I've had more peace of mind here in a month than I get in a year at home. So the trick is going to be to take some of the peace with me as I wend my way across Eastern North Carolina tomorrow.

I'm not going to edit this...seems important to just let it flow and let it be as it came through my fingers.

My Book Will be Published--Now What?

Now that I know my book will be published—a two-book deal is on the table—what my writing teacher promised (see my 1019/07 post) has come true...I've started writing again and it's good. I’m well into the second novel, the one I couldn't write for almost two years. Told a friend yesterday that as long as I was in labor with the first one (before it was accepted for publication), I was unable to get pregnant with the second one. Conception, pregnancy, labor, delivery, these threads are in my writing; I've stopped trying to escape them...so it's no wonder that my metaphor about writing follows this theme.

I have the perfect place to write, the BEST computer—built for me by my supportive and mostly quiet husband, a decent cat who makes few demands, and a life filled with other writers. But for two years the words wouldn't come...not true...I started half a dozen things, but what wouldn't come was going into depth, getting to the point where I could do what I love most, which is revise. The characters were one-dimensional, the settings under-developed, the plot invisible. What I've come to accept about my writing is that I start—ALWAYS—with character. If I will just keep plugging away, regularly, those people I've created will share their stories. (On the paradox of creating characters who then take off on their own, doing things differently from what the writer planned, heading in unimagined directions, saying surprising things in unique voices, Anne Lamott commented: “What’s a god to do?”)

During a writing retreat in a friend’s two-room cabin—so remote I could skinny dip al fresco—I spent two weeks with no TV, no phone, no internet/email, rolling in words. Various sections of my novel covered the dining table, the couch, the floor. It came to life and I began to see that it was good. Above the kitchen sink in the main room was a wooden plaque: “Trust the Process.” In that two weeks I came to grok the full meaning of that statement (so common it’s become psychobabble). Now, three years later, I know that my job is to trust the process of writing. That an outline would kill my creativity. (I once knew a writer who mapped out her plots, putting them on pages she taped to a nine-foot wall, floor to ceiling; she wrote by that map, seldom deviating from the outline. The product was wooden, event-driven, almost indigestible. When she gave up the outline, her writing soared.)

So I’m into my second novel, pregnant again, with a mandatory gestation period of no more than two years (yikes! the first one took eighteen). But what I’ve learned in all that time has my fingers flying on the keyboard; I’m a mature, confident writer, filled with joy that my life has become what I’ve longed for it to be: I make my living writing and teaching writing. Amazing!

A Hunger for Revisions

This morning in my writing group I heard a chapter read aloud from a novel-in-progress. I've heard the chapter at least twice before, maybe 3-4 times in all, and am familiar enough with it that I noticed whole new sections. In earlier iterations, the entire chapter was 23-25 pages, and the group had advised the author that her last 10-12 pages needed the most work. This morning, before she read, she apologized for ignoring our advice and said that she'd gotten enmeshed in the first 10 or so pages instead of working on the latter half. Those pages had grown to 20 during this frantic revision, which took place over the past week and ended when she went to bed last night. The writing was confident, passionate, rich in detail with gripping dialogue. The things she'd chosen to expand did need expanding, which somewhat startled all of us. Characters that were shadowy before are fully fleshed. Scenes she'd teased us with are deepened and broadened, enriched with details of setting, character, plot. Now the 20 pages are a stand-alone chapter. The writer is already planning her next step, which is to work on what had been the second half of the chapter and expand it into a separate piece.

I found myself feeling envious of the writer. Not the sort of envy that comes from a feeling of less-than. I know I'm a talented and accomplished writer. But I felt heartsick that I didn't have anything to return home to...this time I made a note: "I wish I had something written so I could work on a revision--go into it with my whole hands, like kneading dough." That feeling stayed with me all afternoon, and I'm hoping it's the prelude to a return to true, real writing, not the scattered pages I've produced over the past year: meandering story lines, interesting but not compelling characters, an ambivalence about the 'when' of things, a lack of enthusiasm about research (which I usually love), and no direction whatsoever. Still, the few pages linger and whisper to me at the oddest times, so something richer and deeper is in them than I'm seeing right now. Can hardly believe that after all these years I'm still freaked-out by the blank screen, am still hearing the whispered "that's shit" from the demon on my shoulder. [Wonder if the s-word will make it by the blog police. I gave up heavy cursing many years ago, feeling challenged as a writer to find better words than the George Carlin famous seven. But the s-word still makes its conniving way into my speech and thoughts from time to time. As well it should.]

I learned something today that I most likely already knew, buried deep in my unconscious...I cherish the phase of writing that produces such chapters as I heard today. I've done such revisions myself, many times. The way I write is like Ray Bradbury once described: "I throw up in the morning and clean up in the afternoon." My first writing generally suffers from too-much-ness. My first edits cut away to the truth. Then comes that delicious time when I wallow in what my characters have to say, taking my hands from the keyboard to ramble through my thesaurus and "The Synonym Finder," a favorite tool. I recline in my desk chair and think about what the character's thinking about, then snap back to the keyboard. I long for that.

I do feel better having written this.

The wider darkness

From my office window I'm watching winter come in. The onset of daylight savings time has widened the dark hours in my day (I'm a late riser, so I don't get the benefit of more morning daylight, and dusk creeps in an hour earlier). My window now stays uncovered most of the day so that I can get as much light as possible.

A section of woodland--44 acres--has been denuded for a housing development a quarter of a mile from the back corner of our lot. I've found myself living in fear about new traffic patterns that would turn our quiet street into a thoroughfare...I stand at my kitchen sink and watch joggers, mothers pushing baby carriages and strollers, neighborhood cats crossing. The mailman. UPS & Fedex delivery people who know they can leave a package on our porch if our neighbors aren't home. Folks standing in the middle of the street chatting. Children clattering by on skateboards. Around the corner a basketball hoop overhangs the street and locals know to watch for kids gathered beneath the hoop. The denizens of these quiet streets are rich in neighborhood. If the access to the development is anywhere but the highway, the increase in traffic by our house will be huge.

Even more disturbing is the animal life that's been driven from the 44 acres of forest that were destroyed. I saw 8 deer in our backyard last evening. Possums. Woodchucks, squirrels, the occasional chipmunk, even beavers (there's a wetland directly behind us, adjacent to the new development).

I've been rationalizing...people need places to live, but housing doesn't seem as driving a force behind this new development as money. And I question whether expansion of our small town is a good thing.

What I know for certain, no matter the outcome, is that worry/fear keeps me from writing, and that any time I'm worried, I'm not living in the moment and am, in fact, messing up the present with concerns about the future.

Still not writing much, and am not even thinking much about writing. Often when I'm not actually creating, I'm thinking along the liines of plot, characters, human behavior, settings. But right now all my voices are quiet, and that feels ominous. I don't think this is connected to the onset of winter and shorter daylight hours. Some of my best writing has been in the dead of winter. But because these posts have dwelled on the theme of darkness, maybe it's something I need to ponder.

Saturday a great line (or so I thought at the time) occurred to me as I was getting out of the car in our driveway. I thought, "I'll write that down as soon as I get inside." Then my husband and I got into a conversation, I went out to get the mail, the phone rang...the line was lost. In THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, Joan Didion tells us how she always carries notepads for any stray thoughts that might bear fruit later. I know many writers claim to do that, but I wonder how many actually do. The times I've tried that, I wind up with scraps of paper and odd thoughts that I feel I should transfer from the scraps to a file on my computer, but somehow never do. I've thought of creating a "stuff" file with a shortcut on the desktop of my computer for easy access, but haven't done it. Such mental meanderings about this conundrum always leave me thinking that I don't take myself seriously as a writer.

Would love feedback from others, those who take notes and those who don't.

Writing into a black hole...

Hmmm...I guess it's okay to create another post on my own post. And since there are no comments, I reckon I'm writing into a black hole rather than from one.

The comments and post have loosened the writing muscles, and I want to keep exercising them. So I'll just have at it...if anyone comments, that's good.

Went to swim this afternoon, and reconnected with a casual friend who sometimes works the front desk at the gym. Her 74-year-old mother died a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't know because I've been out of town so much in the past 10 weeks, since my daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer. Talking with my friend about her mother made me realize how out-of-it I've been. Three gorgeous fall days have passed with me hardly leaving the house...not depression so much as a burst of a need to reorganize my office--maybe on the heels of having written a guest column in southernauthors.blogspot.com in which I talked a lot about my office. But the reorganizing also included our bedroom and living room, and after several days of hectic activity, I realized I was going through what I almost always do when there's been a crisis: try to straighten up what parts of my life I can, because I have no control over the enormous other things, eg, breast cancer. When I finally did go out this afternoon, I was hit with joy for the fall that is exploding all around me, in spite of the hideous drought and dire predictions of a colorless autumn.

Our cross-the-street neighbors have a sugar maple I can see from my kitchen window, and every October I'm surprised to see its glorious red-orange-yellow, having forgotten the starring roll it plays before it's naked for winter. I stood, stunned, beside my car, realizing how inwardly directed I've been in my flurry of moving furniture. Cleaning bookcases. Throwing away. Giving away. Borrowing my son's strong back to move the larger pieces. And occasionally returning to the keyboard.

There's a story roaming my brain and I'm not quite ready to commit it to e-paper, though now I'm convinced it begins in the fall, during a storm, in the full moon, hospital labor and delivery swamped (more from the storm than the moon). One of the mothers is a character from an earlier book.

I was about to write of character, plot, setting...then I realized I didn't want to do that for fear someone else would use my ideas...and here I am writing into a void. Funny! More later.

Writing from the Dark

The dark maze between…

...completion of a novel and publication. I finished my novel in December, 2005. On January 13, 2006 (my grandson's thirteenth birthday), I began a shotgun approach to finding an agent. Got lucky (providence does play a role in such things), and signed with a great agency in June. My agent (I got such a thrill when I first said that), using the same shotgun technique, sent my manuscript to six publishers...the rejections began to accumulate, but each one was framed in language that titillated and sucked me into believing an acceptance was just around the corner: "…persuasively written and deeply feeling…this is simply too literary for our list…a talented, accomplished writer…if the author had published previously or had a platform…a wonderfully gracious and lyrical writer…even a few years ago, I would have taken it quite seriously…a touching and well-written novel…but in today’s climate of fiction publishing…." Ah, well.

What happened next surprised and dismayed me--a total block. I haven't written much since the rejections began rolling in, and am hoping that blogging about this will get me over it. My mentor/teacher/friend--a fine novelist who’s been a midwife to the birth of over a dozen published books, and with whom I’ve been working for twenty years—said I wasn’t blocked but just going through a fallow period. So I looked up "fallow": dormant, quiescent, hibernating...a field waiting for seed. Whatever I call it, my natural story-telling voice has laryngitis, and I must quit straining it, wait out the quiet.

When I titled this blog "the dark maze between..." I had to resist what I really wanted to call it: "Ruminations from a Black Hole," which is what I'm feeling these days. But talk about negative...

My mentor also said that she’d never seen it fail, that writers almost always go through a spell of slumbering when a novel is finished. There are exceptions. I’ll cite two extremes--Stephen King, who writes 363 days a year, taking off for Christmas and the opening day of the baseball season, and Herman Melville, who was inactive for almost twenty years after MOBY DICK and before BILLY BUDD, although he did publish poems during his fallow period.

A few months after the first rejections of my novel rolled in (there’ve been about fifteen in all), I was so down emotionally that I sought counseling; a wise psychiatrist helped me see that I wasn’t so much depressed as I was in mourning over the completion of a project that had consumed me for eighteen years. Again, just changing the label of my mood from depression to mourning made all the difference. I took his advice and burned a copy of the manuscript in a ritualistic manner, breathing in some of the smoke to inspire me to write another, and wafting some of it northward, hoping a few molecules would make it to New York publishers.

Okay, that’s it for today…writing this has been therapeutic, and I’d love to hear from any other writers who’re in the doldrums or in the morass of waiting, waiting, waiting…