M. Rickert's Blog, page 2
November 26, 2014
2014-11-Lesley-Kagen-4-e1416427826967
October 1, 2014
October
September 13, 2014
Mentoring service
June 23, 2014
A Midsummer Night
May 21, 2014
The People on this Bus tell great stories
May 12, 2014
Dropping the Book
“Book drop day,” that’s what they call they day an author’s book becomes officially available. Harry Potter fans used to wait in line in their pajamas in front of bookstores for that one-minute- past-midnight hour when J.K. Rowling’s books “dropped” and magic wands everywhere lit the night with exclamation points of wonder.
I, too, was in my pajamas when my book officially dropped. There was no line of eager readers to be seen, however, which was fine with me, as that might have been disturbing in my bedroom.
It was just after midnight when I awoke, directed by some internal clock. “It’s book drop day,” I whispered into the dark.
On book drop day I drank blueberry tea and ate a dark chocolate curry truffle. My salad was garnished with edible flowers, and I felt pleasantly subversive as I nibbled the violet colored petals. I also ate an artichoke, dipping the leaves in melted butter. “Because you have to have a little heart,” Ruthie whispered from my dropped book.
Afterwards, I leaned back in my chair, my eyes closed, enjoying the sunshine on my face after the long winter, and cold spring. In that moment, I couldn’t have asked for more. In that moment, I had enough.
April 28, 2014
How I Became a Writer
I was cross-eyed. I saw two mothers but had only one. Everything existed in reflected space. I liked to try to guess what was real before I reached my hand out to verify. I lived in a world populated by the actual and perceived.
I was raised on Vietnam and assassinations and hospitals. The possibility of miracles. The ravage of God. The holy presence of blood. And fairy tales. The old-fashioned kind; Bluebeard with his dead wives and the bloody key, Red Riding Hood swallowed by the wolf.
I started out in poetry. I sent out packets of poems and when they came back I sent them out again. They came back. I sent them out. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I worked at Pioneer Chicken and Disneyland. Eventually I became a pre-school teacher and then a kindergarten one. I wrote. I wrote at night. I wrote in the morning. Yet, no matter how much I wrote something was wrong with the novel I was writing.
I quit my job as a teacher in order to concentrate on my writing. I got a job in a coffee shop. Finally, I started meeting other writers. I served them coffee. They asked how the writing was going, but when I told them the truth, that it was not going well, they looked down at the sugar packets, or began to fold a napkin in little triangles.
Years later, after I started getting short stories published, one of these writers, a woman I knew only as a customer, leaned across the counter to pull me close and kiss me on the cheek and I still don’t know why.
January 28, 2014
Pete Seeger
“Being generous of spirit is a wonderful way to live.” Pete Seeger
Some forty years ago I sent a fan letter to Pete Seeger. I was young, and naïve, and beginning to taste the desperation at the writing table. I am embarrassed to admit this next part, but here goes. I sent him a song I had written. Yes, I did. And because I didn’t know how to write music, as I explained to him, I included a kind of chart of explanation for the code I had developed which basically went something like, “your voice goes up when the circles are higher.” I am blushing as I write this. And you know what? He wrote back. Not only that, but he wrote a wonderful, encouraging letter. He took the time to do that. Over the years, with my many moves, that physical letter has been lost, but it has always remained a source of inspiration for me. The measure of greatness, I believe, is in how power is wielded toward those who carry less. Thank you, Pete. You great, great man
November 27, 2013
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving
Gratitude for my teachers. A few years ago I picked up a book at the library because I was attracted to the cover and also the promise of a ghost. I quickly fell in love with the author, Joshilyn Jackson’s combination of grit, humor, empathy and sincerity. (I’ll read pretty much anything, but it must be sincere.) Some time after that I finally settled a twenty-year-long debate I had been having with myself and applied to (and was accepted by) Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in fiction. Joshilyn Jackson was an instructor for one semester there, and in the lovely way that sometimes happens, that semester was also my first in attendance. Furthering the loveliness (!) she was assigned as my mentor. I could write a great deal about my twenty-year pursuit of the novel form, but perhaps this sentence says enough? At any rate, I came to Vermont College with the draft of a novel, and the same questions I had struggled with for much of my adult life about how to make a novel out of this thing of words and sentences. I couldn’t have asked for a more generous , insightful teacher than Joshilyn. I still keep, and suspect I always will, all her letters and in-draft notes on my novel. Recently, when stuck on something I was writing, I turned to this old advice; knowing it wasn’t written for this new work, it still applies. One of the great disappointments for me in my writing life has been the pettiness, stinginess, competitiveness and, very sadly, the tendency toward purity tests that exist in the culture — one of the great delights has been the generous attitude of those who have gone before and are willing to reach a hand back to help others along. Joshilyn Jackson did that for me. She has a new novel out this month, SOMEONE ELSE’S LOVE STORY. I highly recommend it. “I fell in love with William Ashe at gunpoint, in a Circle K. It was on a Friday afternoon at the tail end of a Georgia summer so ungodly hot the air felt like it had all been boiled red. We were both staring down the barrel of an ancient, creaky .32 that could kill us just as dead as a really nice gun could.” First paragraph OF SOMEONE ELSE’S LOVE STORY @ Joshilyn Jackson
