Michael Cogdill's Blog, page 2
March 17, 2010
Humility Meets High She-Rain Praise
Alayne in Boston proves a Southern tale can resonate far beyond the American South. Her review speaks of a Northeastern reader who hears, and feels, the chords of a time and place far from her own.
As we climb out toward the launch of She-Rain, I offer Alayne's review link here not merely because it glows with praise of the novel. Her review is suffused with what I deem a true humility. Deep and real humility isn't self deprecation. It's recognition -- the ability to see ourselves in the lives of people often desperate in their needs and far apart from us in opportunity. Alayne, as I sit in awe of your praise, thank you for passionately caring for the people of She-Rain. Your review tells me you celebrate their humanity, that you never underestimated who they could become.
Readers, check out the link to Alayne's review to see what I mean:
http://thecrowdedleaf.wordpress.com/2...
Every writer longs for such praise, and too many of us suck such a galaxy of good words into the black hole of ego. I pledge, instead, to give a good shot at using Alayne's review as a reminder of my upbringing, the struggles of my parents and other family, and the sacrifices of chronically underestimated people who worked awfully hard to give rise to me. I'm a small-town boy writing of mammoth problems and beautiful dreams. In She-Rain, the characters I set loose on a page thrive far beyond what's easily expected. The review above truly humbled me, even with its praise, by letting me catch a new sight of people who made me a writer and a man.
Thank you, again, Alayne. I'm mighty glad a hard-working publicist dropped She-Rain onto your Crowded Leaf!
Readers, so many have drawn healing and joy from it, I'm offering here again a tribute to the beautiful blonde I lost, but still adore. No, there's no scandal here. This comes with the full support of my lovely brunette wife. An earlier review reminded me some of the richest lyricism grows from silence. My wife, Jill, and I celebrate the fact She-Rain rose in part from a member of our family who never spoke a word. Yet our Savannah articulated love far beyond words. So once again, here's that tribute to her. How we love her still.
A Dog’s Inspiration to a Writer and the World
How the Life and Death of a Golden Retriever Might Save Us From Ourselves
On the morning of May 29, 2008, I lifted Savannah from her bed, carried her to the car, and made the longest seven-mile drive of my life. At the office of a veterinarian, welcomed by that profession’s unique form of love, I soon lay on a cushioned floor beside a golden retriever who showed virtually none of her age, watching both my hands stroke the face that had welcomed me home for thirteen years.
The answer to a yearning awaited us that morning. It was part of the quiet covenant I made with Savannah the day my wife, Jill, and I adopted her. When a sweet dog’s bloodline comes in confluence with our own, we human animals take on a sacred devotion. As sickness comes on hard and takes down the joy of living, caring dog owners are committed to shouldering our beloved family member to a merciful death. On the floor that morning, I answered Savannah’s courageous outreach for that death, allowing her to carry me. The peace that arrived in her final breath lifted the tide of my heartbreak. As I nearly drowned in sadness, Savannah showed me to the shore of a graceful goodbye.
Later that day, a prominent friend in Hollywood, fresh from the same grief in his own family, shared with us some comfort, but also a spiritual yearning of his own: Why would God measure the lifetime of dogs, and other animals we love, by a virtual hourglass when we live by a calendar? Why so little time on earth for those so good and loyal? It seems a cruelty.
After these months of healing, and the reporting of countless human tragedies on television, I’ve arrived at a conclusion: Savannah’s too-short life, like that of all sweet dogs, calls us to a fine urgency. Dogs get after big living. They seem illiterate of worry, yet able to read joys that elude us. They quietly shout to us: Wag your backside to music instead of your tongue to malice. Wallow less in pity and more on the bed of the one you adore. Give yourself, extravagantly, away.
I still fail her, of course. I live too much in my worries and sorrows and too little on the joy path she wore for me. Yet in these times of media-saturated human disaster ,a thought of Savannah improves me as a man, recalls me to life as a writer. Her memory sets off some musing about the hope found in the life and death of a good dog. See if these truths make the news of your times easier to bear:
Savannah feared nothing about death. She went to it with eyes full of gratitude for the way her life had been. Her eyes seemed to draw from some deep well of love, way beyond the crust of words. Even in her final hour, sick as she was, she lived as a divining rod to this love. No matter how I tried to comfort her, she served me – right to her last moment. The kidney failure that was stalling her life was no match for the servant’s heart within her.
The high pitch of biased media, politics, and the vitriol of social debate held no allure for Savannah. She made grace her way of life. She ran from loud voices and bounded to gentility wherever she found it. We could trust her to be tender, even with the smallest child. Savannah taught me there’s nothing so powerful in this life as a truly gentle woman or man.
There is no vanity in such dogs. They split mud holes, then track adoration across the floors of the humans who forgive them. They surely wonder why we care so much for things and so little for helping one another have simple wellness and fun. Savannah never cared for the size of my car. She simply loved the ride. She measured none of my money in how she valued me. In times of my sorrow, she made certain to place her head under my hand, letting me read a sense of all-will-be-more-than-well in its Braille.
With the too-often forgotten elderly in a nursing home, Savannah visited with no consciousness of herself. The sights and smells that repulse too many humans never seem to repel a good dog. Something innate about Savannah longed to care for everyone. She never appraised anyone by their politics, religion, or race. No human bloodline or job pedigree held any sway. Savannah treated the ignorant as kings and the malicious as queens. Even avowed dog haters valued what they found in her, and she loved them without pause.
Such a dog will forgive to the point of endangering itself. Some may argue enough hatefulness will turn any dog, even the most generous and kind. Perhaps this forms a caveat to us as well. Maybe good dogs teach us we will eventually draw back what we put into the world. Or is it that forgiveness becomes a form of capital we spend to the great shock of our enemies, an investment from which we draw the interest of turning enemies into friends? After every trip to the vet, on the heels of cavity exams every sane creature loathes, Savannah forgave Jill and me. We never had to ask.
In the afterglow of thinking of her, I adore considering how living so might change humankind. What might the news look like if everyone were so devotedly kind to everyone else? My job -- as a writer of news and fiction -- would so beautifully change.
Within an hour after putting her into that permanent sleep, I sat weeping at our kitchen table and wrote an open letter to Savannah. It let my grief out to run, with the memory of her a comfort at my knee. I leave you with a passage of it here, and a wish that the news of our future days will improve, changed in some small way by the legacy of Savannah.
“You tracked to the child who lives in me always. In this man you found a boy who loves you, sweet girl. Even in death, somehow you will always lead the boy in me home. I will follow your trail. And together, in the grand wet and muddy fun places of memory, we will be glad.”
###
Michael Cogdill is a 24-time Emmy-winning television journalist whose novel, She-Rain, contains two narrative threads dedicated to the memory of Savannah. She-Rain debuts nationally in March, 2010.
As we climb out toward the launch of She-Rain, I offer Alayne's review link here not merely because it glows with praise of the novel. Her review is suffused with what I deem a true humility. Deep and real humility isn't self deprecation. It's recognition -- the ability to see ourselves in the lives of people often desperate in their needs and far apart from us in opportunity. Alayne, as I sit in awe of your praise, thank you for passionately caring for the people of She-Rain. Your review tells me you celebrate their humanity, that you never underestimated who they could become.
Readers, check out the link to Alayne's review to see what I mean:
http://thecrowdedleaf.wordpress.com/2...
Every writer longs for such praise, and too many of us suck such a galaxy of good words into the black hole of ego. I pledge, instead, to give a good shot at using Alayne's review as a reminder of my upbringing, the struggles of my parents and other family, and the sacrifices of chronically underestimated people who worked awfully hard to give rise to me. I'm a small-town boy writing of mammoth problems and beautiful dreams. In She-Rain, the characters I set loose on a page thrive far beyond what's easily expected. The review above truly humbled me, even with its praise, by letting me catch a new sight of people who made me a writer and a man.
Thank you, again, Alayne. I'm mighty glad a hard-working publicist dropped She-Rain onto your Crowded Leaf!
Readers, so many have drawn healing and joy from it, I'm offering here again a tribute to the beautiful blonde I lost, but still adore. No, there's no scandal here. This comes with the full support of my lovely brunette wife. An earlier review reminded me some of the richest lyricism grows from silence. My wife, Jill, and I celebrate the fact She-Rain rose in part from a member of our family who never spoke a word. Yet our Savannah articulated love far beyond words. So once again, here's that tribute to her. How we love her still.
A Dog’s Inspiration to a Writer and the World
How the Life and Death of a Golden Retriever Might Save Us From Ourselves
On the morning of May 29, 2008, I lifted Savannah from her bed, carried her to the car, and made the longest seven-mile drive of my life. At the office of a veterinarian, welcomed by that profession’s unique form of love, I soon lay on a cushioned floor beside a golden retriever who showed virtually none of her age, watching both my hands stroke the face that had welcomed me home for thirteen years.
The answer to a yearning awaited us that morning. It was part of the quiet covenant I made with Savannah the day my wife, Jill, and I adopted her. When a sweet dog’s bloodline comes in confluence with our own, we human animals take on a sacred devotion. As sickness comes on hard and takes down the joy of living, caring dog owners are committed to shouldering our beloved family member to a merciful death. On the floor that morning, I answered Savannah’s courageous outreach for that death, allowing her to carry me. The peace that arrived in her final breath lifted the tide of my heartbreak. As I nearly drowned in sadness, Savannah showed me to the shore of a graceful goodbye.
Later that day, a prominent friend in Hollywood, fresh from the same grief in his own family, shared with us some comfort, but also a spiritual yearning of his own: Why would God measure the lifetime of dogs, and other animals we love, by a virtual hourglass when we live by a calendar? Why so little time on earth for those so good and loyal? It seems a cruelty.
After these months of healing, and the reporting of countless human tragedies on television, I’ve arrived at a conclusion: Savannah’s too-short life, like that of all sweet dogs, calls us to a fine urgency. Dogs get after big living. They seem illiterate of worry, yet able to read joys that elude us. They quietly shout to us: Wag your backside to music instead of your tongue to malice. Wallow less in pity and more on the bed of the one you adore. Give yourself, extravagantly, away.
I still fail her, of course. I live too much in my worries and sorrows and too little on the joy path she wore for me. Yet in these times of media-saturated human disaster ,a thought of Savannah improves me as a man, recalls me to life as a writer. Her memory sets off some musing about the hope found in the life and death of a good dog. See if these truths make the news of your times easier to bear:
Savannah feared nothing about death. She went to it with eyes full of gratitude for the way her life had been. Her eyes seemed to draw from some deep well of love, way beyond the crust of words. Even in her final hour, sick as she was, she lived as a divining rod to this love. No matter how I tried to comfort her, she served me – right to her last moment. The kidney failure that was stalling her life was no match for the servant’s heart within her.
The high pitch of biased media, politics, and the vitriol of social debate held no allure for Savannah. She made grace her way of life. She ran from loud voices and bounded to gentility wherever she found it. We could trust her to be tender, even with the smallest child. Savannah taught me there’s nothing so powerful in this life as a truly gentle woman or man.
There is no vanity in such dogs. They split mud holes, then track adoration across the floors of the humans who forgive them. They surely wonder why we care so much for things and so little for helping one another have simple wellness and fun. Savannah never cared for the size of my car. She simply loved the ride. She measured none of my money in how she valued me. In times of my sorrow, she made certain to place her head under my hand, letting me read a sense of all-will-be-more-than-well in its Braille.
With the too-often forgotten elderly in a nursing home, Savannah visited with no consciousness of herself. The sights and smells that repulse too many humans never seem to repel a good dog. Something innate about Savannah longed to care for everyone. She never appraised anyone by their politics, religion, or race. No human bloodline or job pedigree held any sway. Savannah treated the ignorant as kings and the malicious as queens. Even avowed dog haters valued what they found in her, and she loved them without pause.
Such a dog will forgive to the point of endangering itself. Some may argue enough hatefulness will turn any dog, even the most generous and kind. Perhaps this forms a caveat to us as well. Maybe good dogs teach us we will eventually draw back what we put into the world. Or is it that forgiveness becomes a form of capital we spend to the great shock of our enemies, an investment from which we draw the interest of turning enemies into friends? After every trip to the vet, on the heels of cavity exams every sane creature loathes, Savannah forgave Jill and me. We never had to ask.
In the afterglow of thinking of her, I adore considering how living so might change humankind. What might the news look like if everyone were so devotedly kind to everyone else? My job -- as a writer of news and fiction -- would so beautifully change.
Within an hour after putting her into that permanent sleep, I sat weeping at our kitchen table and wrote an open letter to Savannah. It let my grief out to run, with the memory of her a comfort at my knee. I leave you with a passage of it here, and a wish that the news of our future days will improve, changed in some small way by the legacy of Savannah.
“You tracked to the child who lives in me always. In this man you found a boy who loves you, sweet girl. Even in death, somehow you will always lead the boy in me home. I will follow your trail. And together, in the grand wet and muddy fun places of memory, we will be glad.”
###
Michael Cogdill is a 24-time Emmy-winning television journalist whose novel, She-Rain, contains two narrative threads dedicated to the memory of Savannah. She-Rain debuts nationally in March, 2010.
March 4, 2010
More Praise of She-Rain, As I Praise the Beautiful Blonde Who Inspired This Writer
Yet another review just emerged, this one also speaking of She-Rain in terms every writer longs to hear. I'm overwhelmed with gratitude. Here's a portion:
Reviewer Comments:
I am really struggling to write this review, because everything I've tried putting down so far, seems so lame. There is no real way I can describe how beautifully written this book is. She-Rain was written with the most beautiful prose and has that rich Southern feel that makes this book amazing and one of the best, if not THE best story I've ever read.
Beautifully written, "She-Rain" captured my soul from the beginning. The story is about an abused boy, Frank Jr., who grew up in a mill town in the 1920's with an alcoholic and drug addicted father and a strong and hard working mother. The emotions are raw and real and cover all from anger, hatred, and rage, to love, hope and forgiveness. The characters are so very real, so real that I swear I've known some of them from my own childhood.
Although I finished this book a few days ago, I still am breathless by this most unforgettable novel. This is a book that I will be keeping in my permanent collection and will be read again and again. I honestly won't be surprised, if in years to come, it becomes a classic. It is truly a treasure that should not be missed. This is a must to add to this year's reading list.
http://tweezlereads.blogspot.com/2010...
This praise about the prose reminds me some of the richest lyricism grows from silence. My wife, Jill, and I celebrate the fact She-Rain rose in part from a member of our family who never spoke a word. Yet she articulated love far beyond words. Below here you'll find a tribute to her, coming soon to blogs around the world. I'm deeply honored to share it here.
A Dog’s Inspiration to a Writer and the World
How the Life and Death of a Golden Retriever Might Save Us From Ourselves
On the morning of May 29, 2008, I lifted Savannah from her bed, carried her to the car, and made the longest seven-mile drive of my life. At the office of a veterinarian, welcomed by that profession’s unique form of love, I soon lay on a cushioned floor beside a golden retriever who showed virtually none of her age, watching both my hands stroke the face that had welcomed me home for thirteen years.
The answer to a yearning awaited us that morning. It was part of the quiet covenant I made with Savannah the day my wife, Jill, and I adopted her. When a sweet dog’s bloodline comes in confluence with our own, we human animals take on a sacred devotion. As sickness comes on hard and takes down the joy of living, caring dog owners are committed to shouldering our beloved family member to a merciful death. On the floor that morning, I answered Savannah’s courageous outreach for that death, allowing her to carry me. The peace that arrived in her final breath lifted the tide of my heartbreak. As I nearly drowned in sadness, Savannah showed me to the shore of a graceful goodbye.
Later that day, a prominent friend in Hollywood, fresh from the same grief in his own family, shared with us some comfort, but also a spiritual yearning of his own: Why would God measure the lifetime of dogs, and other animals we love, by a virtual hourglass when we live by a calendar? Why so little time on earth for those so good and loyal? It seems a cruelty.
After these months of healing, and the reporting of countless human tragedies on television, I’ve arrived at a conclusion: Savannah’s too-short life, like that of all sweet dogs, calls us to a fine urgency. Dogs get after big living. They seem illiterate of worry, yet able to read joys that elude us. They quietly shout to us: Wag your backside to music instead of your tongue to malice. Wallow less in pity and more on the bed of the one you adore. Give yourself, extravagantly, away.
I still fail her, of course. I live too much in my worries and sorrows and too little on the joy path she wore for me. Yet in these times of media-saturated human disaster ,a thought of Savannah improves me as a man, recalls me to life as a writer. Her memory sets off some musing about the hope found in the life and death of a good dog. See if these truths make the news of your times easier to bear:
Savannah feared nothing about death. She went to it with eyes full of gratitude for the way her life had been. Her eyes seemed to draw from some deep well of love, way beyond the crust of words. Even in her final hour, sick as she was, she lived as a divining rod to this love. No matter how I tried to comfort her, she served me – right to her last moment. The kidney failure that was stalling her life was no match for the servant’s heart within her.
The high pitch of biased media, politics, and the vitriol of social debate held no allure for Savannah. She made grace her way of life. She ran from loud voices and bounded to gentility wherever she found it. We could trust her to be tender, even with the smallest child. Savannah taught me there’s nothing so powerful in this life as a truly gentle woman or man.
There is no vanity in such dogs. They split mud holes, then track adoration across the floors of the humans who forgive them. They surely wonder why we care so much for things and so little for helping one another have simple wellness and fun. Savannah never cared for the size of my car. She simply loved the ride. She measured none of my money in how she valued me. In times of my sorrow, she made certain to place her head under my hand, letting me read a sense of all-will-be-more-than-well in its Braille.
With the too-often forgotten elderly in a nursing home, Savannah visited with no consciousness of herself. The sights and smells that repulse too many humans never seem to repel a good dog. Something innate about Savannah longed to care for everyone. She never appraised anyone by their politics, religion, or race. No human bloodline or job pedigree held any sway. Savannah treated the ignorant as kings and the malicious as queens. Even avowed dog haters valued what they found in her, and she loved them without pause.
Such a dog will forgive to the point of endangering itself. Some may argue enough hatefulness will turn any dog, even the most generous and kind. Perhaps this forms a caveat to us as well. Maybe good dogs teach us we will eventually draw back what we put into the world. Or is it that forgiveness becomes a form of capital we spend to the great shock of our enemies, an investment from which we draw the interest of turning enemies into friends? After every trip to the vet, on the heels of cavity exams every sane creature loathes, Savannah forgave Jill and me. We never had to ask.
In the afterglow of thinking of her, I adore considering how living so might change humankind. What might the news look like if everyone were so devotedly kind to everyone else? My job -- as a writer of news and fiction -- would so beautifully change.
Within an hour after putting her into that permanent sleep, I sat weeping at our kitchen table and wrote an open letter to Savannah. It let my grief out to run, with the memory of her a comfort at my knee. I leave you with a passage of it here, and a wish that the news of our future days will improve, changed in some small way by the legacy of Savannah.
“You tracked to the child who lives in me always. In this man you found a boy who loves you, sweet girl. Even in death, somehow you will always lead the boy in me home. I will follow your trail. And together, in the grand wet and muddy fun places of memory, we will be glad.”
###
Michael Cogdill is an Emmy-winning television journalist whose novel, She-Rain, contains two narrative threads dedicated to the memory of Savannah. She-Rain debuts nationally in March, 2010.
Reviewer Comments:
I am really struggling to write this review, because everything I've tried putting down so far, seems so lame. There is no real way I can describe how beautifully written this book is. She-Rain was written with the most beautiful prose and has that rich Southern feel that makes this book amazing and one of the best, if not THE best story I've ever read.
Beautifully written, "She-Rain" captured my soul from the beginning. The story is about an abused boy, Frank Jr., who grew up in a mill town in the 1920's with an alcoholic and drug addicted father and a strong and hard working mother. The emotions are raw and real and cover all from anger, hatred, and rage, to love, hope and forgiveness. The characters are so very real, so real that I swear I've known some of them from my own childhood.
Although I finished this book a few days ago, I still am breathless by this most unforgettable novel. This is a book that I will be keeping in my permanent collection and will be read again and again. I honestly won't be surprised, if in years to come, it becomes a classic. It is truly a treasure that should not be missed. This is a must to add to this year's reading list.
http://tweezlereads.blogspot.com/2010...
This praise about the prose reminds me some of the richest lyricism grows from silence. My wife, Jill, and I celebrate the fact She-Rain rose in part from a member of our family who never spoke a word. Yet she articulated love far beyond words. Below here you'll find a tribute to her, coming soon to blogs around the world. I'm deeply honored to share it here.
A Dog’s Inspiration to a Writer and the World
How the Life and Death of a Golden Retriever Might Save Us From Ourselves
On the morning of May 29, 2008, I lifted Savannah from her bed, carried her to the car, and made the longest seven-mile drive of my life. At the office of a veterinarian, welcomed by that profession’s unique form of love, I soon lay on a cushioned floor beside a golden retriever who showed virtually none of her age, watching both my hands stroke the face that had welcomed me home for thirteen years.
The answer to a yearning awaited us that morning. It was part of the quiet covenant I made with Savannah the day my wife, Jill, and I adopted her. When a sweet dog’s bloodline comes in confluence with our own, we human animals take on a sacred devotion. As sickness comes on hard and takes down the joy of living, caring dog owners are committed to shouldering our beloved family member to a merciful death. On the floor that morning, I answered Savannah’s courageous outreach for that death, allowing her to carry me. The peace that arrived in her final breath lifted the tide of my heartbreak. As I nearly drowned in sadness, Savannah showed me to the shore of a graceful goodbye.
Later that day, a prominent friend in Hollywood, fresh from the same grief in his own family, shared with us some comfort, but also a spiritual yearning of his own: Why would God measure the lifetime of dogs, and other animals we love, by a virtual hourglass when we live by a calendar? Why so little time on earth for those so good and loyal? It seems a cruelty.
After these months of healing, and the reporting of countless human tragedies on television, I’ve arrived at a conclusion: Savannah’s too-short life, like that of all sweet dogs, calls us to a fine urgency. Dogs get after big living. They seem illiterate of worry, yet able to read joys that elude us. They quietly shout to us: Wag your backside to music instead of your tongue to malice. Wallow less in pity and more on the bed of the one you adore. Give yourself, extravagantly, away.
I still fail her, of course. I live too much in my worries and sorrows and too little on the joy path she wore for me. Yet in these times of media-saturated human disaster ,a thought of Savannah improves me as a man, recalls me to life as a writer. Her memory sets off some musing about the hope found in the life and death of a good dog. See if these truths make the news of your times easier to bear:
Savannah feared nothing about death. She went to it with eyes full of gratitude for the way her life had been. Her eyes seemed to draw from some deep well of love, way beyond the crust of words. Even in her final hour, sick as she was, she lived as a divining rod to this love. No matter how I tried to comfort her, she served me – right to her last moment. The kidney failure that was stalling her life was no match for the servant’s heart within her.
The high pitch of biased media, politics, and the vitriol of social debate held no allure for Savannah. She made grace her way of life. She ran from loud voices and bounded to gentility wherever she found it. We could trust her to be tender, even with the smallest child. Savannah taught me there’s nothing so powerful in this life as a truly gentle woman or man.
There is no vanity in such dogs. They split mud holes, then track adoration across the floors of the humans who forgive them. They surely wonder why we care so much for things and so little for helping one another have simple wellness and fun. Savannah never cared for the size of my car. She simply loved the ride. She measured none of my money in how she valued me. In times of my sorrow, she made certain to place her head under my hand, letting me read a sense of all-will-be-more-than-well in its Braille.
With the too-often forgotten elderly in a nursing home, Savannah visited with no consciousness of herself. The sights and smells that repulse too many humans never seem to repel a good dog. Something innate about Savannah longed to care for everyone. She never appraised anyone by their politics, religion, or race. No human bloodline or job pedigree held any sway. Savannah treated the ignorant as kings and the malicious as queens. Even avowed dog haters valued what they found in her, and she loved them without pause.
Such a dog will forgive to the point of endangering itself. Some may argue enough hatefulness will turn any dog, even the most generous and kind. Perhaps this forms a caveat to us as well. Maybe good dogs teach us we will eventually draw back what we put into the world. Or is it that forgiveness becomes a form of capital we spend to the great shock of our enemies, an investment from which we draw the interest of turning enemies into friends? After every trip to the vet, on the heels of cavity exams every sane creature loathes, Savannah forgave Jill and me. We never had to ask.
In the afterglow of thinking of her, I adore considering how living so might change humankind. What might the news look like if everyone were so devotedly kind to everyone else? My job -- as a writer of news and fiction -- would so beautifully change.
Within an hour after putting her into that permanent sleep, I sat weeping at our kitchen table and wrote an open letter to Savannah. It let my grief out to run, with the memory of her a comfort at my knee. I leave you with a passage of it here, and a wish that the news of our future days will improve, changed in some small way by the legacy of Savannah.
“You tracked to the child who lives in me always. In this man you found a boy who loves you, sweet girl. Even in death, somehow you will always lead the boy in me home. I will follow your trail. And together, in the grand wet and muddy fun places of memory, we will be glad.”
###
Michael Cogdill is an Emmy-winning television journalist whose novel, She-Rain, contains two narrative threads dedicated to the memory of Savannah. She-Rain debuts nationally in March, 2010.
February 25, 2010
The First Major Blog Review of She-Rain, Just In
My thanks to all for your embrace of this unique love story -- a love triangle fitted perfectly to our present times, with adultery busting out and making news all over. She-Rain launches March 31, already covered in praise.
Let fly your thoughts on this synoptic review! Welcome!
http://blogcritics.org/books/article/...
Warmest peace, gratitude, with wishes of great times to you all,
Michael
Let fly your thoughts on this synoptic review! Welcome!
http://blogcritics.org/books/article/...
Warmest peace, gratitude, with wishes of great times to you all,
Michael
February 15, 2010
She-Rain Puts the Love Back in Love Triangle, Takes On Inevitability of Sex Scandal
Adultery makes news the way war once did. I have no need here to call names. The above headline alone will send famous faces – and the images of their attendant heartbreak -- soaring to mind.
Celebrity love triangles seem as common as our very longing to be loved. I’ve worked in television news for twenty-five years and have never seen so widespread a herd of big-name libidos running wild. Perhaps it’s just more chic now to cover the naked truth of people we wish never to see naked. It is, certainly, magnetic. Viewers and readers pile in.
Yet for all its info-tainment, this wide-screen cheat-fest, even with its weeping contrition, has a way of attaching despair to us. It gives off the feel that we’re nearly doomed by our deeply human nature. Stepping out in the Biblical sense may begin to feel inevitable. I wonder how many people in devoted relationships secretly fear themselves left out. Even the most sympathetic witnesses to the heartbreak of a scandalized relationship may honestly feel they’re missing the fun that caused it. A real and lasting love can feel as likely as the NBC Nightly News with Conan O’Brien.
For She-Rain, I leaned into a simple definition of romantic love: Young hearts longing for one another as they long for the very best for each other. This seems a clarifying and pure way to think of it. For the people who form the love triangle of She-Rain, the very best of living with it does not come naturally, or easily. Their lust is as common as hunger, strong as sunlight. Some good science shows run-amok romantic love grows from brain chemistry awfully akin to obsessive compulsive disorder. Pedro Calderon de la Barca believed love that is not madness is not love. Frank, Mary Lizbeth and Sophia – as they made way through my imagination – feel this madness as an irresistible agony.
But what if amid that madness, a love triangle formed a constellation of hope rather than a design of malice? Human longing -- lived well – just might improve the nature of our hearts. The Faulknerian heart in conflict with itself can brace us to stand gracefully on our feet of clay.
As with our minds, we allow the majority of our hearts to lie fallow, seldom explored or used for their greatest good. Readers of She-Rain discover three people, survivors of crunching hard times, who venture out toward the edges of what the heart can hold. There to find that we human creatures -- so prone to the self-destruction of lust, envy and revenge – hold a stunning capacity for beauty.
I have chosen to tell a scandalous Southern tale -- a love story like no other. In it, all are flawed, love at times seems the most malignant insanity, and people practically sun themselves in tragedies of the early 20th Century -- many of which still make news today. Yet in She-Rain, three people clear themselves a way to let the love between them reign. They show us that malice and disgrace, in the face of temptation, are not inevitable. Living imperfect lives of defiance, two women in love with the same man create a wonder of the least expected. In this fiction, I believe we see a truth about ourselves. We catch sight of what’s possible. Those powerful women show the way.
That defiance in She-Rain draws from my boyhood reality. Growing up in the home of an alcoholic who kept the air charged with threat of violence, I saw love as an act of miserable sacrifice. Sociologists might have presumed such a boy would devolve into a man on the same path – sentencing the women I encountered along the way to the same abuses, and myself to destruction. Yet the opposite occurred. I managed to flout expectation. By the great virtue of strong women who raised me, and the model of a World War I veteran who put on display the stunning strength found in living as a gentle man, I cut a path far apart from addiction, abuse of women, and religious fundamentalism, which too often sentences women and children to death in the name of family. I abandoned a father hell-bent on destroying himself, and that act generated an accountability that saw him hit bottom and bounce into a beautifully forgiven man. One whose memory my mother and I love and honor deeply to this day. She-Rain is dedicated, in parts, to both of them.
I dedicate it, also, to my wife Jill, my muse who inspired both women in the love triangle. She remains the idealistic young soul I fell nearly instantly in love with in 1985. I tried to marry her so fast I nearly spooked her father into moving her away. Yet a few years into the writing of She-Rain, I found an utterly new woman emerging in her. Out of her strength, a stronger woman came. Rather than aging, she’s become a constant re-creation of herself, one of stunning beauty and grace I wish to deserve. In She-Rain, she inspired me to let fly the wisdom of measuring ourselves not by who we are, but by the legacy of what we can become. She deserves the plural title loves of my life.
Which brings me to the title of She-Rain; it derives from an Appalachian folklore term for a scrap of fog that breaks from a cloud to drift on the mountain treetops. It takes on the delicate look of lace, surrendered to wind, and that surrender reminds us of a higher order to which we can yield. Hard times, most certainly in relationships, are inevitable. Yet we are not doomed to a hard fall. Through the clash of body and soul, above the warring of our inner good and evil, we can soar.
In the novel, I chose to put this first on display in a simple act of love between two desperately poor children. Out of their terrible times, they respect and serve one another -- creating a form of love that defies words. As it evolves into young adulthood, that love grows more familiar to what we know as the longings behind every sex scandal ever known. Yet this young man -- soon to find himself in love with two women at once -- respects himself enough to harbor a sacrosanct kind of respect for them. He becomes man enough to allow both women to improve him. This love triangle helps yank him from the swamp of ignorance and violence into which he was born and set him on a path to greatness no one sees coming.
This young man, Frank Locke, your narrator in She-Rain, lives a lifetime in one of the ironic truths of sacrificial young love: It refuses to grow old and weary as we do. The feel of it sweetens with age, improves us, even as we stumble and fall and crave forgiveness, often failing to live up to its high ideal. I won’t spoil the story by letting you know which woman he shares the majority of his life with, or the full impact both women have on who he becomes. Though I leave you with a few of his words, written from his teenage memory of one of those women he adores. In this passage of She-Rain lives the yearning that can scandalize a man, alongside the devotion that can fortify him. In it a young man coming of age in a terrible time celebrates his early joy of a great woman’s love – feeling the brush of her own against his heart.
"Seeing her braced me to the bone, yet moved a sweet pain through to the marrow – as if we had been apart years instead of days. The dark curls in a tide around her face, skin colored in shades of creek sand, deep with summer and the force of a seventeen-¬year-¬old heart. Her eyes shone wet and bright as a long mountain view after rain – at once delicate and strong, refusing to grant sorrow or malice a bed of its own. Even in that cemetery, in the hardness of the time, every line that formed her, everything she was, begged for a fingertip. She was, to me, perfect satisfaction. A near-¬holy place of rest."
Michael Cogdill, a 24-time Emmy winner in television, dedicates his Southern novel She-Rain to the empowerment of women, encouraging all in a toxic relationships to walk out before they have to run.
She-Rain
Celebrity love triangles seem as common as our very longing to be loved. I’ve worked in television news for twenty-five years and have never seen so widespread a herd of big-name libidos running wild. Perhaps it’s just more chic now to cover the naked truth of people we wish never to see naked. It is, certainly, magnetic. Viewers and readers pile in.
Yet for all its info-tainment, this wide-screen cheat-fest, even with its weeping contrition, has a way of attaching despair to us. It gives off the feel that we’re nearly doomed by our deeply human nature. Stepping out in the Biblical sense may begin to feel inevitable. I wonder how many people in devoted relationships secretly fear themselves left out. Even the most sympathetic witnesses to the heartbreak of a scandalized relationship may honestly feel they’re missing the fun that caused it. A real and lasting love can feel as likely as the NBC Nightly News with Conan O’Brien.
For She-Rain, I leaned into a simple definition of romantic love: Young hearts longing for one another as they long for the very best for each other. This seems a clarifying and pure way to think of it. For the people who form the love triangle of She-Rain, the very best of living with it does not come naturally, or easily. Their lust is as common as hunger, strong as sunlight. Some good science shows run-amok romantic love grows from brain chemistry awfully akin to obsessive compulsive disorder. Pedro Calderon de la Barca believed love that is not madness is not love. Frank, Mary Lizbeth and Sophia – as they made way through my imagination – feel this madness as an irresistible agony.
But what if amid that madness, a love triangle formed a constellation of hope rather than a design of malice? Human longing -- lived well – just might improve the nature of our hearts. The Faulknerian heart in conflict with itself can brace us to stand gracefully on our feet of clay.
As with our minds, we allow the majority of our hearts to lie fallow, seldom explored or used for their greatest good. Readers of She-Rain discover three people, survivors of crunching hard times, who venture out toward the edges of what the heart can hold. There to find that we human creatures -- so prone to the self-destruction of lust, envy and revenge – hold a stunning capacity for beauty.
I have chosen to tell a scandalous Southern tale -- a love story like no other. In it, all are flawed, love at times seems the most malignant insanity, and people practically sun themselves in tragedies of the early 20th Century -- many of which still make news today. Yet in She-Rain, three people clear themselves a way to let the love between them reign. They show us that malice and disgrace, in the face of temptation, are not inevitable. Living imperfect lives of defiance, two women in love with the same man create a wonder of the least expected. In this fiction, I believe we see a truth about ourselves. We catch sight of what’s possible. Those powerful women show the way.
That defiance in She-Rain draws from my boyhood reality. Growing up in the home of an alcoholic who kept the air charged with threat of violence, I saw love as an act of miserable sacrifice. Sociologists might have presumed such a boy would devolve into a man on the same path – sentencing the women I encountered along the way to the same abuses, and myself to destruction. Yet the opposite occurred. I managed to flout expectation. By the great virtue of strong women who raised me, and the model of a World War I veteran who put on display the stunning strength found in living as a gentle man, I cut a path far apart from addiction, abuse of women, and religious fundamentalism, which too often sentences women and children to death in the name of family. I abandoned a father hell-bent on destroying himself, and that act generated an accountability that saw him hit bottom and bounce into a beautifully forgiven man. One whose memory my mother and I love and honor deeply to this day. She-Rain is dedicated, in parts, to both of them.
I dedicate it, also, to my wife Jill, my muse who inspired both women in the love triangle. She remains the idealistic young soul I fell nearly instantly in love with in 1985. I tried to marry her so fast I nearly spooked her father into moving her away. Yet a few years into the writing of She-Rain, I found an utterly new woman emerging in her. Out of her strength, a stronger woman came. Rather than aging, she’s become a constant re-creation of herself, one of stunning beauty and grace I wish to deserve. In She-Rain, she inspired me to let fly the wisdom of measuring ourselves not by who we are, but by the legacy of what we can become. She deserves the plural title loves of my life.
Which brings me to the title of She-Rain; it derives from an Appalachian folklore term for a scrap of fog that breaks from a cloud to drift on the mountain treetops. It takes on the delicate look of lace, surrendered to wind, and that surrender reminds us of a higher order to which we can yield. Hard times, most certainly in relationships, are inevitable. Yet we are not doomed to a hard fall. Through the clash of body and soul, above the warring of our inner good and evil, we can soar.
In the novel, I chose to put this first on display in a simple act of love between two desperately poor children. Out of their terrible times, they respect and serve one another -- creating a form of love that defies words. As it evolves into young adulthood, that love grows more familiar to what we know as the longings behind every sex scandal ever known. Yet this young man -- soon to find himself in love with two women at once -- respects himself enough to harbor a sacrosanct kind of respect for them. He becomes man enough to allow both women to improve him. This love triangle helps yank him from the swamp of ignorance and violence into which he was born and set him on a path to greatness no one sees coming.
This young man, Frank Locke, your narrator in She-Rain, lives a lifetime in one of the ironic truths of sacrificial young love: It refuses to grow old and weary as we do. The feel of it sweetens with age, improves us, even as we stumble and fall and crave forgiveness, often failing to live up to its high ideal. I won’t spoil the story by letting you know which woman he shares the majority of his life with, or the full impact both women have on who he becomes. Though I leave you with a few of his words, written from his teenage memory of one of those women he adores. In this passage of She-Rain lives the yearning that can scandalize a man, alongside the devotion that can fortify him. In it a young man coming of age in a terrible time celebrates his early joy of a great woman’s love – feeling the brush of her own against his heart.
"Seeing her braced me to the bone, yet moved a sweet pain through to the marrow – as if we had been apart years instead of days. The dark curls in a tide around her face, skin colored in shades of creek sand, deep with summer and the force of a seventeen-¬year-¬old heart. Her eyes shone wet and bright as a long mountain view after rain – at once delicate and strong, refusing to grant sorrow or malice a bed of its own. Even in that cemetery, in the hardness of the time, every line that formed her, everything she was, begged for a fingertip. She was, to me, perfect satisfaction. A near-¬holy place of rest."
Michael Cogdill, a 24-time Emmy winner in television, dedicates his Southern novel She-Rain to the empowerment of women, encouraging all in a toxic relationships to walk out before they have to run.
She-Rain
January 20, 2010
A Vignette From She-Rain -- Free of Charge!
She-Rain is structured in much the way Hemingway created In Our Time. Vignettes divide the piece, each creating new insight into the world of the tale. Below is one of those brief vignettes, which in its own way stands alone as a story of sacrificial love and the unique and lasting pulse a dog, though brief of years, can add to a human life.
From She-Rain:
My mother told of an ancient widower, Thad Weaver, a kind wisp of a man.
Having outlived his farming legs and been taken in by a daughter, he haunted
the courthouse steps most days, trolling for conversation — his heart surely
lonesome as an abandoned bird’s nest at home. Ma said she always heard his
great-grandchildren treated him as they might an old yard tree — fit for a climb when they took the notion, but mostly ignored, its joy too long taken for granted.
Always strewn under him, without need of leashing, lay a mongrel she-dog, all wags and wallow, gray-streaked black. She became a catch rug for smiles from passing children on the courthouse square. The old man said he called the dog Abe “’cause she’s spindly as Lincoln and a pert near identical likeness of him in her face.”
You might figure, a sweet bitch dog with a man’s name rendered Thad into even more the courthouse novelty. People adored laughing with him at the thought Abraham Lincoln had a namesake that squatted to pee and came
into heat.
One little boy in particular, helping his father on trading trips to town, fell for Abe. He fell hard and deep into love with her. A mutual love — of play and roll and adoring one another on that square.
One of those times, without showing a hint of forethought, the old man, leaning off that bench, said, “Boy, this dog has more in front of her than I do. I want you to take her on. Take my Abe on with you and your daddy here, and be good to her. Take her on now. She’s rightly yours.”
As my mother had heard it, Thad creaked himself down, kissed the animal on the head, and she returned the act with one of those looks only a dog can translate into love. The man wiped at his face, gestured through a long argument full of wig-wag with the father, then told the boy they should wait there until he walked off to make the parting easier on Abe. The boy
knelt petting the dog, who watched her former master gimp up the street. Thinking out loud as boys will do, the child had taken note of the single walking shadow in the morning’s sun, where for years there had been the strolling shade of two.
Thad Weaver stopped coming to the square, and in less than a month he died in his bed — nearly one-hundred-years-old, full of memories that stretched far before the Civil War.
Abe and the boy passed better than five years together in their isolation, far up into the scarps outside Marshal. The aged girl saw him to the edge of adolescence.
He finally carried her — in the burlap wrapping of cut sackcloth he had washed — to her grave he dug at a gravelly creek side. He wanted his Abe to lie near the clear water’s music until the end of the world.
The first time she told me of this, my mother said, “Your daddy would have lived as a far more lonesome boy without that dog. His sweet old Abe. I’m right sure I’m the only one he ever talked to about her. One thing’s for sure: She showed him love’s a thing you earn by the givin’ of it away. That old dog helped draw his soul out to live. His deaf daddy and that old
girl first taught your daddy how to love. It’s a wicked shame, what he snatched up from livin’ in the rest of the world.”
From She-Rain:
My mother told of an ancient widower, Thad Weaver, a kind wisp of a man.
Having outlived his farming legs and been taken in by a daughter, he haunted
the courthouse steps most days, trolling for conversation — his heart surely
lonesome as an abandoned bird’s nest at home. Ma said she always heard his
great-grandchildren treated him as they might an old yard tree — fit for a climb when they took the notion, but mostly ignored, its joy too long taken for granted.
Always strewn under him, without need of leashing, lay a mongrel she-dog, all wags and wallow, gray-streaked black. She became a catch rug for smiles from passing children on the courthouse square. The old man said he called the dog Abe “’cause she’s spindly as Lincoln and a pert near identical likeness of him in her face.”
You might figure, a sweet bitch dog with a man’s name rendered Thad into even more the courthouse novelty. People adored laughing with him at the thought Abraham Lincoln had a namesake that squatted to pee and came
into heat.
One little boy in particular, helping his father on trading trips to town, fell for Abe. He fell hard and deep into love with her. A mutual love — of play and roll and adoring one another on that square.
One of those times, without showing a hint of forethought, the old man, leaning off that bench, said, “Boy, this dog has more in front of her than I do. I want you to take her on. Take my Abe on with you and your daddy here, and be good to her. Take her on now. She’s rightly yours.”
As my mother had heard it, Thad creaked himself down, kissed the animal on the head, and she returned the act with one of those looks only a dog can translate into love. The man wiped at his face, gestured through a long argument full of wig-wag with the father, then told the boy they should wait there until he walked off to make the parting easier on Abe. The boy
knelt petting the dog, who watched her former master gimp up the street. Thinking out loud as boys will do, the child had taken note of the single walking shadow in the morning’s sun, where for years there had been the strolling shade of two.
Thad Weaver stopped coming to the square, and in less than a month he died in his bed — nearly one-hundred-years-old, full of memories that stretched far before the Civil War.
Abe and the boy passed better than five years together in their isolation, far up into the scarps outside Marshal. The aged girl saw him to the edge of adolescence.
He finally carried her — in the burlap wrapping of cut sackcloth he had washed — to her grave he dug at a gravelly creek side. He wanted his Abe to lie near the clear water’s music until the end of the world.
The first time she told me of this, my mother said, “Your daddy would have lived as a far more lonesome boy without that dog. His sweet old Abe. I’m right sure I’m the only one he ever talked to about her. One thing’s for sure: She showed him love’s a thing you earn by the givin’ of it away. That old dog helped draw his soul out to live. His deaf daddy and that old
girl first taught your daddy how to love. It’s a wicked shame, what he snatched up from livin’ in the rest of the world.”
January 12, 2010
She-Rain's Brush With Cold Mountain. My Open Letter to Charles Frazier
One Carolina Writer Salutes Another Who Won Many Hearts (and The National Book Award).
Charles Frazier, I must thank you.
Across the pages of Cold Mountain, your imagination ran in full color. You committed an act of beauty. You proved the power of fiction to reveal our deepest humanity. These years later, I still stand in awe of the world you called to life.
In Ruby, you tapped an under-estimated heart, and the survivor latent in us all poured out. Rene Zellweger’s portrayal of her on film, though brilliant, reveals only a glance at the woman you gave to us. In your Ruby I saw so many of the great women who raised me, only a scant few miles from North Carolina’s Cold Mountain itself.
I saw them, too, in Ada – a survivor who proves, alongside Ruby, that women need never yield grace for strength. For her, your Inman walks a trail of longing whose path calls to us all. Through his journey, you tell the world how a man’s heart can grow strong and worthy when it’s enameled in undiluted love.
Mister Frazier, such praise and much more you’ve clearly heard. Such is the intoxicant of any writer. So many of your readers who venture in here will join me in raising a glass of celebration in your honor.
But in thanking you for the brilliance of Cold Mountain, I must thank you for the existence of She-Rain.
Reading your beautiful book helped give life to my own imagination. It caused me to raise up, from that same Western North Carolina ground, my She-Rain -- a novel of curative love, deep longing, and human heart’s capacity to rise above the worst of times and expectation.
From your pages, to this day, you place a hand to my back. A reminder to my ear that literature, to live with lasting power, must never dwell only in the mind. It must make good room for itself in the heart. While She-Rain takes place in a different time (the early 20th Century), your great Civil War journey story is a part of its legacy. In times when I threatened not to write on, vowing my full-time job in television allowed no room for fiction, your National Book Award-winning novel led me to put one word in front of another, and with joy, as if on a fine trip toward home. Your long journey to the end of Cold Mountain cut a good trail to the celebration of language and storytelling. Sometimes I still open a copy of your book, at random, just to bless myself with its music. The sound of it has a way of leading me to the unique voice that is my own.
So thank you, again, Dr. Charles Frazier. Readers of Cold Mountain, I know legions of you join me in this gratitude. She-Rain debuts nationally March 31 -- a story making way through the same blue Appalachia, venturing to tell a new story of it to the world. Charles Frazier, our tales are vastly different. Yet they ring with the comforts, harsh beauty, and magnetic lore of the American South. To tell such tales becomes a sacred trust. Readers, I hope you find this North Carolina writer kept that trust in good hands. May She-Rain, in some way, live up to the high legacy of Cold Mountain.
Charles Frazier, I must thank you.
Across the pages of Cold Mountain, your imagination ran in full color. You committed an act of beauty. You proved the power of fiction to reveal our deepest humanity. These years later, I still stand in awe of the world you called to life.
In Ruby, you tapped an under-estimated heart, and the survivor latent in us all poured out. Rene Zellweger’s portrayal of her on film, though brilliant, reveals only a glance at the woman you gave to us. In your Ruby I saw so many of the great women who raised me, only a scant few miles from North Carolina’s Cold Mountain itself.
I saw them, too, in Ada – a survivor who proves, alongside Ruby, that women need never yield grace for strength. For her, your Inman walks a trail of longing whose path calls to us all. Through his journey, you tell the world how a man’s heart can grow strong and worthy when it’s enameled in undiluted love.
Mister Frazier, such praise and much more you’ve clearly heard. Such is the intoxicant of any writer. So many of your readers who venture in here will join me in raising a glass of celebration in your honor.
But in thanking you for the brilliance of Cold Mountain, I must thank you for the existence of She-Rain.
Reading your beautiful book helped give life to my own imagination. It caused me to raise up, from that same Western North Carolina ground, my She-Rain -- a novel of curative love, deep longing, and human heart’s capacity to rise above the worst of times and expectation.
From your pages, to this day, you place a hand to my back. A reminder to my ear that literature, to live with lasting power, must never dwell only in the mind. It must make good room for itself in the heart. While She-Rain takes place in a different time (the early 20th Century), your great Civil War journey story is a part of its legacy. In times when I threatened not to write on, vowing my full-time job in television allowed no room for fiction, your National Book Award-winning novel led me to put one word in front of another, and with joy, as if on a fine trip toward home. Your long journey to the end of Cold Mountain cut a good trail to the celebration of language and storytelling. Sometimes I still open a copy of your book, at random, just to bless myself with its music. The sound of it has a way of leading me to the unique voice that is my own.
So thank you, again, Dr. Charles Frazier. Readers of Cold Mountain, I know legions of you join me in this gratitude. She-Rain debuts nationally March 31 -- a story making way through the same blue Appalachia, venturing to tell a new story of it to the world. Charles Frazier, our tales are vastly different. Yet they ring with the comforts, harsh beauty, and magnetic lore of the American South. To tell such tales becomes a sacred trust. Readers, I hope you find this North Carolina writer kept that trust in good hands. May She-Rain, in some way, live up to the high legacy of Cold Mountain.
January 8, 2010
This Just In ... She-Rain
The first physical copies of She-Rain just arrived. Ten plus years of work distill into those pages. As its creator, I am in awe of my good fortune -- especially to have worked with my wife, Jill, to bring the final book into being.
In The Jerk, Steve Martin's character, Navin Johnson, finds his name published in the phone book as says, "...I'm in print! Things are going to start happening for me now!" Then a wild-eyed maniac sniper started shooting at him off a hill. But Navin more than survived. The naive stooge thrived! May I become so fortunate.
To publish is to ask for the smokin'-hot rounds of critics. I'm braced. Working in television will do that for you. But I'm blessed already with the light of lavish praise on this southern story. Readers have called it beautiful. Poetic. They've said it changed them for the better, and that they're longing for more. To all of you who've embraced pieces of She-Rain even before you could buy it, THANK YOU!! And stay tuned. I'm a writer who believes every reader -- on some level -- becomes family. I want to hear from all of you. How you are. And how you've liked living for a while in the entire world according to -- She-Rain.
National debut coming March 31. Launch parties in the Carolinas before then. As we say in the South, even occasionally on TV, "come on, y'all. Come on in!"
In The Jerk, Steve Martin's character, Navin Johnson, finds his name published in the phone book as says, "...I'm in print! Things are going to start happening for me now!" Then a wild-eyed maniac sniper started shooting at him off a hill. But Navin more than survived. The naive stooge thrived! May I become so fortunate.
To publish is to ask for the smokin'-hot rounds of critics. I'm braced. Working in television will do that for you. But I'm blessed already with the light of lavish praise on this southern story. Readers have called it beautiful. Poetic. They've said it changed them for the better, and that they're longing for more. To all of you who've embraced pieces of She-Rain even before you could buy it, THANK YOU!! And stay tuned. I'm a writer who believes every reader -- on some level -- becomes family. I want to hear from all of you. How you are. And how you've liked living for a while in the entire world according to -- She-Rain.
National debut coming March 31. Launch parties in the Carolinas before then. As we say in the South, even occasionally on TV, "come on, y'all. Come on in!"
November 18, 2009
Calling Out Opinions: Writers, Hit Me...
...with even the roughest patina of your unvarnished thoughts about the current state of publishing. Is the business more celebrity obsessed than ever? Is being so just good business? How do e-readers alter the state of our discovering audience? I want to hear from all of you! As we work in this world of letters, don't you think it's time we became as skilled at entrepreneurship as we are at weaving a narrative?
Warmest peace to all of you!!
Michael
Warmest peace to all of you!!
Michael
October 20, 2009
The Affair of Writing
I anchor the late news on WYFF4 television – NBC in the Western Carolinas and Georgia. A newscast – so often fraught with helicopter live pictures and word of the worst of times for often innocent souls – leaves the people who bring it to you wired at the nerves and longing in the heart by a work day’s end. Coming home at midnight with all that energy, I vented the power of it on fiction. She-Rain, over a span of a decade, emerged as the result.
And, thus, came my love affair with such hours as 4:30 am. It grew out of lust for an utterly different world, and a love for the sway of language. Countless mornings I drew myself away from She-Rain and came to bed at the breakage of dawn to my extraordinary wife, Jill, who not only tolerated this tryst. She knew and embraced its beginnings. Thankfully, she still does so, as a muse, an editor, and my great love.
Great television writing calls for sentences of no more than 22 syllables or so. It must spark with active voice, and it dies without action. Powerful storytelling lives in lines that open with a sense of wonder. They should never merely end. They should land with power aimed for the human heart. The trouble is, we in television keep writing about the same things. Over and over, we tell of common trauma resurrecting itself in differing lives. Along with my work as an anchor, I tell long-form stories that have won me a few awards over my career.
When colleagues ask me how to win Emmys writing about the same terrible human events, I always say – spray the events with active, high-caliber words to create that sense of wonder, then get deep down into the humanness of it all. Down where those events find their making. Find the heart, then let the viewer hear it.
This will seem the oxymoron of a media hound’s lifetime, but I believe all writing – even hard-news journalism – ought to aim for some brush with beauty. A few days ago, I read a critic chiding Pat Conroy for his “purpled prose.” I doubt Mr. Conroy troubles himself much at this, given the legion of fans adoring his way of calling deeply human events to life in fine lines of storytelling. And yes, it’s easy to go way too far. Yet when Scott Fitzgerald in a magazine piece described an ocean as the color of blue silk stockings or the irises of children’s eyes, he taught us all how efficiently a line of beauty can find its way into a reader’s heart.
One of the great storytellers in the history of television, Bob Dotson of NBC News, gave me some advice that will serve any writer well – when you think of that beautiful little line that rings with music and clarifies the whole story, write it down. Put it on a scrap of paper, scrawl it on your hand, write it anywhere that’s legal. Never rely on your memory. Seed the future of your story with the scribbling of your present time. Even if you write on your leg while steering a riding lawn mower, get that thought some permanence. Reader, please, if you get ideas that way, let me know. Let’s share in the bizarre comfort of odd places where our writing suddenly arrives.
In just such a peculiar way, She-Rain whispered to me, even on the news set in a commercial break. Many a night, the novel would slip me her number again. I’ve often come home with a scrap off a news script, scribbled full of lines and ideas that would rise to full life at 4:30 the following morning. She-Rain became a solace from the world of news, yet she drew from what that world taught me about the telling of a deeply human story. The terror and beauty common to us all.
So here’s to writing that grows out of that longing for an utterly different world. Here’s our affair with language and the rising of a tale. May those we love understand that we who write simply can not help but stray there. Thankfully they know us, and love us anyway.
HANK: And that's a wrap. (I've scribbled on many a script myself!)
She-Rain will be published in early March, 2010. Read the opening pages here: http://she-rain.blogspot.com/.
And, thus, came my love affair with such hours as 4:30 am. It grew out of lust for an utterly different world, and a love for the sway of language. Countless mornings I drew myself away from She-Rain and came to bed at the breakage of dawn to my extraordinary wife, Jill, who not only tolerated this tryst. She knew and embraced its beginnings. Thankfully, she still does so, as a muse, an editor, and my great love.
Great television writing calls for sentences of no more than 22 syllables or so. It must spark with active voice, and it dies without action. Powerful storytelling lives in lines that open with a sense of wonder. They should never merely end. They should land with power aimed for the human heart. The trouble is, we in television keep writing about the same things. Over and over, we tell of common trauma resurrecting itself in differing lives. Along with my work as an anchor, I tell long-form stories that have won me a few awards over my career.
When colleagues ask me how to win Emmys writing about the same terrible human events, I always say – spray the events with active, high-caliber words to create that sense of wonder, then get deep down into the humanness of it all. Down where those events find their making. Find the heart, then let the viewer hear it.
This will seem the oxymoron of a media hound’s lifetime, but I believe all writing – even hard-news journalism – ought to aim for some brush with beauty. A few days ago, I read a critic chiding Pat Conroy for his “purpled prose.” I doubt Mr. Conroy troubles himself much at this, given the legion of fans adoring his way of calling deeply human events to life in fine lines of storytelling. And yes, it’s easy to go way too far. Yet when Scott Fitzgerald in a magazine piece described an ocean as the color of blue silk stockings or the irises of children’s eyes, he taught us all how efficiently a line of beauty can find its way into a reader’s heart.
One of the great storytellers in the history of television, Bob Dotson of NBC News, gave me some advice that will serve any writer well – when you think of that beautiful little line that rings with music and clarifies the whole story, write it down. Put it on a scrap of paper, scrawl it on your hand, write it anywhere that’s legal. Never rely on your memory. Seed the future of your story with the scribbling of your present time. Even if you write on your leg while steering a riding lawn mower, get that thought some permanence. Reader, please, if you get ideas that way, let me know. Let’s share in the bizarre comfort of odd places where our writing suddenly arrives.
In just such a peculiar way, She-Rain whispered to me, even on the news set in a commercial break. Many a night, the novel would slip me her number again. I’ve often come home with a scrap off a news script, scribbled full of lines and ideas that would rise to full life at 4:30 the following morning. She-Rain became a solace from the world of news, yet she drew from what that world taught me about the telling of a deeply human story. The terror and beauty common to us all.
So here’s to writing that grows out of that longing for an utterly different world. Here’s our affair with language and the rising of a tale. May those we love understand that we who write simply can not help but stray there. Thankfully they know us, and love us anyway.
HANK: And that's a wrap. (I've scribbled on many a script myself!)
She-Rain will be published in early March, 2010. Read the opening pages here: http://she-rain.blogspot.com/.
