Robyn Ryle's Blog, page 11

Madison Monday: The river’s up

The river is up, but no, that’s not quite right.

The river is vast and indifferent. When you spot it at the end of the street through the gaps between buildings, you feel that it’s wrong. Your heart beats faster. Your palms sweat. Fight or flight, fight or flight. The river is the bad guy in the horror movie. The river is coming for you.

The river is chewing with its mouth open. It is no longer interested in polite society. If you listen closely, you might hear it belch. The river is letting the crumbs of what it consumes fall freely onto its lap. The river is spitting while it talks.

The river is laughing at us. Not with us. It laughs at the children skirting along its edges. The grown people splashing in its shallows. The river is trying to convince us that it’s all fun and games. Come on down! Come on down! Bring your kayaks and your swimsuits! Bring your cameras and your fishing poles! The river is laying a trap. The river is waiting to eat us alive.

The river is relentless. The river is tired of winter. The river doesn’t believe in the old gospel tune– “No more water, the fire next time.”

The river is lonely. It wants to pay us a visit. It wants to stay as long as it can. The river wants room service and someone else to wash the sheets for once.

The river doesn’t care about your attempts to describe it. To make it knowable. To wrap it in words.

The river is.

Elephant Rock Flash Prose Contest

My lovely friend Jeannine Ouelette, a talented writer and the woman behind Elephant Rock Retreats for Writing and Yoga, asked me to judge a flash prose contest to celebrate the Association of Writers and Writing Programs national conference coming to her hometown of Minneapolis in April. I met Jeannine at the Tin House Winter Writer’s Workshop a couple years ago and loved reading a small snippet of her novel-in-progress.

Stout’s Island Lodge

The theme for the contest is The River. The entry can be any kind of writing–fiction, poetry, non-fiction or cross-genre. It just has to be 500 words or less. The deadline is March 30. You can see details about the prize below, but it includes a 2-night stay at Stout’s Island Lodge, which looks like a pretty amazing spot. So, send me your stuff!

how to enter

Email submissions to elephantrockretreats@gmail.com; please use “contest” as subject line; include your full name, address, and phone number in the email and the attachment. Do check your word count (applied to text of your prose piece only, excluding title and your personal info). Pieces that fail to adhere to the word limit will be disqualified.

the prize

Winner will receive a single edition broadsheet with original art commissioned based on and incorporating the text (or excerpt) of your work plus a gift certificate for a two-night stay at the glorious Stout’s Island Lodge, home of Elephant Rock’s annual Solstice Retreat. Winner and honorable mentions will be notified by email on April 3 and invited to read at a public event on April 10 hosted by Elephant Rock and Ben Weaver Music, sponsored by Banjo Brothers, during the AWP conference.

On turning 41

I turned 41 yesterday and it was a good day. No, I didn’t turn 25 again. I’m not stuck at 30. If you ask me how old I am, I’ll generally tell you. I don’t think that’s a rude question. I’m 41 and pretty happy about it.

Forty-one is well past the age I could imagine being when I was a teenager. I have a vague memory that it was 35. Thirty-five seemed very old when I was 18. It was the frontier beyond which I could imagine nothing. Would I be married? Have kids? Would my body be slowly deteriorating? Would I be famous? It was very important to me to be famous, which is more than a little amusing in retrospect. Thirty-five was the void as far as I was concerned and now I’m six years past it.

Ashley Ford just wrote an essay about how in her 20s, she wants to live like she’s in her 40s. Yeah, I don’t blame her. It is good to be in your forties. Good to care a lot less about so many things. Good to be able to spend less time on what’s not important. Good to truly value the friends you have, because your patience for bad ones has run out. I spent a lot of time in my 20s and 30s being anxious about who I was. Trying to become someone else. In your 40s, you can settle in and get comfortable with the person you are. Kind of like your self has become a roomy pair of jeans. You can breathe easy and move around.

At 41, you can admit to yourself the things you like and the things you don’t. I really don’t like going to loud concerts where I have to stand up the whole time. I don’t like bars where I have to shout. I don’t like Woody Allen movies and I’m just never going to.  I really, really don’t like meetings.

I do like going to the same places over and over again–the same restaurant, same bar, same vacation spot. I like reading in bed with my husband. I like staying home. I like dyeing my hair and getting a pedicure. I like buying shoes.

In your 40s, you’re no longer embarrassed by pictures like this

It helps to have a job where the ideal is older, not younger. Forty-one is still young for a college professor. I’ll fit the typical mold for my profession best probably when I hit 60. Then I’ll have achieved the proper level of cumudgeon-ishness.

I think the same is true for writing. Sure, there are a lot of awards out there for writers under the age of 35. And too often, I think, “emerging writer” becomes synonymous with age. Why can’t you “emerge” as a writer at 50? But there’s still plenty of time and wrinkles don’t matter in author photos.

Sometimes I think, “Oh, those wasted years of my 20s and 30s when I wasn’t writing! What I could have done!” Okay, honestly, I don’t really think that very often, because my next thought is, what would I have been writing about? I was such an idiot back then. I could barely get out of my own way.

I turned 41 yesterday. I taught some classes. Met with some students. Survived a snowstorm. Ate dinner with my family at my favorite restaurant. Watched an episode of Angel. Crawled into bed with a good book at nine. It was a good day.

Key West, Thursday

Some good things we’ve eaten (and drank) so far:

– Everything at 2 Cent, but especially the caramelized brussel sprouts with pecans and cranberries. Also, some roasted peppers in a balsamic reduction. Simple, but delicious. This is our second time here, both times at the bar, because we didn’t make a reservation. Next time, we will.

Fried okra and pickles at Firefly

– All things fried at Firefly Southern Kitchen. Also, a drink called Heartbreaker with sparkling wine and muddled raspberries. This place may be news. It’s on Petronia. We ate on the balcony and had it pretty much to ourselves at 12:30. They serve brunch until 3 and we ordered three starters–fried okra, fried pickles and skillet mac and cheese. They were all delicious, especially  the pickles, which were almost like a tempura. In a tiny nod to healthiness, we ordered a pinot noir-soaked pear salad with blue cheese, walnuts and balsamic dressing. Good, but not as good as the pickles and okra.

The bar at Camille’s and okra.

 

– Huevos rancheros  and the special omelette at Camille’s on Simonton. Funky decor. Music, like The Commodores, that made the husband happy. The special omelette was loaded with all kinds of fresh seafood. The huevos rancheros were simple and perfect.

– Beer and mojito at the Green Parrot Bar. Also off Duval, though not far off. Touristy, but I still love this place. The open air-ness of it. The weird, weird pictures. The general indifference of the bartender. The people-watching. The fact that you can get a beer here well before noon.

If there’s a trick to eating well on Key West, this may be it–don’t eat on Duval. The best meals we’ve had so far were elsewhere. The hard part is finding these places, but there are worse ways to spend your time than wandering the streets of Key West in the sunshine looking for your next meal or drink.

 

Key West, Wednesday

Key West in the morning is a busy place. A noisy place. Street sweepers. Leaf blowers. Garbage trucks. Some huge utility vehicle whose purpose seems to be cleaning out the sewers. It is a place and places can be noisy. There are things to be done, even if the business is mostly for tourists. The business is us.

Ubiquitous chicken picture

By 11 or so, the fog that rolls in at night is gone. The people emerge. Duval St. gets busy. A different kind of noise begins.

Then you might slip away from Duval to one of the side streets. Into a neighborhood. Some houses are painted bright colors in pristine condition. Some are barely standing upright, the wood worn gray. Some cement block apartments. You might wonder about a life spent waiting tables or cleaning hotel rooms in Key West. Would it be an endless adventure? Working hard and playing hard in paradise? Or would it just be hard?

Madison Monday: From above

I’m sitting outside as I write this and nothing else really matters. The stars are shining. From our balcony, we can see people passing by. We have traveled far enough away to be warm.

Madison from an airplane

This is what we left behind. Not the town itself, which is beautiful even in the snow. But, yes, the cold. The tightness in your shoulders that settles in sometime in December. The clenching of muscles that comes with always being cold.

We have traveled to a place that makes flannel-lined pants redundant. I can smell the ocean where I sit now. It took all day and we landed hard, but we are here.

About “Weeds”

It’s been over a month since my story, “Weeds,” was published by the incredibly lovely folks at Atticus Review, but here’s a little bit about the behind-the-scenes of the story, better late than never.

Fast Facts:

First draft written: April 2014

Number of drafts written: 10-15

Number of rejections: 10

From submission to publication: 6 days

The idea

Beware of the giant hogweed!

This is another story in a series I’ve been working on for a while now, all of them set in a community garden with the titles of the stories reflecting that theme. The first was “Soil,” then “Light,” now “Weeds.” Still working on “Seeds.”

I’d been chewing on what to write for the weeds story for a while. Then I took the master naturalist class at the Musctatuck National Wildlife Refuge. During one class, there was a woman who was very, very enthusiastic about invasive species and specifically, invasive plants. The overall message of the class seemed to be, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” Invasive species would make a good horror show, I thought afterward. The Attack of the Giant Hogweed, or something like that.

I guess maybe I’d also been thinking a lot about the ways in which as children, and especially as girls, we’re taught to tolerate a lot of behavior that we shouldn’t have to tolerate. Men tickling you. Grabbing your knee. Talking about your body. Staring at your boobs. Wanting to wrestle. It’s creepy when you take a step back. A little scary.

A little help from my friends

Writing might look on the outside like something you do on your own, but most of the time it’s not. At least not the editing part if you’re lucky to have people willing to thoughtfully and honestly read your stufff. As always, my husband read one of the earliest drafts of this story. Ellen Airgood made me think about Lucy, the main character. Then my friend, Matthew Kabik, took a look and helped me cut away some details that were detracting from the main movement of the story as well as a kind of introductory frame that wasn’t working. I also sent this story to Carve Literary Services, where editor Matthew Limpede really helped re-shape the opening paragraph and the ending.

Editing is hard, the hardest part of writing for me. Sometimes I think there are tricks out there that other people know–people who have been to MFA programs or taken more classes than I have. Alas, I’m probably wrong. No one’s holding out on me. There aren’t any tricks. There’s just going over the story again and again and again. Setting it aside for a while. Reading it again. And then asking some folks you trust for help.

The “truth”

There was a kid named Craig when I was about Lucy’s age. He did, in fact, pick me up and tell me that he was taller than me. It was kind of a big moment. He called me the day before my birthday when I was in sixth grade to ask me if I wanted to “go out” with him. I said yes. The next day I changed my mind. I didn’t know exactly what it meant to “go out” with a boy, but it all seemed a little scary. Sometimes it still is.

This is a test

A tentative stack of books

This is a test of whether I can write blog posts on my iPad. I’m leaving for Key West Monday morning (assuming it stops snowing/icing/freezing long enough for that to happen). I was thinking I want to blog from Key West, because that seems right, doesn’t it? In Key West a writer should write, though maybe Hemingway didn’t actually write in Key West. Maybe he just hung out with cats.

At any rate, there are packing issues that mostly concern creating enough room for books. The right books. You don’t want to take a dud. Nothing worse than being stuck next to the pool in the sunshine with an unreadable book. And enough books. You don’t want to run out, either. If I don’t have to take my computer, there’s room for more books. (Yes, I know I can download books on my iPad and if things get desperate, I will. But really, I want to read books, the physical-type things with pages that if they’ve earned it, will sit on my shelves after.)

So, can I blog from my iPad with a keyboard attached? It appears the answer might be yes. Now, let’s just hope it stops snowing.

 

Straining and puffing

This is a picture of my big scary novel. It’s sitting behind me, even as I write this now. It’s watching me. Breathing down my neck.

I would rather not talk about how long I’ve been working on this big scary novel. It’s a long time. It might be five years. It might be longer. In the past when I read interviews with writers and they said they’ve been working on their novel for five years…ten years…fifteen years, I thought, what’s wrong with them? But now I know. Now I understand.

Here are some metaphors for what it’s like trying to write a novel, and by “write,” I don’t mean churning out a draft. Churning out a draft of a novel is relatively easy (at least for me). But truly writing a novel is a whole other thing.

– Writing a novel is like swimming the English Channel (from my friend Ellen). Cold and lonely and you think it will probably kill you. The only way to do it is to just keep swimming. One stroke after the other.

– Writing a novel is like an excavation. That’s Stephen King in his book, On Writing. So, it’s dirty. Back-breaking. There’s the chance you won’t find anything and instead will end up burying yourself alive.

– Writing a novel is like juggling a bedsheet. Yeah, you can’t even picture that, can you? Exactly the point. You can’t juggle a bedsheet. It flops down onto your face. You can’t really throw it into the air. It’s all connected and you keep getting tangled up. Trying to find the edge that goes at the top of the bed. Tripping. Falling over. You can barely grasp the concept of the bedsheet, let alone juggle it.

I may not be able to write a novel. Really write a novel. Which is to say, I may not want to put myself through what it takes to write a novel. I may not be up to the task. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to see what the end point is. People have read versions of this novel and they’ve liked it and maybe you just stop there. Done. I have written a novel.

Still.

I love my main character. Her name is Margie. She’s not always lovable. Kindness doesn’t come naturally to her, but she tries.

I like stories that take you to a place and you can tell the author loves that place and you can tell the author really wants you to know that place. To understand it.

I think most people don’t really understand small towns. What it’s like to live in them. What it’s like to watch them disappear around you. I think there’s a big trauma that comes from losing your community that no one really talks about anymore, but that doesn’t make it any less traumatic.

I think people in small towns feel like they have to apologize all the time because we’re bland. We’re vanilla. We’re not diverse. But I don’t think that’s always true. I think believing that makes all the ways in which people are different and interesting disappear. I don’t think that should happen.

These are the things that make my novel scary to me. These are the things that give it a gravitational pull. That give my novel a voice with which to go on whispering at me.

A good writer always works at the impossible. There is another kind of writer who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights. And giving up the impossible he gives up writing. Whether fortunate or unfortunate, this has not happened to me. The same blind effort, the straining and puffing go on in me.  – John Steinbeck

Sometimes in February…

Sometimes in February, I lose it.

I find myself sitting at our dining room table, eating a perfectly nice meal with my lovely husband, unable to stop crying.

Or for a week in a row, I wake up every morning and seize on the ugliest thought I can find. I marinate in it. I am a skin-covered bag of rage.

One year, I walked, and that helped.

Last year, we went to Key West, and that was an escape. But then we came back and February was still here, even though it was March.

Dar Williams has a song like that–“And February was so long, that it lasted into March.”  She’s a good, Midwestern woman. She understands.

I can feel it coming on, this February illness. A hopelessness. A breaking point. Cold that kills small, delicate things.

I don’t know why there aren’t more songs and poems about February. Perhaps because it crushes all the artistic ability right out of us. I haven’t really written anything for days. Except this.

I like happy endings. I like to think of my life shaped that way. I remind myself that I can see the tiny shoots of daffodil leaves already, poking their way out of the ground. They have a deeper understanding of winter, one that tells them it’s drawing to a close. They have a longer wisdom.