Stopping by Woods in August

An online publication to which I subscribe recently had an excerpt from a book (Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth) by Andrew Wyeth in which he discussed the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.  Wyeth asked Frost if he went through a lot of revisions of this poem, and if it had been written in winter.  Frost answered, "I'd been writing a very complicated, long-drawn-out poem, almost a story type of poem, entitled 'Death of a Hired Man.'  I had finished at two o'clock in the morning. It was a hot August night, and I was exhausted.  I walked out on the porch of my house and looked at the mountain range.  It came to me in flash!  I wrote it on an envelope I had in my pocket, and I only changed one word.  It came out just like that."

I love to think about that sort of flash of clarity, where a great poem leaps from the universe into the mind of a poet, even without the stimulus of the same sort of scene to prompt it.  But it may be that the intense work Frost put in on his long narrative poem was a required part of the birth of the Stopping by Woods poem.  All that intensive effort may have primed the pump. 

Readers, writers, what has been your own experience with writing that appears in your mind more or less fully accomplished?  Is there any pattern to it that you can discern?

American and Chinese Risk Tolerance; Writers' Risk

Two things this week resonated with my understanding about risk taking in the US and in China or among Chinese Americans today. First, I read an article in The New York Times for Sunday, January 16 about Architects Finding Dream Jobs in China. In part, it read, "The American mentality is, 'if it's never been done before, then you shouldn't do it. It's all about risk, risk, risk. The Chinese have a kind of fearlessess about building.' " The article described buildings in China with holes through them, with a five story park underneath the building, etc. When my husband and I were in Shanghai in 2005, we were astonished at the remarkable large buildings everywhere, with architecture that was far beyond anything we had seen in the US, so this attitude rang true to me.
Then there is a new book by Amy Chua about Chinese American parenting. She claims Americans are unwilling to expect very high achievement from their children, don't want to risk losing their affection, and thus don't insist that their children work at their activities enough to allow real achievement. Again the theme of risk, now in a very different context, but still saying Americans are adverse to risk.
Writers cannot really abjure risk. Writing is inherently risky and the scarier the places in a writer's soul that she explores in writing, usually the stronger the writing that results. So we need to buck this trend, or pretend to be Chinese American and learn to take these risks. Revel in the danger and enjoy the good writing that results.

Body and Pen

One of my students, many years ago, told me he thought we should all decant our brains into servo machines and forget all this physical activity. At the time, I thought he was a bit cold and techno, but I didn’t think his idea was totally out of the range of possibilities. I didn’t much like sweaty exercise myself and thought doing without all that might really save a lot of trouble. Not long ago, I ran into his essay again right after I had reread Thoreau’s essay on Walking, where he said, “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from all worldly engagements.” What is it that Thoreau was collecting or soaking in during these long walks that my student felt was expendable? I’d guess, connection to nature, a sense that I am part of something larger than myself. It would be hard to get to that feeling if I were a brain in a servo mechanism as Chris had envisioned.
One thing I’ve noticed in my reading is that I appreciate breaks that show me what a character is doing and feeling in the world. A glimpse out the window, a flash of yellow leaves blowing in the wind, the warm vapor of a cup of tea, swirling around the character’s face, the taste of a wild blueberry just picked on top of the mountain, the wind gusts that push hard against the body and then let go with no warning. These mini-descriptions that authors place in long sections of dialog or of interior monolog make me feel embedded in the character. Why? Because that’s how I experience the world. Read, read, read, then look up for a sensual input. The rhythm is familiar and takes me right into the story, has me looking out through the eyes of the character.
I’ve been trying to teach myself to be aware of my bodily sensations and use those in my writing. Gayle Brandeis’ Fruitflesh book, her earliest one, is great at increasing sensory awareness. I’ve heard that when she talked with California Writers Club, Inland Empire, about that book, she handed each person a strawberry to experience. Many people in the group had never encountered a strawberry with such intensity in their lives. Smelling, close examination by eye, feeling, tasting. I’m not sure about hearing. If you heard the berry, let me know.
Gayle, a dancer as well as an author, and many writers I’ve heard talking about their processes, say that a walk is one of the best ways to stoke up the brain. Walking with the sense on high amplification is a great experience, very relaxing and also, paradoxically, invigorating. So, nowadays I wish I could talk with my former student again and say, “No, don’t decant your brain. You would lose way too much.”

Live dangerously: Write

One of my inspiring teachers is writing a book linking danger and writing. My imagination has been at play with that connection for a while now. You need courage to write, not just because your cousin Joanne won't like how you portrayed her as a bitch (or she thought you did) in your novel or memoir. The deeper risk is that it shakes up your own soul. All of those things you could list that you DON'T want to write about are the things you need to confront, but each one takes an act of courage on your part. Even if you are not going to write any memoir, you need to mine these past events because their emotional freight is what makes your writing come alive. Digging into buried pain bombs is not easy. And it can be rewarding but there are no guarantees: you can't say to yourself, okay, if I think this through finally, my relationship with my dad will be fixed forever. It may not be. You may need to keep revisiting that healing sore on and on into the future because there is still shrapnel there. But some of the hurt area will recover the healthy pinkness of flesh and definitely, the emotions you uncover will spark up your writing. Go there, take the risk.

Looking at Rocks for Inspiration

We have wonderful rocks in California, and they’re more visible than in other parts of the country, particularly in the desert. I remember watching students climb a huge rounded rock at Joshua Tree National Park. The rock was the size of a two story building. It looked smooth from afar, but up close it was covered with irregularities, bumps, depressions, crumbly places, and crystal outcroppings. The students held onto and to stepped on these irregularities as they scrambled to the top. I remember how the seven students looked on top of that rock. Viewing them from some 100 feet away, it was hard to imagine that they’d climbed rather than being dropped from a helicopter MASH-style. It seems to me that the rock is a symbol of writing. It looks like a miracle, but if you begin the task, the close-up is much easier than the distant view. One sentence at a time, one step at a time. Exceptions and irregularities provide openings to progress. The story comes alive and the climber rises to the top.