December 4, 2008
Thursday

“Start with a Spanish doubloon. Those are always good.”
               — George Booth, b. 1926, American cartoonist
                   from a New Yorker cartoon showing a woman advising her husband on what to write about

I’ve written sometimes about what I call the “fall into fiction,” that state of mind wherein I exit the real world and dwell in my created world that I find necessary to advancing my work. I mentioned it most recently just one month ago when I commented on a friend’s sojourn at a writers’ colony in France. I said I was “wobbling” in my commitment to work, getting distracted by, among other things, the election, and the economy. I declared my intention to go back to work the Monday morning after Lynn and I got back from New York. And then I had my health concern, and then, and then . . .  well, as Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, “It’s always something!”

I haven’t exactly fallen into fiction yet, but I am sitting on the edge. I read an article in Poets & Writers by Bret Anthony Johnston, one of my most helpful Bread Loaf tutors ever, and went to the library yesterday to get the stories he mentioned. The article was about sustaining momentum with a piece after using writing prompts or exercises to get started. (Bret’s own book of exercises, Naming the World, is the best ever!!) And I find that I’m noticing things, picking up odd objects, photographing the strange or the unexpected, with an eye to how they might find their way into my fiction. For example:

• In the women’s bathroom at the A.C. Moore craft store I found a 250 ml bottle of Smirnoff vodka, empty of course, the crumpled bag and the receipt on the floor next to it. The receipt showed that it had been bought at the liquor store in the same shopping center less than two hours before. I walked through the store wondering which clerk or customer felt she needed to go running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper to get her through her busy day.
• I found a business card stuck in the copy of Amy Hempel’s stories that I got from the library. It was in the middle of the story I borrowed the book to read (about a young woman who thinks she fails her dying friend by not staying the night with her). The individual is a high-ranking member of the Pennsylvania governor’s staff but also (more significant for me) someone who lives in my township and who has spoken passionately against some of the development going on. Before I read the story I thought about how the card might have gotten there. Did the high-ranking staff member borrow the book? Did he give the card to someone who had the book with her (because, really, it’s women mostly who read short fiction, especially short fiction by other women that they borrow from the library) during one of the township board meetings, or was he carrying the book himself to have on hand for the parts of the meeting that did not interest him?
• Finally, as I left my bank after making a deposit at the drive-through, something on a landscape rock caught my eye. On a gray December day I had to stop and get a picture of this curious bit of cheer.

The next time I try to fall into fiction I’ll try to put all these elements together — a vodka bottle in a public bathroom, a government guy’s business card in a book of fiction, and a plastic smiley figure on a landscape rock outside a bank that probably doesn’t have any Spanish doubloons.

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A year ago, I took a short excursion into Montana and then bought rose-colored suede cowboy boots at Dan’s Western Wear in Sheridan, Wyoming.

Two years ago, I attended a program about Amish and Mennonite funeral customs (fa-la-la-la-la!) and then sang along with “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.”

Three years ago, I posted a picture of trees that will probably be felled when the property is developed. (But they’re still there and I’m still enjoying them.)

Four years ago, I was silent in this space.

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