July 13, 2010
Tuesday

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
      — Theodore Roethke, 1908-1963
           American poet

I took my waking slow this morning. I read a friend’s e-mail from a few weeks ago again and realized that the perfect small gift for her could be had at Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia. I would have to drive by there on my way to Tennessee, so I decided to wait until about the time the facility opened at 10:00 to be on my way. It would have been futile to leave earlier anyway, since Sewanee made clear in more than one place that “we cannot accommodate anyone before 2:00.” Counting rest stops and refueling, I had at least five hours to drive. Waiting until 10:00 would get me there at 3:00, when things would probably be running smoothly at the check-in table.

In learning to write fiction, the apprentice encounters several standard caveats concerning techniques that are, if not cliches, at least familiar tropes that are difficult to make fresh.

• Don’t open with the weather, and especially don’t make the weather reflect your character’s mood. (The sky was heavy with gray clouds that threatened to empty themselves onto the fields below, much as Jennifer’s heart was heavy and ready to empty itself of her sorrow.)
• Don’t use dialogue to convey information (“Your grandfather, who was fluent in Spanish and was drafted out of his first job just after World War II started and sent to Puerto Rico to teach English to the local recruits and thus never saw the stress of battle, wrote these letters to the girl he met just before he left, the girl who would become your grandmother.”)
• And don’t put your characters in a car or other conveyance and have them travel somewhere.

It’s hard enough to make a lengthy drive where two characters can interact only in conversation interesting. How much harder, then, to relate a solo drive north and west from Milledgeville, Georgia, around the southern tip of Atlanta, and then, somewhere, into Tennessee, then a little dip back into Georgia before crossing again into Tennessee and the start of the ascent into the mountains. You drive, you try to figure out what your GPS means in congested Atlanta when she says “take ramp right” and there are three one right after the other, you hear her eye roll and her sigh when you guess wrong and she has to say “Recalculating.” It rains for a while. You stop for gas. You buy a pack of crackers.

And suddenly, there’s a sign: “Whiteside, Tennessee. Central Time Zone.”

Central Time Zone? Just how far from home am I?

I rolled through the south gate of the Domain of the University of the South and took the Hospital sign, as my information from the conference suggested. I pulled into the parking lot of the Sewanee Inn just as the first bus from the airport was unloading. It was precisely 2:00. Not 3:00.

Aryn Kyle, who was a fellow at Bread Loaf last year, got out of line to come over and greet me. I cannot stress how schoolgirlishly giddy I get when something like this happens. She’s thirty years younger than I am, but she is an accomplished writer whose work I’ve admired for several years. And then Nina McConigley, who lives and teaches in Wyoming (Wyoming!) and who was on staff at Bread Loaf for several years, came over to me. I felt like the uncertain newbie in the eighth grade cafeteria who is being embraced by the cool girls.

I made a decision before I got here that I would try my best to begin as few sentences as possible with “Well, at Bread Loaf .  .  .  .” In the check-in line I was wearing one in my extensive collection of Bread Loaf t-shirts, the powder blue one, but I took a shower and changed before dinner. As I reported on Facebook, I chose “a soft jade top (plain) and a simple strand of gold to wear to dinner. No sense reminding Sewanee that he is not my first love.” 

Comparisons will be inevitable, of course. Though I am a Big Deal Writing Conference veteran, in many ways, in this new place, I am a neophyte again. I had dinner, met new people, introduced myself in person to some people I’ve known only online, and went to the opening reading by poet Robert Hass.

I’m in a new place, ready to do familiar things in a new way. With Roethke, I say:

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

*********

Love it? Hate it? Just want to say hi?
To comment or to be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the bracketed parts with @ and a period) OR
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/silkentent