July 14, 2010
Wednesday

Beginnings are so important.  .  .  . Just finding that right moment to introduce this character, this world, it’s everything.
        — Aryn Kyle, b. 1978
            American fiction writer 

The Very Famous Writers’ Conferences that I am such a fan of all have a similar design. The core of the experience is the workshop, a gathering of ten or so Beginning or Wannabe Writers led by one or two Faculty (Famous Successful Writers). Sometimes there are Fellows who also participate — writers with maybe one book published who will become the next generation of Faculty. The Wannabes present their manuscripts, we all read them in advance, and then they are discussed in terms of craft and how successfully the stories convey what the writer wanted to convey.

Workshops usually meet five times for two hours each. The rest of the time is filled with lectures on literature and craft, craft classes, meetings with visiting agents and editors, and readings. (There are parties too. And bird walks. And book-signing receptions. And trips off campus to the Piggly Wiggly and the wine store, which has a big sign: WELCOME SEWANEE 2010!) Faculty and headliner guests usually read for forty minutes or an hour in the late afternoon and the evening. Fellows get twenty minutes or so. The Rest of Us sign up for slots at open mic events, where we get five minutes (at Bread Loaf) or three minutes (Sewanee).

Three Fellows gave the opening reading this morning: playwright Dorothy Fortenberry, poet Cody Walker, and fiction writer Aryn Kyle. Sewanee is different from other conferences I’ve been to in that it has playwrights instead of nonfiction writers. Fortenberry presented a scene from a new play, about a woman deciding to become a single mother by artificial insemination. She (Dorothy, not the character) enlisted the help of another playwright who acted the part of the brother, who is not the sperm donor, just a brother. You had to be there, really. It was fun.

Cody Walker was no less entertaining, by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. Writing serious poetry is an art that lies outside my writerly talents. Reading it well aloud, especially one’s own, is no less tricky.

And then there was Aryn.

Aryn read the title story from her new collection, Boys and Girls Like You and Me. I heard it first last year at Bread Loaf.  And I’d read it again just a few weeks ago.

Back in June I’d read Olive Kitteridge, the extraordinary novel-in-stories that won Elizabeth Strout the Pulitzer Prize. It riveted me. Pulled the top of my head off. It was the kind of book that I couldn’t wait to get back to, and yet each time I picked it up I knew I was getting closer to the end. Every page seemed to say something personally to me. I copied out passages and sent them to friends whose current situations seemed to be addressed. I wrote pages in my journal that riffed off sentences or situations. I read some of the stories twice.

And then I came to the end. And it was like losing a relationship. I knew I had to pick up another book, and do so fast. My constant, focused reading over this past year has helped my writing, of that I am sure. But I also suspected that any new book would be a Rebound Relationship. I’d try to get comfortable with the new characters, the new voice, but I’d always be thinking about Olive.

I was right. I tried one book, and then another. I was bored, irritated. I wanted Olive back. I tried some short stories in magazines. Okay, but no Olive. I read stories that stabbed me in the heart before. Still compelling, but not Olive.

The morning of July 3 the coffee was perfect. I did not want to spend perfect coffee on a book or a story that wasn’t worthy of it. 

I picked up Boys and Girls Like You and Me.

And I fell in love again.

Aryn Kyle’s stories helped me get over Olive Kitteridge. That’s fancy writing.

Aryn Kyle is the fellow assigned to my workshop. I left the lecture hall this morning ready to begin, to sit across the table from this dazzling young writer, who will read my story and give me her take on it.

I am the luckiest Wannabe Writer in America.

 

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