I'm at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts

I'm going to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts!

Greetings from the Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke

I'll be heading for the VCCA in a couple of days. Meanwhile I'm visiting fabulous old friends and getting shown the sites in Salem and Roanoke. 

The Taubman Museum is a gorgeous place, designed by Randall Stout, who worked for Frank Gehry.

The VCCA is its own kind of gorgeous. I think at least half of my published stories were drafted there during prior residencies.  http://deniseemanuelclemen.com 
I'm thrilled to be going back.

Mother Nature and Rejection

There's severe weather honing in on the San Gabriel Valley again. As I was checking my email only to find that I did not make it into a writers' residency I'd been hoping for, my entire house shook and rolled. That was too loud to be thunder--or simply the shock of rejection--I thought as I saw the flash. I waited for smoke or a fireball thinking that maybe a plane had crashed, and then the rumbling began again. Two more crashes came in rapid succession. Two more flashes. It rained enough to get the pavement wet on my patio, then stopped. It's deathly still now--like Mother Nature is holding her breath. Not one leaf is moving. The birds are mute. But there's a low growl from time to time as if some beast is crouching for an attack. Batteries? Check. Phone charged? Check. Water? Check. Ipad charged? Check. Computers unplugged? Check. Disaster plan? You mean like a plan for my future? Um. Well, no. I don't have one of those.

Day 6 at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts

Spring is unfurling here in Virginia and so is my ability to concentrate and work. 

Now that the notebook project is finished (see previous two posts,) 

I have been dividing my time three ways: working on a short story, polishing my memoir manuscript, and sending out sample pages and/or a proposal—or at least a query letter for my memoir. My A list submissions are ready to go.

In a couple of months, I will move onto the B list if need be. There will be plenty of time while I’m here for digging into my next manuscript, too--the divorce manuscript. Working titles: His Big Fat Indian Wedding, The Geography of a Divorce, Flying Blind (since I flew around to be with family and friends because after 32 years in L.A. with Mr. Ex, I could not tolerate being there.) Suggestions? Feel free. I also like The Marriage Museum or the Marriage Mausoleum because he’s living in “our house” with the Little Missus and raising his new family there where we raised our girls. A little creeeepy. There’s something wrong about sleeping in the same bedroom, occupying the same space with the Little Missus that he occupied with me. Even the same bed—though at some point, they got a new one, I heard. There’s only one wall in that bedroom that will accommodate a queen size bed—so the two of them are right there where he and I used to be. The only way to change it up would be for him to sleep on my side of the bed…..which is even creeeeepier. 

Residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts/Day 2

Do not be alarmed--I do not plan to blog every day while I am here at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. BUT… I am still primarily in digging mode and I’m un-earthing things that need daylight. I feel like the ground hog next to the horse barn outside my window who pops his head out occasionally for a paranoid peek around. I, too, am mostly underground, getting ready to pull my head out of this pile of notebooks and write.

But meanwhile there is this:

It seems that, years before I became a writer, I bought a pretty hardbound notebook. The cover is a detail from a painting of Venus and Adonis by a French painter named Charles Joseph Natoire. I have no memory of what purpose I had in mind for this pretty book. It contains lists of things to do—gardening projects and home maintenance chores, a roster of people I sold tickets to for my kids’ school fair, a list of jobs for the rummage sale I was heading up for a non-profit, phone numbers for people I don’t remember, a Christmas shopping list. 

Here's what I got for Mr. Ex that year:

On a page in the middle of the book was this:

“Let’s say we’re sisters.

“No triplets! We’re all identical.”

“No I’m adopted.”

“Well, I’m a princess.

“No, no—let’s be cheetahs. I’m the fastest in the world. Let’s say I’m a lost cheetah and you found me.”

“Can I be the owner?”

“I know! You can be a princess with a cheetah.”

Oh, these little minds content in the back seat, oblivious to the freeway. I change lanes while they exchange their crowns for spots. I plan dinner and they plan their lives in their jungle palace. The traffic jam of domesticity has closed all roads while they soar from place to place with plans so much grander than mine. I took the reality exit. Warning! Do not back up.

I have no idea why I wrote this down.

My daughters were very young then—judging by C’s contribution to the book.  (She wrote some letters and numbers backwards when she was really little. ) 

          

And I have no idea why, when I began to write, I could not write dialogue. I’m sure it took me forever before I opened a story or an essay with a conversation.

Another Writer's Residency

I am very lucky. This month, in November of 2009, this is my house.

I have a room of my own to write in.

There is beauty here--refined and rough.

There are places to gather. And there is the prairie for walking alone.

.

I see London, I see France, I see Jamie's....

There are various perks to being at a writer's residency. At the Virginia Center for the Arts they change your sheets, bring you fresh towels, vacuum your room, and clean your bathroom. At Vermont Studio Center, there's a serene meditation chapel open 24-7, and wonderful guest writers who preside over small group seminars. Both the VCCA and VSC have talented chefs who lay out dinner each evening in a cozy dinning room where you can hobnob with your fellow artists. People usually come to the table itching to socialize after being holed up in a studio all day writing or drawing or painting or sculpting or composing. It's easy, during a month long residency, to make a new friend or two or if you're an extrovert, maybe even a dozen.

It's different here in Auvillar.

There are only three of us. All writers. We are responsible for our own cooking (except at the Wednesday group dinners) and we share the housekeeping duties in our ancient stone house. We do our own laundry and we don't have a clothes dryer.

So we get to see one another's undies.

I have un petit inferiority complex now...lingerie and writing. http://web.mac.com/jamiecatcallan/iWeb/JamieCatCallan/Home.html

One of these days, I'll have a book and a website. Vraiement! And better underwear.

Writers' Odysseys

An "emerging" writer like myself can benefit immensely from receiving a fellowship to a writers' residency like the one here in Auvillar http://www.vcca.com/programs.html. The opportunity to write most of the day, or all day and even into the night is harder to come by in ordinary life. And being in a new environment in a foreign country changes one's perceptions. New ideas for stories are sparked by being in a new place. If you're someone who can't get away for an entire month, or a writer who wants more of a workshop environment, there's Astra Writing in Greece. I went last spring and it's even better than it sounds.

Write this Tree

This is a catalpa tree. It's real. I've been walking by it every morning as I trudge the mile or so from the Lied Center, which houses my MFA residency, into the center of the small town of Nebraska City. There's a coffee house there that makes a delicious latte and that's how I start my day before I sink into the world of fiction writing. The tree is an enthralling sight as the sun lights up its dangling green bean-like pods. Someday, I'll probably have a catalpa tree in a short story or a novel. I like the way the word, "catalpa" sounds and the way the pods make the tree look like it's all fancied-up, wearing earrings. Maybe there'll be a wild party under a catalpa tree or maybe a murder. Maybe I'll invent a girl named Catalpa. Fact into fiction.

My current novel has a husband in it--an L.A. attorney who makes tons of money in a high-profile firm that does entertainment law. The law firm isn't actually that good though. All the partners make most of their money because they're involved in the porn industry, and the husband (in the novel) gets more and more corrupted as time goes by and doesn't even come to the hospital to take the wife home after she has a miscarriage. He's judgmental, aloof, thinks he's always on the moral high ground. He's an impeccable dresser, and so fastidious he wipes the rim of his wine glass after every sip.

See how it works? Fact into fiction.

Another Step on the Path to Reincarnation as a Writer

Ever since my friend Shanna applied for a writer's residency at McDowell and got it, I've been filling out applications, too.  While she was at MacDowell Shanna sent me a photo of her room and I burst into tears at the thought of sitting in the chair next to the big stone fireplace and pecking away at my laptop while others prepared my meals and sheltered me from the everyday world. I asked to see her application when she got back to L.A. and what I remember is this: The first item on the form was List your prizes and awards, most recent first--and then there were 8 or 10 stark black lines waiting to be written upon.  Shanna (according to my memory) wrote, "You're kidding, right?" The rest of the application was in much the same vein. But Shanna is an utterly fabulous writer and her writing sample was the key that got her a month at a very prestigious residency program.  

MacDowell rejected me when I applied a year or so ago. But I applied to a few others.  I got into the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Vermont Studio Center. 

Then I got rejected from the Millay Colony--twice.  But recently I've been notified that I'm an Auvillar fellow for the fall and will be going to France to write.  Today I got a call from Ragdale and I've been awarded a residency there, too. Little by little, I'm becoming a writer.

I need better work habits, but eventually hope to become a writing machine.

Valentine

"Anti-valentine--(n) a curative measure, most often administered during the month of February; a kind of medicinal tonic, often melancholy, bitter or dark, traditionally made from paper, glue and epistolary materials," so read the party invitation sent our by the visual artists to the whole Vermont Studio Center community.  

Some made anti-valentines.  Some made valentines. The latter, I'm relieved to report, outnumbered the former.

It was fun.  But I'm not going to send it.

Tomorrow, they say, is Lupercalia, an ancient Roman festival of wolves that traditionally involved much drinking, carousing, and a ceremony where young men ran around clad in goatskins lashing people with strips of goat skin for good luck.

I'm feeling like my luck is pretty good, actually.

Buried, Then Not

I had a dream about Mr. Ex last night. A dream that moved me into the future (it was February 12th, for some reason.) We were in New York with our daughter M. for the weekend.  M. & I had flown from our respective locations and he had driven all the way from California, his trunk and backseat loaded with M.'s old toys. By the time I arrived at the hotel, the two of them and the toys were installed in our room. There was a large Buzz Lightyear, 2 child-size wooden stools I'd stained and stenciled just before she was born, remote controlled cars and a stack of other stuff. Mr. Ex had just gotten up from a nap and left the bed that I would later sleep in all rumpled. "Why did he bring all your toys?" I kept asking my daughter after her father had left. "We can't get all this to the airport...he's done this just to make problems for us." I left the room feeling upset and when I came back I couldn't remember which room I'd been in until I found the key envelope with the number, written in Mr. Ex's handwriting, in my pocket. There were someone else's children in the room when I entered and they were playing with M's toys. The three boys introduced themselves to me very politely--Raintree (he was a little apologetic about his name), Ernest Moon, and the third name drifted away as I awoke.

I don't think I've dreamt about Mr. Ex since he left me and I woke up feeling like things might fall apart today. But in the dream, I kept wanting to get back to my writer's residency and here I am. 

The quote from yoga class this morning that I heard most clearly: "Breath is always in the Now. We can't take today's breath tomorrow and we didn't breathe yesterday for today."

Ice And Ice

These are views from my Vermont windows--the motel last night in Burlington 

and here from my bedroom at the Vermont Studio Center.

Note to self--Don't stand beneath icicles.  When it warms up midday and the sun is hitting them directly, they break loose and fall.

An icicle through my heart might have been appropriate last winter, but now I have writing to do.

Now

I leave for another writer's residency in a few hours and for the first time since July of '07, I leave the City of Angels reluctantly.

"Now is all we get, ever." This is what a person I like very much says. 

Now I am in L.A. 

Tomorrow I will be somewhere else.

But NOW--tonight--I am here.

The Real World

This is the sign we see as we leave through the main gate.   I had an impulse to stop my car and put it on the other side of the post--so you'd see it driving in.  It seems to me, that this haven of creativity or other places like it, is for many artists their real world.  The place they inhabit with the most passion and commitment. Sure, before I know it, I'll be back to thinking about property taxes, getting my oil changed, calling the dentist, and seeing if the vet can figure out why one of my cats is licking the hair off her legs, but in a way all of that seems like stuff I could do while sleepwalking.  When I sit down to write at home and look out my window at my towering grevelia  tree that seems like a haven too, but it's there that I feel awake and really, really real.

Almost Gone

After today, only four more days here.  I'm tired of hunting for moose.  Tired of deciding if the glass is half empty or half full.  Forget the glass.  Let's just drink out of the bottle and marvel at the wine slipping through its shiny narrow neck.

Reflections

This is the pond in the woods and it's lovely. When I stand there I see possibilities. A deer may appear for a drink. Mallards could paddle by. That large long-legged bird I haven't yet identified might clatter up out of the cattails and fly right over my head. There's a sturdy bench under the trees and if I have the patience to sit there (which I almost never do) maybe more than one amazing sight will present itself.  I keep wondering about that bench. It's a ways in from the trailhead and it's made of metal and wood.  Who carried it in there?

Strategically Placed

A lot of post-it notes have come down off the wall above my desk. Little ideas have become paragraphs or pages, and in some cases, are in the wastebasket where they belong. I have a decent draft of a short story, I think, and it has nothing to do with divorce or marriage which proves something good is happening here. I'm getting closer to sending Beneath the Water back to my agent--pretty sure that'll happen Monday afternoon. I have a whole new beginning to the 2nd memoir which is about you-know-what, but it's going swell just the same.  I did a critical essay on a Tobias Wolf story I adored and tonight, I'm just going to jumble up my damn novel like my MFA mentor has asked me to. I'm two weeks into this residency and I haven't felt this good in ages (about writing, anyway--but yeah, about most other things, too.) I have concluded that my brain does not work in L.A.  Too much history, too many Freeway exits where I think, hmm that's how you get to... and we used to always... and I remember when we.... the whole place looks like him and the scent of jasmine or rosemary smells like the night air coming into every bedroom we ever slept in.  You know what it smells like here?  Leaves. Frost. Stars. And absolutely nothing.

Where I'm At

My sister-in-law asked me the other day where I was exactly. She was worried that I was on my own in a high crime area. I love how my family is concerned about me. I've been to my brother's house several times since my marriage ended and always feel the embrace of family there. I used to joke that I could be missing for days before my husband would wonder where I'd gone. My body would be stone cold, I'd say, before he reported me missing. I've traveled more than 60,000 miles this past year and my sister-in-law always seems to know where I'm headed. For now, I'm here under the blue skies of Virginia in my remodeled chicken coop next to this historic barn that contains studios for other writers, composers and visual artists.  In a few weeks, I'll go visit my mom and then head back to L.A.  But I won't be there for long.

Connections

Every morning in the woods, the paths are strung afresh with spider webs.  They brush my nose and cheeks, and in the sunlight you can see the shiny floss connecting trunk to branch, leaf to stem.  A visible example of connections unseen.

Like the woman in the airport.  As I was wheeling my book laden bags to the check-in counter the man behind me asked if I was carrying gold bricks.  

"Kind of," I said.  "They're the books I'll need for this trip."

"Are you an author going on a book tour?" he asked. (I should have asked him to keep holding on to that thought.)

"No," I said.  "I'm a writer though and I'm going to a writer's residency and this is the reading that will inspire my own writing."

His wife took over then.  She'd been taking writing classes herself. She'd been to the Santa Barbara Writers' Conference. What did I write? she wanted to know.

"Memoir," I said.

"That's what I've been learning to write," she said.

I gave her the one-line summary of the book I'd be working on--the story of giving up my son for adoption when I was 17 and reconnecting with him when he was 21.  She nodded and as we went to our separate kiosks, she and her husband wished me good luck.  

Several minutes later as I was dragging my bags to the scanner, she rushed up to me.  "I just wanted to tell you that I gave up a baby, too," she said.