I’m sitting here in my red room, working amid the clutter of Pokemon cards and the sound of Pokemon streaming over the Internet. So, it’s not the ideal writing space, but I think of Stephen King and how he wrote in his book On Writing: A Memoir of Craft of writing with his son playing near him. That’s how I write. That’s how I get things done, and I love my red room. I love the energy and color and the fact that there are books stacked all around this room.
I taught my third class today and feel like I’ve finally gotten in the groove. What made me happiest was the fact that I used Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s poem “Daddy, We Called You” in class and streamed her Youtube reading of this poem into the classroom. My students loved it!! Mind you, these are students who are mostly majoring in health and business fields, but I could tell they were moved by her poem and by hearing her read it. I used her poem along side Mary Oliver’s poem “A Visitor” to get my students to think about comparing and contrasting in an analysis essay. It worked so well because both poems are so accessible and both are poems about fathers, which is a subject that’s likely to resonate with most people. I really felt this was the most engaging discussions we’ve had so far.
On the writing front, I’ve been reading Tillie Olsen’s Silences, which makes me more determined to move forward with my writing projects, no matter where I find myself doing it; at a doctor’s office, in a red room with Pokemon episodes playing endlessly on a computer, or in the few minutes I have between work and meetings.
Not too long ago I went to a writing lecture given during the Kerrytown Book Festival. The panel was made up of two writer couples. Their discussion focused on the writing life when both parties in a couple are writers. That’s not my situation, but I just wanted to hear writers talk about the writing life. I always find inspiration in it. At one point, there was the discussion on who gets ownership of certain life situations that might make good fictional or poetic subjects or situations. That got me thinking a bit later on how we make our stories different. It got me thinking that the same situation can be used in many different ways, but it’s the unique characters and situations around it that make it different. I think about this as I deal with cancer in my novel. Cancer is a common story in novels, but what makes mine unique is the characters that surround the story. They have unique experiences and approach that common circumstance in a very unique way. I guess what I’m getting at is that those stories need to be written because we all experience the same things in uniquely different ways and that’s where the unique story arises.
That’s it for now. The picture below has nothing to do with anything. I took it at this year’s Clinton Fall Festival, which I covered for the newspaper. It’s sort of my silly little tradition to go to the animal exhibit and photograph animals up close. Last year, I photographed a camel.
