The day before yesterday, I attended Portland Book Festival 2023. I heard two discussions, toured both floors of booths, talked to a couple of editors, met an interesting woman, and didn’t get very wet in the rain.
I woke Saturday morning at 3am and wrote until 6 and went back to sleep for an hour, which seems to have become a habit. Most days I return to the page later in the day, but those words count for the next day. So I am breaking some sort of rule doing it that way. Never mind. I have 14,128 words as of this minute, averaging over two thousand each day. Only revising so far. “Only revising” work that has been through dozens of drafts. “Only revising” as if that were not the longer task.
My sister and I have blood, stubbornness, pride, and clever hands in common. We are good at things, but different things, things you cannot see.
—The Bad Lands
Sisters fly across country to pick up a 1957 Porsche Cabriolet 356 inexplicably left to them by a relative they honestly do not remember. On the drive from Savannah to Portland, Oregon, they discover just how different they are.
Some revisions have been wonderful so far. Obvious issues quickly corrected. Little cuts and line revision, words moved from here to there on the page, a sentence, and then re-envisioned. Big cuts and rewrites are nothing new. This is the easy stuff while ideas for new stories percolate. I hope. Still, I am working on the fifth story in my collection and it’s only day 6. I can already see I will need to print them out when I’m done and reorder them. I have a strategy for that.
A rejection sent to me last night called my prose “beautiful” but didn’t think the story amounted to enough for publication. Reading between their lines, not what they said, but “beautiful” is what they said. Beauty can be shallow. Maybe I should be aiming for “disturbing”?
I read a story this morning that was too wonderful not to share: Tracking Ghosts by Genesis Downey
Sometimes I come across something that I automatically copy and format and save as if I were still teaching. The urge was very powerful for this story, which is on the surface a hunting story my students might have loved. [Would have loved after we talked about it.] There are several students I would send it to today if we were still in touch. Especially the ones who knew the lie in “Traveling Through the Dark.” I used to teach that poem with Molly Gloss’s “The Doe.” Some of my students were from serious farming and hunting families. Downey’s story would touch them. There is an interview I copied as well, and that would make for a lengthy conversation. And then the four words in the story that are not discussed in the interview. The use of second person point of view, which in theory is a powerful distancing tool but which also brings the story close to heart. The delicate—but so brief—exploration of the ways we do not deal with death and what it means to the living, what it should mean, how we hunt for meaning. [So click on that link and read Downey’s story.]
The impulse is strong to post every day during NaNoWriMo, but since that is not usual for me, I’m afraid it would be annoying. I had some stories of my own that I was saving, but nothing important enough to remember for here, I find. I am left with NaNo and Book Fest and a story to share. Expect to hear from me in a few days. Maybe i will even have a start on “Hospitality,” the working title for something new.
At Book Fest, I talked to a lovely woman for a long time in line both to get into the venue and to have our books signed by Debra Magpie Earling. We sat together during the reading too. Then I had to rush off to meet Gary who was driving to pick me up. Right on time. I have her name, but realize I did not get any contact information. I have found her on LinkedIn, but I am not optimistic that she will find me there. In case she finds me here: Hello, Claudia Montagne! Last name like “mountain” in French, which is what she said and also Gary when I told him in the car.
DAY TWO WORD COUNT: 14,128
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 
I have never attended a book festival. Never had a burning desire to do so. Twice I have met and heard authors whom I thought quite highly of only to find they were rather boring in real life. Nor did they seem to care if I liked their work or not. I’ve realized over the years that most writers do their work in solitude with little to no interaction with others and that’s what they like. I’ve met a couple of bloggers who also left that impression with me. Then, a couple of unpublished writers who were absolutely delightful in person. It’s a conundrum.
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I’ve been to AWP three times and met impressive people each time and the national NCTE in Seattle years ago—Maxine Hong Kingston did not disappoint. She was the reason I went. On the other hand, her presenter got her first book title wrong and praised her for exactly the same approach to story that he criticized in Toni Morrison. Since I had actively disliked his first novel, I overlooked his obvious charm and judged him self-important. Saturday, in response to a question about a white woman writing the story of a historical Indian woman, Earling went off on a new film that my husband had already declared he refused to see, and for the same reasons. She is soft-spoken. Michael Cunningham read his third novel (the second one you know of) in a local NW Portland bookstore many years ago. He was as good a reader as anyone I have ever witnessed. I have seldom regretted going well out of my way to meet and hear an author. I drove students in my car to hear Maya Angelou. It was an unforgettable experience and well worth driving 180 miles over a mountain pass in the dark. Mary Karr was as funny in person as on the page. Sherman Alexie recited rather than read his stories. One of my favorite authors is private and shy and her public readings inclined to be very well planned but cool. Toi Derricot’s was the first reading that had me in tears. Most recently, my husband and I slid out of a reading by an author whose second novel failed to capture me, and whose introduction to the third was so heavy with irrelevant name-dropping neither of us could bear it. In any event, I have attended many, many readings.
As a result, when I was teaching I could tell my students details about the author’s voice and manner in person even before the internet took over the world. I had met most of the contemporary authors I taught.
I agree that we write alone, that we are basically solitary beings playing with our imaginary friends, but even in that habit, my best times as a writer, my very best times, were at The Flight of the Mind where I was in workshop in the morning, writing the rest of the day, and communing with others at meals and at evening readings. I do not pass up opportunities to hear an author.
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