In the last week: band-tailed pigeons and Eurasian doves, Steller’s jays and a single scrub jay, robins and goldfinches, red-wing blackbirds, song sparrows, hummingbirds, crows and ravens, bald eagles, red-tailed hawk, black oystercatchers, gulls, whimbrels, Canada geese and brown pelicans, and a mixed flock of semi-palmated plovers and dunlins (this latter with distinct dark bellies—I wish I’d had my camera). Gary calls the black birds with bright eyes “cowbirds”, but I wonder if they are the same as a bird called a Brewer’s blackbird? They are new in our neighborhood.
The other day I watched three pairs of Canada geese herding 15 goslings across tidal flats fifteen miles south of my home. One pair had 8 babies, one pair had 4, and one pair had 3, and the tender care of both parents was genuinely touching. I was at the dentist having my teeth cleaned, but everyone stopped what they were doing to admire the three families.
There is a story there.
At least twenty years ago, my writing partner Rebecca Olson noted that my stories always had birds in them. I had not noticed. It is my husband who loves birds. As a result, I think about birds more than I would otherwise.
That impulse to focus on birds has resulted in stories. I imagined children falling asleep and becoming owls; then the owls fall asleep and slip back into being children. My story “If It Were True Owls Dream” was accepted for publication by Liminal Stories and will be available online in July. The first day I sent it out was to Shimmer and the editor E. Catherine Tobler rejected it but urged me to send it to Liminal. I owe her for that excellent advice.
Most recently, I began a science fiction story wherein I imagined all the birds in the world dying. I originally meant it to be a short story, but the early draft grew longer and longer and more and more complex. I have drafts that are nearly 20,000 words long. This fell into three parts, one in the near future, one hundreds of years later, and a third part even further into the future. Then I worked just on the first section, which was also the longest at nearly 10k. A friend urged me to cut most of it, which I did.
I had the idea of the vanished birds, but also other ideas about veganism and overpopulation. Then it became a story of about 6,000 words that began working as a story. It was not done, of course. Not in four drafts or ten, since I have only been working on it for a few months, but still. It is science fiction and it is about birds . . . and mostly about life on Earth.
I carved back that shorter story and carved back some more. It is less than five thousand words now and maybe it works. Probably it lags in the middle because my stories often lag in the middle, and there is not enough action—there is never enough plot in my stories.
There are usually birds.
I want another story, and I have one, but it is not quite figured out. “On Cherry Street” is about a young woman returning to the house where her mother died. She is very much aware that crows are watching. Birds again. I still don’t know what it is trying to be. Is it a horror story? I’ve not explored horror. Is it magic realism? This story is about four thousand words and I am not even sure what it is about.
Back to thinking. Back to visualizing.
When I create a story, as when I create anything, I need a solid visual. This is true when I am piecing a quilt or, just recently, designing a program cover for an event. Most often what I am creating must be complete in my mind before I actually make it. Even the weaving where I deliberately provoke randomness and choose yarns that vary in color, I have a vision. When I was painting, I would spend far more time imagining what I wanted to create than actually painting it. The stories are harder as I build them up and tear them back down on the page.
Creative work is like that. How and what we create must be first born in the imagination. Only when that vision has grown can the work be realized for others to see. Sometimes the ideas come home to roost.
There is always the danger they will simply fly away.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 