Writing Update April 2024
Hello subscribers!
Here is my monthly update about my writing projects, what I’m reading, and what’s been inspiring me lately.
Returning from Retreat
When I go on trips, I plan to be a productive reader and writer. I bring at least three books I’m working through, maybe six. I bring two to five notebooks to write in. I bring my laptop.
And how much reading and writing do I actually do? Not much. I’m a chronic overpacker, a vacation optimist. I assume that the change of scenery will make me more contemplative, more inspired, more focused on my creative work, and I pack accordingly. How do I know which book or writing project I will find most engaging? Better pack it all, just in case. My luggage lives up to its name: all my potential inspiration must be lugged around. I am heavied by my hope.
Time after time, trip after trip, my imagined productivity ends up forgotten in a corner when reality shows up. In reality, I maybe open one book in the evenings. In reality, I spend very little time writing. In reality, the demands and wonders of the trip are far more fascinating than the impedimenta I brought from home.
This is even true when I hang out with a bunch of writers. I oversee the logistics of Seattle Pacific University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. For nearly two weeks last month, I was at a writing residency on Whidbey Island with 35 writing faculty, students, and staff. The demands on my time and energy are substantial—but surely, I thought, I can make progress on my reading and writing goals.
I packed an additional bag just for my books and journals. I read maybe 10 pages total. I brought journals for each of my writing projects. I didn’t touch them. I did buy several new books (for which I had no luggage room!), and excitedly read the introductions to each. I bought a new writing journal and composed one single poem in it. I stayed up late talking with people, and when I returned to my room, I was ready for sleep. During the day, I was managing logistics or shopping for more supplies or taking in the writing wisdom from the seminars.
Overall, I had book-packer’s remorse. Why did I bring so much weight with me, when I know from experience that I never read or write as much as I think I will? Maybe this is the trip that will finally teach me. Perhaps traveling light is better for me and my particular process. When I’m on vacation—even when it’s a work trip—I like to be present to the moment, to the people. Reading and writing can happen, but I should keep my expectations—and my packing—at the lighter end.
Writing Projects
Poetry
I didn’t write much on my longer fiction projects this month, but I did spend some time with my poems. I revised a few of them, including two I rewrote from scratch. I sent several out for submission at the beginning of March.
At the residency, I wrote one poem. It took me several days to write, and it ended up being longer than I expected. Every time I thought I was close to the end, it turned out to be a false finish, a doorway onto the next movement. I wrote it in the new journal I bought, a journal I have dedicated to a recent poetry project.
Normally, I write poems as occasions or ideas arise. I also have a few “series” ideas that I return to from time to time. This recent poetry “project” is a larger endeavor. I’m hoping to write 30-40 poems under its theme: the story of Phaethon.
In 2021, I started reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, retellings of Greco-Roman myths of transformation. I finished it in 2022, and was drawn to the story of Phaethon (which begins at the tail-end of book 1 and extends into book 2).
Phaethon’s mother tells him that his father is Phoebus (Apollo), the sun god. Phaethon wants proof, so he travels to Phoebus’s palace. Once there, Phoebus immediately recognizes him and claims him as his son. But Phaethon wants more proof. “Ask anything,” Phoebus says, which, of course, is always a recipe for disaster. Phaethon wants to drive his father’s chariot, pulling the sun across the sky. Phoebus tries to persuade his son to another path—any mortal who drove the sun-chariot would surely die. But Phaethon won’t be swayed. So the preparations are made, and dawn’s gates open.
Within seconds, Phaethon realizes the mistake he’s made. The horses aren’t used to such light, mortal weight in the chariot, and they go wild. Long story short, the heavens burn, the earth burns, and Jupiter (here called the “Almighty Father”) strikes Phaethon dead with his lightning. Phaethon is buried by Naiads far from his earthly home. His mother and sisters find him. In mourning, his sisters transform into trees. A friend mourns him and becomes a swan. Phoebus is so grieved that he refuses to pull the sun across the sky. The other gods beg him, Jupiter threatens him, and finally Phoebus returns to his solar task.
So much of this story reminds me of my own grief. There are many moments and lines in this epic poem that spark memories of the early days of bereavement. I’m hoping to write poems as responses to this story, but also as windows into my own story. Here are a handful of poignant lines:
“The surest proof that I’m your father is my fear for you. Look at my face! And would you could inspect my heart and learn what cares a father bears!”
“Yet these were but small griefs.”
“The darkness hems him in; he does not know where he is heading, where he is.”
“Even speech is hard for me—just opening my lips.”
“Here Earth fell silent—and in any case, she could no longer stand the savage flames, nor utter other words. And she withdrew into herself—into her deepest caves, recesses closest to the land of Shades.”
“Meanwhile his father, Phoebus, in despair, hid his own face; the world, for one full day—if we believe what ancient stories say—was left without a single ray of sun.”
“And meanwhile, Phaethon’s father, in despair, without his radiance (as he appears when he is in eclipse), detests the day and light and his own rays; the god gives way to sorrow—and to sorrow, he adds rage. He will not serve the world.”
Recent Reading
March’s Reads
Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land. An incredible diachronic, multi-story, lost-text, story-within-story novel. This is my second Doerr novel, the other being the celebrated All the Light We Cannot See. From these two novels, I can say that Doerr is a master of multiple storylines. Each character’s story is rich and intriguing, but there are at least five different main characters from whose POV we hear the story. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, every character’s story involves an ancient play (called “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” by a little-known playwright, Diogenes). The play becomes the through-line for the various characters, from the fifteenth-century fall of Constantinople to the Korean War to February 2020 to a futuristic spaceship escaping a burning Earth. For each character, one central question seems to be asked: Could a story save your life in the midst of catastrophe?
Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses. This is my first Amy Tan novel. What I love about Tan’s writing is her attention to detail. So many mundane details, anecdotes, and quirks are shown in the first three-quarters of the book. Characterization, I thought. Fleshing out the characters. And then, in the last quarter of the book, suddenly all these mundane details take on significant meaning—nothing is mundane, nothing is simply just “description” or “characterization.” Everything supports the plot, the texture, the mystery that is slowly revealed at the end. An interesting story of sisterhood and memory that takes on an almost magical feel in the final chapters.
Currently Reading
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
I am still working my way through this whale of a book. One chapter per day is my goal, but I’m a bit behind. This quote strikes me as quite hopeful—hopeless hope may be the most profound hope there is, a hope against certainty.
In vain we hailed the other boats. … Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. … So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.
Bruce Beasley, Summer Mystagogia
Bruce (and his wife, Susanne Paola Antonetta), taught at Western Washington University for a number of years (just recently retired). Even though I was a creative writing student there, I never took a class from either of them. I first met them through SPU’s MFA program as a student. Susanne was a creative non-fiction mentor, and Bruce came in to guest lecture about Emily Dickinson. They’ll be coming as guest lecturers at this summer’s residency, so I will get to see them again soon! This poetry collection from Bruce is amazing. His poems are dense and evocative (like Emily Dickinson) and he brings in scriptures, myths, and fairy tales in creative and fascinating ways. He has a number of lengthy poems, which accumulate meaning on each re-read. Here is an excerpt from the poem “Figure,” a meditation on the beginning of language and how it interacts with the real, physical world.
and in time / a lightning-cleaved birch / came to mean / not wood and wormhole and split, waterlogged bough / but a figure / for dividedness, a story / about polarity / and interdependence, twins— // enemies—whose lives converged / when they found themselves / in love with the same woman, // whose name was Death, // while the thing itself—the riven tree— / stood barely acknowledged in its woodenness.
…
But that’s what it takes / to stake our claim here. / This wouldn’t be our world / if language / didn’t violate every fullness, / make a lack / for the mind to invent // in— / woodpecker’s bug-ridden cavity in the branch— / and give us days / rich or deprived / with metaphor and myth, / a world more embrangled than the body / insists it is, // as iris and tympanum and tongue / repeat again and again / (whether or not we believe them) // their true, disfigured tales.
Mary Oliver, Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse
This is a book on poetic meter and the impact meter has on form, energy, image, etc. Here are some of her thoughts on meter and breath that I found interesting:
Metrical poetry is about: breath. Breath as an intake and a flow. Breath as a pattern. Breath as an indicator, perhaps the most vital one, of mood. Breath as our own personal tie with all the rhythms of the natural world, of which we are a part…. Breath as our first language (3).
More poems in English literature are constructed with the five-foot line than any other length of line. The work of Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, to name a few, rests upon the foundation called pentameter. The secret of its constant employment is simply that it is the line which is the closest to the breathing capacity of our lungs—we have just enough breath on one uninterrupted reach to say it through—at the end we are neither exhausted nor do we have any real amount of breath left. It fits us. Thus the message it delivers is a message of capability, aptitude, and easy fulfillment, not edginess, not indolence, but the ease of something that fits—the ease of the song that fits, that one sings calmly. Within it passion, great passion, is held in the wildfire of form (30).
Thanks for reading! Please pass this Substack along to anyone you think might be interested.
Loved Cloud Cuckoo Land, too! Hope you’re well, Nate.