“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back — Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”
~ W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951
Murray’s passage has occasionally been maligned because he erroneously attributed the following couplet to Goethe.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!
It strikes me as a bit petty to toil in criticism in the face of useful motivation and beauty. Besides, boldness does pack plenty of power under the hood. And — whoever we credit with the seed that grew into this passage — the most important message is shoehorned into the last three words underpinning all commitment. Begin it now. What will you do?
Faust: Begin it Now
And, by the way, if you’re feeling persnickety (or just curious) here’s Goethe on the matter of dallying, boldness, commitment and action.
Enough words have been exchanged;
Now at last let me see some deeds!
While you turn compliments,
Something useful should transpire.
What use is it to speak of inspiration?
To the hesitant it never appears.
If you would be a poet,
Then take command of poetry.
You know what we require,
We want to down strong brew;
So get on with it!
What does not happen today, will not be done tomorrow,
And you should not let a day slip by,
Let resolution grasp what’s possible
and seize it boldly by the hair;
it will not get away
and it labors on, because it must.
Get caught stealing like an artist! Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) did… And it seems to be serving him rather well.
Newspaper Blackout will take you down the blackout poetry path, demonstrating the visual and literary appeal of Kleon’s quirky poems. Kleon derives poetry by crossing out most of the words in a given publication, discovering meaning in the remnants, and he’d like to show you how to do the same. (I can’t help thinking about refrigerator leftovers for some reason, but most leftover success stories involve adding/combining rather than subtracting…)
In Steal Like an Artist Kleon deploys his full quiver of mashup, remixing and doodling tricks to offer some practical wisdom about the creative process to his 19 year old self. We’ve all wished our way back in time, yearned for a redo knowing what we now know. Kleon skips the wish and gets it done.
Mary Beth Coudal is hosting a 3-day memoir writing retreat from October 25 to 28 at Skenewood, an historic Georgian manor house in Westport, New York. Participants in Coudal’s Adirondack Memoir Retreat will complete a publishable story from their lives, discover the next steps in their memoir process, and connect with a community of memoir writers to share and support their journey. (Essex on Lake Champlain)
Hats off (and a deep, balance-testing bow) to Mary Beth Coudal for organizing and hosting an inspirational long-weekend on Lake Champlain for a group of inspiring memoirists. I was fortunate to lead a pair of workshops with Coudal and to present on the importance of storytelling in the digital age. But my favorite part of the weekend was connecting with great storytellers forging new paths in this wild and wooly world of publishing. Readers, you are in for a treat once these stories are ready for you!
Coudal’s Adirondack Memoir Retreat took place in an amazing location, but I’ll let the video images speak for themselves. If you’d like a first hand experience, you can rent or buy this childhood homestead of playwright Robert Sherwood, or—with a little luck—Coudal will host another writers’ retreat before the property is sold. Stay tuned…
Although I was only able to participate in the first day and a half due to conflicts, I spoke with many of the writers on their last night and they offered glowing reviews. I wish I’d been able to attend the final reading!
virtualDavis | Category: Writing | Comments Off on The Depot Stories on August 29
George Davis will bring his storytelling skills to the Depot Stage with stories about the Depot Theatre. Part of the Depot Theatre’s “Tonight Only!” series, “The Depot Stories,” will be an evening of oral and digital storytelling about the Depot Theatre’s 33 year long history and the quirky nature of a professional theatre set in an active train station.
“Since our historic walls can’t talk, we’re going to do that for them,” Davis said. “We’ve got stories from Depot performers, audience members, staff, and even Mo, the Depot Theatre cat.”
Tickets are $15 each and can be purchased online at depottheatre.org, or by calling the box office at 962-4449. (Source: Sun Community News)
After three days back at home in the Adirondacks I’m ready to wrap up my Abiquiu series about my month apart in a remote New Mexico desert canyon. A month of writing, revising and listening. This post is a freestyle retrospective in images, sounds and words. A digital scrapbook of sorts. If you’re interested, here are the previous posts:
The video/slide show above was shot on my iPhone. Excuse the blurry images and the bumpy footage. The audio was not recorded among the Benedictines, though Gregorian chants were a part of my days at the abbey. All credit for this beautiful music goes to Medwyn Goodall, a musician and producer from Yorkshire, England.
I’m shaving and all of the sudden a bearded fellow in black robes and hood is at my bathroom window. It’s Brother Hidalgo (name changed) from Monterey, Mexico. I’d met him on my second day at the abbey when he explained that he would pass by my hermitage a couple of times each week to pick up the garbage.
So I knock on the glass and wave. He recognizes me and waves back, then flushes crimson and turns away. He returns to the trash and recycling. I look into the mirror and continue shaving. I realize that – despite the towel around my waist – I must have looked naked to Brother Hidalgo. No wonder he was embarrassed.
When the weather is warm I sit outside and watch magpies, so many magpies gathering twigs and bits of fiber hanging in the sagebrush, gathering the ingredients for a cozy nest, I surmise, though I haven’t a clue if I’m right or wrong.
According to the 1961 edition of Roger Tory Peterson‘s A Field Guide to Western Birds, Magpies, Pica pica, are “the only large black and white land birds in N. America with long wedge-shaped tails. In flight, the iridescent greenish-black tail streams behind; large white patches flash in the wings.” Long iridescent tails that vibrate in the unfiltered sunlight that intoxicated Georgia O’Keefe once upon a time. The black billed magpies natural habitat includes this high desert canyon along the shores of the Chama River in Northern New Mexico, especially the foothills, Peterson says, and “ranches, sagebrush, river thickets,…”
I’m in bed, almost asleep despite concerns on the first day when I arrived and saw the futon on a raised tatami mat floor.
That will be my bed for the month of March? Will my finicky back let me sleep on that? For almost four weeks?
But, like camping on an even thinner mat in the wilderness after a hike, I sleep restfully. Briefly, but restfully, though I usually awaken after four hours and think, How will I ever make it through the day with so little rest?
And then I do. Without yawning. Untangling then braiding my stories. Or twisting them into a rope. With knots. That I try to cut out when they become too tight to unknot. I discard the knots outside the hermitage door where they collect in a pile next to a cow patty the size of a Thanksgiving turkey which was still shiny, moist and brown-black on my first day but each day grows flatter, drier, paler and more wrinkled.
When I first arrived there were cattle wandering around the abbey grounds, especially between the Chama and the dirt road from the hermitage to the church. Sleepy eyed cows ruminating and nursing new calves among the sagebrush.
On the second or third day – when the winds were starting but before it snowed – a rancher on horseback passed through with a skinny black dog. I haven’t seen the cattle or the rancher since, but the dog comes back to visit every few days and I give him a piece of dried salmon jerky. He likes the jerky and he begs for more, but settles for a scratch behind the ears.
The pile of knots grows bigger each day. Twice buried in snow that melted within a few hours of sun-up, the knots that were too tight to unknot have been loosed by the wind, not all of them, not yet, but threads blow around the yard and hang in the sagebrush like desert tinsel. Sometimes I see one that I like, and I bring it back inside to braid or splice or just to wrap around my finger as a reminder.
A lone coyote yips then wails then barks at the base of the canyon across the Chama, a river too lazy to reflect the moon which is full and high overhead. Soon others join in. The coyotes are all around the canyon, surrounding the hermitage, yipping and wailing outside my windows, perhaps hoping for salmon jerky handouts.
In Southwestern tribal legends the coyote is often portrayed as a clever trickster. According to a Native American twist on the Prometheus myth, coyote stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans, a welcome gift that made winters more tolerable and raw food more enjoyable. Perhaps the coyotes outside my window are singing about fire. Or outwitting the gods. Or salmon jerky. Perhaps they’re untangling and braiding stories. I hope they can find something salvageable in my pile of knots or among the threads fluttering in the sagebrush.
At this liminal frontier of waking and sleeping my own story – naked, iridescent and wrinkled – emerges among the moonlit thickets. At last!
Frosty Morning in Abiquiu, New Mexico (Photo credit: Princess Stand in the Rain)
As of tomorrow I’m at the halfway point for my desert retreat in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Eleven days in; eleven days to go. That’s 12+ hours/day, six days a week editing, revising, shuffling and rewriting. In silence. Without interruptions or distractions. Without internet access. Without excuses!
It’s been a productive stretch despite the fact that my manuscript is still bloated and desperate for a liposuction/stomach staple two-for-one… But I’ve discovered the heart and soul of my story, and the next two weeks I’ll perform ruthless, unsentimental surgery, cutting away all nonessential narrative. With luck and endurance I’ll return from the desert at month’s end with a svelte memoir.
I spent the first week focusing on the most enjoyable sections, and last week I dug into the darker sections. Death, depression, failures, violations. It was a tough week. A proverbial roller coaster ride. More like a bucking bronco ride. I’m feeling whiplashed and bruised today, but licking my wounds in Santa Fe.
Each Saturday I’ve driven two hours from the Chama canyonlands to the city where I lived from 1996-9. I re-provision, de-soil my laundry and pig out on delicious New Mexican food. And after a week without telephone or internet access, I spend hours on the phone with my amazing bride. My generous, understanding bride who’s tolerating my time at the hermitage. I offer my deepest gratitude to this woman who transformed my world over a decade ago, the woman who’s allowing me to share our sometimes beautiful, sometimes disturbing and always intimate story.
Thanks also to the Benedictines for use of their handsome hermitage and to my colleagues at The Depot Theatre and Champlain Area Trails for letting me vanish for sooooo long. The last couple of weeks have reminded how much I love Scrivener, so thanks to the good folks at Literature and Latte for simplifying my work on Rosslyn Redux. And thanks to all of you who’ve encouraged and pushed me. Now it’s time to jump in my jalopy and head back to the desert for another productive week. Cheers!
Hats off to Patrick Ross (@PatrickRwrites) who’s blog The Artist’s Road chronicles his open road quest to live an art-committed life. His AWP post on immersion writing struck home note only because it reported on a panel I was sorry to miss on the final day of AWP Chicago (too many compelling, concurrently scheduled panels!), but because he reflected on a couple of familiar memoir writing/revising challenges.
I attended a Friday morning AWP panel titled “The Writer in the World: A Look at Immersion Writing.” As a sports fan I grew up admiring George Plimpton, who immersed himself so deeply in his writing that he even got to be a “quarterback” for the Detroit Lions. But as explained by Robin Hemley–a multi-published author and director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa–immersion writing should be viewed more holistically, incorporating “Memoir, Journalism, and Travel.” (OK, I cheated there; that’s the subtitle of his book A Field Guide for Immersion Writing.) ~ Patrick Ross in The Artist’s Road
Ross shared Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s story about being asked by editors to include more personal personal details in her first book. Include more of yourself, they told her. She did. And she promptly received two offers!
Ross apparently received similar advice for his memoir, and the overwhelming feedback I received from agents during the 2011 Writer’s Digest Conference was similar. I was pitching Rosslyn Redux as an Adirondack counterpoint to A Year in Provence or Under the Tuscan Sun. The memoir had already evolved dramatically since inception as a book about green renovation and historic rehabilitation. As the chapters collected and the page count rocketed to catch up with the national debt, I was drawn more and more to the social and historic narratives connected with the house. “But what’s your personal experience?” I was asked again and again.
Ross also sharedJoe Mackal’s (author of Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish and editor of River Teeth) advice to let interviewees read what you’ve written before publishing your work. Their feedback and perspective is valuable even if you ultimately decide what to cull and what to keep.
This advice was echoed in several memoir-focused panels I attended, but the reason was slightly different. By sharing your manuscript before publication, those represented are less likely to object, and the author has the opportunity to discuss and convince. If they only read the final, published work they stand a greater chance of being offended and angry. Unless your portrayal flatters the pants off of them!
Ready for a reentry rumination? After nine sublime days in the Caribbean, I’m swapping swim trunks and sunscreen for conference kit and desert camo. Here’s a sneak peak at the exciting adventure behind and ahead.
West Indies
Each winter I join my bride and in-laws for a pilgrimage to warmer climes, gentler rhythms and an extended opportunity to catch up. This year we escaped to Curtain Bluff, an intimate resort in Antigua that felt familiar from the moment we arrived. In fact, we were so smitten with the welcoming staff, the gracious guests, the understated decadence and the endless-but-effortless opportunities for recreation that we unanimously voted to return next year, locking in our reservations before departing yesterday afternoon.
The character of Curtain Bluff is truly unique among luxury Caribbean resorts. Its boutique scale and dramatic real estate (two magnificent beaches divided by an elevated promontory permitting accommodations and spa sensational ocean views) provide two important ingredients for their magic formula, but by far the most critical is the people. Simply put, the staff and guests at Curtain Bluff create the most compelling marriage of any resort I’ve ever known in the Caribbean.
It’s not a stretch to talk about Curtain Bluff as a “family”, and not just in the varnished, Technicolor brochure way either. I made new friends virtually every day, friends who work at Curtain Bluff and friends who vacation at Curtain Bluff, friends who have already been in touch and with whom I’ll keep in touch, friends who I look forward to seeing again. Fortunately we’ll see many of them again next winter on vacation. And some we’ll see even sooner. Two different members of the staff have already made arrangements to visit us in the Adirondacks this summer! Watch e-Marginalia for a more contemplative reflection soon…
Windy City
After trickle charging my batteries in Antigua, it’s now time to sharpen my pencil and get back to write write writing. To jump start my creative editing and revising juices I’m heading off to Chicago for The Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference which takes place from February 29 to March 3 and which boasted over 9,000 attendees last year. I’m hoping for a slightly tidier affair this year as it is my first AWP foray, but even if the ranks are once again swollen I am encouraged by the insights of friend and fellow scrivener Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson):
However Borgia-like academic politics in general can become at times, the AWP universe is genteel, tame, even sleepy by comparison to the sharp-edged high-stakes market-banging battles being waged right now between bricks-and-mortar bookstores and the rise of the biggest digital retailer-publisher in history; between traditional publishing and digitally enabled self-publishing; even between centuries-old paper media for reading and the burgeoning popularity of e-readers and tablets.(We Grow Media)
I’ve been honored with an opportunity to sequester myself for a month at the Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert, originally architected by another George, George Nakashima, the Japanese-American woodworker who inspires my brother’s furniture making creativity between diplomatic postings. Tucked into the rugged canyon lands that enchanted Georgia O’Keefe, surrounded by high desert wilderness in all directions, along the banks of the Chama River, in the company of web-savvy, self sustaining, solar power harvesting, beer brewing monks, I will dedicate myself to revising and editing Rosslyn Redux. One month of quiet. Of solitude. Of focus. I can’t wait!
Thanks for your patience during my Curtain Bluff hiatus. More of the same in March, I’m afraid, but I’ve scheduled some interesting posts to appear during my cenobitic Southwestern sojourn. Although I won’t have web access during the week, I’ll venture in to Santa Fe for a few hours each weekend for provisions, I-miss-you-telephone-calls to my bride, and a short wifi fix.
Take a skinny dip in the data stream from the last day of the Writer’s Digest Conference 2012 (WDC12). After the intensity of the last two inspiring days, most attendees are simultaneously exhausted and sad to go. The energy, connections, and cross pollination at WDC is infectious, so saying good bye to new and old friends is tough. Back to the garret! But with a band of new co-conspirators. Read the rest of this entry »
That image above is one of the “picture poems” I included in 40×41: Midlife Crisis Postponed and it combines contour drawings that I made in 1994 during my final year in college with abstractions from photographs that I took in Peru in 2011. I’ve previously posted elements of “Contours & Artifacts” in Choice (June 4, 2012) and Wonder (December […]
