And what about the work?

Maybe it is because I am not feeling well.  Maybe it is because the magic of this place is finally settling in and becoming my baseline.  Maybe it is because I am finding that rhythm I felt I had no time to find.  I dug in a little deeper today with my work.  That is to say, I starting freaking out.

I gave myself one goal while here: revise one chapter of my creative nonfiction novel.  I say "chapter" with some trepidation.  Before I left I confessed to my mentor/friend/colleague, Marilyn, that I was afraid what I thought would be one chapter of the book, was actually going to turn into one book.  If you aren't a writer you may not be able to fully grasp the gravity of this revision and thus will not be able to fully appreciate the gravity of my freak out.

Let me back up a bit.

This creative nonfiction novel was my thesis project.  It follows four generations of women on my mother's side.  Like most of my work, it is fiction based on autobiographical events.  Sometimes leaning more towards fiction.  Sometimes leaning more towards fact.  Writing in the space where fact and fiction overlap is my shit.

For various reasons, Cleofas is the "chapter" I hoped to revise while in Vermont, mainly because she is one of my favorite characters.  I can't get her story out of my head.  I hadn't read her chapter, quite honestly, in about two years.  When I did, it felt like an outline--there was so much more story to tell.

My great-grandmother, Cliofas, and her husband Jose.

So here I am.  Writing the gaps.  Feeling completely overwhelmed by the scope of her story.  I already see further revisions down the road that I can't even begin to think about now.  (I am not fully committed to the idea that Cleofas is her own book, but it is clunking around in the back of my head.)  It is historical so I find myself getting lost in research.  It is personal so I find myself texting my mother for more information and needing to do her character justice at every turn.  It is emotional so it all weighs heavy on my heart. 

Then I remind myself to breathe.  One sentence at a time, Candy. 

I'm describing my freak out to my friends over dinner.  Yet another gift of a residency: being able to discuss your artistic freakouts to people who understand and actually give a shit, who will sit and talk it out with you until you've hit some emotional core or just can't talk about it anymore.  Thankfully, mercifully, my companions are experiencing a version of the same over their own projects.  One says, "Well, as an outsider her story sounds beautiful, but I understand you have to give birth to it."  Another says, after admitting to her spouse that she too was freaking out, "My partner said, you don't know where these two weeks will lead you, how it will influence your work later.  This is just as important as the work you complete while there."

I'll go to bed tonight holding on to that last thought.

Entrance to the Maverick Writing Studios and new snow.

I’ve been fighting a damn cold since, if you can believe it, the day I left San Francisco.  Its timing was impeccable.  I managed to stave it off with homeopathic syrup and tea infused with garlic, lemon, and ginger, but it’s trying hard to take me under.  I slammed Tylenol PM last night and woke up just in time for lunch today at noon.  I considered my studio afterwards, but decided to head back to bed with a dose of DayQuil and The Best American Short Stories 2013.  I slept all day.

Last night there was a reading at the Red Mill.  Poets, creative nonfiction, and fiction writers who have been here for two weeks read from their work and it was fantastic.  So talented, their work so brave.  There were poems about love and post-partum depression, prose about a mother’s suicide, a lesbian murder mystery, and an ode to VSC.   A few readers thanked the crowd for helping them finish something they hadn’t been able to back home.  I am still contemplating if I will read next week.  Of course, I hear my own advice to our students, “Read!  It’s muscle memory.  Practice!”  I will keep you posted.  

The common area at Kowalsky House.  My painter friend, Esmerelda, and a night cap.

I sat with a wonderful group of women last night at dinner.  My original group from the airport has grown to include another poet and sculptor, one from North Carolina, the other from Pennsylvania.   Have I mentioned the food here is delicious?  I’ve already had to change my eating habits from the first few days because I was definitely coming back home with an extra ten pounds.  The fresh baked bread and hunks of cheese get me every time.  Last night they served a seafood stew with mussels, shrimp, and calamari over rice (my wife would have loved it!), made even better when the new sculptor busted out a bottle of red wine and shared it with the table.  We spoke of home ownership and the trauma of selling and buying, Dutch tulips, homeopathic remedies, Brenda Hillman and Bob Hass, and of course, always, our families and creative work. 

Everyone here has left something behind.  Jobs, school, husbands, wives, pets, children.   Many are current MFA students or recent MFA graduates.  Many are university teachers still grading papers before being able to fully commit to their Vermont experience.  The artists with families really inspire me.  They talk about balancing their artistic lives with their parental duties, about their children and spouses encouraging them to pursue their dreams, about how doing so actually makes them better parents.  I think of my friend Sara and all the other artists with children, young and old, and have so much respect for their dedication.  Couldn’t it all just slip away in the bustle of other commitments? 

Not really. 

These artists are 100% dedicated to their work and it is a magical thing to be in conversation with them, to discuss their artistic goals, to share mine, to believe that I belong here among them.  Here is another gift of being at a residency.  To understand the kind of commitment we all have to our art and the professional level to which it is (or will be) achieved blows me away.  It is this community building I imagine the people who create and support these types of environments want to encourage.  It lifts us up, makes us believe it is all possible, demands that we keep going.  

The Mason House Library

The Mason House Library where the writer's craft talk will be held on Friday.

This feels like a dream.  Last night I packed long johns, wool socks, whiskey, snowshoes, and too many books into suitcases, held back tears, and tried to still my guts that vibrated with an emotion I couldn’t exactly locate.   Everyone asks, “Are you excited yet?”  I don’t think it was excitement I felt last night, all month.  A mix of fear, disbelief, and utter gratitude gets a little closer to a definition.  Fear that I won’t be able to focus on my writing the way I see it in my minds eye; disbelief that I am deserving of this gift; utterly grateful that it is all actually happening. 

Emotional.  This is me.  Always.  Probably forever.  I wear my emotions on my sleeve, I am obvious, my raw nerves sense every brush of feeling well before I am able to articulate the why and how.  I yell, scream, curse, cry, sometimes in the same breath, because I am overjoyed, because I am mad as hell, and everything in between.  No matter what the occasion, a well placed “fuck” gives me great satisfaction and over the years I’ve come to accept, even treasure my emotional outbursts.  I can’t be so certain for those who share my company.

Still, deep down, I know writing is a way for me to channel all this and it is no surprise that I’ll first feel this Vermont experience in my body before being able to put it into words.

I spent the day with my English bulldog, Girly.  We took a walk around the Lafayette Reservoir with a good friend of ours, who inevitably asked, “Are you excited?”  Yes, of course…and scared.  "Scared of what", she asked.  Once more, a rumbling in my gut and tears.  I don’t know. 

The truth: scared that I will, that I am, actually accomplishing a dream.  I think of actors and musicians, the rare artist, who work their asses off for years and finally, totally, arrive and it is beyond anything they ever imagined and they spend the rest of their days living the cliché…doing what they love.  To have even found what I love, my passion, the thing that makes me spill over, is a gift.  I know this.  I know that people walk this earth for a lifetime and don’t find their gift or at least don’t have the courage or the support to go after it.  

For me, it is all happening.  Right now.  Yes, because of my hard work, but also something else, no?  Magic.  Timing.  Luck.  Others.

I have not arrived, but I am on my way.  Of course, I am crying as I write this so I know I am right where I need to be.