Writing for Good

By Susan

I'm writing this, a bit road-weary, from a roadside Starbucks somewhere near Knoxville, Tennessee, still absorbing the connections, serendipity, and friendships of my past week of travel.

Beautiful writing day at the Carnegie Center 

This trip brought me back to people I've welcomed into my life over the past two years of writing full-time: a Trappist monk, the staff and crew of a small non-profit, writing friends from conferences and workshops, authors and teachers I've been lucky to meet, and--as always--my family. I marvel at the life I'm creating by staying true and focused to my passion for writing and my purpose-driven quest to promote literacy around the world. It all converges, and the past few weeks encapsulate how my past two years of writing, seeking, and connecting people are all beginning to come together.
   
I started at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference in Lexington, Kentucky, and participated in a fiction workshop for two days with George Ella Lyon, a gifted and beautiful Kentucky writer I met over a year ago through the Appalachian Writers Workshop. I reconnected with other Kentucky writers--friends who are starting their own presses, editing anthologies, completing novels, and leading panels. Friends who are connecting with other writers to say new things and encourage each other. After two days, I left refreshed and inspired enough to complete a short story and a poem. Surrounding myself with literary energy, I've discovered, pushes me along my own path, right when I need it.

From there I took a day to revisit the Abbey of Gethsemani. This visit was different from my prior stays: I loaded twenty boxes of books to donate to the International Book Project, who will ship them to a sister abbey in Nigeria that lost its theology library to a fire. Many of you may know about IBP and the work that they do to supply books around the world (and BIG THANKS to those of you who've donated to make this project happen!). The same day I delivered the books for the Nigerian library, I received word from Kumasi, Ghana, that the second library I'd collected and shipped had finally arrived in the hands of the kids of Touch A Life Foundation. It was a full circle moment: planning and shipping a thousand books while the last shipment of books arrived at their new home. There's nothing much sweeter than that feeling!

Today, I stopped in Richmond, Kentucky, to visit a friend who has an incredible young adult manuscript he's ready to launch into the world, and we spent almost three hours talking about writing, partnerships, books, and the future. How can we all keep writing, writing for good? And I thought about where I was two years ago: out of work, stepping off a cliff toward an artistic life, jumping into my passion with both feet. I had no idea I'd hang out with monks and ship books around the world. I didn't know my workshops and conferences would connect me with some of my favorite writers and expose me to so many new ones. And I didn't know my life would be so much richer because of the new friends, partnerships, and people who are slowly becoming my ever-expanding writer's circle.

I didn't know until I stepped out of my regular life that this whole other world was waiting for me--one full of writers and people wanting to change the world with words. So tonight, here in the cool mountains of east Tennessee, I'm thankful. Thankful that I'm a writer, for good.

Author Event: Let there be cake balls and scones

by Joan

Julie Kibler on Calling Me Home

I love book signings. I love meeting the authors of my favorite books, hearing the stories behind the stories and, yes, dreaming of a time when the one at the podium might be me. 

Long before our own Julie Kibler’s book came out I told her I wanted to host a signing at my house. Though I’ve only been in Dallas for eight years, I’ve made pockets of friends here and there and wanted to get a chance to spread the word about Calling Me Home. Plus I love to entertain, especially when there will be sugar involved.

Dallas friends at the Mora's house

We had a nice turnout, great conversation and just the right amount of books. Julie told the rapt group about the seeds of the story, her grandmother’s doomed relationship with a black man in a sundown town, and about her journey to publication.

Pamela's scrumptious cake balls

Pamela made gorgeous cake balls, Elizabeth made decadent scones and clotted cream, and my husband graciously agreed to shoot the photos.

As writers, we gravitate to book events. In fact, over the next month, at least 3 or more of us are going to see Cheryl Strayed, Elizabeth Strout and George Saunders at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Over the past several years, several of us have seen KathrynStockett, Vanessa Diffenbaugh, Chris Cleave, John Irving and Jamie Ford to name a few.

Thanks, Julie, for treating my friends to a great day!

Tell us about your favorite author events. 

photo credits, Rick Mora

The Writing Muscle

By Susan

I’ve written here before about my equation between exercise and writing. If my body is stronger, so are my words. Over the years, I’ve found my physical health though yoga, weight lifting, and running bleachers during hot and bright Texas sunsets. When I work my physical muscles, it strengthens my writing muscles as well. Exercise, it seems, has always fed my spirit.

This week, I’ve been hiking.  I’m at the Abbey of Gethsemani, and have been for the past four days.  I’ve completed two strenuous hikes per day and capped off my evenings with yoga. I’ve spent my time in solitude and silence among monks and priests, and I’ve done some deep soul-work concerning my novel and my life. I’m probably in better spiritual health than I have ever been.

On Saturday, I spent several hours in the Monk’s Garden under a 100-year-old Gingko tree with Brother Paul Quenon, a 50-year monk here at the abbey who was a novice under Thomas Merton.  He’s a monk first, but is also a poet and widely-acclaimed writer who loves to talk about words and philosophy and his favorite writers. He gave me some great advice and insight into my plans for my novel, and he left me a copy of his last published article, “In Praise of the Useless Life,” (Parabola, Winter 2011-2012).

I thought about his fifty years as a monk, and the spiritual muscles this man must have. I surmised that his life of contemplation and spiritual weightlifting flow through to his writing, and I realized that all of us have a wellspring of something that fuels our creativity. Sometimes it is the physical, sometimes spiritual.

Regardless, creativity is work. Divine work, perhaps, but work nonetheless. And I must admit that as much as I have written this week, the greater work I have done has been regarding fueling that wellspring. It connects writers, I believe, this tap into creativity, whatever we choose to call it. Lately I've been regarding and recognizing it as the Divine--elusive but ever-present. I show up to do the work. Sometimes I capture the perfect essence of what I am seeking and sometimes I don't. It's the showing up, and the recognition, that both separate and connect us.

That's why contemplation is so critical to our work as artists. Whether you take the time to find your wellspring in a long walk, in quiet time, or in a retreat, refueling the spirit can only help with getting those works on paper. Whatever your tradition, I salute you, fellow writers: Namaste, Shalom, and God Bless. Keep refueling the wellspring. Keep writing.

Bourbon, Monks, and Guns

By Susan

I always love it when writers talk about the research, or lack of research, that they do for a novel.
I’m what I will call-- for the sake of this blog post--an “In-Betweener.” I don’t write historical fiction that requires immersion into a time period. Nor do I write contemporary dramas with little to no background.
My current manuscript, The Angels’ Share, covers three generations and is a mesh of backdrops that require facts and accurate timelines but also leave room for the story. The interesting thing is that my characters have minds of their own. One owns a bourbon distillery. One is a monk. One is a negro girl in 1950 in Kentucky. And one is a modern-day civil rights professor who investigates the mysteries of the past. Whether I wanted to or not, this manuscript required some research.

Where is the sweet spot in research? For me, it’s a combination of reading, going and doing. Here’s my process for keeping it fun.

Step One: Find Some Bourbon

I started with the bourbon because frankly, it was the simplest. The Kentucky Bourbon Trail is a breathtaking drive, full of horse farms and tobacco fields and the rolling hills that are home to me--a home I left twelve years ago. When I returned as a researcher, I saw the entire painting with fresh eyes and a new perspective.
The Bourbon Trail is a marketing creation to drive tourism for Kentucky--and as a marketing gal myself, I see this clearly. Yet having grown up in the Bluegrass State, I know the good stuff when I see it. With nice brochures, beautiful photos, and a promise of booze, Kentucky cleanly packaged the desire in me (and thousands of others) to visit bourbon distilleries. And so I started in 2006 visiting them all: Maker’s Mark, Heaven Hill, Four Roses, Wild Turkey and Woodford Reserve. By 2009 I’d been to all of them except Jim Beam, the granddaddy. I’m saving that one for my July 2011 trip—and will make the long drive from Texas, my current home, to Kentucky, with a smile on my face.

Step Two: Visit Some Monks

In July 2009, a long-time friend agreed to join me at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a monastery in the middle of Kentucky (and the middle of the Bourbon Trail) that houses Trappist monks. We’d considered a writing retreat and staying for a few days. Yet after 15 minutes of silence, we realized that the strict requirements of the monastery were not for us--we had too much talking to do!

Yet we were both struck (and struck is the only word I can use here) by the simplistic austerity of the monastery. It was magnificent, yet stripped. It was silent, yet spoke volumes. The monks were pleasant, yet detached. (What use did they have for mere mortals, when they had a direct line to God?) By visiting Gethsemani, I saw what it truly meant to be a monk. And I couldn’t have written about that without seeing it.

Step Three: Shoot Something

I’m a pacifist. I like peace and love and hippies. Yet when a character in The Angels’ Share reached for a pistol, I knew that I had to know more than “she reached for the gun. She shot it.”

I called on my good friend Mr. Martin, one of my Texas buddies who just so happened to be traveling from Houston to Dallas with a 9mm, a 45, and a revolver on his person. (I know, right? Only in Texas.) Could he meet me at the gun range at 5:30 p.m., I asked, in Dallas? Of course, he answered. He’s leaving for a South African safari in ten days, he said, and he needs the practice too.

And so tonight, I shot a gun. I shot the 9mm and the 45--the revolver, he told me, was "a little out of my league." And now I know what it feels like to see sparks flying off your 45. I know that a 9mm shoots straighter if you don’t close your eyes when you squeeze the trigger. And I know that even though I am stronger than I thought I was, a gun is by far louder and more powerful than it ever looked on television.

Fiction, no matter what anyone says, is a little nugget of truth wrapped up in narrative, a trigger that begins as something very real and then transforms into something else—something completely created. When you need to back up your literature with solid facts, you’ve got to find your starting point, retrace your steps, and base your fiction in fact.

For me, I’ve gotta go there, feel that, or do this. That’s my research, in a nutshell. But it’s also my life. I’m not a writer who sits at home and thinks. That’s why I shot guns tonight. Not because I want to kill something, not because I’m a right-leaning conservative (because I’m not). But because I live my life and I love my life. Don’t you?