The advantage of belonging to a writing group, aside from the obligatory writing, is the community you form inadvertently. Vietnam Veteran and Pulitzer Prize nominee Jimmy Janko says of our Veteran’s Writing Workshop, “I still have issues of fear. Fear my life won’t go deep enough. But this group is never lacking in depth. It’s like a cradle here.” Maxine Hong Kingston, our beloved mentor, who started the group over ten years ago puts it simply, “I think we now understand we are lifelong friends.” After editing our anthology, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, she scolds us tenderly—exasperated. “We are working here with eighty non-conformists. You rebelled from the military, from common life and from my editing and my deadlines. You people are conscientious objectors and deserters. I ask you to meet deadlines, you ignore me; I ask you to rewrite, you disregard me. Editing for and leading eighty individuals is like herding cats. I am a cat herder.”
Maxine weighs her thoughts carefully and speaks deliberately. “Today, I think we should get back to basic ways of being, expressing ourselves and our art. The first lesson I gave to the very first Veteran Writing Workshop ten years ago was ‘How to Write a Scene’. How we can use our lives and convert it into art. How we can understand what we have been through. Put everything into words to understand the chaos we’ve been through. Today remember or imagine how a core event in our lives played out in real life. It was full of feeling and energy and explosion that changed you. It was full of physicality, feeling, senses. Not full of thought and understanding and words—these things come later. Someone has been to battle but the words don’t come for twenty years. In the Odyssey, Odysseus tells it over and over. Write this event as a scene, one place in chronological time. No lapse of time, no change of place. Describe place with all of your senses--the smell, sound, feel, look of it. If others are in the scene, describe them. Use dialogue. The great dramatic moments come from confrontation, where people are face to face and really talk. If we can hear those voices, then it’s developed. Aristotle taught that scene has unity in time and place -- cause and effect. Everything is connected. It’s a feat to turn one big moment into consecutive moments. Don’t flash-back or flash-forward. Your book is a sequence of important scenes, then you simply connect them. That’s narrative. When we write with a theme, we end up with an essay. But when we write about an event in our life, we think about the theme later on. When we finish maybe we will understand what it’s about, what the theme is. Stop and think what core event comes to you from your past. Set it down as a scene. Stay in one setting. Use smell which is connected to memory, sight, sound, feeling, touch, pain, taste, color or lack thereof--tactile things. Feel how it was to be in your body at that moment. Things are most dramatic when you take your time. When you set your scene and slow it down, we can see the whole thing.”
Members of our Veterans Writing Group take turns leading. A week or so before our quarterly meeting, the rotating leader emails us the prompt. It is a suggestion supported by reflection on the subject, and usually includes prose or poetry that substantiates the topic. It’s a jumping-off point for our ninety minutes of silent writing. Maxine pacifies the talkers among us. “Your vow of silence allows the writer’s voice to come in. You listen to the natural quiet and put that desire for communication into the writing.” Prompts are more general than specific, more ambiguous than aphoristic and can be interpreted on many levels. Maxine claims there are only a dozen plots in literature anyway, no original stories remain. “Great drama comes from the conflicts of ethical problems. Good writing comes when one of your characters wrestles with this conflict. Write about that struggle.”
We’ve been prompted to write about something we can’t remember—the forgotten things we’ve kept locked up for our own protection. Or to write about something we’ll never forget, something that haunts us. Write a story beginning in the middle or write at the speed of walking. Write about unconditional love or unchecked anger. Write a love letter to yourself and let your story listen, then reach beyond where it began. Write about a moment when you felt joy at someone else’s success—or maybe there was only envy. Write about a subject you can’t escape because if you can’t escape it you have to turn around and face it. Go into the dark of forgotten things and invite them in. The struggle of every writer is to claim yourself as narrator of your own unspeakable stories. Storytellers will never forget the emotional memories; rather it’s the trauma you must forget so you can go on. Listen to yourself. Ask yourself, does writing change anything? Write about that. The human condition is a symphony that resonates universally, and lost illusion is the title of every work. The secret is to tell an old story in a new way in order to touch a generation of people.
Esteemed visiting leader and poet, Fred Marchant, assures us that prompts aren’t intended to confine us to a set agenda. “I’d think of this as a possible focus, but of course writing has its own imperatives and desires and they must be honored above all. If this doesn’t work, then spin it into another direction.” He brings hand-outs of work by venerated writers. Salman Rushdie speaks from experience when he says, “Literature is a loose cannon and this is a very good thing.” In a poem written two days before his death, William Stafford asks of us “Are you waiting for time to show you some better thoughts? … What can anyone give you greater than now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?”
Author, Paulene Laurent’s prompt intrigues me, “I invite you to reintroduce yourself as though you didn’t know yourself. If there were only one story in your life that you could write about today, what would it be? Look for something new to develop, a change, an element of the unknown. What story do you want to leave? A story you haven’t told before? There’s a sentence I’d like you to begin with: I have something to tell you and I will tell it to the best of my ability and with all of my heart.”
In silence we disperse. I head for the back deck to listen to the natural quiet and hope my writer’s voice will come in. My ninety minutes of hard honest writing has its own imperatives and must be honored above all. Spinning the prompt in my own direction, I get ready to write the first lovemaking scene that I as a writer and my novel’s protagonist have experienced. I stop and think of a core event from my past and take the time to slow down and set my scene. I stay in one setting, use all of my senses and feel how it was to be in my body at that moment. An English Professor from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop once critiqued my narrative by saying it lacked fluids. Excuse me? “Blood, saliva, semen—every great writer includes these elements in her narrative.” It’s a story I can’t escape, so I must turn around and face it. It leads me into an element of the unknown, a story I haven’t told before, a loose cannon.
In literature, a girl’s first sexual experience is either portrayed as painful, terrifying, and intimidating, or liberating, immaculate and wildly orgasmic. For most, the first bloom is neither a deflowering nor a blossoming, but like petals in the fold, falls somewhere in between. My character must take her ease and leisure, slow down, in order to open her heart. I write as if speaking to a beloved daughter, although I have only sons.
As the reader lives vicariously through the writing, the writer lives through her characters. Writing a lovemaking scene is somewhat like experiencing it firsthand. This can be predetermined to some extent. Certain factors must be present—qualifications met. You must have unequalled trust in and respect for your reader, and be absolutely certain you are ready. You may begin then retreat if necessary. Wait for a while until you can think of nothing else. Start again. Explore the writing piece by piece then work in layers. Use nuance, texture and metaphor. Let it build and lure you. Entice it, feel the essence of it. Savor the reader’s hunger for your story. When desire takes control let the language propel you. Let it wash over you like warm surf over sand, until you are suffused with the idea of it, until there is too much to withstand, until your point of no return. The breath quickens. Then the words will gush from within and your story will be spent.
Since I’m no longer waiting for time to show me some better thoughts, I have something to tell you and I will tell it to the best of my ability and with all of my heart.
