Tonight I must muster up the courage to face a large crowd of eager listeners at this week’s annual Voices, Places & Inspirations reading for the Hemingway Days festival. It’s my first public outing (aside from the grocery store and yoga classes) since my Cuba exhibit back in March, and needless to say, I’m a bit nervous. I’ve been so inward and quiet during this pregnancy, and to add to that, I’m suddenly having mixed feelings about the novel I’ve been working (sporadically) on for over 5 long years.
Though there is some tweaking that needs to happen before I send it off to a potential agent, the story is pretty much there. There are, however, two things that could pose a real problem for it, or rather, two things I’ve done that might not work in it’s favor. (and make me leery of reading it in public…it might turn the mood of the place a bit somber…)……
The first is that the chapters are so dang short, and jump from one time/space to another, or from one characters POV to another. I’ve got a about 60 chapters that are all of two to three pages long. Maybe it’s my ten second attention span, my ADD blown up on the page, or maybe it’s because I’m a poet at heart, but what might work on the page might not work out loud, unless you know the previous story-line to help situate the chapter. Or appreciate short chapters because you yourself have a ten second attention span.
The second possible “problem” is that it is TERRIBLY sad. I mean, really, break out the friggen’ hankies sort of sad. Last night I was reading it out loud to Rob, and every (short) chapter ended on such a down note. “Wait, wait,” I said….”here’s a funny section…” so i start reading that section about the main character sneaking off into the catholic school mop closet to get a dose of the janitor all the girls are ranting about and the damn thing ends with a reference to dirt falling on her mother’s casket. Yeah, REAL funny.
It’s close to the bone, I guess…writing about a girl’s quest to find her father, discovering her “other” family, cultural identity questions, unveling truths that no one wants to talk about, her feelings of loneliness and spiraling out, and the political turmoil throughout the small town. I suppose there is no better time than NOW to be digging deep to write these last parts that I couldn’t quite reach before. Maybe that’s why it’s taken me so long to write it- it’s hard to come to a settled place about your unsettled history and childhood until you are forced to come of age yourself. Hard to hear the ghosts that haunt you if you’re not willing to listen to everything they have to say.
Hemingway is one of those ghosts… I suspect that we’d have gotten along smashingly had a) i been alive at the time, b) was a man, and c) could hold my liquor as well as he could (or couldn’t…). Ok, ok, maybe we wouldn’t have been kindred spirits, and he’d probably would have liked me more as an the outspoken woman that i am, but we do have a few things in common: an obsession for writing, revealing the underbelly of a thing, and the great blue sea.
I hate to admit it, but I only recently read “To Have and Have Not.” I suppose that I read it while in Cuba makes up for the fact that I waited so long to read it. It takes place in the same decade that my novel does, and in Key West and Cuba, too. It was comforting to read not only because it’s a great fucking book, but because it validated a few things about my own process of writing. Hemingway is tight with his language, his diction far from fluffy (which mine needs some work on, I know, I know…), and his storyline is driven by character. And though I like to think I’m rubbing shoulders with Marquez and his ability to create “magical realism,” I could learn a lot about Hemingway’s lack of “preciousness” and his ability to keep things sentimental when necessary by just presenting the hard cold truth.
But, the overall tone of that book, too, is one of utter desperation, and when all is said and done, the good guy dies and perhaps only one left wiser is the reader.
We do have to remember that for all the frolicking Hemingway did, he also agonized endlessly over whether to use the word “and” or “the,” and despite his addiction to drink, he would sometimes sit for hours just to finish his discipline of 500 words a day before popping himself together a toddy. It’s easy to busy ourselves with the outer world, but real writing takes place when you put your ass in the chair and you muster up the courage to write what those small voices are willing to reveal to you, whether it’s joyful or utterly sad. We’re not allowed to judge the process if we’re going to be real about it. The editor can come in later and let you know what’s what.
So what, you wonder, does this have to do with pregnancy? Maybe not much. Maybe everything. I do know that writing is part of what makes me who I am, and without it, i don’t pay attention to the world as well, or to my own inner voices that are asking me to listen. I suspect my time to write will be a bit more compromised when this little being comes into the world, but I need to remember that i not only owe it to myself, but to her, to continue to put my ass in the chair and write when i can. The evolution of our souls are at stake, she tells me, as I read sections of my book out loud and she starts to wiggle within, as if listening. Finish the book, says my own soul. There is more ahead of you after you deal with this difficult but beautiful story.
finally a good storm to cool things down, rinse things off & shake things up. though i’m happy to say that Fay did not leave too much of a mark, and the clean-up will be minimal: a few fallen tree limbs (which were dead anyway from our rainless summer) and about a gazillion spanish limes in the back yard, their fruit splayed open in perfect halves when they hit the ground. their insides ripe, sticky, viscous. sort of like how i’ve been feeling these days. and definitely ready to split open…..
cricket desmarais
