Wild Words

As I pushed my Grit Chair – think bicycle wheelchair – into the yard to pull weeds from flowerbeds, I thought of what a writer can learn from nature. We have five flowerbeds, down from the ten when we bought the house. Curious about what might grow in the yard, we let a strip along the fence go wild. Poke weed, wild iris, goldenrod, thistle, chicory, aster, and bindweed persisted despite rain, heat, and neglect. I decided to be as persistent as the wild things with my writing.

Another day, I stood to weed our raised Bedford stone flower bed. Round, it is twelve feet across. At the backside of the bed that spills orange and yellow and red from zinnias, marigolds, Mexican sunflowers, other such beauties, a vine with large leaves and small balls wove beneath and around the flowers, hiding away until its size commanded attention. Watermelon. I detest watermelon but I admired its patience. A bird had likely dropped its seed into the planter on its way to eat berries in the wild strip. I thought of that patient watermelon seed and realized I needed to be patient with my writing. I needed to leave a revised story alone for days, months, even years to let time show me how to best tell it.

In the house, I retrieved a book on revision from the shelf, next to it a book on weeds that I had rescued from a discard pile at the public library. That book and its beautiful drawings demanded my attention. WILD GREEN THINGS IN THE CITY: A Book of Weeds was written and illustrated by Anne Ophelia Dowden, published in 1972 in the USA, Belgium, and Canada. She wrote about the weeds of New York City. I came to a paragraph that made me think of what we writers must do.  Consider these words from the book’s opening pages:

“What do we call them – wild flowers or weeds, a joy or a nuisance, loved or unloved? They are the orphan plants of a great city – the neglected, the trampled upon, the underprivileged. But isn’t it cheering to see a small but beautiful dandelion fighting its way to sunlight between a brick, a bottle, and a tin can in some dingy vacant lot; of a milkweed shoot breaking through an asphalt driveway by its sheer urge to be alive?”

Thinking of the patience and persistence needed to write, I revised it this way.

“What do we call them – words, a joy or a nuisance, loved or unloved? They are the orphan words for a great city – the neglected, the trampled upon, the underprivileged. But isn’t it cheering to see a small but beautiful sentence fighting its way to sunlight;  breaking through by its sheer urge to be alive?”

(Pages from Anne Ophelia Dowden’s book - her drawings )

Beyond the Boneyard: An Excerpt

Note: This excerpt began as a short story and became the opening of my novel-in-progress, Beyond the Boneyard. 

 November 1963

Two mannequins stood against the factory wall beneath a tall unadorned window that offered a glimpse of sky. Across the room, a chest with narrow drawers butted against Flora Abbott’s drafting table. French curves for drawing sleeves, busts, and waists of dresses covered much of the chest top. A beer stein with an assortment of pencils and paint brushes pressed against her transistor radio that was no bigger than a book she might borrow from the library. A mannequin’s hand, shoved beneath the door, held it open to the factory floor.

                          Steven worked at his drafting table. They created mockups of dress cards to be printed for sales ladies across the country. He sang along with music playing on her transistor and opined on hourly news reports. Flora tolerated his noise. For spring sales kits and catalogues, they illustrated knockoffs of Mrs. Kennedy’s shifts, sheaths, wiggle jackets (with pillbox hats), pencil skirts, and evening gowns. On the factory floor, women hunched over pinpoint-lit machines that buzzed and thwacked in fits and starts as they stitched seams.

                          Flora’s daily attire, black slacks with a white shirt and black sweater, white socks, black oxfords meant she wasted no time choosing an outfit or doing laundry in the basement of her fourplex among shadows as dark as those in the barn on her family’s farm. She looked to the Timex watch on her wrist. The minute hand marched toward one o’clock.

                          Twenty-eight years she had worked at the factory. When she was eighteen, she rode a Greyhound bus to Cincinnati where she began as a checker at the factory. Her boss stressed no flawed dress left the floor. A dress might slip through with a cracked button or a missing stitch in a seam. War years, when the factory switched from dresses to parachutes, she checked seams with diligence, mindful that a break in a thread could cause a soldier’s death.

                          After the war, she worked a machine on the factory floor. Lunch time she avoided small talk and gossip with other women, preferring to eat alone and sketch in her notebook. One day she left it in the break room and the floor supervisor showed the drawings to their boss. Flora received a promotion to assistant card illustrator and a few years later to card illustrator.

Tonight, she was to have a dinner date with Peter. They’d met at an art museum lecture, though a woman her age, forty-six, had no business taking up with a man eight years younger. She never spoke of him at work.

                          To capture the flow of fabric and accurate lines of a dress, she trailed her pencil along a French curve. Then Flora painted the dress to match a square of peach shantung silk she stapled to the mock-up of a sample card. A man’s voice on the radio, Britain declaring it’s no crime to be a witch, Flora had known a witch. Her mother. Then Doris Day sang her latest release, “Funny.” Then. A special bulletin. From Dallas Texas …. Three shots fired ….

                          Flora stood, Steven at her side. Another bulletin. More on the shots fired …. No casualties.  A serious injury ….. She turned up the volume. “Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a possibility …. standby on this bulletin …. President Kennedy was shot today…. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up …. One, and then another, of the sewing machines fell silent. Women crowded near her radio, their worried looks no partner to the smiling mannequin faces.

                          A late report …. The president cradled in the arms of his wife …. he is dead ….

                          None of the women spoke.

The floor supervisor threaded his way through them. “You’re dismissed for the day. Report back tomorrow, usual time.”

            As sounds of weeping crept over the factory floor, the women retrieved coats and purses from lockers on the wall. Steven lifted his hat and coat from a wall hook. At the door, he paused. “Are you okay?”

                           Nodding, Flora noticed the mannequin’s hand, kicked from beneath the door, palm up against the brick wall as though in need of a touch. Gathering her purse and car coat, she took the stairway to the street. The day warm for November, she carried her coat. Few cars passed as she walked in eerie quiet beneath trees not yet finished letting go of glorious color, the same quiet as on her last day at the farm, her mother in the kitchen at her sewing machine while, without a word, Flora carried her suitcase out the front door and down the lane.

Letters and a Barn

In the past week, two writing questions have been posed to me: one by friends and the other by a literary agent. On Monday, when I entered the private room of a restaurant, it took me two seconds to know which seat was mine–the one at the end of the table, easy for me to access because of my gimpy leg. The women sitting around the table had saved it for me. We chatted about families, jobs, trips, houses, bargains, but then a question was posed to me: How did you come up with the idea for your novel?

The question was about Her Phantom Partner, a novel that took me ten years of writing, research, and eighty-eight revisions to tell William’s story. This week I began to query literary agents, hoping to find the right fit for me and my work. As I read agents’ webpages and interviews, one question stood out: What makes you qualified to write his book?

The two question share one answer: I am qualified to write this story because the idea for it demanded I explore where it starts and where it ends up.

The idea for Her Phantom Partner began with my parents, married for nearly fifty years and separated only by death. My father left letters he wrote to my mother about his job, golf, the weather, illnesses, money problems, their children, and his father and mother. I came across a picture of my parents I had taken the year my mother died. She was sixty-eight. It was black and white. The content smile on my mother’s face and adoring look on my father’s led me to ask how a Catholic son and a preacher’s daughter, married during the Great Flood of 1937, made it through all this years.

I write to sort my thoughts and did so with their story. Soon, I was writing fiction, no longer my parents’ story but William’s story and how loyalty to one woman shaped his life.

So, why am I qualified to write this story? My father’s letters made it so. I saw in them a deep love underpinned by a persisting loyalty. His words drove me to explore loyalty as the binding element of love in Her Phantom Partner.

The idea for the next novel, in first draft, titled Beyond the Boneyard, came from a writing exercise during a workshop to write about something happening inside an old building. I had recently hiked my cousin’s farm when I came to an abandoned barn by an animal boneyard. I wrote one page about an imagined death in that barn. That nugget of a story nagged me, made me recall the foundation of an old barn in a park near my childhood home. Research led me to the fact that the park had been part of a farm taken over by the government for a World War I Army camp. Now that I had a place, I had to know who had lived and died there. An old farmhand stepped forward. I kept writing. A bastard child, a plot, a mystery about her mother, grew into chapters.

I am qualified to write both of these stories because, through writing, research, and revision, I know the places and met the people living there. I am a storyteller with more ideas to explore. The next idea of a novel comes from a play I wrote about Sir Thomas More’s child. Yes, there is a a beheading and yes, the head is stolen and hidden away.

Reappearing Act

My disappearance from my blog has been a good thing. My last entry was in January 2021. Now it is April 2022. In the between time, we all dealt with bad stuff – disruption, fear, illness, and sadly for too many death. We managed life through isolation, zoom, masks, and whatever else stuck or failed to stick to our psyches, bodies, days. I had a slight advantage. I was a West Nile Virus long hauler, my symptoms differing little from Covid long haulers, but I’ve had six years post infection to haul me and my life toward normal.

My lasting reminder is a bum leg ( I gave the same disability to William, the protagonist in HER PHANTOM PARTNER.)

The thing that saved my mind and soul was writing.

Parked at my desk, I write two to six hours nearly every day. I’ve produced a novel, am drafting a second one, finished a story collection, wrote a monologue, and a bunch of essays about my infection and recovery. Now I must do the hard work of getting published. I can’t promise when I’ll do the next blog. I am at my desk, writing, editing, and submitting. There’s a song with this line: “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.” I’m clapping.

One big part of my reappearance happened out of the blue, last month. Danny Seim created my portrait, along with portraits of 39 other people whose images, blown up to 38” x 40”, will hang in downtown windows this summer in a project called “Windows Into The Community.” We are being recognized for roles we “played in shaping and progressing our Louisville community.” I’m going to be hanging around with Thomas Merton, Anne Braden, Will Oldham, and other folks I admire. Thank you Patrick Piuma of Urban Design Studios for my reappearance. Now, you can play ‘Where’s Waldo’ in the illustration below. No prize offered for finding me or someone else you know.

August 2019: THE BOOM PROJECT: AN ANTHOLOGY

It’s here. BOOM PROJECT: VOICES OF A GENERATION. I am thrilled to have a story in the anthology. When I heard that Bonnie Omer Johnson and Kimberly Crum wanted to produce an anthology, I had to know more because they are wonderful writers, teachers, and editors. They have a love for the written word and they are kind.

Submission had to be from writers, poets, memoirists who live or have lived in the Ohio River Valley and they must have been born between 1946 and 1964. The editors asked for stories that gave “a peek into the lives of our generation through story and poetry.” I submitted Simon and the Actress and they picked it for their anthology. Yay! And, Double Yay!

It tells the story of a woman as her career fades and the care of her elderly father escalates. Sounds sad, right? Nope! In his later years, my father told stories about growing up in Louisville on Floyd Street, how he met my mother at the old Jewish Hospital, rowing a rescue boat during the 1937 Great Flood, and more. His stories always held fact, humor, and joy (sometimes a pinch of sadness). The true part of my story was the opening scene where the elderly father wanders from home on a snowy day. Yes, an LG&E man brought my Dad home. True, too, was the high-end men’s store. You’ll have to buy the book and read the story to find out about that adventure. As I wrote, I realized how important place was going to be in defining the two characters. I chose to write fiction not memoir, to show how place—the Ohio River, Beargrass Creek, Cherokee Park, and a nursing home—informed the lives of Simon and his daughter.

I believe my father would chuckle at parts of my story. I know he’d argue that ‘that’s not how it happened.’ And, I’d remind him I write fiction. My father told stories and wrote letters to us our whole lives. His words taught me the real joy of writing comes when your reader laughs, cries, or sees a little bit of herself in one of your characters. I thank him for my storyteller’s life.

To honor the vision of Kim and Bonnie, I offer this quote from BOOM’s Facebook page.

“We leave you a tradition with a future. The tender loving care of human beings will never become obsolete. People even more than things have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed and redeemed and redeemed. Your “good old days” are still ahead of you, may you have many of them.”

—-Sam Levenson, In One Era & Out the Other

A Toddler's Lesson: Sane Woman Walking

On my writing desk, I keep three photos of myself as a child of three years. I wear a cotton jumper. Twin barrettes hold then blonde hair in place. In the first photo, I give a fierce look at someone off camera. In the second photo, I sit on a tricycle, cookie in hand, eyes closed, my face a scowl, feet on pedals. In my favorite photo, I point to the sky as I look back, the shadow of the person holding the camera blending into mine on the grass. In all three I see determination.

For the past forty-two months, my body has been twisted into a pretzel and more thanks to a mosquito infecting me with West Nile Virus in October 2015, paralyzing me and destroying nerves. I’ve done three kinds of therapy—physical, occupational, aquatic—yoga, weight-lifting. and floor exercises in gyms, a studio, my living room, a motel room, and yes, in a wheelchair. With help from family, a special friend, and amazing therapists, the paralysis is gone. Nerve damage claims residency in my left leg, but I deny it permanent status.

Without my trusty walker or forearm crutches, I become a tin soldier in need of a good windup whenever I fall limply forward from the waist. On my crutches, standing tall, I move like a ballerina, on my walker a marathon runner. Pure fiction, I know.

Speaking of fiction, through it all, writing gave me sanity and a way to understand loss and love, past and future. Since the bite, I read my work at a Greenwich Village pub, lectured at my MFA program, revised my novel, and wrote or revised a dozen stories. (I have been on a few hikes - that’s another blog). I continue to meet with my two writing groups, one focused on craft, the other on new work. Writing stayed my priority. Without it, I would not be out and about, a sane woman walking.

When I look at my toddler photographs, I understand the determination on that face. I imagine I had my sights on the near impossible when I pointed to that sky. I imagine I was told no when I glared at the photographer. On my tricycle with cookie in hand, I was determined to go where my finger pointed. Now, I must bring that determination to my work—first draft, revisions, publication—just as I resolved to walk again when people told me I might not.

Yesterday was my first Wednesday in forty-two months not to exercise. Instead, I met with my writing group. We shared writing resources and markets, and then we submitted our work. The determination in that room to get work into print helped me realize that, like my toddler self, I look forward.

A New York City Story - June 2018

My trusty walker, Ms. Scarlet, met a robot in New York City. I met several kind men, including a street beggar. We were in the city for a conference and, everywhere we travel, we look for story ideas.

Many of you know a mosquito bit me 992 days ago. It gave me West Nile Virus, paralyzing much of me. My body is back except for my left leg so I use Ms. Scarlet, a Nitro Euro all-terrain walker, hot red and black. She is a siren when it comes to meeting men. We enjoy their curiosity about her and their conversations with me. In NYC our adventure began at LaGuardia Airport.

I sit curbside on her lap, waiting for our ride. A six-foot tall blue and white robot, shaped like a thick, squat bullet, moves back and forth on the pavement. He is a test robot for the security team. He comes up to Ms. Scarlet. A light in his cone-shaped head scans back and forth, back and forth. Then he rolls away. I don't know who watches us through his eyes. Ms. Scarlet and I move behind a concrete post where he can't see us. Hmm, a thriller?

TWH2018 writers gather in a bookstore. Ms. Scarlet sits in a cab with me. The driver drops us off and says the event is across the street. He fails to say five blocks away, the farthest I have walked with Ms. Scarlet. At the bookstore, we encounter a young man in the aisle on the phone, his back to us. I say excuse me. Nothing. I tap his shoulder. He glances back to me and returns to his phone. Ms. Scarlet pushes against his legs. What happens next? Ah, a mystery, an action story.

Ms. Scarlet and I check out a restaurant, amazed at how many old men bring their daughters to supper. Hmmm. We walk to the grocery where an old man using a cane flirts with us. A four-year old boy challenges Ms. Scarlet to a race in the snack aisle. He wins. The old man asks where I live. A visitor, I say. He tells me I remind him of a copywriter he worked with in advertising. Yes, a love story, a reunion in a grocery.

One night, writers gather to read their works at The Bowery Poetry Club (Awesome place!). Two women help me and Ms. Scarlet onto the stage. Ms. Scarlet loves the stage! And applause, even whistles from writers. (So do I!) After a fun evening full of talent, we take a cab to the hotel where the driver lets us out a yard from the curb. I look up to a beggar near the hotel. He takes a step toward me and stops. I understand he will help me if I need it. At the door, I turn to thank him. He is gone. Maybe, a mystery, a love story, the man, her long lost husband.

Silas House, author of SOUTHERNMOST (amazing book on shelves now), says: "Stories are a balance between mystery and information and stories must be about love." I agree. New York City gave us mystery, information, and kindness, if not love.

Novel Excerpt: BEYOND THE BONEYARD

Ben Cook, longtime farmhand on the Abbott farm, January 1964

“….that pretty girl pulled cold charcoal from the ash pan, sharpened it with a kitchen knife, and put color into old house paint to draw on slabs of flat rock and wood, making her face, Chase’s, her mama and daddy, even me. Caught the mule, too. My most liked was the one with the yellow flowering of the tobacco, the little waterfall in the creek, and the walnut trees on the up side of the boneyard. I been saving it all these years for Flora, when she come home.”

April, 18, 2018: WHERE I'M GOING...

"Where you come from is gone." - Hazel Motes in WISE BLOOD

WISE BLOOD, Flannery O'Connor's first novel, was published in 1952, the same year she was diagnosed with Lupus, a debilitating, death-bringing illness. Returning to her mother's Georgia home, Flannery set aside two hours every day to write no matter what. I borrowed her discipline after a tiny mosquito bit me in 2015, leaving me unable to walk without Miss Scarlett, my bright red walker.

West Nile attacked my spine and my brain. Speech, physical, and occupational therapists brought back most of my body. (My PT and I continue to work on my left leg, a stubborn mule of a limb.) While my body improved, my mind remained cloudy. I struggled to read and write.

One day, out of 150 days in hospitals and a nursing home, a caretaker, Brian, brought me a book. He challenged me to read it because he'd heard my worry that I would never write again. I read it in a day. I dove into other books, and then I came home. Papers, books, sketches of my characters, timelines, a coffee cup cluttered my writing room, a space caught in a time warp of who I was five months earlier when I got bit. I couldn't write. I couldn't sit at that desk.

Who I had been as a writer was gone. I had to find a new way to work. I had to learn to write again. I decided to edit the novel I had completed before the bite. My goal: cut 10,000 words. I deleted  21,568 words and the novel, HER PHANTOM PARTNER, sang.

Now my writing room holds only what's necessary to my work. I sit at a new smaller desk. I copy Flannery's discipline and write two hours (usually more) most days. I have finished a collection of 12 stories, FAMILY DIRT, and am hard at work on a new novel, BEYOND THE BONEYARD.

Miss Scarlett and I are not the stay-at-home types. We travel by car, boat, and airplane. She helps me get wherever I want to go. I sit with her to eat, cook, and play. I'm no longer quick or graceful. That part of me is gone. Writing powers where I am going -- forward! Make writing your power source: It works!

Novel Excerpt: HER PHANTOM PARTNER

William Ashley, 21-years old, in love with a mad woman – September 1936

“…the wheel and the ride held tarnish as if behind the glitter of lights and bright paint something ugly hid. If it broke apart while they were at the top, he could do nothing to stop their downward spiral. He could not save this girl beside him from a fall.”