"Do Not Hurry; Do Not Rest"

I've been learning about two things. One is "verticality;" the other, its kinsman, is pace. This has to do not only with writing but with life.

What is verticality? It's a concept that emphasizes depth rather than breadth (horizontality.) In other words, one's writing reflects a more inward, up and downward flow, than expansive, back and forth, if I'm saying it right. Annie Dillard says it best in her essay on "How to Fashion a Text:"

"The interior life is in constant vertical motion; consciousness runs up and down the scales every hour like a slide trombone. It dreams down below; it notices up above; and it notices itself, too and its own alertness. Te vertical motion of consciousness, from the inside to the outside and back, interests me."

A life lived mindfully and "vertically," may I even say "spiritually," will be interesting, if nothing else.

I've always been more of a rabbit than a tortoise - given to great bursts of energy, only to break down and be out of the race for a while. Is it too late to teach an old dog new tricks? I hope not.

Which brings me to my second lesson: pacing. The great philosopher/poet Johann Goethe once wrote: "Do not hurry, do not rest." If one is going for the deep sea diving of verticality, pacing is everything. "Do not hurry. Do not rest." It saves energy and spends it wisely.

So I'm trying this on in life, as well as on the page. Yesterday, as I walked through the halls of the prison where I work, I was conscious of these two things. Slow down. Dive deep. Oh yes, and breathe.

When the Student is Ready

My prayer has been answered. I've been wandering around in the dark for so long, I've grown accustomed to it - writing-wise, I mean. I haven't known what I was doing wrong or even doing right. I was just doing what felt right to me. And that doesn't good writing always make.

So, I've finally found a guide - two guides really - two mentors to show me what's what in my writing, to separate the trees from the forest and help me "find my way" out of the thicket of my own voice. I've just completed my first week of residency in my low-residency MFA program at Western CT State University. It was incredible - meeting new, young, up-and-coming writers and old, seasoned, been-there-still-doing-it writers. I attended workshops and lectures, presentations and one-on-one sessions.

If you're an aspiring writer and all you want, what you ache to do, is write, then I HIGHLY recommend this program. The faculty are down-to-earth and very generous. They are working writers, not academicians. There is very little ego there - just writers writing and wanting to help and mentor other writers. I feel like I stumbled on my Brigadoon.

Okay, slow down, enthusiastic former cultist! I still have to do the work but so far, both Don J. Snyder and Danial Asa Rose, successful and award-winning writers, have e-mailed me responses to my writing within one day of finishing the residency. If this is any indication of what the semester is going to be like, I'd better hold onto my hat. Still, I know I need to pace myself for the marathon ahead of me. This is not a sprint even though I feel like a Thoroughbred sprung out of the box. At last I have two trainers.

"When the student is ready, the teacher arrives" as the old saying goes. Last September, long before I considered entering this program, I made the following entry in my journal:

"I think I need to be shown how to write the next chapters of my life - that I need a blueprint for the journey - two experts who will guide me."

Don't ask me why I said "two experts" but I guess dreamed them into being. This, too, is grace. An answer to prayer. Thank you, God.

What They've Got That I Haven't Got

Well, I'm starting to get really excited. The wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-you can't-sleep-so-you-write-in-your-blog kind of excited. A lifetime dream is about to come true. It's not the horse in the backyard that I've always wished for or that trip to Venice we had planned for this February. We had to cancel that so I could pursue this. I'm about to embark on an MFA program in professional writing.

Now what on earth is that, one might ask? And why would that be a dream of a lifetime? Simple. It's what I was always discouraged to do. And here, at the ripe old age of 52, I'm still rebelling against my writer parents. They were against education in the arts. "You either have talent or you don't and if you have it, you use it."

To them, one didn't waste time in graduate school learning to do something you already know how to do. They were old school, boxcar-riding, depression babies. They neither had the money or the time to indulge in MFA programs. (Actually, they weren't hobos riding in boxcars but I thought that sounded good.)

So now that they've both left this world and moved onto that great graduate program in the sky, I've found the courage to pursue this dream of my lifetime - to become a fulltime writer. They were fulltime writers and strongly discouraged me from following in their footsteps. Like good parents, they were trying to spare their child from a life of misery. And like a child who wants what she can't have, I've held onto this dream with a vengeance.

It's not that I don't like working in the prison and being a social worker. I've managed to write a book, a few books actually, while doing so. And articles and poems and screenplays. So, what's the big draw to the MFA? "What have they got that I haven't got?"

In the "Wizard of Oz", when the wizard is distributing the rewards, he prefaces each speech to the four seekers with "but they have one thing you haven't got." To the scarecrow, he says it's a diploma. I suppose I'm looking for the diploma, the piece of paper which will allow me to eventually write for a living from home, perhaps teach, and graduate from the prison. But it's more than that.

Someone once said that MFA programs don't teach you how to write but they provide courage. In that respect, I'm more like the lion than the scarecrow. It's not the brain I need, not the diploma but fortitude. That's the one thing I didn't get from my parents - an alcoholic father and an unhappy mother. Perhaps that's the one thing they couldn't give.

In the end, I suppose courage is the one thing I can only give myself - permission to act in the face of fear. But let's be honest, that little ticket stub called a diploma won't hurt either. It stands out on a resume and says "she can write" or at least "she can fulfill the requirements of a degree program." In the end, my parents will probably prove to be right. Nothing takes the place of action. And for now, this MFA is the action I'm taking.