4.9 things writing teaches: a guest post by Don Rearden

Don Rearden grew up on the tundra of Southwest Alaska, and once slept next to a seal. His debut novel The Raven's Gift will be flying off Canadian shelves in 2011.

1. Be passionate. Write because you love stories, characters, images, words. Don’t write for others, and don’t write with dreams of big checks and star treatment. Write because you love surprises and because you relish the euphoria of unleashing your creativity.

2. Write. Words, words, words – unfortunately they don’t write themselves. What distinguishes real writers from dreamers is that writers are constantly capturing their dreams on paper while the dreamers spend their time dreaming and talking about what they are “working” on. If you really are a writer, get writing.

3. Find a mentor. Writing is a solitary and often lonely prospect. Find readers you trust, but seek out writers you respect and learn from them.

4. Be a mentor. Use your skills as a writer and reader and share them with young writers. They will learn from you, and if you’re a good mentor, you’ll learn just as much from them.

4.9 Alaska. Show me a better muse. In terms of states, we are fortunate. She is rich in history, culture, wildlife, geography, and characters. Be a student of the 49th state, learn from Alaska, eat, sleep, and breathe this amazing place --- get out in the weather, meet the people, and listen to the land.

Deb: 49 Writers weekly round-up

Much of Alaska is bathed in sunshine, and we're feeling sunny as well at 49 Writers, basking in the sense of community you all have created at our new 49 Alaska Writing Center.  If you're still spring cleaning, we'd be happy to take a few lovingly used DVDs and board games off your hands for our guesthouse.  Drop them off on the porch on June 16.

The Alaska Writers Guild is hosting a 2010 Alaska Writers Conference September 10-12. Nationally recognized authors, agents, editors, publishers will offer tips on becoming a better writer and reaching your writing goals. They will be discussing query letters, promoting your book, the hook on the first page, dialogue, the way of story, and much more.  There will be lectures, interactive workshops, seminars, manuscript reviews, and good one-on-one conversations with professionals who work in the book business. Visit the AWG website for the latest information:  http://www.alaskawritersguild.com/. The Early Bird Discount ends May 30.

Select University of Alaska Press titles are now available electronically.  Visit http://extension.uaf.edu/uapress/ to browse by title or author and select "Buy This Book" for pricing options.

That's it:  we'll let you off easy as the holiday weekend beckons.  Thanks again to our amazining volunteers and donors, and look soon for information about our Sept. 3-5 retreat at Tutka Bay, with registration opening first to our members.

We Did It! 49@Raven Place opening a smash hit!

We did it. And by "we" I mean ALL of us: friends of 49 writers, volunteers, members of the new 49 Alaska Writing Center, broader members of the Alaska writing and reading community. From Ketchikan to Barrow, we came together this year and propelled our vision from its virtual origins into a physical reality, anchored at 415 L Street in Anchorage -- "Raven Place" -- with plans to reach far across the state.

Last Saturday, we put away the paint cans and enjoyed Raven Place as an author event space for the first time. Deb explained how we grew from a collaborative blog into a nonprofit lit org with plans for workshops beginning this fall, a September retreat at Tutka Bay Lodge, and more. Heather Lende cut the yellow ribbon on our porch and moved us with readings from her new book, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs. Volunteers were 'honored' (if a toilet seat, or paintbrush with googly eyes, can be considered an honor) for the amazing work they did in the last three weeks, transforming our space into beautiful shape. Writers and readers mixed on the sunny porch and in the renovated kitchen, enjoying appetizers and conversation.

There were many announcements to be made Saturday, including these biggies:

By event time, we had raised $10,009 in individual contributions, far surpassing our first May fundraising goal of $2000. Contributions ranged from $30 to $5000. We appreciate them all, and given the significant cost of renovating our space and launching the writing center (with expenses ranging from business licenses to website development) we are putting every contribution to excellent and immediate use. The fundraising campaign continues. Thank you to every one of you who sent in your contribution. We'll be listing those names in our next email newsletter.

We're on track to reach our first membership recruitment goal in record time. You don't have to be a member to enjoy our writing center events or upcoming classes, but membership does have benefits and supports our mission.

Raven's Brew Coffee has offered to be our writing center's official coffee sponsor -- with promises to keep us caffeinated at all our major events. They also charmed us with our own collection of raven-decorated ceramic mugs and travel mugs, in time for Heather Lende's reading. Raven's Brew coffee at Raven Place -- is there anything cooler than that?

We also have a new logo, and a website under construction. We'll share a glimpse of those on another day.

For now, we're trying to take just enough of a breath to bask in what we accomplished last Saturday. No one who knows me will be surprised that I got just a tiny bit choked up looking at the crowd that gathered for this first opening event: friends and colleagues, writers and editors I've known for over a decade, plus writers and readers and neighbors I met for the first time on Saturday. But why not get choked up? A writing center isn't born every day. Here's to watching it grow and blossom in the months and years to come.

A few more photos from the May 22 Heather Lende fundraiser!

Jen, our Green Thumb volunteer, reacting to her lovely pipecleaner flower award.

Deb, co-founder of the 49 Alaska Writing Center, tells us how we arrived at this day. Whew!

Special guest Heather Lende signs a book for volunteer event leader Paula. Note the mug in foreground -- Raven's Brew is sponsor of the Heather Lende book tour AND the 49 Alaska Writing Center!

Sonya poses with her "Mr. Threshold" volunteer award. But where are poor Mr. Threshold's wirerim eyeglasses?

Buckling Down: A Guest Post by Miranda Weiss

The other day, a street sign I’m sure I’ve read dozens of times before stopped me in my tracks: “Buckle up. Somebody needs you!”

I was on one of my now-frequent multi-tasking hikes across Homer: pushing my five-month-old daughter in her SUV-style jogging stroller (complete with shocks, oversized pneumatic tires, storm cover, and cargo hold), throwing a tennis ball using a long plastic wand to the blue heeler, catching a spring warbler or two through a pair of binoculars strung around my neck, and maybe, I’ll admit, trying to carry on a cell phone conversation with a friend or family member in another time zone.

“Buckle up. Somebody needs you.” The sign felt too true. Since the birth of my daughter over the winter, I’ve gotten daily lessons in being needed. And it feels wonderful. She is the sun I orbit, and I am her, um, milky way. It is my face she sees right before she falls asleep at night and mine she sees when she first wakes up. I get the first smiles of the day. My daughter and I are almost always together, our bodies in contact. It’s not that my husband is absent—far from it—but my newly-full breasts are a constant reminder that I am her umbilical cord of survival.

The more my daughter needs me, of course, the harder it is to go about getting back to my writing. And in contrast to what is a chemical, animal hunger my baby and I have for each other, my writing feels so…unnecessary. No one is going to cry or starve or lie helpless in her own filth if I don’t write a second book.

Still, around the time my baby was two months old, I forced myself back into my study. For short stints during naps, I sat in front of the computer trying to string a few unimportant sentences together, all the while my ears hyper-alert for any noise coming out of the baby monitor.

Now that the paperback of Tide, Feather, Snow is coming out, I’m reflecting on why I write. Nobody needs my work. It doesn’t pay my agent’s mortgage, and has long since stopped paying mine. There are those brief moments of ecstasy from writing—like during my book tour last spring when a radio interviewer in Seattle had selected passages for me to read, the same passages in the book that I love. Or when, from time to time, someone will ask whether I have another book coming out, hoping that I do. But these episodes are so few and far between, if I relied on them to fuel my work, I’d quickly grind to a stop, becoming like one of those cars you see pushed off to the side of the road, tires flattened from being abandoned, grass growing up all around.

There are writers out there, I’m sure, who need no one to help convince them of the necessity to keep going in their work. But I’m not one of them.

I rely on a patchwork writing community—mostly readers in other time zones. We make schedules for our work and help each other stick to them. We read, encourage, and critique. This is the unsexy side of writing, but also the side that keeps me going.

After writing—and throwing away—months of distracted work, I recently finished a short essay that recounted an experience I’d had as a kid where I grew up in Maryland, bringing tadpoles back to life that had spilled out of the bucket I was raising them in. It was a light piece about ponds and frogs and what that stuff can teach us about mortality and luck. It was only 1300 words and I was immensely proud of it while simultaneously wondering whether it was a piece of crap.

The first thing I did was email the essay to a writer friend who is a reader of my work. She called me when I was once again behind the stroller, drifting around while waiting for the studded tires on my car to be changed out, and scanning the slough in the middle of town for newly arrived ducks and geese. “It’s great,” I heard her saying over the wind coming across the slough. “Observant, smart,” she said. And then we quickly proceeded to discuss how to revise it.

I’m excited by Andromeda and Deb’s work—and that of the whole community of 49 Writers—to establish a lasting, tangible writing community across the state. Count me in. We need to keep writing—and we need each other.

Miranda Weiss is the author of Tide, Feather, Snow, released in paperback this week.

Taking Care of the Dogs, and What a Reading can Teach You.

Heather Lende reads from her new book at 49 Alaska Writing Center's Raven Place.

For my first reading in Anchorage the microphone was broken. One thing I learned from the accident I write about in Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs is to expect the worst and plan for surviving it. I pay very close attention now to the safety talk on airplanes. I know where the exits are and which way the door handles turn. I know where the fire escapes are in my hotel. I was walking on the Anchorage Coastal Trail following a reading at Title Wave this morning and mentally platted an earthquake escape route.

But I hadn’t imagined a reading with a broken microphone.

At the same time, I didn’t come all this way not to read. And since it was the first stop on the tour, I didn’t want to begin on a bad note. So I stood in the middle of the crowd and used my best stage voice. I have been in enough community plays to understand the importance of projecting so they can hear you in the back row.

But reading loudly about your mother dying is a challenge. I chose to read that chapter because it explains the title. “Take good care of the garden and the dogs,” were my mother’s last words. It is hard to read about that softly. I wasn’t sure I could do it loudly. It helped that I had some friends there. I must have done okay, because they sold all the books they had ordered, and there were piles.

I have also read from Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs in Haines, and that was the hardest audience. I guess it’s natural to want your friends to really like what you do. At the Haines event, I learned some things about the pieces I read that I hadn’t realized. For instance, the whole garden theme, and the whole taking good care of dogs (and people) theme. I am sort of embarrassed to admit this, but I was surprised when reading aloud, how much that all came together in the title chapter, which I had written more intuitively than thematically.

The Title Wave reading brought that even more to light, since I read the Good Neighbors chapter, too, and realized that it contains a bad dog, and gardening details, and a discussion of how we respond to the proverbial bad dogs among us. (My answer? We take good care of them. At least that’s what we must do if we are all to live in peace and harmony someday.)

Then, this morning, on the Coastal Trail, I heard fireworks, and a golden retriever puppy raced by me dragging a leash. I heard children screaming, “Holly, Holly, come back!” So I took off after the puppy, and some folks on bikes passed me and I asked them to catch the dog and wait, and I’d run her back to the kids. About a mile and a half later, I found the bikers and Holly, and I picked her up and trotted toward the sounds of children calling. (They had found a dad, and bicycles and were coming my way.) I handed the pup over to a freckled little boy whose face was wet with tears and he hugged and kissed that sweet, scared puppy.

Sometimes when you write things down, they have way of happening. Often, words gain meaning the more times you read them, even words you wrote yourself. On my way back, I thought of my mother’s last words, and of that little boy’s face, and how I just did what she said to do, and how that advice had made someone very, very happy, and I started to cry.

Deb: 49 Writers weekly round-up

Much is still happening this week at 49 Writers. We’re putting the last bit of spit and polish at our Raven Place facility in preparation for the May 22 fundraiser and volunteer thank-you event with Heather Lende. Volunteers and founding member donors must RSVP to attend, as we have seating for 35 only. If you haven’t already RSVP’d, email 49writers@gmail.com right away. Attendees note: we’ll have a box for your Book Nook donations – autographed copies we’ll sell to Raven Place guests. Please include a note with your email address so we can properly thank you. For more on the Book Nook, contact coordinator Louise Freeman-Toole at mailto:louisefreemantoole@yahoo.com

Our first Raven Place guests arrive Monday. We’ll run Raven Place exclusively during the summer, when our on-site writing programs are on hold for Alaska’s play time. Starting on September 2, with a reading by visiting writer David Vann, we’ll open part-time for writing programs. Guest house revenues are an important part of our initial budget, so we’re aiming for at least 20% guesthouse occupancy during this first winter. As we acquire additional funding, we hope to drop back to summer-only guesthouse functions.

Your response to our calls for volunteers and memberships continues to humble and amaze us. Thanks to donations and memberships large and small, we’ve avoided bumping bottom despite some hefty set-up expenses. We much appreciate your support for our commitment to strong service and programs to promote Alaska writers and writing – do keep it coming!

Likewise, we’re signed on 16 volunteers for ongoing positions – everything from blog interviewer to bookkeeper. But we still need more help. Of special concern are finding a back-up host and a groundskeeper for Raven Place. Both are Anchorage-based, and neither requires huge chunks of time. We have a volunteer in charge of flowers, so the groundskeeper needs only to mow the tiny lawn (we’ll supply the mower), shovel walks, and take recycles to the Dowling facility every so often. Our current guesthouse host is committed only through the summer, so we’ll need someone to pick up the slack in the fall. The position requires daytime availability (between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.), but it’s far from a daily commitment – only on guest check-out days. Ideally I’d like to have three hosts to alternate responsibilities. If you can help with either of these or if you’d like to browse the full list of available volunteer positions, email me at 49writers@gmail.com.

Do you have a new book coming out? Would you like to generate interest and sales for books previously published? 49 @ First Fridays stands ready to help. We’ve got a well-trafficked Anchorage location and a great First Friday coordinator ready to schedule your First Friday book signing. Contact Paula Bryner at paulabryner@gci.net prior to May 28 to reserve your spot on this year’s First Friday calendar. All we ask is that you provide your own books (or arrange for a distributor to deliver them) and that you donate 25% of your sales to 49 Writers. The gallery owner who occupied our 415 L St. facility prior to us reported around 400 First Friday browsers, so expect much higher exposure than your typical bookstore signing stints. Summer signings will be on the porch only.

On June 25th, F Magazine will celebrate its One year and One month with a very big issue, and they’re seeking more content than normal. The theme is "Anniversary - a reminiscence of dates.” Submissions by writers, photographers, and artists are encouraged. The deadline is June 10.

More good news for Juneau author Brett Dillingham: his Performance Literacy Through Storytelling is officially a recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Awards Distinguished Achievement Award; it has tied for gold in the Education/Academic/Teaching category. This is in addition to the Educational Publishers' award the book recently earned.

Among the latest recipients of the Rasmuson Foundation’s individual artist awards are writers Karen Benning, Peter Porco, Tom Sexton, and Miranda Weiss. Karen is currently revising her first book manuscript. She will take a sabbatical and finish the manuscript’s revisions and submit it to agents for publishing. Peter’s first full-length play, titled “Wind Blown and Dripping,” was produced in the fall of 2009. Peter will travel to Adak, the play’s location to complete a revision. Poet Tom Sexton will spend time in Lowell, Massachusetts to complete a series of sonnets. Since its inception, the Rasmuson Foundation has awarded over $1.4 million in grants to nearly 191 individual Alaska artists at various stages of their careers as part of the Individual Artist Awards program to help create a dynamic and supportive environment for creative artists. Recipients are chosen based on work that reflects the diverse cultural and aesthetic communities in Alaska. Congratulations to all!

The Alaska Botanical Garden is hosting a writers' workshop featuring Amy Stewart, a well-known garden writer, blogger, and author of four books. Amy will present the workshop at the museum auditorium on
Sunday, July 11, at 7 p.m. The cost is $12 per person; $10 for ABG members.

4.9 things writing teaches: a guest post by Ann Chandonnet

Ann Chandonnet spent the prime of her life in Alaska (1965-66, 1973-2006) and now lives, gardens and writes in North Carolina where the locals call insignificant pimples on the landscape (600 feet for crying out loud) "mountains."

1. Keep your day job.

2. Don't expect the editors of little magazines to be grateful that your vocabulary is larger than theirs. But don't alter your word choices just because they object.

3. Even the best-meaning and best-educated editors will create errors (my favorite from Gold Rush Grub being "Louis and Clark") at the rate of approximately one for every 8.7 errors they find and correct--or ask you to research and correct.

4. Keep notes of good ideas.

4.9. Your dreams deserve respect because they are unique.

Andromeda: "Sneek Peak" and other thoughts on imperfection

That's what I promised, in print, that attendees at our upcoming May 22 fundraiser would get: a "sneek peak" at Raven Place.

Just a little embarrassing, to misspell two words side-by-side in an announcement about a writing center. I missed it completely. It was my kids, ages 15 and 12, who pointed out the error while tittering at their mother's poor proofreading.

But there have been other little neuroelectrical shortages this week. Like the receipt I'd thought I'd lost, which was sitting nicely folded in my wallet. Like the piece of paper I meant to bring to a meeting, but left behind on my desk. Like the fact that I lost track of the time on Monday afternoon and showed up late to an writing awards event to which my children -- both runners-up in their separate age categories -- had been invited. (Late to a writing celebration. Because I was caught up puzzling over budget numbers at the new writing center. Waaaah.) Luckily, even the people running that particular awards event were late to it; it was that kind of a Monday for lots of folks in town.

But I wouldn't really be sharing this if I thought it was seriously problematic. I'm not sure you can give birth to something new -- a child, a book, an organization -- any other way. There will be some intellectual brown-outs; some helpful or not-so-helpful amnesia; some birthing and growing pains.

"The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing," said a French painter named Eugene Delacroix.

Huge Prather said, "Perfectionism is slow death."

And yet, the more we care about something, the more we take ownership of it, the harder it is to notice flaws without wincing.

I think of the great volunteers who have been busy at Raven Place all week. Several volunteers have grown so fond of their projects -- from painting to woodwork -- that they want it to be just exactly perfectly right! But it won't be. We're volunteers, not professional carpenters and painters. And we're working in a house with a lot of history -- so rare in Anchorage -- that has been loved and used and fixed up by many interesting people before us. There are paint drips; there is old wiring; there is a shelf that someone sawed off in a crooked fury in order to fit in a refrigerator; and a doorway partially blocked by a recent drywall addition, which didn't really bother us until we had to push a mattress around and past it, heaving and grunting the whole time. Talk about giving birth.

If you visit Raven Place this Saturday -- or anytime this year -- please do me a favor. When you see the little paint drip on a piece of trim overhead, or the strange fit of a piece of carpet in a dim corner, help all of us remember what that imperfection means. It means that people -- some less-than-handy than others; some younger than others -- weren't afraid to lend a hand. It means that people cared enough to show up and step outside their comfort zones. It means the physical building has already taught us something important: that we'll never be perfect. And that's all right.

Where the Bones are: Frank Writing About Family - a guest post by Sandy Kleven

My aunt is telling lies about our family. She has already finished a book of lies, a second is underway and she plans a third. She says she is doing it for those who come after, to share with her descendents the story of her life. She does not plan to publish her work. With the first memoir, ten copies were printed, secured with spiral binding and given to her sisters and their children. My aunt is a revisionist. She makes everyone look good.

Some of the stories can make you weep. You feel the mood of Seattle, in the 1930’s and 40’s – so much walking, so much war. It’s an intimate family story, with the cooking, the holidays and history’s impact on the family. One of the chapters tells about the first telephone, another about the first radio. One chapter is about my birth -- gotta love a book like that – except for the bold omissions and the calculated revision of family history.

I love this story about my grandfather, a Norwegian immigrant who fished in the Bering Sea every summer. When, during the depression, there was no money for fuel oil, he found a way to heat the house -- one day at a time. At the time, houses still had wood cooking stoves in the kitchen which made wood heat an option when fuel ran out.

My grandfather pushed a wooden wheelbarrow down to the beach to get wood. I didn’t know the distance but, with the magic of a search engine, I can see his journey and pinpoint the distance at five miles, round trip -- through the business section, past the locks, past Ray’s Boathouse, to Ballard Beach. There, he loaded driftwood into the wheelbarrow and tied the towering load with ropes. Through the chill of winter, he wheeled back to the house on 61st Street. One load burned in a day. He went back the next. When I think of him doing this, I imagine the strain of it and the humiliation of announcing in the streets that this effort was necessary. I got the idea that I might make a movie about it and let the great grandsons repeat the trip in a relay. I may. I hope it’s a true story.

In an impressive and long effort, my aunt has documented our rich heritage. But it is a white wash. That my grandmother was the best mother in the whole world? Probably not. The effusive description brings to mind a little girl with a fistful of flowers for her mama, a girl who would never say a harsh word. I think she is involved in an act of deliverance, perhaps, to redeem the past and make it right. To give a better past to those who come after.

Consider this example: My mother got married at fifteen, pregnant with me. My dad was seventeen. It was a major crisis for both families. They married in a church that neither family attended because of the shame involved. My mother was so shaken by all of this that when she got the terrible news that a favorite uncle had been killed in the Pacific, she was relieved because he would never find out that she was pregnant.

My aunt tells the same story like this.

As time went on, Betty was seeing Milt more and more… This was the beginning of something serious … The day came when Betty and Milt, came to the folks and said they wanted to be married. Everyone seemed to know it was inevitable and gave their permission. On July 1, 1944, Betty and Milt were married in the little Lutheran church on the corner, just they and their witnesses. After the ceremony, I was waiting outside the church. I watched them as they returned to our house. My sister was radiant and more beautiful than she had ever been… To my surprise Betty was going to have a baby. (Ballard’s Child).

I have spent many hours enjoying, loving (!), the spin that my aunt is putting on our family history. But the sweetness begins to get to me. It reminds me of the histories that local churches write about themselves --- sanitized, heartwarming, insincere, wishful thinking or, better, wistful thinking. You know nothing really exciting is going to happen – you sense the limits right at the start. The gritty parts are unseemly or improper. But effective writing has to get to the harsh words, to the snot on the pillow when a heart is broken. Without the bass notes, the story is superficial and sentiment is the strongest emotion.

I talked to my aunt about this. “Why aren’t you telling the truth?” I asked. “Why are you leaving out the bad parts?” It turns out that this had come up in her writing class, too. She said that she is getting closer to writing that is more frank, that doesn’t white wash. It isn’t easy.

Accepting the fact that truth telling – about one’s family – does not come easy to anyone, I respect the intensity of feeling that attaches to this issue. Name an emotions and you can find it, bubbling in a simultaneous soup with guilt predominating.

I suggested to my aunt that she might start by writing about the issue itself, that she write about the struggle with truth in memoir, but I don’t think she can objectify it. She does not yet see that more nuanced writing could meet her unspoken purpose of making the past appetizing, delicious.

What’s the point, anyway, about writing a hard hitting expose about the people you love? That can’t be the goal. But to write about how events took place through your own eyes -– sticking with humility in the telling -- this path has promise. Or to tell your recollections with balance, as a journalist might, remembering that a huge chunk of your history occurred behind doors closed to you. Research for what you do not know has promise, too – through interview – and public records. Take comfort in the fact that, with the passage of time, those who would have been hurt or incensed care less, don’t remember, or have passed on. At sixty-five, I feel far less muzzled than I was at thirty-five. I have also discovered that one’s family, in general, does not read what I write, unless I put it in their hand and I need to do that less.

I am a poet. I write about my mother. I have celebrated her in poetry. As she nears the end of her life, and her health suffers, I write about the anticipated anguish of losing her. I do not want her to read these poems. I have stopped writing for her eye. She sent me a letter a few months ago, her writing shaky from Parkinson’s. After her signature, she scrawled a final line. “After I go, promise me you won’t write bad things about me.”

My husband told me to call her right away to put her mind at ease. I did call her and I reminded her that she used to say, “I don’t care what you write about me, as long as it makes money.”

Then, I sent her Velma Wallis’ book, Raising Ourselves, and marked the place where Wallis’ mother gives her daughter permission to write honestly about her childhood. I am sensitive to my mother’s need but if we were to have a long, deep, talk about it, my mother and I might discover that what I consider her finest moments are on the list of items she would delete.

In a way that makes me feel unkind, I will make no promises about my future writing. I am not writing for my family. I am looking for my own truth. I am writing for the future. I want to have been a witness to the little glimpse of reality that I was given. It makes the best story.

God, Radio Tours, and Bookstores: a guest post by Heather Lende

I have been on the telephone to radio stations around the country as part of my book tour. The radio chats are sort of the warm-up. They provide the opportunity for me to take the entire five-minute drive-time-live conversation with Barbara in Georgia stammering about what my book is about, where the heck Haines, Alaska is, and if I know Sarah Palin.

I just got off the phone with a show in Nashville called Beyond Reason. (No kidding.) The note from my publisher said it was a spiritual show. The hosts (there were two) began by asking what my near death experience was like, and whether I had seen the light. I told them I didn’t see God when I was under that truck that ran me over, I saw Dave Olerud. (Dave is a friend who had a construction accident and broke his back and lost the use of his legs.) I said I prayed that I would have what Dave has. Grandchildren. I told them I have a granddaughter now and they asked if my prayers were answered.

Now, I am of the C.S. Lewis school of prayer. He wrote that we need to pray not so that God will understand us, but so that we will understand him. I thought about that when they asked me if God was responsible for running me over. “Was he there,” the kind southern accented host asked, “telling the truck driver to hit you?” By now I was getting a little panicky. This isn’t really what my book is about, and I’m an Episcopalian and we don’t talk about God much. Luckily, time was up, and we all said thank you for a wonderful, thought-provoking conversation.

In other news, I leave this week for a book tour, and if you have read the list of places I’m signing books, you will notice that they are all independent bookstores, not chain stores. (Well, except the new Raven’s Place; three cheers to the 49 Writers fairy godmothers!) Anyway, this is on purpose. I write a lot about community - it is important to me. Locally owned and operated stores anchor strong, happy communities of readers and writers. A bookstore on Main Street is about the most cheerful sight in any town. One with a cat and comfortable chair even more so.

For writers, independent bookstores are typically staffed by smart, passionate readers who care about what you, as a writer, do. The people who own and work in these stores love books.  If they like yours, they will order lots of them and tell their customers to buy them. They will buy raffle tickets from your children and make donations to your library, too. Also, they like to share what they enjoy reading with other bookstore owners across the country. They make a living selling your books for you so you don’t have to rent a booth at the fair and sell novels like earrings, and so that you can use what you earn from their sales to write more wonderful books for them to sell.

If you are a writer, you need to make friends with good bookstores. What you can give them are events and sales, and what they give you are events and sales. (And cookies and coffee and time to talk and some good advice on what to read next.) It is a win-win. So, buy your books from an independent bookstore, and when you do, thank the owner for supporting your profession, and your community, and the good work you do.

That’s enough preaching for now. I still have to figure out if God was there when I was run over, and if so, why didn’t he say hello?

Deb: 49 Writers weekly round-up

What a week! Raven Place is looking phenomenal. Many thanks to all who've transformed 415 L St. with painting, raking, and fixing. If you missed the photos earlier this week, check here and here. We'll have another work party this Saturday, May 15, from noon to 5pm. Drop by if you like -- stay a little or stay a while. A lot of assembling and disassembling (as in furniture, not facts) this week, due to new purchases. Also a little touch-up painting, some hedge clipping, some floor cleaning.

Our evening with Heather Lende is coming up on May 22. It's a $100/person fundraiser, and it's also a way to celebrate our wonderful volunteers. If you've already helped, if you've already donated/joined with $100 or more, you're eligible to attend. Doors open at 7 pm; refreshments will be served; books will be available for purchase; a few small surprises will be unveiled. BUT YOU MUST RSVP to 49writers@gmail.com, if you haven't already! (Put "RSVP Lende event" in the subject line, please.) Note for founding members who can't make it to Anchorage to attend this event: we'll be happy to send you a signed copy of Heather Lende's new book with your donation. Email 49writers@gmail.com before May 22 to request your copy.

Now, on to news from our readers. First, check out the nice review of John Morgan's Spear-Fishing on the Chatanika in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner. And while we're on the subject of poetry, Cold Press Publishing, the imprint behind Two Review, is pleased to announce the release of Threads Give Way, poet Shannon K. Winston's first book of poetry and the first book by a single author published by Cold Press Publishing. Linda Nemec Foster calls Winston’s “a quiet and unassuming voice that intimates a remarkable attention to the natural landscape and our longing to be part of it.”

Anchorage poets, take note: at the Poetry Parley at Out North Theater on May 19th, starting at 7:00 p.m., Elizabeth Thompsen will be sharing 30-40 minutes of poetry. Also, there's Mountain Muses poetry open mike on Monday May 17 at Organic Oasis, 7-8 p.m.

Also on Monday, May 17: For the first time ever, Alaska’s winner in the national Letters About Literature contest has gone on to win the national award, thus earning a $10,000 grant for a local library of her choice. Anna Wichorek, a junior at West High School in Anchorage, named the Mountain View Elementary School Library as the recipient. Awards will be presented to Anna and the other Alaska winners at a reception on Monday from 5-7 p.m. in the Mountain View Elementary School Library at 4005 McPhee Avenue (between N. Flower and N. Klevin Streets).

Anna’s winning letter was to Alaska author Velma Wallis about her book, Two Old Women. Wallis is flying in from Fairbanks to greet Anna, and a representative from the Library of Congress’ Center for the Book will also be on hand to hear Anna and Taylor Haines (a state winner) read their winning entries. Just under 70,000 students in grades 4 through 12 entered Letters About Literature 2010, a national writing contest sponsored by Alaska Center for the Book and the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress in partnership with Target Stores.

Also in the good news department (our favorite!), Brett Dillingham's storytelling textbook Performance Literacy through Storytelling was named one of four finalists by the Association of Educational Publishers for the Distinguished Achievement Award under the K-5 Curriculum and Instruction category.

Likewise, Sandra Kleven is celebrating the completion of her movie on Theodore Roethke, to be shown for cast and crew in Seattle on June 5th 8 pm., and to debut in Alaska at the Graduate Residency in Creative Writing at the end of July.

Remember that several recognized authors from the 49th State will be in Skagway, Alaska on June 3-6 to launch the first-ever North Words Writers Symposium. Keynoter speaker will be best-selling mystery writer Dana Stabenow, who will lead panels along with several writers, historians and editors from around the state.

They include Nick Jans, Sherry Simpson, Kim Heacox, Kaylene Johnson, David Hunsaker, Andromeda Romano-Lax, Daniel Henry, Elizabeth Dabney, Nita Nettleton, Peggy Shumaker, and Tim Woody. Local color and story ideas will be offered by historian Karl Gurcke and editor-publisher Jeff Brady, along with conference coordinator Buckwheat Donahue of the Skagway Convention and Visitors Bureau. In addition to engaging in panel discussions about writing and publishing, registered symposium participants will get to travel to Lake Bennett on the White Pass & Yukon Route and float through Dyea on a raft tour.

Andromeda: I need your inspiring writing quotes!

Constructing a new website for the writing center, and I'd like to have some quotes about writing that refresh each time one visits.

Here's a quote that's been hanging on my bookcase for years: "You should have the feeling, as every experienced writer has, that there are more ideas where that one came from, and that you are inexhaustible as long as you are alive." Patricia Highsmith, author of Talented Mr. Ripley

Do you have some favorites? Anything about writing, the writing life, a love of reading -- whatever will inspire visitors to our writing center site. Please make sure to include attribution. Send to 49writers@gmail.com with "quotations" in the subject line. Inundate me, please!

Andromeda: A furnished fantasy at 415 L Street

I'm fantasizing of the time this fall when I will hide away from my daily cares and lodge away from home in order to spend a few days writing and revising -- and I think I've found the perfect, affordable place. Oh, wait. It's not some hotel a few hours north of town. It's our own Raven Place! (And because I'm a member, I'll get 10% off nightly rates...)

OK, that was a silly lead-in, but I'm typing this near midnight after a day of overseeing Scanhome deliveries and Wal-mart expeditions and shopping for things like wineglasses and curtain rods. But see how awesome this place looks, and we're not even done yet! I wanted to post the photos here because many of you will see this room 10 days from now, full of chairs and writers, in complete "49" mode, with no bed or bright red throw pillows in sight. And, by contrast, guesthouse guests (we've had our first rental inquiries and bookings) will see this place in leisure mode, with no idea of how it looks set up for a get-serious-and-write workshop.

Thanks to everyone who has been helping, writing, meeting, and contributing. Your notes and assistance have been so encouraging!

And now, we return to our regular blog programming.

Andromeda: Drill, Baby, Drill -- Work Party Success at Raven Place

Poets fixing light switches. Novelists painting trim. Journalists and creative nonfiction writers and screenwriters raking, scraping, hammering, even -- my heart soars with gratitude -- scrubbing out a toilet.

It was a fantastic day last Saturday at Raven Place, the 49 Alaska Writing Center's new home on L Street. ("L for literature!") We had sun, we had springtime temps, but even more, we had a great turnout of volunteers who showed up, read the task list, and got working. A huge thank you to Paula, Eric, George, Doug, Sonya, Chris, Pat, Sandra, Don, Susanna, Jen, Aryeh, Tziporah, and Brian. And a continuing thank you for those working on projects that didn't end on Saturday -- the countertop installed on Monday, the renovation of the kitchen into a place where we can all hang out more easily, the ongoing prep for flowers, the planning ahead to 5/22.

You're all amazing. I am so impressed -- and so inspired -- I almost can't find the words.

But quickly here, a few more. If you'd like to join the work crew this coming Saturday, 5/15 from noon to 5 pm, we could use a few more brave souls -- especially those who are comfortable with drills (please bring your own). Much of our remaining work involves hanging stuff, putting up shelves, and minor furniture assembly and disassembly. If you're like me and can't hang a picture straight, we also have some floor cleaning and a little interior touchup painting to do. If you didn't come last week, we'd love to see you this Saturday! If you've already volunteered once, it's up to you (of course) if you'd like to volunteer again. No need to stay the whole time. Just let me know with a quick email rsvp to 49writers@gmail.com or lax@alaska.net.

And of course, if you're as inspired as I am, but live outside Anchorage or can't step away from your manuscript-in-progress (understandable), there are many other ways to help. Become a member and/or, at the $100+ level, a founding donor -- signup to the right.

4.9 things writing teaches: a guest post by Lita A. Kurth

Lita A. Kurth is a recent MFA graduate of the Rainier Writers Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University who has published poetry, essays, and short-short stories in various small venues. Her short story, "Marius Martin, Proletarian" was recently accepted for the anthology, On the Clock (Bottom Dog Press). She sometimes blogs at http://www.tikkundaily.org/.

1. There’s no way out but through. Your own patience and fortitude can bring you through a seemingly insoluble problem. Who knows where solutions come from, but they wait on the other side of a dark and scary cave.

2. You can face the depths of your own suspected unworthiness and live to tell the tale, which is itself a tale worth telling.

3. Find at least one good mentor and one good colleague. They help so much! By yourself, even in a library, you can never equal the type of support and knowledge that contact with other living writers provides.

4. Be a good mentor and a good colleague.

4.9 Read about writers, preferably those with high aims who suffered numerous and agonizing setbacks.

The Author Questionnaire: Is This a Trick Question?: A guest post by Heather Lende

I have been trying to fill out an author questionnaire sent to me recently by the PR woman at my publisher. She is very nice, and has no idea what anxiety she has caused me. She assures me this is quick and easy and fun. It has now occupied way more of my waking thoughts than it should. Here are some answers I didn’t send her:

1. Describe your new book in one sentence.

I took me 287 pages to describe what it was about. If I could have done it in one sentence, I’d be a poet.

2. Where do you do your best writing?

If I knew of a place where I could go to do my best writing, all of my writing would be the best.

3. What is your motto or maxim?

Should I have one? Is this common for writers? Not one editor ever has asked for this. They don’t teach writer mottos or maxims in the UAA MFA program. Should it be in Latin?

4. Do you have any secret skills (besides writing, of course?)

Secret? Me? Well, maybe, but they have to do with sex. (I’m grandmother. Trust me, some things should be secret.)

5. Describe the plot of the first story you remember writing.

It was called Gloria’s Last Ride and about a woman who rode a dead, frozen horse like a sled down a hill in Haines and off the dock, in January. I won a prize for it at the Southeast Alaska State Fair. It was rejected by several literary magazines as just too far-fetched and odd. The thing was, it was very close to being true. A frozen horse did slide down the hill and off the dock, and someone did try to ride it, and someone a lot like Gloria died, not right then, but later. Also, the other character really did put rum in my instant coffee and wear a sou’wester to fix a leaking pipe in his basement. That’s where the pool table they laid Soapy Smith’s body on for his wake was kept.

6. If you had to change professions, and needed no credentials, what would you do?

Is writing a profession? Can I have health insurance?

7. Which band would you like to have follow you around, playing the soundtrack to your life?

A Mariachi Band. The Moscow Symphony. My children with kazoos. Asleep at the Wheel. Maybe the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? (Do I have to house and feed them?)

8. What is your all-time-absolute-favorite book?

Is this a trick question? (I’ve written a spiritual memoir, so I should say the Bible, but the writing isn’t all that good, especially the modern translations.)

I don’t mean to disrespectful, and it is very gratifying to be asked such questions. It just took so long to answer them, is all. I have shared this so that you will better prepared than I was. It’s never to early to start thinking about which band you would like to follow you around playing the soundtrack to your life.

We made The Ear!

Feels great to wake up on a Sunday, after a long and successful work party on Saturday (photos coming on Wednesday!), and read that our writing center and Raven Place facility made it into the Anchorage Daily News gossip column. Here's what The Ear had to say:

OUT AND ABOUT ... May 22 is shaping up as a good day around town for things literary and cultural.

Writers Andromeda Romano-Lax and Deb Vanasse signed a lease on May 4 for that cute house downtown on L Street next to Snow City Café for their 49 Alaska Writing Center. They're calling it Raven Place. The plan is to lease it during the summer as a tourist guesthouse and use that money to support workshops, classes and other activities for writers all year. They're having a $100-a-ticket fundraiser on May 22 with Heather Lende, celebrating the opening of the center and Heather's new book, "Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs."

Deb: 49 Writers weekly round-up

Another amazing week comes to a close at 49 Writers.  Andromeda and I began with a whirlwind trip to Tutka Bay Lodge, where thanks to the generosity of Kirsten and Carl Dixon, we'll hold our first 49 Writers Retreat on Sept. 3, 4, and 5.  Watch for details in the weeks ahead - space will be limited, and we're thrilled to announce that David Vann will be our retreat leader.  Thanks to David and all who joined in our online book club discussion last night - great dialogue!

Fix-ups at Raven Place are in full swing.  I'm feeling more than a little guilty about leaving this all in Andromeda's capable hands, as I'm Outside on a trip planned months ago.  I'm hoping some of you will pick up my slack by stopping by the work party at 415 L St. this Saturday, May 8, from noon to 5 p.m.  Meters are free on weekends, and there's good parking in nearby lots (though you must pay) and down 5th Ave. near Elderberry Park.  We're gearing up for our first event, a thank-you to volunteers and founding members.  It's an evening with Heather Lende, on Saturday, May 22.  Watch for details - again, space will be limited.

As a vacation rental, Raven Place opens June 1; check us out at http://www.vrbo.com/, listing 301633.  If you have friends or family visiting Anchorage this summer, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better location at our rate of $149 per night.  49 Writer members get a 10% discount, too.  I'm still looking for a back-up host to run the rental from June 1-16 - please email me at 49writers@gmail.com if you're available between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. on those dates to ready the house for its next set of guests. 

Speaking of members, our apologies to any who had trouble with our click-through membership form.  The third-party server that housed it went down intermittently yesterday, so we've uploaded it in a back-up location.  If you email me at 49writers@gmail.com, I can also send it as a form-fill attachment.  We're thrilled and humbled by the great response to our call for members and volunteers, and we welcome more of each.  After the initial push to get the facility in shape, we'll be setting up volunteer teams for planning, development, and service.

F Magazine, a monthly hyperlocal publication that focuses on all genres and mediums of arts and entertainment in Anchorage, extends a call to readers of 49 Writers for short fiction (no more than 1,000 words). For the next issue's theme, "Road Tripping for Art," the editors are calling on fiction and poetry that pertains to travel and road trips. The deadline is May 14.  Send submissions to artzineF@gmail.com.

http://www.arcticamag.ca/ is also accepting short fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, audio, video and visual-art submissions about the circumpolar region. Submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis. For guidelines, go to www.ArcticaMag.ca/submissions.html or email Submissions@ArcticaMag.ca.

May 15th is the launch of Mary Mullen's poetry collection, Zephyr, published by Salmon Poetry. Mary was born in Anchorage and raised on the Mullen homestead in Soldotna. She traveled to villages throughout Alaska working for RurAL CAP Head Start, and was Head Start Director for Chugachmiut before she moved to the west of Ireland where she now lives with her daughter, Lily Mullen.  Her poems are a social history of being a child on the Kenai Peninsula pre and post the oil discovery at Swanson River, and her poems also give readers a look into the world of her lovely Lily, who has Down syndrome

On Tuesday May 25 from 10:00 am-12:00 pm at the UAA Campus Bookstore, Beth Stiles Leffingwell will perform and discuss her life with music, journal writing and publishing. Known to many as an outstanding cellist, teacher and writer, Beth shares stories from her journals dated from 1938 till the present and her three books: As One Twig is Bent: True Stories of Parenting and childhood in the Great Depression; Music vs. Marriage; and Leff Continuity: Anchorage Arts, Earthquake into Millennium.

Last but not least, Nancy Lord shares a great writers blog hosted by David Gessner and Bill Roorbach. David was on the Kachemak Bay conference faculty a couple years ago and Bill will be there this summer.

The David Vann online discussion

Today's discussion of "Legend of a Suicide" goes live from 6 to 8 pm AK time, but in the meanwhile, please feel free to leave comments, especially if you may not be available this evening.

Leave your comments and/or questions using the comment feature (bottom of this post), tagged with either your Google ID, a name of your choosing, or Anonymous. If you have questions or comments for the author, start them with "David." Stop by as often as you like today and tonight to get back in the discussion thread.

Some starting points for readers: Favorite line(s) from the book? Thoughts or emotions triggered? Questions about meaning or structure?

And please don't overlook our interview with David Vann, below.

Andromeda: 49writers interview with David Vann

David, thank you for writing the best and most intricately structured book I’ve read this year – a truly amazing read that, by about page 135, I was looking forward to finishing so that I could read all over again.

You say in the interview at the back of the new paperback edition : “This book is as true an account as I could write of my father’s suicide and my own bereavement, and that was possible only through fiction.” Wonderfully said. What I want to know is, how difficult was it to write, given the nature of the material? You’ve written two nonfiction books, and I’ve read that this book took a long time to get published. Was there a point in your writing life when you felt ready to write this; did you have to wait until you had a certain amount of narrative control under your belt; did you have any concerns about wading into such heart-wrenching material?

Although Legend of a Suicide wasn’t my first book to get published, it was the first book I wrote. I worked on it for ten years, from when I was 19 until I was 29. So I was learning to write, and I had no idea how to tell the story. I threw away everything from the first 3 or 4 years, because it was all too direct, with too much emotion on page 1. I’d start with the day we found out my father was dead, for instance, which didn’t work at all. But then I read Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and heard a lovelier, more emotionally distanced voice, and I was also reading poems by Elizabeth Bishop, and I ended up writing Ichthyology, which was the first story I was able to keep. It focused on tropical fish and fishing in Alaska, and my father’s story came indirectly, beginning first as subtext and rising to the surface at the end. That indirection was the key to writing the rest of the book, and is part of why I didn’t write the book as nonfiction. There was no one true story to tell anyway (because we all had different versions of who my father was and what had happened and what it meant) and the true story, even if I could have found it, would have been too direct and essentially unreadable.

Once I finished the book, it sat for 12 years and no agent would send it out, so I sent it to a contest (AWP’s Grace Paley Prize), and that’s how it was finally published.

The structure is unusual to say the least: three short stories told in the first person, followed by a long novella told third person and without quotation marks, followed by two short stories told in first person again. All feature the same characters – or so this reader would argue anyway: Roy Fenn (adolescent except at the end of the book) and his tragic father. There are repeating themes and constellations of images and connecting storylines throughout, but what I loved most was how the early stories “teach” the reader how to interpret the main novella. We know enough of the “true” (within the framework of the fictional world) events of the early stories to be able to understand, or try to understand, the novella in several possible ways – at least that’s how I read it. Without spoiling the book for others, I’ll say that there is a shocking development in part II that makes use of a startling and effective shift in POV. First: did you plan the structure this way from the beginning, and in what order did you write the stories? Have readers had widely different interpretations of the novella, in particular?

I’ve been happily surprised that interpretations of the novella and of the book overall really haven’t strayed very far. It’s an unusual structure, as you note, but people seem to get what’s going on.

The book is a transformation of true material. My father asked me to spend 8^th grade with him in Fairbanks, but I said no, and two weeks later, he killed himself. I felt tremendous guilt afterward and wondered whether he’d still be alive if I’d said yes. So in the novella, the boy says yes. He spends a year homesteading with his father on Sukkwan Island, in southeast. I picked an island I’ve never been to, but one close to Ketchikan where I grew up, because I wanted to use that same familiar rainforest but let the island itself be a landscape of imagination, something that could transform in order to reflect what’s going on inside the characters.

I wrote “Ichthyology” first, then “Rhoda,” then “A Legend of Good Men,” the order they appear in the book. But I wrote the novella last, after writing “Ketchikan” and “The Higher Blue.” The novella makes use of everything else and flips everything on its head, so I guess that’s why it had to be written last, but I placed the other two stories after it in the book because “Ketchikan” tests and hits the limits, finally, of how much I can understand about my father, and “The Higher Blue” is an epilogue. It’s the same story as “Ichthyology” but written as fabulism, in an entirely different style, forming a kind of bookend, and it’s more hopeful, also, which is what I wanted for the ending.

The word “Legend” in the title of the book means “a series of portraits,” so the overall book title is really “A series of portraits of a suicide.” I was reading Chaucer’s “Legend of Good Women” and thought this literary form of a series of portraits (borrowed from the tradition of writing about saints’ lives) could work well for me, since I didn’t have one clear story to tell about my father. I was also reading Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” which are stories that all disagree and form a debate of style and content, so that’s my intent in my book. Each story is written in a different style, and the series of portraits of my father and his suicide and my own bereavement conflict and in that way form a debate about what really happened and what it meant. As you point out about the novella, the other stories frame and “teach” us how to read it.

Three things among many I enjoyed in this book: first, a faithfulness to intense moments of emotional truth. Second, the tight control of language – for example, the character of 13-year-old Roy’s voice. It’s written simply and starkly, in a way that reminded me of Cormac McCarthy (for example, The Road”) with particular attention to syntax and punctuation as a way of getting that young narrator’s voice exactly right. Third: the landscape descriptions. You really captured Southeast Alaska sensations and smells and sights. Can you talk about your influences and any thoughts you have on your own writing style, or strengths you value in other writers?

Thank you, Andromeda, for such generous comments and questions. Regarding influences, I mentioned above that reading Robinson and Bishop helped me write “Ichthyology.” “Rhoda” is a minimalist short story, influenced most by Carver. “A Legend of Good Men” takes its structure from Chaucer. For “Sukkwan Island,” the novella which is most of the book, I was reading six novels by Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner, and I was influenced most by McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, which is his greatest work. His more recent novel, The Road, has some great sentences in it, but Blood Meridian offers those great sentences nonstop for over 300 pages. It’s my favorite book, and I think it’s the most magnificent American novel ever written (though plenty of people would disagree with me, of course, including probably McCarthy, who is a huge fan of Moby Dick and apparently rereads it every year). In “Ketchikan,” I returned to poems by Elizabeth Bishop and also used Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship.” I’m not sure what the influence was for “The Higher Blue.” Maybe Donald Barthelme.

I don’t think any writer has ever been truly original. I think our styles and our voices (I view voice as style plus sensibility) are a combination of all the works we’ve loved and ingested, framed by our own growing up and language communities. I grew up hunting and fishing in Alaska and northern California and reading my dad’s westerns, Louis L’Amour and such. We hunted the same ranch each fall, and as we hiked along, my father and uncle and grandfather would tell all the stories of what had happened in these places and who had been there, and in that way our family history was retold each year. So that’s part of where my style and material come from, and it’s also where my focus on landscape comes from. I believe that stories exist only in place, and I can’t imagine telling a story without focusing mostly on the place. The landscape writers I’ve read, such as Robinson, Bishop, McCarthy, and also Annie Proulx, have strengthened this sense. I’m not able to write like McCarthy or Proulx or any of the others, of course (though I wish!), but I’ve picked up a few limited aspects of their style, and I’ve also learned from great teachers. My mentor, John L’Heureux, drew heavily on theatre, and so I focus on dramatic conflict between characters in addition to landscape description.

One more comment on how you write descriptions: In the New Yorker chat, you said, “It’s the extension of the landscape that leads to theme … And this move from the concrete noun to the abstract noun is how authors extend landscape description into theme.” Coincidentally, Deb Vanasse here at 49writers is teaching a workshop on description, and last weekend, she happened to use a wonderful passage from your book – as well as many others – to show how one “earns” the abstraction by first using effective concrete imagery. Do you have any more to say about that?

That was nice of Deb to use my work. Re the idea of “earning” the extension to theme, I think the landscapes that work best are the ones that are mythic for us, from our childhoods or other important moments, because if we focus on those landscapes and push on them hard enough, they’ll begin to shift and transform and suggest, whereas less important places tend not to do that. My point is really that the transformation can’t be planned and writing can’t be faked. We can’t say, “I intend to write about this bay and use it as a metaphor for x.” We write about the bay, and if we’re lucky and also working on the right material, something that really does matter to us, something might happen. And I agree that the entire game is in the details. A place has to be described clearly and concretely before it can become more. Sounds like good advice from Deb.

The example I use for this in class, by the way, is from the opening of William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning.” The boy smells cheese in the store which has been converted into a courthouse to try his father, and he believes he can smell the meat sealed in cans, because he’s hungry, but then there’s another smell, of fear and grief and the old pull of blood, which is Faulkner’s extension from the literal to the figurative, from the concrete to the abstract (“blood” here used as an abstract noun, meaning “family ties”). This is theme. By the end of the story, the boy will have to make a terrible choice between blood and conscience.

David, I want to ask you a question inspired by a book called Ron Carlson Writes a Story. Carlson describes, with humor and candor, the process of discovering while writing. Sentence by sentence, he really doesn’t seem to know where he is going until he gets there. Other writers – perhaps more novelists than short story writers – sometimes report having more of a plan, or at least a glimmer of scenes toward which they’re aiming, even if things end up changing along the way. In the book chat you did with the New Yorker, you allude to being surprised by a key event in the middle of the Sukkwan Island novella that I was sure was planned from the beginning (but evidently not)! Most often, do you head toward a bright light, see only as far as your headlights allow (to misquote E.L. Doctorow), or stumble in the dark?

I had no idea that event in the middle of the novella was coming. I was halfway through writing that sentence before I saw what would happen, and then I was just shocked. I had thought I was writing toward something else, but looking back, I could see the pressures that had been put on the boy, and I could see that this was, in fact, inevitable. I just hadn’t understood or seen it coming. So I had to go with it, and I had no idea what I’d write for the second half of the story. That was frightening, but those pages that begin the second half describe something I’d never been able to describe before, and that’s what’s wonderful about having the writing take over. It’s why I write. I love the unconscious patterns that show up, and I love that what I’ve denied or been afraid of will find its way to the surface despite my careful plans. My plans for where I’m going are never any good. Ideas are death to fiction, in my opinion. None of us has ever really had a truly new idea, only tremendous ego and the delusion that it’s a new idea, and the more we can get away from ideas and let character and place take over, the better.

I was very excited to see in the paperback’s aftermatter that your next novel (due out in early 2011), Caribou Island, takes place on the Kenai Peninsula – and appears to be closely related to these stories, through the character of Rhoda. This seems to be the book you were researching as recently as summer 2009, when you guestblogged for us. Were you just wrapping up some final details then, or are you an amazingly fast writer (with an amazingly fast publisher)?

Thanks, Andromeda. Caribou Island is set entirely on the Kenai Peninsula, and I was there last summer to go out on a drift-netter again, work in a fish processing plant, and revisit various places that I use in the novel. I finished writing the novel in September and then worked on revisions through March.

The novel draws from two family stories. My stepmother (Rhoda in my fiction) lost her parents to murder/suicide (her mother shot her father then herself), and my grandmother, at age ten, walked home from school and found her mother hanging from the rafters, a suicide. But the book is about marriage rather than suicide, and has no guns, and no important father/son relationship. And Rhoda is different than she was in Legend of a Suicide. So the new novel follows Legend in that it’s set in Alaska and works through landscape and transforms family stories, but beyond that it’s really different. The main character is a 55-year-old woman, there are 7 points of view, and the book focuses on a marriage that’s falling apart.

Thank you so much David. We hope to see you soon in Alaska and we can’t wait to read your next book.

Thank you, Andromeda. I really appreciate such thoughtful and generous questions, and I also appreciate all the support you and Deb have given me. I think it’s very exciting, also, how you’re developing 49 Writers as a center. I hope I’ll get to visit.

Afternote: We're proud to announce that the 49 Alaska Writing Center, with generous support from Kirsten and Carl Dixon's Tutka Bay Lodge, is bringing David Vann to Southcentral Alaska for an Anchorage reading and Tutka Bay writers' retreat in early September. Stay tuned for details.

It's official!

49 Alaska Writing Center has a home at 415 L Street, aka "Raven Place" (next to Snow City Cafe).

The lease was signed today and repairs and improvements begin tomorrow. We promise plenty more news and photos, of course. For now: here's to a great writing community, great neighbors (have I mentioned Snow City?), and one of the most beautiful springtimes I can remember.

4.9 things writing teaches: a guest post by Vivian Faith Prescott

Vivian Faith Prescott was born and raised in Wrangell, Alaska. She is a fifth generation Alaskan. Vivian is currently an MFA student in the University of Alaska Anchorage's low-residency program.

1. Trust your instincts. Learn to trust where your writing wants to take you whether or not you're writing prose or poetry. If your character wants to have a pet iguana, let her.

2. There's a story in everything and that story can be shaped by our writing. We need to take the time to listen to other people's stories and the stories of the landscapes we live in, i.e., the natural/political/and personal landscapes. Be a good listener.

3. Writing teaches you to use your emotions. If you're sad, jump right in and write; if your angry, hurt, happy, etc...jump right in and use those emotions as a catalyst. You might be surprised what crops up in your writing.

4. Writing is an art. In order to become a better artist we need to practice every day. Committing to your art is a commitment to your sense of 'self.'

4.9. Writing teaches you to appreciate other writers. It might look easy, but it isn't.

Moose on the Cover and other Mixed Blessings of Authorhood: A Guest Post by Heather Lende

When If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name (Algonquin, 2005) was published I was in a Seattle nursing home recovering from a terrible accident. I was run over by a truck. (I know, it’s all material, but there are easier ways to find something to write about, trust me.)

Anyway, with the new book, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs (Algonquin, too.) I was hoping for a big thing. Sort of Academy Awards meets a New Yorker author event. I imagined adoring fans lined up around the block. I’d wear a skirt and a scarf and my glasses and look like an author. (Or maybe a parka, so I’d look Alaskan. Seth Kantner looks great in that white one. But I don’t have a parka, and no one Outside would believe that it rains as much as it snows in my part of Alaska. Although orange rubber overalls could be sort of Deadliest Catch-y.)

Which brings me to moose on the covers of Alaskan books. I’m two for two now. The latest cover features a moose riding a bicycle. What I have learned, is that authors write books but publishers sell them. Mine assures me, and so far has been correct, that a moose on the cover sells books to people who don’t live where there are real moose. Moose make people smile, like Bullwinkle, or underwear. The reason you write is so people will read what you say, and if that’s how to do it, well, let there be moose. The good news is that if there is a moose on the cover, then you don’t have to put the word “Alaska” in the title and that makes it easier to come up with one.

But back to the big book launch fiasco. (In my mind it was a fiasco. My husband says I daydream too much. That is another side effect of the writing life.) The launch was supposed to be May 18th. In Haines, the small town where I have lived most of my life now, the 18th is high school graduation. The whole town, more or less, turns out to wish the twenty grads well. So, the bookstore was allowed to sell my book on the 17th. I was to leave on the book tour the 19th. That way, I’d be gone three weeks during which time everyone could read my book without looking at me funny in the grocery store. (I had no idea Heather was off her rocker so badly… Maybe she shouldn’t coach our children in cross –country… I can’t believe she wrote that about me… I’m going to kill her… Or her chickens… She must be making a gazillion dollars and could donate a lot more to the library endowment fund.)

Instead, on Wednesday April 28th, Liz from the bookstore called me up and said my book was out in Juneau, so she needed to get some signed and for sale asap. So, my big day was spent with Liz and the boxes of books. Walter came in and talked about his mother dying, and bought a copy. Ron stopped by looking for a calendar, and asked if that was my book and bought three. That was it. I wore whatever I had on, jeans and something. I forget already.

But here’s the thing: just holding that brand new book with my name on it made me feel like a queen. Over the moon. Really. It is thrilling. Which is all a long way of saying hello and welcome to the writer side of my life. (The rest is an open book.) I will be guest posting about what it feels like to have a book published, the book tour, or whatever writer-ly things you’d like to know from me. Please ask and I’ll do my best to be helpful.

We have a key! 30 Days to Opening Raven Place

The 49 Alaska Writing Center now has a home with a name: Raven Place.

As of today, we have a key. Pop the champagne!

We're still finishing paperwork (will there ever be an end to paperwork?) but time is short. We plan to have an evening fundraiser on May 22, and we plan to open to summer guests on June 1. Why a guesthouse? The purpose of the vacation rental facility, loyal readers will recall, is to earn revenue to subsidize the cost of having physical space for writing center events -- classes and readings -- the rest of the year.

If you can paint, clean, help install a counter, help choose light fixtures -- or just about anything else -- please go to the link at right. We are assembling CODE RED work teams and we need you!

We will have come-on, come-all work parties on SATURDAY MAY 8 and SATURDAY MAY 15 from 12 to 5 pm. (RSVP please -- to 49writers@gmail.com) Come help out, enjoy the spring weather, and meet some fellow writers and book-lovers.

More news as it's available...

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