2AM Traffic

Yesterday Alistair MacLeod took the lectern and read a short story entitled "As Birds Bring Forth the Sun" that he published over twenty years ago. MacLeod is 72 two years old, yet he reads with the pressure and the awareness of a much younger man who has told a million stories and honed his approach over the years to keep people spellbound. Without taking a single sip of water during the 25 minute reading, he cleared his throat as if sea water bubbled perpetually inside it before moving straight into the rest of a sentence, sentences that he later revealed he wrote longhand and toiled over to get their proper rhythm and momentum and accuracy one after the other without completing a second draft. Later on Joe told me that MacLeod writes at about the rate of one short story every three years, and when he does he holes himself up in a cabin on Cape Breton and writes until it's finished. His stories, if you haven't read them, are about the magic, horror, humility and joy of living on the east coast of Canada where land disappears into oblivion and nature becomes stronger than man could ever comprehend. It was a pleasure to hear him read and to participate in the standing ovation that followed.

Joe sat with me for about a half an hour, offering me a couple of pieces of advice on my work, but in general our conversation focused more on writing - how it works, how it prevents us from working, what should be given greater attention because it's more important. I told him about every thought I've had about writing over the last year and he responded exactly as I'd hoped, trying to allay my fears and anxieties and convince me that I have to cut through all of the bullshit that doesn't matter and focus on the story, get the writing done, get the ideas down, realize that I still look at people with a great interest that is always changing and needs to be explored and captured on paper. Half of my problem has been not hearing that spoken out loud. You write some stories and live for a year with this voice shouting in your head that no one is reading what you write, no one cares about it, that it's all just a game that people play to get their material noticed, and the characters you think about wither and die in your mind because you aren't giving them enough air to grow and become stronger and speak to YOU before they speak to anyone else. How can you write about people if you can't spend any time really getting to know them? I've got this woman in my head that I'm returning to for the first time in months and months and I have no idea who she is, what she looks like, where's she going. I want to write about her, and if I'm going to do that I have to get to know her. That's what I'm going to devote more of my time to over the next little while, even if it's just two hours a day at first.

Joe said that if I ever had something that I thought was finished I could send it along to him for his thoughts. It means so much. The group had an assignment last night to write a four paragraph story that begins with the line, "'Where were you last night?' she asked." I ended up writing a page and a half of stuff about a woman whose glass eye falls into the garbage disposal after she sneezes. It's called "Gesundheit."

Last night Kim and I watched Talk Radio over beers. Matt came home and we stayed up until 1:30 or so chatting. Today is the last day of workshop and the last day of my tenure as an assistant.