I just got back from my fourth year at The Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop. I studied with Pete Rock, who was kind of a late addition to the conference this year, as were all the writers in his workshop. We applied late or registered late. Some of us had first, or second, or third choices that had filled up. But all of us I think, were happy with the way things turned out. Man, what a bunch of crazy, wonderful, thoughtful, surprising people.
Some highlights from this year:
1) The woman from Winston-Salem that I was looking around for turned out to be staying in the dorm room exactly across the hall from me.
2) The readings. Ok, so the wooden benches of the Cerf Amphitheater hurt, but it’s always worth it. I should go on about all of them. Karen Shepard’s story about a group of college girls ignoring, not acting, while their friend is being raped. Benjamin Percy’s voice. The bit he read from his novel was great, but I can’t get his voice out of my head. Dorothy Allison’s voice confined to Vollum during a night of rain. That hardly stopped her voice from swelling to a boom and then receding to a heart breaking whisper. Luis Alberto Urrea told a story about how stories were told to him when he was a child and then he threw his book to the grass and performed his reading. Amazing! Steve Almond being Steve Almond while being interrupted by some kid walking on the path behind him. It was awkward. The kid looked confused, stoned. Both. He eventually sat down and Steve got to finish. Charles D’Ambrosio reading something new. Giving us the chance to see how seamless his sentences seem to flow, piling on top of each other. Joy Williams and her wonderful and hilarious short pieces about God, or like, from his perspective. I always love listening to D.A. Powell, and his hard-working poetry. He can make just about anything dirty. Aimee Bender read from her book, and then Jim Shepard finished up the week with a funny, but terribly sad, and kind of frightening short story from his new collection.
3) The chicken pot pie. There is this guy who works in the dining hall. Last year he was at the grill. This year he was making oven entrees. I always like getting what he’s prepared because he seems to love what he’s doing so much.
4) The seminars/ panels. I don’t go to them all. I specifically do not attend the morning ones. I just need that space after breakfast. I heard that Matthew Dickman gave a good one on suicide, though. I was sad to have missed it. It was interesting, because every morning in workshop we’d talk about the talks we’d heard, and everyone took wildly different things away from them.
Richard Nash talked about “The Future of Publishing” which seems to be a little less confusing than I imagined it. He gave a brief history lesson on publishing, on how often, and how drastic the changes through the years. His publishing company, Red Lemonade seems to have a pretty sophisticated social networking element incorporated into it. He emphasized the writer’s responsibility in the health of the reading industry. It’s about being connected. Being active in the community and supporting writers and writing.
Pete Rock talked about using research for novels. His novel My Abandonment, and a new novel he’s been working on, have fictionalized pieces of real-life stories and events. Pete talked about the dangers of too much research, and getting too close to the real-life people. He talked about the dangers of wanting to show off cool stuff that you’ve found.
A lot of people I talked to complained about Charles D’Ambrosio and Joy Williams panel, “Architecture and Impulse : Building the Short Story.” Some called it too mumbly. But I think it’s probably a good thing when writers who are trying to pin down an aspect of craft fail to do so. It was great to hear Charlie talk about following the music of what he’s writing, the sound, the rhythm. It was good to hear that he doesn’t keep a book of ideas. That if an idea comes, he writes it out, even if it’s just a page or so. Joy Williams had a particularly hard time talking about stories she had written in the past. It’s as if when they were released into the world, they were truly released from her, and she had a hard time remembering things about writing them, like she had a hard time or a resistance to think or talk about them at all.
I was distracted during Luis Urrea’s talk, “The Theory and Practice of Trust: Writing as Ghost Story” but when I became undistracted it was amazing. He started off by channeling Jim Morrison’s, “Is everyone in? Is everyone in? Is everyone in? The ceremony is about to begin.” His seminar was more otherworldly than most, exploring that spiritual side of the impulse to write, the inspiration and the responsibility the writer has to tell a story that someone, a family member, or fallen soldier cannot tell for him or herself. It was sad. It was as if he was handing us some item. A wand or staff bestowing an honor and responsibility upon us. Believe in coincidence. Believe in everything.
Benjamin Percy talked about the importance of work in writing. How a character’s occupation defines them, how they see the world, and how they speak in it. He showed us a clip from “Stranger than Fiction”, he talked about his father in-law waxing his tractor, he sang us a little song. I sang along.
Aimee Bender made us listen to a six-minute Kate Bush song twice while she talked about fairy tales. Then she gave us a little excercise. I haven’t done mine yet. We were to pass around pieces of paper, one with an occupation, one with a verb, and we were to write a story in which the occupation longed for the verb. I got a dancer who wanted to bellow.
Dorothy Allison talked about dialogue. I never know what to do about dialogue. I feel like I have some grip on it, and when my dialogue is failing, it’s because I don’t know my characters as well as I should. But Dorothy of course blew my mind and opened my eyes. Of course you’re characters need to make sense, and use their own voices, of course they need to be pushing against each other all the time. Dialect isn’t just dropped letters. She used it like an accent. People from everywhere have a dialect of certain way of speaking. I learned that Dorothy is always listening and writing down what she’s heard. So watch out with those cell phone conversations!
Steve Almond gave the last seminar of the week, “Funny is the New Deep.” I am of course already very funny, but it is good to be reminded of the relationship between humor and tragedy and the things that are the funniest often arise from things that are the saddest. It’s also good to remember that you can’t just throw in a bunch of jokes to show off how funny and clever you are. You have to open yourself up to the ridiculousness of this world and use your funny right.
5) The math camp kids in their sarongs!
6) On Thursday, I totally skipped out, and I totally missed Pete’s reading so that I could go to the Eddie Vedder concert. I managed to snatch up a last-minute ticket from Ticketmaster on my phone during Luis Urrea’s seminar. It wasn’t working at first. I was cussing at my phone. I wonder if Dorothy saw. Anyway, I would say it was amazing, or that it was sublime, but I haven’t been able to tell people how it was for me. Glen Hansard opened. I thought I was dreaming. I actually pinched myself several times. Glen’s voice is great, and then Eddie who I’ve loved and been into for years and years played ukulele, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, banjo, mandolin. Glen played with him a couple of times, but mostly Eddie was solo, and I love shabbily dressed men screaming their hearts out over acoustic or stripped down music. Even if he hadn’t dug out some of my most favorite songs, I still would have felt all the stirrings, it still would have felt exactly like church should feel. All that weariness was sloughed away, leaving a gleaming, raw newness inside, something for possibility, for love, and for joy, to cling to.
7) I had to run to Powell’s the last day after the seminars. I had promised my son books and I was running out of time. The bus was no problem but it took me a lot of walking up and down the same streets in Portland before I found the bookstore. I got in and out of there so fast, like record time grabbing Bunnicula books, and old Sesame Street collections that were published during my childhood. By the time I got back to Reed though, I just missed dinner. I got a Cliff bar and an Odwalla from the bookstore, and Steve Almond gave me the chicken noodle soup he hadn’t touched for all the broccoli floating in it.
8) Dorothy Allison. One of those late mornings of the week. Was it Friday? Saturday? I zombie-walked to the dining hall, eyes half-open staring at the muffins, and someone said, “You look how I feel. Like why bother.” Dorothy Allison was speaking to me from the other side of the sneeze guard. I had grounded myself from talking to her, because I could only stammer. I stammered something, and she said, “Because you’ll feel better.” I wanted to fall into that voice of hers and be held. It was a long week. She was my strange breakfast angel.
And then…the last night, after the last readings, Pete got me a beer, we went outside and he asked me who’s class I’d be in next year. I told him I wanted to take Dorothy Allison but I was a little scared of her. Like ten minutes later, more of our class had gathered around, and Dorothy was right behind us. Pete started talking to her and soon was telling her all about how frightened I was of her, and then talking about some award I’ve won that I was being quiet about, and then about the story I turned in for the workshop. It was like an ambush. It was a good thing it was dark out there, I’m sure I was blushing up a storm. Of course, in a way, I think I might take her class in the future, however embarrassing it is to have someone embarrass you it’s less embarrassing that embarrassing yourself.
So that was my Tin House 2011 in a nutshell. Of course I’m missing a lot and I didn’t even talk about all the amazing people in my class, but that will come, for now…a nap.
