Meet The Writer

Day 1: The View Where I Write

“Meet The Writer” is a casual, fun way to get to know me better as a writer. You may know me personally, or you may be getting to know my writing through this newsletter. But unless you’re a peer or faculty member at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, you probably don’t know me as the writer I committed to cultivating.

A writer I follow on Substack

Beth Kempton

often introduces short, generative challenges. This is a 15-day “Meet The Writer” challenge, which I will publish as a short series. I don’t know if I’ll do all 15 days or skip the ones that don’t inspire me, but hang on and we’ll figure it out together.

Thank you, Beth, and on to Day 1 VIEW. What is the view from where you write?

Show Us Your Desk

This is a funny one to me. During my virtual residency for school last week, one of the instructors, author Bret Lott, and also creative writing prof at my alma mater CofC among other far more impressive roles, had us go around the Zoom-room showing or describing our desks and view. At first I didn’t think much of it, just a silly exercise. But by the time we got to the end, I truly felt that I knew everyone a little better. I saw their cats, stacks of books, collections of healing crystals, childhood photos, and tokens of inspiration. My friend,

Adiba Nelson

has a picture of herself as a young person to remind her who she is writing to and for.

We get used to seeing everyone’s faces layered in front of their background, whether it’s a bookcase (me), humorous image of the inside of the Vatican, or a messy living room. Or worst yet—the mysterious blur. What don’t they want us to see? I wonder. Under Bret’s directive, we got to peer under the hood.

Seldom do we get a Zoom-tour, but when we do, we see a fuller picture behind the face. Because Bret’s exercise, so fresh in my memory, was a successful way to introduce my peers—who I know as writers—instead as regular people. In this case, I suspect it’ll be the opposite for readers of this newsletter. Regardless, I’m not a regular person.

Where I Work (Usually)

My office is in a cut-out alcove in the hall of our second story. My desk faces a wall where I have a cork board plastered with outlines of my work, poems, inspiring passages, reminders, post its of passwords to the literary magazines I read for, and highlighted and notated assignments. The cork board mostly includes my own stuff, but I also have work by two other writers.

My favorite is a poem by Stephen Dunn (coincidentally the late husband of one of my former VCFA advisors, poet Barbara Hurd), called The Sacred.

The Sacred by Stephen Dunn

After the teacher asked if anyone had
     a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all
     said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he’d chosen, and others knew the truth
     had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
     the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
     and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key
     in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

I love this poem because it isn’t a car enthusiast’s ode to how fast a Porsche can go in 3 seconds, or the smell of a rusty old Ford pickup with a vinyl bench seat. It’s not even about the cliche “freedom” the car affords us to travel great distances, rather the freedom to exist alone but not necessarily lonely; to control his environment, to speak, or not speak, to worship at the alter of the dashboard, a sacred and divine container. The key, as the metaphor for being the point of it all, is that when we put it in the ignition, the engine starts, our personal intimacy combusts to life.

I also have the first paragraph from The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer (the author who ghost wrote Spare by Prince Harry, but don’t judge him on that, there’s only so much one can do with insane content.)

We went there for everything we needed. we went there when thirsty, of course, and when hungry, and when dead tired. We went there when happy, to celebrate, and when sad, to sulk. We went there after weddings and funerals, for something to settle our nerves, and always for a shot of courage just before. We went there when we didn't know what we needed, hoping someone might tell us. We went there when looking for love, or sex, or trouble, or for someone who had gone missing, because sooner or later everyone turned up there. Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.

This passage could’ve been written by me about my own “Cheers” bar, The Gingerman, in Greenwich, CT circa 2011. It was one of the few places I could go alone knowing I’d find a friend or two, even if I didn’t know which ones. The core group that lived there (yes, it was a home) celebrated achievements, toasted to holidays, found new love in old friends. The Gingerman is where I drunkenly sobbed over the suicide death of my friend David, who I’d met there and spent most Sunday brunches with. The Gingerman is where my best friend at the time tried to take her shirt off at the bar because she was hot, and where I met another long lasting friend, Emily. It’s where my cousin, Liz, would almost always agree to go for dinner or a drink even when she refused to stay out drinking all night on a school night. The Gingerman is where my high school 10-year reunion was held, where I proudly told the Yale and Columbia grads, still in graduate school looking for meaning in life, that I worked for Chrysler, a fortune-100 auto manufacturer, drove personally specced free car, and influenced how dealers conducted business and how consumers experienced it. It might’ve sounded small to them, but it wasn’t and I knew it. The Tender Bar, is, of course, the Gingerman.

The Desk

I write on an old wooden desk I purchased during the pandemic from a guy moving out of a farm house in Leesburg, VA. My husband, Chad, hated the desk, for which I paid $20. It is heavy and a pain in the ass to move, and completely unfit for display in a respectable home. Some of the handles broke off and were replaced with string tied in a loop through the holes. I meant to “refurbish” it. Cover it with a nice coat of paint, replace the handles. But so far, I’ve let it remain who it is. Chad has come to accept this desk, especially since he knows it can be a hidden snack point.

On it, I have a large monitor, a huge mouse pad with a Jeep Grand Cherokee that reads, “BE LEGENDARY.” It might be a little schmaltzy for a car ad, particularly for one that has, like, the most market share of an SUV ever, but it’s a good axiom for a writer. This photo was taken in our temporary/Covid-19 apartment in Leesburg, but you get the gist. For the last few months, I’ve kept a copy of the book Formation by Ryan Leigh Dostie to my left even though I’ve read it and wrote my thesis on it months ago. I guess I’m just not ready to let it go.

The View

To my left, my view is of our backyard in Fairfield backcountry. When the pool is open in the summer, the water glistens and makes me feel calm. It also encourages me to focus and get my work done so I can run outside and jump in it. Once, I happened to look up and caught a fox in action, running across the yard with a ground hog screaming from the fox’s tight mandible. When Sheryl, the mom fox, moves her family in under our pool shed in the spring, I look out to see little fox cubs rolling around, squealing, nipping, and barking like puppies whose voices haven’t dropped yet.

And then of course, the alternate writing spaces are the front seat of my car while my little one naps. I often look up from my screen to the garage door or to nitpick what my garden needs. I’m currently composing this newsletter from my bed because one of the great privileges of adulthood is writing from bed at 5PM.

Leave a comment and let me know where you get your best work done, whether it’s school work, job, writing, creative or otherwise.

Day 2 → CATALYST What made you start writing?

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