Remember those classic bubble bath commercials, “Calgon, take me away”? When I’m stressed and busy it’s not a sudsy bath I yearn for. It’s an artists’ colony – a place where someone else shops for groceries, makes dinner, vacuums the living room, washes the sheets, and generally leaves me alone to write. It’s a place without appointments, errands, or any other external obligations, where the only demands on my time are self-imposed. A place to think long, uninterrupted thoughts, take meditative walks, speak to others only if and when I choose. A place where I can leave papers all over the floor and find them in the same place the following morning. Most of all, it’s a place I can sustain an idea over several days, absorbing myself in what John Gardner has called the “vivid and continuous dream” of a novel.
The artists’ colony I dream about is the only one I’ve ever been to: the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Long ago, as a MFA student at the University of Virginia, I would jump in the car for the hour-long drive to the VCCA for a few days whenever they had a last-minute cancellation. But I’ve only been once, for a scant week, since having children.
My kids are older now, and I just found out that I’ve been accepted for ten days in May – the perfect time, as I finish a semester of teaching, to plunge deeper into my new novel. Until then (with a nod to James Taylor) you must forgive me if I'm up and gone to Virginia in my mind.
Jessica Dunne, one of my favorite artists, painted the landscape above, “Contorted Willow, Virginia,” while a resident at the VCCA in 2007.
More than a decade ago, leafing through The New York Times, I came across this image as I was beginning to work on a new novel. I assume that it was part of an advertisement, but I cut it out carefully around the edges, so I don’t know for sure. I don’t even know when it appeared in the paper, though from what I’ve deduced from articles on the back side it seems to have been some time in the spring of 1998. (An ad for a wine store says “Prices effective through April 30, 1998.”)
For the Young Who Want To
A long time ago, before I wrote my first novel, I despaired of ever having the time to undertake such a large and arduous project. I had two small children and my days (nights too, come to think of it) seemed hopelessly fractured; my time, or what there was of it, felt like it had been broken into the small, useless increments: fifteen minutes here, twenty there. An hour that was all my own was a rare and prized occurrence. How I was to cobble together a writing life from all these pieces was inconceivable to me. I could not work in shards, I thought. I needed some great and unbroken expanse of time, time like a freshly opened bar of chocolate: smooth, rich, and mine, mine, mine. But it was not to be, not then, and maybe not ever. If I wanted to write, I was going to have to readjust my thinking and my expectations. Instead of that glorious, unblemished chocolate bar, I had a bag of M & Ms: discrete nuggets of time that I would have to learn to use.
How can I be a guest on my own blog, you ask? Over the past few weeks, with the publication of Bird in Hand, I've been busy guest blogging for other sites and doing Q&A's, radio interviews, and podcasts. (And more are coming up.) Now and then, if a particular posting or discussion strikes me as pertinent to issues here, I'll post it as well. Hence my own guest blog.
