Tennessee Williams Festival 2012: Panels & Special Event

I attended three panel discussions and a special event at the 2012 Tennessee Williams Festival. Below are some notes on these.

PANEL ON MEMOIR

This panel was composed of four memoirists.

• Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts: HARLEM IS NOWHERE
• Zachary Lazar: EVENING'S EMPIRE: THE STORY OF MY FATHER'S MURDER
• Claudia Sternbach: READING LIPS: A MEMOIR OF KISSES
• Jesmyn Ward: SALVAGE THE BONES

The moderator was Ted O'Brien.

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, author of HARLEM IS NOWHERE, spoke of her book as one person's consciousness colliding with history, using the first person as a tool to encounter the place. She does not separate Harlem's history from her own life; rather, Harlem very much affects her life and the lives of African-Americans; Harlem and its history are very much alive today. Harlem was once seen as the place from which African- Americans would enter our democracy, but in the 1960s and 1970s, Harlem became the symbol of all that was wrong with our democracy.

Sharifa says that writers can sometimes experience an emotional reaction to their material that causes them to shut down, and that they must develop the ability to push through this, to write through this, to persevere.

Zachary Lazar, author of EVENING'S EMPIRE: THE STORY OF MY FATHER'S MURDER, says that the best part of writing his memoir was interviewing his father's friends and having the father whom he had never known come alive.

Claudia Sternbach, author of READING LIPS: A MEMOIR OF KISSES, focuses her memoir on the observation that the most important moments of life are often marked by a kiss.

Jesmyn Ward, author of SALVAGE THE BONES, wrote her memoir from a burning question: When five young black men died within a short period of time in her hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi, WHY was there such an epidemic of death among young black men? One of these young men was her brother.

PANEL ON WOMEN AND THE WORLDS OF THEIR WRITING

The panelists were four women writers.

• Lucy Ferris: THE LOST DAUGHTER
• Ellen Baker: KEEPING THE HOUSE
• Laura Ellen Scot: DEATH WISHING
• Jessica Maria Tuccelli: GLOW

The moderator was Bev Marshall.

Lucy Ferris, author of THE LOST DAUGHTER, says that her novel sprung from a news headline about the abandonment of a baby by teenage parents. These were actually middle-class teens. In the novel, the abandonment occurs in 1993, and in 2008, we go back to see the aftermath of what happened, especially as the baby did survive. For her book, Lucy learned about the effects of hypoxia at birth. A baby with hypoxia can appear dead to two confused teenagers. Lucy also remarked that people often know us only as adults but do not know the past lives that have created the people we are today.

Ellen Baker, author of KEEPING THE HOUSE, began her work with three images: (1) a photo of women in work garb from World War II, (2) an abandoned farm house that Ellen would drive by and that looked as though life had been hard there, (3) a visit to Calumet, Michigan, which was once home to 700,000 but which had decreased to 7,000 because the mining work had disappeared, leaving empty streets and rows of empty company houses. In KEEPING THE HOUSE, a grand-daughter in the year 2000 goes to northern Wisconsin to try to piece together why there is such separation among the women in her family. She discovers a tragedy that occurred in 1913.

Laura Ellen Scot, author of DEATH WISHING, wrote a book set in the Marigny, where people are dying, and some of them have the ability to make wishes that will come true after their death. No one knows who has this ability and who doesn't. Laura began her work with a "what if" question. This book seems a bit silly to me.

Jessica Maria Tuccelli, author of GLOW, wrote about lives of hardship spanning generations in northern Georgia. Her setting is Rabun County, and she did research at the county house in Clayton (which, to her surprise, turned out to be a shack). When I lived in western North Carolina after Hurricane Katrina, I sometimes went to Clayton and to the Osage Farmer's Market in Rabun County, which also has a wonderful barbecue stand next to it.

Jessica chose north Georgia because she wanted to write about a place that was completely unfamiliar to her. She is from New York City. On a trip with her husband, she went through an ancient forest in northeast Georgia and knew that this was the place she would write about, as it has a magical quality.

Jessica had to find a way in to talk with the people about their lives, and after persistent efforts and softening her approach, people began to talk generously with her about their stories. The people of Rabun County all have Cherokee ancestors, as well as African-American and Scotts-Irish. These people all have ghost stories.

Jessica has given the people of Rabun County copies of her novel, and they have expressed appreciation for the way she has portrayed them. Jessica used the Beck family as a basis for her novel.

PANEL ON FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR

The panelists were four people who have written about free people of color.

• John Guare, author of a play titled "A Free Man of Color"
• Barbara Hambly, author of the Benjamin January series of mysteries featuring a free man of color
• Gregory Osborn, archivist at the New Orleans Public Library
• Daniel Sharfstein, author of THE INVISIBLE LINE: A SECRET HISTORY OF RACE IN AMERICA

The moderator was Pat Brady.

John Guare play, "A Free Man of Color," is about race in Louisiana before the Louisiana Purchase by the United States. The play will be performed at the Swine Palace Theater at LSU in September. I will consider going to Baton Rouge to see it. John Guare says he just loves the idea of his play being performed at a place called the Swine Palace - but I didn't really have a reaction to this as I'm used to the name of that theater in Baton Rouge.

John made the important point that today we have no vocabulary to talk about the nuances of race that existed in 1802 and earlier. Prior to 1802 (and the Louisiana Purchase), race existed on a continuum with many different shades and social standings. Once Louisiana came under the United States, all of this changed and any nuance of race disappeared. You were either black or white. If you were 1/32 black, you were black. If you were less than 1/32 black, you were white. Lots of either/or thinking here.

Barbara Hambly, author of the Benjamin January mystery series, had wanted since college to write a murder mystery series about a free man of color. Barbara knew (as many people don't) that free people of color owned slaves. Her main character, Benjamin January, is always walking a fine line between white and black. He is 3/4 black, with a fully black father and a mulatto mother. His mother is the child of a white master who raped one of his black slaves.

Barbara explained that free people of color did not identify themselves as black. To be black meant to be a slave. U.S. Americans, however, made no distinction between free people of color and black slaves. The way they saw it, if you weren't white, you were black.

Gregory Osborn's African-American parents were in the diaspora to California just after World War II.

Daniel Sharfstein, author of THE INVISIBLE LINE: A SECRET HISTORY OF RACE IN AMERICA, says that his book comes from an experience at age 20 in South Africa, where he spent a summer doing photo education. The black people he worked with were all classified as African by the government except for one woman who was classified as colored. This woman was actually fully African, but a census taker, wanting to do her father a favor, listed her classification as colored. This gave her a very different and much better educational and social experience as she was growing up, all due to her racial classification, which was not something visible and obvious but simply due to one census taker's whim.

This flexibility of race is what Daniel explores in THE INVISIBLE LINE. He returned to the United States wondering about race here. He came across one man in the United States who was suing for divorce on the grounds that he had unknowingly married a woman of a different race than he had thought. (Clearly, the race of this man's wife had not been obvious to him.)

Daniel tells the history of race through three families - just before the American Revolution, just before the Civil War, and at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Someone remarked that stereotypes about black people today stem from the terror inspired by the Haitian Revolution, which was indeed very bloody and terrifying for white people in Haiti. It was also remarked, though, that fear of a slave uprising had always existed. Indeed, oppressors always fear the oppressed - they fear their vengeance, which they know they deserve. In the United States, the Reconstruction after the Civil War hardened attitudes toward black people in the South.

SPECIAL EVENT: WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE UNITED STATES' BEST NEW RESTAURANTS with John Mariani

The best thing about this event was the wonderful hors-d'oeuvre served along with it. John Mariani says that there is no better barometer of economic health than how many people are going to restaurants. This is true of our receding recession, and it was true of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

I also noticed that John Mariani says he likes to eat at the very fattening Cochon in New Orleans, as well as at John Besh's Lüke, with its French bistro cooking.

Tennessee Williams Festival 2012: Master Classes

I attended the Tennessee Williams Festival, which was held March 22-25, 2012. Here are some notes about the Master Classes I attended on Thursday, March 22.

CHILDREN'S BOOKS 101 with Catherine Frank

The main thing I learned here is that Young Adult books have crossed over into the mainstream adult reading world. Suzanne Collins' THE HUNGER GAMES is an excellent example, as is HARRY POTTER.

I also identified some books I want to read.

• THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET by Brian Selznik
• THE FAULT IN OUR STARS by John Green
• TRY NOT TO BREATHE by Jennifer R. Hubbard, which addresses not only suicide but the rebuilding of the life of someone who has attempted suicide

INTEGRATING E-BOOKS WITH PRINT PUBLISHING with Radclyffe and Julie Smith

This Master Class was really for publishers getting into e-books, so it didn't apply to me, but I really just like to hear Radclyffe speak. I like Radclyffe a lot.

MAKE SOCIAL NETWORKING WORK with Michele Karlsberg

Michele spoke about how to use social networking media to keep yourself as an author before the public. Michele says that Facebook is best used to spark conversation, and Twitter is best used to spread quick information. Michele likes to put up discussion questions on Facebook and let her FB Friends discuss them. She also says that people love Top 10 lists. And she has the interesting idea to offer a prize of "Lunch with an Author"! The winner gets to have lunch with the author whose FB page it is. Michele provided a hefty handout with extensive information, and she makes herself available to answer questions any time. I also just plain old like to hear Michele speak.

SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN THE PUBLISHING WORLD with Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry of the Book Doctor

This Master Class was about how to pitch your book to a publisher. You need a pitch for your book - a 200-word, one-minute answer to the question, "What's your book about?" Your voice should come through in your book, and the pitch should be reflective of the book (funny if a funny book, heart-thumping for a thrilling book, informative for an information book). You also need a platform - what YOU will do to get your book before the public. Arielle and David stressed that most authors have no idea how overwhelmed agents and publishers are. They also said that self-publishing has become quite respectable in the last few years.

An interesting thing is that the Book Doctor (Arielle and David) also held a later event during the Festival called Pitch-A-Palooza, where anyone could take one minute to pitch a book to them. They would choose a winner and help that author get his or her book published.

Hospital Experience #19: Riches of Writing

This is the nineteenth in a series of posts on a recent experience at Ochsner Hospital - having a cardiac catheter ablation procedure to correct a heart arrhythmia. These posts describe and reflect on various aspects of the hospital experience. This nineteenth post will reflect on the riches I have received through writing about this hospital experience.

I have already written about the ways that writing enriches my life in my post of December 23, 2009, titled "Frank Schaeffer's Patience With God: More Thoughts on Writing and Words." After reading Frank Schaeffer's book Patience With God, particularly what Frank says therein about writing and words, I felt inspired me to make my own list of the many ways that writing enriches me, and I did so in that earlier post. In this current post, I will use that list to examine how the same riches of writing apply to my blogging about my recent hospital experience.

KEEPING MEMORIES. These blog posts hold my memories about the hospital experience. I can return to these posts time and time again to remember.

Writing often also helps me access memories. In other words, if I start writing about something I remember vaguely, I often find that the act of writing brings up more and more detail. Writing also brings to mind entire memories that I had forgotten. I did not experience this in blogging about my hospital experience, probably because the memories are still so fresh, but I want to mention it.

LIVING MY LIFE TWICE. This is a wonderful benefit of writing. I can live my life twice. I live it first as lived experience. Then I live it again by writing about it. The writing causes me to delve deeply into my experience, to mine its richness, to live my life more fully.

This is certainly true of my hospital experience. I lived through it as the events unfolded in the hospital. Then I lived it a second time, far more deeply, through my writing.

CLARIFYING MY THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS. If I want to know what I think or feel about something, a sure way to find out is to write about it. The very act of writing freely about a subject pulls up my thoughts and feelings and spills them onto the page or screen.

With my hospital experience, I took the time to articulate my thoughts and feelings and to organize them into a coherent piece of writing. Working with this inner material clarifies it.

In addition, my thoughts and feelings are no long roiling about vaguely and namelessly inside me. I have named them and placed them outside myself - on a page or screen - where I can stand back and look at them. This also makes my thoughts and feelings clearer to me.

I am aware, too, that any piece of writing is a snapshot of my thoughts and feelings at a particular moment in time, so I need to hold them loosely, realizing that my thoughts and feelings may evolve and that I can clarify that evolution with additional writing. If I look back on my hospital experience a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now, I may be writing about different thoughts and feelings.

PUTTING MY EXPERIENCE OUTSIDE MYSELF. Writing takes my experience outside of myself and puts it onto the page or screen, where I can look at it more objectively. I can "see" my experience more clearly on the page or screen than I can when it remains locked within me.

This allows me to be calmer about troubling aspects of my experience. Just the fact that I can look at the experience in written form, outside myself, makes any inner turmoil far less intense, including how I now view my panic in the procedure room, my encounter with Nurse Dreadful, and the post-procedure bleeding incident.

MAKING MY EXPERIENCE REAL TO ME. To name and articulate something, to put it into words, makes it real. Unnamed experience is often vague.

For example, as a result of writing, my panic in the procedure room is much more real to me. It is not some vague and nameless terror. I see the physiological manifestations of the panic and the inner feeling state that went with them. I have named all this, making the experience real and concrete. As a result, I am better prepared to speak about my panic potential with my doctor and to let my doctor know what I'll need in any future such situations.

Likewise, having written about my clash with Nurse Dreadful, the dynamics of the clash are real to me. What happened is not some vague unpleasantness but a specific interaction with distinct moves of words, facial expression, and body language. Here, too, as a result, I am better prepared to handle such potential clashes very differently in the future.

The many ways I was supported by my friends are more real to me through my writing. I haven't just vaguely received lots of great support, but the specific gifts of each friend are distinct and real to me.

ENTERING MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES. Writing opens a kaleidoscope of perspectives. I can explore how a situation appears to someone very different from myself by putting myself into his or her mind, so to speak, and writing from that place.

Among these blog posts are two where I look at the encounter with Nurse Dreadful from Nurse Dreadful's point of view, giving me a far broader perspective on what happened. This nurse came across to me as Nurse Dreadful - but is it not possible that I came across to her as Patient Dreadful? Writing from someone else's point of view is a wonderful way to stand in someone else's shoes and to build compassion.

PULLING UP INSIGHTS. Writing is a way to access my unconscious, to know consciously things that I didn't know I knew. As I write, I sometimes find myself pouring insights onto the page or screen, insights that I would not have accessed otherwise.

This is most evident in my two posts on Yvonne's gift of healing music, particularly the first of the two. I reached an amazing insight at the end of that post - an insight that came through writing. When I began writing that post, I had no idea that my writing would take me to this insight. The insight was present within me all along - but I was not conscious of it. The act of writing pulled that insight up into my awareness.

FINDING SOLUTIONS. If I write about a problem, I often find myself writing through to possible solutions. Those solutions come to me through the act of writing. In other words, I start writing without knowing how to solve the problem, and the writing itself pulls possible solutions up into my awareness.

With my hospital experience, I would say that writing has given me solutions to similar future situations. I now see better ways to be authentic, especially in stating my needs to my doctor concerning potential panic and in relating to a person who comes across unpleasantly.

HEALING. Writing heals. Because writing clarifies my thoughts and feelings, puts my experience outside of myself, makes my experience real to me, allows me to view an experience from multiple perspectives, pulls up insights, and finds solutions - because writing accomplishes all these things - writing heals.

Here are four specific ways that I have experienced healing through writing about my hospital experience:

• Taking baby steps in compassion
• Opening myself to receive love from others
• Glimpsing that life is worth it
• Becoming more authentic by telling the truth

BONDING WITH OTHERS. Naming and articulating my experience connects me with others. When a writer shares his or her writing, readers connect with the writer's experience and even connect more deeply with their own experience. Frank Schaeffer, the catalyst for my earlier post on the ways that writing enriches my life, is one of many writers who connect me to my own experience and help me to understand myself more deeply.

In blogging about my hospital experience, I have made my writing available to anyone who wants to read it on the Internet. I connect with people who read about my hospital experience - people I know and people I don't know - who will never tell me that they have read my posts. The connection is nonetheless made, even though I don't know about it. I also connect with people who read about my hospital experience and let me know that they have done so. In these cases, I am aware that a connection has been made. Most wonderful are those people who read about my hospital experience and respond with their own thoughts and feelings about my experience and/or with experiences of their own. They do this through the blog's comment function, through some other online channel such as email or a Facebook comment or message, by phone, or in person. I find this incredibly enriching.

These connections also help me to tell the truth. In blogging about my hospital experience, I tell the truth to myself, to those who read my blog posts anonymously, and to those who read my blog posts and respond. By connecting with others through blogging, my truth is told, heard, and even valued.

CREATING. In writing, I create. I produce a piece of written work. Creating is deeply satisfying and increases my joy.

Indeed, I do take joy in these hospital experience blog posts.

ENERGIZING. Writing energizes me. Sometimes when I write, I feel actual currents of energy flowing through my body.

I have often felt this excitement and energy upon sitting down to write these hospital experience blog posts.

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD. The act of writing causes me to study my subject closely. I look deeply into the person, place, object, experience, or idea that I am writing about. This close study opens my subject to me in greater fullness and glory and increases my appreciation for my subject. The more subjects I write about, the more I fall in love with my world.

In writing these hospital experience blog posts, I have fallen in love with the whole hospital experience, with my friends, with life's ability to absorb pain into joy, and even with the physiological and emotional state of panic and with Nurse Dreadful. I didn't enjoy the panic, but I have enjoyed analyzing it through writing and gaining an understanding of its different components. I didn't enjoy the encounter with Nurse Dreadful, but I have enjoyed examining the encounter from her perspective and analyzing the dynamics of our interaction through writing.

I would say that my blogging about my hospital experience has caused me to fall in love more deeply with more of my world.

Hospital Experience #17: Telling the Truth

This is the seventeenth in a series of posts on a recent experience at Ochsner Hospital - having a cardiac catheter ablation procedure to correct a heart arrhythmia. These posts describe and reflect on various aspects of the hospital experience. This seventeenth post will reflect on a special gift I have received from blogging about this hospital experience: the joy of telling the truth.

This post also connects with my posts on Frank Schaeffer, an author whom I would characterize as a courageous truth-teller. This post connects particularly with my post of August 27, 2009, titled "Frank Schaeffer's Memoir: Self-Disclosure," and with my post of December 26, 2009, titled "Frank Schaeffer's Patience With God: Problems of Integrity with Fundamentalism," especially the final paragraph. In these earlier posts, I marvel at some of the unflattering things Frank discloses about himself in his books and reflect on what might have motivated him to make these self-disclosures.

In this present post, I will examine my own self-disclosures in my hospital experience posts and reflect on how these self-disclosures have benefited me. I will use my above-mentioned earlier posts about Frank Schaeffer for deeper understanding about self-disclosure and truth-telling. It is not necessary to have read my earlier posts on Frank Schaeffer to understand this one.

FRANK SCHAEFFER'S TRUTH TELLING

Here is what I understand about Frank Schaeffer and his passion for truth telling. Frank grew up in a family who ran a fundamentalist Christian mission in Switzerland. Because his parents (Francis and Edith Schaeffer) were esteemed Christian teachers, anything that did not fit with their image as upright Christians had to be kept as a strict family secret, including Francis Schaeffer's depressions and rages and his verbal and physical abuse of Edith. The truth could not be told - it would harm the ministry.

As a young adult, Frank continued in his parents' footsteps and made a good living writing Christian fundamentalist books and speaking on the Christian fundamentalist circuit. As time went on, Frank became more and more uncomfortable with the message he was preaching - it just didn't mesh with reality. Yet Frank was unwilling to give up his comfortable living, and he feared that he didn't know how to support his family in any other way. This inner conflict made him irritable, and he took out his irritation on his wife and children. Eventually, Frank did leave Christian fundamentalism, joined the Greek Orthodox Church, and now makes his living as a secular writer. He has published eleven books (three of them co-authored), and a twelfth book is scheduled to come out in the spring of 2011.

In his memoir, Crazy For God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back, Frank makes some very unflattering self-disclosures. Specifically, he speaks of how he stayed on the Christian fundamentalist circuit for so long simply because of the good money, and he reveals details of his unloving behavior to his family, especially how he sometimes hit his daughter, Jessica, and pulled her hair in anger. At first, it was hard for me to understand how Frank could reveal such things about himself, things that now cause him shame and that he deeply regrets.

I began to understand Frank's self-disclosures better when I read his next book, Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism), where Frank specifically describes his spiritual evolution. In Patience With God, Frank describes the great inner tension produced by feeling trapped into having to proclaim publicly what his heart no longer believed - and his HUGE RELIEF when at last he stepped away from Christian fundamentalism and could finally TELL THE TRUTH. What a sheer, sheer relief it was - after so many years of keeping secrets - to simply tell the truth.

MY SECRETS

Like Frank, I grew up in a family with secrets. The biggest secret was that my mother was an alcoholic. Apparently, the sky would fall if anyone ever found out about this. It was a very strict secret. So secret was it, in fact, that my two youngest sisters, Maria and Janet, never did know about our mother's drinking problem until our other sister, Sandra, decided that she should tell them - when we were all well into adulthood. (Our mother had stopped drinking when I was sixteen, Sandra was twelve, Maria was eight, and Janet was seven. Our brothers, Michael and Danny, were fourteen and ten, respectively. Only the four eldest - myself, Michael, Sandra, and Danny - were old enough to understand what had been going on, although Danny later forgot that he had known this. After our mother stopped drinking, we never talked about it again - until many years later, as adults.)

So - secrets were the norm in my family. My father didn't even like us to have friends to spend the night. We did sometimes have friends to spend the night, but my father didn't much care for this. He didn't want anyone to know our family business. He once told me that he felt he couldn't run his home the way he wanted to when we had guests over. (My father wanted to run the home with tight control - we were all scared of him, including my mother. I am convinced that this is why she drank.)

One characteristic of adult children of alcoholics is that they have trouble telling the truth. While I don't think of myself as a liar, I do see situations where I find telling the truth difficult, situations where I feel tempted to beat around the bush or to project a better image of myself than is true - even though telling the truth would actually simplify things in many of these situations.

MY TRUTH TELLING

One area where I have had trouble telling the truth has been my over-indulgence in fatty and sugary foods over the last several years. I have tried to hide this, eating healthy foods and moderate amounts when with other people, but eating fatty and sugary foods and large amounts when alone. As a result, I gained a lot of weight, and I now have high blood pressure. The first step in confronting the problem has been to tell the truth - I have chosen to eat poorly and not to exercise, and this has led to weight gain and high blood pressure. Now I need to choose new eating and exercise behavior.

Somehow, it is a great relief to actually say this - to tell the truth. I have felt the joy of this relief in writing my hospital experience posts, especially "Hospital Experience #8: Personal Responsibility and Honesty." It feels good to spell out the truth about what has been going on with my eating and lack of exercise.

I think that tension is produced in our bodies when we don't tell the truth. We may not be conscious of this tension, but it is there, affecting our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. When we tell the truth, we release the tension and experience the joy of being able to relax more deeply than perhaps we ever have. I believe that this is what happened to Frank Schaeffer, and it is one reason that, as he says, he began to treat his family far better when he started to tell the truth. Telling the truth allowed Frank to relax, and a relaxed husband and father is a kinder husband and father.

Also, we expend energy to hide the truth, and this is tiring - even though we may not be conscious of the toll this is taking on us. When we tell the truth at last, all that energy is freed for creative purposes. Frank Schaeffer experienced a great burst of creativity when he began to tell the truth. He took up again the painting that he had loved but abandoned as a young man, and he started writing novels.

Writing these blog posts on my hospital experience and delving into the truth has given me an inkling of the relaxation, energy release, and joy of truth telling. This blog allows me to tell the truth to myself as well as to anyone who reads the blog - the blog is, after all, available to everyone on the Internet! I especially thank those who have read the blog, particularly those who have told me that they have read it. This lets me know that my truth-telling has been heard. Thank you! Some have even responded with comments through the blog's comment function, by email, by phone, or in person - sometimes sharing experiences of their own. This lets me know that my truth-telling has been heard and valued. Thank you!

I want to end with a word of caution, mostly to myself. I do know that truth-telling can be over-done. The truth-telling in this blog gives me joy, which indicates to me that I am ready to make these particular self-disclosures. There are other self-disclosures that I am not ready to make - these should stay in my personal journal, not for sharing. I may never be ready to make certain self-disclosures to anyone but myself. Even Frank Schaeffer, courageous truth-teller that he is, says that there are some things about himself that he chooses not to disclose. This is as it should be.

I also feel quite sure that there are some self-disclosures that I am not ready to make even to myself. Of course, I don't know what these are, since I haven't yet disclosed them to myself.

What I want to do is to continue telling the truth to myself and, as appropriate, to others. (Certainly, truth telling should never be used as a club to hurt someone else - most of the time, we don't need to tell others the truth about themselves but the truth about our own selves.) I also want to encourage others in their own truth telling through supportive listening, as others have done for me. Truth telling can be a great joy. It is even more joyful to share that joy!

Hospital Experience #11: Yvonne - Healing Music Part 1

This is the eleventh in a series of posts on a recent experience at Ochsner Hospital - having a cardiac catheter ablation procedure to correct a heart arrhythmia. These posts describe and reflect on various aspects of the hospital experience. This eleventh post is the first of two posts in which I will reflect on the gift given me by Yvonne, a life-long friend and a pianist living in Colorado.

Throughout this hospital experience, Yvonne has supported me in many ways, including thinking of me and praying for me, contacting me before the procedure to express her love and concern, listening deeply to me, and most especially keeping vigil during the procedure. Yvonne kept vigil for me in a unique way: throughout the entire morning of my procedure, she played and sang healing music for me.

Yvonne has done this healing music for many people. She has done it for people who simply wanted the experience, for people undergoing illness or surgery or grief or trauma, and for people in the process of dying. She has done it for those who are physically present in the room with her and for those who are physically elsewhere.

Here is my understanding of the healing music Yvonne does. What I understand is that Yvonne sits at the piano and quiets her spirit, sets her intention to connect deeply with the spirit of the one for whom she is playing and singing, and begins to play. As she plays, early on, she feels herself slip into a place of connectedness. She then allows herself to be led to the pieces and songs she is to play and sing.

Yvonne says that, when she plays and sings in this way, she is very aware that something is being done through her rather than that she is doing something. She experiences herself as a channel through which gifts of the spirit world flow to others. These gifts do not originate with her. In fact, Yvonne is often in awe of what a healing music session evokes for those for whom she plays and sings. People often share this with Yvonne in the days or weeks after a session, but Yvonne herself leaves it entirely up to them whether or not to share, as they wish.

Some years ago, I experienced this healing music with Yvonne in person - that is, while physically present in the room with her. When I experienced this in person, the music had a deeply calming effect. It was in the evening at my home, so I went to bed right after the healing music session and slept very soundly. The calming effect lasted noticeably into the next day.

On the morning of my cardiac catheter ablation, Yvonne again did this healing music for me. Yvonne is not a morning person and she lives in the Mountain Time Zone (an hour earlier than the Central Time Zone where I am located in New Orleans), but she got up early enough to begin playing and singing at 7 a.m. MDT, and she did not stop until approximately 11 a.m. MDT when she received the phone call that the procedure was over and I was fine. Yvonne was with me in this special way the whole time.

POSTSCRIPT: I am writing this postscript after completing this post. I originally intended to write one post on Yvonne's gift of healing music. That was before I realized where this writing would take me. The writing has taken me to such a surprising insight that I have decided to end this post with that important insight. This post, then, will reflect on the gifts of comfort, presence, and healing that I received through Yvonne's playing and singing for me. My next post will continue my reflections on Yvonne's gift.

Here are some of the benefits I received from Yvonne's gift of healing music during my hospital experience.

COMFORT. This comfort was tangible for me. I truly felt comfort in knowing that my friend was with me throughout the time of my medical procedure. Yvonne devoted the entire morning to me in an intense and concentrated way. She wasn't thinking of me while also going about her daily tasks. She wasn't waiting to hear news of how the procedure went while reading a book. She concentrated her whole attention exclusively on me for four hours. This is hugely comforting.

PRESENCE. Yvonne was present with me. Although she was physically in Colorado while I was physically in New Orleans, she was more present than she would have been if she had been sitting physically right outside the procedure room waiting for news of the outcome while reading the newspaper, chatting on a cell phone, or eating a snack. In fact, the ONLY way in which Yvonne was not present was physically. She was present with me mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

We get so caught up in the physical that, if someone isn't physically in the same location as we are, we experience them as not there, as absent. Yet physical presence is the most shallow way of being present. Unless other ways of being present are also involved, physical presence alone is useless. To use a drastic example, if an individual is physically having sex with his or her spouse while mentally and emotionally doing so with someone else, many people would consider this an act of infidelity even though the individual may never have approached that other person physically at all.

Mental presence, emotional presence, and spiritual presence are REAL ways of being present. I know that this is true, even though if remains intangible for me. That is, I didn't actually feel Yvonne's presence as she was playing and singing healing music for me. I simply knew that she was doing this, that she was truly present with me in this deep way - and this knowledge comforted me.

Yvonne does have a more tangible sense of non-physical presence. She told me that, as soon as she sat down at the piano to play and sing for me on the morning of my medical procedure, she could feel my presence right there beside her. She said, "It was as though you were right there in the room with me." I would say that it was more than that. I was right there in the Colorado piano room with Yvonne, and Yvonne was right there in the New Orleans procedure room with me - or perhaps we were right there with each other in a way that has nothing to do with space.

HEALING. The healing music played and sung by Yvonne healed me at a deep level, whether or not I am conscious of it. Actually, I am not conscious of the healing that went on and probably continues to go on as a result of Yvonne's gift. But I know that healing happened and is probably still happening - I know this because it is clear to me that concentrated energy has an effect. Yvonne was intensely concentrating her energy upon me for four hours. Something happened as a result, whether on not I am aware of it.

I might wonder - since Yvonne was playing and singing healing music for me - why I clashed with Nurse Dreadful and why I panicked in the procedure room. Shouldn't the healing music have produced calm? Not necessarily. I can think of at least two reasons why not.

First, I realize now that there is something I could have done and didn't do. In the weeks and days leading up to my procedure, I thought about the gift Yvonne was going to give me and felt comforted. However, on the morning of the procedure itself, I was so focused on getting through the procedure intact that I did not take time to align myself consciously with the healing music, to open myself consciously to receive this gift. I think I could have received more if I had done this.

Second, while feeling calm throughout hospital day would have been a gift that I would love to have received, I believe that the gift I actually needed to receive was far different. It is the gift of insight. The Nurse Dreadful clash and the procedure room panic have led to very useful insights about myself, as my blog posts show.

Also - and I am realizing this with amazement just this moment - I value the insights more than I value calmness. To find myself saying that I value insights more than calmness is HUGE! My life stance thus far has been very different. I have often expressed it like this: "I don't want to grow and become a better person - I just want to avoid pain and discomfort," and "I'd rather not learn the lessons life teaches because they are too painful - it's not worth it." But now, in this hospital experience, I am able to see that it IS worth it. Somehow, I am able to say, "It is worth it to have clashed with Nurse Dreadful and to have panicked in the procedure room because of the insights I have gained from those uncomfortable experiences."

Come to think of it, I don't think I have ever said this about any uncomfortable experience before! Before, I would have said: "No, it was too painful to reach those insights - it wasn't worth it." But this time, it IS worth it.

As I write this, I am becoming aware of just how great a shift this is in my thinking. My writing is also solidifying the shift, making it more concrete and real to me, so that I can choose to work with it in the future and make it a conscious part of my life.

I am also noticing something else about this. It is not quite true to say, "The discomfort of the clash and the panic is worth it because the discomfort is outweighed by the valuable insights." It is more than that. It is that the joy of the insights retro-actively infuses the clash and the panic. The pain of then is absorbed into the joy of now. It is not a question of weighing painful incidents against valuable insights and finding that the insights have greater weight. No. It is that the painful incidents get absorbed into the joy and value of the insights. I mean - the pain is transformed. The pain doesn't cause suffering any more - it causes joy.

I have NEVER experienced this before. All the pain in my life has caused me suffering. I have weighed the pain against the joy and decided that the small amount of joy simply isn't worth enduring the large amount of pain. Conclusion: Life isn't worth it. Resultant life stance: My life goal has been to get from here to the grave as safely and painlessly as possible. I have often said, "If it is true that we actually choose to come to earth, I must have chosen to do so in a moment of utter cosmic insanity." I have often imagined the day when a doctor will tell me, "You have just x amount of time to live," and with what relief I will exclaim, "Finally, finally, I am getting out of here - it will be over!"

But now I have had an experience that opens a whole new way to approach life. I have actually experienced being able to say, "This painful event is worth it because of the insights I have gained. Indeed, the value of the insights infuses the pain. The pain has lost its quality of suffering and has become part of the joy."

I would like to reach a place where I can also say, "This entire life is worth it," and "The pain of this life no longer causes me suffering but joy." For the first time, I glimpse this as a very real possibility.

I began this section saying that I knew that Yvonne's playing and singing had effected and was effecting healing in me even though I was not consciously aware of the healing. I am ending this section aware of a tremendous area of healing.

THIS is the healing I have received from Yvonne's gift of music - to have actually experienced the fact that pain can be transformed from suffering to joy and to know that life can truly be worth it.

Tennessee Williams Festival: Treme

At the Tennessee Williams Festival, I attended a panel discussion titled "All that Jazz . . . And Beyond: The Making of Treme." The panelists consisted of the creators and writers of the new HBO television series Treme, which will begin airing in April.

• David Simon, co-creator of the series
• Eric Overmyer, co-creator of the series
• David Mills, writer for the series
• Tom Piazza, writer for the series and author of two post-Hurricane Katrina books - Why New Orleans Matters and City of Refuge
• Lolis Elie, writer for the series and former columnist for the Times-Picayune

What struck me about this presentation was the high level of collaboration required when writing for a television series. The writers come together to contribute ideas and hash things out. A writer is assigned a specific episode, but it can happen that some (or much) of what he writes for that episode may need to be replaced with something someone else has written for a different episode. Clearly, the writers need to be flexible and to give up any attachment to their own work.

Writing for a television series is also quite immediate. Early episodes are airing while later episodes are still being filmed (and even perhaps being written). What actually happens on the set during earlier episodes may need to inform later episodes.

As I think about collaboration for a television series, I think of all the many levels of collaboration beyond the writers. One important but perhaps overlooked area of collaboration is collaboration with residents of the neighborhood where scenes are being filmed. We recently saw an instructive example of this in a March 22 article in the Times-Picayune, "Treme Crew Disrupts Uptown Area." The uptown area in question is not far from where I live - but far enough that I'm not within the disrupted area. I've seen the filming going on while out riding my bike, though.

Anyway, according to the Times-Picayune article, the owner of the home on the uptown river corner of Lowerline and Garfield Streets has allowed the Treme crew to use his home for filming several uptown scenes. He has been handsomely compensated for this, though the actual amount of money he received is not public knowledge. Meanwhile, the neighbors, who are not compensated, have to put up with reduced parking space, increased noise, and swarms of people all over their normally quiet block for a period of about ten days. Some don't like it. This is clearly an area of collaboration that television series producers have to consider.

NOTE: David Mills died suddenly of a brain aneurysm on March 30, 2010, two days after participating in this panel discussion and twelve days before the airing of the first episode of Treme on HBO. I believe that he will be watching over the Treme series from the spirit world. May he shine as a bright spirit in his new home.

Tennessee Williams Festival: Master Classes

One of the neat things about the Tennessee Williams Festival is that the events were held in different locations around the French Quarter. The Master Classes were held in the Historic New Orleans Collection in the 500 block of Royal Street. The Historic New Orleans Collection is a museum, a research center, and a publisher. One of its publications is the Tennessee Williams Annual Review, devoted to scholarship on Tennessee and his works. The Historic New Orleans Collection also has an extensive collection of portraits - we were in one of the portrait rooms for the Master Classes. The work and holdings of the Historic New Orleans Collection are extensive, and it is worth a visit, as is its website:

http://www.hnoc.org

I attended five Master Classes at the Tennessee Williams Festival. Below I give a summary of and highlights from each.

ERIC OVERMYER: ON STAGE, ON SCREEN. Eric Overmyer is both a playwright (On the Verge, In a Pig's Valise, Native Speech) and a television writer (Homicide: Life on the Street, Law and Order, The Wire). He is currently writing for the new HBO series Treme, about life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Overmyer spoke mostly about writing for television. He said that most bad television writing comes from the tendency to over-explain with dialogue rather than to trust the acting.

JOHN DUFRESNE: WRITE A FIRST DRAFT OF YOUR NOVEL IN SIX MONTHS. John Dufresne is a novelist and short story writer. He teaches writing at Florida International University in Miami. He has also written Is Life Like This? A Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months. Dufresne's Master Class drew upon this book.

Dufresne said that, by following his plan, you will have a first draft of a novel in six months - not a finished product. He said that everything important happens in revision, but you can't revise until you have something in black on white to revise. The first draft brings into the world people and their lives that weren't here before.

Ideally, Dufresne's plan calls for dedicating three hours a day to writing, seven days a week, for twenty-six weeks. By keeping a notebook in which you write every day, Dufresne said, you confirm to yourself that you are a writer. You also raise your antennae because everything around you will be attracted to your novel and you want to pick up those signals.

Dufresne stressed the importance of solitude. He warned us not to answer the telephone or the doorbell while writing. "Remember," he said, "how Coleridge answered a knock on his door - and there went 'Kubla Khan.'"

Dufresne's plan for writing a first draft of a novel in six months is very detailed. You spend the first two weeks on writing about yourself. Dufresne's list of what to write is extensive: pre-school years, earliest memory, first grade (including a seating chart of the classroom), smells and the memories they evoke, all your toys, all your childhood meals, everything you ever lost, all your jobs, your regrets, your first love, your death scene, your obituary, and ever so much more.

You then spend the next two weeks writing in equal detail about your characters. You also need to know the items in your characters' refrigerator, the contents of their medicine cabinet, the appointments on their calendar, the mail on their side table, the stuff in their junk drawer, the clothes in their closet. And you need to know ever so much more about them.

Dufresne's plan continues with place, theme, point of view, plot. The time allotted to the Master Class was up long before Dufresne had finished taking us through his plan.

It strikes me that it would be worthwhile to work through Dufresne's book even if you never intend to write a novel. You would certainly get to know yourself very, very well.

JOSEPH BOYDEN: THE ART OF REVISING. Joseph Boyden is a Canadian of mixed European and Native Canadian Indian descent. His novel Three Day Road is about the experience of three Native Canadian Indians fighting in World War I. Boyden teaches writing in the MFA program of the University of New Orleans.

Boyden said that a fiction writer's goal is to get the reader to suspend disbelief. I like the way Boyden expressed this in his handout titled "Notes on Some of Our Communal Tools": "We need to slip the reader into a world that we've created that is so believable, she forgets not only that she's reading fiction, but that she's reading at all."

Boyden presented many ideas for revising a work of fiction so that it produces this complete suspension of disbelief. He stressed the importance of one's choice of narrator and of the point of view from which the story is told. He also stressed the importance of hearing your work read aloud - either by someone else or by yourself. He said that it is vital to have trusted friends who will read your writing and tell you honestly what is not working.

JILL McCORKLE: SHORT FICTION WRITING. Jill McCorkle is a short story writer and novelist. She teaches writing at North Carolina State University. She spoke about writing short stories. Four points especially impressed me in McCorkle's Master Class.

First, McCorkle stressed the importance of emotional truth. She said that a good short story has the same emotional truth as a child's drawing. Whoever is figuratively looking over your shoulder and censoring your work has got to go. As you are writing your first draft, McCorkle said, you want to let the truth spill onto the page. There is great freedom in not editing yourself before the story is even there. This allows the subconscious to speak through the writing. None of us knows as much as our subconscious does, McCorkle said.

Second, McCorkle stressed the importance of putting a draft away for a time to let it sit. During this time, she said, your brain is at work making connections and preparing for the next steps.

Third, McCorkle advised a constant listening for the story in the midst of the goings on of life. It is important, she said, to keep a drawerful of anecdotes. For example, McCorkle said that she once overheard a woman say, "The humility has been just awful lately." Things that you overhear or see can become part of your writing.

Fourth, McCorkle said that her short stories take shape when she begins with a concrete image, never with an idea.

BEV MARSHALL: LIVING AS A WRITER. Marshall has written three novels: Walking Through Shadows, Right as Rain, and Hot Fudge Sundae Blues. She teaches writing at Southeastern Louisiana University. Her presentation dealt with all aspects of a writer's life.

Marshall said that a writer must possess or develop these skills:

• Be technologically savvy and have a Web presence.
• Act as one's own salesperson.
• Maintain a good-looking appearance for public events.
• Keep up a high energy level for heavy-duty book tours.
• Know math and accounting.
• Work with a legal assistant to understand contracts.

Marshall then gave many practical suggestions about what a writer needs.

Curiosity. A writer is curious about the world and the people in it. She wants to know what, when, where, how, why.

Empathy. A writer has empathy for her characters. She loves them. If she doesn't, then the reader certainly won't care about them. Marshall advocates getting to know one's characters thoroughly. Marshall's own notebooks are filled with columns and columns of information about each character. Sometimes, if Marshall is having trouble hearing a character, she has that character write a letter to her beginning "Here is what you don't know about me and what I want to tell you . . ." Marshall also sees herself in every character. She sees herself in each character's best and worst and the whole range between.

Newness. Marshall said that editors reject books that are too familiar. A writer needs to find something fresh and different.

Time. A book needs time to rest, to stay home, to simmer. The longer a book rests, Marshall said, the better you can revise, and writing is really revising. Editors will reject a book sent to them before the book is ready.

Journals. Marshall has four journals or notebooks.

• Emotional dumpster journal, to spill her feelings out onto the page and let them pass through and out of her
• Notebook of random notes and quotes about writing itself
• Working journal for writing projects
• Pocket journal to capture thoughts and things noticed in the moment

Special place. Marshall advocates dedicating a special place for writing, a place that is not shared with others.

Proofreading critics. There is no substitute for a pair of fresh eyes to pick up errors, inconsistencies, and awkward phrasing.

Playfulness. Marshall reminded us that Joseph Campbell said that work should be play.

Inspiration. A writer should know what inspires her and bring more of it into her life, whether it be poetry, music, the outdoors, exercise, a luxurious bath, or any of the many other possibilities.

Reward. A writer should always reward herself after a period of work. Marshall said that an alcoholic drink can be a reward but should never be used to jump-start one's work.

Patience. A writer would do best to avoid becoming angry with her work or her characters. This doesn't help the writing process. Instead, when the writing seems not to be working, it is best to trust that tomorrow will come and things will turn around. I also think that it is well to see the very condition of being stuck as part of the process, as something that the writer needs to go through to get to the finished product.

Reading. A writer is a bibliophile, constantly reading.

Perseverance. Marshall advocates seeing rejection as an opportunity to try again.

Priority. A writer makes her writing time sacred. Writing is writing - it is not thinking about writing or planning to write but actually writing. There will never be a "good" time to write. The time must be set aside and dedicated to writing. The writer then needs to say no to everything else regarding that time.

Courage. A writer faces fears. What the characters say may frighten the writer, but this is exactly what the writer most needs to write. When we write through our fears, we do something valuable for ourselves and our readers.

Bridge. Marshall said, "We bring light to each other through the sharing of our stories. Books become a bridge between the banks of our differences."

Frank Schaeffer's Patience With God--More Thoughts on Writing and Words

In my previous post, I responded to passages in Patience With God where Frank Schaeffer discusses writing and words. Doing so has now inspired me to write this post, where I will explain some of the wonderful things I experience through writing.

KEEPING MEMORIES. This seems fairly obvious: writing is a way of preserving memories by recording them in words that I can return to time and again. But beyond that, writing accesses memories. If I start writing about something I remember vaguely, I often find that the act of writing brings up more and more detail. Writing also brings to mind entire memories that I had forgotten.

LIVING MY LIFE TWICE. This is a wonderful benefit of writing. I can live my life twice. I live it first as lived experience. Then I live it again by writing about it. The writing causes me to delve deeply into my experience, to mine its richness, to live my life more fully. Donald M. Murray, a long-time columnist for the Boston Globe and a writing professor at the University of New Hampshire, wrote a memoir titled My Twice-Lived Life, based on this very idea. Through his writing, Donald Murray has been a great inspiration to me as a writer and a teacher of writing. He died at age 82 in 2006.

CLARIFYING MY THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS. If I want to know what I think or feel about something, a sure way to find out is to write about it. The very act of writing freely about a subject pulls up my thoughts and feelings and spills them onto the page. I can gain greater clarity by reading what I have written, perhaps writing further and reading again, doing this a number of times, and then organizing the material into a coherent piece. Taking the time to articulate my thoughts and feelings makes them clear to me. I have placed my thoughts and feelings onto a page, where I can see them outside of myself. They are no longer roiling about vaguely and namelessly inside me. It is important to add that such a piece of writing is a snapshot of my thoughts and feelings at a particular moment in time, so I need to hold them loosely, realizing that my thoughts and feelings may well evolve and that I can then clarify that evolution with additional writing.

MAKING MY EXPERIENCE REAL TO ME. To name and articulate something, to put it into words, makes it real. Unnamed experience is often vague. Here is an example. As a child, I sometimes had a feeling of blackness that sat in my chest. I believed that this was an aberration that marked me as defective and that nobody else had such a deviant feeling. The whole thing was vague and shameful to me. I couldn't "see" it clearly, but I knew it was bad. When I was able, as an adult, to name this blackness as depression and to describe it in words, this made a huge difference. My experience became real to me and I could do something about it. Likewise, Karen Armstrong in The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness describes what a relief it was to name and describe the symptoms of epilepsy, which had caused her anguish for years because these symptoms were so frightening and incomprehensible.

For me, it has also been hugely helpful to name and describe the Adult Children of Alcoholics syndrome, to see some of those characteristics in myself (as I grew up in a home with an alcoholic parent), to make this experience real to me and to do something about it. Janet G. Woititz's book The Self Sabotage Syndrome: Adult Children in the Workplace has been very helpful with this. In addition, Sonia Johnson in From Housewife to Heretic: One Woman's Struggle for Equal Rights and Her Excommunication from the Mormon Church helped me to name and articulate the previously vague experience of breaking a taboo, something I had done in leaving the Catholic Church.

Betty Friedan helped women to name and understand their vague malaise in The Feminine Mystique and then to take action. Patricia Evans helps anyone suffering from verbal abuse to name and understand it in The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond, so that one can "see" this abuse in a concrete way and take action.

PUTTING MY EXPERIENCE OUTSIDE MYSELF. Writing takes my experience outside of myself and puts it onto the page, where I can look at it more objectively. I can "see" my experience more clearly on the page than I can when it remains locked within me. This often has a calming effect on me when I write about something troubling. Just the fact that I can look at the experience in written form, outside myself, makes any inner turmoil far less intense.

ENTERING MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES. Writing opens a kaleidoscope of perspectives. I can explore how a situation appears to someone very different from myself by putting myself into his or her mind, so to speak, and writing from that place. For example, if I have a disagreement with my sister, I can "become" my sister and write about the situation from her point of view, thus giving me greater understanding of where she is coming from. I can also converse with someone on paper, speaking as myself and then as the other person. I can even do this with someone who has died. I can explore what the world looked or looks like to a Neanderthal person, to a Druid in Britain 2000 years ago, to a woman arrested as a witch during the Spanish Inquisition, to a Union soldier during the Civil War, to my grandmother during the Great Depression, to Adolph Hitler, to Mother Teresa, to Bill Clinton, to George W. Bush, to God.

PULLING UP INSIGHTS. Writing is a way to access my unconscious, to know consciously things that I didn't know I knew. As I write, I sometimes find myself pouring insights onto the page, insights that I would not have accessed otherwise.

FINDING SOLUTIONS. Likewise, if I write about a problem, I often find myself writing through to possible solutions. Those solutions come to me through the act of writing.

HEALING. Writing heals. Because writing clarifies my thoughts and feelings, makes my experience real to me, puts my experience outside of myself, allows me to view an experience from multiple perspectives, pulls up insights, and finds solutions--because writing accomplishes all these things--writing heals.

BONDING WITH OTHERS. Naming and articulating one's experience connects one with others. When a writer shares his or her writing, readers connect with the writer's experience and even connect more deeply with their own experience. Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia helps me to understand something of the depths one can reach in meditation, even though I have not had that experience myself. Nancy Venable Raine in After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back helps me to understand what it is like to be and to have been raped, insofar as one can understand this without the actual lived experience. Frank Schaeffer is one of many writers who connect me to my own experience and help me to understand myself more deeply.

CREATING. In writing, I create. I produce a piece of written work. Creating is deeply satisfying and increases my joy.

ENERGIZING. Writing energizes me. Sometimes when I write, I feel actual currents of energy flowing through my body.

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD. This is extremely important. The act of writing causes me to study my subject closely. I look deeply into the person, place, object, or idea that I am writing about. This close study opens my subject to me in greater fullness and glory and increases my appreciation for my subject. In fact, writing causes me to fall in love with my subject. I can say that I love my sister Maria more deeply because I have written a poem about her. I love Cafe Luna on the Levee more deeply because I have written a piece about it. I love my Vermont rock more deeply because I have written about finding it and about what it means to me. I dare say that Frank Schaeffer loves his wife, Genie, more deeply because he has written so beautifully about her. The more subjects I write about, the more I fall in love with my world.