WEEKLY WRITER'S PATH #5
WHEN THE SKY IS WHITE, you can only see snowflakes falling in front of tree trunks, speeding cars, or streetlights. What is tangible is sometimes hidden against a matching background until you blink your eyes and refocus, making a snow flurry suddenly visible.
It actually snowed this week, for a brief moment. Do you remember Wednesday afternoon filled with white? Looking back it feels like a dream. My youngest called me on my cell phone from home to report the news: wind blowing horizontal out of the east, a whiteout. I called him back twenty minutes later to report the blizzard was now in town, coming from the west. The announcer on the local radio station spent a minute describing what none of us had seen in months.
That night I woke up in the dark to scratching on my bedroom windows: snow crystals hitting the glass. When I went for a walk the next morning, gathered in discreet pockets around clumps of grass, were tiny piles of white dots. The air was wet and fragrant. There were “cloud snakes” winding through the hills. But by afternoon, the sun was as warm as a summer ball of fire. It was a quick drink, our glasses back on the table, empty and requesting more.
Last year, I applied to the MacDowell Colony, a famous artists’ community in the snowdrifts of New Hampshire. They offer individual cabins and solitude to write, compose, paint—totally paid for with weeks or months on end to create. Lunch is served in a basket at your front door. No telephones, no internet, distinguished company, hours and hours alone at a desk, sidewalks covered with snow, banks of snow burying your windows—all that soft white solitude.
When the letter came, my daughter was at home and called me at work. I asked her to open it and she read me the news that I was not accepted. Those words in her voice cushioned my disappointment.
That night I walked the four blocks from my office to a bookstore that was holding readings from local writers with works in progress. After the reading I talked with the coordinator and we made a time to meet. Last May I read parts of DIZZY SUSHI with another writer, Trent Zelazny. We did radio interviews together and enjoyed our disparate styles of writing. The coordinator, Jennifer Owings Dewey was kind enough to suggest the name of an agent. I emailed; he emailed back. I sent two pdfs of DIZZY to him and I marvel at how things happen.
I was so seduced by the prestige of MacDowell, by all that cocooning white snow, that I hadn’t looked close to home for writing support. I’ve had assistance and encouragement from so many people so near and dear to me that I couldn’t even see it until I stepped aside and refocused. What I really wanted from MacDowell—besides the snow—was the time to write and a listening community. And I’ve found that. Now, if only a picnic basket would arrive at my front door at lunchtime . . .
