All posts by Amber

Writing retreats are serious business even in bikinis

Antics, Travel, Writing, ,

I spent Saturday and Sunday at Cannon Beach in a rented house with the Viva Scrivas on retreat.  Lest you think it was all cocktails and bon bons and Scrabble, let me tell you a little story…

Saturday was the kind of day that happens once or twice a year on the north Oregon coast.  75 degrees.  Clear sky.  No wind.  A day for bikinis.  Seriously!

And we worked, wrote our fingers to the bone.  When I paid our bill at the rental office, the woman said, “I saw you all working away yesterday.  How did you do it?  The day was too nice for work.”

How did we do it?  One word at a time…  Some of us are on deadline (yikes).  Others making good use of the time away from demanding jobs and small children.  Another getting back to writing after a long absence.

Our group tries to get away 2-3 times a year for writing binges followed by those aforementioned cocktails and bonbons.  It’s a great way to be together and make major accelerations in our writing progress.  I wrote nearly 5,000 words to give me nearly 45,000 words written in my newest novel.  I’m into the last 1/3 and let me tell you… IT FEELS GREAT!

I have horse on the brain

Antics, My Reads, ,

Last week, I took care of my neighbor’s horses while she was out of town.  I woke wondering if they were ready for breakfast.  I wrote in my office with one eye on the weather darting over the coast range.  I watched for sun breaks and the chance to ride.  For a week, I smelled like hay and stalls and horse sweat.  I pulled the rhythm of my days into that of snuffling breath and eager hooves.

My reading choice: King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry.

Whenever the horseboys raced their horses beyond the city gates, Sham outran them all.  He outran the colts his own age and the seasoned running horses as well.  He seemed not to know that he was an earthy creature with four legs, like other horses.  He acted as if he were an airy thing, traveling on the wings of the wind.

Then I thought of this lovely poem by Allen Braden, which appears in his book A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood.

Detail of the Four Chambers to the Horse’s Heart (excerpt)

Listen. The last time I saw my father
alive, he spoke of horses, the brute geometry
of a broken team in motion. He tallied
the bushels of oats, gallons of water
down to the drop each task would cost.
How Belgians loved hardwood hames the most.
Give them the timber sled at logging camp
any day, the workable meadows in need
of leveling, tilling, harrowing, new seeding.
We could’ve been in our dark loafing shed,
cooling off between loads of chopping hay,
the way he carried on that last good day.
With the proper encouragement, he said,
they would work themselves to death.

I must confess that this horse-less week is much more crazy and much less full.

Get Low & The Importance of Telling Our Stories

Antics, Writing, ,

Recently I watched Get Low starring Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek,Bill Murray, and the adorable Lucas Black.

IMBD says: A movie spun out of equal parts folk tale, fable and real-life legend about the mysterious, 1930s Tennessee hermit who famously threw his own rollicking funeral party… while he was still alive.

So this guy, Felix Bush, experiences this terrible tragedy and feels responsible.  In order to punish himself, he sequesters himself away from all human contact.  Until, at the end of his life, he realizes that he must tell his story to purge his soul.  And, as the preacher says, find “peace from the burdens of his head and heart.”

I believe that we all have important stories to tell and that in the telling, we become stronger, better people.  If there is one thing I want young readers and writers to know, it is that their stories are valuable beyond measure and well worth telling.

I second the mission of StoryCorps: To provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.

Ghostopolis by Doug Tennapel

My Reads,

OK.  My reading choices are eclectic.  I like it that way.

And I love skeleton horses named Skinny and dead girl/live guy romances that aren’t all goofy and self-indulgent a la Bella/Edward.

And regular boys who get all heroic on the world!

And my son says, “Ghostopolis is awesome!  The Bone King is cool.”

 

Angry Young Man by Chris Lynch

My Reads,

My reading is nothing if not eclectic since we’re moving from the picture book, Snook Alone, to the YA novel Angry Young Man by Chris Lynch.

The reviews of this book have been stunning, and I picked it up because I’m writing an angry teenage boy character myself these days.  I loved this book for the way it took me into such unfamiliar territory.  It is one of those books that I could never have written because it’s not my world, not my people.  Yet I came to love both world and people and to want them to survive and even flourish.

Thanks, Chris, for taking me somewhere I’ve never been.  That is, after all, why I love to read.

Snook Alone by Marilyn Nelson & Timothy Basil Ering

My Reads, , ,

If you don’t know the work of Timothy Basil Ering, you should.  I would buy anything he’s worked on.  My love of Frog Belly Rat Bone is profound!  So that said, even if the reviews of Snook Alone hadn’t been spectacular, I would have bought it.

And this book… ah… it sings, it philosophizes, it scrabbles in the sand, it sniffs it’s own butt.  And I love all of it.  I could not pick favorite bit, but listen to this:

Snook curled in the farthest corner
and watched all night.
In the silence, he listened.
The wind was his breathing.
The waves were his breath.

The writer’s job: make alien out of auto parts

Writing, ,

In my current WIP, my main character has a part-time job at an auto parts store.  While googling for a list of metal auto parts that I could talk about, I came across this amazing piece of metal art.

It strikes me that this what I am trying to do as a writer.  I want to take the pedestrian, the everyday, the bin of scrap auto parts, and transform them into something out-of-the-ordinary.  Maybe even out of this world!