SOMETIMES I PAINT FAKES

 

Pablo Picasso

Yesterday in writing group there was a long discussion about what works, what doesn't work, what writers need and do not need from feedback or critique groups.
During that discussion, I had two moments that stick with me. As we're talking about the need for more discussion of writing, our purpose as writers, and building a writer's community, I made a comment about having had those kinds of discussion in my grad program, and that thought has been at the back of my mind since: how much I miss those long nights, sitting around a common room, with wine or pizza or soda, talking about what it was we really hoped, in our hearts and minds, to accomplish with our writing.

The other moment was when one of our members remarked to me that my current book, "I'll Fly Away" is one of the two best pieces of writing I've done. I thought for a bit, then shared that there were only three pieces of writing I've done that absolutely captured me entirely through the process, and this is one of them.

I write all the time - I am always working on something, but it is a rare moment, a rare treasure in fact, when a piece you are writing settles into your heart and stays there. For the last almost two years I've lived with this book wrapped around my heart. There is no happier time for a writer than when a book does that.

When I am writing on other things, I enjoy it, and it is still a labor of love. But it is to me, much like that (probably apocryphal) story about Picasso, who, on viewing a painting of his in a Paris gallery, proclaimed, "it's a fake!" and left. A protoge of his followed him out in distress, and said to him that he didn't understand, they both knew this painting was not a fake, as he had watched Picasso paint it. Picasso shrugged, and said, "Sometimes I paint fakes."

There are those works for anyone working on creating a piece that are things that we do, they are part of our process, but when it comes to profound expression of who we are as an artist or writer, are fakes.

I'll Fly Away is not a fake. I never expected to write it, and I certainly never expected a character like Samuel Joseph, a hard-swearing twenty-year-old, to live in my heart as he has. But I had a need to write about talented young people, and he began speaking to me.