ON POETRY, INSPIRATION, and WHAT IS AND IS NOT IMPORTANT

I’ve been working on some of my poems this morning, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude keeps pulling my attention from the page, so it is time to express that gratitude. Until recently, I had never submitted my poems for publication. But I recently did begin to submit them, and I have had more success getting them published than I ever expected, and that is really due to my taking to heart the support of a very few people from my past.

Sister Sal, upper right at the end (around the time we had the argument!)
(that's me, center in front of my mother)

First, my late sister Sally. With the very first poem I wrote (I was ten) she argued with me for quite a long time that I must have gotten it from some book - I couldn’t have written it. She was trying to give
me (rest her soul) a lesson against plagiarism, but instead gave me a different lesson - that there was
something worthwhile about what I’d written. Love you, Sal.

That lesson was reinforced when I was in graduate school. My main Masters’ advisor - the wonderful amazing Nicola Morris - was constantly reaffirming the poetry I sent her. She could be brutal with her feedback, but always, always it was underscored with careful thoughtful advice that was infused with her deep desire to see you succeed in getting where you were trying to go. I loved her then, and always will. I would wait with no small anxiety for the package each week containing her critiques, and

they would always send me back to my keyboard with excitement and energy to GET THERE. And, when she liked a poem as I had submitted it, her comments could send my spirit flying for days. My favorite was a comment scrawled in an upper corner of one poem that simply read:  “Lovely, lovely, lovely.”

So why didn’t I send poems in for publication until all these years later?  That is due to another, considerably less appreciated, person from my past, my fourth grade teacher, Sister Something-Or-Other (I think I’ve forgotten her name out of revenge). She would take student writings from our English class and call us up to her desk in front of the rest of the class for her to comment on them. I will never forget the day I had turned in an essay about the men and women of the working-class neighborhood where I lived then, and she called me up.

She looked at me, down at my paper in front of her, and then stared out the window at the back of the classroom as she said:  “You are a very good writer - it’s just too bad you don’t write about anything important.”

That comment never left me. If there is anything a writer wants, it’s for those who read the words we've written to feel that they are in at least a small way, important. Her words did not stop me, over the years, from submitting stories, essays, and, finally, a novel even after I'd received buckets full of rejections. But never poetry. I’d had three poems published, but submitted by teachers of mine, not by me. Why could I submit all these other writings and not my poetry?

Because, what it took me years to realize is that poetry, at least for me, is the heart of everything. Damn near everything I’ve ever written began with an idea expressed in a poem, and sometimes some

language from a poem made it into essays or stories or novels. Once, in a review of my novel “Somewhere Never Traveled” the person reviewing wrote “J. McKenzie must be part poet….”  Few comments I’ve ever received made me smile so broadly. 

Someone once said that poetry is the art of levitation - meant to uplift the reader, to take us somewhere that feels above the normal world, so that we can see clearly. I think most fiction writers feel that any writing should fit that - that we always aim to touch the most basic essence of humanity in the reader, and make it stronger.  That, dear sister I-Don’t-Remember - is IMPORTANT. 

Of Windows, Writing, and Eartha Kitt

Recently, I posted this on one of my social media accounts; 

Some pieces are harder than others to write. Years ago, I went to a Women’s Studies conference where I was captivated by a talk (not her keynote speech) given by Maya Angelou. I don’t remember the exact words she used, I was very tired after three days of workshops/sessions and then having to bury myself in curriculum development (for the upcoming term) every night. I sat in the back of this informal break-out session and listened to her, and, as always, found her inspiring, articulate, stunning. I was feeling distanced from my fellow conference-goers, who were all (it seemed to me at the time), at the “angry stage” of feminist development, and days of exposure to that had wearied me. I sat and gratefully listened to Ms. Angelou, but not really listening, just sinking, at the back of the room, into the first safe space I’d felt in days. Then she said something - this many years later, I don’t remember exactly what - and my head came up. I grabbed a pad of paper from my big conference bag and started to scribble. That “scribbling” went on for years.

What had hit me then, somehow stirred by Ms. Angelou’s words about something entirely different, was that women needed to reclaim silence, which had been for some time equated in our minds with being silenced. I tried many times over the next few years, mostly in essays, to capture the heart and essence of what I wanted to say about that. Three of those essay attempts were *pretty* good - one actually exciting an editor friend of mine enough that she argued with me to let her publish it, but, to me, it was Not. Yet. Right. Finally, much later, in an afternoon after tea with a dear friend, just sitting by my window watching her walk home, I picked up pen and paper and created the first draft of a poem. That, also, went through several drafts until one day I looked at it and exhaled. YES. That poem, “Looking Out the Upstairs Window” will be coming out in the Willowdown Books (UK) anthology The Poetic Bond X on November 9th.

I'd thought of this talk when I received an email from the editor (with proofs) at the same time I was sitting at my desk, struggling with another piece.  I've been trying to write a piece about Eartha Kitt, wanting, in that piece, to highlight your courage in being outspoken, focusing (for those who don't know), on the incident

where she spoke out to both LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson during a luncheon at the White House. I wanted (want) it to highlight courage, speaking truth to power, and to celebrate her for that. Even though I'd only been trying for a few days, neither first draft essays nor poems were capturing the sense I wanted. (That I want).

    I've been writing (and publishing) for a long time. It's exhilarating when you sit down with a pen and an idea, the words flow on the paper, and it's perfect, it breathes on its own, it has the right words. I think anyone who's ever had that happen would agree, and would also agree how rare that is. I will also admit that sometimes, coming back to those instantly perfect pieces months, or even years, later, I am a bit stunned to find they need work. I also have to note that, as exhilarating as those these-are-perfect-words moments are, it is even more so to work for them over draft after draft, working and working to find that - thing, the thing that makes it not just the right words, but the right heart. 

    That means not just working word by word, line by line (though it does mean that), it also means stepping back from each finished draft, and listening to it - what does it say? How does it feel? If the whole of it - the

words, the flow, the sense, and the content, don't absolutely SHINE with the feeling that you were aiming for, I have only one thing to say - START AGAIN.

    I say this as I continue to struggle, continue to try to find the right form, continue to try to even identify that thing that I'm looking for, not only in the Eartha Kitt piece, but in others I've been working on. Some of those are finished, edited, polished -- but NOT YET RIGHT. There does exist a problem with taking this approach - there are writers, and I know a few, who will never send out anything as they work it and re-work it and re-work it. How do you know one problem from the other?  If you're thinking it needs more work because you're not sure where it might have a market, or that there are those who would be upset by the content, that's the latter problem. If first readers tell you it's ready, if it's been workshopped and everyone approves, if you've done multiple edits for words, line by line, flow, and form and feel those things are perfected, but it still doesn't feel right, START AGAIN. 

    How to do this - how to find the form, the words, the heart - that is something that changes and can be elusive, as I'm re-discovering (for about the zillionth time) with this current piece. There are things you can do to help bring it about, to push yourself in that direction, and I plan to explore those more, here, in my next post.

NOTE:  Just another note that, though I was absent from these pages for close to a year, it is not because I wasn't thinking of it - the full reasons I stayed off this page (though I was/am writing like a madwoman) will be the subject of another post.     

 

Imprints in the Sand

    Tonight, when I sat down at my writing desk (my schedule currently is a LOT of nocturnal writing) I thought it was time I got back to my writing blog, and posted something actually about writing. Lately, I’ve been focused on a great many pieces I’m either editing or drafting, and writing has been going extraordinarily well, for a very long time, which, for a blog like this, is not necessarily a good thing.  Without personal (recent) experience of the stumbling blocks, what could I possibly write about that other writers would relate to? 

For help, I started browsing through a file I keep of drafts that I have started, either for the blog or for articles or essays. In doing that, I ran across several draft blog posts from my previous blog “Judy in

A student gathering at Eluwa Special School

Namibia” - an online journal I kept while I taught at Eluwa Special School (a school for the deaf and blind) in Ongwadiva, Namibia.  One particular draft stood out to me tonight; my little internal voice whispering that it was relevant, I should explore. I’d like to quote it in full here:

This morning, I walked down to my classroom to print out some student evaluation forms for tomorrow (yes, I know it’s Sunday).  Both as I was walking there and as I was walking back, I took detours around the school grounds. It is a “home weekend” and many of the children have been picked up to go spend the weekend with their parents on their homesteads or in nearby villages, but many have not. Regardless, the campus is quieter than usual on a weekend. I walk around the buildings and courtyards, and, looking down, I see my own footprints in the soft sand everywhere I go – my little sandal with the “Ecco” imprint in the middle – surrounded (everywhere I go) by the footprints of the children (often bare feet) and the prints of other teachers. I see my own prints headed this way and that all over the school.

Yesterday, as Digna and I headed out down the unfamiliar sand paths (Note: we had been invited to spend the weekend with another World Teach teacher at her school outside of a village a few hours away) back to the highway, I always knew we were on the right path by the sight of my own footprints coming in.  There has been no wind in several days, and the prints last.

I can’t help but wonder, today, how long after I leave those prints will be here.  Ashley had

A homestead in the desert we visited that weekend

been worried about us getting lost going back to the highway in the confusing array of sand paths through the brush, but I just followed my own prints.  I realize that, at home, on the concrete walkways of my school, I leave no imprint when I pass, and wonder if that contributes to the occasional sense of having lost my way on my own campus. 

Another teacher here texts me that he can’t really, at the moment, bear the thought of going home to “business as usual” at his school in California, and I understand.  I miss everyone at home so much, but I already know the many things I will miss here – the constant greetings from everyone, the sense of welcome in the cultural traditions, and the clear sense of having left an imprint, a mark, an impression.   

 

Here’s what struck me:  “I realize that, at home, on the concrete walkways of my school, I leave no imprint when I pass, and wonder if that contributes to the occasional sense of having lost my way on my own campus.”  

 

I think every person - and certainly every writer - wonders at some point about the imprint they’re leaving - what is memorable and what is like a conversation in the hallway at work or school - dealt with in the moment, and then forgotten? We wonder if we've lost our way, and no one has noticed we're missing.

Here’s the odd thing - I never got lost in Namibia - in the twisting narrow openings between huts and

Heading out from the highway into the brush (Digna 
on the left)

shacks, in the chaotically arranged streets of the larger cities, in the unmarked pathways in the desert, I headed out, time after time, and got where I was going, and felt, each moment along the way, that I was where I belonged for that journey.

I’m sure that confidence, that centeredness, came from the people there. Fresh from their revolution and separation from South Africa, fresh from a successful battle against apartheid, they owned where they were, every step of their daily lives, and owned it with pride. Few of them owned land or much in the way of possessions, but they owned their country, they owned their lives, and the sensation was contagious. It shone from them, infused the air around them. It’s an impossible sensation to fully communicate in words. 

For a writer, the road to owning where you stand, what you write, is a difficult one. No revolution will help you, it has to be a revolution of one. Don’t lay down concrete paths designed for the masses - kick

"my girls" from one of my classes at Eluwa - they
certainly left an imprint on my life, especially 
Selma, bottom row center. I hope I left a good
imprint on theirs. 

pathways in the soft sand, and beckon others to follow your footsteps, your imprint. Find a place in the world of writing that, when you speak with your own voice, it is the voice of the owner. 

Your goal should always be to leave an imprint - from writing to brighten a single life, or writing to shed light, or writing to set a fire - you’ll know the right path when you find it.  It will feel like home, like you can see the imprints of your own feet, hear the sound of your voice, know that you fully own where you stand. Leave an imprint.

 

 

Re-Surfacing Out of a Love for Words

I love words.  I love their simultaneous clarity and their inherent potential for confusion (especially in English). There is, at one and the same time, a beauty to a word's simple, direct meaning, and a potential for darkness in their possible connotations.  Nothing gives me so much joy as to see words that bring understanding, that sweep away confusion, and that brush away the fog.  And nothing - not a damn thing - makes me as mad as words intentionally used to muddle meaning, to manipulate, and to mislead. Sometimes, similar muddled meaning and misdirection can be unintentional - unskilled speakers, or people who believe their profession requires more language rather than clearer language. I don't blame them.  I do find them frustrating, and I know many others do as well. 

So, for that reason, there's a new thing I want to start doing here with a series of posts I'm calling "The (Un)-Ravel." One skill I know for certain that I have is an ability to take complex or ambiguous (or intentionally disingenuous) words and make the meaning behind them understandable. What often happens in the process is that what I am making clear are errors (unintentional or intentional) in thinking. 

On social media, I've often posted such things - analysis of someone's communication or statements to try to suss out what is the message behind them, or the problems buried in them.  I posted an analysis of a decision written by Justice Alito, an analysis posted of an argument supporting gun rights posted by a family member, and several others - all received with enthusiasm by people who found them to be helpful in clarifying their own thinking about the issues. 

I love doing this - not to rile anyone up, not to take anyone down, but to try to make clarity and (please God, I'm begging for this) clear thinking more of a priority in the way we receive and process information. Note

that I did not say "critical thinking." I used the term "clear thinking" instead for two reasons.  A) the term 'critical thinking' is embroiled in and therefore has its meaning muddled by a great deal of dissension and debate about its validity in education, making the term so weighed down with connotations it loses its usefulness; and B) 'critical thinking' comes nowhere near being accurately descriptive of what those who use it mean by it.  "Clear thinking" is, to my mind, much more descriptive of my goal.

Note that the majority of posts I put here will still be about what they have always been - the various reflections, incidents, and skills a writer uses to find her way in her work. The "(Un)-Ravel" posts will always be titled with that identification, and will likely be much less frequent, as un-raveling what someone is saying and/or arguing takes quite a bit of time when their original language is unclear. 

For each (Un)-Ravel, I will take some public writing or speech or article, and give it that kind of shake-down, taking out and disposing of the dirt and mud that only obscures meaning to see what we have left. First up will be (coming SOON) an un-raveling of the words of US Attorney General William Barr in two

places - his written opening statement for the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, and an interview he did with NPR, in both settings where he appears to deny the existence of systemic racism, and makes broad statements about the causes of crime, the causes of police brutality, and the appropriate role of law enforcement. That un-raveling is currently in progress and should be coming soon.

Storytelling

I am in awe of storytellers. I call myself a storyteller instead of an author because I don't give a flying fig about the market or sales or the publishing industry - I just like to make up stories and it's amazing when someone else (or many someones) likes those stories or is moved by them. But the storytellers I'm in awe of are the *real* storytellers - the ones from the oral tradition who can and will make up a

story on the spot that will rivet you to the sound of their voice; or they have a story they've told over and over that grows and deepens as they tell it each time. Their skill and artistry with that kind of immediate real-time storytelling not only awes me, I also respect it more than I can say, because I know how bone-wrenching hard it can be to make up a good story. That they do it, just like that, right in front of you, is astounding, and way beyond my capacity.

I work hard at my stories - I dig for the truth of the characters that present themselves to me, and I'm always looking in the story for relevance to the themes that drive me - the abuse of power and the resilience of the oppressed in the face of it; the reality of working class lives as opposed to the way their lives are much maligned in popular cultural mythology; how the strength of women is different from that of men - deeper and more potent than our culture would have us believe; and how, in the best words ever used for this "there are more things in heaven and earth....than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

It's a struggle. It's a struggle I love, and to see it come bursting from storytellers with such joy and power gives hope to one who stumbles with each step.

Advice from a "Pantser"

I don’t write a story chronologically. I also don’t outline. That makes me, according to some - a “Pantser” - a writer who develops a story “by the seat of [my} pants” instead of from a carefully-developed plan. Rather than outlining, I begin writing a story after a character or a scene becomes so vivid, so demanding, that it *must* go on paper. Though, in truth, by the time this happens, there are usually several scenes running through my head like scenes from a favorite movie - so clear, so insistent, so essential that they no longer introduce me to the character - the character simply lives there, and by this time, I know her/him. Also, by this time, there are pages and pages of brainstorming, snatches of dialogue, descriptions of setting and events - all captured as they rush, pounding, into my brain. I don’t write even these things in any chronological order, but instead whichever rises to the top on any given day that I sit down to work.

Lots of things have to happen just right for this to go as smoothly as that sounds, and they seldom do. (And it really doesn’t sound that smooth, does it?) Recently, at lunch with a friend, I was discussing a day I was trying to find the right working title for my current piece - brainstorming for

hours, researching the setting, the time, the place, mythology, culture, making lists, cursing, until I’m driven out of my writing room to slam kitchen cupboard doors, throw recipes on the counter, and curse a lot more, planning to do some frustration-baking. Until…. a chance memory of a scene written weeks before gives me the right four words. My new working title. {And no, I’m not telling you until I’ve lived with that new title for a while} No baking got done, but a lot more pages got written that day.

Why was a working title (which seldom survives to become the actual title) so important? Because, as I explained to her - the first ‘working title’ I’d begun with was not putting me in the frame of mind that seemed *right* for the story, right for the characters. That’s a
“Pantser” attitude, I’m pretty sure. If it doesn’t feel right, the work won’t be right. Follow your gut with a story, and see where it takes you.

I respect people who outline meticulously. I admire them, I’m awed by them…..and I don’t understand it at all. To me, the magic of story writing is discovery. While I sometimes know - more accurately, suspect - what the final scene of a story will be; that often changes, and even when it doesn’t, how I’m getting the character from her page one to that final page is a mystery that unfolds day by day.

This makes sense to me, and could easily be predicted from every personality test I’ve ever taken - I like uncertainty, I like change, and thrive on them both. They create a sense of almost magical mystery that keeps me driving forward. So, being a “pantser” fits. I don’t know where my characters are taking me until they open their mouths, or climb out a window, or run onto a stage - and I love that surprise.

What this says to me is that every writer needs to take a close look at themselves and how they live, what resonates, what doesn’t, and then reflect on the process they’ve been using to write. As a writing teacher, I have frequently had to encourage students to unlearn a process they were taught was the only right one (as if any one thing could be the “only right” for all humans) and begin to find their personal process by exploring how they live when they are truly themselves, fully comfortable in the world they’re in, and then explore this question: how can you make your writing process like that?

I was lucky in my early years to have teachers who taught this intuitively. All the way from high school through graduate school I was gifted with writing teachers who knew how to see each writer individually, or at least to see me that way, and to give me the words I needed to trust my own way forward.

Forming your writing process to reflect how you fit in the world has other advantages outside of writing. You become less susceptible to what other people think you should be or how you should

do things. Difficult times (while still, obviously, difficult) are softened by a clear knowledge that it is simply a part of your piece of the world, and how to best handle these times for your life (as opposed to how others think you should handle them) becomes clear to you. You don’t think of your goals in terms of anyone’s expectations but your own. You accept and adapt more easily than many you know who have the same struggles.

Two things helped me to discover what was mine in my process (both in life and in writing) and what others had imposed. First was the clear, pointed, and loving advice of a great mentor in my writing, who guided me through my graduate program and stays in my heart. She knows who she is. The other one is a book (not a writing book) called “Callings” by Gregg Levoy. The subtitle to this book is “Finding and Following an Authentic Life” and I don’t think I’ve ever read a nonfiction book more appropriately named. I devoured my own copy and actually wrote to the author to thank him. I’ve given several gift copies to friends. No writing text ever helped me in my creative process as much as this book did.

I wouldn’t say that you need such an adviser or need to read this book to find the way to your own authentic process of writing. I would say that finding your way to that place is probably the most important thing you can do as a writer. I was on my way there before I encountered this adviser (turning down law school admission to go to the creative writing program where I she was my

teacher) and was also well on my way before I read this book. But they helped. They strengthened me, they blew away any dust from the clarity I was developing about who (and what kind of writer) I wanted to be. Some people (and, as a teacher, I believe, a lot of the younger generation) get there more easily than those of us who’ve been around a little longer, and their authenticity and passion makes me love them perhaps more even than my characters.

Find your own route there, and be sure the way you choose is *your* way. For me, one of the best

expressions of the goal comes in a scene from a movie called “Living Out Loud.” The main character (played by Holly Hunter) is walking along with a friend of hers (Danny DeVito) and says to him, “I want to stop agreeing to do things I don’t want to do.” Devito stops, turns to her and says: “Then Stop!”

Stop agreeing to a process that isn’t yours. Stop agreeing to do things (as a writer or a person) that you don’t want to do. Stop writing for the reasons others have given you and find your own reasons. Listen to the advice of teachers, and do what you need to do for their classes, but when you sit down to write, not as a student but as a writer, make your first step finding the authenticity that is unique to you.

On The Pier

  

Some moments in life weld themselves in your memory, so stark and vivid that each time you think of them, it feels as though you are living those moments again. For me, one of those happened at around 2 a.m. on the Santa Monica pier, decades ago.  When our children were little my late husband and I would go night-fishing there. We would hire the teenager who lived next door to sleep on our couch, and off we would go. My husband loved fishing, and knew everything about it - I used to tie a string to a stick to “fish” with my Dad. Both of us relished these late night outings, though - it was time for just the two of us at a point in life where such things are rare. As entry to the pier was free it was something we could afford.

An odd assortment of people would be there, on that pier, every time we went. People with old plastic lawn chairs and coolers of beer, people with impressive tackle-boxes filled with every magic

fishing gadget, old men alone, a few old women alone, hardly ever any other couples. We would walk out along the pier, choosing our spot, and I would settle in, leaning on the rail, a few feet from my husband, my line in the water, feeling the salt spray and enjoying the quiet of our time together, the city lights a backdrop and the sounds of the city at night our soundtrack.

At that time,  the pier was most decidedly not in its heyday - there were rumblings in the City about dismantling it.  Those who came, especially those who came late night, were not coming for the iconic rides or shops - they were there to fish under the stars while they still could.

Lots of fish were caught there, some worth keeping, some released back amid grumbles, and some “real catches.” You’d be leaning over, listening to the surf, watching the lights glow against the waves, when suddenly the low murmur of voices along the pier would change in tenor, there’d be a rustle as people moved closer to whoever had hooked a good one, and people would wait to watch the fish reeled in, then either admire or sneer.

  I saw more than one fish flopping on the pier boards, gasping, dying. It was the part of those evenings I hated. Some few were more merciful, putting the fish they caught in buckets of water, at least until they got them home. But everyone wanted to watch the catch itself.

One night, voices rose higher than usual, and the a larger crowd than usual gathered around the man whose pole pent hard over into the water.  At one point, the voices became a collective gasp, and the crowd around him visibly moved back and away among murmurs of “shark! shark!.....” I was standing just a few feet down the rail from this fisherman, and the crowd around him had pulled back well away as the shark was pulled over, flying over the head of the husky fisherman, and landing on the boards, it’s long form (three feet?  four?) thrashed and mouth worked for air, teeth showing.

I watched as the fisherman in question reached down, cut his line, and then, quickly, without

any hesitation, grabbed the thrashing shark by the tail, pulled it up, swung it over his head, and, backlit by the city lights, swinging in a large arc, bashed the entire creature, hard, into the boards to stun it, then spun and threw it over the rail and back into the ocean. Everyone rushed to the rail to watch the creature as it hit the water.  We heard the smack, saw the spray rise, and then the shark begin to move again, at first just small movements, and then it thrashed once, hard, and swam away. It lived.

Few images have stayed in my head as that one has over the years - the dark form of the big man, arm swinging in an arc with the still-thrashing shark in the air above him, swinging around - up, over, and down, all the city lights behind him, all the people huddling back in a dark mass.

It happened so fast, and it was so long ago, that I don’t remember what I was feeling at the time, but I do remember the silence in which my husband and I leaned over the rail, watching, waiting to see this creature begin to move again, and the breath that escaped me as he did.  It was a moment that crystallized for me all those times I had seen a salmon or a trout or any other fish, mouth working and gasping, thrashing on the ground or against the pier as it died, and the dark tension that would grip my chest each time I saw it.

Those were moments that sent me to a place we all fear but don’t think about - the day coming when all of us gasp for life, trapped in a battle we know we can’t win, against an enemy no one can defeat.  And all those moments became one that night on the pier.

Years later I was faced with a challenge - twice.  First from a teacher in a delightful and fun write-sci-fi workshop, and later by the wonderful women in my writing group - write a scifi story.  I’d been a sci fi fan all my life, but thought I couldn’t write such a story worth reading. But, the Irish in me wouldn’t let me back away from a dare. The workshop leader wanted us to write something about a creature that was the last of his/her kind.  The writing group wanted me to just shut up and do it. Not one to follow directions exactly (ever), I began a story in the workshop that day about a creature the first of its kind - a man who could actually live in the minds of other living things - not reading their minds, but experiencing their life with them, directly, from behind their eyes. He couldn’t, at first, control these strange excursions into another life, and people thought he was insane - until it started happening to others.

A few months later, when the writing group issued their challenge to me, I thought of that unfinished story, and began again  - a group of three people, who all find themselves behind the eyes of a cougar just as it’s being shot by a farmer, and go on to become the first members of a new group of humans, a new evolution of humankind, able to (almost) completely connect with other living creatures - and the “almost” is the thing that complicates the story.  It became the best-selling thing I’ve ever written: my sci-fi novel Somewhere Never Traveled.

What does this novel have to do with that long-ago stunned and released shark?  It was that moment on the pier, and all the other moments it brought into focus for me, that allowed me to think what it would be like, to feel it fully, to be one of those creatures at that moment of capture, of terror, of fighting for life.  That moment, and what it implied for me, was the essence of the desperation to connect we as humans cannot escape. Writers, much like actors, must connect to characters, to the world, to people around the, so moments that push you towards that are essential to a writer’s development.  You can’t choose them, they choose you, and you need to be ready. How critical this is reminds me of words written by Peter Shaffer in his play Equus:

"A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power.... Moments snap together like magnets….. Why?

….I can trace them. I can even, with time, pull them apart again. But why at the start they were ever magnetized at all--just those particular moments of experience and no others--I don't know."

Those moments - the shark sailing and flailing through the night air above the pier, all forged together with all the moments I’d watched a fish gasp and struggle for air, or a puppy sigh out its last and then go still, or any living creature sigh and struggle and surrender - they became one collective moment in my mind, the forge that let me connect and empathize, and that let me imagine a time when we all could connect in this way.

If anything, the lesson here goes back to what so many writers and writing teachers have said - pay attention, and let go of what you’re supposed to think, expected to think, or urged to think - find the moments that forge together like magnets for you, follow them, and see where they take you.