A Cultural Collection to Inspire You

Last week I came upon a resource I'd like to share. If you're interested in anthropology, folklore, or music history, you'll want to take a look at this.

Folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax began making field recordings of southern folklore and music in the 1930s. From the 1960s onward, he focused on comparative research in world music and dance.  As a result of his work, Lomax compiled an extensive collection of audio and video recordings and photographs that capture decades of folk culture in the U.S., England, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Spain and the Caribbean. The Association for Cultural Equity, founded by Lomax in 1983, is custodian of Lomax's archive. On the ACE website you'll find a research center containing digitized items from Lomax's archive as well as teaching resources, which can be a source of inspiration for any lifelong learner. And, the great news is, the digital resources are growing. By the end of February about 17,000 tracks will be available online for free streaming.  I know I'll be stopping back.

Right now

Where have I been? Mostly, right where I am now--sitting at my desk having a staring match with the computer screen. Well, to be honest, there's been more reading and typing than simple staring. I'm swallowed up in revising Gates the Hours Keep.

The dogs are snoozing in my office. Sadie's stretched out by the closet, and Tali's curled up under my desk. I've opened the curtains to have a glimpse of bright blue sky, and except for the dormant brown lawns, January looks like April.  Sometime this afternoon, I'll slip outside and steal some sunshine for myself.

A warm winter should be welcome, but the first winter without my dad shouldn't be so extraordinary. I want dull skies and bitter, biting winds. I want a world of grays and browns, not sprouting columbines and cloudless blue. When I walk the dogs today, the sun will warm my face and I'll think what a rare gift such a  winter day is. On days like today I feel more alive. And, then I think of Dad. He would be out tinkering on broken-down machinery or sitting in the tavern praising the warmth but commenting on the dryness.

Days such as today are a gift I can't share with him. No happiness comes without my remembering he's not here. Yet, happiness comes. In friends' smiles and sunshine and smelly dog fur, it comes.

The one good snowfall we've had this winter was Tali's first. Watching her and Sadie play in the snow, I laughed and laughed. Here's a glimpse of that day. I hope it makes you smile.

Exploring character through valued possessions

Photo by Timitrius

Imagine you have to pack up your home and can only take with you those things that fit in the trunk of your car.  Bringing family members along?  Then you have to share the trunk space with them.  What do you take?  What do you do with those things you leave behind?  Who decides?

For a while now I've been considering those questions, and I have about a year to come up with the answers.  The flowers transplanted from my grandparents' house, the china hutch Grandpa built, the desk I bought during grad school, shelves and shelves of books--those things simply won't fit.  The spices in the kitchen cupboard?  Those, I ought to bring.  Everything I have must prove its worth.  Necessity is winning out over sentiment.  And, I'm surprised.  I've always had trouble letting go of items to which memories are attached--even gifts I don't especially like, I cherish because I love the giver.

This has me thinking about the impact of objects in my fiction.  Most often my characters' prize possessions are valued, not for their usefulness, but for their emotional weight.  Nothing wrong with that.  But utilitarian objects--a hammer, for instance, or a bow--could be even more important to a character.

With that in mind, consider a character from your work and make a list of the five objects most important to him or her.  Now, delve into each object.  Describe it in depth.  How would the character describe it?  How would the character explain the object's worth?  Is there a story attached to the object?  Does it have a history?  Where and how is it kept and cared for?  What sort of condition is it in?  And so on.

At the exercise's end, you will likely have greater insight about the character.  You might also have some fresh ideas for the plot or even for an additional story.  Let me know how the exercise works out for you!

Historic newspapers online--Chronicling America

Photo from Library of Congress

 As an archivist, I understand that the majority of archival materials are not digitized or readily available on the web.  But, as a writer without the money and time to travel to various archives, I've searched the web for useful, valid sources for historical research.  More and more are becoming available, often as a result of institutional collaboration.

A website I've been using the past few weeks,  Chronicling America, is produced by a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.  The partnership, known as the National Digital Newspaper Program, is an ongoing project to develop a searchable database of U.S. newspapers and to digitize selected historic pages. Currently more than a million digitized newspaper pages are found in Chronicling America. Digitized newspapers date from 1836-1922 and represent newspapers from all U.S. states and territories.  A directory of newspapers from 1690-present is also part of the website, and a list of topics widely-covered topics is included to help guide researchers.  (Although most of the listed topics don't relate to my current research, glancing through the topics sparks my imagination.  A short story involving the roller-skating craze, maybe? A character who practices yoga in 1905?  So many possibilities to explore.)

In a related project, the Rural West Initiative, Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University has produced a database visualization based on Chronicling America.  A timeline and US map are combined, enabling users to see the geographic distribution of American newspapers over time.  Added filters limit results to newspapers in a particular language.  For me, the visualization is interesting, but less useful than the newspaper project itself.


Weekly Newspapers, 1690-2011 from Geoff McGhee on Vimeo.

If you know of some good sources you'd like to share, please feel free to comment or share a link.  I'm always looking for more.

Found poetry

Play is an important part of creativity.  Play frees up the mind, leading to innovation and keeping state of mind from growing stale.  Word-play is a fun way to improve, or at least flex, your writing skills.

I've recently been playing with poetry--in particular, found poems.  Found poems are created by taking words or phrases from other sources (usually written, but things overheard can also be used) and recombining them as poems.  I came across the idea in Getting the Knack, 20 Poetry Writing Exercises.  It's the first exercise.  I have yet to try the remaining 19.  Cutting, re-arranging words, adding or changing punctuation are all allowed by the exercise, but you're not allowed to add your own words to the mix.

Most of what I come up with is utterly abysmal.  All of it makes me laugh.  Here's one I just wrote, pulling from Henry Taylor's autobiography, From Lead Mines to Gold Fields, Memories of An Incredibly Long Life.

GRASSHOPPERS FOR FOOD

Dig a hole

three feet deep

three, in diameter

All women 

and children

circle around the hole

wave willows,

advance slow.

Drive hoppers to the hole

Go to hole

with basket

of coarse grass, woven close

Fill basket

with hoppers

Boil water,

heating rocks

Pour over grasshoppers

Cook to taste.

Remove rocks

Dry hoppers

on grass mat

When dried,

pulverize.

Add water,

stir to mush

Eat as though most luscious food in the world

Photo by amphioxus

Give the exercise a try--come play with me, and share your creation in the comments.

Plowing ahead

Photo by h. koppdelaney

Activities I've long enjoyed have taken on the luster of chores.  Writing, working out, gardening, cooking--the small moments I found joy in have become an endless list of things to be done.  The past year has wrung me dry.  But, I'm not giving up.

The novel I'm working on now is set primarily in Nebraska, around the time of the civil war.  It's the first thing I've written that my dad showed any interest in, and when I began working on it this spring, he would talk to me about native prairie plants, the hedgerows settlers planted, the grasses they brought with them.  We had long discussions on local history and the plains.  The last day I saw Dad, I told him about the scene I'd just written--the novel's end, which had come to me though my draft was nowhere near the end.  I felt he should know how things turned out, since the details he gave me built so much of the framework.  Did he like the ending?  He didn't say, and I didn't ask.  We went on to talk about other things--the drought in Texas, Dad's cows, the birdfeeder outside his window.

It's tougher now, working on this novel, when the places and experiences and tone of the story are so closely woven with my memories of Dad.  I've had to change my approach to keep myself going.  I'm handwriting pages--writing and writing without reviewing or critiquing or shaping what comes.  I'm trusting there will be a worthwhile harvest when all the words are on the page.

I'm working like my homesteading ancestors did--head down, trudging forward.  You can't stop breaking sod because you don't feel like plowing.

Bringing the Devil to His Knees

From time to time I like to share books about writing that I've found especially useful or interesting.  The latest one I've been reading,  Bringing the Devil to His Knees: the Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life is comprised of essays originally presented as lectures in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.  The book is not an assemblage of how-to-write rules, but instead, an exploration of writing approaches.  The essays are divided into three categories:  Techniques, Devices, and Strategies; Maps and Legends; and Facing Up to the Reader.  As in any collection, some essays stand out as more relevant than others, but which essays a reader finds useful will no doubt vary with the reader's own needs as a writer.  The chapter with the greatest impact on me, "In Defense of Omniscience" by Richard Russo, inspired me to step away from my usual first-person narrative style and begin writing my current draft in third person omniscient.  Within the essay, Russo also touches on balancing showing with telling, which is something I'm constantly evaluating in my own writing.

The closing of the book's introduction states: "This book does not mean to provide--cannot provide--a set of answers.  At best it will be suggestive (in the best sense), informative, and inspiring".  It delivers exactly what it promises.