I recently spent two weeks participating in a pilot program for a new residency for writers, visual artists, and 
musicians/composers in south-central Wyoming through Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts. The thing I have in common with Dick Cheney is an everlasting love for Wyoming and its landscapes, so things were good there. I watched the winter deepen. I finished two stories: a long one I’d been working on for almost two years, and a short one that emerged almost fully formed after a year of writing elliptically around its core. I worked on a novella, the aforementioned elliptical writing (called By Anonymous here, which I will most likely end up changing). I thought it might be interesting for some writers or residency aspirants if I documented my progress and process here a little. I’m always curious about how writers work and the weird alchemy that can happen when those of us with full-time jobs (or families, or a string of part-time jobs, or caregiving responsibilities, or any of the other obligations life offers us) are given studio space and weeks of unstructured time to write. This was my third writer’s residency (I wrote a little about the first two here and here) and, like my previous two, it was integral to the evolution of my writing and creative thinking. I’m going to do two three of these posts, in chronological order. And look at how beautiful winter is!
11.23.11. Wrote for a few hours today, just finishing revisions on The Emily Ice. Sort of can’t believe I’m still working on it after almost two years, but it keeps getting better. Last year at Jentel, a buck was poached overnight on nearby land and after we were all asked to remember if we’d seen or heard anything suspicious the night before, they drove us out to look at the corpse because they knew it would be covered in astonishing birds. We watched eagles gnaw the dead deer through binoculars, then I went back to my studio and wrote a scene of grotesque tension that we so needed in that story. I think of all those things as connected. I’ll do another read-through in a week or so.
11.24.11. Pretty sure By Anonymous should be a long short story, not a novella or novel. Spent about 4 hours embarking on an extrication of all the extraneous material I’d added to this piece over the past year. It feels good to pare it down, and since I spent so much time moving around inside the story, I have a better sense of what really needs to be there.
Notebook. The chair that is a repurposed deer. Leather floor. Leather wallpaper. Leather picture frames. And its craftsmanship. Flies.
11.25.11. A sort of day off, during which I watched it snow and wrote about yoga.
11.26.11. Continuing to undo a year’s work. I finished rewriting The Game (part 1 of By Anon) today (minus 2 scenes) and it has turned into a phantasmagorical Alice Munro-type story -meets- sex farce. I don’t know where this tone came from, but it probably rebelling against so much time in the heaviness and black humor of The Emily Ice. I worked for about 5 hours today and interesting things kept coming up. Having these long stretches of open time is the best way I have to develop my material. Walked through the new snow for almost 3 hours, to the top of the hill where all is panorama and light. A group of deer on the side of a hill. They stop what they’re doing and we watch each other. Then I went through the blue-shaded valley, which is full of robins. The creek moves under the ice.
Notebook. Psychological horror. The flies, the animals as furniture, the blank black windows sealed off from the land. The awful history of the place.
11.27.11. Wrote 3,000 words today. The Conversion (2nd half of By Anon) started to cohere in my mind. When something coheres that way, I always wonder what had driven me before. Sometimes that revelation happens over and over in a story. At night we built a fire (we did this on Thanksgiving too). All the stars were out. Talked about living well, without a lot of things, and farming, and the economy of the handmade. At the edge of the yard, some creature had burrowed into the snow and wriggled enigmatic free-form patterns of loops and lines.
11.28.11. Realized I’d need to reorganize all The Conversion scenes and think more about structure. Something happened to my brain–probably the hitting of a stride–where I can write more with less effort and it comes out better, more oriented toward the larger story. The last time this happened was in Bali when I forgot every song I know but felt permeable and could pick up Indonesian words after hearing them just once or twice. Sekolah, suka. Now I surprise myself every day with what I now know about this piece. This is where not-writing begins to more clearly show its value. So much that I read, hear, and witness on my walks ends up twined inside the story. Sometimes it’s a shining through-line.
Notebook. Scenes will need to be reordered for max building of tension. E should not know what’s going on bc it’s insane. Then there’s a brief Colt section at the end. 1st person. It will be wonderful.
