What I’m Writing: As I’ve been waiting (still) to hear about book proposals currently out, I’ve begun working seriously on a magazine article about everyday, down-to-earth ways to celebrate the themes of Advent’s four candles—a spin-off of a talk I gave last November. Thus, due to magazine lead time, it’s December in March this week—though the still-falling snow outside this study window makes that not as great a stretch as it might seem elsewhere.
As happens each time I turn to a magazine article, I’m remembering how much I love writing in this genre. True, these short pieces don’t have the literal heft of books, or the scope to expand ideas at length. Nevertheless, they offer a wonderful way to connect with readers. Because each individual magazine is targeted to a particular population, right off the bat you know a lot about the people to whom you’re speaking: what they believe, are concerned with, hope for and fear, what they need, what might help them. Since magazines have house styles, too—consistencies of rhetoric and tone, syntax, overall and paragraph structure—a writer also faces a more finite range of compositional choices, setting up interesting challenges for individual tweaking, allowing greater focus on content.
If you’re a writer totally focused on long-form works, you might give magazine work a try. It’s easier to break into, for one thing. The upper-division magazine writing class I taught for many years was always packed, and during every single one of its iterations students sold work before the semester’s end.
Granted, in some circles writing for periodicals doesn’t have the cache of “real writing”: as our English Department became more territorial during my career’s last years, that course was no longer allowed to count for students under the “Creative Writing” block.
But people read these “little things” and feel connected with their writers (as fan letters affirm), and the process of writing such articles well necessarily moves the writer into the head of potential readers, requiring her to imagine what will resonate with them, touch them, help them along their ways.
Ephemeral, yes. But what is writing for publication about if it doesn’t foster human community?
What I’m Reading: Laurie Lisle’s Portrait of the Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Last fall, feeling like I could use some role models of women in the arts who were dedicated to their crafts and pursued unconventional lives (as I might be said to do as a widow who’s lived alone by choice for twenty years now), I began seeking out big research-informed biographies. The first two were moving and rich with information but depressing in their depictions of troubled lives (Sylvia Plath, Dian Arbus). This one is proving incredibly inspirational as well as informative. What a character O’Keeffe was, so independent and utterly devoted to craft, so willing to evolve in her art without worrying what others said. Very engagingly written, too.
Something Beautiful in My World: My “second-act” career as a massage therapist specializing in work with the elderly and hospice patients yielded a beautiful moment last week. For about a year I’ve been offering hospice massages (through the healthcare group I contract with) to a woman I knew three decades ago through our town’s once-lively bohemian-ish reading circuit in bars and bookstores. The town/gown thing and both of our opinionated personalities contributed to distance; we weren’t antagonists, but not really friendly, either. In these latter days, though, we’ve realized we liked each other and looked forward to our time together. Last week a call came asking if I could see her before the originally-scheduled date since she was actively dying. Though always talkative, my friend kept drifting to sleep during the massage (more like a laying-on-of-hands), but woke periodically to smile at me or comment on a song I was singing softly to her as I worked (“I’ve always like that one!”). As I lifted my hands she squeezed mine tightly and smiled into my eyes, seemingly at peace, nothing more to be said, and we kissed each other goodbye.