Basque Sheepherder Hijacks Story!

Oct. 28, 2010

Dear Ones,

Oh my. I am obviously not getting out enough. In fact, I'm not getting out at all. Later this afternoon, Ruthie the residency manager/goddess is going to take us for a tour of the ranch and this little tenderfoot will be going along, taking pictures.

But back to the headline for this blog. NEVER EVER trust a reporter. EVER. Even one who once was a reporter in a former life. Because we are all magpies. We will dive after any old tired piece of tinsel, foil, frayed ribbon or dirty shoelace to line our nests with. Last week I posted a picture of a loyal border collie named Pippin who followed his owner with fervent adoration. Ruthie said the man was probably a Basque sheepherder. Which makes all kinds of sense.
Wyoming=Basque sheepherders.

Think of all those sheep in Brokeback Mountain. Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger obviously weren't Basques (unless it was the Beast with Two Basques) but the Basques have been living in Wyoming (and other parts of the West) for nearly 100 years.

But here's the deal. One of my characters, Misty Cotton, the world's neediest, mouthiest, most insecure student in the universe, has somehow wrangled an invitation to an artist's colony in Wyoming. She's staying at The Double DD Ranch and she's supposed to be working on a series of "linked" short stories set around a bar.

Backstory on The Misty One: Misty and her husband, who runs an up-and-coming real estate company, are having marital problems. He's fed up with her self-dramatizing; she knows he's got a thing for his assistant, Carla. He doesn't understand her need to get published, her desire to turn their front yard into a labyrinth, or why her office has become a shrine to Billie Holiday.

Oh, relationships are all so complicated, aren't they?

Misty has recently had a big fight with her creative writing teacher, Rory (the main character), and has since decided to bag writing classes and strike out on her own. Now she's in Wyoming. It's January. Her muse has taken a vacation in Florida. Misty is struggling. And that's when she lifts up her eyes unto the hills and spies...Sebastian "Sabie" Messalina and his dog, Sparky, no, I mean, his dog, Pippin.

Is it The Silence of the Lambs meets Heidi?
Stay tuned.

Should Misty trash her short stories, which are going nowhere, and aim for a little New Journalism with the sheepherder in the red woolen cap? Honestly, I don't know. I guess I will figure it out.

And no, I never did get back to that sex scene on the prairie with Rory and Nils. His lower lip is still trembling. Rory is still wondering when he's going to pull his hand out of her bra and make his move. Maybe that is the move. Lower lip action.

Now I've got to contemplate a possible romantic scene in the barn. With sheep and a Type-A border collie. And a man in a cherry red cap. And with Misty, who is overdue for something big in the Wild Thing Department. I'm telling Misty keep her powder dry--but let's face it--the woman has terrible boundary problems! In fact, most of the people in this book have terrible boundary problems, which is why they're getting into trouble all the time.

In the real world, I have eight more days of this residency. Eight days. It's going really well, for the most part. I'm contemplating a trip into Sheridan tomorrow for, um, supplies.

I miss Ohio and am looking forward to re-entering the world of family, dogs, Jon Stewart, people who like me, students (yes, they're out there), and many many leaves in the front yard.

Dear ones, wherever you are, remember: no one will ever walk in your moccasins but you. Sorry to go all Sherman Alexie on you. But. You know what's going on. Walk in it.

Hitting the Wall With Turkeys And A Sex Scene

"I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know." ~ Billie Holiday

Oct 26, 2010

Dear Friends -

Tornado warnings in Ohio, high wind advisories here in Wyoming. I am hunkered down in my studio watching the wild turkeys in the tall grass. They are trying to get over to the next field but there is a fence in the way. Some of them are trying to climb through the fence, but the mesh is too small. So they run back and forth along the fence perimeter, back and forth, crying and clucking and waving their stumpy little wings. Poor things. They have inspired a very bad poem. Here it is:

Turkey Poem

I feel sorry for the turkeys.
They aren’t very smart.
They’re destined for the butcher
Dinner as art.

They taste good at Thanksgiving,
But they want to be free.
If you were a turkey
How would you be?

I am obviously hitting the wall, creatively. This is the Marlo Thomas "Free to Be You and Me" version of a poultry poem. Stop me before I write again!!!!

Oct. 27, 2010

Since I've been here I've written about blow-ups in the classroom, student mutinies, lost children, someone driving a bookmobile and loving it, Halloween, and intoxicated people in a hot tub. I just pray to god there's a connection between all these things. I have even attempted to write a sex scene. I have only gotten as far as someone cupping someone else's breast. She puts his hand there. His lower lip trembles. They're on the prairie. In a field of wildflowers. But I can't seem to go any further south than the navel. Fade to black. Am I a prude?

Sex scenes are hard! Although I have a very imaginative mind and frequently swear like a stevedore, I have a hard time writing in a true, authentic and naked way about people actually taking off their clothes and getting down to bidness. When you think about it, sex is pretty preposterous. It's like, you want to put that ... where?

It's not dignified. It's unseemly. It's outright ridiculous. There are all those body fluids. It's messy. It's noisy. Yet people do it. It feels good. It is good. But writing about it?

It's like, look away, look away, look away, Dixieland!

Case in point: Consider Scarlett O'Hara the morning after Rhett Butler carries her upstairs in that to-die-for dress of hers and has his way with her...why, goodness, Miss Melly! She wakes up in a very good mood.

Why, shut my mouth!

So back to my sex scene. What do I want the scene to accomplish? I want it to show character. I want my readers to feel close to these people. I want them to care about them. I want them to identify with the characters, see themselves in them, feel tenderly towards them. I might even want them to get a little turned on by the scene, as I would be. I want them to be real, and sex is about as real as it gets.

But I'm not D. H. Lawrence. I'm not Anais Nin.

No, my sex scene is going to have to be mine...so if you'll excuse me, I've left two people fumbling in a field on the prairie in a partial state of undress. The wind is blowing. And there are turkeys, turkeys everywhere. I better go rescue them before things get out of hand...

I guess that's what Billie Holiday meant about changing a tune to her own way of singing. She's got to do it her own way.

Halfway there

Dear Friends -

It is incredibly windy today. I feel like I'm being pummeled, brushed, and buffed by an enormous electric toothbrush all over my body when I go outside. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. It makes me high, just looking at the way the trees are bending and creaking and the leaves go rocketing by. Wyoming is recognized as one of the windiest places in the country, or, as the wind farm people like to say, "a premiere wind site."

I've been sitting at my desk for six hours, more or less. Every now and then I'll look up and see herds of deer running by in the next field over. They leap. They bound.

The sky is an intense iron bluish-gray. The wind is howling. The atmosphere is fraught. It feels like something is going to happen.

Should I expect Mary Poppins or Jack London?

One of the residents here has generously downloaded a movie for me, "Sylvia," starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath, the bi-polar poet who committed suicide by gassing herself. I can watch it on my computer with earplugs. My son tells me it's probably not the best viewing material on a windy day in the lonesome middle of nowhere.

I've been re-reading Elizabeth Gilbert's book "The Last American Man" and it's pretty good. She's is a lot looser in this book, not so self-conscious or precious. She's having fun. She's found her subject. I take back what I said about her in an earlier post. I don't think she slept with Eustace Conway, the iconic mountain man who is the subject of her book. But I do think she slept with his younger brother, Judson. Or wanted to. And who wouldn't want to?

Here's how she described Judson, whom she met when she was 22 and working on a ranch in -- where else??-- Wyoming:

"I met Judson Conway the first day I came to the ranch. He was the first thing I set eyes on after that long drive up that big Wyoming mountain, and I kind of fell in love with him. I didn't fall in love with Judson like 'Let's get married!' I fell in love with him like 'Mercy!' Because here was Judson Conway at that moment: slim, handsome, hidden slightly under a cowboy hat, and appealingly dusty. All he had to do was stroll by me with his sexy swagger (classically executed, in the Hollywood manner of Pardon-me-ma'am-but-I-just came off-a-long-ride), and I was believer."

YOWSA!

That narrator is so much more likable and trust-worthy to me than the one in "Eat, Pray, Love," with its movie-of-the-week epiphanies and neat little observations.

As for my own writing, it is inching along. I still hope to have a draft finished by the time I leave Ucross.

****

Horoscope for today: "Your ability to get your point across is sharpened right now, although you may have a hard time finding people to talk to." Ha! Ha! Ha!

I haven't talked to a single soul today except the answering machine in my Ohio home. Dinner is in two hours. New people have come today to Ucross. I can't wait to meet them.

Thank you for reading my blog. It makes me feel a little less OUT THERE on the prairie. This blog is a tumbleweed and I've pinned a note to it, hoping it rolls its way up to your door.

Caught in the Act

Caught in the Act

The cottonwood trees are taking off
their clothes,
dropping leaf after yellow leaf,
performing a slow striptease
this Sunday morning.

Snow is predicted
on Wednesday but
for now the sun peeps
through a torn petticoat
of clouds.

Oct. 24, 2010, Ucross, Wyoming

Sweet Saturday and The Fruits of My Labor

Dear Friends, wherever you are...

There are just a few of us at Ucross this weekend.

The others have left. More are coming. (Wait. That sounds Cormac McCarthyish. Like we're the last people on the planet.)

I like the weekends here because they feel lazy, even though they're not really that different from the rest of the week as far as my routine: Get up, check e-mail, make some coffee, get some breakfast, then head to the studio. (My studio is right downstairs from my bedroom.) If it's sunny, I"ll close the blinds because the sun is so bright. I'll kill a few million box elder bugs that are crawling around on my desk. Then I'll try to immerse myself in another world, this book I'm trying to write. Sometimes immersion works and I'm transported but a lot of times as I'm writing, I'm thinking, this feels mowing grass by hand--uphill.

Then I'll kill a few more bugs and get up and have another cup of coffee. I'll look at my watch. I'll wonder what kind of leftovers are in the kitchen fridge for lunch. I'll chew on a piece of beef jerky and worry about the high sodium content. I'll check my e-mail. Then I'll try to get back to work. Maybe I'll call my husband on my cell phone. We'll talk for a couple minutes. (I'm not a phone person.) Maybe I'll call my son. More work.

Self-talk: No, you may NOT check your e-mail again. No one could've possibly sent you anything important in the last five minutes. Sometimes I'll pluck a novel off the bookshelf and page through it, trying to see how other writers describe their characters without being too damn intrusive. Sometimes I'll check thesaurus.com online to see if there's a better word for "shadow."

I might check on the history of Basque sheepherders in Wyoming. I'll look for the name of a male Basque character. (We like the name "Gorka." Sounds like a Croatian brand of granola.) I might check out real estate prices in Sheridan (waaaaay too high by Ohio standards). Then I'll yell at myself again. I'll look at the lone box elder bug bravely trekking across my desk, its splindly legs going step-step-step. Should I kill it? I feel powerful. I'm the Emperor Nero. Thumbs up. Let the creature live! Roaring cheers from the amphitheater! Release the doves! And the panthers!

Today I feel like I'm chopping wood. Write a page, there's a stick. Write another page, there's another stick. Write, write, write. Stick, stick, stick. I hope this kindling catches fire.

It might be time for a nap. Wait, it's only 2:20 p.m. The others are going hiking in Crazy Woman Canyon. I should go but I'm too busy. You know. "Working." And so it goes on this quiet Saturday. Right now my mind feels like a very small room with no windows. There's only one thing to do: Get outside.

One great thing about Ucross. There are lots of great books to read. In James Galvin's wonderful novel, "The Meadow," he quotes a poem by Robert Duncan, "Often I Am Permitted to Return to A Meadow."

Here is my favorite stanza:

It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun's going down

That stanza makes me think of the west, the wonderful long tilt of the sun when the shadows grow long, and the prairie and the trees and of course, the wind.

Writing is such a solitary act, and yet it's a conversation too. I love how those words, written so long ago, have the power to move me in many different directions.

Duncan, The Dog That Ate Sheridan, Wyoming

Dear Friends,

Pictured above is Duncan, Ruthie Salvatore's 180-pound St. Bernard. He is VERY big, even by St. Bernard standards. Ruthie (Ucross's residency manager) keeps slobber towels stashed all around her house in case anybody needs a wipe-down. If things get too messy, she'll run you through a car wash.

This is my 11th day at Ucross. I am now on page 135. I cannot tell if what I'm writing is hot stuff or not. That's what happens when you're in a room by yourself for hours at a time.

"Uh, waiter, can I have the check, please? The reality check?"

Dinner was sweet tonight. Six of the residents are leaving tomorrow.

It's so strange to be here. We connect and then we say goodbye. It's like a really good interview.

On Monday a new crew of six comes. We will make them feel as welcome as the old-timers made us feel. I feel so very grateful to be here and to have had my life enlarged by such dedicated and caring people.

This is almost half over. I can't believe it.

Goodnight. Isn't the moon pretty tonight?

Eat, Pray, Love Writing Your Ass Off....

"All I want is to be a cowboy and wear my own pants." ~ From the movie "Destry Rides Again." Mischa Auer makes this comment to his wife after losing his clothes to Marlene Dietrich in a card game.

I am wearing my own pants but I'd like to try the cowboy thing. And I'm in good company. Guess who has been a resident at Ucross not once but twice?

Elizabeth Gilbert, who has practically owned the Nonfiction Best Seller Page of the New York Times for the past three years for her blockbuster memoir about eating pizza, kegeling, and schtupping across three continents. Bless her heart! Can we get an amen? No? Well, anyway...

She came here first to write "The Last American Man," which I thought was really good (although I think she and the guy she was writing about probably had sex even if she didn't cop to it in the book).

She came back a second time to write "Eat, Pray, Love."

Am I just a skosh jealous of La Gilbert's phenomenal success? Let me put it this way: Does Oprah wear Spanx?

Hell, yes, I'm jealous. I'm just praying that Liz left a little pixie dust on the sheets. Maybe I've even got "her" room.

The weird thing is I'm reading her very first book, a collection of short stories, "Pilgrims," and it is REALLY good. E. Annie Proulx (I wonder what the E. stands for) wet all over her knickers about this book and I can definitely see why. Here's what she wrote on the back of the dust jacket: "Elizabeth Gilbert is a young writer of incandescent talent. The stories in 'Pilgrims' flash like mirrors, cut like razors."

What I find interesting is "Pilgrims" (1997) is a lot like some of Proulx's Wyoming stories: pared down, funny, minimal, wry.

It's no coincidence that Proulx also did a residency here at Ucross and also served on the Board of Directors. I'm a huge fan of Proulx.

I can see that I've drifted from my earlier attitudes of nun-like gratitude about being here in Wyoming. (And I am! I am!) I should be getting more and more Zen-like, the longer I'm here but instead I've developed this potty mouth and a bit of an attitude. I put this down to a lack of alcohol, television, and small dogs I can cuddle with in bed.

For the record, I went back in Buck's cabin today and the vibe was a little mellower. Maybe learning he had a glass eye took the edge off things.

I've been working hard. Week two and I'm in the groove of things. Tomorrow night is a full moon.

Remember what Telly Savalas used to say on that TV show "Kojack"?

"Who loves ya, baby?"

Me. I do.