What constitutes benign neglect?

Many years ago I heard Ursula LeGuin interviewed on the radio. I had read only one of her books, but I was interested in her life partly because I had lived a few doors from her house near Forest Park in Portland, Oregon, many years before. The interviewer asked her how she managed to be so prolific with young children in the house. And she said, "Benign neglect." 

Now I find myself wondering about how to separate from my animals long enough to be productive. This may sound silly to those people who don't have animals. But those of you who share this issue, you know who you are. I have decided to avoid eye contact with my dogs while I'm writing. This may entail shutting them out of my writing room, but I hope not. 

Women with children or animals: how do you make space for your work? 

I'm reading the fall issue of GLIMMER TRAIN. Last night I read an admirable ghost story in that issue by Sean Padraic McCarthy. Titled "Preservation." It's about a guy whose wife dies in an accident and leaves him with three little girls to raise. There was a tinge of Andre Dubus, the elder, about the story. Very good story. GLIMMER TRAIN never fails me when I want a good story. 

Sunday morning in September

It is delicious, waking up early and with a strong cup of coffee reading OLIVE KITTERIDGE. Sadly, I'm almost finished with it. The thing that really stands out about the stories is how she makes you care about people you have probably had disdain for in real life. I think that I sometimes have the urge to write characters I admire or respect immediately. It's still a personal thing. When my first agent told me that she didn't like Kate Banner in HUMMINGBIRD HOUSE, I realized ours was not a match made in heaven. So not everyone is going to love the characters I love. But I think -- and I see this in the work of other writers, too -- that there's the desire to make a more perfect life, to let the character grow and  be wise in perhaps unrealistic ways. But Elizabeth Strout doesn't do that. The characters remain mean and uncompromisingly self-centered. Human, in other words. 

Finally, after all the labor of moving, my natural routines are emerging, and they are routines that have grounded me all of my writing life. I wake up between 4 and 5. I feed the cat and make a cup of coffee. It's very strong coffee. I read a little and then begin writing after the caffeine kicks in. Last night, I got into bed a little early -- around 8:30 -- and I was able to return to the story I'm working on. The stream of writing, thinking about writing, wading in that water all the time, has been slow to come back. I've been in a dry season. Now it feels good. 

OLIVE KITTERIDGE

I may be the last reader in America to get to these fine stories. Several people have recommended them to me; that made me remember all the times publishers have said that readers come to books by word-of-mouth, not advertising. I woke up yesterday morning before 4, let out the dogs, fed the cat, and settled back into bed with a cup of coffee and OLIVE KITTERIDGE. Two hours later I had to put it down in order to save some for later. It is the sort of book you want to dole out slowly, to make it last. Her portraits of place and people are reminiscent of the work of William Trevor. 

I have posted more of HOME PLATE. In revising the Irish sections -- and the Swiss section embedded in the Irish section -- I was excited by the images I had gathered on my travels and the way they seem to neatly fit into the story. This precipitated a longing for travel. Seeing a new place almost always wakes me and makes me want to write. Sometimes I think it would be nourishing to travel with a group of women writers. We could settle in somewhere for a month, explore, write, and share our work. La Muse in southern France has come up more than once as a possible site for such a jaunt. We'll see if this fantasy endures. 

Revisions I Have Loved Doing

Fiction writer Debra Monroe told me that moving into a new house is an act of revision. It requires the kind of imagination and problem-solving that revision in writing requires. That's what I've been up to -- making green decisions, buying fabric to have a chair upholstered in patchwork, giving away things I don't want or need. Weeding out the unessential. It does feel a bit like writing. Seeking out the ethical response, inventing the flourish, and getting rid of all those clunky sentences and metaphors. 

To return to writing I've been KINDLE-reading a book called THE PLAYWRIGHT'S PROCESS: LEARNING THE CRAFT FROM TODAY'S LEADING DRAMATISTS. I find that I'm working on several projects, like a patchwork. This makes me a little anxious, fearful that I won't finish one of them, but I'd rather be writing than waiting for the next thing in the novel to make itself clear. The play is set in Baltimore. The glimmer that started it all is the memory of a cold, dank night in 1974 when I went with a shipping broker I'd met in a bar out to a Russian ship in the Chesapeake Bay. It was my friend's job to make sure the captain had everything he needed to be happy during his short stay. We took a launch from a pier at Fell's Point and went out to the bay and climbed the tall metal ladder on the side of the ship and were ushered into the captain's quarters, all oak and brass trim, where I was given a Russian beer, while the men did their business. I was terribly afraid of water at that time in my life, so this was a brave thing indeed. Some might say foolish. 

My other immediate writing task is to revise another chapter or two of HOME PLATE. I hope those of you still rading it haven't given up on it. 

Finally

I have been away from WWGT because of The Longest Move in My Personal History. Today I close on the new (old) house and the moving, painting, installing electronics, and unpacking will all take place in the next two weeks. I have committed to having an MFA party on September 10. Deadlines are good. 

Meanwhile, those of you teaching this fall -- enjoy the last few weeks of freedom.