Sandra Gail Lambert

Jill Bolte Taylor

The monthly Lesbian Potluck and Readings were last night.  I scooped shrimp from the broth of a low country boil and sucked them out of their shells as women talked about the happenings of their day, their week, their lives.  Pitched among their voices was the goodnight song of a cardinal and the chaotic medley of frogs gearing up for a night of cruising around the lake.

After the readings, some of us stayed on the screened porch.  The lake was only a sheen in the darkness.  One woman had written of the thoughts in her mind just after a car wreck.  "I didn't mind not breathing," was one of the lines.  I asked a rambling question about if she remembered everything and was just transcribing the events or if the writing of it had allowed her to remember.  Was it all "true" or did she take the moment and write what must have been happening the best she could figure out?

Then, in a sort of mind meld, we asked each other if we'd heard Jill Bolte Taylor talk on NPR, on YouTube, on Oprah?  All of us writers were fascinated with this story of a woman who had (during a stroke) gone to the other side of her brain. And that she still lived in that place to a certain extent. All of us had visited there in our writing but not enough or easily enough or long enough.  We yearned for reliable access.

Here's Jill Bolte Taylor.   

Disability and Poetry

Here's a little something for the poets. 

First check out Wordgathering.  It's a journal of disability and poetry produced by the Inglis House Poetry Workshop.  In their own words it's a "literary journal with the mission of developing poetry and discourse around disability literature."

Then go over to the blog Dispoet where there is all sorts of discussion about poetry and disability.  

And Breath and Shadow, a journal of disability culture and literature, always offers poetry as well as prose (including, in the past, two pieces of mine.)

So, does anyone else have other links to add? 

Oh, p.s. and by the way - if you link to the 2008 Inglis House Poetry Contest winners, you might find a familiar name.    

Harriet McBryde Johnson has died

Oh, this just hurts. 

We never met.  I did write her a fan letter once.  I'd just read To Late to Die Young, her book of essays about disability.  I closed the book and felt part of a community of writers, like we had a style.  She never left the body out of the discussion.  She had that particular crip humor that combines earthy self-deprecation with verbally nailing assholes to the wall with their own bad logic.  Death wasn't so scary, and she was relentless about living well, about all of our rights to live well.

Her essay Unspeakable Conversations, is important.  In 2003, when it was published in the New York Times, I made everyone in my life read it.  She says the things I always want to, but without the impotant sputtering. Read it here.      

Lesbian Writers Fund - last chance for 2008

Every year the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice selects a few emerging lesbian writers of fiction and poetry and awards them the majorly big bucks.  Here's the link for the submission guidelines and the in-their-office deadline is June 30th.  Hurry. Fame and fortune await!

St. Augustine Project Revisions

The printer just finished spitting out the pages of my post-conference chapter revision.  I am in the really-pleased-with-myself stage, so I'm not going to read it again for awhile.  Tomorrow, it's on to the next chapter.  

One of the big "ah ha" moments for me at the conference was when Connie May said we should have a time line for the completion of our novels.  I sort of had a little freak out when she said it.  It was shocking to me that I'd never even thought of it since I'm the type who makes time lines and lists for everything.  But then, you know, I'd have to claim that the novel was real. 

I came home and did what I've done for any project I've ever worked on in my whole life except writing and started figuring out word count and the number of chapters and how much time for each one and built in draft revisions and added extra time for sudden life stuff and it may be totally unrealistic but DECEMBER 2009 is the date.  Yikes. 

Thank you, Connie May.  

   

Post Below Sea Level Revisions

It's as if I had the wax spread out on the car, but it was still smeary and yellow.  These past days I've been rubbing the chapter, moving the words around in circles, putting a bit of writing muscle into it, and now, in places, it gleams.  Color is showing through even in the not-perfect-yet sections.  And I had thought, before the conference, that I was bringing the best work I could do.  Hah. 

There is exciting news in Gainesville.  We're having the first significant rains since March.  Friends call each other to squeal "it's raining, it's raining," and strangers mutter "great rain, huh?" as they pass.  I check my rain gauge every day, chart the results, and then tell more people than want to know the results.  3.6 inches this week, so far!  

Butterlies abound.     

Post Below Sea Level

After the sweet goodbyes, after the drive home, after dealing with a stopped-up sink and a toppled tree, after many loads of laundry, I was ready. 

I upended the stack of notes, critiques, book suggestions, e-mail contacts, handouts, and hotel memo pads onto my writing bed and have spent a day and a half organizing.  I am excited.  This novel seems possible. 

Writing Community

I have a friend who, every year on my birthday, calls my mother to thank her for the existence of me.  Well, today's the day for the call.

And tonight there's dinner and a reading with Connie May and Dorothy and Laura van den Berg, and then a champagne reception.  What a fine birthday celebration.  It's also the last night of the conference.

All this week we've been experiencing and talking about the importance of a writing community. We say things about how our family, our friends, our partners don't quite understand what we do. We say how fine it is to be with fellow writers who, even as strangers, "get" us. 

I have friends who don't care that they don't quite "get" me.  They just support me.  They bring me reams of paper and ink cartridges, listen to me read and say it was great no matter what, go to lunch with my mother, buy any book I have anything printed in, and, for today, hand over envelopes of cash towards attending this conference. (It was like being a bride or mafia boss.) 

So, thanks to all of you - the writers here in St. Augustine and to all my people at home.              

Writing Below Sea Level with Connie May Fowler

I've had my manuscript critiqued (thoroughly), I've helped critique a manuscript, I've read in front of a roomful of writers, I've talked writing at lunch, in the lobby of the hotel, and through bathroom stall doors.  I've heard and read many (put an exclamatory adjective here) pieces of writing.  I am so tired. I am so happy. That's it for day one of the Writing Below Sea Level's St. Augustine Project.

Here's the salt marsh view outside my hotel room window.  It's good to be close to the rise and fall of the tides and the occasional rush of a train.