The salmon are still running, but my family and I are not running after them, not with nets or cameras or any kind of eyes. We have left fishcamp for school and town life, with hourly schedules and places-to-be, deadlines to meet---it’s always a hard transition. Along with it comes the daily loss of daylight; the slow climb toward a long night pulls at me. But there are consolations---one of them, trips! This fall, to Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennessee, for an in-studio radio show, a visit to Covenant College, where I gave readings and lectures. A book club who had recently read Surviving the Island of Grace showed up en force reminding me again that writing is not about numbers, but about the real bodies and faces of real readers. Thank you for being there! The meetings and readings on campus were felicitous, the trees gorgeously mutli-colored, the views multi-state, and I will return in January of 2009 as writer-in-residence.
Other quick writing news: Surprise Child will appear in German in the next month or so ; I am working on a revised edition of Surviving the Island of Grace, which will be published in spring, 2008. Two other manuscripts continue to fill my writing hours. Teaching has begun again, after summer break. My new students in the MFA program I teach in (Seattle Pacific University) are wonderful writers, who live all over the country. For them, and for me, and for all who care about writing and teaching, I pass on these words:
“I don’t teach writing. I teach patience. Toughness. Stubbornness. The willingness to fail. I teach the life. The odd thing is most of the things that stop an inexperienced writer are so far from the truth as to be nearly beside the point. When you feel global doubt about your talent, that is your talent. People who have no talent don’t have any doubt.”
-----Richard Bausch, from Off the Page:Writers Talk about Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between
