Tele Aadsen

writer - fisherman - listener

 

Writing at North Cascades Institute

 

Hap­py New Year, friends!

Final­ly, a post­card for you that actu­al­ly is a post­card, thanks to Cap’n J’s Sol­stice pho­to shoot. (And how awe­some is my many-legged friend? Sock­to­pus is my crafty sis­ter Ash­ley’s work.)

It was a pret­ty wild New Year’s Eve up here in the moun­tains… Nachos and a soda with an evening of word-mak­ing. In the final hour of 2013, I took a break to read a let­ter, a wel­come sur­prise from an old friend. (My neigh­bor deliv­ered sev­er­al weeks’ worth of mail the oth­er day; I’ve been parcel­ing them out to myself, one a night, as a treat.) On the blank back of a reject­ed page from chap­ter four, I start­ed writ­ing a response.

Have you noticed how dif­fer­ent­ly you write to a friend? How the words come more nat­u­ral­ly when you’re just talk­ing with some­one you trust wants to hear what you’re say­ing and cares? Your friend knows your voice; they’ll hear your words exact­ly as you mean to con­vey them, respond­ing with empa­thy and cel­e­bra­tion at all the right places. Such a dif­fer­ence expe­ri­ence than writ­ing to the silent­ly judg­men­tal page, the face­less screen — or worse, the clear­ly scowl­ing crowd that’s so going to hate this. With those detrac­tors in mind, why bother?

There’s good rea­son writ­ing teach­ers advise imag­in­ing one spe­cif­ic read­er as we approach our work.

In con­ver­sa­tion with my friend, I found myself shar­ing thoughts that, in my book, had been stiff. Over-wordy, yet dis­tant. As a let­ter, they stum­bled into what I had­n’t been able to say with­in the book. So I inter­rupt­ed the let­ter to reach for my note­book instead. That’s how I rang in 2014 — find­ing a dif­fer­ent way into the sto­ry, scrib­bling a re-writ­ten scene, and send­ing thoughts of grat­i­tude to that friend. Pret­ty good terms on which to wel­come the new year, I think.

So. Two thoughts to share with you:

The first is a poem one of you sent (thanks, Angela!) It’s a verse observed inside a Seat­tle Metro bus as part of their 2006 poet­ry-in-motion project. I’m sor­ry I don’t have the author’s name.

Every fam­i­ly has one — usu­al­ly the one

who writes, the one who spills fam­i­ly secrets

onto the page like so much grape juice

on beige car­pet — cre­at­ing continent-shaped

stains that are slow to fade and nev­er disappear

entire­ly

 

The sec­ond is a quote from Theo Nestor’s new­ly released book on craft, Writ­ing is My Drink. This is what Lisa Jones, author of Bro­ken: A Love Sto­ry, has to say about the role of the memoirist:

You’re sim­ply a nice car­pen­ter who has helped make a shel­ter for oth­er peo­ple’s uneasi­ness by expos­ing your own.”

 

This house is big, sweet­ies. Come on in — there’s plen­ty of room for us all.

Hap­py New Year, all. Be well.

Tele

c/o ELC

P.O. Box 429

Mar­ble­mount, WA 98267