Writers on Wednesday--Leah Stewart

This week I have the musings of Leah Stewart on the process and craft, the delicate art form, really which is editing. Since I'm up to my eyebrows in revisions and spent the better part of this afternoon helping my senior student reshape her flash fiction, this couldn't be more appropriate. Enjoy!

In my experience the more convinced writing students are that not a word of their work should be changed, the worse their writing is. That resistance to editing is usually a sure sign of an amateur, someone fervently convinced that writing is about the pure rush of inspiration and expression, and not about the hard work of learning a craft, of taking editorial advice, of revising and revising and revising. How to explain, then, the much-admired and well-known writer who told me that when he got the marked-up manuscript of his last book from his editor, he sent it back in the box it came in, saying he couldn’t bear to have it in his house? They published it exactly as he’d written it, to much acclaim.

It’s worth noting that he himself said that, had he not been too “raw” to look at his editor’s suggestions, he might have been able to make it a better book. Still, even as a young writer, he chose not to publish a piece rather than take the editor’s suggestions, a choice it’s hard for me to imagine making, especially at the beginning of a career. When my first agent sent me the marked-up manuscript of my first book, I called a writer friend in despair over the changes he wanted me to make. My friend said, “Well, you know you don’t have to do everything he says.” No, I didn’t know that. I was an unpublished writer. He was an established agent willing to take me on. The notion that I didn’t have to do everything he said had honestly never crossed my mind.

In the end, thanks to my friend, I didn’t make every change my agent suggested, especially on the sentence level. But I did make at least one rather significant change I still regret, even now, ten years after the book was published. I went against my instinct to make that change, because he insisted on it, because he seemed so sure. My own convictions about my work waver. I have faith in myself as a writer, but not always in the writing I produce. There’s incontrovertible evidence, after all, that even the best writers write bad books. And then there are those supremely confident students as proof of the lack of relationship between certainty and skill.

My books are better for being edited. When I think about the changes I made to my second and third books, I feel no regret, only gratitude to my thoughtful, conscientious editor, who helped me make the books so much better than they were. I’m lucky to work with an editor like her, someone who offers feedback on plot points and lines of dialogue and everything in between, which not all of them do these days. There are times when I do exactly what she suggests, and other times when I balk. Some of her ideas might work for the novel at hand, but not for the writer I am. When I don’t want to make the change she suggests, we talk until we determine why she’s suggesting it. If we can pinpoint the problem, most of the time we can come up with a solution I can execute.

My better students, the ones so riddled with self-doubt they might actually become writers, sometimes come to me after workshop confused by their classmates’ contradictory assertions. They ask how they’re supposed to know which comments to value, which to ignore, where your own convictions about your work should give way to other peoples’. My advice is vague and clichéd, if accurate: Go with your gut. You have to doubt yourself to get better, but you have to have faith to write at all.

Did the writer who sent his book back to the editor act out of faith or doubt? I don’t know. Some writers are high-wire artists; some are bricklayers. He’s a high-wire artist, and maybe having reached the other side of the wire he couldn’t bear to tempt fate by stepping back on.

I wish sometimes that writing was like math, precise and indisputable, instead of the messy, subjective thing that it is. I’m a believer in pragmatic advice, of the “move this scene here” variety. But there are places where technique alone fails you. Writing well is not math but alchemy, a disputed and mysterious science, a chemistry of faith and doubt.  

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Bio...

Leah Stewart is the author of the novels Body of a Girl, The Myth of You and Me, and Husband and Wife. She teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Cincinnati.

MONDAY MUSING--Is the magic in the ritual?

Christmas is all packed up here, less than 48 hours after the event. Part of this is because we are taking our annual winter journey to worship the sun and sea in Grand Cayman before New Years. But another truth is that I can't stand having the accoutrements around after the magic has happened--it's like being the person who comes to sweep the set of a beloved stage or screen show, to see that the furniture and props are just... things. When they are part of the magic, the buildup, the advent stockings hanging on my staircase are festive. When there are no more anticipate-the-holidays activities scribbled on slips of red cardstock and chocolates tucked inside them, they are just drugstore felt stockings stapled to ribbon cluttering up my house. 

And as you know from my post on Christmas books, we pack these and their friends the holiday movies away with the ornaments and nativities. I am militant almost about safeguarding the 'magic'. To be honest, there is a part of me that is completely cringing about writing about Christmas on December 27. Shouldn't we be moving on, writing about resolutions or our new snowfall? part of me thinks. But I have been thinking about the ritual of Christmas a lot this year.

My sister and I were up texting after midnight on Christmas eve, our sewing machines humming along. Her two-year-old had sleepily said she hoped Santa would bring her a snowman, so Linden (who lives in the Caribbean) was up making a snowman for Quinn out of felt and buttons. On my end, I had sewn a modified "Ugly" doll for Hayden out of his old hockey pants--part stuffed animal, part hot-water-bottle holder for his night pains, and when I saw it set out by his stocking, I just knew Max was going to feel gypped, so I was whipping up a blue fleece bat/owl type creature. We were texting back and forth photos of our projects, and expressing the hope that the Christmas magic we grew up on had been created. 

For us, a huge part of this magic was the heavy, unaltered and beloved ritual my parents created around Christmas.

The Christmas of my childhood has weeks of lead-up that I won't bore you with--everyone has things that bring the season to life for them. We did too; songs, Tableaux, and the traditional goose dinner with my grandparents on my mother's blue and gold wedding China, new Christmas flannels, and reading aloud from Clement Moore. But the real ritual began Christmas morning, in a near-sacred order that stretched every Dec 25th until mid-afternoon.

My four siblings and I woke each other up and waited in our bedrooms, peeking across the hallway at each other, until the appointed time. I made sure everyone had brushed and gargled--my hyper-sensitive sniffer wanted nobody's morning breath wafting my way on the next part: waking my parents with a serenade of "Merry Christmas Bells Are Ringing." A quick cuddle in their bed, and then on to stockings in the living room. My mom knit all of our stockings, beautiful, matching and personalized, but they were never where we hung them on the fireplace. They were tucked into a pile, a bounty of stuffed animals and presents and extras. These we opened as my Dad laid a fire in the fireplace, calling out grateful 'thank you Santas'.

I marvel about the next part of the ritual as a mother: breakfast. Somehow, my mother managed to clean up from a full goose dinner for at least ten people on Christmas eve, and on Christmas morning, the table would be re-set with that same classic China, grapefruits halved and sugared at each place setting, holly sprigs in the napkin rings, homemade sticky buns in the oven. My dad made coffee and scrambled eggs with cream, and there was stollen and bacon. My sister-in-law and I were shaking our heads over this as we cleared the table Christmas eve this year, my mom shuffling around, HELPING, with her walker as she learns to walk after her shattered femur last June. How did she do it, all those years? How did she prepare these incredible meals, and clean, and do the wrapping and the stockings, and make all that magic? A wonder woman, we decided, who was also willing to do what we are not: all-nighters. 

After sit-down breakfast, we had worship--a reading aloud of the Christmas story, a few carols. If someone had learned a religious piano song (seven years of lessons, and the only piano song I can play from memory is Greensleeves) they played it. 

Between stockings and a sit-down breakfast, by the time worship was over, it might be ten, or even eleven. At long last, the deliciousness of presents could begin! We had appointed places in the living room where we sat, year after year. The elves--my brothers--would distribute the presents from under the tree to each person's station, careful to avoid or sometimes employing the aid of the clickety-clacking LGB train. 

Presents were opened in specific order, SLOWLY, one at a time, youngest to older, in repeating circles, until we were finished. With an original family of seven, this could go on until the afternoon, when the ritual ended with wrapping paper tossed in the fireplace, and my mom doling out our laundry baskets to carry our loot back to our rooms. 

Magic. Memories. Ritual. One Christmas four years ago, when there were just the two boys and my in-laws were here for the holidays, we let Hayden and Max tear through stockings and presents in a hazy, frenzied, fifteen-minute blur. No appreciation, no thanking the giver, adults milling around making coffee and trying to get the boys to eat something other than chocolate Santas for breakfast. No candles lit, no reading of the Petersham's The Christ Child, no carols. Just hysterical, rampant gimmes. 

I felt sick afterwards, stuffing torn wrapping paper into trash bags, the boys looking up at me like, "that was it?" It was barely eight-thirty. I took a walk that afternoon and vowed that I would bring the ritual, the magic to my children. I've been doing it ever since. As we set out the stockings on Christmas eve, I heard my oldest, my nine-year-old fellow Virgo reminding the other two how it would go: stockings, then breakfast, then worship, then presents, ONE AT A TIME. 

I don't do China or a big sit-down breakfast--our wedding China is still in its original packaging in our basement. And we've added our own flair; letters from Santa and reindeer chow debris greet them first thing, and a departure note from "Cheese", our elf on the shelf. I light candles scented like pine and poinsetta. My Dad comes over and makes scrambled eggs with cream, Jon brews excellent strong coffee and we have gluten-free sweet potato waffles with Nutella. This year, for the first time, my kids were so much more excited about giving than getting, desperate for everyone to open the gifts they had made or selected. Slowly, (okay, semi-slowly), one at a time, in order of age, while the LGB clickety-clacked around the track.

I think now, that the magic is in the ritual, and in the sentiment, maybe, in the care of creating and preserving tradition. I hope your Christmas was merry. Now, pack it up and let's move on. 

The Incentive Quilt

Around their second birthday, I have taken each of my children on an outing to the fabric store where I let them select fabrics that I will sew into their incentive quilt. I am usually waddling through the store, seven months pregnant with the next, and the incentive is clear: get out of our bed and into your own with this lovely new quilt before the baby arrives.

The boys’ quilts are queen-sized, patchwork style, seven inch squares with bugs, trucks, spiders, flame and lava fabrics, lots of fleeces and fuzzies. I leave the bottoms open, so that I can slide a duvet in for winter months, but still enjoy them in summer, and I do absolutely no hand-quilting. These quilts would be a lot easier if I actually knew how to sew, but so much of my time is spent ripping out seams, rethreading my $99 plastic machine, fiddling with tensions. I still have to break out the manual nearly every time I wind the bobbin or replace a broken needle.

It is all worth it, though, because my boys love their quilts, drag them out to the living room to snuggle by the fire, make tents with them on the trampoline, and when my oldest spent a week in the hospital with pneumonia, he insisted on being cocooned in his. I have asked if they want new ones, if they’re bothered at 5 and 8 years old by having Scoop, Muck and Dizzy from their toddler years on their beds, but they refuse.

There was a boy I wanted to sleep with in college because I heard his mother had made him a postage stamp quilt out of all his favorite childhood clothes that graced his dorm room twin. Not only was this guy smoking hot, but I thought there must be something special, a confidence to someone who would proudly sleep under a homemade quilt with puppies and bunnies, Izod alligators and duck heads from his boyhood clothes. And I’ll confess, the creative part of me just wanted to get a good look at this quilt, see how it was put together, but I never did.

Two years ago, it was time to sew my daughter’s quilt, but it has been different. There is no coming baby, no incentive to stop sleeping in her king-sized daybed intertwined with her warm, olive-skinned limbs. I have dawdled over Piper’s quilt, partially because of the difficulty of tackling a crazy quilt, partially because her interests keep changing--“shoes, ponies, flowers!”-- and partially because life keeps interrupting us, demanding to be included in her quilt. The color scheme has expanded from red, peach and petal pink to red, peach, all shades of pink, ivory, orange, fuschia, tangerine and even the occasional bright white and pale green. Then my mother-in-law died after a long battle with breast cancer, and her loving promise to haunt us came in the form of dragonflies—we saw them everywhere, and in going through her things, I found a vest beaded with dragonflies. It had to be included in Piper’s quilt.

Cleaning out closets for my mother, I found a turn-of-the-century rag quilt that one of my father’s great aunts had made. It had moth-holes and tears, but there were sections of it that were intact, red, pink and cream, and had to be included. I also used clothes of Piper’s she had outgrown or stained: the orange and fushcia striped leggings from her 6 month old costume as a baby chicken? Yes. Her goldfish and cherry onesies? Of course. When my sister graduated from Wakeforest, she sent me the orange and hot pink paisley sheets I had given her four years earlier as her going-off-to-college present. Could I use them in Piper’s quilt? Check--putting the crazy in crazy quilt.

Flipping through the Garnet Hill catalog when Piper was at the height of her two-year-old obsession with ponies, I found sheets that had whimsical patchwork horses. I ordered a set, and then cut up the pillowcase, taking ten ponies and hand-embroidering each one on squares placed randomly in her quilt. This was the slowest part of the process—for more than a year, I went everywhere—my boys’ hockey games, toddler playtime, meetings, haircuts, car, train and plane rides, with a pony in my purse. Whenever I got demoralized, Piper would cheer me on. Last month, she told me, “You know what I will love best about my quilt? Whenever I am jumping on my bed, I can look down, and it will be like, wow I’m riding on ponies!”

She kept me company in our loft while I sewed and sewed—taking loops of fabric from my bins and blanketing her ride-on pony or wrapping her dolls, chattering away, weighing in on fabric combinations and lay outs with a keen design eye. When I was working late, bleary-eyed and accidentally sewed my finger in the machine, Piper was a level-headed three-year-old doctor, carefully bandaging and kissing it—after that, she warned me at least daily about not sewing my fingers.

Throughout all this, I finished the edits for my first novel and wrote my second. Piper’s quilt was the creative outlet when writing stumped me, the perfect escape. Manipulating fabrics, sewing crazy angles, waving off any puckering or gapping to ‘part of the vintage look’ was often easier than writing to a deadline. For two years, I dutifully recopied “finish Piper’s quilt” from To-Do list to To-Do list, along with “clean basement” and “organize junk drawers”. You can imagine which got finished first. 

This spring, just after Piper’s third birthday, I knew I was getting close, but unsure about how to finish the back. With the boys’, I simply bought plain fleece blankets and sewed the two together. But I sensed Piper’s needed something different. Strolling through Marshalls one day, I found the perfect back—a king-sized, scallop-edged, pale pink and already machine-quilted in looping color-on-color paisley pattern bedspread, on sale. It was the mature and elegant flipside, the foil to the craziness I was furiously quilting. It would mean I would have to make her quilt bigger, hand sew at least two more ponies. But never mind that. I cut the scallops off, and incorporated tiny squares into the front, for congruity—there is method to my madness.

Finally, last week, I laid the two out on top of each other and tugged and pinned, then rolled the heft up and put the two sides together, using Piper and a chair to help me quide the king-sized heft through my-little-engine-that could, the bargain basement sewing machine. And then it was done. Well, mostly done. I still want to sew on more bows, flowers and embellishments, still have a throw pillow to make out of one leftover pony, and I could always do more hand-quilting…

Piper is finally sleeping under ponies in her king-size daybed. And I’m right there beside her, and usually one or two of the boys, and at least one cat, and sometimes Daddy, and the dog snoring away on the floor. One of these days we’ll all go to sleep in our own beds and stay there, and eventually the basement will be cleaned, and the junk drawers organized too, but for now this is just fine.