Tag Archives: Travel

Writing from The Ledge #2

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

Three weeks. Gone.

For you working in regular jobs or chasing kids, three weeks with a small dog and your laptop in a house on The Ledge might sound questionable. You’d rather spend three weeks of free time on Cape Cod or touring Europe or driving the California Coast. If you’re a writer trying to squeeze time with your creative work around other work, you understand the value of three weeks in a quiet house with a rocky front yard.

The LedgeThe house on the Ledge is built on the Niagara Escarpment. During huge storms these weeks, I wondered if the thunder that deeply rocked my office shook the entire stony structure from Watertown, New York through Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin and the tip of Illinois. Under cities and countryside, harbors, orchards and vineyards, the Ledge that formed the basins of four Great Lakes remains fairly unchanged through centuries except for human interference. There’s a story to be written form those facts.

Saffron and orange leaves now stand out in bands of green. Temperatures have been in the forties more mornings. Packing to leave, the sundress and sandals return to the suitcase never worn. A red sweater, jeans, t-shirts, socks and sneakers simplified morning selection of what to wear. Local grown raspberries, sweet corn and tomatoes are gone from farm stands where apples are piled high.

One book off to the publisher, one manuscript truly finished and revised, future projects thought through, peace of mind restored. Packing to leave the shores of my beloved Lake Michigan for the hard working Mississippi River’s bluffs. Wish I could be in two places at once.

Two Priests, A Pregnant Woman and a Guy with a Big Hat

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It could have been a good joke. Did you hear the one about two priests, a pregnant woman and a guy in big hat? Wait for the punch line.

Another Tuesday morning at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Two young priests in full-length cassocks stand with arms outstretched as a TSA agent runs a wand over their bodies. The pregnant woman in front of me is called aside to remove lotion bottles from her carry on bag. A tall man with a tall ten gallon cowboy hat asks the agents to hand carry his new purchase through security. The security folks agree.

My ticket has “TSA PRECHK” on the top. I don’t have to remove my shoes. I’ve flown enough this year on one airline to earn this small special dispensation. The pregnant woman isn’t happy with differential treatment and grumbles as she eases out of her heels. On the other side we redress, reshuffle the things we carry, check our tickets and id are easily available, and disperse into the early business morning crowd.

There was a moment when we were a spontaneous community. Then the common experience is over and we are merely strangers who have successfully navigated a small challenge at seven thirty in the morning.

For some reason I need to write about these four people. On the tram to the concourse I consider taking out my laptop. I pass a collection of tables and think about stopping. Seasoned traveler, I get to the gate area and claim an end seat. The words haven’t disappeared, the sensation is still fresh, nothing else has distracted my thoughts.

Perhaps this small group stands out because each person so clearly carried unique identifiers into the homogenized crowd of dark-suited business travelers. The young priests proclaimed their faith, the pregnant woman could be called a mother, Mr. Cowboy carried his self-identity high above most of us. In a busy world where blending in is a valued skill, they were exceptional. Somehow they’ll find their way, as one grouping, into some future writing.

As for my Green Bay Packer logo jacket, well the insignia is tastefully embroidered on the left chest. Not really noticeable unless someone is looking closely at strangers in a crowd.

 

The Kroner Transfer

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Amsterdam is a large airport, busy even at six thirty Sunday morning. Like many European airports it has transfer centers where passengers can check on their next flight or make changes to their reservations. It’s a good idea that would make more airports in the Untied States friendlier to visitors.

The KLM 330 empties hundreds of people journeying from Minneapolis to the cities and countryside’s of Scandinavia, Europe or beyond. Young people with more dreams than goods, parents nervous about shepherding kids through other countries with limited language skills, business people carrying the universal black packs stuffed with laptops and binders. I might be one of the older people on the flight making my way to Copenhagen where I’ll meet my niece for days of sightseeing.

Traveling out of my comfort zone triggers creativity and words– a small poem in a notebook carried in my purse, a short story about my grandfather on a legal pad, a character sketch on the iPad. Each sense is tuned to unknown stimulus. How to create a character from the Frenchman next to me in economy seats who devoured Dan Brown’s latest book during the eight-hour flight then left it on the seat. He offered it to me, but I am already traveling with more luggage than I want to carry including a book in hand and two ebooks. Wondering what language the man three rows back mutters during numerous visits from the crew that earned him a new seat mate for the second half of the trip, a tall man in a dark sport jacket and khaki slacks who said nothing. Trying to decipher the smells along the canals outside the hotel. Enjoying the undertones in the ice cream bought from a vendor along the walk.

The cabbie, a recent Turkish immigrant, spoke little English. The hotel staff moves from English to Danish and French or German. I listen for the little French or German I remember from relatives. The Danish words are difficult to tackle and I want to be independent, not so American. But then the glorious Sunday afternoon sun makes the waterways sparkle, people move along with weekend laziness, the server tells a small joke about the man playing violin for spare change and I am a world away from home in a good way.

Truly transferred to the land of natural blondes, thousands of kroners, and dozens of hours of sun.

Marching America

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So many things can be said about being American. People wear red, white and blue or paint a flag on their chest. There are bumper stickers about my land and your land. Tonight fireworks will make thousands of small children cover their ears and thousands more clap their hands in delight. Obamacare, recall governors, tax reform, cities in disrepair. That’s all democracy in action.

Standing on Highway 42 in Egg Harbor, Wisconsin is about as American as the Fourth of July. Lots of people from Milwaukee, Illinois, Minneapolis stream come here to remember what it was like to live in a small town or to watch their kids have a blast catching candy from friendly strangers on floats built on someone’s driveway.

 

 

The Democrats marched. The Republicans marched.

The Catholics marched. Didn’t see any Lutherans self-promoting. (Garrison Keillor would have a few choice words about that.)

The University of Wisconsin marching band rode on wagons. There was a woman with camel and a cow on a truck and elegant clowns dancing together. A guy sang in Italian, a Latino boy lassoed by-standers, and the Belgians announced their festival.

 

The vets opened the hour tour of local pride with one of their own pulling the last float asking no one to forget his pals who lost their lives in Vietnam. Under hot sun on a rare ninety plus degree day in this town on the shores of Lake Michigan people applauded until the end.

This is America.

Traveling Book Club

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Every writer must be a reader. I won’t back down from that statement. A writer who does not read is like a person applying for a driving license who has never sat behind the steering wheel. I have my book club to thank for exposing me to literature that would not have crossed my radar and keeping me reading when projects or writing could have devoured all free time.

This month we’re reading The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, an American writer with a shelf of science fiction including significant speculative fiction work. Bless their collected souls, the book club members want to be supportive of my speculative fiction work. Dick is fascinated by many of the same social and political issues readers will identify in my books. He passed away in the 1980s which shows that a dominating government, limited resources, and loss of freedoms are not concerns unique to any one generation.

Discussion without an arbitrary cut off related to everyone’s work schedule the next day will be interesting. I suspect we’ll talk about a whole lot more than books. There is a world of problems and challenges to chew through—families, work, politics, music, books. We’ll probably visit The Peninsula Bookman for a wander through new and used books. I’m guessing we’ll also visit the Bayside Tavern for good bar food and a bit of rowdiness. I know we’ll spend time walking along the shores of Lake Michigan even if it rains. The lake calls to our two Michigan and one Wisconsin native as a homecoming of sorts.

So be prepared Fish Creek. The book club is coming to town.

Work Travel

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For two decades we’ve slept in different cities at least half of the work year. First it was me traveling as a corporate college recruiter and trainer. When our babies arrived, he picked up the frequent flier mile accumulation until a national consultant lured me back onto the road. Whether sitting in economy class, first class, or on a corporate jet, a family person is always alone at the end of a day of business travel. Hundreds of airline miles wait for us to take a trip together. But who wants to get on a plane?

Crisp sheets in a nice resort suite or worn linens in a chain hotel never have the familiar smell of our family clothes detergent, the pillows are always too flat or too puffy. I picture you sitting in front of your laptop too late into the night when you call from Paris or Rome. I picture you lounging in your favorite leather chair when I call from Ireland or Chicago or Milwaukee. When you’re gone I work crazy hours and sleep lightly.

Tonight the house is extra quiet. We tried to squash everything we needed to discuss into the twenty-four hours between the time I got home Sunday and your departure Monday—taxes, house repairs, parents’ health–and fell asleep holding hands. I worked in my office Monday with the sounds of you carrying up the stairs. Sometimes that interrupts the flow of my writing and I complain, but usually your voice on phone calls merges with the music in my office like home-brewed white noise. A dog can’t make those kinds of sounds.

Things click and crack. The washing machine buzzes in the basement. Lights give empty rooms a false sense of waiting for someone’s arrival. Nothing to watch on television. A new book doesn’t grab my attention. Back to work. If it’s ten o’clock here, you’ll be awake in two hours. We’ll talk in the afternoon as you get ready for bed. Have a good day.

Windy City/AWP

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Wet, sloppy spring snow slowed travel in the Twin Cities this morning, but weather reports from Chicago prompted a last minute change in packing from heavy sweaters to lighter items. Temperatures in the Windy City on Leap Day 2012 reached sixty as AWP check-in began. True to its reputation, Chicago’s wind pulled hair in every direction, yanked doors wide open and blew the dust and dirt of city’s streets everywhere. By six o’clock temperatures began to fall and cold rain added to the thrill of walking from the Chicago Hilton to dinner.

The flavor of this year’s crowd is beginning to show in the early registration groupings—young people carrying duffle bags and string sacks. Presenters and book fair participants already at work, middle-age attendees dragging roller bags with one hand and holding on to their Caribou cup with the other. Thanks to my husband’s Hilton stays we’ve snagged a room on the executive suites floor, a quiet place for the coming days. Just the sound of the wind around the building, the El tracks a few blocks away, horns and sirens twenty floors below. Chicago.

AWP is all about social media this year. At times on Thursday more than one session on the topic has been offered at the same time. Waiting to see how many people will be blogging or tweeting during sessions. Eager to hear what others have discovered about creatively using technology in their work.

More in the morning.

Margaret Atwood at AWP

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“The writing of The Handmaid’s Tale gave me a strange feeling, like sliding on river ice—exhilarating but unbalancing. How thin is this ice? How far can I go? How much trouble am I in? What’s down there if I fall? These were writerly questions, having to do with structure and execution, and that biggest question of all, the one every writer asks him- or herself with every completed chapter: Is anyone going to believe this?”

Margaret Atwood, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

A great winter evening at home = Adele, a lit fireplace, a soft blanket and Margaret Atwood’s classic works. If writers had groupies, I might be tempted to join hers. The Handmaid’s Tale carried me through sleepless nights of a difficult pregnancy (interesting juxtaposition) and lured me to reread Cat’s Eye. Teamed with Pat Conroy and Anita Shreve, Atwood has been a teacher of how to structure stories, when to challenge readers, the many ways characters present larger than life.

The first time I heard Atwood talk about writing, speculative fiction, and her work was during a twentieth anniversary tour for The Handmaid’s Tale. Talking Volumes, a partnership of the Minnesota Public Radio and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, in collaboration with The Loft, usually attracts older middle-age readers to its interviews with nationally known writers. Atwood drew people across most ages. She didn’t want The Handmaid’s Tale or Oryx and Crake to be relegated to science fiction and pointed out that everything within her works was possible. She didn’t dream up magic potions or whizmos. She merely pushed her creativity to create that ”Ëœstrange feeling’ of being where everything is not quite the same. Not a timid speaker, Atwood provoked thoughtful questions when the floor was opened. She is comfortable with her direction, achievements and taking creative risks.

Today’s political environment provides an interesting backdrop for Atwood’s appearance at the 2012 AWP conference as the keynote speaker. Republican social conservatives rhetoric has opened doors many find uncomfortable. The exact kind of doors Atwood is willing to swing open and explore. It’s fair to say that she resists her body of speculative fiction being placed under the science fiction genre umbrella with its uncomfortable collection of speculative fiction, horror, fantasy, superheroes, and cyberpunk. Atwood may be the most influential writer talking about recognizing works like Handmaid’s as literature as something different.

Writing of a near future world isn’t easy. Reality is, that bar some gigantic environmental or military event, daily life ten or twenty years from now will be a lot like today—kids will be educated, adults will work, the sun will rise, governments will exist. In 2022 your day might be very similar to 2012 with slight alterations—on the simple side new gizmos or foods. Somewhere something might make those alterations significant. Instead of the writer beginning with a human “what if” question defining a character’s story, speculative fiction pushes to a “what if” question that defines the life of characters within an altered society.

My published works are all speculative fiction. Minnesota Cold is the story of an older woman called to lead a revolution. Along with confronting institutionalized production of future laborers and the ability to prolong life, she struggles with deep decisions impacting her family–as a mother and grandmother. While writing Minnesota Cold, I always thought of the book as the story of Sally Dodge who happened to live in the near future. Her past is my present. Her present is what Atwood calls that feeling of sliding on river ice.

For three years I’ve been living with the characters of Ashwood, a family trilogy beginning in the near future following an almost apocalyptic global depression and extending through two decades. On the surface, the trilogy has the comfort of living with a family from formation through the launch of its children as independent adults. But under that surface, this normal cycle takes place during the development of a necessary big government, struggles as the nation’s needs change, and the growth of gigantic corporations which seek to bend the definition of personal self-determination.

My next work may be a more contemporary family novel. But these years spent under the influence of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale have been creatively satisfying. What a thrill to hear her again at AWP.

AWP Planning

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In ten days over nine thousand writers, editors, writing teachers, publishers and related professionals will converge on Chicago for the 2012 AWP conference. If you’re sitting with your laptop, feeling very alone with your creativity, try getting your head around that many people involved in the work of writing and publishing. The Chicago Hilton will be packed with small groups of us all doing what doesn’t come naturally—networking. The Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference is an important place to be, so important that the conference sold out in early January.

Three years ago, conference programming centered on craft and relationship building with editors or publishers as well as a hefty number of sessions for educators. There were a handful of sessions dealing with the growing reality of the publishing world—self-promotion for published writers. In 2012 programming has shifted dramatically toward the business of marketing and selling your brand and your books. One session best describes the state of publishing today: The End of the World as We Know It (But Some of Us Will be Fine). The Chicago Fire Department will probably force AWP to close the doors to the hall before half of those interested can claim an inch of seating space.

Tools may change, but the writing process remains intact—that focused creative work of a writer and their words. How the product is prepared for readers or offered to readers isn’t all that magical. The big challenge remains the same for most writers—how to make readers aware of new works. The channels are multiplying. Unfortunately resources aren’t doing the same. For many writers that’s the crux of the question: How to create presence in the wide array of media, and not have the marketing effort displace time needed to work on new materials. Hopefully others have some clues, lessons, techniques that will help my marketing strategy for Harvesting Ashwood: Minnesota 2037 this spring and summer.

Now, back to the 300+ page AWP program schedule. Hope to see you there.

Lake Michigan Home

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The mildest winter meant snow shoes were replaced by hiking boots in Peninsula State Park. Deer are on the move, small wildlife have left footprints in the frozen slush. From a bench above Lake Michigan what can be seen is miles of snow-covered ice whipped into cracked formations interrupted by threads of open blue water. The majesty of this great body of water replenishes my creative soul. Family, friends, home, and work make Minnesota the great place where I live. Filling my eyes with Lake Michigan, even in winter, reminds me that I grew up in climates dictated by her power and that her shores will always be my home.

The next time I come here it will to be attack revisions of the final Ashwood family book. The woods will be too wet for hiking, the branches of our forsythia bush may almost be in bud, Door County will be in a quiet state with merchants stocking for a new season.

When I am in a serious writing mode the outside world almost slips away. Nights and days are precious resources that have different lighting. I’ll pack the refrigerator with quick foods and favorite treats and work. Playlists on the iPod might fill the background with music that isn’t played at other times—Enya, Yanni, Sarah McLaughlin. On the other hand, Dave Matthews and Bruce Springsteen might fit the work mood.

Stocked notepads, pens, paper and ink cartridges this trip. The dictionary and thesaurus are always here. Will drag the dreaded Chicago Style Manual in the manuscript basket.

Lake Michigan might still have some ice. I wish our place was close enough to hear the water, but we have to be happy with the sounds of tree branches and birds. Works fine for me, especially when work is what I’m supposed to be doing.