To Keep Writing--

On Grad School, and the Art of Stories, the Sound of Writing.

Hello!

In grad school, in Tucson, I had the good fortune of working with Dagoberto Gilb. He was quick to introduce himself as a Latino-German American born in LA, to an immigrant mother and an American-born father, raised mostly by his mom.

In the late 1970’s, after completing his master’s degree, he was working construction on a high rise in El Paso. He heard there was a night class, a writing class, being held across the street.

The professor?

Raymond Carver.

Carver had just sold his first story collection not long before, and according to most reports, he’d bottomed out, separated from his wife and worked harder than ever to stay sober, hospitalized more than once, a well-known story.

Gilb had been writing on his own. He approached the prof, asking for input. Carver agreed to read a story…According to Dagoberto Gilb, Raymond Carver’s response to the work was, “Oh, man! We’ve got to get you into Iowa!”

Dagoberto laughed when he told us that he had no idea what “into Iowa” meant, but he shrank from it. He said it sounded pretty…white. No, thank you! He stayed in the landscape where he’d lived and worked, the Southwest, El Paso, Tuscon, Los Angeles, the southern border, the world of labor and writing on his own…and he kept writing, sending out stories.

What I’m thinking about today though is another experience he shared, and what it says about writing energy, focus and motivation.

After he’d published a few things, Allen Cheuse noticed his work. Cheuse contacted him out of the blue to ask for a story. Allen Cheuse is—was—a writer and NPR book reviewer with a radio show called The Sound of Writing, highlighting short fiction.

Dagoberto said he hurried home after work, cranked out a story that had been on his mind and put it in the mail—at a time when writers actually mailed stories, on paper. As soon as he mailed it, he said, he started panicking: God, how could I send THAT story? What was I thinking? Man alive, I’ve blown it…

Damn.

The work had left his hands...too late to take it back.

The stakes were so high!

He sat down and wrote a second story, something he’d been thinking about, maybe had even drafted without finishing…he finished it and mailed it. Boom! Allen Cheuse!

Again, the voices of self-doubt kicked in: Jesus. It’s a big opportunity! It’s Allen…Cheuse? Allen Cheuse doesn’t want that…God!

He wrote a fast third story, to patch up the mistakes of the first and second, to salvage his opportunity, prove himself, get on the radio, sell his work, to…to…to be a writer…A WRITER! And he put it in the mail, with a letter saying something along the lines of, Maybe this one?

By the time he mailed the third story, a phone call came in. It was Allen Cheuse himself accepting the first story Gilb had submitted. Of course. Right?

But here’s the important part: Dagoberto Gilb had written more in that handful of days than he had in months, because of the particular mix of high hopes, self-doubt and a willing audience waiting.

That’s how I remember him telling us, anyway. This is the version that lives in my mind, and I hope I’m getting it right…:)

Having somebody ask for work, creating a deadline of sorts, motivated him to get the words on the page, stories he’d been thinking about. He had a sudden sense of audience and possibility.

Optimism may be the best writing tool in the world: somebody out there had taken an interest.

Imagining a writer whose opinion he valued reading his stories motivated him to keep going, to work hard, to panic, perhaps, but still to write. Otherwise, it’s easy to get lost in the panic, the doubt, without doing the work.

More than once, I’ve channeled that moment for myself and for those I work with in workshop and otherwise. Workshop keeps the writing process going. Reading work out loud keeps it going. It doesn’t have to be Allen Cheuse, or Raymond Carver. We’re here for each other, now. Sharing your work is part of the dream, the picture.

Write like Allen Cheuse is waiting, dance like…well, you know the saying…dance like Raymond Carver is watching. Something like that! Ha!

But most of all, listen and write and listen and write and read out loud and write and listen and clap and shout and witness and love these moments we have, right?

Keep going!

xo