VCFA Puerto Rico Residency Day 5

[Posts from my Vermont College of Fine Arts winter residency]

Today seemed to be about risk, on the page and in real life.

In the morning we assembled for a generative workshop, a session where we would create new work, possibly inspired by a writing prompt. I’m not a fan of prompts, but I’ve learned to be open and patient in such workshops. I know good work can come of them– one of the essays in my creative thesis was born of a writing prompt I received at the River Pretty Writers Retreat last year. So I was prepared to be game for this workshop.

We read out loud an essay by Dorothy Allison, “Survival is the Least of My Desires,” in which she states upfront: “I believe the secret in writing is that fiction never exceeds the reach of the writer’s courage. The best fiction comes from the place where the terror hides, the edge of our worst stuff. I believe, absolutely, that if you do not break out in that sweat of fear when you write, then you have not gone far enough.”

So…I guessed we wouldn’t be generating happy essays about coqui in the rain forest.

This brought me to the moment of choice–would I be participating fully in the writing prompt to come, which Richard McCann already said would be a prompt we could write from for the rest of our lives? Or would I simply ignore the prompt and write whatever I wanted to write? Either way I would be taking a risk. If I dove into my worst stuff would I be able to really write and share what might come? If I didn’t do the prompt I would have to account for why if called on to share what I had written. I’ll give you the prompt first and tell you what I did.

The prompt came from this part of Allison’s essay in which she speaks of urging young writers “to confront their own lives in their fiction. Not that they must write autobiography, but that they must use the whole of their lives in the making of the stories they tell; they must honor their dead, their wounded and lost…”

Richard asked us each to make a list of “your dead, your wounded, your lost.” Then we had to circle the name for which we had the most energy and start writing about it. As we wrote, Mary Ruefle would call out a word and we had to incorporate that word into what we were writing. The words eventually totaled 16 and we had to use at least half of them. If you’re curious, here’s the list of words:

Sea
Artichoke
Purple
Sign
Transfix
Carpet
Words
Frond
Snap
Central
Born
Unheard of ever
Uninspected
Beverage
Divigate

I admit I didn’t get to half. I used 4, maybe 5 of the words. Reason being I was taking the first part of the assignment seriously, writing in a way to honor the person from my list. The words eventually became a distraction. I wrote them down to consider another time. As it turned out, we didn’t have to share what we wrote and I was glad. I felt the writing was risk enough. The sharing, like the word list, would only distract me from what was still taking shape on the page. For the same reason I can’t share with you what I worked on, but know this: I sought to be honest and honorable and I hope to continue to do so as I work on this piece.

Fast forward to the afternoon, post lunch. We’ve planned a hike to see petroglyphs, images carved into rocks by the native Taino people. But our guide arrives and there’s a hitch–the rain has swollen the river in the spot where we are to cross it. We have to swim across at a point where the water is about 8 feet deep. The guide described the distance across the river as short so I change into my swimsuit. I am not a strong swimmer, but I figured I could stroke well enough to get across. I thought this could be one of those life changing experiences where you do the thing you thought you couldn’t do. I wanted to try.