Writing in Alpine

I spent last week in Alpine at a summer writing retreat, sponsored by the Writers League of Texas. Writers swooped down on the tiny town from all corners of Texas and parts of Louisiana and Oklahoma. They were writers of fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and poetry, and like me, they came to explore their craft--with each other and with the pros who make up the WLT faculty.

This is my third year at the retreat. My sweeties comes with me every year and hangs out while I'm in class. At night we go out and do fun things... for me anyway.

The first evening we gathered at a writing instructor's rented casita and watched the sky turn orange, red, purple, deepening to navy as the sun sunk behind the Davis Mountains while a version of King Ranch casserole cooked in the oven. We listened to the night birds, watched billy goats across the road, slapped at biting mosquitoes, and talked about the juicy alchemy of Alpine on the writer's soul.

The second evening a panel, comprised of the WLT faculty, fed our curiosity with details about their successful writer lives. Although these journalists, authors, and poets seemed to have fallen into their writing careers by accident or the intercession of a benevolent Fate, Joseph Campbell would be proud of their heroic quest to become noteworthy. We listened, infatuated by their stories, and yearned for our own benevolent Fate to favor us with the Holy Grail, a publishing contract.

The third evening three of us drove to nearby Marfa and sat on the patio of the Hotel Paisano where Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, Natalie Wood and other cast members stayed while filming the movie Giant. We watched other tourists and a couple of ranchers and their families enjoy the cool desert evening and a fine meal. We had the restaurant's signature entrée: pistachio crusted fried steak, garlic mashed potatoes, and fresh string beans. If you want to know how to charge $16 for a chicken fried steak, I just told you. Alas, even though it was past eight o'clock when we headed back home, it was too early to see the Marfa lights.

The fourth evening we met up with 2008 Texas Poet Laureate Larry Thomas and his wife Lisa in the Holland Hotel bar. My sweetie and several writer friends are partial to the margaritas there. Larry, an Alpine resident transplanted from Houston, pumped us for city news while we envied his and Lisa's languid life in the Big Sky Country. Afterwards we went to the public library to hear fellow workshop participants read their work. Yes, I was the designated driver, and happy to be of service.

The fifth night we fretted over our approaching departure. This annual summer retreat is grueling work, but I am so viscerally affected, being among this tribe of writers who migrate to the desert every August, that I feel a deep sadness when it is time to leave.

In the flow

The writing life is multi-layered. The fun part is the creative process. It's what keeps us coming back to the computer screen.

I've been struggling with my main character in my second novel, which is about a race for Texas governor. The race itself has lots of twists and turns—typical Texas politics with backroom pacts and dirty tricks in the mix. She’s covering the race and you’d think she’d be as flashy as the plotline, but she’s been stiff as cardboard.

My friend Karleen reminds me that this is typical in the process. The character is new to me and I don’t know her yet, so I put her in different situations and figure out how she might react. Eventually, as I will get to know her and what makes her tick, I won’t have to force anything. She’ll take over and write her own story. I’ll just be taking dictation. Until then, my job is to keep exploring her character, looking for the interior story, for what motivates her.

Last night, for example, after weeks of drafting five chapters and moving her from scene to scene, she showed me how ambitious she is. It helped me see why she wants to make this journey. She’s going to risk her reputation in this story, and I couldn’t see how someone so strongly identified by her career would put it on the line. But now I see: her ambition drives her to the brink. Wow. I did not know this when I started writing this novel.

Today adrenalin is popping through my veins and I’m writing “in the flow” as Karleen likes to call it. In the flow, for you who don’t know, involves those times when the story comes out hard and fast. A writer’s job, when this happens, is to jump into the rapids and write as fast as she can, capturing the story. (To hell with punctuation and spelling, I’ll handle that in the editing.)

Will I be able to ride the flow to the end of the book? Possible, but unlikely. And frankly, I don’t care. Right now I’m just thrilled with the ride.


PostScript: I mention my friend Karleen Koen occasionally in this blog. She is a best-selling historical novelist who will be revealing ways to wrangle a finished novel from the rough draft at a weeklong retreat in Alpine, TX. She’s an amazing Sorceress who graciously shares her magic potions.

Interested? Go to http://www.writersleague.org/ and click on Conferences and Retreats for detailed information about the 2014 Summer Retreat. This will be my third time to attend the retreat. Hope to see you there.