Greetings, writers—
Well, it’s August: the month of friends’ birthdays and parents’ wedding anniversaries; the start of school, the end of summer. (Sorry, it’s basically over.) We’re back in Portland, which is a lovely place to come home to, even if one’s house smells woody and stale when uninhabited for a week; even if one’s cat has left a welcome-home puddle of urine on the floor.
The junk mail has been recycled and my suitcase unpacked. My clothes are in the wash because, despite being wrapped tightly in plastic bags, they still smelled like the eight ounces of nutritional yeast that got spilled—or scattered by mischievous TSA agents🤷🏻♀️—in my suitcase on the way over. (I don’t know what I was thinking, bringing that bottle of Bragg. It probably did look like I was trying to smuggle something suspicious, and also, who am I kidding? I never eat healthily in Ohio—it’s vacation—so it’s hardly the time to address my horrible Vitamin B12 levels.)
After barely writing for weeks, I’m working again, nearing the end of my latest collaboration with James Patterson and wondering what project will come next, besides, of course my Alleged Novel, which is a slog and a delight and a pit of despair, etc. etc. (How do I know I’m not just shoveling shit into a bag with no bottom? a writer friend once asked. The answer is, obviously: you don’t!) We got that screenplay in before the writers’ strike, but now we’re not allowed to work on it, so maybe my end-of-summer project should be swimming in as many rivers as possible. Willamette: check. Clackamas: check. Washougal, Columbia: not yet this year.
Just kidding, I’m totally going to keep writing. And so should you.
Today, find a poem called “August,” and use it, somehow, as the raw material for a scene. There are many August poems, of course, and below is one, plus my specific suggestions for it.
Answer the question, “What is happening in the silence of this house?” however you see fit.
Write about how you will start this day. (Maybe it’d be better try that one early tomorrow.)
Begin a scene, like Garcia does, with something concrete, and it with an abstract, deeply existential question.
Happy Friday, happy writing—
Emily