Things I Didn't Know I Loved

... staying open and curious

My legs are jelly and I can’t, just can’t, make any more small talk: I’m on the other side of the busiest time of year for me at the Key West Literary Seminar. For ten days we run around for up to 14 hours/ day dealing with 600+ people who’ve come to this island 90 miles from Cuba because they love books.

This year’s theme was “Florida, The State We’re In.” There are so many moving pieces that I’m always astonished we manage to pull it off. For introverts like me, this is serious business!

Opening night at the amphitheater. It’s outdoors. So pretty and pleasant UNTIL…

… we get hit with a sudden squall and the temperature plummets. Our director, Arlo, assessing the impending storm clouds.

At KWLS, I run the workshop and scholarship programs: I hire the faculty, admit 100+ students, and give out more than 30 awards.

I’ve learned so much in the past five years. I’ve learned that most authors, even pseudo-celebrities, are humble and generous. I’ve learned that getting people to the right place at the right time is like herding cats. I’ve learned there’s no such thing as being over-prepared, and that I should trust my gut if someone seems a bit “off” on paper: in real life they will surely cause me trouble.

Kimiko Hahn, Suzannah Collins, Billy Collins and Marie Howe (poets). This picture was sent to me with the caption: “Billy Collins is the king.”

Things I didn’t know I loved…

I read everything my KWLS teaching faculty shares with students; it’s always the best stuff. Here, for example, is an amazing short story called “The Appropriation of Cultures,” by Percival Everett, workshopped this year by Rebecca Makkai.

Beloved poet Marie Howe was teaching, and she asked me to do some photo copying for her. Amongst the poems was this one by Nazim Hikmet:

it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain

All day long that line “night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain” stuck with me. Those words filled me up and kept me going. I returned to read the lines again and again.

Here are a few “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved:”

Watching men fish

In the run up to the Seminar, we hosted a screening of the 1979 cult documentary, Tarpon in which authors Richard Brautigan, Thomas McGuane, and Jim Harrison hang around talking about writing, 70’s Key West, and fishing. The film includes some of the only existing footage of Brautigan (a poet and novelist); Jimmy Buffet wrote the soundtrack. The film was eventually rescued from a barn where it had been languishing for three decades.

Jim Harrison (who wrote the novella upon which the movie Legends of the Fall was based — one of the most heartbreaking movies ever made) explains that he started fishing for tarpon because he was “looking for electricity, something that freshens up your feeling of being alive.”

What do you do to find the electricity in your life? How do you “freshen up your feeling of being alive…”?

Waiting for checked luggage

I never, ever check luggage when I fly (I’ve been well trained, haha). I was sitting in my car waiting just outside the airport for my assistant, Maisie Higgins, who was coming from LA to help me during the Seminar. She had checked a bag. Maisie is absolutely delightful but clearly not as well trained as I am.

I sat there for an hour looking at social media. I began to despair.

Then I glanced to the side and this is what I saw in my mirror:

Sometimes all you need to do is turn around to change the entire story.

Talking to hundreds of people

I’m not generally great at small talk. But in the five years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve had to learn to be warm and authentic with people I don’t know, day after day after day.

My first year, I spoke for about half an hour with Geraldine Brooks (Pulitzer prize-winning author of March) as we loitered anxiously outside a packed event. Honestly, I think she was as happy to chill as I was. The next year I gushed overly enthusiastically to Lionel Shriver about how much I loved her book, The Post Birthday World (FYI, she’s pretty intimidating). This year, I picked up a well known writer at the airport and s/he made no attempt at small talk… I had to sit there and force myself not to babble. And then, days later, we chatted warmly. Part of the skill of conducting superficial talk is being able to read the mood.

I’ve learned to live with these feelings of discomfort and uncertainty. The book Quiet by Susan Cain helped me immeasurably.

Cain’s most powerful message is that while our culture celebrates and rewards extroverts, introverts have invaluable skills that we all benefit from, even as we take them for granted. Here is Cain’s Ted Talk.

On Writing

Lauren Groff has participated in the Seminar three times, and I find her writing insights to be on point. A couple of nights ago, cocktail in hand, she started talking to me in German. (Had she just seen my name tag and decided to give it a go? Who knows, but it was fun.)

Some of her gems from the Seminar:

“What’s important is creating processes around the work that allow me to play when I write.” By her own account, Lauren is an anxious and regimented person. As such, she’s made a point of developing routines and approaches to writing that allow her to be more light-hearted. Her point was that without nurturing both intensity and playfulness, her writing wouldn’t be as successful.

“Fiction is not supposed to provide answers, it’s supposed to ask questions that beget more questions.”

On characterization and stereotype: “I like to build up something that is familiar and then take all the air out of it.” Which reminds me, I’m reading Tessa Hadley’s short story collection After the Funeral and she is a GENIUS at characterization.

“Novels live in the monogamous part of my mind, short stories are developed in my poetic brain.”

Karen Russell later continued this theme, saying, “After writing a novel, I yearn to return to the promiscuous short story.”

Fun to think of novels and stories in this way: monogamous and promiscuous.

I’m diving back into some serious monogamy: about to launch into “final” edits for my Ibiza novel. What does this mean? What is going on? Stay posted for new news on that front. It’s been quite a ride.

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