 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|
||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
Air-Fern WritersOctober 05, 2005
You can tell already that I was in a snarly mood: Generalizations, anyone? What do you mean by "support" and which arts are you talking about? OK, so I was driving in the pity lane, envying musicians and theater people and dancers because their arts are inherently collaborative and even in long cultural droughts they tend to find each other because otherwise they dry up. Writing can be collaborative, but it doesn't have to be and it often isn't. Many writers don't need other writers, or don't think they do. I know I do. I also need the occasional reminder that I'm not working in a vacuum and that what I'm doing has a potential audience out there. That's what's hard to find on Martha's Vineyard. Martha's Vineyard doesn't mind if you do, but it doesn't care if you don't. I must admit, though, that there are plenty of people on this rock who have helped me keep going in one way or another. Some writers get big honking grants and advances; I get treated to lunch or comped into a concert, or someone offers me a slot at a reading, that kind of thing. If life is a political campaign, then mine's one that depends on $5 and $10 donations. This is not the easiest way to do it. Sometimes I lust after five- and six-figure donations from fat cats and PACs -- wouldn't it be loverly?? Maybe it wouldn't. Driving to the barn, I thought about how Morgans, to which tribe my Allie belongs, are known for being easy keepers. They come from old New England stock that foraged in rocky fields and survived long winters. The easiest of the easy keepers are referred to as "air ferns" -- they can't really live on air, it just seems like it. (Allie isn't quite an air fern, but at the barn everyone else's grain is measured out in a two-quart scoop, while hers is measured in a 14-ounce tomato sauce can.) The drawback to this thriftiness is that if they get the opportunity to gorge -- on lush spring grass, for instance, or in a half-closed bin in the grain room -- they can get seriously, even life-threateningly sick with founder or colic. So I figure that maybe my muses think I'm an air fern writer, or at least an easy keeper, and that if I were overexposed to the camaraderie, connections, and creative stimulation that reportedly hang out at writers' workshops and in certain urban areas, I'd get sick, or stop writing, or start writing stuff that doesn't sound like me. That must be it.
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
Home - Writing - Editing - About Susanna - Bloggery - Articles - Poems - Contact Copyright ©
Susanna J. Sturgis. All rights reserved. |
||||