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Predestination and Identity in The Time Traveler’s Wife

October 24, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 4 Comments

I finally picked up The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger as a throwaway book for my trip to India. I’d heard so much about the book and the movie, but I just didn’t think it would be my thing. But reading this book in India had a lot more meaning for me than reading it at any other time would have.

See, I’m on a little bit of a spiritual quest here.

That isn’t why I said yes when my mom suggested traveling to India, but being here has triggered all kinds of memories and desires and spirituality that I’d let lie dormant for a very long time so in the story of Clare and Henry as they encounter each other throughout time, I couldn’t help but think about predestination and reincarnation and who I’m meant to be.

Clare and Henry

First let’s talk about the book. Henry first meets Clare when she’s a little girl. He’s got a genetic mutation that sends him traveling through time at the slightest stress and he meets her many times over the years as she ages. Sometimes he is older when he meets her and sometimes younger, because he’s drawn to moments from different times in his life. There are rules to time travel, though, and Henry can never reveal the future to Clare, the woman who will become his wife.

There was so much set in this book, that I really did start to wonder about predestination. Although Henry sometimes violates the rules a little (with no real consequences), he never veers from the path of his and Clare’s relationship. I liked that to a certain extent, but it also made me feel boxed in. I loved that they seemed to belong to one another throughout time (and would have liked it more had this book veered into reincarnation), but I longed to see what would happen if they started their relationship earlier or changed something (anything) up to see if their lives together could be better or longer (although what I thought was sweetest about the film About Time which is also about time travel and I liked better was the fact that the main character there just wants to relive the best moments of his life).

Predestination in Real Life

So here I am in Varanasi, the holiest city in India (if not the world) and I’m wondering if there is in fact a set path for each of us. I’m traveling with one woman who near the beginning of the trip was waxing lyrical about the good old days when she never wore a bra. It seemed as though she had become more conservative with age, although she had regrets. Then one day she wanted to go swimming and she jumped into the water in her t-shirt and panties and I wondered if she was finding a bit of that person she used to be.

Another fellow traveler was in the Peace Corps in India in the 1960s and I’ve been watching him dig into the languages he used to know (he’s less rusty than I am at any of mine), eat the foods he missed, and even rediscover some memories of trips he had taken way back when. It seems like he’s finding the person he once was too.

As for me, I first fell in love with the idea of India in undergrad as I took some classes in non-western art and architecture. I saw images of Khajuraho. And of Varanasi.

I even made a sculpture that resembles the offerings made to the river. And then life happened and I read books with Buddhist leanings but failed to really investigate those pulls. I ate Indian food occasionally and even visited a Gurudwara when my Indian best friends got married. But none of it was really about finding what called to me about India or who that person was who used to dream of visiting the birthplace of Hinduism and Buddhism.

My Identity

Last night I made an offering to the River Ganges. And this morning I watched the sun rise over her banks. I visited Sarnath, where the Buddha first declared his enlightenment.

And I don’t know who I am yet. I may never know fully who I am meant to be. But I do know that the things and places that called to me so long ago deserve investigation. I owe that to me. And because becoming a fuller person and allowing myself the curiosity to explore the world makes me a better wife, friend, and person, I owe that to everyone else too.

It might be a while before I embark on my next transcontinental examination of self, but someday you will find me doing the following: revisiting the feeling of the mists and butterflies of Iguacu Falls, peering into ancient volcanoes in Africa, and walking the streets of an ancient Italian hill town. With any luck, I’ll get to share all of those adventures and more with my husband. I may not ever know what any of those strong pulls mean, but I’ll never find out from the comfort of my couch.

I’m leaving The Time Traveler’s Wife in India, but I’m not sorry I read it. What experiences have you had with intersections of who you are and who you used to be? I’d love to hear your stories.

Opening up Language with Aureole by Carole Maso

September 29, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I started reading Aureole by Carole Maso because Goodreads told me that Gwendolyn Jerris wanted to read it and I needed the kind of book that Gwen loves—lyrical literature like Inner China that falls somewhere between poetry and prose. It’s a type of writing that echoes that of our shared advisor, Micheline Marcom, and one I think we both aspire to in our own way. I started reading this book because I needed to get lost in language—to see again what some of its outer limits are.

What I didn’t realize until I opened the book and started reading the introduction was how very perfect this book would be for stretching my language and my thinking. To start with, it turns out that Maso is, like I, a prose writer writing poetry. Longtime readers of this blog will have seen me fall in love with all kinds of writers who dance along that line (most notably Anne Michaels and Michael Ondaatje). But when Maso started describing her process for writing this book—for the way she was deliberately reinventing her language—I was hooked. She writes “If I felt I was doing something I already knew how to do well, the rule was to start again.”

Part of my struggle is that I’ve been doing a lot of blogging lately. And I don’t mean for this blog. At work, I’m writing about content marketing and other forms of digital marketing where the very best thing I can do for the audience is write simply and clearly as I try to demystify aspects of the topic. What that’s left for this writer, though, is a large hole in my creativity where I want to be mysterious. I want to be oblique. I want to stretch pull tease and twist language until it does my bidding and my readers can learn about how to reinvent their worlds along with their words rather than following expected paths to get measurable results.

Finding Sense in Nonsense

“When they are French, which they often are, especially in bed they say dérangement. When they are French, and this is Paris, which it often is—so beautiful, so light-dappled, such light—the window opening up onto everything, everything: the tree-lined boulevard, the stars, the Tour Eiffel, she says, it’s like a cliché, only beautiful: croissant, vin rouge, fromage, French poodles, polka dots. When they are French.” – Carole Maso

Actually, the passage above is hardly nonsense, at least not in a Steinian sort of way (though I know Maso was reading Stein when she wrote this). But there is a certain amount of arbitrariness and randomness to the connection of the thoughts. When they are French? Usually Frenchness is more of a permanent state than that. This allowance that it’s an identity the two characters can put on or take off is playful and perhaps something they put on when they are in France. As this story evolves, “When they are French” also starts to mean when they are lovers or in bed. I absolutely adore the openness of this and the fact that some of the meaning I’ve just imparted comes from my head and that if you read this story, you might have an entirely different (and equally valid) meaning.

That openness of meaning is so much what I crave reading and also writing. A work that only achieves its full meaning through interaction with a reader just seems like magic to me. And although I bring my own feelings and experiences into a reading of Madame Bovary, you and I are much less likely to be able to build castles of our own interpretations of it because the narrative and language are much more conventional.

Sound

“A dream of sucking, akimbo.” – Maso

Now would probably be a good time to mention that this book is mostly comprised of erotic adventures both hetero- and homosexual. In case erotica isn’t your thing. In many places Maso exploits the softer vowel sounds so well as the crescendo of each act builds that I didn’t even see what she was doing until she interposed a different, harder sound. At some point I’d really like to re-read this book aloud just to feel her mastery of sound.

Rhythm of Language

“And she opens her hand, her life to him: a blur of wings.

And desperately.

And desperately then.” – Maso

Another thing that really makes me want to read this book aloud is the way that Maso uses the rhythm of the words. Imagine after reading an entire chapter of foreplay and play and allusions to the act of sex, reaching this peak…

You Can’t Push All the Time

All of this fabulous word play and invention of syntax and crazy sensuous juxtaposition so pushed my thinking of what words can do that when I reached a line that read “threshold of all possibility,” the mundanity of those words only highlighted how wonderful the rest of the book is. What this means for me and my writing is that if I’m going to push the limits, I’m going to have to really go for it, because the moments that I flinch or get lazy will be obvious to the careful reader. And worse, they will disappoint me if I catch myself doing it.

The Next Journey

A completely unexpected moment in this book is when Maso references India. I’m actually leaving for India in just over a week and suddenly it’s everywhere, including in A Mapmaker’s Dream, another book I read this weekend.

That sounds like a complete and total non sequitur, but I had to find some way to drop in the fact that my blogging might be a bit sporadic in October. I’ve bought all of these books:

(Two of which I’ve since read) and I plan to pack as many of them in my luggage as I can and to write when I can. Maso described a character’s “ink-stained hands (the measure of her day)” and I plan to get some of that in as well. Maybe I can find my own language in the interstices of poetry and prose. I’m sure as hell going to try.

If you want to open up the boundaries of the way you use language, pick up a copy of Aureole from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

A Hollow Life For Kings and Planets

September 7, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Who will we become? Is the longing for something greater in life something we should chase or should we be happy with what we have? When farm boy Orno Tarcher meets the worldly Marshall Emerson on Orno’s first day at Columbia in For Kings and Planets by Ethan Canin, these are the questions that are set in motion. And if the book had lived up to that struggle, I would have been thrilled.

I keep wondering why I was so critical of this book as I was reading it. It spoke to a struggle I face every day. The language was pleasant and the central metaphor was mercifully subtle. It featured characters who felt deeply familiar to me. But there’s another, much deeper reason I could not love this book…

My Struggle

I wrote last week about my desire for an unwritten life. But I also want to feel grounded in myself. Throughout their college experience, Marshall pushes Orno to do something more, something greater. And Orno pushes himself to accept his own limitations. Hell, not even limitations. Orno pushes himself to enjoy the more grounded life he’s drawn to. He experiments with Marshall’s kind of life and he loves his friend dearly, but he knows it isn’t right for him.

I don’t know yet what’s right for me. I know I need to create, but in the past month I couldn’t point even to a poem that I’ve started, at least nothing for myself. The dreams and projects are building up inside me but something is holding me back. And while I’d been reading a spate of poetry and hybrid books by women who were experimenting with voice, the last couple of books I’ve been drawn to (after a couple of weeks of barely reading) have been relatively conventional narratives, both by men, that haven’t rung bells in my soul.

So I know I want one aspect of Marshall’s life—the element of seeking something greater and more fulfilling (or more accurately, I can’t escape it)—but I want Orno’s sense of fulfillment. Can I have both? I think so, but some days it’s really slow going.

Language and Metaphor

Remember when the most stressful question on your English test was, “What is the meaning of the title?” The origins of the title of For Kings and Planets aren’t revealed until about halfway through and then it seems like a casual aside. Orno is writing to Marshall that something or other is named much more conventionally, that it’s not named “for kings and planets.” Actually as I’m typing this, I’m realizing that with Marshall’s love for quoting poetry, it must be a quote, likely from Auden, but I’ll let you seek that on your own (poetry is better in context anyway). What I like about the title, though, is that a whole other dimension of it emerges just in the final pages of the book and in a very subtle way and I started to understand who is orbiting whom.

When this book was published, Canin was teaching at The Iowa Writer’s Workshop and the language is suitably beautiful without being at all show-offy. Still, this is a book where I underlined lines more because I recognized something in the characterization than because of a turn of phrase I loved. Speaking of characterization…

Familiar Characters

If I told you that both Marshall and his professor father—men who are hungry for a greater life which sometimes makes casualties of the people around them—seemed familiar, you might think I was talking about you. Because the truth is that most of the people who read this blog are my friends or family. The other truth is that I’m surrounded by seekers and dreamers. Or rather that I surround myself with seekers and dreamers.

The scary truth is I recognized that “making casualties of the people around you” part as something I’m prone to. It’s something I fight against, when I’m aware of it, but sometimes that hunger to become something greater is all-consuming. All. Consuming.

Why I Can’t Love this Book

And this book isn’t consuming at all. It’s distant, not angst-ridden. It’s psychological when I want it to be emotive. And it never acknowledges the place between dreamer and grounded that most of us make our lives in. Which means the characters ultimately lack nuance.

So many times as I was reading this book as Marshall quits school and runs off to Hollywood to read screenplays all the while showering admiration on his more grounded friend, I wanted Marshall to find some element of satisfaction. I wanted Orno to feel some control over his own destiny. But never the twain shall meet. And the book ends up feeling flat in that way that so much contemporary fiction is criticized for.

I hope I haven’t completely spoiled the book for you. But maybe I’ve saved you a little time, too. Because whether you’re a seeker who longs to be grounded or a salt-of-the-earth type who longs to dream, I think you can push yourself harder than Canin will push you with this book. And I’d love to hear about your struggles and triumphs in the comments.

As for me, I’m off to harvest some plums from our back yard. Maybe somewhere in the manual, mindless tasks of picking, washing, peeling, boiling, and preserving, I’ll find the space to dig into my creative self and wrench out whatever’s standing in my way. Because the grounded self and the seeker self are not mutually exclusive. And my destiny is to try to be both at once, or at least in turns.

Wish me luck…

If you want to decide for yourself, pick up a copy of For Kings and Planets from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Seeking Myself in a Pile of Books by Women

August 3, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 4 Comments

Lately I’ve been searching. Digging into books by women about women—trying to find out what it means to be me. Although I have some very dear friends, I’m feeling the absence of a community as we’re too busy to get together or too far apart. Most likely I’m sheltering myself too deeply inside me.

So I’ve taken this quest where I take all of my quests—into the pages of books. The place where it’s safe to learn and stretch and grow. To shine and blossom away from any influence that might divert or derail me. But I’m ready to come out now—my thoughts jelled enough I’m no longer terrified I’ll twist and shape them to please others. At least for now.

Men Explain Things to Me

I picked up Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit on a night when I was headed to a gathering of female writers (a group that will not be named). During dinner before the event, Ann Hedreen and I discussed what we really thought of this group. I was wrestling with the fact that the event had to be secret. That the organizers felt they had to exclude men. And that they had named their group after a remark by someone they would consider part of the patriarchy. It all felt so reactive.

Ann and I had a really good discussion that night about feminism and what it means to be a woman. It was just the kind of conversation I’d been craving. We wandered into Elliott Bay Books and ran across this book and I thought it would be just the right time to get a new perspective on feminism. The event went well. It actually felt amazing to be surrounded by so many successful women who were so open and generous with each other. I was still sad that it needed to be exclusive, but if that’s what made them be as open as they were, I can understand the place for that.

What I didn’t love was this book. I actually had a fight with my husband about it before I even opened it. I think I was reacting to some sense of being stifled and he was reacting to the combative title. But I put myself in the position of defending something I hadn’t even read. Which I now deeply regret.

What I wanted from Men Explain Things to Me was some insight into the reasons I sometimes feel small or less than. To slights and microaggressions that might be undermining me as I try to build myself up. What I got was a story of how men victimize women. Solnit was saying that not all men intend to put women down, but behind her hand her tone sounded as though they should know better. They should be responsible for our feelings even when we are not responsible for ourselves. I think the book is meant to be playful, but I didn’t feel playful in reading it. I felt less than rather than equal. And not in a way that made me want to improve my lot.

Strike one on finding empowerment in the pages of a book.

When She Named Fire

The next book I picked up, When She Named Fire is a collection of poems by women. I have to admit I haven’t gotten very far into the book yet because I was so floored by Kim Addonizio‘s contributions (the book is alphabetical by last name if you want to know how soon I got hung up) that I stopped reading.

In just four poems, Addonizio struck deep into the heart of how the two sexes wound each other and ourselves. She opened up sensuality. And she made me reconsider (deeply) my relationship with my mother. I don’t know how good the rest of the book is, but I’ll be reading this one slowly and for a long time. If even one or two more poems are as good at helping me take ownership of myself and my experience, that sense of empowerment will bleed into my next book, which is a good and necessary thing.

Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls

Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls was co-edited by Karen Finneyfrock, someone I’ll dare to call a friend although we don’t yet know each other that well. Karen and I spent a few days up at the Whiteley Center together with Nicole Hardy and I was so impressed by her centered sense of self and her presence.

Karen works a lot with teens and this collection was created to empower teen girls by showing a wide diversity of experiences. The poems get to the heart of owning yourself and of the myriad ways we can be beautiful and strong and sometimes hurt ourselves. I fell in love all over again with Sarah Kay and Patricia Smith. I read this book fast and will probably read it over again. I’m definitely buying copies for the young women in my life.

What stuck with my most about Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls, though, is the sense that we write for ourselves. Full of many right answers and a few wrong ones, I’m sure that girls will take comfort in (and power from) this book. They will learn that they are not alone. But they will also not really listen and will instead go off and make their own lessons. And that is how it should be.

What surprised me about this book is how maternal it made me feel. And maybe that’s because my best friend is having her first baby this weekend (so it’s on my mind), but maybe I’m growing up a little, too. But reading and communing with these women over their tenderest moments, I came to realize how small and individual our lives are. I have so many things I want to teach to young women, but maybe the lessons we need to learn cannot be taught. Maybe I could not be taught. Maybe it’s okay that I, like many young girls, longed not to be told how to live but to be loved no matter what choices I made—what successes and failures I created.

Talking to My Body

The irony of Talking to My Body is that I found author Anna Swir through a collection anthologized by Czesław Miłosz who at every turn celebrated her feminism but in the most misogynistic tone. I can’t really explain and I think it was well intentioned and also cultural. Regardless, after reading one or two of her poems, I had to have more.

And the real reason I picked this book up is because Swir’s poetry is incredibly sexy. And not in a 50 Shades of Grey sort of way. I actually thought there would be more erotic poems in the book, but twenty-five or so poems gathered as “To Be a Woman” were enough. What Swir does in this section is explore the experience of being a sexual being through the voices of three very different women. It’s gorgeous and full and the three diverse perspectives open up an entire plane of acceptable possibilities.

“A night of love with you,
a big baroque battle
and two victories.”
– Anna Swir

Why this Now

One of the things I’ve been struggling with in this post-publication summer (if not my whole life) is that I ache to be known. Deeper than that, I ache to be accepted in all of my faults and failings. I’ve built a wall to shield those tendernesses and I understand that as long as I hold strong this wall, none of that will happen. I’ve learned a lot from Rebecca Bridge about the power of exposing your experience while sitting with yourself (see her essay about her boyfriend’s suicide on Gawker), but I also see how vulnerable being at that edge can make her (and watched others jump over) and I’m not sure I’m brave enough to sit that close to the fire.

Some days I think that the pain of not being known is just slightly less than being rejected for who I am. On those days I do not write. And some days I am strong enough that I want to dig and become no matter what anyone says or thinks or feels. That is when I unlock the door—let the words tumble out into the shape of the real me. Whoever that may be.

What I’m looking for in these books—in all the books I ever read—are the edges I butt up against—the rubs that show me the negative space that is me. With each book I shift and change shape—sometimes a little and sometimes a lot—find my center of gravity and learn to occupy this space.

I don’t know if I’m a feminist. I do know that I am most happy when I’m surrounded by a sea of voices speaking their own truths and when I speak up so that my voice is counted among them.

I have a date, soon, with Roxana Arama where we’re going to talk about writing—where I’ll get real with her about the things I’m struggling with most and I’ll listen as she does the same. And tonight I’ll talk about books and reading and life with a very accomplished group of women. I feel lucky to be counted among all of the women I’ve named in this post and those whom I have not named. As much as I long for a large communal kitchen filled with all the generations of women and all the voices I love, I know, too, that this is my way of engaging, and that maybe, if I’m lucky, my voice will endure to someday help someone else.

Beachcombing at Miramar and What it Takes to be a Writer

July 20, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 5 Comments

I read Beachcombing at Miramar: The Quest for an Authentic Life by Richard Bode just as I was changing jobs earlier this summer and somewhat terrified that I’d never write again. Things are better now, as of this weekend I have two books started and a jumble of poetry I vow to someday edit, so I feel like I can finally talk about this book and what it means to me.

Isolation

Bode retreated to his house on the beach after a divorce from a marriage it sounds like he was never that into. And this book is a collection of essays about the year he spent beachcombing. Like many memoirs (most particularly Walden), it feels carefully trimmed to highlight the experiences that string together into the best narrative. I guess fiction does that too, but in this instance, especially as he talks about his isolation, I wondered if he was anywhere near as removed from society as I dreamed he was.

“Since they have never learned how to be by themselves, they have never learned how to be together.” – Richard Bode

My relationship with isolation is cloudy. A first born, there was a time in my life where I was very happy with only my own company, but I feel like my parents resisted this impulse in me. Perhaps because of the adorable baby brother who soon followed or just to fit into society in general. But somewhere very early I got the impression (in a way that was difficult to argue with) that I was supposed to be social. I started flitting from group to group engaging just enough to feel like I’d satisfied the requirements and then I’d go on to the next. But I never again settled into my own company.

Even in grad school for writing, a time when I should have been most deeply immersed in my thoughts, I was experiencing an immense push-pull between the isolation I craved and the importance of sociability that I’d internalized.

But there are times when a writer cannot be social. It’s perhaps the lonesomest of careers (and maybe that’s why it calls to me). Because I work with words, the slightest verbal interruption can throw me off completely—sometimes for the whole day (especially when I’m in that nuance of language place). I cannot even listen to music with lyrics.

And yet, I’m still pushing and pulling myself about whether that isolation is okay. Often all it takes is a declaration of intent that “I will be writing today and cannot be interrupted” for me to then turn around and follow my husband around the house all day (unlike Bode, I’m very lucky in my choice of spouse).

The best times—the most productive times— are when I find balance, as I believe Bode did, between the alone time required to think and create and the social time that almost everyone wants some degree of. To do that, I have to give myself permission to be alone sometimes and to be honest with myself about the times when I don’t.

Inspiration

“Where does your inspiration come from?” has to be the most frequently asked question of writers. With this book, Bode allowed himself time to think and to observe the world. Although his book is self-referential (inspiration comes from the very time and space that he’s writing about), I believe the magic of inspiration actually comes from an artist’s brain.

I’m not saying that artists have different ways of thinking than others—that would imply some sort of biological predisposition toward art I’m not prepared to champion—but I do believe the openness, fluidity, and tangential nature of thought are necessary to the creation of art. Because the magic of inspiration is actually the magic of connections that we make, of looking at the same thing as everyone else from a fresh angle. Some of that is allowing ourselves the time to think, and some of it is allowing ourselves the space to see whatever it is we are looking at in the light of our unique experiences (and then honing the skills to express that viewpoint).

“I have a task that is greater than all the labors assigned to Hercules. It demands that I live in the richness of this moment because that is all I have or will ever know.” – Richard Bode

Bode is just walking up and down the beach. But by being on that beach through the seasons, he sees the experience of being there in a different way. The thoughts in his mind are shaped by that presence and evolve into something a day visitor might not understand. It’s pretty wonderful.

And inspiration, as long as you are open to it, really is inexhaustible (I’m sure I’ll kick myself for writing that someday, but I do believe it). At work this week, I was treated to this presentation:

How to Never Run Out of Great Ideas from Peter Meyers

That was at a marketing conference. But because I didn’t have my head stuck in the “this is the place I work” vs. “this is the place I write” rut, this fabulous presentation inspired me professionally and personally. Not every part of this presentation will be tailor made for you. That’s the point. Pluck the parts that resonate and marry them with something else and go make work.

There is a line from Gattaca that is with me always. Vincent (Ethan Hawke) is explaining to his much more athletic brother how he beat him at swimming this vast distance when they were kids. He says, “You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton: I never saved anything for the swim back.” If you are saving back ideas for the next project or for the right moment, you are holding back a part of yourself. Go back to that presentation above. Check out slide 7. Then slide 8. 20. 21.

The time to make your best work about that burning issue is right now. Because tomorrow something else might be burning and you will have lost that moment forever.

Coping with Fear

“The individual who fears the criticism of others is no different from the one who seeks their praise. Both are shadow figures, fading into the landscape, lacking the will to act for themselves.” – Richard Bode

Just before that quote, Bode relays an anecdote about Georgia O’Keeffe that is likely apocryphal, but the sentiment is important. He says that before ever showing her work to the world, she set up a show for herself to decide what she thought of the work. She had the wisdom to look into the work and to see it for all of its flaws and also its successes. She also had the wisdom to know that it was her critique that would be the most valuable to future work.

Making art is scary. I’ve been writing about that a lot lately, here, here, and also in my notebooks. But that’s life and it’s time to move on.

I found a lot of comfort this week talking with a beloved writer friend about art and fear. We walked through Madison Park with her kids and talked about our work and the things that are inspiring us. She is a person to whom it is safe to say aloud the things I haven’t worked out on paper. I even let her thumb through notebook #1 – the next novel. The point is that the world is a lot less scary once you find those people to whom you can open up. My husband hears about my emotions and my writer friends hear about my art. And everything else must go into the work.

“I am on my way toward the center of myself, doing my best to strip away layers of sham and pretense as I go along.” – Richard Bode

Beachcombing at Miramar is a very Buddhist book—right down to the quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh. And I love it. It helped me find some of my center during this latest transition, and re-reading it today it helped me all over again.

What are the books and influences that shape your life as a writer? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

If Beachcombing at Miramar is your thing, pick up a copy from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.