Heart's fictional home
May. 23rd, 2002 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrThanks for all the kind comments to my post of last night. They helped.
Rob called the interviewer who saw him last week, and she said he'll get the word tomorrow. So one more day of sweating it out.
Still browsing my bookshelves restlessly, looking for something to read. Picked up Bobby Ann Mason's Shiloh and Other Stories which I read in graduate school. I said I'd read new, so I only read a story or two and put it back. I have a very vivid recollection of some of her stories, esp. the first one, "Shiloh"--I remembered the last three lines almost verbatim. If I remember correctly, Mason had been working on something intensely in graduate school (did she do her dissertation on something like Ivanhoe?) and got so sick of it that she decided to write a bunch of short stories about the place she knew best, Western Kentucky. Her characters are utterly different from the people I know, but I really liked how they seemed to be absolutely steeped in their place of origin. Have been thinking all night about creating private fictional landscape. It can be a very fruitful thing for a writer to do, if he/she manages to hit upon an imagined world that is in synch with the stories the writer wants to tell and, perhaps, where he/she came from originally. Like Faulkner with Yoknapatawpha County, or Tolkien with Middle Earth. I've always wanted to create my own fictional world, to set a lot of stories in it. I thought I might have something in Piyanthia (the setting for my first book) but it didn't quite sink its hooks into me deeply enough--maybe it required too much research, was too remote from my own life. It's not . . . it's not a heart's home to me. Middle Earth's Hobbiton, after all, was based on Tolkien's memories of his boyhood home of Sarehole. I love Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion," primarily because I like what Keillor does with Lake Woebegone as a storyteller.
Maybe I haven't found a heart's fictional home for my writing because I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. It was a nice home, and a nice town, but . . . well, the kind of stories I've always wanted to read and I thought I wanted to tell didn't seem to be set there. I suppose Steven Spielberg has found it fruitful to use growing up in the suburbs as the well of his creativity. Bully for him. But for me . . . I don't know. I guess I just haven't found it yet. Maybe in either my fiction or my real life. Hmm. Must think about this more.
Mom called from Georgia today. "I've been reading your LiveJournal," she said, "and I wanted to know, did you ever get your stove in?"
I laughed. "Well, it's plugged in and it works, but it's stuck out five inches from the wall, because we can't jam it into the alcove where it's supposed to go."
"What's in the way?"
"A cabinet on one side and a support post on the other. It's a quarter-inch too wide." I couldn't resist adding: "You know I love to talk to you on the phone, but you could have dropped me a comment on the LiveJournal to ask, too, you know."
"A comment? What's that?"
So I explained. And I explained that even though she doesn't have an account, she can post as an anonymous user. It makes the whole thing like a conversation. This is part of my ongoing less-than-subtle campaign to get family members to sign up for LiveJournal. My parents are polite, but wary. I continue to harp on the theme that it could be a good way for our far-flung family to keep in touch with each other every day.
[Post a comment here to show her--and say hi to my Mom, if you're so inclined].
Cheers,
Peg
Rob called the interviewer who saw him last week, and she said he'll get the word tomorrow. So one more day of sweating it out.
Still browsing my bookshelves restlessly, looking for something to read. Picked up Bobby Ann Mason's Shiloh and Other Stories which I read in graduate school. I said I'd read new, so I only read a story or two and put it back. I have a very vivid recollection of some of her stories, esp. the first one, "Shiloh"--I remembered the last three lines almost verbatim. If I remember correctly, Mason had been working on something intensely in graduate school (did she do her dissertation on something like Ivanhoe?) and got so sick of it that she decided to write a bunch of short stories about the place she knew best, Western Kentucky. Her characters are utterly different from the people I know, but I really liked how they seemed to be absolutely steeped in their place of origin. Have been thinking all night about creating private fictional landscape. It can be a very fruitful thing for a writer to do, if he/she manages to hit upon an imagined world that is in synch with the stories the writer wants to tell and, perhaps, where he/she came from originally. Like Faulkner with Yoknapatawpha County, or Tolkien with Middle Earth. I've always wanted to create my own fictional world, to set a lot of stories in it. I thought I might have something in Piyanthia (the setting for my first book) but it didn't quite sink its hooks into me deeply enough--maybe it required too much research, was too remote from my own life. It's not . . . it's not a heart's home to me. Middle Earth's Hobbiton, after all, was based on Tolkien's memories of his boyhood home of Sarehole. I love Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion," primarily because I like what Keillor does with Lake Woebegone as a storyteller.
Maybe I haven't found a heart's fictional home for my writing because I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. It was a nice home, and a nice town, but . . . well, the kind of stories I've always wanted to read and I thought I wanted to tell didn't seem to be set there. I suppose Steven Spielberg has found it fruitful to use growing up in the suburbs as the well of his creativity. Bully for him. But for me . . . I don't know. I guess I just haven't found it yet. Maybe in either my fiction or my real life. Hmm. Must think about this more.
Mom called from Georgia today. "I've been reading your LiveJournal," she said, "and I wanted to know, did you ever get your stove in?"
I laughed. "Well, it's plugged in and it works, but it's stuck out five inches from the wall, because we can't jam it into the alcove where it's supposed to go."
"What's in the way?"
"A cabinet on one side and a support post on the other. It's a quarter-inch too wide." I couldn't resist adding: "You know I love to talk to you on the phone, but you could have dropped me a comment on the LiveJournal to ask, too, you know."
"A comment? What's that?"
So I explained. And I explained that even though she doesn't have an account, she can post as an anonymous user. It makes the whole thing like a conversation. This is part of my ongoing less-than-subtle campaign to get family members to sign up for LiveJournal. My parents are polite, but wary. I continue to harp on the theme that it could be a good way for our far-flung family to keep in touch with each other every day.
[Post a comment here to show her--and say hi to my Mom, if you're so inclined].
Cheers,
Peg
(no subject)
Date: 2002-05-24 07:24 am (UTC)I love reading Peg's journal, but I can't imagine it being an every day thing. I don't know how all you writers find time to read & write to everyone on a daily basis. I guess because you're writers! I'm a reader & this has been a fantastic way to hear what's going on w/Peg & family - I REALLY dislike the phone. Char - you were the one to get me going on email & internet & now look at me!!! I'm posting comments!
Peg - good luck to Rob - hope to read good news tomorrow.
Love love love,
your (only) favorite daughter-in-law heather
Hi, Peg's Mom!!!
Date: 2002-05-24 09:40 am (UTC)Welcome aboard!