And so it goes that the snows have returned to Waawiiyaatanong. There has been a steady flotilla of heavy wet snow falling since this morning. And the light is all grey and muddled like it often is this time of year. Darkness has crept in ever diminishing light before the Spirit Moon, we know we are into the high storytelling and writing season. This is the real gift of the approaching settler holiday season, the ability and time and want to sit down with one’s relations and share stories and humor familiar and new. If the summer and spring season heal and nourish our bodies than it is this time of year that heals our relations and our creative selves. So let us start here, with this concept of the approaching season of stories, our light in the metaphysical darkness.
After an excellent finish to my year of readings, artist appearances, and talks, I am comfortably in the warmth of my own home and left to the task of churning out the new work. This is the hard lonely part of the writer’s career. One that is made easier by the fact of having multiple projects on the go and being fortunate enough to have the financial wherewithal to be able to focus and complete these projects. The year saw four full-sized notebooks full of first drafts filled and ready for inputting into the digital format. The very necessary revision stage built in to this process has already begun to place more polished pieces into the world. There are new poems set to appear soon enough and these are the result of this work. But poetry is not storytelling. And I began this talk of snow and late seasons with promises of storytelling.
I have transitioned my prose-based writing into a different writing program. For years I’ve been Word/Office based. But what I discovered was for larger projects, even Breaking Right, but most notably The Detroit River project and the novel The Waters that Divide have been far too unwieldy to manage using a simple word processor. So enter that infamous piece of writer’s software Scrivener. For organization it’s been second to none and allows for quick shortcuts to scenes and character sketches and research that is vital to making a working manuscript. In truth, it might not look as pretty as all the familiar Word interface. But it is much more focused on the hard work of prose writing and ensuring quick access to your research and all the important attendant notes. This what a professional art’s based (and to less extent academic based) writing software package looks and operates like. The one main difficulty is inputting the writing into the framework of the Scrivener. But like all works of writing, it takes time and effort to get through it. And that busy administrative work translates later to fresh work in the prose realm.
And following a couple weeks worth of work, there are three book length prose works that have lept closer to completion. Most notably has been a return to and reworking of ye olde MFA thesis work, To Stoke a Bitterroot Fire. I might have to blame that show Yellowstone for this one. Not the murder and deceit part, but the nostalgic part of me that wants to revisit and share a story from the actual people of Montana. My wife and I lived and worked and studies in the Gallatin Valley in the first decade of this century. A foundational time for us, it was filled with an interesting group of Montanans and transplants that we fundamentally working class rooted folks. The stories of ranchers and politicians make for good TV, I suppose. But literature is different, more honest and reflective. This story is an important part of this process. Because any place is about more than its stereotypes. A place is made not by the handful of rich and well-inherited folks. It is always constructed by the workers, the coffee slingers, the general labourers, the ski-lift runners, and the myriad of folks that simply keep the lights on and the doors open. I did a little bit of this work in the Gravel Lot that was Montana. But I know the work there isn’t done. Hence this new work in progress. One that follows the stories of some young Montanans as they try to understand their place in a changing state where the forces of gentrification, change, and simple survival all swirl around them and pull at their lives.
Let’s look to the promise of the season. Snow that falls but have yet to stay speaks to the tentativeness of this season of transition. So, it’s all hopeful joy and anxiety in a way. But consider those stories, long or short, as we in the northern hemisphere enter a season of them. Let them and their stories of hope and survival guide us through what can be a difficult gathering of darkness. I leave you this go around with a sample from the Gravel Lot that was Montana collection that honours that working class grit of the Treasure State. A not so subtle reminder that the workers of the world are the ones that need celebrated, not the capitialists that under value their very being.
Well. Well done.
Well don Dan