The New Orleans Writing Marathon

Voices From The New Orleans Writing Marathon Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project Advanced Writing Institute 2003 Table of Contents Prologue: Bucket Man Introduction: The N. O. Writing Marathon At Peace with the Marathon . 1 Tracy Amond Writing in the Zone . 6 Andrée Cosby My Fourth New Orleans Writing Marathon . 10 George Dorrill Fight Naked . 23 Clarice Gautreaux Gems – The Marathon Experience . 28 Holly James Safety and Danger on the Streets of New Orleans . 32 Mary Koepp Marathon as Accidental Muse . 35 Richard Louth Irresistible Invitations . 40 Karen Maceira Refuge of Writing . 44 Connie Magee Assignments Misunderstood . 47 Patricia Maus-Benit Love and Essaying New Orleans . 53 Melanie Anne Plesh Disconnecting the Pen and the Brain . 58 Margaret Boyle Westmoreland Other Voices . 64 Marathon Guest Writers Afterword: How We Made Our Book .. 84 Prologue For my sabbatical in Fall 2002, I moved to the French Quarter with the sole purpose of writing every day. Each day I wandered, filling five journals with my writing at coffeehouses, bars, parks, benches, the river. During that journey, I met many people who influenced my thinking and writing, one of whom was “Bucket Man.” I met Bucket Man one midnight on a dark French Quarter street. He was swinging an industrial-sized plastic bucket by his side, and when he saw me, he pulled the bucket over his head and began singing. Sound poured out of the bucket like a symphony. When he removed the bucket, he looked me in the eye and asked me who I was and what I was doing there. Imagine being asked that question on a dark city street by a man who sings in a bucket and wears a chain of keys around his neck. I told him I was a writer and a teacher. He looked me up and down, then asked me three questions: “What do you think?” “What have you learned?” “Have you put yourself in danger?” I have come to believe that these are the essential questions for a teacher and writer to ponder, and I have passed them on to teachers in our Summer Institute. These questions have led us to talk about how we may be called to account for our thinking when we least expect it; about how we need to talk to students about what and how we have learned; and about how we need to take risks and seek dangers that are intellectual, emotional, existential, and sometimes even physical in our jobs. Otherwise, what do teachers really have to say to a world that has enough on its mind already? As one Summer Fellow in our writing project said today, “Teachers are heroes.” I agree. Like Odysseus, the job of each teacher is to plunge to the depths and to bring experience and learning back to the world. Nothing less will do. Teachers in the Writing Project are a special type of hero. Like Odysseus, whose name translates as “Trouble,” they know that they are putting themselves in trouble every day. Daily they must take risks in the Summer Institute and in their classes. Daily they are called on to account for their thinking and learning. The challenges that defined Odysseus’ troubled existence included a Cyclops, Sirens, gods, and goddesses. Instead of mythical monsters, our teachers encounter other challenges: parents, administrators, colleagues, students, standardized tests, writer’s block, the five-paragraph theme, English grammar, and 100 other perils. Still, like Odysseus, our writing teachers persist. Like Odysseus, they survive through a combination of intelligence, experience, values, and vision. They grow, they change, they adapt, they learn, and they seek knowledge and danger. They do it because that is their calling. It has been glorious working with the teachers whose writing fills this anthology. Heroes infused with the spirit of Bucket Man, their mission is to think “out of the bucket.” Because they can, because they do, their students will be forever changed. —Richard Louth, Director, Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project Introduction: The N.O. Writing Marathon From July 21-23, the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project held its eighth “New Orleans Writing Marathon.” Below I describe the concept and structure of the "New Orleans Writing Marathon" as well as what made this latest one special. The Marathon Concept The New Orleans Writing Marathon springs from the work of two authors, Natalie Goldberg and Ernest Hemingway. In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg defines “writing marathon” and provides a model for a writing community: Everyone in the group agrees to commit himself or herself for the full time. Then we make up a schedule. For example, a ten minute writing session, another ten minute session, a fifteen minute session, two twenty minute sessions, and then we finish with a half-hour round of writing. So for the first session we all write for ten minutes and then go around the room and read what we’ve written with no comments by anyone. .. A pause naturally happens after each reader, but we do not say ‘That was great’ or even ‘I know what you mean.’ There is no good or bad, no praise or criticism. We read what we have written and go on to the next person. People are allowed to pass and not read twice during the marathon. Naturally there should be some flexibility. If someone feels the need to pass more often or less often, that is fine. What usually happens is you stop thinking: you write; you become less and less self-conscious. Everyone is in the same boat, and because no comments are made, you feel freer and freer to write anything you want. (150) Hemingway helped us connect Goldberg’s model with our own locale by showing us how food, drink, and a sense of place can contribute to the individual writer’s experience. In A Moveable Feast, he describes writing a story about Michigan while consuming cafe au lait, rum, and oysters in a Paris cafe: The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it. I ordered another rum St. James and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened the pencil with a pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink. I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and pen. (6) The New Orleans Writing Marathon attempts to combine Goldberg’s sense of community and her structure for response with Hemingway’s reliance on place and sustenance for inspiration. The New Orleans Marathon Model In New Orleans, we split into small groups to go to restaurants, coffeehouses, bars, parks, streetcars, churches, the river, etc., where we eat, drink, write, and share our way across the city. We spend about an hour in each place, then move on. We follow Goldberg’s basic rule of balancing uninterrupted writing with responses limited to a simple “Thank you” after each reading. Then, we eat, drink, and socialize before moving on to a new writing spot. Our marathons are not about sightseeing, nor are they about publication. The emphasis remains on the writing, and doing it for oneself. The Advanced Marathon The Advanced Marathon differed from others in its size, length, and purpose. It involved close to 30 writers from across the country, and required two nights lodging in a hotel. About half the participants were not part of the Advanced Institute itself, and these included National Writing Project and Louisiana Writing Project representatives, a guest speaker, a musician, and a radio producer. The structure of each day was tighter than usual. Each morning began with a general gathering in the living room of Le Richelieu Hotel’s Paul McCartney Suite. Inspired by Kim Stafford’s words and Spike Harris’s music, participants wrote together before splitting into small groups, coming back each evening for a read-around and celebration. Writers took the last morning to review their journals. We ended with a read-around recorded by Todd Delaney, a KSLU radio producer who followed us each day while working on a show about the marathon. From the beginning, this marathon seemed less "private" and more "public" than others. As well, members of the Advanced Institute were determined from the outset to publish the story of this event. Without compromising the essence of a marathon—an emphasis on individuals writing solely for themselves—we hoped to showcase some of the work generated during the marathon as well as reflections about it. We wished to feature, connect, and explain some of the "raw" writing of the marathon for those attending as well as for those unfamiliar with marathons. When members of the Advanced Institute returned to campus, they spent a week discussing their collective experiences, reflecting on the marathon in new pieces of writing, and creating this collection of works. “Going public” in this book (and in an upcoming radio show) with an event so focused on private writing was a challenge. But we think that the writing produced in this marathon will speak to everyone who reads it, and that the story of this marathon is worth telling. —Richard Louth, Director, Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project Two Marathon Moments Kim Stafford reads to us Richard and Melanie writing at Molly’s At Peace with the Marathon Tracy Amond I set out for the New Orleans Writing Marathon on a simple quest: to write. Not to write anything in particular. Just to write. To allow the city to peel back the layers of my “normal life” so I can just write whatever comes to me.

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