Welcome back, everyone, and a special welcome to my new subscribers. Here’s what’s been on my mind this month.
Ephemerality
Some of you know that I began my career as a dancer and actor. As a stage performer, your art is ephemeral. It lasts only as long as the performance itself, and then it’s gone. But the experience is shared with a live audience. There is connection. Emotion. Applause. Writing was a revelation to me for the opposite reason. Each morning when I returned to my desk, the work was still there, exactly as I had left it. But when publication day came, there was no applause. It was eerily silent as I spent far too many hours anxiously watching my book’s sales rank rise and fall on Amazon.com.*
Still, the work of writing gave me comfort that something I had created would remain intact to be experienced by new readers again and again. Unfortunately, books go out of print and forms of media change. Nothing lasts forever. Perhaps that’s why I have become obsessed with ephemeral art, starting when I first witnessed Andy Goldsworthy’s work in the documentary film, Rivers and Tides.
Watching him patiently stack flat stones against the force of the incoming tides and painstakingly melt icicles into delicate, organic shapes, only to see them collapse with a breeze, was the essence of the impermanence of the human condition. There was effort, creation, beauty for an instant—and then it was gone.
Other artists honor ephemerality in their work. Andres Amador rakes shapes into beach sand for the tides to wash away. Jon Foreman carefully places stones into gorgeous patterns that are swallowed by the sea. They remind me of the ancients who carved petroglyphs on stone walls or piled up stones into ovoos in Mongolia or inuksuit in the high Arctic. Besides being way-markers and places of spiritual significance, one objective of these stone structures was to send comfort across vast empty places. In fact, when I was in Greenland, a local Inuit explained it to me when I expressed outrage at seeing bits of trash far from the village, tossed here and there along a trail. He said that this was not careless litter sullying a breathtakingly pristine place, but a hedge against ephemerality. They had been left “so that people would know that someone else had been there.”
A Place for Poetry
I read a lot of poetry lately—not in bed, or on the couch, or even in the big leather chair in my office. I read it in the bathroom. There are poetry books next to every toilet in my house. Why not? Madeleine L’Engle, my very first writing instructor, always recommended keeping a notebook by the toilet. It’s the perfect place for quiet contemplation. And poetry provides that, too.
The first poem in U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s 2015 collection BRIGHT DEAD THINGS is How to Triumph Like a Girl. It resonated with me immediately as an ode to fierce womanhood:
…As if this big / dangerous animal is also a part of me, / that somewhere inside the delicate / skin of my body, there pumps / an 8-pound female horse heart, / giant with power, heavy with blood.
The “8-pound female horse heart” immediately made me think of Akmaral, the titular character in my new novel, as she discovers her own courage and resilience while training as a warrior. You can read the full poem on Poetryfoundation.org.
Literary Citizenship and Friendship
I’ve written before about literary citizenship on The Writers Circle’s blog—what we writers do to bolster one another through early drafts, final drafts, pre-pub anxiety, and post-pub-day blues. With so many dear friends publishing new work, I’ve been kicking my own literary citizenship into high gear. One of my oldest writer friends is Stephanie Cowell whose beautiful new novel A BOY IN THE RAIN published early this month. To help spread the word, and to share the length and depth of our friendship, we wrote a piece together for Writer’s Digest: Surviving Over 30 Years of the Writer's Life, One Buffet Café Lunch at a Time.
Creative Writing Prompt: Pick Three Words
This prompt originates from Madeleine L’Engle’s workshop that I took with Stephanie Cowell all those years ago. As I recall, Madeleine had a bowl—or was it a bag? Or a hat? Out of it, we each picked three random words written on small slips of paper and, from them, we had to create a story. I created this carnival wheel spinner to make it easy to do online.
INSTRUCTIONS: Spin the wheel three times. Whatever words you get must appear in your story. The words don’t have to be the focal point of what you write. They just have to show up somewhere. You can change the verb tense or make a word plural—whatever is necessary to help it fit. And don’t forget that some words have multiple meanings or can be used as different parts of speech. The key is to allow your subconscious mind to connect random, unrelated ideas to create an image that comes to life on the page.
Thank you for your support!
I swore that I wouldn’t pay to self-publish my novel. Thanks to Regal House, I didn’t have to. I believe in traditional publishing and the value of curation. Still I knew that, no matter who published AKMARAL, marketing and promotion would inevitably fall to me. Budgets being budgets, I’d originally planned to do it all myself. But I just hired a publicist, which is an expensive prospect. I realized that promotion was a bigger job than I could handle while running The Writers Circle, teaching, and… oh, yeah, trying to get back to my two new writing projects. If you are inclined to support my efforts, please consider the paid subscription option. Some of you already have, which honestly stunned me. I hadn’t expected it and I am so very, very grateful! No writer, not even the most famous ones, can do this alone.
Thank you for your support.
Forthcoming by Judith Lindbergh
AKMARAL: a nomad woman warrior on the ancient Asian steppes must make peace with making war - May 2024 from Regal House Publishing
"A gripping saga, a love story, and a convincing portrait of a time and people lost to history” —Christina Baker Kline, #1 bestselling author of Orphan Train and The Exiles
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Or visit judithlindbergh.com.
*Don’t buy your books from Amazon. Support independent booksellers (and me by using this link) by shopping at Bookshop.org!
PS - Just realized your pub date is NEXT May. Wishing we did not have to wait that long. The theme so intrigues me: the archetypal woman warrior is more important than ever RIGHT NOW! ❤️📚
Another ephemeral art form: live jazz (!) Thanks for your lovely reflections.