Conversation GuidesConversation Guide for Fairy Tale Blues* What gave you the idea to write about a marriage sabbatical? Marriage can be absorbing and isolating. There are just the two of you tussling over a range of issues from the most intimate to the most mundane. Marriage partners can loose perspective after many years of closeness. Privacy within the relationship can become insulating and we can get locked into certain views. I've been invited to attend writers' residencies that have taken me away from my everyday life for extended periods. The solitude and the absence of responsibilities that identified me at home offered new perspectives. That's when I thought: what if a woman decided to leave temporarily to deepen a relationship with herself? In my case, there was a legitimate work reason for leaving home, but I wondered what it would take for a woman to go against the cultural grain and spend time on her own away from her marriage. * You suggest in the novel that marriage is currently evolving as each generation finds new ways to address its rewards and limitations. Do you think we'll ever get it right? I think we've always got it right. My grandmother Margaret's marriage was perfect for her and her times, so was my mother Alice's and so is mine and my children's. Marriage presents challenges that are mirrors of our society. Yet typically each generation evolves the concept of partnering to a new level. I like watching how emotional and physical intimacy that once was considered the wife's domain has become the responsibility also of the husband - don't you love seeing those men with diaper bags over their shoulders? And how a strong sense of self, which was once the husband's domain - remember dens, those special rooms designed for a man to get away from the family and pursue his own interests? - is now an honored pursuit also of a wife. I've witnessed among my friends the imbalances that can occur with such growth and one of them is men holding back on the provider end, as I suggest Jess does in the sports business he and Annie share, and the women taking charge of everything inside the home and out, as Annie did. Confusion can slip in when we share life and authority. There are few guides for evolving partnerships. * In the Conversation Guide of your previous novel, Crybaby Ranch, you describe how that grew out of the exciting intersection of your own experience and your creative imagination. Was that true for Fairy Tale Blues as well? Definitely. For me, that's how the creative process works. The two - reality and imagination (which is to say the range of possibility I can conjure) - join and produce stories. Yet the end result is always fiction. There is nothing of the memoir in my novels. For example, the longtime love my husband and I share opens my vision to the many possibilities partnering can take and aids me in expressing the experience of deep intimacy and caring, while not in any way resembling my personal actions or those of anyone I know. It's a creative process that is a microcosm of the natural world of birthing - how could it be otherwise? - in that male and female mate and the result is a whole new being. Not one or the other, but an original creation unto itself. So it is with story. Reality and imagination (or possibility) mate and the result is a unique story. * Many writers say that their final work never quite lives up to their intention never quite says all that they meant to say. What did you want to say in Fairy Tale Blues that might not have gotten said? I wanted to say so much that I had difficulty in choosing my issues. Many issues I touched on, but wished to say more. For example, I wanted to say, "Look what else you can do besides divorce." There are a dozen steps of separation that couples can take in response to unresolved issues, while saving the valuable parts of the relationship. I wanted to say, "Create your own form of partnering." * How did the experience of writing this novel differ from your experience writing Crybaby Ranch? I wrote Crybaby Ranch over a long period of time while I also owned a resort business in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It's hard to write seriously while working in the business world, and I have a lot of sympathy for those who face this struggle. I've since let go of my shop. With Fairy Tale Blues I was able to write full time, which was wonderful. It seemed an entirely different process. More concentrated. I loved it. The lifestyle that writing a novel demands matches me perfectly. It's easy for me to be self-disciplined. In fact, I don't even call it that. It feels more like freedom - oh good, I get to wake up and write all day again tomorrow. * Do you continue to read avidly, even when you're deeply engaged in writing? Are there writers you've particularly enjoyed who have influenced your work? I love to read and wouldn't stop for anything. Some writers say
they can't read while writing because they find themselves aping
another writer's style. I don't have that experience. Yet in another
way, everything I read influences or inspires my work. I especially
love beautiful language. I become entranced by it and find that
even though I am reading in bed with only the pleasure of the story
in mind, I am still studying where the author placed the commas,
pondering the sentence structure and word choices. I admire Barbara
Kingsolver very much, her wisdom and humor. I don't know that I
am particularly influenced by her, but I aspire to her vision and
her skill in relating that to her readers. I am especially interested
in reading poets that write novels, because of the careful language
and the deep awareness for which poets are noted. * What do you hope to accomplish during the rest of your writing life. Do you have a long view with several projects in mind, or do you take it project by project? What I love best about reading a novel is when the characters' realizations within the story clarify personal issues for me. To have a writer put words to a troublesome concern of mine is a wonderful experience that grounds me and allows me to move forward. A similar thing occurs when a writer finds the language to express beauty and insight. I glow with the celebration of it. I hope to give that to readers myself. So perhaps a little of both: a long view of continuing to write
and offer readers the gifts I love to receive, yet the subjects
are still to be discovered. * You came to writing novels later in life, having accumulated much experience from which to draw inspiration. How crucial was that timing in contributing to your success? And what advice would you give other writers, both older and younger? Timing is mysterious. For years I felt that my true self was a writer, yet few people acknowledged me as one, so I felt as though I lived a secret life. Perhaps the most comforting thing about being published is that my inner life and outer life have been united. Yet I know that if publication had happened to me earlier I would have given it more weight in my life than would have been well-balanced for me. By the time my first novel was published my work had been rejected by publishers for many years. I had to learn not to take that personally or I wouldn't have been strong enough to continue to write and to live with the immense joy I get from that. Now I have found that I don't take the success or acceptance I receive personally either. I enjoy it very much. I love the opportunities that are available to me now and the wider acquaintanceship of people with whom I interact. But being published doesn't have much to do with how I see myself, just as I had learned not to let being unpublished affect my self image. I think writing is like every other creative pursuit: we must do it for itself and not for any result we imagine it may bring us. Writing is our concern; what happens to it after it leaves our hands is no longer our business. For me writing is an act of unconditional love, I do it for reasons that have nothing to do with the conditions it may bring - money, acceptance, self image. As soon as I stepped onto that path of thought something released in me. I continued to send my work out, but I wasn't attached to it as I had been before. I would give the advice to writers that the poet William Stafford
offers in his book Crossing Unmarked Snow, "Make writing
a way of life, a practice that can lead to self-realization, to
a fuller involvement in one's own experience." What could be
better?
Acknowledgments
My sons and daughters-in-law contributed to this project and I am grateful to them. Trevor Buhler, Amy Buhler, Toby Buhler, Amber Buhler. I feel profoundly privileged to have John Travis as my teacher. Going on meditation retreats in Jackson Hole and in India with him has enhanced my life with meaning and joy. The fictional retreat leader in the novel is a mere shadow of him. Ellen Edwards is a perceptive editor with a strong sense of ethics, a clear vision of story and mastery over language. I feel immensely fortunate to work with her. Thank you, Ellen. My husband John Buhler offers support in every way from his heartfelt happiness over my pleasure in the writing life to creating delicious ragouts and pasta sauces for our dinners together. And always he is my first reader. My gratitude goes to Susan Marsh and Patti Sherlock, two exceptional writers, who offered steady support as readers of my manuscript - a considerable gift. Gratitude also to my agent Charlotte Sheedy for her expertise over the years. Through the professional assistance of Rebecca Vinter and Meredith Kaffel my writing life is smoothed and eased. Susan Wasson, Judy Johnson, Eric Boss and Judy Boss, thank you once again for your generous spirits.
An enormous part of my pleasure in this work is the weaving of
chance remarks, stories or shared events that find their way into
my creative process. In this project I thank Coulter Buhler, Libby
Vallee, MacKenzie Caston and Elaine Mansfield. Inspiration and support
for my subject came from two books in particular: Media's Folly,
by Tanya Wilkinson and The Light Inside the Dark by John
Tarrant. Tina Welling lives and writes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with her
husband John and four-legged family members, Zoe and Miko. Fairy
Tale Blues is her second novel. Her first novel is Crybaby
Ranch. |
|
Published by NAL Accent. |
|
Contact Tina Welling |
| Jackson Hole Writers Conference |
| Buy From Amazon.com Barnes & Noble Valley Bookstore |
Conversation Guide for Crybaby RanchQ. Was there a particular image or idea that triggered the writing of Crybaby Ranch?A. An image that supplied a lot of energy for writing this story occurred during an intense point in my mother's fatal illness. I witnessed my parents holding each other's hands and looking in into each other's eyes. My father said to my mother, "We are partners, aren't we?" Though lasting only a moment, I was seared with a profound awareness of what it means to commit to another person. They were nearing their 50th anniversary. I used this scene in the book to help Suzannah describe to Bo what kind of marriage she wanted. The idea of life partners intrigues me. Though I have been married to the same man for decades now, I think of us as having five or six different marriages within the one. Partners don't always grow at similar rates or in compatible ways, so when there is a bond of deep love, this calls for adjustments instead of separation. But a relationship involves an exchange between two people and in some cases the exchange stops or only flows one way, as in the case of Suzannah and Erik at the novel's opening. I don't believe that every marriage should continue until parted by death, but I do believe that a committed partnership acts on many energetic levels, some very mysterious. Q. Did you hope to send any messages through the story of Suzannah?A. Perhaps a little confirmation for women in particular toward the idea of discovering their true selves, offer a couple signposts that I have discovered during my own process of what Jung calls "individuation." One signpost is to follow what you love, as Suzannah did in moving to Jackson Hole, getting a job at a bookstore, honoring her love of beadwork. A relationship with the natural world is very healing, as is learning to enjoy solitude. Yet perhaps the most powerful and direct path is the creative one. Engaging creative energy is a sure way to awaken the unconscious and enliven ourselves. Suzannah's love for creating her beaded jewelry both aroused her evolution toward independence and supported her through the difficulties that journey provoked. Q. Did you know the ending of Crybaby Ranch before arriving at that point in writing it?A. No, but sometime early on I knew the final line: "It begins, it begins." I was so happy knowing that; it carried me through the years of writing with a bit of confidence that I would complete this project and create a story that measured up to the spiritual meaning those words held for me. Q. So the whole story was not in mind before you began writing it?A. No, not at all. I began the novel with a sense of magnetism between Suzannah and Bo, along with that image I mentioned earlier of my parents acknowledging their partnership. Then I just had some fun moving the story along, then I had some trouble moving the story along, back and forth - fun and trouble - until it began to come together. After that, it was rewrite after rewrite with spaces in between for clarity to make an appearance...if it was going to. This book spent a lot of time sitting about. Yet each time I picked it up again, I felt a strong energy for making it work. So I would engage in yet another rewrite. Q. Love for the natural world plays a role in your novel. Suzannah found solace and pleasure in the outdoors. Do you?A. Once I was a dependent, indecisive person who never strayed far from my husband and children or the places I was expected to be. Then slowly I began to wander farther and farther up the mountain canyons. First just short walks, then I packed my lunch and spent entire days on solo hikes into the Tetons. I was scared some of the time and exhilarated all the time. The love of the natural world became another relationship for me. And this relationship supported a whole new sense of who I was and who I could become. As it turned out I felt happy with my own company and I became confident that I could take care of myself. Q. Is there a joining of biography with imagination in the novel?A. Yes. And that's a good way to put it. It's a joining - a mating, a kind of love affair, even a sexuality - of actual life and the creative arts. Like real life conception these two qualities - my experience and my imagination - bonded and produced (in a whole lot longer than nine months!) a novel. Some parts of the story concerning Suzannah and her mother Lizzie came from journal entries I made while caring for my own mother as she suffered from Alzheimer's Disease. But with time and dozens of rewrites, this biographical piece blended with fiction and became a universal story about any mother who suffers and any daughter who loves her mother. Suzannah is not me; Lizzie is not my mother. Yet, because of my experience, there is an emotional reality to this relationship in the book. One of the things I love most about creative writing is how this blend works. It entertains me enormously to discover that I have created some character that I know nothing about at the moment, only to realize later that he or she has evolved from a past seedling. Even those crazy Aunts kind of emerged from this silly routine my sister Gayle and I drop into sometimes when we realize we have done something nutty. We might be out on her boat, hear something fall into the water and one of us will say in our particular dialogue voice, "Sister? Was that our house key you dropped in the water?" And the other will answer in the same tone, "Of course not, Sister, that was just your lunch." But at the same time such disclosures are dangerous to make since people then tend to jump to the conclusion that a novel is entirely true, a thinly disguised memoir, which creates an immense disservice to any work of art. Fiction, like painting or dance, is an artist's interpretive vision of life: the choices available, the working out of cause and effect, the meaning, the interconnection of it all. People who have little experience of the power of creative energy often assume there isn't such a thing and their understanding of the process is limited. Q. What is the most difficult part for you about writing a novel? What is the most pleasant?A. In my experience writing a novel is a long, long process that takes me years to complete and during that time I don't know if I am writing something that connects me to real life in a deeply intimate way or detaches me from real life in a way that threatens my mental health. Or at least that is how it has felt in the past. With the publication of Crybaby Ranch my confidence in how I work has increased and I may find this mystery solved or at least more comfortable. I fall in love with the process, the characters, the story and even myself because of the enlivening force of creative energy. But then I wonder if I'm in some dream world in which noone but me finds value. In that case, those growing stacks of papers on my desk and those tiny notes that litter my car, kitchen, and business, like confetti, only attest to a kind of insanity. Then again it may be a novel and those papers are proof that it's evolving toward completion. It may be that all novelists flirt with schizophrenia, though I suspect that this is something that self-heals with experience. I remember the first novel I wrote (which resides in my bottom desk drawer) was such an intense process that I feared I was going to meet my characters on the street. Now I succeed more often in seeing my work as my work, rather than my life. Perhaps it is necessary in the beginning of all passions - whether a relationship, a skill, an art or an idea - for us to briefly loosen our boundaries and merge with it in order to fully experience it. Honeymoons aren't necessarily just applicable to marriages. All of the above could also apply to what is pleasant about writing a novel. My life feels dense and textured with the fullness of experience. Writing for me brings the unconscious into the conscious. So I can enjoy discovering the first sage buttercup of springtime on the mountain behind my house, then when I return home, enjoy the discovery in another way through writing about it. Often that second experience lifts from my awareness other qualities of the experience that I wasn't conscious of at the time. And, too, it pins down the fullness of the event for me: my fingers touching the glossy petals, the aroma of wet earth as the snow melts into it, my eyes squinting in the sunlight, my pup Zoe nosing the blossom. These flowers are only the size of a dime and are a wondrous surprise in the patchy snow. Writing for me enlarges my life and deepens it as well. Reading also accomplishes this for me, so I am very grateful to be involved in the whole exchange of writing and reading. Q. Would you describe your workplace and writing schedule?A. My workplace is a small log cabin, an old one, moved in from the Elk Refuge outside of Jackson Hole and attached to my home. Just one room with an ancient woodstove (there is also electric heat), windows on three sides, lots of bookshelves. One wall supports a long rustic-looking counter the previous owner put in, which I use for crafts on one end and for manuscript-sorting on the other. My desk sits facing all the windows and the stove and in a corner I've placed a wicker settee to read and knit and beneath one window I've created a small area for meditation. I feel lucky and grateful every time I walk into this cabin. My schedule is a mere theory, a rumor I pass among my friends, a vague intention, a wispy wish. In my imagination I write in the mornings, hike or ski in the afternoons. But in reality I don't actually get out of my pajamas till lunchtime, and though I've been writing, who can take anything seriously that is done wearing pajamas? Then there is my resort shop, which I work at half the week, morning and afternoon (though not in my pajamas). I close the shop for two months after ski season and another two months after the summer season, during those times I can give myself over completely to my phantom writing schedule. All in all, like most writers who also hold day jobs, I often feel a bit schizophrenic (there's that word again) trying to juggle two callings - my business and my passion. And two worlds - one of reality and one of imagination. Actually, I love my life. The time I spend in my shop dealing with visitors from around the world balances perfectly with the time I spend in solitude writing. And I especially love the ledger work where there is no doubt about where to place the decimal points, whereas in my writing life I can spend an hour deciding about punctuation in a single sentence. Q. How did you arrive at this point in your writing career?A. Much like a new driver learning a stick shift: starts and stops, starts and stops, jolting down the long road. Since I have envied those writers who begin their careers as toddlers I have racked my brain to come up with a story from my childhood that shows without a doubt that I was always meant to be a writer. This is the best I could find: when I was seven years old I had a favorite spot behind the sofa and laying on my stomach I would write and read. I remember announcing to my parents after crawling out of that place one day that I was going to grow up and write stories. That was the end of that for a couple decades, until I announced to my husband sitting on the front side of the sofa - as a grown-up should - that I would like to write. But we had little children and though I promised myself every time I put them down for a nap that I would use that time to write, invariably I would nap myself. This went on until the boys entered school, then I got a position at the local radio station to write commercials. From there I began writing poetry, but every poem - just like a radio commercial - could be read in 30 seconds...flat. But that was my beginning. I fell in love with how I felt when I wrote something - a good commercial, a poem, an essay. Crybaby Ranch is my first published novel; before this I have published essays in national magazines and several anthologies, lead writing workshops for the Jackson Hole Writers Conference and other organizations. I have always loved reading novels, so it was only a matter of time before I tried to write one. I have two training novels that will never be published. Yet they taught me things I needed to know about the craft of writing and the management of creative energy. Q. And your next project?A. Another novel. I am hooked on the process of developing characters that meet life-challenges, fail and succeed, and along the way teach me things I need to know. I am especially entranced by relationships. My next novel is about a marriage, a good marriage. Nevertheless, the wife arrives at the need to take a sabbatical from the marriage. I want to address some universal dreams women have about mating for life and how those dreams so often oppose reality. I was raised on the Cinderella story as are many women in our culture and such fairy tales set us up for some disappointment. And yet marriage and partnering is still something many of us yearn to have in our life. I like to write about problems I don't know the solutions to, so that instead of that old adage that suggests you write about what you know, I choose to write about what I love and want to know more about. Writing is how I educate myself. Questions for Discussion
|
