Fishtrap, Kerouac (give a dog a bone)

I spent the week before last basking in the cool air and camaraderie of Fishtrap, a writing conference on Lake Wallowa, OR.



The place isn’t easy to get to. I flew into Boise and drove my rented Subaru six hours southwest, through Christian radio country and Nez Perce land. Awesomely, I arrived in this little pocket of Oregon to find I already had a friend there—my Write Club pal Jo Ann, who I hadn’t seen since she moved to Bellingham a couple years ago, was attending the conference too.

It was a great summer campy week. My favorite thing about conferences and residencies is the magic that descends when people are fed, watered, housed, contained, and stripped of responsibility. It’s easier to know people, easier to be known. Time expands, experiences are compressed, so that a week or two later, I’m still mentally unpacking it all.

So, speaking of Kerouac, it looks like I’ll be hanging at his Florida house next spring as writer in residence. The College Park house is where he wrote his second book, The Dharma Bums, and where he hid out from On The Road’s unexpected success. According to the (slightly disturbing) video tour on the website, you can even stand in the very spot where Jack curled up in a ball on the ground in the backyard, “sick with fever, dead broke.” Goodness!



The house has been updated and renovated by the Kerouac Project, though the back bedroom, where J.K. slept and typed his manuscript onto one long scroll, apparently hasn’t lost its vibe. According to former resident Ted May, “There's a great concentration of energy in the back of the house. I feel him back there; I do.”

Hopefully Jack’s spirit won’t mind if I forgo the scroll-and-typewriter routine and opt for methods less romantic. No guarantees I won't occasionally curl up in the yard, though.

(...as advertised:)

An Exercise

I'm spending the week at Fishtrap, a conference in Eastern Oregon. Though I usually bristle at writing exercises, Robert Stubblefield gave us a fun one today in workshop that felt like a party game: generate dialogue with a partner, in real time, where one person imparts a piece of news and the other responds with either, “I guess I’m not surprised,” or “I can’t believe you’re telling me this.” My cohort was Hank Vandenburg, one of my new favorite people. Here's what we came up with as the Waalowa River rushed by outside:

“Yes, it was Genie.”
“I guess I’m not surprised.”
“It only happened once.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth.”
“I don’t know what’s true anymore with you.”
“I’m so sorry. I was just so drunk.”
“Wait—I thought you were back on the wagon!”
“Well, I haven’t told you everything.”
“This changes things. It’s over.”
“I just can’t imagine being married to anyone else.”
“You don’t deserve to be married to anyone else. After all I’ve done for you, this is how you treat me? I’m going to Paula’s and I’m taking Binky with me.”
“I’ll start going to AA, I’ll do anything.”
“Isn’t AA where you met Genie?”
“She was just there...you were out of town...”
“I was out of town getting your goddamn prostate medication!”
“I'm so sorry! It’s just my addictive personality.”
“I’m sick of the excuses, Mortimer. I’m 35 years old and it’s time for me to take charge of my life. I want a baby, Mort. And I don’t want it to have an addict’s genes.”
“I love you and I can’t imagine being with anyone else, Sal.”
“I Googled sperm banks last night. I can get premium stuff for less than thirty bucks.”

etc...

I think this exercise works because it's fun--it's quick, engaging, unpredictable. It reminds us that, on the page, good dialogue ought to be all of these things; the writer is a medium, letting all kinds of folks inhabit her brain. (Or giving voice to all the loonies already in residence.)

The exercise also reminded me of the first rule of improv: Say yes to everything.
There's not an exact corollary to fiction here, since stories are anchored by conflict, but it might be a way to generate a story set-up: let two characters talk themselves into an absurd situation, then start the story there, going back and cutting all the run-up dialogue.

They're ringing the dinner bell. Feedin' time!