 16 clumsy & shy.... About a year ago I took a workshop with Nicole Hardy, author of Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin, on writing an artist statement. She ran us through a battery of quick prompts to mine our lives so we could see the connections to our art. One question was about our early influences, which is a question that always flusters me. I don’t come from an academic family who introduced me to great works while in-utero, and I grew up on TV, pop tarts, and frozen vegetables. I listed out a few names that were true for me, but still nothing felt authentic. The next day I picked through my books and pulled out Allen’s Ginsberg’s Snapshot Poetics: A Photographic Memoir of the Beat Era. I made some notes, and kept the book by my bed for a month, eventually tossing it back into the pile of my art and photography books, which were perched on top of an old Ilford photo paper box – a box full of contact sheets, test strips, and more than a decade’s worth of photos I’d taken. I don’t know about you, but the artist statement is my most dreaded part of any residency or grant application. I often miss deadlines or abandon my application ¾ of the way through because I just can’t pull one together. Total self-sabotage. (Any other writers feel weird even applying “artist” to what they do?) I decided that it was time to get my artist statement done, just to have it in my pocket. I emailed my friend Carla who has a memoir coming out in 2019, and asked if she’d be my accountability partner and exchange drafts, giving us both (myself mainly) a deadline. When I started working on my artist statement again, I went back to what I wrote in my notebook in the days following the workshop and decided to follow the photography thread. Alongside a detailed description of Ginsberg’s photograph of Kathy Acker, I scribbled in the margin, “In 61 pages of plates, there are less than a dozen women.” Rereading this sent me back to my bookshelf, back to the photographs of Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark, Cindy Sherman, and Annie Leibovitz. At its heart, writing is an act of discovery. In going back to my original workshop notes, then the notes I’d written after, then exploring from there, I discovered that photography played a pivotal role in my development as an artist, as a writer. It’s so strange to me that I never saw it before. I studied photography from 7th grade through the seven years I spent getting my undergraduate degree, even taking architectural photography classes when I was majoring in urban planning. I’d also studied literature and creative writing during those times as well, and it still took me awhile to figure out that writing was maybe more than a hobby. Here’s a snip from the current over-written draft-in-progress, which I really ought to get back to since I’m 16 days past my suggested deadline.
Almost 30 years later, my writing still holds elements of the black & white photography that captivated me in my youth: the composition of the frame, the light and shadow casting nets on life’s totality, exposure and controlling the narrative as an antidote to erasure, the desire to show, show, show, show (and tell beautifully). PULL OUT YOUR NOTEBOOK! Who and what were your early influences? Are there any parts of that medium or those people that still resides within you? That shows up in your work? Feel free to post in the comments, or reach out via my contact page. I’d love to hear what you discover! xo, scu Some old work from the photo box, circa 1993 -- 1996
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Okay, I made something that's on its way to becoming a book. It's a complete first draft: twenty-two chapters and a coda, an epigraph and a table of contents. Now, I'm working the revision toward a second draft, and I'm a little stalled at chapter 15, but it's for the best that I'm stuck because there's something it still needs to say. There's no panic, no writer's block, just a lot of walking through the city and drifting and going to bed early and seeing what my dreams have to offer up in the morning. Holding a first draft -- slipping its pages into a binder and seeing it whole -- transformed how I relate to the work, and to myself as a writer. Whatever it is you're working on, keep working it. In the final "Meet Readers" are Patty Belsick and our musician Nora Hughes. Looseleaf is a new Seattle-based reading series co-founded by Spark A'wesome, Shelley Casey, Dawn Quinn, Samantha Updegrave, and Suzanne Warren to create a space for woman-identified emerging and established writers to step out of their binders and share the stage. Combining storytelling and music, the series is held at The Den in Chop Suey. Our next reading is coming up on Tuesday, January 26, 2016. Doors at 7 pm, and it's gonna rule. I've run these quick Q+As with all the women reading and performing. In case you missed the first installment (Kristen Millares Young & Jenny Hayes), you can read it here. And the second (Casandra Lopez & Michelle Peñaloza) one is here. PATTY BELSICK What are you reading at Loose Leaf on 1/26? I'll be reading a piece from the book I'm writing (trying), tentatively titled, There's a Reason My Name Auto-Corrects to Party. It's a book based on my life and I believe, Life in general, with all of its little victories and fucked-up-ness. Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exiting about their work? The writer I'm in love with right now is Lidia Yuknavitch. She blows me away with her every sentence and her book, The Small Backs of Children, is my secular bible. I never lack inspiration when I read any part of it, which I devoured as soon as I got it. I'm also reading Jeanette Winterson's The Passion and feel as equally in awe. I'm empowered by strong female voices that make the world stand up and listen. Lidia is a Warrior in my eyes. What she does with words and language and emotion and art, how she intertwines them in ways that make you realize it should have always been like this - it's nothing short of amazing. Why are you out of your binder? Or, advice for stepping out of binders if you still feel stuck in one? I am Finally out of my binder! It's taken some time and some writing workshops to make me realize that my work is not dead after it's written. My last workshop in Portland, with Lidia Yuknavitch, and a room full of amazing writers, made me realize that my work is as living as I am. And for the reading on the 26th, I pulled from 3 separate pieces. It flowed together as if it had always been written that way. That would be my advice, look back at your work and let it breathe, as it truly helped me. Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going? A quote for me right now comes from Winterson's book, The Passion. "She grew in secret, away from their eyes. Outwardly she was obedient and loving, but inside she was feeding a hunger that would have disgusted them if disgust itself were not an excess." Blows me the fuck away!! Anything coming up for you in the near future? In the near future, I have a writing workshop in Portland in March and my work was accepted for my attendance to the Writing By Writers Workshop at Methow Valley in May, which I'm overjoyed about. I hope to be able to read publicly more and just keep the writing flowing. Where can we find online? You can find me online at lifesshort@live.com NORA HUGHES What are you playing at Loose Leaf on 1/26? I'm playing four songs from a set I'm working on, of 10 songs in 10 languages. I've started by learning songs in languages that I know a little- Spanish, French, Welsh, and I'm going to choose languages that are increasingly difficult for me- tonal languages, languages with weird sounds my mouth doesn't want to make. At the same time, I'm looking for songs that all fit together as one set. There's this thing, that they all need to have, and I haven't been able to describe what it is, but I know when I hear it. Lyrical, sad, hopeful, direct. Something like that. But not that. But that's part of it. Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exiting about their work? I'm reading a compilation of essays, interviews, photos, and drawings called Women in Clothes, by Sheila Heti, Leanne Shapton, and Heidi Julavits. I've been reading it and thinking about it for two weeks and having a conversation with myself for two weeks, about what I love about it, and what I find problematic about it. Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going? My friend texted me this page from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse today: 
Patty Belsick Event Page! Nora Hughes
Freelance work. And a bourbon. Some nights, it's a good life. And these books are incredible. But more on that later.  |
