15 minute read
HOW WE SPEND OUR DAYS - Cynthia Newberry Martin
HOW WE SPEND OUR DAYS - Cynthia Newberry Martin
Alice Elliott Dark spends her days taking baths and hoping for answers. Eric Nguyen starts his days at five am without an alarm. In the warmer months, Kirie Pedersen lives in a tent on a cliff high above the water on the Olympic Peninsula, writing in a series of daily sessions she calls “ticks.”
In the early 2000’s, when blogs were all the rage, I vowed not to start one until I had a published book. Years went by, friends started blogs, and I was still working on my first novel. One day, I was having lunch and learned that yet another writer friend without a book was starting a blog.
Despite never doing anything without deliberation, in less than twenty-four hours, my blog was up and running. I called my brother and asked him for the name of his website guy. The website guy told me to use WordPress. I chose a theme. Then I needed a header and remembered a photo I’d taken of little cottages outside of Provincetown. I also needed a quote. Taped to my desk was the Annie Dillard quote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” And I needed a name, so I pulled the Annie Dillard book off my shelf and found the quote and kept reading. “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.”
“Catching Days,” I thought, and typed it in.
It was Thursday, September 4, 2008, and I kept going, writing my first post. Here’s a bit of it.
Annie Dillard also writes, “There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by…a life spent reading–that is a good life.” Today I’m reading Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk. It was the 1993 Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award. Unfortunately, the Whitbread Awards have gone the way of stadiums and are now referred to as the Costa Book Awards, as in the coffee.
I decided that to get the blog habit started, I would post every day for a month.
I also decided I would make up for not having a published book by mentioning a book in every post I wrote.
Six months went by, and I was still writing posts. I was also noticing that so many of the blogs I read invited guest bloggers to write a post. I wanted to do that too, but I wanted something a little different.
Back in the seventies, my passion was France and all things French. I lived in Tours for a year teaching English to French high school students, and each week I looked forward to Elle magazine. The first page I turned to was always the column dedicated to a day in the life of a woman. Heads of corporations, housekeepers, mothers, salesclerks—each week a different woman wrote about how she spent her days.
Writers, I thought.
I emailed my friend Pam Houston, who I met after taking one of her classes at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and asked her if she’d be the first guest writer. On August 1, 2009, Pam wrote about one of her days.
The day begins at first light when my youngest wolfhound, Liam, sings a song. He throws back his head and howls to greet the day. It sounds a little like a donkey and a little like an elephant… Sometimes I can go back to sleep, but more often than not I get up and read to ease into the day. This week it was Margaret Atwood’s new one, another review for Oprah. The Year of The Flood…. a dystopian future where everything is screwed up all thanks to men and their penises. Very droll in Atwood fashion. Incredible world building.
On September 1, 2009, Dani Shapiro, who I met when I took a class from her at Sirenland, wrote about one of her days.
At the end of the day, family life resumes. The three of us have dinner–casserole leftovers from a Moosewood Cookbook recipe for Michael and me, chicken fingers and pasta for Jacob–and at this time of summer, a Red Sox game is almost always on television. “Mom, did you see that? Mom, look at that catch!” I glance up from my iPhone, juggling the competing interests. These years of having a young child at home, of domestic life, of writing books–these years are full and rich and complicated, and even as the hours pass by too fast, I know one day I will look back at them longingly.
My plan was to start with bigger names to help readers find Catching Days, but my ultimate goal was to highlight lesser-known writers. And I figured, by continuing to invite big names every once in a while, readers would come looking for them and hopefully hang around to find the rest of us. I wanted one writer to lead to another writer to lead to another one.
On December 1, 2012, Dan Chaon, who I met when he was a guest lecturer at Vermont College of Fine Arts, wrote about one of his “days.”
I hate waking up, and I avoid it as much as possible. I have actually built my entire life around not doing it. I have arranged my teaching schedule so that I don’t have any classes until afternoon, and I have trained my dog, Ray Bradbury, to ignore the rising sun and the ringing of neighborhood church bells and the chirpings of nasty little birds.
To elicit the details that connect us as people—walking the dog, taking the kids to school, piles of laundry—I asked each guest to write about a particular day, which of course might include writing or might not. What counted was that they were a writer, and what we wanted to know was how they spent their days.
Dawn Tripp contacted me after she read a review I wrote of another book over at Contrary Magazine. On March 1, 2013, she wrote about one of her days.
[T]his morning at 5 a.m., it is the reader who is with me, in the chair beside my chair downstairs at the kitchen table in the half-dark of the house. As I begin to write into this new scene–an exchange between a famous artist and her sister–I am keenly aware of how I want the reader to feel the intent behind the moment I am drafting. It’s oddly exhilarating to write this way. You are fiercely determined to move this stranger who you have not met, who you might never meet, to lead them through your vision for a story, and to bring them to see, to feel, to be moved by these lines of pencil or type on a page.
At 6, the clock chimes and, as always, it’s a small struggle to put my mind back together, and shift gears. I wake up my boys, fix breakfast, pack lunches, glance at the news, get the kids dressed and wrapped in their coats and out the door to the truck.
Until 2017, in addition to the essay and four photos (one of the writer that is not a professional photo, one inside the house, one outside the house, and one of whatever), I also asked each writer the same three questions.
1. What is the best book you’ve read in the last few months and how did you choose it?
2. Would you give us one little piece of writing advice?
3. What is your strangest reading or writing habit?
But in 2017, a writer pointed out, if you’re a writer, you likely have lots of friends who are writers and sometimes you have lots of friends who have books out at the same time, and that question puts a writer in a bad spot. Which made sense. So in 2017, I brainstormed other questions and now try to mix things up. Although recently, I’ve returned to the obsession/habit question as one I ask each writer.
2017 was also the year of another one of my favorite essays—that of Jericho Parms, who is part of my VCFA writing community and the author of Lost Wax: Essays.
Her day begins with this paragraph:
In the morning: My coffee tastes weak. Outside the ground is still bare but the trees are coming back to life. Buds dabble the branches in chartreuse against the damp fog. Last night I fell asleep reading Nellie Bly, and I woke up this morning thinking of one of her familiar exclamations: “I want to be on the other side of the world!” It’s not even fully light out when I realize this will be one of those days when I battle myself.
From there, Jericho’s essay moves nonlinearly to On my writing desk, In town, and at one point to If this were another day.
In 2012 How We Spend Our Days featured long-time friend, commenter, and supporter of Catching Days, Darrelyn Saloom, who I think I first met on Twitter. Darrelyn wrote about one of her days in November.
Sunshine peeks through bedroom curtains, but the naked floorboards are cold. I slip on a pair of socks, put on the kettle, and comfort my traumatized alarm cat. She follows me onto the back deck where I watch my husband push a wheelbarrow from horse stalls to barn. Then I hear the tractor crank up, and the morning is mine for writing after I walk the dog.
Years later, Darrelyn suggested I read Sharp as a Serpent’s Tooth by Mandy Haynes, the creator and editor of this magazine. I loved it. And in November of 2021 Mandy wrote about one of her days.
But today will be spent on the phone with a wedding coordinator, a call to the venue where the wedding was held, and a conversation with the new bride. These last few months have been hard on all of us, but they’ve also taught me some valuable lessons. As humans, we have to be able to go with the flow. As writers, well, we should never turn down an opportunity to hear a story. Pay attention—there are characters everywhere.
Also in 2021, in December, one of the twenty-five MacArthur Fellows for 2022 contributed a day from his life—the wonderful J. Drew Lanham, who I met virtually when he taught at a Writing by Writers workshop.
As I write this essay, I consider again that I have no submission process, although I’ve been giving that some thought. I try to promote voices that need to be heard. I try to promote writers published by small and indie presses. I try to invite writers whose books I love. I enjoy inviting writers I meet along the literary road. Sometimes publicists send me books in the hopes I’ll invite the writer to do a post. Writers themselves often email asking if they can write a post. But I have to like their work. I have to like the writing. In the end, I do like the randomness of how it all falls together.
When I first started the series, I wrote to two of my literary heroes—Annie Dillard and Ellen Gilchrist—and each one wrote me back, a lovely letter declining my invitation to write about one of their days. But THEY WROTE ME BACK.
Ginger Eager is a Georgia writer I met through the Georgia Writers organization who did the Georgia 50-state bookstore event with me and who I featured in November of 2022 in the How We Spend Our Days series. I noticed the diversity statement she posted on her website and asked her if I could use it on my website.
I am committed to diversity, equity, kindness, and inclusion. These values demand lifelong learning. If you experience something on this website or in my social media presence that does not support my intentions, please let me know.
And I’ve learned a lot through the years. For one, no matter how busy I am or how pressed for time or how small the change is, if I want to edit another writer’s words, I will take the time to ask. I met Rebecca Makkai at Ragdale, and she wrote an essay for the series back in November of 2013. I was running short of time, and I made an edit without double checking. And I knew better. I apologized. She was gracious. And I restored the passage to her beautiful words. But I still feel mortified about it, happy to know I won’t make that mistake again. Here's a little piece of Rebecca’s day.
The day starts with my daughters, newly three and six, screaming about a balloon they’ve both laid claim to. My husband has fed them breakfast, and as I emerge from the shower, he drops them in our room so he can head to work. They decide they want to “do the twist” on the bedroom rug, as they did yesterday. The problem: yesterday I sang them the Sam Cooke song about the twist—but now, as I search the closet for something to teach in, all I can remember is “Let’s Do the Twist” and “Let’s Twist Again,” neither of which is right, I know. And my kids know it too. I manage to dress and locate a Sam Cooke CD and load the girls into the car. We find the song (“Twistin’ the Night Away”—of course!) and I get a moment’s peace.
I also want to apologize to Christopher Castellani every time I see him. I met Chris at a reading in March of 2013. He said he would write about one of his days for the May 2013 feature. But then he got busy with a conference for Grub Street, and May 1 came and went, and I had never not posted on the first and so I didn’t say no problem get to it when you can. I said, I’ve never not posted on the first. He stayed up late that night and wrote it. I posted a day late. And life went on. I apologized. He was gracious.
By 9:00 I walk to the coffee shop around the corner, which charges $2.75 for a small cup of hot water poured slowly and lovingly over grounds. It’s more of a caress, really, what they do to those grounds. It makes me so happy I almost don’t mind the $2.75. I find a table in the atrium next to an outlet, set up my laptop, and stumble through the dark alley of my new novel’s first chapter. Beside me is Tennessee Williams’s Memoirs, which I keep picking up for inspiration. When the barista isn’t looking, I’ll sneak a bite of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’ve hidden in my bag. Three and a half hours gets me a few potentially workable lines, some ideas I’ll likely shoot down tomorrow, and maybe half a scene. I told you: a perfect day.
Sometime after July 1, 2014—maybe January 1, 2015—I started paying writers a small honorarium. Fenton Johnson, who I met as a friend of a friend, explained that paying a writer, even a little bit, shows respect for a writer’s words and respect for an author’s worth—two things I certainly want to show. Here’s an excerpt from Fenton’s day.
I was walking with Pam Houston, the human, and I had been complaining. Non-Southerners do not realize that south of the Ohio objecting to the nature of reality is just a conversational mode–a way of making a particular kind of mouth music that is not intended to carry any larger implications about the speaker’s temperament or frame of mind. Many of the most light-hearted Southerners I know are the most eloquent complainers. Some of them find their ways to becoming writers.
In 2019, when my first novel, Tidal Flats, came out, I moved the How We Spend Our Days series to my new website. At the same time, I decided to stop embedding the photos in the essays and to include them as part of a slideshow at the end of each essay. Little by little, I’m updating the format of older essays.
Another big step came this past January when I also started publishing the series on Substack. Now more readers can find and enjoy the latest essays. Subscriptions are available too. And all essays, including the older ones, are still available on my website, where you will also find a complete list of writers by date as well as alphabetized by first name.
The first essay in the series was published on August 1, 2009. As I write this to you, the most recent essay was published on August 1, 2023. That’s 169 days in the lives of writers—stepping stones of days from 2009 to the middle of 2023.
When I started the series, I never anticipated the peace that would come from having recorded the day of a writer who is no longer with us. I’d like to leave you with a little part of a day from the wonderful Richard McCann, who I met while I was at Vermont College.
Now that time has passed, I write about these moments piece by piece—I write slowly, in the summer, say, at Yaddo or lying by the pool. My practice on ideal days like these? First, a morning latte. Then write a thick paragraph or two. Take a walk, while revising and memorizing the sentence that I believe will come next. Have a second coffee at a street café. Look around at the passers-by, realizing how lucky I am still to be alive. Go back home and write stuff down—enough stuff to give me the confidence to keep moving forward.
