Deborah Bogen

This semester I've been doing some guest spots at the college level - and it's been a wonder and a joy. After decades of trying to learn to write I find I have something to pass on. Those of you who are teachers by trade may find that laughable, but it's taken me till now to know, to really know, that I've lived with this art long enough to say something real about it to new writers. To me that feels both holy and outrageous.

This morning I'm giving a workshop on generating new material. We'll use a great Stanley Plumly poem, one of Lynn Emanuel's and one from Beth Ann Fennelly. An added bonus - the preparation for the session sent me into a new poem of my own. (Thank you to the poets and the I Ching).

The Bible says "In the beginning was the word." I say, in the end is the word as well -- the words that lifted me from a pit and helped me know truth about what is wrong while celebrating what is right in the world. I am grateful. Now off to the holy and outrageous. Read More 

Okay. You're right. That's a bad (a very bad) blog title.

But today the writing was so much fun, inventive and lively and sensible somehow, while just the other day I was slogging through the swamp of confusion I call my outline, pretty sure I was in no way ready to write this book. Even as an exercise. Was it sleep, coffee or luck that turned that around?

I really don't know, but I do know this. I can't let the fun factor count for too much if I want to write this book. Or any book. If I want to do it well I have to keep at it the way I'm keeping at weight lifting. Day after day. Not looking for a fast change - but moving ahead - pas a pas.

For me that means packing up the machine and getting to the quiet table and listening to my characters and taking lots of notes, and checking and rechecking my "facts" (did they eat cabbage in Paris in 1230 A.D. - probably, but I should actually know that.) It means tracing and retracing the paths of these alive-to-me people who will all come together eventually if the outline is right. Oddly, it also means loosening up, floating along some afternoons so that things I missed on a fast day get a chance to surface.

It means getting deeper inside the story, trusting my instincts if something seems to work, but checking back later to reassess. And for me, it means cutting sentence after sentence from first drafts because I intend to write some good sentences in this book.

And it's a little scary putting that out there.

So, tomorrow is another day. Another chance - get a good night's sleep, my friends, and may your writing go well. Read More 

The first time I heard someone (you, Doug Anderson) describe developing a writing practice with this phrase in mind, I was - well - a little grossed out. But that's me. Prudish, uptight, etc....

However, as I got set up at my table in the Cafe today and opened my laptop something in me relaxed. A/C - check. Good table - check. Coffee - check. Yes, I'm here, where I write the book. I can write it right now. I won't be phoning the Home Depot people or checking on the wash or making lists.

And I best not be blogging either - time for the book.

Wishing you well,

Deborah  Read More 

So who am I writing for? If I was honest I'd admit, it's mostly for me. If I was being fair I'd say, but also it's for you. Is that a boring answer? Maybe, but as I work on the prologue for the new book I realize I am being a better writer this time than I was when I wrote the prologue for the last book. I'm writing and reading and re-writing and reading and looking things up and re-writing and reading again and I'm getting someone else's take. I am doing the things you may already do all the time but I realized - and it shocked me - that I did not do this the last time around.

When I wrote the prologue for Witch I wrote it quickly, mostly as a way of getting past the fear that I couldn't write the book at all. I dashed it off - as if it was an exercise at a Monday night writing group. I got through it so I could begin the real work of writing the book. It was that mad dash across the sand before you throw yourself under the first ocean wave and begin to swim.

So, my apologies if the prologue to Witch seems a little drab. I am (either by nature or by a perversity of my own design) an autodidact. This is not something I necessarily recommend but neither do I wholeheartedly condemn it. There are pluses and minuses to both sides of that coin. What it meant here is that when I sat down to write my first novel at a fairly ancient age I did the thing I know how to do. I threw myself at the project with a will and hoped that my open eyes would make me better by and by.

Before I settled down at the machine this morning I spent some time in the garden with my friend, Paula. It was more fun this year because I finally hired someone who knows more than I do about plants and soil and light. I am re-thinking this autodidact thing in a serious way. Maybe I can get some of you to be beta readers for the new book. You can tell me what I need to fix. Read More 

So this morning I'm being good - I'm taking a Pump class. That's one of those classes where a perfectly toned (much younger) woman takes you through a set of weight training exercises and says encouraging things like "I know you can do this..." and "come on, tighten your abs and lift that leg higher." Part of me is with the program - I'm old - I have to stay on top of the muscle thing. Left to it's own devices muscle tone simply fades away. But part of me is thinking about a work out pal named Marie who is also there for our little torture session. I owe Marie. When no one else was interested she read a draft of "Witch" and told me to keep on keeping on.

There we are, Marie and me, trying to keep our spirits and our triceps up and suddenly my mind leaves the room. I' m elsewhere and elsewhere is the second book, "The Hounds of God." Why am I there and - more to the point why is Marie there - Marie at age 17. In the book she's not (of course) from Pittsburgh. This Marie is French. She's like my friend Marie but young, Parisian, and falling for one of my characters - the one who I thought might become a priest. A whole plot point unfolds in about 6 minutes and I am doing none of the work (well, I am lifting the damn weights) but it's Edric and Marie who are telling me the story. They are suddenly alive and insistent and actually - they're right. She belongs in the book.

Where does this stuff come from? I thought I had all the characters worked out - and certainly most of the twists and turns the story needs. But Marie and the tale itself are hard to ignore - so once again it's going to be different that I had planned.

Does this happen to you?  Read More 

It is a coincidence, I know, that "home" and "om" rhyme, but I like to ignore that fact and take a deep breath of Pittsburgh -- of this particular house, this street, this desk, this window, this view. I like to relax into another long work event called "writing a novel" while going about the daily work of laundry and phone calls and dental appointments. There's no way I can make the writing go quickly (though I hope to make it go well) and there's no way to make it less scary, but there is this good place called home in which to do the work.

Stories do a lot to stitch the world together. When I started "Witch" I just took off writing and hoped the story and the characters knew what they were doing. It was energizing and exhausting at the same time, living for weeks in a strange dream world that created itself daily (and nightly) in my mind. The characters grew like real people, becoming more concrete, more determined, more willful until eventually I often found myself taking dictation from someone I was pretty sure I had made up.

So here I go again into the narrow crowded stinky streets of 13th century Paris where somehow men were able to conceive of great cathedrals to both inspire and control an illiterate populace. How did they manage the heights, the arches, the story-laden sculpture and the glorious stained glass? And at what costs were those spires driven into the sky? How many bones are in those foundations?

I hope you are off to a summer of good work, gardens and writing and music and the like. May our paths cross. And may you be well. Read More 

"I'm writing in Paris" certainly sounds good. That was part of the plan But here I am in one of the world's greatest cities and between the churches, the museums, the food, the parks, the people on the street - I can't seem to write a thing. There's too much to experience and wonder at.

But haven't most of my best-laid plans come undone? And hasn't that usually worked out well? "Trust the process and keep a notebook handy" are perhaps the wisest words for writers. For this one anyway.

In my dream world all the cities have Metros where people can scowl at each other as they fly from place to place so that geography loses its death-grip on art and culture and we can all hear each other read...often. So, let me sign off with one more bit about trusting process:

Me: "Funny, I seem to be working on poems."
Jim: "Yes, that usually happens when you decide to quit writing poetry altogether."

May your day be full my friends. A bientot!  Read More