Writing Takes You Into the Unknown
It's like spelunking, with a light on your hat. … You’re descending into dark and unknown territory and you can never see very far ahead.
–Me, quoted on Salon.com, December 16th, 1996
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About Tobias
Born in Alabama in 1945, Tobias Wolff traveled the country with his peripatetic mother, finally settling in Washington State, where he grew up. As a scholarship student, he attended the Hill School in Pennsylvania until he was expelled for repeated failures...
Causes Tobias Wolff Supports
American Red Cross
International Red Cross
spelunking
I love this image of descent into a dark and unknown (and slippery) place. It helps me immensely at the moment to see this rich metaphor, because I've been feeling my way more than ever before with this new novel. I've come to a few very hard walls. The light on the hat is essential, though, and I guess there's no other way than to trust in what it lights up.
the deep dark
Especially true in memoir writing, Tobias! Sometimes writers try to avoid capturing personal memories that delve into the deepest, dark within. Eventually those hidden crevices are revealed and then, what a relief!
I think of it as peeling my personal onion. Each layer, however thin, intersects with another and yet another. The members of my workshops, senior citizens all, become excited when they discover memories they thought were hidden forever. And can put them down on paper!
SERRA
ps I visited that town of Concrete many years ago...wow!
Spelunking
A good metaphor. Writing can certainly be compared to tunneling. But a writer - one as accomplished as Tobias Wolff - generally is wise enough to bring the proper tools along with him. Flashlight, ropes, first aid kit, etc.
This Boy's Life is a marvelous book. One I'm curious of, because I grew up in a similar environment - a fire breathing dragon of a father - but one I find little interest in writing about. Perhaps it's purely a matter of genre, that I am incapable of writing of family drama. (Could Joyce write Gone with the Wind?) Or perhaps a fear of what might emerge at some turn in the tunnel? Who can say?
Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece, A Long Day's Journey into Night, is another story I have no interest in emulating, as much as I would love to. Perhaps my family just wasn't that interesting.
We all have our own tunnels. And flashlights. Perhaps I'll just have to write about someone else's family...
Writing
Reminds me of the title of Adrienne Rich's book of poetry, Diving into the Wreck.
We all have to take that leap, somehow, somewhere.
Yes, and sometimes you know what's down there will hurt you...
...but you're committed; so you still have to make the trip down before you can come up again.
I fear ...
I fear I may be in need of a new lightbulb!
Meg Waite Clayton
author of THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS, a national bestseller, THE LANGUAGE OF LIGHT, a Bellewether Prize finalist, and the forthcoming THE FOUR MS. BRADWELLS