There are many things I’ve learned about myself during the
past 21 months living abroad in a developing country, so many, in fact, it would
be hard to list them all. At times I
feel as if I’ll take away more from this experience than I’ll leave behind. One
thing I know I've learned is that I like to write and, even more
surprisingly, that people like to read what I have written. Luckily, my schedule has also allowed me to do a
lot of writing and a lot reading. These really go hand-in-hand; it’s hard to do one without the other. It seems that exploring other people’s style,
their rhythm, and their cadence, is an important part of developing your own.
Recently, I read a series of novels by Anne Lamott that
follow a young girl and her family over a 10 year period as she grows from a
sweet little angelic child being raised by an anxious widow to a manipulative
teenage addict who challenges her mother’s new marriage. When reading any series of books, whether it is
Harry Potter or the Millennium series, I always find it interesting to watch the characters grow and change as the storyline evolves. I was happy to come across a fourth book by Lamott in one of our regional house libraries, Bird by Bird, a
non-fiction book that, as its subtitle suggests, offers “some instructions
on writing and life.” The book is
filled with stories about how Lamott became interested in writing and some of
the challenges she’s faced along the way.
It follows the same format she uses when teaching writing classes
at UC Davis, giving new writers tips and tricks for assigning writing tasks,
dealing with perfectionism, discovering characters, and letting plots develop
alongside them. She’s very funny, so in
addition to this being an interesting read it’s also entertaining. One of the first exercises that she suggests
for learning how to craft a story is to give yourself a manageable, short writing
assignment describing a brief moment in intricate detail. She references some advice
her father once gave her brother when he was ten years old and had
procrastinated about writing a report on birds.
He’d had three months to complete the report, but waited until the last
minute to begin it. Seeing his
frustration and despair, their father, who was also a writer, suggested that he
take it “bird by bird”, focusing his writing on the description of each bird
instead of being overwhelmed with the entire assignment. This advice stuck with Lamott and she
recommends it as an exercise for focusing on the details of a single situation
and letting that set the scene to expose characters and settings that can later
be explored. I liked this idea so much that I decided to give it a try. Here is what I came up with:
Having
lived in the midst of the Sahel for the past 2 years, she still had not gotten
used to the intermittent brown-outs that roll through during the hot season. These brown-outs have nothing to
do with electricity, although that’s often a problem as well. Instead, the brown-outs are aptly named because of the color they
change the sky. The hot dust-filled
Harmattan winds that blow in from the north are still as eerie to her now as
they had been the first time she’d experienced them, well over a year ago. This time they came on quickly. She was sitting on her porch admiring a couple of
neighborhood kids who were studying in the outdoor classroom recently built in
the courtyard of her compound when the winds began to pick up and the late afternoon temperature began to rise. Within
minutes, the sky above and the air all around was sepia-toned and filled with
fine particles of sand. After the girls
ran home, she took shelter in her hot cinderblock room closing the door and
shutters behind her and drawing the curtains in a futile attempt to keep silt
and sand from coating her belongings.
Unfortunately, the small cluster flies that usually only torment her in
the early morning while she enjoys a cup of coffee and a crossword puzzle decided to follow her. To
avoid them, she took refuge under the mosquito net on the small twin bed that
occupies a quarter of her room. Luckily,
the power stayed on despite the high winds, so she was able to use her most
valued possession, the oscillating fan she bought when she’d first arrived in
Senegal. As the evening descended, she ventured out a few times to refill her
water bottle and check on the weather.
Not much had changed; it was still hot, still brown, and still
windy.
What seemed stiflingly oppressive
to her, surprisingly did not affect the neighbors who’d come by earlier in the
day to pick up the stackable plastic chairs that she and her host father rent
out for parties and events. Soon after
the 7:30pm call to prayer, she heard the sound tests from their rented speaker
system and then the amplified drums that would continue on throughout the
night. When she returned to her room and
splashed her face to cool off, she noticed that the water returning to the sink
was brown and that her whole body was covered in grit, which prompted her to rinse
off completely. After a quick shower, she
patted herself dry and then crawled back under the mosquito net,
unclothed. Being completely naked in this
conservative Muslim country is a rare event, for anyone, and it felt a bit
risqué. Although women are not shy about
walking around topless, especially in the extreme heat, being totally naked is
something that rarely happens, even in the privacy of one’s own room. She’d recently learned that some women even
keep their bottom halves covered with a crocheted wrap skirt when showering or
giving themselves bucket baths. That
night, however, she did not hesitate to disrobe. It was too hot for her to care about modesty
or cultural integration. She lay on her
bed with arms laid flat above her head and her legs spread wide so that no part
of her skin was touching another part, as if preparing to make a sweaty snow
angel atop her damp sheets. On occasion,
a limb would bend in an attempt to find a comfortable position on the lumpy
bed, but as soon as the skin on either side of the crease of her knee or her elbow
would touch a stream of sweat would work its way down the limb like a raindrop
on a window. The fan positioned just two feet from the net provided some relief as it attempted to dry the
trickle of sweat before it reached its destination.
Sleep
was not an option, at least not until she was thoroughly exhausted. The neighborhood drum-fest was loud and
intrusive. Even her host dad was trying
to drown out the beat of the tam-tams by blasting Miles Davis and John Coltrane
from his computer speakers. The
sounds of both kept her from sleep so she picked up a book and tried to
read. The hum of the fan did not completely
drown out the drone of the mosquitos and flies that zoomed around the net
attracted, no doubt, to the headlamp she was using to read. The wind, the
insects, the drums, the jazz, the heat, all mixed together in the air filling
her room with an amplified agitation.
The insects soon outsmarted the net and many of them found their way through the small holes that had been created when the bracelets she wore to
mark each passing month snagged and caught on the delicate
netting. After a while, smashing mosquitos
between the pages of her book became less fulfilling and more of a hindrance to
her actually being able to read the words in the book, so she turned off the
headlamp and resigned herself to a restless night, pulling a sheet above her
head to keep from being feasted upon in her sleep. Just two more months of this, she
thought, and then the rains arrive.
So, what do you think? Do I have a novel in me? I think I should probably just stick to blogging.
If you're curious about where I've been living, I've recently made an album entitled, "My Digs in Diourbel". Check it out. Also, the "Keur Cheikh Girls Club" album has also been updated with new photos. Both of these live on the My Photos tab, but you can also click on the links above.
