{Studio, Improvised}
During my VCCA residency, I wound up doing a lot of writing over at Sweet Briar’s library. Their quiet, wood-paneled browsing room gets flooded with daylight, and I loved working alongside all the lush color and texture of wood and textile. It wound up being a great space to escape and play through the long draft of the book’s new story.
With my spring VCCA residency wrapping up, my mother flew down to Richmond to join me for an impromptu mother-daughter road trip back up to the (reportedly still snow-patched) north.
We headed right for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which I’ve been dying to see, and even more so since I found out about the Chihuly glass installation commissioned for their courtyard. The sculpture garden did not disappoint: lush and green and spacious, and full of modern pieces installed in dynamic interaction with their surrounding space. People from Richmond had wandered in for lunch at brightly painted cafe tables scattered on the various patios and for picnics on blankets on that hearty green expanse of grass.
We headed up to Amuse for the most sumptuous lunch I’ve had at any museum restaurant (I’m still dreaming of that coq au vin and fresh-baked herbed bread). And there’s nothing quite like enjoying an exceptional meal with an aerial view of Henry Moore and red glass-reed Chihuly.
Our favorite piece in the garden wound up being Jun Kaneko’s ceramic Untitled, Mission Clay Pittsburgh Project, which you can see in the first picture and which, along with some of Kaneko’s other work, is the largest freestanding sculpture made of clay. The medium is so unexpected; there is an organic feel to this even form, and Kaneko evokes an expressive depth through the splashed glaze and richly patterned surface. We were transfixed.
{The Paris Review + Chai Green Tea}
The interview with Hilary Mantel in the new Paris Review is amazing. And it’s such ridiculously good timing as I work on this book of historical fiction and wrestle through its myriad attendant challenges.
Mantel talks pretty frankly about this writing process:
When I come to write what I call a big scene, especially in… any historical material, I prepare for it. Whatever I’ve done on that scene, I put aside. I read all my notes, all my drafts, and all the source material it’s derived from, then I take a deep breath, and I do it. It’s like walking on stage — with the accompanying stage fright.
And, she continues:
When I’m writing a novel about historical figures, I have to be everybody. It’s strenuous…. When people are real, though dead,… I consider them my responsibility.
It is a heady business, this writing fiction set in the past. So happy to have come across this new interview.
Plus, perennially grateful for the stash of green tea my mother sent to Virginia for my residency. The chai in this blend cuts any bitterness when, writing along mid-scene, I invariably forget and leave it over-steeping.
{Lakeside, Sweet Briar}
This spring I’m down at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts for a residency. I’m already well into a long draft of the book’s second-to-last story. With all the bookwriting, there’s not a lot of mojo left for blog posts. But there are long walks to the Sweet Briar boathouse with its spindling floors and greening, weather-gnawed clapboards and the music of the lake on those old woodwind pilings. The perfect antidote to these lengthy days (and late nights) of writing.
Starlit Nights 