THE CITY OUR WRITING TEACHER: BUILDING A CITY OF THE HEART

After the memorial, our writing group gathered and lit candles in front of a portrait of Les Plesko, painted on an alley wall by a stranger.

by Mary Rakow

Building a City of the Heart is about connecting.   

Last time I wrote about coming undone.  We all do, at some point. When one of the group finds life too much to bear and takes his life, you gather. Les was the author of three novels, “The Last Bongo Sunset” (1995), “Slow Lie Detector” (2009) and “Who I Was” (2012), but he had another manuscript in the works.

Joshua organized the memorial at Beyond Baroque. We flew in from different cities.  Janet and Julianne shepherded Les’s fourth novel,  “No Stopping Train” to publication with Soft Skull. When it came out,  Sammy organized a huge reading from that final novel at UCLA. We each read sections, as did some of Les’s students. Rochelle hosted our intimate gathering in her home where we grieved in private, together. Others set up a website in his honor. Countless acts of generosity. 

We are all broken people. As writers, in our group, we know this. And we hold each other because, first of all, we hold the work of each other.

Between writers, what is love? What is true “community”? What are the marks of it?

Love among writers is sacrificial. It is not competitive. It is a celebration of the achievements of the other. It is protective of the work of the other. It is generous and joyful. 

I wrote last time about writing The Memory Room, my first book even as I came undone year after year, for eight years. How was that possible?  I had a great therapist.  But it was this writing group that pushed me and held me as I shaped that darkness into a beautiful object.

And how did they do that? 

The man who became my publisher lived then in D.C.  The Trade Towers had been bombed. Lying on his office couch one night he read the entire manuscript straight through, over 500 pages, and bought it without asking me to change a single word. How is this possible?

Because of my writing group. They knew every paragraph. And because they wore two hats. They gave me their compassion as my memories came and came and came in their shattered pieces. They held all that but they set it all aside when we began to critique. They took off the hat of compassion and put on the hat of rigor. Simple as that. And that’s the key.

Writing group isn’t about making like-minded friends. It isn’t primarily about having a deadline. It’s certainly not a patty-cake group where everybody flatters everybody else. You get nowhere that way. It’s a group that operates out of love. Love for excellence. Love for the word. Love for literature. And who exercises the rigor that such love demands. That is what building a City of the Heart means. This is what we do when we find the writers who become our family. This is what we receive and this is what we give. And when we do this not only do friendships develop as a consequence but we put into the world work that lasts. Work that is real food. 

This year The Memory Room is in its twentieth year. Is it a best seller? No. It is a dark but not a pessimistic book.  Has it received critical recognition? Absolutely. That’s what we can give each other. Those eyes and ears with that degree of attention. The quality of attention is our greatest gift to the other writers. This is what we must remember. Not to use the other but to love the other. When we do this friendships develop, people write excellent work and we become better as human beings. All at the same time. This is our privilege. This is our opportunity as writers. We should never settle for less.

How did it start? 

You take a class with a brilliant but intimidating teacher. You’re invited into a private workshop. You meet every two weeks.  You pay the $1,000.00. A big decision. You ask, am I for real here? You also pay each session whether you attend or not. But you ALWAYS attend. You ALWAYS have your seven pages. We all did that. You stay until the teacher moves out of state. You form a group with nine others. You meet for several years. You are all trained in the ways of rigorous critique. You feel like you belong to each other. Even though you come from very different educational, economic, social and racial groups. 

Fast forward–

You give readings together of your work in progress. Everyone moves toward completion at different rates. Some have published four books, made films, had their novels made into movies, others are working on their seventh draft of the first book. The speeds vary just like everything else. Twenty years later, you are still each other’s closest critics.

From LA, some, like myself, moved away. Does it matter? No. This city now spreads to Paris, Melbourne, Florida, Orange County, San Francisco.  This City of the Heart. 

As Joshua said in a recent email, we are “glued” to each other. 

This week David sent his radio piece done for Australia’s equivalent of NPR. It’s gorgeous. And short. Treat yourself. Listen to it here: 

https://www.abc.net.au/melbourne/programs/thefridayrevue/david-francis/101449752

When we have built such a city, the love lasts. We know we are receiving love of this kind because we are returned to our biggest self, our at-peace, most expansive self.  

Why do we want to be in the company of writers who bring us to this elevated state of mind and feeling? Because writing–for both the religious person and the non-religious person–is an act of devotion to an invisible good to we alone can see and make and in so doing make visible to others. We need to stay on that individual, radical path. But to do that, to perform that devotion again and again and again, we need a community that keeps calling us back to it. In this way we build a City of the Heart, inside ourselves. And from this city, our best work will come.

Can it happen online only? Why not?  Eliot Li started by writing short stories then migrated to flash fiction.  That’s where he found his people. Here is his most recent interview. It’s brief. He’s very generous toward me, but that’s not the point. Point is, keep looking. Don’t lower your standard. Enjoy!

https://oxfordflashfictionprize.com/2022/09/27/2489/

Writing Exercises/Reflection

1. When have I been in a writing group where I was the least skilled?  If never, why not?  What am I afraid of?
2. Do I join writing groups, etc. to get or to give or to do both?
3. In what ways have I built with other writers A City of the Heart?

***New!  “Office Hours” ***

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Free 15-Minute Edit for writers I haven’t yet worked with. 

Email your tel number with “Office Hours” in the subject line.  [email protected].  

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Office Hours Held Fri.  Oct 7, 11-1pm Pacific Time.

Thank you for your great Comments! See you next time!

Mary 

© Mary Rakow 2022 

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A freelance editor living in the Bay Area, Mary Rakow, Ph.D. works with clients who are both local and global. She is both rigorous and encouraging, insightful and kind.

A theologian with graduate degrees from Harvard Divinity School and Boston College, Mary writes with deep feeling and a questioning faith. This Is Why I Came earned outstanding reviews in The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Commonweal, Christian Century, O Magazine, Ploughshares. It appeared on reading lists for courses at both Princeton and Yale.

Graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from UC Riverside, inducted into Alpha Sigma Nu for her doctoral work, Rakow is a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellow. She received two Lannan residencies and two residencies at Whale & Star, in the studio of visual artist Enrique Martinez Celaya, where she wrote the first book-length treatment of his work, Martinez Celaya, Working Methods (2014).

Rakow’s debut novel, The Memory Room, received outstanding reviews and was shortlisted for the Stanford University International Saroyan Prize in Literature, a PEN USA/West Finalist in Fiction and was listed among the Best Books of the West by The Los Angeles Times.

Mary is a beloved editor and writing coach. She is constantly on the lookout for new writers, both those who are just starting out and those with publications and writing accolades.

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