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Amelie and Apples

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Last week was my 23rd birthday. Birthdays are my favorite holidays. Not mine solely, but all birthdays in general. How special it is to celebrate the very day in history when a person you love didn’t exist for one moment and then suddenly did. I was nervous for this birthday. Mostly because it was my first time celebrating it really away from home and family. And yet, my nerves were for naught. The night’s festivities brought eight terrifically thoughtful and talented ladies from my MFA program together. It’s incredible to me that just after a month of knowing each other, we can connect on such a familial level. We went out for sushi at the local Asiana House and then came back home to watch Amelie, one of two movies in the world I could watch forever. It was wonderful.

Speaking of adventures and familial love, yesterday my closest friends here and I went to Peck Farm Orchard in East Montpelier to go apple picking and walk through the corn maze. I took a lot of pictures, because the Vermont landscape in autumn just begs to be photographed. The honeycrisps were magical – they are the closest thing to experiencing solid apple cider. Two of my friends had never been to an apple orchard before. To see their faces brighten at the simple pleasure of crunching into a hand-picked apple was so worth it!

Today, I’m working most of the day on writing a story for class, which hopefully turns into a novel. I love the main character and am really excited with playing with the interplay between language and format. We are to turn in a maximum of 25 pages for a workshop, which is difficult because my original idea for this story was in terms of a novel structure. I think it’s harder to condense a novel idea into a story, rather than finding the pleats in a short story to expand it into a novel. But, I am focused and determined to give this short story my all. Perhaps, I’ll make a big push in the novel for NaNoWriMo. Note to self: I need to create a story playlist on Spotify. This is a tool I discovered a few years ago. Organizing songs that get me into the mood of the story and the mind of the characters really helps me write and visualize scenes. (If you don’t already read the LitHub playlists inspired by classic novels, I suggest you check it out now! Here’s the link for Lolita, To the Lighthouse, Beloved, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

Other updates: I should probably clean my studio (how it’s so easy to put this off) and I have three various freelance projects to work on. I finished Tales of Falling and Flying and loved its simplicity and absurdist-spun fables. Now, I’m double-fisting The Catcher in the Rye and The Areas of My Expertise. They are definitely for different moods. Catcher is useful for the particular voice I’m trying to capture in my own story, and the intellectual, but superbly preposterous made-up facts of The Areas of My Expertise is the exact silliness I need to read to help me go to sleep at night. Perhaps next on my to-do list is to also re-read Einstein’s Dreams, which is one of my all-time favorites.

And eat lots of apples, of course!

books! tacos! gala!

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

When the director of my MFA program announced that any student who wanted to attend the Third Annual Vermont Book Award Gala could go for free if we volunteered to set up chairs and hang up coats, I jumped at the chance. Who am I to resist a reason to dress up and dance?

First, a little background on the history of the event. The Vermont Book Award is a $5,000 literary prize created by VCFA to celebrate the literature of Vermont. To qualify, a book must be a work of outstanding literary merit by a Vermont writer. Authors and poets are nominated by Vermont independent booksellers, as well as publishers. From a selection of over 400 nominees, a panel of judges narrows the list down to eight finalists. The winner is then selected from those finalists and announced at a fancy schmancy gala in the fall.

Which brings me to Saturday night! I’m not sure if the gala can be properly described to you, but I will do my best, and trust me when I say it was amazing.

The event was hosted in the VCFA Alumni Hall. Now this is New England, so even the alumni hall has a “stable/barn” feel to it, especially with the wooden beams and rafters. But, once the party started, this was absolutely no barn. Picture caramel wooden floors perfect for dancing; colossal brick loft walls; pane glass windows letting in vitamin D and light, and then later, blanketed by luxurious velvet indigo curtains. Surrounded by a 20-foot spread of charcuterie and finger food was a centerpiece of potted trees, with fairy-lit trees tangled around boughs, and stacks on stacks of gloriously dusty, collectible books.

We emerging writers took in the same precious air in that hall with literary notables, such as Katherine Paterson (of Bridge to Terabithia fame) and last year’s Book Award winner, Major Jackson. A most humbling feeling indeed. We drank cocktails called Anne of Vert Gables and snacked on scrumptious delectables from Montpelier’s own Mad Taco. Later, we danced until our feet were bleeding to Burlington singer Kat Wright and her band, The Indomitable Souls. Love her raw, jazzy and soulful style, much in the vein of Adele and Amy Winehouse. You can spend hours watching her band’s videos on YouTube—they are so good!

The moment we all were waiting for was truly titillating. Standing in a room filled with over 200 people, all witnessing eight terrific readings by the finalists. We gave a toast with our free prosecco (*yum!*) like it was New Year’s Eve. In the end, it was Jensen Beach who won the award for his newest story collection, Swallowed by the Cold. I give my heartiest congratulations to him, as well as to all of the other finalists. They are all worthy of winning in my eyes.

What an entrance into the public world of being a writer! I am most grateful to everyone who spent so much time and effort in planning and coordinating this beautiful literary evening, and to Kat Wright and the local vendors and all the deliciously lovely writerly folk who attended. I was so honored to be a part of it and am very much looking forward to the Fourth Annual Gala!

 

 

On the Cusp of Autumn

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

First weeks are hard. There are countless adjustments to be made: new time schedules, meeting new people, figuring out where you need to be at what time, and of course, there are tons of assignments to be done. It is imperative to keep track of what is being asked of you, because your body and mind are surely being asked to stretch into a zillion directions. (Carl Sagan, I’m sorry, we are not made of star stuff, we are made of Silly Putty.) But, as a master of the sticky-note, my desk is plotted like a military graveyard with periwinkle and teal Post-Its, describing each and every task I need to accomplish (with only minor coffee stains coloring the text).

I’ll quickly share a few of my greatest experiences this week during class:

–Julianna Baggott, my Forms professor, is a prolific writing superstar. She has perfected something called “Efficient Creativity”: the art of writing without being at your desk. By this, she means that she is always creating scenes in her head while taking care of children or driving in the car or walking through the grocery store, so when she sits down to her computer, she already knows what she is going to write. Because of this method, she has written 20+ books while taking care of four children, holding two professorial gigs, and managing to do other human things, like sleep, eat, relax, exercise, go out. One of her goals for our class is to help us become more efficient writers and through that, she believes in running writing drills, which I actually love! For me, drills aren’t only for me to practice my skill and actually WRITE, but they are an opportunity to play and experiment in a pressure-free space. For example, one of the drills included using our own memories inspired by random words (think: snake, teeth, scar, bad job, fire) and then threading those memories together to create an outline for a short story. In addition to these drills, we also read and critically respond to fabulous short stories: “The Rememberer” by Aimee Bender, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” by Tim O’Brien, “My Man Bovanne,” by Toni Cade Bambara, and “The Owls,” by Lewis (Buddy) Nordan.

-My latest room decorating project was also inspired by Baggott. She suggested that instead of constantly worrying about how we compare to the others in the MFA program, we should be looking up at the horizon, at those writers and artists who we admire and strive to emulate. She said we should print out their pictures and hang them above our writing space so we can always have their spirit near us. For me, it was very important to have my wall enriched with the faces of inspiring and innovative female artists—the women who weren’t afraid to create something new and push back on any boundaries set on art. This is only the first half that I’ve been able to put up so far, but there are more coming! I may need more wall. 

-This week also saw my first day on the job as Managing Editor of VCFA’s Hunger Mountain annual literary and art journal. I gratefully received this position by winning the Editorial Fellowship and I already know that this is a place I was meant to be. I love the energy and camaraderie that is felt in that office, as I work alongside Editor-in-Chief, Miciah Gault and Program Assistant, Lizzy Fox. I love that I have a direct connection with all of the writers who contribute to the magazine. My first correspondence with many of the writers was to congratulate the winners of our 2017 writing contests. I am so happy to be able to contribute my energy and ideas into creating a tighter-knit writing community. Writers need to support each other and this position will allow me to help make other writers shine in the unique glow that VCFA has to offer. I work 10-15 hours a week on top of classes, and do a little bit of everything on the journal, so again, sticky notes are a savior.

In other news, what with all of the homework to do, during nights and weekends, I am in a sort of cocoon of coffee and green tea and writing and reading, accompanied by the sonic comforts of Philip Glass, Zoe Keating, Tycho, and Emancipator.

It feels like it could trip over autumn at any moment. It’s summer sunny and yet the air is getting crisper, like someone above poured extra bits of oxygen into our airy fishbowl. I am loving wearing layers of sweaters and jackets and scarves. My nose is on full alert for pumpkin spices. It is my favorite time of year, all cinnamon and leaves and the sound of breeze rustling the earth. Any day now.

But for now, there are still sunflowers and beautiful birch trees and that’s okay, too.

This Post Has Cats

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

Pictures of my cat, Saki. She, too, is a bibliophile, but they often make her sleepy.

I’m really going to miss this little beaut of a feline while I’m at school. Luckily, she is one of my mother’s favorite photographing subjects, so I’m sure I will receive many pictures of my dear Sak throughout the year. She is such a lovely, fluffy little thing.

In other news, here’s what I’ve been reading/watching/listening to:

  • Loved loved loved The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. I know I’m a little late to the party on this one, but it has already been added to my Books I Love list. As soon as I finished it, I immediately wanted to read it all over again. It is truly a book written for writers and really has had me thinking of how to craft my own stories in the future.
  •  I took two DVDs out of the library the other day: Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited. I definitely recommend both, but for very different reasons. Mrs. Danvers was so much more terrifying in the movie version than she was in my own head when I read Du Maurier’s novel. The special features on the Rebecca disc are lovely and informative, especially when they draw parallels to Jane Eyre. As for the other, I do so love a Wes Anderson film. They are always composed with all the weird and laughter and awkward and emotional truth that makes me feel oddly satisfied when the end credits begin to roll.
  • Musically, I’m leaping with glee because Emancipator just released a new song off their forthcoming album. Emancipator is always my go-to music for writing, walking, pretty much any time of day. This new song does not let me down. You can listen to it here.

I am very much ready for it to cool down and be nicely autumnal again. After all, I am an October baby and I always feel most in my element when I’m surrounded by colored leaves and fuzzy sweaters and pumpkin-flavored things and crispy air.

Blueberry Poetics

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever sat and stared at a blueberry before? I’m not talking about just scoping through the box to pick out the plump ones. I mean, really, have you ever held it good and long in your palm, felt the smooth skin, the wrinkled puckers, the fluttering five armed star protecting its eye. Have you put it to the light, turned it round on all sides, juxtaposed the blue with the greenery of its birthplace? Have you taken it into the darkness? Rubbed it between your palms, pinched it with your forefinger and your thumb to allow the smallest drip of juice to squeeze through the blue skin’s pores, the darkness heightening your other senses.

It is a rainy day and the day after a total eclipse, so naturally I’m feeling pensive. As I took a few blueberries out of the fridge to have with my breakfast this morning, I stopped my pawing hand to notice the many colors inside this “blue” berry basket. No longer was I seeing blue, but there was a stone gray and a deepwater navy and a jade green and a flush plum. In fact, I was surprised how I had never noticed that young blueberries look so similar to itty pomegranates in shape. I grew fascinated by the berries’ closed-up belly buttons, where once a stem tethered them to a highbush. I held them in my hand, gently, tenderly, and brought them to a table, where I immediately set them up for a photo shoot. The light from the curtainless window gave the berries a frosty glow and the little orbs became not berries, but something bigger, celestial, almost like planetary objects clustering sporadically.

This morning, I had a lesson in beauty. That something so simple as a blueberry can be beautiful and wondrous and mysterious if you take the time to really look at it, to know it, to open yourselves to its every angle. Perhaps it was out of this kind of understanding and respect to the fruit that I couldn’t bear to eat them after our mindful  meditation, and so I carried the berries back to the fridge and put them back into their plastic habitat.