“Just Do Your Own Work:” On the 10th Anniversary of Séamus Heaney’s Death

Photo credit: Sean O’ Connor, 2009

As a 17-year-old undergraduate student in Dublin, I was lucky enough to have Séamus Heaney as my professor and the chair of our college English Department.

It’s funny the things you remember about someone. In addition to his poetic talent and genuine kindness, Séamus Heaney was the first man I ever saw wearing western-styled cowboy boots. Also, he could tell a great, great story—mostly about rural life in Ireland.

One day, I remember him telling this long scéal about a farmer who dithered about whether he should or shouldn’t go across the fields to knock on a neighbor’s door to borrow a shovel.

As a rural kid, who felt outclassed and intimidated by that south Dublin campus, I hung on Heaney’s every word. By story’s end, I think I was the only student in that classroom laughing my head off and longing to hear more.

Now, almost 40 years later, here I sit here in America, where, on the 10th anniversary of Mr. Heaney’s death, I can still hear him reading Beowulf to us in that second-floor classroom. On that day, I was far too young and definitely too immature to appreciate my own privilege.

Writing Advice That Lives On

Long after I graduated, in two separate media interviews, Séamus Heaney gave some writer advice that resonated with me back then and, to this day, has become a kind of touchstone for my own work.

First, just before he was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, I read an interview in some magazine in which he spoke about his then-dual life as a working professor and as one of the world's greatest modern poets.

Back then and now, as a writer with a day job, I loved the part of the interview where he stated that he had always considered it his first duty to earn a living and provide for his family.

Later, in a separate interview, Heaney told the reporter that, as a writer, we shouldn’t let ourselves get distracted by—or compete with—other writers. Instead, Heaney counseled, “just do your own work.”

Speaking of work, read Heaney’s poem, “Digging” at the website of The Poetry Foundation. Earlier this summer, when I was invited to recite or read a poem for our local “Favorite Poem” event, “Digging” was my automatic choice—though, of course, I could never read it like the master poet and reader himself.

Listen to the Nobel Laureate poet recite “Digging” here.

Rest in peace, Séamus Heaney, (1939- 2013).

Writing about Tough Stuff (and then getting on with your day?)

I'm writing my first book-length memoir. It's something I thought I would never, ever write--that I would never have the stomach for.  But I am writing it. I feel compelled to write this story about my leaving Ireland at age 24 to come and live in the U.S.  

The story is, of course, about much more than the cultural bloopers, the adventures and misadventures of my early years in America.  

I've just drafted and printed the first 50 pages. I have no idea if it will ever get published.

Last Monday, I flipped back through the "easier" stuff to write and insert a really difficult scene.  How difficult? I, a woman who (mostly) breezes through the transatlantic airport departure lounge completely dry-eyed, sat here at my computer weeping.

Then, this morning, almost a week later, I got up, made coffee and tackled the second-most difficult scene. As soon as I began to write Difficult Scene 2, I instantly sank into another bout of  melancholy.

2013-06-15 11.27.38

Surely this is a kind of willful psychosis?  Surely, on an ordinary American Sunday, a day when the sun is shining through my writing-studio window, it would be easier and healthier not to revisit or revive the past. To simply stay in the present?

But for better or worse,  I've written both scenes. In doing so, I've committed to typed words one of the saddest and loneliest times of my adult life.

Writing these scenes--actually the whole book so far--has taught me that sometimes, we commit our worst acts of cowardice, our most heinous acts of negligence against ourselves.

So I'm done.    I'm free to get up from this desk and go about the rest of my normal American Sunday.   

Or am I?

Thanks (giving) for my writing life

"It’s Thanksgiving,” he said down the payphone. His American voice sounded woken-up cranky.  "So my roommates are off work and gone home. ‘Like, Thanksgiving's a holiday over here.”  Oh, come on, I wanted to say.  I mean, with nobody getting born or killed or risen from the dead,  just how big could this 'holiday' of yours really be?  The year was 1986. The era: way, way pre-cellphone. The setting: My native Ireland.

But only for one more month. That day, the day before Thanksgiving, 1986,  the American Embassy had issued me a temporary visa. My lucky day. How lucky? I had even found an un-vandalized payphone to call across the Atlantic to one of my expatriate  friends. Now that I had my visa, I needed a landing pad in the land of the free.

I watched the last of my money clink into the payphone slot. “Is there a message?” The man asked.

“Yes,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “Please tell my pal Mary that I’ll ring again next week. When she’s back from … um … this ... Thanksgiving." “Sure,” he said. Then ... Clunk.

Standing in that phone box, I was one of the 19% of unemployed young Irish people. I was among the estimated 30% of college graduates for whom there were no suitable jobs in our own country.  And we're not talking "dream job" or "creative job." In fact, I didn't even know what these terms meant.

As an unemployed person--then and now--you don’t feel like part of an unemployment statistic or a unified group.  There's just you. There’s just you and your shame and your assumption that everyone else—especially your old college friends—all have jobs. And those friends who have moved overseas? Yup, they have jobs, too. And new jobs mean new friends—the kind of friends who invite you home to their family for secular-sounding American holidays that aren't named for a saint or a savior.

Even more than a job, I needed a place to be—somewhere far away from that damp, November afternoon in Ireland.  Oh, yeah, as I left that phone box to walk through Dublin's city center, I knew it in my soul: I needed a life.

But there’s one big advantage to being 24 and jobless.  Your emigration to-do list is really short.

Get yourself a temporary American visa. Check. Empty your savings for a transatlantic airline ticket. Check.Start saying ‘goodbye’ to your family. Check.Track down an expatriate friend to lend you a couch and a place to stay.

Um … well … I was working on that last one.   But I couldn't work on it until this Thanksgiving thing was over, when I’d scrape up enough courage and spare change to call across the Atlantic again.

A month after Visa Day, I landed in JFK Airport, New York on a freezing afternoon. I had a backpack and a borrowed $200 and yes, a place to stay.

I never did get to California, at least, not to live. From New York I took a Trailways bus three hours upstate, where, as an act of mercy, a family member had set me up with his American friend. That American friend, a man I had never met before, would  pick me up and put me up until I got on my feet.

In America, I went and found me some jobs. I became a waitress, a bartender, a secretary (when we still called it that), a college administrative person, a marketing assistant, a substitute elementary school teacher (quelle disaster!) and ... well, a host of other things. One year, by the time Tax Day rolled around, I submitted a whopping nine W2 forms. I went back to grad school at night. And, even with a strange accent and with substantial holes in my resume, even during the most recent U.S. recession, I managed to stay (mostly) employed.

But did I really like any of my jobs? Did any of them feed me or my vague, dreamy hope of one day being a writer? As an immigrant and as a child of working class parents, there were many, many years before I even let myself consider these questions.

My writing and editorial skills led to better and more fulfilling jobs. Almost at the same time, I began submitting my writing to literary magazines. Suddenly, the rejection slips were intermingled with a few "we'd-like-to-publish" notes. Eventually, and still with a jittery disbelief, I found myself with a dual career as a creative writer and as communications professional.

kitchencounter

Yesterday morning, as I prepared for my 25th Thanksgiving in America, and before I left for my office and job,  I took my cup of coffee to the kitchen counter.

In my iPhone, I went through my last minute Thanksgiving list:

Turkey? Check.Cranberries? Check. Sweet potatoes? Check.A really good writing life?  Check. Check.

--

A Reading Life: Thank You

Last week, I contributed to this wonderful blog, The Books They Gave Me, in which readers get to "reflect on the books given to us by loved ones." For my contribution, I decided to write about my first ever gift of a children's book by the hugely popular British author, Enid Blyton.  In 1970, a beloved aunt gave me the 1966 edition of "The Hollow Tree House." I'm sure my aunt didn't know it then, but her gift of a paperback children's novel started a lifelong love of reading--and writing.

In terms of time input and multiple drafts, the "Books They Gave Me" post was an absolute beast.  This mini essay took several rounds of scribbled bedside notes and balled-up yuck drafts.  In the end, I found myself keeping it short, sweet and to the point.

Why was this piece more difficult to write than, say, a 3,000-word personal essay or a 1,500-word feature?

In effect, I was penning a long overdue thank-you note not just for a gift, but for a life.

Over 42 years ago, I finished that children's novel and looked around for another.  I craved trips to the town library. In between our trips to town, I re-read the books I had previously read.

After that first book, there was no turning away, no defection from this new and thrilling world, this universe of words and people and places and sensibilities that were a million miles away from my childhood home and our small farm in south Mayo in the west of Ireland.

I read my way through a rural, dreamy childhood. I read my way through the turbulent teens. I've read on planes and trains. I've read in bed.   I've read my way up to and through a hospital surgical procedure. I read in the bathroom--even the stinky public ones.  I've read through broken romances and ... more broken romances (Men? Who needed 'em anyway?).  I read after my cat died. I read in the waiting rooms of the Irish hospitals where my late parents spent their final days.

Reading calms me. Reading thrills me. Reading is how I understand the world around me and the places I've been and never will be.  Reading is how I seek to understand myself.  Reading tells me what to believe, what to say.  Reading begets my public arguments and my private joys.

Across two continents, multiple jobs, two college degrees, 17 house moves, 5 cats and many, many different dress sizes, books have been the constant--the constant happy.

How could we ever adequately thank someone for such a gift?

What are your early reading memories? Feel free to share in the comments (below).

Maeve Binchy: Lessons for All Writers

maveb

This week, the news spread via the international media and the Internet that popular writer Maeve Binchy has died after a short illness. Rest in peace, Maeve. And thank you for all those loveable and highly readable  stories and books.

I didn't know Maeve Binchy--at least not personally.

Once, she was the judge of a short-story contest in which my entry made second place. So I can guess she had good taste, yes? Also, I once flew back home from Ireland to Boston while sitting next to an off-duty airline stewardess. Needless to say, we got chatting. And needless to say, I got her to spill about who she's waited on and what they're like.

She said Maeve Binchy was a joy.

My first and best memory of this iconic Irish writer was an interview on a Saturday-night T.V. show in Ireland.  I couldn't have been more than 17 or 18 (was I 20?) at the time, and Maeve  Binchy was a comparitively neophyte published writer.

From that T.V appearance, I remember two things:

1. She assured the interviewer that writing was really like sitting in a pub and just telling someone a story. It was that exciting and that uncomplicated.

2. I remember her extraordinary warmth and grace--and for some reason, this came as a shock.

Can You Be Quotable, Famous and Nice?

Until Maeve, our iconic Irish writers--our Joyces, our Becketts our Kavanaghs et al--had been ... well ... mostly male. And, gender aside, our national writers had been quotable, talented and erudite--yes-but what had they taught us about being or playing nice? About combining  grace with literary fame?

So this is what I remember most about Maeve Binchy. Not her books, not her plots, not her characters, not her books-turned-feature films or astonishing literary output. But her grace.

Take a look at this week's  newspaper tributes to Maeve Biinchy's life and death, and it's clear that, beyond the works and awards, her grace and charm didn't go unnoticed.  The term "popular" described way more than her 40-million in worldwide book sales. These good manners, this altruistic consideration of others--her readers, the airline worker, the T.V. interviewer. These are the hallmarks, the legacy of a truly "good writer."

And of course, this leads us to ask: What if she'd been just as successful but also one of those ice-queen, prima donna writers?  This week, would we flood the Internet and media with our memories and our heartfelt tributes?

No. Or if we did, we would just write the usual "life and work" tributes. We would write and speak about her in that distanced, awe-struck way in which we pay tribute to other impressive but inanimate constructs like .. oh ... say ... the pyramids of Egypt or the Taj Mahal or Donald Trump.

To me, the way in which Maeve Binchy conducted herself on-screen, in life, on air or in the air is just as important--actually more so--than her status as a bestselling woman writer.

Should You Come Out (as a writer) at Work?

It's happened again. This morning, my Google Alert told me that my name had been mentioned somewhere out there in the cyber galaxy.

Was it a glowing online review? Some writer blogger mentioning or  (or damning--who knows?) my book for writers? Some agent who had come upon my last novel and now, she or he had a question or a quibble or a hot writers' advance for the next book?

It was none of these.

Instead, it was a press release that I posted at work as part of my job as a communications director for a non-profit here in Massachusetts.

Dang. It's not that I'm disappointed that the search engines are picking up my work-generated press releases, but I don't like this public link between my paid work (aka, the day job) and my life as a creative writer.

I hate when that happens. In fact, I do everything I can to not have that happen, to keep  my day job and my writing life separate.  So I never stand in the lunch room blathering about last night's rough draft. Or I never announce a new publication.

2011-10-20_19-50-56_853

I don't invite my colleagues to any of my public readings or panel discussions.

I never bring one of my books to work, and I never, ever mention my workplace on Twitter or on my author's Facebook page. Sometimes, when and if a colleague reads a piece of mine or sees my name in the local newspaper (the arts, not the business section), I grow suddenly bashful and embarrassed, as if I've been caught out in a secret.

Why?

Mostly, I like to honor the requirements and ethics of my professional life and workplace. I feel grateful to have a job I like with colleagues I respect.  But then, I don't write anything salacious or pornographic or outrageous. I don't write on the job.  So what's the harm in sharing my life with those people with whom I wait in line for the coffee machine?  Just as they tell me about their kids and their kids' birthday parties, why can't I share my extra-curricular life?

Mostly, I want my colleagues to see me as fitting and fulfilling the role I'm paid for. So I hesitate to introduce another variable of myself, to charge them with seeing me in another and separate light.

And make no mistake: They are separate. The worker me and the writer me are very different. Especially on those self-effacing and writer-blocked days, I like the worker me better. It's a far more confident and competent version.  It's a version that gets things done.

But mostly, I think I keep things separate because, even when I'm writing fiction, some part of that manuscript will reveal my past and my innermost thoughts and sensibilities.

Do I really want my colleagues to know that much about me?

How do you manage it? Really, I'd love to know. Do you allow colleagues or business associates to share in the joys and challenges of your writing?

Do you share rough drafts with your family or life partner or best friend?