Word Raccoon stayed up too late, and then when she woke, she squawked to learn we are out of Coke Zero.
This required me to make coffee. Too early. (Or tea, but let’s be honest, tea does not give quite the same boost.)
I have promised the raccoon that we will have Coke Zero if she can just get her shiz together enough to get to the café.
Also, I have promised her poetry. We have not read today’s prompt and she won’t follow it anyway, but it will spark something, and that’s where we live, in the sparks.
She’s also cranky because although we thankfully have a hair appointment later this week, we haven’t seen our stylist in quite a while because she had to have surgery, and we miss both her and fresh hair.
We are grateful she is better. She offered to hand us over to someone else. She has been our stylist for years, so no.
But also, we told her she can reschedule us if she’s not up to it. We’re desperately hoping she is.
Right now, WR is twirling the sycamore seed pod she triumphantly picked up after guest lecturing in her friend’s Creative Writing class.
The students were the best. They even asked us to come back. And they wrote us sweet cards that we are absolutely going to hang in the kitchen.
WR showed up, I’m afraid, while I was reading “Renewal,” which absolutely was the right pick, sorry I doubted her, though we did have to explain Logan’s Run to the class.
What I didn’t expect was how quickly the room opened up.
We talked about publishing, a side quest I didn’t know we’d be going on but was glad we did. One student even quoted me back to myself on her card. Aw…
At the end of class, I was asked to read a poem the professor had prepared. I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t heard of it, though it apparently went viral some time ago.
I scanned it quickly. WR said yes yes yes because it’s highly performable, “The Invitation” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. WR put on her most performery voice (LOL) and wailed on it.
Having read it, I was jealous I hadn’t written it. It’s so me.
The questions were thoughtful, focused. The kind that make you hope you can rise to meet them.
We talked about how comedy is slippery but powerful if handled carefully. About taking chances because no one gets hurt if you get it wrong. About blooming whenever you bloom.
I told them I’ve given myself permission to write anything I want now. Even punk poetry. The editor of the student journal perked right up at that, LOL. I said yes, I’ll send something for next year.
We talked about persistence too. How many times the poem I read had been sent out before it found a home. How I knew it deserved one anyway. How even if it hadn’t, it held a truth I’d been carrying since childhood, and that was enough.
I mentioned, lightly, that poetry held me through some dark hours. (They’re young. I kept it short but honest.)
We circled around what we’re really after as writers, which is a reader who wants to come back. Not just understand, but re-enter. To be pulled by curiosity, or recognition, or even a small, useful confusion.
At one point, two students mentioned birds in their stories, and I said I just love birb sightings, in and outside of literature. They laughed. Bless them.
We moved easily between novels, short stories, poems. I was aware and thankful that my repertoire has grown.
One student asked how to choose among his ideas. He starts things, doesn’t finish. I told him to finish one. Imperfectly. To give himself a deadline.
Another asked how to get her poetry published. I was glad, deeply glad, that I could answer.
Someone asked about my agent, and I explained how I found her, and also why I didn’t send my second novel her way. Not because she wouldn’t have read it, but because I knew it was a niche passion project and I wanted to try it on my own.
I shared just a little about my current WIP. That it’s set on a university campus, that it involves a missing literary object, that it’s part mystery, part something else I’m still figuring out.
Afterward, in the hall, they asked if I would come back.
I said happily, if their professor wanted.
Ah. I forgot how fun teaching can be.
(Not sorry to not have to do the admin, though. Gross.)
WR did wear her signature earrings, though I tried to tell her they were ostentatious. She did not care. She said if I couldn’t see that the color of the flowers on our Easter dress matched them, then I was missing an opportunity.
From the art to the conversations to the seed pods and pinecones she gathered, Word Raccoon is pleased.
Now she has work to do today.
Does she want to do it?
She does not.
She says it can wait. But we pledged to at least touch poetry every day, even if only for a few minutes, so we’re starting there, before the world makes its demands.
And, she says, did someone mention Coke Zero?
(I swear, I need to get her a sponsorship. And a glass of water.)
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