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Maile and I talk about what we’re currently writing and then get rather excited as we describe this new journey we’re inviting you to join us on. 

Music by Lucy Leigh.

If you love the content we’re creating, or if you’d like access to some bonus interviews and other material, or if you’d just like to help us feed our six children, you can contribute $5 / month over at our Patreon account to make all of that happen. This podcast depends on listeners like you! Thank you!

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As always, there are a few ways to listen: click the play button in the image above, go to our webpage to hear this and all of our other episodes, or head on over to Apple podcasts or Spotify!

And keep writing!

Jamie Harrison joins us today to talk about all kinds of interesting things, like how reliable she thinks her childhood memories are, what her process is in writing mystery novels, and what it was like growing up the daughter of writer Jim Harrison (author of Legends of the Fall). 

A talented writer and a kind guest, Jamie brings us along on her writing journey. I know you’ll enjoy this one.

Jamie Harrison’s new book, The Center of Everything.

An interview with Jamie over at Literary Hub. Continue reading “NEW EPISODE! S4E7 Jamie Harrison on Memory, Writing Mysteries, and Why She Never Wanted to be a Writer”

Dear Jen

Well, here we go. I’m sitting on the bedroom floor where my youngest two sleep. Leo is already out, the fan raising wisps of his long hair as the night settles outside. Poppy has restless legs, though her eyelids are nearly too heavy for her to hold open. I have my laptop in front of me, but a pillow that one of them discarded is calling my name. Honestly. I’m so tired, I think I could sleep for a year.

We’ve reached the end of the road, at least as far as these letters are concerned. Today is the last letter I’ll write to you. And next week, you’ll take us home. What an enjoyable routine this has been for me over the last 40 or so weeks. Nearly a year. That’s quite a thing.

Our exchange might be coming to an end, yet everything else around me is screaming that the world is stuck in this liminal space: Covid-19 simmers somewhere below the surface, no longer peaking yet still not behind us; the city streets of this nation are pouring forth a kind of mangled pain and grief. We can see where we’ve been—do we know where we are going? What do the coming days and weeks have in store for us?

I have to be honest: some days I wonder if these festering wounds of racism and white supremacy in the Unites States can ever heal. I hold onto hope, though—not for me, but for those most effected by the systemic injustices that abound. It is such an uncomfortable space to lean into, a topic that for nearly forty years of my life I knew so little about, but it’s important work, and it involves people I love. I hope we all find the strength to play our part, to tend to our garden, no matter the fires that rage.

And in the midst of all this, a book release. These Nameless Things releases in less than four weeks. To be honest, I don’t even know what to say about that right now, in these times. I don’t know where to begin.

As I considered what I might like to write in this, my part of our final exchange, there was really only one main thing I wanted to express, one message that kept rising to the front of my mind:

Jen, keep going!

Just about every day, writers like us encounter a new reason to stop writing. Either it feels like we’ll never get to where we want to go, or someone doesn’t appreciate our work, or rejections large and small dot the landscape, or, as Wallace Stegner once said, the stories never turn out on paper the way they had in our head.

And, yet. What else would I do, but write? I can’t think of a thing. Honestly. Not a thing. Some days, this seems like a fruitless calling, and other days, a glorious one.

Outside my children’s bedroom window, I can see blue sky behind the last, thinning remnants of storm clouds that have passed. They brought in their wake a delicious coolness, a dim kind of summer evening light, and a stillness that can be felt as much as seen. Even the willow tree growing over the alley, with its light limbs normally willing to move at the slightest rustle, stands completely still.

Dare we hope for such peace, such calm, in our world? Dare we hope these storms will pass us by and leave us with something better than the charged, pre-storm air? Dare we hope that something will come of these words we constantly try to string together? Perhaps it’s the message we all need right now, in this difficult space. Keep going.

Sometimes, in these liminal spaces, hope is all we have. Sometimes, taking the next step is all we can do.

It’s been a lot of fun, building up a kind of collective hope in these letters, with you.

Thank you, and, until our paths cross again…

Keep going,

Shawn

I heard the protestors
five days after medics
carried Big Floyd motionless
on a stretcher. I was painting
the fence white, the boards
that separate our back patio
from our neighbor’s. I had put up
the fence because their girls
would sneak into our chairs
and smoke cigarettes
when we were
not home.

At first I wondered why the
car horns had erupted, and then
I heard the distant rumble
of voices, strange in a blue-eyed
day with no storms in the
forecast. As they came closer
up Prince Street, I realized
the words they chanted:
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
I gently dipped the brush
in the white paint and methodically
coated the first board.

Five days after a police officer knelt
on Big Floyd’s neck for nine
minutes, I knelt beside an old fence
for much longer than that
and slid the roller in between the slats
making sure to coat it completely
in white. Not missing
a spot. And the protestors came
around again, filling me with a strange
sense of dread and
wonder. Anything seems possible
when the people are on
the move. My children shouted,
“They’re here! They’re here again!” and
stood on the front porch, watching
and clapping and waving. My nephew said,
“This is the coolest thing
I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” as I turned
and walked wearily back
and picked up my brush.

I should be walking with them, I thought.
But if I left my post at the fence,
the brushes would dry out, the white
paint would grow stale and crack
and the rollers would be lost. I did
not feel like making another
trip to the hardware store. Besides, it was
such a nice day for painting.

I know how to work, how
to paint, have been taught by the generation
before me how to make a clean edge,
how to always apply a second
coat, how to put down a drop
cloth to make sure everything remains
nice and tidy. But I was never
taught how to make a protest
sign or how to shout
until I was hoarse or how to walk
in the hot sun, the police
following quietly
behind, their boots solid
on the double-yellow lines,
their thumbs clasped in their body
armor, Covid-19 masks covering
their faces.

The voices dim in the late afternoon
and I am in the kitchen, cleaning out
my brushes. A paint brush used
to paint white boards is a funny
thing, though—no matter how
long I clean it, I can’t seem
to get all the white out. Eventually,
I stop trying, dry them and wrap them
and put them away. I go up
to my bedroom
and look down on empty James Street
and realize that this is the problem:

While the protestors marched,
I painted the fence white.

When I was seven
or eight or nine, my grandpa stretched out
on the sofa, straight as Jesus in the grave
and faced the ceiling, his head
perched on the armrest. He pulled
a small, black, brittle comb from his
front shirt pocket and paid me
twenty-five cents to run it through
his graying hair until his eyes closed.

I stared at his sun-tanned skin (dark
and wrinkled), his thick glasses that
magnified his tired eyes, his large ears
that sprang out from the side
of his head like seashells.

I’d never seen him hold so still, this man
who never stopped working, never stopped
moving. I wonder, now that I
am older, what dreams came to
him on those slow Sunday afternoons
while I pulled the comb softly through?
Dreams of a more successful life?
Dreams of enough money to stop
worrying? Or maybe dreams of
kidneys that weren’t failing him?
Perhaps dreams of having
more time, maybe ten
more years, maybe twenty? Enough time
to meet more
grandchildren or great-
grandchildren? He was 55
when I combed his hair, and only 61
on the morning he didn’t wake up.
My parents
are now 63.
I am
43.

In the midst of all those numbers,
questions: Are there ever enough
years? Is there ever enough time?

I lay quietly on the sofa, still, eyes closed, as
if I am dead. Poppy opens her plastic
doctor’s case. She is three. “Open
up,” she says, placing
a pretend thermometer in my mouth.
“Hold still,” she chides, wrapping a velcro
blood pressure cuff around my hand.
“This will hurt a little,” she warns,
pushing the plastic shot
against the wrinkles on my wrist, those
timelines.

“Will I make it?” I ask with a straight
face. “Am I going to live?”

Demure, she packs her things away and looks
at me with a serious gaze, dark brown
eyes that seem to know it all. “You are
very sick,” she admits in a knowing
voice, “and you will be okay. But only
if you eat good food.”

She is her mother’s daughter.

She leaves the room and I lie there
listening to the sounds of Maile and the kids
in the kitchen, the banging of pots, the
dancing of silverware. I
hear the traffic going by on James Street.
I wonder, Are there ever enough years?
I wonder, Will I make it?
I wonder, What is a life?

In my pocket, a quarter, and I call my little
doctor back to my bedside. “This is for
you,” I say. “Thank you for saving me.” She
grins and runs for the kitchen, holding
the coin aloft, as if it is
a flame
as if it is
a dream
as if it is
a memory that she will remember
when she is 43.