Letters From Kelly

Another January, another season of watching my fellow writers experience a surge of energy for their work. Sometimes, it’s brought on by the downtime over the holidays; in others by the shiny, fresh feeling of a new year. 

Perhaps you’re among these writers, for whom the January reset comes with a little extra gas in the tank. I hope so. And if you are, let’s talk about how you can make the most of it while it lasts. 

• Don’t squander your surge on research, unless it’s the most important thing your project needs right now. 

As a former newspaper reporter, I’m particularly susceptible to this one. “How can I write if there’s more reporting to do?” I think. The truth is, there is always more reporting you can do. The real question is: Is it necessary? Or is it just procrastination?

If that “research” involves social media, it can probably wait. 

Instead, make a list of the questions you’re thinking about researching. Then switch to your project and start writing. If, once you’ve got your writing done, those questions still feel urgent, by all means, dive in! 

• Do create a bridging ritual. 

The writer Sheryl Garratt says that between fast-paced lives and constant distractions, many of us have forgotten the value of performing a ritual as we shift from task to task. 

“Ritual can be a way of reclaiming space, of bringing … ourselves fully into the present moment in order to do our best work,” Garratt writes. “Bridging rituals are the tiny things we do to move from one role to another, to shift from one task to a different one, to change our state of mind and find focus in a world of constant distraction.”

Garratt suggests small, easy rituals like making yourself a cup of tea, or clearing your workspace. You can, like Mister Rogers, take off your jacket and put on a cardigan. She also suggests taking three deep breaths and then saying aloud, “I am now here to make art.”

OK, that one might not be for everybody. 

Find one that does work for you, and then do it. (Ignore your dog giving you the side-eye.) 

My last suggestion comes in two parts, which may at first sound antithetical: 

• Don’t write for 5 minutes, then give up. AND, make time for breaks.

You need to give your mind time to simmer down, to shed the world, to reach The Zone. If you get impatient because it’s taking more than a few minutes to find, you’ll never actually get there. 

You also need to respect your poor beleaguered brain when it’s tired. Gotham teacher Angela Lam has written about this, and says that our minds are like nutrient-rich soil — they need rest to remain fertile. 

“Sometimes,” Angela says, “while laying fallow, a seed germinates and sprouts, out of control, into an award-winning story.” 

Let that be a benediction for us all— ride your new-year wave, and let us read your stories!  

Kelly Caldwell

Dean of Faculty

The song “The Show Must Not Go On” by the band Harvey Danger, has this couplet:

You can bash your head against the wall, forever, the wall will never change

But if you start to like the bloody bruises, the wall cannot be blamed.

It cracks me up every time I hear it, but it also puzzles me. Is it about reveling in your own stubbornness? Or is it about persistence?

Recently Gotham teacher Teresa Wong suggested an answer, when she visited my class recently to talk about her new memoir All Our Ordinary Stories, because writing that book took her 20 years.

She wrote the first draft when she was in her mid-20s, after taking a trip to China and Hong Kong with her parents. She knew there was a story there, about that trip and her parents, but she couldn’t find the right way to tell it.

“It was just fundamentally flawed in a way that I couldn’t understand at that point and that I do kind of understand now 20 years later,” Teresa said

She put it away, came back, put it away, came back, trying out new approaches, none of which worked.

Meanwhile, Teresa did some other things:

• She became a mother.
• She became an artist and cartoonist.
• She experienced post-partum depression and write a book about it, which became her memoir Dear Scarlet.
• During the pandemic lockdown of 2020, she started her Substack, Closet Dispatch, where she draws and tells a story about one item of clothing in her closet.
• She became an Artist in Residence at the University of Calgary.

“I needed to add that extra layer of my having my own kids before I could understand my parents as well as I could in the book, to add the depth and perspective to everything,” Teresa said. “I needed to become a cartoonist, because I really needed the imagery and the interplay between image and text to really bring out my parents’ experiences in vivid detail.”

No doubt, trying and failing to write All Our Ordinary Stories helped Teresa write Dear Scarlet. And completing and publishing Dear Scarlet helped her solve the riddle of how to write All Our Ordinary Stories.

For some stories, when we say they need time what we’re really saying is they need you to keep living your life. You need to go to Hong Kong, have one more conversation with your mother, drive cross country, take and quit that job with the crazy boss, write other essays or poems or scripts or books. You need to come back again and again and hit that wall again. You need to fail.

And then, the miracle happens.

“What I ended up doing was just listing out all the stories that I wanted to tell, and then trying to group them into loose themes,” Teresa said. “Once I had that, it made it doable in a way that I hadn’t figured out for the many years I had been working on this.”

Persistence sometimes feels like bashing your head against a wall. But it’s not. It’s a vigil you hold for your story, so that when the right way to tell it finally shows up, you’re there, ready to usher it in.

Kelly Caldwell

Dean of Faculty

In 2001, I volunteered for the post-September 11^th disaster recovery, and one of the first things I learned from the crusty, kind-hearted career FEMA workers there was not to use “endurance” and “resilience” interchangeably.

It’s embarrassing to admit (because I’m persnickety about word choice!), but I did use “endurance” and “resilience” interchangeably. Big mistake.

Because they are so, so different.

Endurance is simply withstanding adversity, often at length. That’s it. It’s Kate Winslet in Titanic, clinging to that door.*

Resilience is something more. It means a person or community has met adversity, absorbed its blows, adapted to it, and recovered. Someone who is resilient may change, but they’ll still preserve the most essential aspects of themselves. It’s Margot Robbie at the end of Barbie — she reclaims her home and her community, but she will never return to life as she previously knew it.

Because stories are all about adversity, it’s important to ask: Are your characters (and maybe their communities) merely enduring the plot? Or are they resilient?

And if it’s the latter, it’s important to understand, resilience doesn’t just happen. Like any good story, it’s created.

What do you construct resilience out of? I’m glad you asked! Three main components:

• Preparedness. A community in Oklahoma’s tornado alley is more resilient if it’s got a state-of-the-art early-warning system and enough sturdy shelters.
• Easing Suffering. The more relief someone gets from their misery, the more quickly they can heal. (Breaks from all the suffering are often appreciated by audiences, as well.)  
• Speeding Up Healing. The faster you clear debris, counsel the bereaved, and treat the wounded, the faster the recovery.

You can see that if a character is resilient, they enter a story on p. 1 with traits, resources, or connections that will enable them to absorb the blows and emerge more or less intact. The trick is identifying them.

Some questions to ask yourself about your resilient characters:

• Were they well-prepared for their trials? Or did they possess a previously unknown (maybe even secret) advantage?
• What will help ease their suffering through their crises?
• What will help them heal? What will make things worse?
• When they emerge from their adversity, what aspects of their previous lives or of their deepest selves will be lost? What will be preserved, or restored?

Hint: One of the most surefire, reliable ways that people ease one another’s suffering is through  comfort and joy — food, love, friendship, laughter, community. It’s why the mass assault of people rushing in to help survivors after a disaster is so moving. All of that kindness and camaraderie is a balm—literally.

Your characters may not have 1,000 strangers swarming in to help them clear away debris, but if they’re resilient, they, like Barbie, have loyal friends, ardent fans, a cool pink convertible, creative instincts, and Rhea Perlman. (Or the equivalent.) Look for the places your characters will find joy, or where they found it before their troubles started, and you’ll find the key to their resilience.

*Yes, I am on the That-Door-Was-Big-Enough-For-Two team.