Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
On the first of each month, Catching Days hosts a guest writer in the series, “How We Spend Our Days.”
Today, please welcome writer
MELANIE PAPPADIS FARANELLO
What is This?
I read an article recently about a man who spent years as a monk sitting in front of a blank wall asking himself, “What is this?” The article said this question could change your life. When I tried asking myself, I felt a surprising rush of rapture, reminiscent of being a child let out for recess after the rain, the promise of puddles and a good stomping, and for about ten seconds the thrill swelled inside my chest. Then a deep abyss opened, overwhelming darkness, and I backed away from both the ecstasy and the terror. I returned to the middle, the connective tissue of daily life, and tried not to be fooled by the mundane.
A Different View
I wake and scrawl fragments in my notebook, catching what I can before they dissipate like fog and the dream state is gone. It amazes me how our brains create elaborate narratives while we sleep.
If I were home, I’d lift the shade—to check the weather? Confirm the sun has risen? Reorient myself to the day?
But this morning, my hotel room windows are cloaked with heavy blackout curtains. I heft back a corner to look outside, to witness morning walkers…but my view faces the hotel’s innards. A spiraling rotunda six floors high, carpeted in multi-patterned prints. The only people are those painted on wallpaper stretched along the empty halls. Metallic light fixtures hover like spaceships casting everything a yellowish hue. A shorted bulb three floors down flickers.
Nothing about today is how I usually spend my days; but how I spend my days has brought me here today.
A Debut
I’m in Baltimore for AWP, the national conference that brings together over 10,000 people each year. Four days packed with panels on writing, publishing, teaching, and a massive bookfair with hundreds of exhibitors, literary magazines, and presses, along with author events, readings and receptions throughout the days and nights. It is as nourishing and invigorating as it is overstimulating and draining.
I’ve come to do a panel with four other writers; a group off-site reading; and my first ever book signing at UGA Press’s booth. It feels both exciting and daunting.
Worker Bees
The metallic light fixtures are sculpted like honeycombs. This feels appropriate. Almost spring, I imagine worker bees emerging from hives, flying toward the source of nectar, hoping for—reconnection? Community? A secret key to the enigmatic publishing industry?
Over the past two decades I’ve attended AWP a handful of times in various cities—Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia. But this is my first time as a “published author.” My debut story collection is being released at the conference, and this feels like a small miracle, a constellation of many steadfast years.
The panel’s called “Debuting After Fifty.” It’s scheduled for 9 a.m.
Folders
If I were home, I’d be at my desk in a small walk-in closet turned writing office.
On the left side of my desk, a printed draft of my novel manuscript is covered with notes for revision. On the right side, a vertical file holder separates a dozen current projects in earth-toned folders—sienna, charcoal, caramel, moss; a system I recently created to manage the sprawling overwhelm. The colors, I read, were grounding.
The moss green folder, labeled AWP Panel, I’ve brought with me today.
Nectar
Baltimore Convention Center buzzes and swarms. It’s 8:30 a.m. and the energy is frenetic, lanyard-clad crowds ready to feed and absorb and commune.
A mass clusters in the hall where tactical officers guard the doors. Our assigned room is already packed. They’ve cleared the aisles. A Fire hazard. They have to turn away many who are waiting to attend a panel about debuting after fifty.
Panel—Room 321-322
We talk about the long journeys on our various paths to publication, perseverance, the ups and downs, failures along the way, how with age comes perspective…
During the Q+A, hands shoot up. What we shared seems to have resonated and it feels good to connect.
Poetry on the Steets
If I were home, I’d finish working on novel edits, then head outside to talk to strangers. I’d bring the honey-colored folder labeled Transit Stories with my postcards to hand out at bus stops.
Later, I’d work on the charcoal folder—The Community Poem Project and update entries.
Book Signing
Instead, I ride the crowded escalators down to the bookfair, wander the enormous aisles, browsing literary magazines and books displayed among candy, pens, stickers. I find University of Georgia’s booth where they’ve set up my book signing. A few gracious and generous friends stop by, and I gratefully sign their copies. I sell only one to someone I don’t know. She introduces herself and tells me she read my essay last year in Electric Lit. This feels like magic—how words from my walk-in closet have traveled across time and space and somehow connected us here. Everything swells with meaning, and it feels like this is the point.
Commitment
We have little control over whether our work will slip through the gates. But we do have control over the dedication to the practice, the belief in creating alternate realities by putting words on a page, day after day, year after year, decade after decade. This focus and attention, stepping outside of yourself to inhabit another point of view, imagine another way of being, is a powerful and worthy practice in and of itself. I say something about this during the panel.
3:00 Author Headshot—Room 313
I’m annoyed at myself for thinking it was a good idea to try the sample-sized hair gel. I’ve never worn hair gel before. Everything feels sticky and weird.
This is definitely not how I spend my days.
I bookmark a panel to attend tomorrow—”Sustaining a Private Life in a Public Vocation.”
Dinner
If I were home, I’d be making dinner for my family, helping with homework, loading dishes.
Instead, I commune with writer friends at a restaurant nearby the convention center. One friend is considering rewriting her novel manuscript from the beginning. We all cringe, it’s painful, brave, and yes, we agree, a good idea.
Maybe this is why we gather. This is the nectar. This is what we carry home, sustaining us when we return to the work. That we understand each other and are not alone.
Return
In my hotel room, I Facetime my family, my touchstone. I feel ready to go home, return to my base, my hive, the work, the page.
I read a little before bed. My mind slips off the words, and I let it drift, wandering toward the dream state, readying to create its own story, hoping that when I rise, I’ll catch fragments before they dissolve again into day.
~
THOSE SAME 3 NEW QUESTIONS…
1. What one word best describes your writing life?
- Committed.
2. Is there a book you’ve read over and over again?
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Not a book, but a poem. “Stepping Backward,” by Adrienne Rich. It hangs on my office wall, so I look at it daily. Lines from the poem serve as different epigraphs in three of my novel manuscripts!
3. What is your strangest obsession or habit?
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Talking to strangers at bus stops (Transit Stories!) Or asking strangers on the street to write a poem (Poetry on the Streets!)
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By MELANIE PAPPADIS FARANELLOA
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