12 Comments

Love this piece. I have to say, most of my work has been written with the medium mindset of leaving the writer with, for lack of a better word, an action item. Writing for the reader, so to speak, so we get curated and noticed and paid - some combination of those, which can never really be unlinked from each other. My eye is always towards the takeaway these days, the purpose of the story. Obviously that’s open to interpretation for a lot of creative pieces. But what would you say is the purpose/takeaway of this one?

Expand full comment

Even my most polished, shiny piece (a medium writers challenge entry) seemed incomplete without this last sentence, oriented towards action. https://medium.com/the-motherload/a-mothers-work-is-everything-6d7b112ab4d4?sk=8583e76245436ac236b3d1933eda7bf4

Expand full comment

It's an amazing piece, so powerful, and absolutely heartbreaking. And the ending is just right. I see it as the reason the piece was written. If you, the writer, were still in the throes of that particular dilemma, you couldn't have stepped back to write it as an observer. Well done!

Expand full comment

I just realized your comment is on Constant Commoner and not on Writer Everlasting! My readers here may be wondering what the heck CNF is and why we're talking about it!

(CNF is Creative Nonfiction, for those who don't know. We're talking about it at my sister Substack pub, Writer Everlasting. )

Here: https://writereverlasting.substack.com/p/the-art-of-creative-nonfiction

Expand full comment

I honestly have never thought of a purpose or takeaway for my creative writing pieces. I'm not even sure I know what that means. I write these pieces because something nudges me and one thing leads to another and then another...

Most creative nonfiction pieces aren't written for a reader. They're written because the writer feels the need to express a thought or a notion or a dream. And they read that way, if they're done well.

The reader should feel they're witness to a reverie. They're not participants and were never meant to be. That's the magic of CNF. It's to make the reader feel as if they've happened upon something special; something that would have been there whether or not they had seen it, and weren't they lucky to have seen it?

It's mood writing and the writer's work is to make sure nothing breaks the mood. The ending has to satisfy, has to leave the reader happy to have had the experience.

As for Medium, I left there because it was a mood breaker. I'm much happier here.

Expand full comment

Hahaha yep. Pleasing the curation gods (or trying to) is exhausting. I like it as a part of my strategy but not all of it. Of course as a novelist I’m really not sure how any of this can strategically support my fiction writing but …. (There’s no end to that sentence.)

Expand full comment

yes everything on Medium I am leaning has to have points, numbers and takeaways.

I haven't found a comfortable rythmn yet because part of me isn't happy with it

Expand full comment

Thank you for this piece, the photos, and the story. I drifted along with you, the cadence feeling like a gently rocking boat.

Expand full comment

Oh, I LOVE that imagery! Perfect!

Expand full comment

This was lovely. Thank you. I wish I lived around water but I'm pretty landlocked. However, we were in Seattle last month and stayed by the water. It was great. I understand why you need it.

Expand full comment

Ah, Maui No Ka Oi. Three years teaching there, learning, loving, leaving.After school, if Haleakala was clear, I would drive my little VDub up to watch the sunset, and if I was lucky, the moon rise over Mauna Kea. Most weekends I'd head to Lahaina side with a book and my mat to read and nap on the each. There were so many little spots that I would visit - the streams near Iao Needle, the road to Hana and the Seven Pools, th public beaches (that have now disappeared) in Kihei, from Kahalui around the northern tip of the island and the same from Hana around to Kula and a stop for Portuguese Bean Soup. It's so special, and once we ar further along toward a safer end of the pandemic, I'm headed back. In the meantime, I no longer can drive, so I am dependent on the kindness of strangers and the buses to get to the shores of Lake Champlain, to just sit. There are a lot of private places along the shoreline that if I still drove, I could get to...and I will. I have to plan and that makes it all the sweeter. Thanks for your great memory.

Expand full comment

Oh you're making me 'homesick'! I've loved all of those places! The Kihei beaches were still open and fairly empty in 1997, when we went back that winter for a visit, but our kids went back a few years ago and said you have to pay for parking now and there never is any. That's sad.

I have a great recipe for Portuguese Bean Soup, given to me by my Portagee sister-in-law. It calls for Linguesa, one hot, one mild, which I can't get here, but I've made it with Kielbasa and it's good, too.

Expand full comment