My Shoshoni Indian Research Trip

Here are excerpts from email letters, showing my excitement over a research trip to Nevada and Idaho.

From an Aug 1 letter to my step-daughter in Meridian, Idaho:

“Am safely back home (and beat) as of 3pm yesterday (Saturday, Aug 1, 2009), after 4 night-time stays at various motels and five full drive days through Northern CA, NV, and ID. It was fun to see all you again. …

“I took 240 pictures on the trip …

“I told you, I talked to the Tribal Chairman (chief), Dale Barr, of the Paiute-Shoshoni Tribe at Fort McDermitt Reservation, northern NV just off Highway 95. He said, water shortage on some of the lower ranches makes for drought conditions every year. The rancher-Indians suffer from a policy termed "best use" of resources, a bill passed by the Nevada legislature in the 1960s called the McCarron amendment passed. I still need to verify the precise import of this fact through googling. It’s purely a coincidence that the main issue in my novel has my protagonist fighting to keep water on the fictitious reservation near some mountains in Nevada. I got a big kick from our meeting, as I had just dropped in. He had a few minutes to very graciously shoe-horn me into his busy morning.

“Then, after I saw you [my Idaho step-daughter], I visited other Shoshoni Indians, they are in-laws on my ex-wife's side on the South Fork Reservation 26 miles south of Elko, Nevada–I dropped in out of nowhere–I’d misplaced their phone numbers. We had a jolly time talking about Western-Shoshoni (the Nevada version of four or five disparate Shoshoni cultures). We talked about their traditions, myths, religions, and some Numi (Shoshoni) language words I’d forgotten. It was a morning in their grand country. I consider the setting a major "character" in my novel. A photo or two are attached. I hope to post more into a Facebook album….”


And here's this from an Aug 2 email to my niece near Elko, Nevada:

“Hi Dallas [my niece, Shoshoni Indian from her mother’s side, Eutopean from her father's side.] I’m writing my book, Sagebrush at Stony Creek (editing, actually) and found this word. This is my recall for a bush or shrub somebody would stoop behind to go to the bathroom outside in a hurry: gwida-gwahnah …

“How I recall it, `pine-nut pudding' is dib-bah-gweenee. Please let me know if that’s right ….
(This is my own attempt at spelling how it sounds to a speaker of American-English.)

“Also, if younger brother is dahmee (or dahmeechee), Dallas, what is older brother? Thanks. (For the curious student of the Numi language, Te-Mook dialect, spoken south of Elko, NV, my niece's answer was bah-bee means older brother.)

“The grapes and cherries came in handy for my drive home through the long NV desert. Thanks. Had good time out there. I took some great photos of the ruggedly beautiful Ruby Mountains, too,

as well as some of the creeks that run through South Fork Reservation (Shoshoni—Te Mook Band). I’ve seen that spelled Te-Moak Band on maps, seems to change every few years. There’s another reservation of that band that I've never visited near Battle Mountain, NV.

“Uncle Richard”

Books I Like

Books On Writing Right Suggested to Pat Nipper by Richard Burns in Oct 2008

Some of my favorite instructive books are as follows:

Hooked – Write Fiction that Grabs Readers … *****
Les Edgerton

Getting Into Character – Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors *****
Brandilyn Collins

Emotional Structure – Creating the Story Beneath the Plot *****
Peter Dunne

Growing Great Characters from the Ground Up *****
Martha Engber

How to Write Killer Fiction – The Funhouse of Mystery & … *****
Carolyn Wheat

Novelist’s Boot Camp – 101 Ways to Take Your Book from Boring to Bestseller ****
Todd A. Stone

Blockbuster Plots ****
Martha Alderson

Writing the Mind Alive – The Proprioceptive Method for Finding Your Authentic Voice ****
Linda Trichter Metcalf and Tobin Simon

Astrology for Dummies [Helps Me Invent Characters and their Traits] ****
Ray Orion

Creating Characters – How to Build Story People ***
Dwight V. Swain

Writing with Style – Conversations on the Art of Writing [Essays] ***
John R. Trimble

ON DECK (i.e., next to read):

The Complete Idiot’s Guide [to] Getting Published [Yet to be read]
Sheree Bykofsky and Jennifer Baseye Sander

Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel – How to Knock ‘Em Dead …[Yet to be read]
Hallie Ephron

Don’t Murder Your Mystery – 24 Fiction-Writing Techniques … [Yet to be read]
Chris Roerden

Models for Writers – Short Essays for Composition [Yet to be read – Essay Writing]
Alfred Rosa and Paul Eschholz

Have a good day. Or if it’s bad, make it grist for your writing mill.

Procrastination

It's my new swear word: "procrastination." Like my grandpa used to say "tarnation." One of those.

With my long anticipated trip to France coming tomorrow (yes, a week in Paris) and a plethora of other even more lame excuses, my writing time has suffered.

Upon return, I will have a daily reminder on my calendar for a month to write 2 hours per day before drinking coffee and having breakfast. (ALL the time will be dedicated to further polishing my novel, Sagebrush at Snow-Mountain Creek). If nothing else, it should help me lose weight by forcing me to skip breakfast. Ha!

I have posted on my calendar similar reminders to send query letters to agents and any follow up. Do others of you out there in blog-space have a fear of success like I do? Where does this procrastination spring from? Do you have similar tales or secret solutions? --rb

Sample Poetry Post

Her Ghost
Richard A. Burns

Her ghost is across the table,
Hovering above the chair where my wife used to sit.
It reaches out to me. And yet, I know such an ethereal thing
Won't hold me, can't cook dinner, would never shout that cheery “bye-bye” when headed out to her work-day.

For entire days, there are no signs of this shy, shy guest.
It leaves me alone, and I’m okay. Then, it’s here once more. I'm getting used to her.
Little by little, I push on. I live, laugh, and love.
And my new sentinel surprises me. She silently approves.

Still ... still, I hesitate. Is my visitor watching again? Could she be jealous?
But if she appears, her spirit simply waves and whispers:
“Go on? Don’t worry about treading on dead leaves,
Done with life, floated down from the might-have-been tree.”

You say it’s only a dream-like blur, a memory streaming by,
Like dissipating patches of light fog along my checkerboard path.
But, no, I think not. It’s real.
It’s real as a cold, steady rain on a grave in winter.

Time moves forward, and my friend, a good deal quieter of late,
Shimmers only faintly in the background.
Still, she rights me when I’m about to stack the dishes wrong.
Ghosts would know such things I guess.

Richard A. Burns © June 2008 All rights reserved.

Attended Gold Rush 2009

I did it. I attended the Gold Rush Writers Conference put on by Antoinette May, this, the fourth annual. It will take me a bit of time to filter my notes down to the essentials, but I took some photos. Take a look:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uF7l4lxd0M

Not sure if these will work as I hope for them to. Omg, they did! Very cool, youtube.

I picked two memoir classes presented by Helen Bonner, Laptop 101 presented by Tom Johnson, and a Poetry Discussion presented by Al Young, former Poet Laureate of California and a professor at UC Berkeley. Lucy Sanna presented some relaxation and focusing tricks. I was given a chance to read four poems on Friday night (May 1), read the climax to my novel Sat. night (Sagebrush at Seven Trout Creek) and the opening of my possible future projects, a memoir, on Sunday morning in the advance memoir class by Helen Bonner.

The poems got the laughs and tears and gasps in most of all the right places. Lots of positive commentary afterwards, a spontaneous reaction that is always a joy. The novel got a great complement by Al Young, who said, "It should be a shoo-in for publishing."

I wish I had the time to write more here. In fact, I wish you had the time to comment more. It’s a good day to work on your project, though. So get to it, okay?

Deep Analysis of 2 Poems

Below is a recent exchange I had by e-mail. My answers are interspersed. The poems themselves are not in front of you. I'm hoping the analysis is still inlightening to curious writer searching for such discussion or improving her voice.-----

Chrissy: I enjoyed reading your poems very much and like them a lot! Both are very creative, moving, vivid, appealing to senses and feelings, though sad but not despaired or completely depressing, i.e. with sense of hope and recovery. Both used interesting analogies and comparisons. However, they are different. I think "Ode to Sadness" is more abstract and romantic, and "Her Ghost" is more domestic and practical. I sense maybe "Her Ghost" was written at a later time than "Ode to Sadness", when you were a little more recovered from your sadness but still think of and miss her now and then, more so at certain moments of a day than others, especially at dinner time, etc. I like both. But, if I have to pick, maybe I like "Ode to Sadness" even better, as, to me, it's more interesting and with more emotional intensity. What do you say?

There are many things I like in the two poems. For "Ode to Sadness", six three-lined stanzas In !st stanza, it's interesting you set the tone here and take sadness as your friend and use the mud-bath to elephant analogy. But, I'm very curious about how you thought about this when you wrote it.

Rich: I’d like to grow at poetry so I don’t have to wait around for inspiration (just “being me”) and being able to write from other people’s or a hypothetical person’s view point, but until then, I write just as I feel. “Wallowing” is a kind of common phrase for me, especially in self-talk, “although like an elephant” is not particularly how I generally put it or visualize it. It could be a pig, or other, wallowing critter, I suppose. But I didn’t like visualizing a pig, which connotes dirtiness more than I wanted. So that never came to mind. I’ve seen wallowing elephants more than once on PBS, so it jumped to mind as a good metaphor (at least, okay), including the needing of the messiness and kind of lazy relaxation and taking the assertive action to assuage a longstanding, hopeless irritation. Elephants are big like sadness is big.

Chrissy: 2nd and 3rd stanzas are very important ones, as they make us feel your sad feelings. I like your pick "pillow". One key word promotes so much associations and truly invokes readers' feelings. A picture's worth a thousand words. "Wrap it around my face and breathe in her perfume", such a vivid image, successfully bring readers to your position and feel what you feel.

Rich: Yeah, I love it, too. But it does kind of clash with the preceding elephant image, probably the main problems with the poem. Still, I feel this poem is among my biggest creative triumphs.

Chrissy: It must be sad and miserable beyond words for a surviving lover or spouse tossing in bed endlessly during those initial sleepless nights. It expressed how much you missed her more effectively than words could. 2nd stanza uses image and 3rd summarizes it in words, both convey the sad sad feelings. I really like the image and think it's such a success.

Rich: It’s not as though my wife and I never clashed. We did in some areas; love kind of fades into an acceptable living arrangement, complete with obvious positives and unspoken negatives. Surprising, no, shocking, to me, in having suffered through her dying, is how change, especially very sudden change to whole life style, etc. is so very difficult for humans to go through—high on the stress-meter. A relationship breaking up is difficult the same way. But the focus of this poem properly remains how the emotion of feeling sad actually helps humans cope; even helps us to face our inevitably tragic futures. (I don’t intend that little statement to be a downer, just factual.)

Chrissy: The 4th stanza, I kinda like the analogy, but not really clear if it's fog or a seducing woman who leads you to a dark place (without sun) and played you, and like very much to hear from you about your thoughts on this.

Rich: I think I’ve taken poetic license to stray and explore some tentative thoughts, not necessarily truths for all time. Certainly, your mind is not as clear as it was (foggy) when sadness strikes. Then I’ve personified sadness--like a student of poetry, but hope it comes across as seamless--and I made "her" (i.e., sadness) a surrogate intimate entity. Intimacy can have traits other than purely sexual, and is important in a successful relationship between mates. To me, physical touching is important. Here, I attempt to tenderly show it.

Chrissy: For 5th stanza, I love all these comparisons. Very interesting thoughts!

Rich: Thank you.

Chrissy: For 6th stanza, as I mentioned before, I like your inner strength of seeing hope, thus making it a positive end ....

Rich: Yeah, some people interpret me as a gloomy guy, and I wanted to not end up there.

Chrissy: ... despite the fact that you still feel sad sometimes. Same as in 1st stanza, I'm curious about exactly how you take sadness, your attitude in general toward sadness. You call it your friend, you like it, need it or cannot help being with it?

Rich: I think I accept sadness as a necessary seemingly-evil thing, like, say, taking a poop. That is completely natural, normal, proves your getting well-nourished, and yet it is taken so negative by our society. I want to sell sadness as normal. My Aunt treats everything in public, social situations as having to be happy and have a happy ending. Then, she can't accept awful things, e.g., she can't talk about them or even allow others to. For example, recently she couldn't face telling me that her daughter was dying of cancer (I finally visited my cousin in her last miserable days). I like balance. I love life and the life force we have. But I don’t deny the “negative.” In a Buddhist sort of view, death (after a good, full life) is actually a good thing. I’m doing something similarly, but with a not quite as socially negatively-charged subject.

Chrissy: I think Ode is a very good choice of poem form for your topic. I wonder what's your definition of ode? From what I learned in my Creative Writing class, it has no fixed rules or format.

Rich: I couldn’t figure out a decent, all encompassing title by excising a few words from the poem, so “Ode …” helps me a lot. It implies, “Let’s analyze sadness”, but avoids people skipping reading the poem if I had just named it “Sadness.” The latter is perfectly logical, but pre-charges the discussion with negativity. Ode is more neutral and has the possibility for being positive subject matter.

Chrissy: Is that [i.e., no fixed form or format] what you think, too? You had six three-lined stanzas for your ode, was it your choice? For any particular reasons?
Rich: It’s just how it popped out of my brain—of, course, there were rewrites, to pare it down to the essentials. It could be a one very-long stanza poem, but I’m a lousy reader, and like a lot of white space. Stanzas help to break it up into bite sized chunks.. You will also note, I strive for clarity in the view I’m presenting. I’m an engineer. No artful mysteries added if I can avoid it. That’s just me. There’s room in the world for phantasmagorical writing, but it’s not where I want to be for my own work, so far.

Chrissy: Anyway, I like to hear your thoughts or anything you want say or explain about your poem. Oh, I'm too slow. I only talked about one poem and it's this late again. Alright, next time. The good thing is I don't need to get up so early taking kids to school. My daughter's 0 period, starting at 7am, is killing me, as I'm not an early person.

Rich: The ghost poem is much more difficult because it bumps up against fictional things, and needs to blend them optimally with reality to get across what I’m trying to. It’s a less important and less successful poem in my opinion, too, but there’s a place for what it touches on. Kevin Arnold work-shopped it at last year's Gold Rush Writers Conference and likes it a lot, but wished I had explained: Was the ghost a continuation of my wife—and in what sense—or was the ghost something separate, spawned by my wife’s death? Perhaps another way to say it, should I call the ghost an “it” or should I call it a “her,” meaning my wife’s "soul," perhaps a white sheeted floating thing, a Casper-the-Ghost with my wife's personality or a changed personality for having "crossed over." Kind of deep, but the way I did it begs that line of questioning. Another way to state it: I’m an engineer, okay? Never in my adult life did I believe in ghosts, angels, gods, such things. Is the ghost poems saying that now I do believe? And Kevin felt I should clarify that and why or why not. But more recently he said that poem in particular sticks in his mind. Quite a compliment.

Chrissy: TGI Friday!

Rich: Having bored you to death, I say have a good week. Hey, longer is okay, too! I need to get to work on Ode To Happiness. --the end--

A Poetry Award

Jan,

A minor award, but if I don’t brag about my life, who else will? I wrote an ode to Chocolate Ice Cream. I think I haven’t work-shopped it with our group, but I did with Edie’s group. (“Very sensuous,” someone commented.) I have read it at a few open mikes including the Mokelumne Hill Gold Rush Conference, with laughs in all the right places. I had it printed in WritersTalk, last year’s “poetry” (May 2008) edition, and it won 1st (poetry) prize for the WritersTalk Challenge for that six-months. $40 richer for it and I nice little plaque on my wall.

I list it on my recent list of “published” articles on my web-site at http://www.writerichly.blogspot.com/. I presume you’re all curious so I include the poem below. – Rich

[So, below, here on my blogspot.blog, I only include the first 20% of the work. If you want more, you can get it by putting in a comment/response on this blog. In fact, thank you in advance for doing that. It’s a pretty good poem, IMHO. In the contest judges’ opinions , too, apparently.]

Cold Temptation
Richard A. Burns

For months I hardly know you exist, thank God.
One day, I slip up. I get a glimpse of your come-hither package at the store;
I allow it into my cart, a small sin in the scheme of things, I tell myself,
But this is the beginning of my fall.

I hide you in a cold, icy place for a day, maybe, a week.
All the while you bide your time,
Tapping your impatient fingers, waiting for me … for tonight.
You play possum, you naughty thing.

... [etc., etc.]

There is more; just ask. -rb