writing

The Essays on Childhood project recently introduced you to 6 of the 11 writers this year. Cue the drumroll…………here are writers 7-11!

It bears repeating that the entire collective is multi-talented, courageous, and impressive. We hope you will spend some time “getting to know” these fine people and anticipating the pleasure of reading their essays. Their stories and reflections will open your eyes and stir your heart with new ways of thinking about childhood experience and the way it shapes our adult lives.

Margaret Ward McClain

Margaret was born in the miasmal swamp of Charleston, South Carolina. She spent her childhood dividing time between the Holy City and Greenville, SC, the red dirt capital of the Upcountry, where she was raised and attended school. She says, “At Davidson College I learned how to be a better human being, and also received a B.A. in English.” She earned a J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law, went on to practice domestic law, and finally landed at I.B.M. Today she is a recovering lawyer residing in Chapel Hill with her wonderful husband Tim. Professionally she is the mother of a 13-year-old son, two grown stepdaughters in-residence, and three very spoiled dogs. The working title of Margaret’s essay is, “The Simons House,” centering on the house where her family spent two weeks each summer.

Cathy Nelson Belk

Cathy is an Ohio gal at heart, particularly so after walkabouts in various other, truly fabulous places. She’s taking advantage of this one wild and precious life by trying new things, which includes this first foray into creative writing (so be gentle). In addition to family and friends, Cathy loves her work supporting entrepreneurs and blogs about it on the Idea Exchange, the blog for Jump Start. Jump Start is a nationally recognized nonprofit organization transforming the economic impact of entrepreneurial ventures and the ecosystems supporting their growth.

Lisa Lewis Smith

A native of Charleston, Lisa was born on June 9, 1973 (the day Secretariat won the Triple Crown). She received her B.S. in Biology and minor in Environmental Studies from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. She worked as a fisheries and wetland biologist in Washington, Alaska, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia before transitioning in 2002 from environmental consulting to outreach and education. She currently serves on the board of the WV Land Trust and is an elder and lifelong member of Kanawha United Presbyterian Church. Lisa grew up spending her summers and weekends at her family home in Lewisburg, West Virginia where she developed an early connection with beautiful and unique outdoor environments.

Jennifer Irene Kayrouz

Jennifer moved to West Virginia just prior to starting 8^th Grade. Some people thought that her family moved to West Virginia on a dare. That was over 22 years ago and she now claims she would give her left pinky toe to be considered a West Virginian by her hillbilly peers. She went off to college once or twice, but always happily landed right back in Charleston. She now works for the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine and loves most minutes of it, getting to travel and constantly learning and being challenged. She lives in Kanawha City with her husband, who, while being 7 years younger is still decades more mature and light-years ahead of her in his intellectual and emotional capacity. They are delighted to be the parents of one precocious 4-year-old girl.

Christi Davis Somerville

Christi grew up just outside the city limits of Charleston, West Virginia, in a middle class home with her parents and younger brother Bobby. She graduated George Washington High School, obtained a BA in Elementary Education from the University of Charleston and an MA in Special Education/Gifted from Marshall University. She now teaches first grade at CLE and her husband is the principal at Anne Bailey Elementary in St. Albans, West Virginia. They live in Cross Lanes with son Brett who is in the 4^th grade. Christi’s essay will explore her experiences growing up next door to her grandmother.

I just returned from a writers’ conference where I participated in my first-ever group critique. In this exercise, other writers who have read your work provide oral (and later written) criticism of your writing. Depending on how the reviewers feel, one may hear high praise, serious complaints against style and content, or some middle ground feedback. Though it is customary for the writer whose work is being reviewed not to be permitted to speak, I was allowed to speak but with these strict instructions:

“You may not defend your work. You may answer questions, but if I hear you defending your work you will be asked to stop speaking.”

It was a tremendously valuable exercise, and both easier and more difficult than I anticipated. I received some important responses to my fiction, but the most mind-shifting element was simply to listen and process what other writers told me about my writing. I learned, for example, that my knowing that a character was dead did nothing to change the fact that readers who did not know she was dead felt I was writing her as “disconnected.” Well, yes, because she’s dead…..but that’s a defense. The reader doesn’t know that, he or she just knows a character is not working for them and they are losing interest. I will be maintaining the existing plot but also developing an entirely new approach to the narrator.

Why am I telling you this?

Going through this experience a couple of days before the U.S. military found and terminated Osama Bin Laden and listening to the national chatter afterward has me thinking about “defending.”

September 11 made us a nation of defensive people, and it’s child’s play to understand why.

At the same time, it seems ironic that the defensiveness is turned inward for some reason. There appears to be more concrete animosity between groups of American citizens than between Americans and anyone else. It worries me that without an external enemy we somehow have become so hyped up on fear and anger that we create fights at home to expel rage we have been unable to purge for a decade onto the most culpable source of our grief.

I wonder what life would be like if we all took a couple of weeks to practice not defending, no matter what anyone says to us or implies. We might hear something we need to hear.

“If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything because we have said everything before we ever had anything to say.”

— Thomas Merton from Thoughts on Solitude

Image credit: Into Great Silence

Esse Diem

Read. Think. Speak. Write.

Essays on Childhood: The 2011 Writers, Part Two