What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? What Feeds the Heart blossomed in my childhood, became a serious endeavor in 1990 while in Valley College; became my Mater’s dissertation at CSUN Northridge State University 2001, and published on November 8, 2021.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? I wrote mainly in my sunny open office space, the third bedroom of my home. My cats kept me company while I worked. Across the room, one of three bookshelves, I gain inspiration from my many writing craft books.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? My writing habits include tea as I read over the last paragraphs from the night before. Coffee as I add more or revise. I write primarily on the computer because i can close my eyes and describe what I see, hear, feel, smell, etc. Freehand takes too long and hurts my carpal tunnel. I start writing after breakfast, break for lunch, and write until around 4pm, I take another break and eat a snack my husband brings me. I finish writing halfway through the next idea…
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
page 230.
Miracle of Michael— When I was eleven
The next day, I enter the sweltering house after summer school’s third week. Trouble sits on the green couch. Where’s Mom’s other friend, the one who offers money for hot lunches at school and kisses me with his tongue and mouth open? Instead, the new man smiles at the space above my forehead. I close the door.
“Hi there, I’m Michael,” trouble says, gazing at my right ear.
“Hi Michael, I’m Jean.” I recognize him as the beast-man Mom cozies against. The one who shakes.
“A pleasure to meet you,” he says. “Don’t let me interrupt your activity. Sorry if I’m in your way.”
“What? You’re sorry?” I ask. Clan members being polite creeps me out. Gotta figure what they expect before I stand close.
“Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about the elephant in the room,” Michael says, chuckling.
I search the space. “Elephant?”
“The elephant in the room is a form of expression, Jean. What do you say to the blind man sitting in your home when no one else is home?”
I shrug in the silence that follows.
“That’s correct, not much. Can I help you with anything, Jean?”
Another silence descends. “Are you scared?” he asks. “Kinda.” “I understand. Let’s take time to know each other. How was school?”
Weird to hear the question from Michael. “Umm…well…” How to answer? “Not very fun or educational, right?” I shrug. “How did you know?” I ask.
“This would be a hard place to study. What’s your hardest subject?”
“Spelling-math-reading.”
“I enjoy reading Braille words, and know how to spell, even though I’m blind. That’s ironic, right?”
What did the man want? I hope he acts differently from Jerry.
“Do you have any questions?” “What’s ‘er-on-ick’ mean?” I ask. “I-ron-ic.” He sounds and spells it. “Sorry, that’s a loaded word. It means the expectations of a situation, the opposite of what you find, like a blind man helping a sighted person to read and spell. This could be called a case of situational irony. Do you understand?”
“Ah, like hating drugs and eating the hash-pumpkin pie by accident?”
“Wow, you’re bright, Jean—that’s a great example. Any more thoughts?”
I search my mind. “Umm, I want to learn, to become a doctor, but I can’t read or spell.”
“Want help with your spelling?” Michael asks. I nod, then realize he can’t see me. “Yes, I need help,” I say. Michael smiles. “Let’s start by setting up an hour a day to get started.”
“Thank you, Michael.” He’s not so scary.
The extra weight Michael puts on fills out his face and shoulders; he stands taller. His eyes glow a beautiful light brown with orange specks in the center.
Gypsy spies on him. Why did Mom and Gypsy hang together? The older woman makes me wary. Michael lives in the house full-time as a member of the clan.
Other clan members blab about Michael’s health, giving him unfair labels: junkie, having a monkey-on-your-back, addicted to horse. Michael wrings his hands, shakes them as if sticky spiderwebs cling. Michael explains how detox works; withdrawal from H. Detox reminds me of the word “toxic.”
Someone said H stood for “horse.”
I tiptoe through the living room to peek around the corner at Michael. Picture catching him hiding a horse or using toxic cleaning supplies, stupid thoughts. “Why do you detox from your horse?” I ask.
Michael laughs. “The H stands for heroin.” “Oh.” Michael hears everything, even when I sneak. He calls to me. “Jean, you have to sneak quieter. I hear better because I’m blind,” He says. “I hear you breathe.” I stop breathing the next time I mosey to the room. Michael laughs.
“Close your eyes,” Willothin tells me. “Distinguish the world using senses that Michael depends on. What do you smell, hear, taste, feel? I’m glad you ask him for spelling help.”
Same as Willothin, Mom senses a magical quality to Michael. Mom takes him to her lair, nurses him back to perfect health, parents us kids less.
Mom glows as she places glasses of wheatgrass and herb water in his hands every couple of hours, demanding, “Drink it all. We need to flush your system.” By popping his pimples with a large bobby pin and washing his skin with witch hazel, she clears his acne.
My mother untangles, combs, and trims his shoulder-length hair; she shaves his beard to his signature goatee and clips his lamb-chop sideburns. She showers him with her love, soothing his pains. Mom offers Michael her best. I’m jealous of Michael, except he treats me sanely in a house full of crazy people.
Within a week, Mom transforms Michael. He rises in importance within the clan’s inner circle.
Day Ten, Gray Morning—Forty years later
Even though I’d known him for less than a year, Michael stayed my favorite person from all the years living at Mom’s house. He died at twenty-three years old. Michael taught me discernment, how to spell, love, and approve of myself. He understood Willothin, setting me on discovery’s road to my inner life.
He told me, “Ask for assistance when you need help.” Essential advice in defiance of the messages I’d heard from the adults around me. Michael transformed me through subtle impressions and concrete actions. Taught me to look for specifics in other people that came and left Mom’s commune. Those who rolled off the hard knocks of life, those who gave love, instead of stealing what’s not offered. I bet Michael helped everyone he met.
“Dear One, breathe in, remember to love and approve of yourself. No love outside is better than the love within. Choose to love yourself first. Know when you’re wrong, and make amends where necessary. You’re made of love. Pass on the truth, not your fears.”
My heart warms.
“Dear Michael, if you can hear me, I thank you wholeheartedly for your gifts. I’m sorry for not answering your call when you needed someone. I’m so sorry, please forgive me.”
Today, Michael exists in my heart. His long-ago lessons come back time and again.
“I miss Michael,” I say to my mother’s unconscious body.
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? One of my mentors reminded me to “Kill your darlings…” This excerpt is where my favorite character dies from the old gunshot wound he’d inflicted on himself years before he met Jean. Michael dies at the time he started living fully and instructing Jean to follow her heart.
I wept as I detailed Michael’s death in Mom’s arms, the mom who never recovered from his ultimate abandonment.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. Here is a photo I’d taken as I began an intense revision. I changed places of Michael’s scenes to the “saggy” mid-section.
True story, I threw away all my old copies, rough drafts, etc. after my house was burglarized and all the pages of three different manuscripts were thrown together in a mess. I didn’t have the heart to piece them back together.
Biography of Daryl Glinn-Tanner: Raised in the 1960s, I knew a lot about drugs, turning in and dropping out in my preteens and teenage years. Unfortunately, I hated what happened to me while high, and didn’t fit in with my mother’s cool people. Felt foreign inside my home, school, or on the playground. So I developed a fantasy life and played in nature, the Tujunga Canyon Wash only three blocks from my street.
There, I found solace in playing with lizards, horned toads, water snakes, and my imaginary friends.
I longed to be accepted by the clean cut kids, police officers, and doctors. (Opposite of my upbringing.) My shyness and unkept appearance blocked the ease in making friends, so I wrote poetry and stories alone. At college, I won a camera and a financial gift, so I played in images.
My first novel, What Feeds the Heart, started over twenty years ago. Soon issued a love/hate relationship with the manuscript until I joined a few writing groups. I learned sophisticated plot developments and character arcs. After graduating with my Master’s degree, I married a clean cut man from Illinois, and we’re happy 30 years later.
Since fourteen, I’ve seen one therapist after another, in hopes to heal the insecure, fearful inner child within me. Joining an anonymous program, I am learning to reparent myself with “gentleness, love and respect.”
I’ve also completed three other full manuscripts: Alonia from Ganymede (dystopian Young Adult Science Fiction), True to the Union (Magical Realism-Time shifting to 1862 Civil War centering on the Vater side of my ancestors), and Across the Line (continuation of the character Amber from What Feeds the Heart).
Most of the INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links can be found at the very end of the below feature: http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html