Author: Phoebe Wilcox

She’s a Maniac

Talking about Flannery O’Connor and The Violent Bear it Away, of course. Just finished it. This book will make you feel like you live inside a smoldering cavity of blind and remorseless insanity–like the sunset is flaying you alive and that’s just an everyday occurrence. And it’s all tied in with evangelical Christianity and shatteringly beautiful (but merciless) rural life. Oh, Flan, hon, if you did this for FUN, what did you do when you were stressed?! I suspect you were a literary genius. RIP. –Now I’ll need to meditate for a day or so in order to recover. 🤣

Left off on Page 118

That means I cleaned up almost 40 pages IN ONE DAY. I might finish this edit (#7) by Halloween! The main (modern day) character just met some dream guy at a party and he had a very special story to tell her about the gnostic gospels. That was just a brief interlude for fun. And to demonstrate how hopelessly single she is, lol. Which is sort of important to the overall plot. The novel is now 322 pages long. I like it. Not as much as I did this morning, haha. But I do like it.

I Got My McSweeney’s Lunchbox!

I finally opened yesterday’s mail and it was NOT a friggin’ COVID test! YAY!! I feel like I’m 10 years old again and it feels great! Author cards and everything! I wonder if they’re anything like Whacky Packs. I wonder if there’s gum inside. I wonder if the authors have haughtily arched eyebrows or big crusty teeth?!

Yesterday I slogged and skimmed through the Middle Ages. My character Giselle should be able to learn to read because her dad is very progressive and with the decline of the feudal system and the increase in capitalistic town wealth which benefited royal coffers, the time was favoring individual endeavor to some extent. Good King Louis the IX had helped start the Sorbonne when he heard some whining about poor kids not being able to become doctors. So I don’t see why, as a vintner’s daughter, Giselle could’t learn to read. So, we got that taken care of. Now. Does the plot require her to read? I bet I could think of a great reason for her to read. It’ll come to me. If I could just work Wacky Packs in somehow. That would be fun! And easy. This book goes back and forth between contemporary time and 15c cuz, baby, it’s about reincarnation. I can do WHATEVER I WANT!!!!!

Beautiful Golden Day in the Swing State of PA

My swing state anxiety is pretty bad. Just praying for Philly and the burbs to engulf the ballot boxes with unprecedented (and unpolled) enthusiasm. It’s just not fair! Why does the whole weight of this dire election have to fall on this conflicted little state?! 😂

That’s not what I wanted to write about. What I want to write about is needing to properly edify myself on the Middle Ages. My main character (one of them) is a French girl named Giselle. When she was a baby Joan of Arc was executed. So we’re talking a long time ago, and I so wish I had a time machine in order to get this right. I have done a little research and I did listen to a great CD set from the library, which I think they may have since purged? Libraries are losing books and resources. It’s like an alt-Right plot to make everyone ignorant. But that’s not what I was going to write about. What I wanted to say is that my young heroine wants to learn to read. Her Dad told her get over to the convent and volunteer to help out. I don’t know if that’s realistic. I also don’t remember if her learning to read is critical to the plot or not. I’ll have to make it critical. And I need more info on the role of reading at that time. I’ve got the nuns illuminating religious manuscripts in the scriptorium. What’s my purpose in getting her over there, plot-wise? I need to double check. Someone else’s ability to read turns out to be crucial later on. But not hers. I don’t know. I guess the rule of writing is first have fun. Then tidy up. And don’t worry about a thing.

Goals

Catch up on all the reading that I need to do, so that I can become a better writer and not appear overly ignorant of the basic literary canon if I ever run into any MFA or Lit-educated types. This week while I was sick I finished Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and I’m almost done The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O’Connor, so that’s something. The book stack on my nightstand is two feet tall. I also want to read my dictionary and thesaurus all the way through.

I Retired So Now I Have to Hurry the Hell Up and Write Before it’s Too Late

It’s totally bizarre not to be driving around suburbia knocking on doors for The County anymore. I left in July. And was very busy with family obligations for awhile there. But. But now I just want to become more and more myself until I metamorphosis into a psychedelic butterfly. I was always secretly a psychedelic butterfly. I finished the sixth edit of Don’t Get Burned. The next day I read through the first three chapters really quickly and said, “Woah, Bessie, this is reading for fun, not edit #7. You have to Start Over and Slow Down.” But the fact that I COULD just read three chapters so quickly is heartening. It means I’m almost done! Which I’ve been lamely saying for years. But I AM ALMOST DONE. I REALLY AM. And if I don’t finish this book by July then I am just a sad sack of procrastination that deserves no literary whipped cream. Or whatever. But damn it, I DO deserve literary whipped cream. I have been sick for several days, but maybe tomorrow I will be able to get myself moving. I have to because I am officially OLD. I could die at any moment. Barbara Kingsolver has written a bunch of books and I am barely at 1.75 books. It’s terrifying. For someone who always knew writing was her passion, I’ve had a very poor output. Phoebe, do not shame yourself. Angels Carry the Sun was a really good book. Maybe luck just wasn’t on your side with some things. Luck changes. I keep thinking about that Tom Petty song, “Even the Losers.” It resonates cuz everyone feels like a bunch of losers, lol. I dreamed I accidentally walked off with someone else’s Nobel Prize in Lit, and I was just pressing this medal against my forehead in a state of extreme angst. So silly. There is hope for me yet. Maybe not Nobel Prize hope, but hope. I AM NOT DEAD YET.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Finished A Widow for One Year. It was alright. Now I picked up two books that I bought at Flannery O’Connor’s house in Savannah, GA several years ago. It must have been just her childhood home because it was right in town, one could see the Catholic church from at least one of the upstairs windows, I remember. The house in Wildcat was on a farm. Anyway, the books I’m reading are The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Paul Elie and The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor. So far I LOVE the second. A welfare worker had to go through snaggly backwoods to try and check on this kidnapped baby. It sort of reminded me of my lovely livelihood. I have great pity and fondness for social workers, bureaucrats, and civil servants of low order. Kafka, Whitman, Bukowski. Maybe they would have been poets/writers that I could actually handle, I don’t know. Of course, Whitman is practically in my family tree with Dr. O.K. Sammis being his childhood friend. Jeannie Olivia Berry Sammis was somebody. My grandmother’s grandma was Kate Sammis. Kate Sammis was one of Dr OK’s many daughters. And Dr OK was Whitman’s friend. Look it up online if ya don’t believe me.

Wildcat

Saw the movie Wildcat (about Flannery O’Connor) this evening. Returned home to find a reference to a wildcat wrestling a prophet on page eight of The Violent Bear it Away, which I bought years ago but still haven’t really read. Finshing up John Irving’s A Widow for one Year. I think I’ll like O’Connor’s book better. Irving taught my dad at the Iowa writers’ workshop. The Irving book, I see why it was a bestseller. I also see why it is probably not a literary masterpiece.