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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 25, 2018)
OCTOBER 25, 2018 // 3 SCRATCHPAD Writers: Be not afraid of badness By ERICK BENGEL COAST WEEKEND M COURTESY KIM STAFFORD Oregon Poet Laurate Kim Stafford. coast INSIDE THIS ISSUE weekend arts & entertainment ON THE COVER From the writer and illustrator of Coast Weekend’s “Beware the Bandage Man” comes “Dredging Black Lake.” Story begins on Page 4 FEATURE 4 ‘Dredging Black Lake’ 12 Mouth of the Columbia 14 A Columbia-Pacific Horror Story DINING From service to atmosphere, Yolk is flawless THE ARTS The Dukes of Swing Big-band musicians play patriotic music in Chinook FURTHER ENJOYMENT MUSIC CALENDAR ....................5 CROSSWORD ...............................6 SEE + DO ............................. 10, 11 CW MARKETPLACE.......... 15, 16 Find it all online! CoastWeekend.com features full calendar listings, keyword search and easy sharing on social media. COAST WEEKEND EDITOR ERICK BENGEL CALENDAR COORDINATOR REBECCA HERREN CONTRIBUTORS RYAN HUME DYLAN TANNER PATRICK WEBB To advertise in Coast Weekend, call 503-325-3211 or contact your local sales representative. © 2018 COAST WEEKEND New items for publication consideration must be submitted by 10 a.m. Tuesday, one week and two days before publication. TO SUBMIT AN ITEM Phone: 503.325.3211 Ext. 217 or 800.781.3211 Fax: 503.325.6573 E-mail: editor@coastweekend.com Address: P.O.Box 210 • 949 Exchange St. Astoria, OR 97103 Coast Weekend is published every Thursday by the EO Media Group, all rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without consent of the publisher. Coast Weekend appears weekly in The Daily Astorian and the Chinook Observer. y recent email exchange with Kim Stafford, Oregon’s Poet Laureate, was one of those interviews in which ev- ery response could be turned into a story, the deleted scenes as compelling as the feature presentation. Sadly, given the limita- tions of space and time, most of the material ended up on the cutting room floor. For example, I asked: What’s one piece of advice you wish you’d heard as you were starting out as a writer? His answer: “The ongoing process of writing is far more important than any particular piece of writing, no matter how ‘successful’ it may seem. Get into the process for the long haul, and cultivate ways that writing can serve your sense of well-being each day — like physical exercise. “I tell my students now, if you write every day, the writ- ing you do may not always be stupendous — but it will al- ways be a better day for your engagement with the self, the language, and the world.” This imperative to make writing a daily practice, especially if you hope to make a life out of it, came up again on Sunday at the Can- non Beach Library, where Stafford read, sang, played guitar and contemplated that elemental human function — storytelling — during a Northwest Authors Series event. He spoke of his own THOMAS ROTT PHOTO Features Editor Erick Bengel. practice, which begins every morning when he takes a walk and sits down with a page. “If there’s something that troubles me, something I’m afraid of, something I regret, something I’m angry about, I just say to myself, ‘I’ll look at that in my writing time.’ And then I do what I call ‘settling my accounts emotionally.’” As one of his students said: “Put your rage on the page. Don’t fight it; write it.” In this way, Stafford said, he can return to neutral. “Happiness,” he pointed out, comes from the Old Norse “hap” and shares the cognate with “happens.” “Happiness,” he said, “is when you come into accord with what happens: If it’s dark, you look at it, you take on what you can, you have relation with what happens, and then you go forward.” Afterward, Stafford pre- sided over a meeting of local writers. Terry Brooks, author of the “Shannara” fantasy series who lives part-time in Cannon Beach, said he needs to write every day to be a pleasant person, to feel sane. A serious writer should do the same, Brooks said. Make time for it. “If you need to give something up, give something up.” This means doing what is, at least for me, the most masochistic part of writing: staring at my own bad unfin- ished work — really looking at how rough and draft-y and bad it is — and continuing to write anyway. Being in accord with what happens while writing means confronting head on my malformed thoughts and mangled sentences, the literary tripe only I could produce, the cringey drivel I fear would make my loved ones give up on me were they ever to read it. Not to worry, I try to reas- sure myself. It can always be smoothed out later. Trust the process. Just write, every day if possible. And it’s always a better day, Stafford said, when something comes forth from the inner life. CW
