Writing After the Fire
By Rusty LaGrange, High Desert Branch
Losing an entire community tucked in the forested canyons of the Sierras is hard to imagine, yet we saw it replay over and over on the news.
For those who lost everything, like North State branch member, T.E. Watson, everything included his 30 years of manuscripts, books, and a lifetime of awards. We know that at least nine other Paradise writers, their friends, and relatives were affected by these firestorms that ravished north and south California. I asked Tom Watson what he did to work through this major tragedy that also stopped him in is forward motion to work on any current children’s story.
“This was a crazy situation. In some ways it is good. It leads to a ton of new material,” he said. “Yet, it has been difficult. Not a solid stable place to sit and write. Thank goodness for laptops. But on the other hand, it did not occur to me that writing was and should have been part of the therapy of sorts. It has been a slow and exasperating process of waiting. I have so much to do and nowhere to do it. Going through the stuff that makes staying with family and friends is not easy. You need to write and you have nowhere to create because you have the feeling of being an inconvenience and you do not want to impose on anyone…. There is nothing more dissatisfying than feeling like you need to stay out of the way.”
I had to ask him how he made those first steps moving forward. We heard on the news then that emergency aid was swamped with too many claims at once for three major fires: Woolsey, Carr, and Camp.
“As far as being portable,” he said, “I am a writer and author. I have written on planes, on a hillside, or loch side in Scotland, with a pad of paper on Highway 5 (not driving of course). Portability is one thing writers must get accustomed to. During the fire, and the days that have followed, I tried writing, even on paper, it just was not coming. The flow wasn’t there.
“Fortunately, it is now.”
This piece originally appeared in
the March 2019 CWC Bulletin.
Rusty LaGrange serves as editor of both
the CWC Bulletin and the High Desert Branch newsletter.