Writing

More Column Ideas That Never Got Written

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(Originally published as a column in The Beach Reporter newspaper.)

Sometimes a writer has to do a sort of mental housekeeping. I like to clear my mind of all the clutter that has accumulated there, and believe me that is no small task. To aid in this task, I start with my notebooks. Like most writers I have little notebooks scattered about in my purse, on my nightstand, and on my desk. The reason I have these notebooks is that if I don’t write down my brilliant ideas when they come to me in the full force of their vision, they will depart as quickly as they came, and I will never be able to summon them back.

The result of all this random scribbling is that after a while, I have all these spiral notebooks filled with the strangest sentences, one-liners, and full paragraphs that try to capture the essence of something that struck a chord in me. I used to think this was an odd personal quirk until I started reading interviews of other writers who claim to have this same habit. And since many of these writers are famous and successful, I decided this trait was one to be embraced rather than stifled.

And in that spirit… I would like to share some of my jottings from some recent notebooks – let’s call them essay ideas that never made it to the big time. You will soon see why. Continue reading →

The Widows’ Wall (a short story)

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(This short story was originally published in 2015 in Clapboard House, a literary journal.)

The wall, when you approach it from the east, in the early morning, looks blank. Looks just like a regular stone wall. The morning sun hits it at such an angle that you can’t see the inscriptions at first. And in the summer, ivy and other creeping plants do their best to stake their rightful claim. One of the widows will usually come by, though and tear any encroaching plant life away, so that the writing is not obscured.

Marianne Carlson, twice widowed (and thus with two stones in the wall) owns the property on which the wall sits. Her modest clapboard farmhouse, built in 1913, belonged to her first husband’s family, the Whidbeys. Edward had been the only son of Ernest and Grace Whidbey; a daughter had run off to the South and hadn’t been heard from in decades. Edward Whidbey had been a drinker. One starless night he had staggered onto the pond when it was not quite frozen through, not being able, in his inebriated state, to distinguish between the snow-covered meadow and the snow-covered and not-quite-thick-enough ice that covered the pond. He had sometimes liked to wander about at night, to look at the stars and howl at the moon. Ernest and Grace moved into town shortly after that, not being able to bear living on the property where their only son had died. They had felt obligated to give Marianne the house and land as recompense for her trouble, and also so that she could raise their grandson away from their own deep sorrow.

For a long while, Marianne stewed in her bitterness over Edward’s failing her. When she married him she had been a naïve girl, had not known much about drinking or what it did to people. Sometimes when he drank, he sang to her and was lovely in ways he normally wasn’t, but that scared her as much as the other times. She wondered who the real Edward Whidbey was – the good-natured crooner of folk songs who reached under her skirts and nuzzled her with the rough stubble of his beard, or the howling wreck with bloodshot eyes who yelled at her for overcooking the vegetables and leaving the radio on and using too much electricity. Continue reading →

Max Bran (A Story)

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(A new unpublished essay/story today about my cab ride with Max Bran, a San Francisco musician.)

When I met Max Bran he was driving a taxi in San Francisco. It was an old beat-up taxi, a clunker. It was raining and I decided to splurge on a cab because I had been waiting for a bus for quite a long time, and it was late at night, and I was in a part of town that didn’t seem so good now that it was nearing midnight. I usually ride buses in cities when I travel because it’s a good way to get to know a city, and also to observe the people who really live there.

I am a person who can’t tolerate silence in a cab unless I ascertain right away that the cab driver does not speak English. This particular night I was sort of dejected because my agent had just that afternoon told me she didn’t think she was the right agent for me. She had been my agent for seven years and had never sold my short story collection or any potential books that I had outlined and was in the process of working on. I was secretly glad that she had finally brought up this idea of separation because I knew I would never have had the guts to do it myself. I was still hurt though because she was really my only connection to the literary world in New York City, if such a relationship – one in which nothing had happened – could be considered a connection. Continue reading →

Everybody’s An Author – Even Fabio

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(From The Beach Reporter on 12/3/92.)

These are the times that try an author’s soul. To know that Madonna’s book is a number-one bestseller, right next to Rush Limbaugh’s, which I guess is supposed to even things out. To know that Kathie Lee Gifford has written her autobiography and that people actually want to read it. I can think of at least 100 things I would rather do before I read the autobiography of Kathie Lee Gifford. Things like hand wash or ironing pillowcases, filing my nails and plucking my eyebrows.

But all of these “authors” pale in comparison to the newest celebrity author on the block – Fabio. In case you don’t know who Fabio is, he is the hunk-of-the-year, now turned novelist.

Fabio is not just some dumb gorgeous guy who wandered into the U. S. via Milan. He is savvy enough to go by only one name, in the tradition of Madonna and Cher. His claim to fame up to now is his modeling career. His image has graced the covers of more than 350 Avon romance novels. He has his own beefcake calendar.

Continue reading →