Patricia Harrelson

A double fatality accident on Highway 49 made me late to Pam Houston’s evening reading at Columbia College. I was still thinking about the hot red flares on the road and the line of cars diverted to an alternate route as I slid into a seat in the Dogwood building. A light flashed from the stage into my eye. It took a minute to realize it came from a square bauble hanging from the chain around Pam’s neck. She had added a jacket to her outfit since her afternoon reading at the library. Had she worn the necklace earlier? I couldn’t remember but I started listening. She was talking about how she writes in glimmers.

Here is a list of the things I heard Pam Houston say:

1. Notice and record. Quoting Henry James, “A writer is a person upon whom nothing is lost.”
2. Write when a thing glimmers at you. Begin by keeping it small.
3. Write with your “screaming brain.” If you think about it, it’s going to be overdetermined.
4. You have to be willing to go with it for a long time before something happens. Good stuff reveals itself in the mess.
5. Narrative tension: You can write a story about a great day at the beach. The tension exists between every line in the memory of all the days that didn’t go great.
6. The metaphor knows more than you.
7. Revise, revise, revise.
8. Do a compassion read. Get outside yourself and see how it might sound to others.
9. Read it aloud. Pay attention to the rhythm of the sentences.
10. Make your words work very, very hard. Cut all the extraneous stuff.
11. Make rules and break them. (e.g. Pam writes in sections of 12 ; she makes titles that are 3 troches: “Cowboys are My Weakness” and “Contents May Have Shifted.” “Sight Hound” is only 8 sections and that title is one troche.)
12. Deadlines can be your friend.