2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

countries. I marvel at the mystery of a photograph of someone long dead,
yet still hauntingly vital on the page, alive in an image. Old photographs
speak to me of time and memory, of the false stillness of image as an attempt
to slow, reverse, even sabotage time. Writers do much the same
thing with language. I'm a very visual person, so photographs of people
speak of unfinished stories to me, remind me of the profound secrets and
unrevealable, unspoken depths of human life. Photographs keep me
awake to surprise, wondering.
Meg: Who were your most powerful influences as an early writer
that kept you writing
Melissa: The authors who astounded me, made me want to write as
well or at least make the attempt: Thomas Mann, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky,
Chekov, Georges Sand, Gustav Flaubert, Flannery O'Connor, James
Joyce, Dickens, Thackery, the Brontes, Faulkner, Eudora Welty, on and
on. So many. When I would lay down to write each afternoon, under
the dining room table, (the one clean place, not overrun by primary-colored
toys and child-centered chaos in the house,) I imagined all of them
lined up, in no particular order, on white bleachers. I pictured myself
writing from the field to them, trying to hone one sentence, create one
image, that might please them. Another powerful influence was my first
husband, a luthier, artist and musician, who showed me how incredibly
hard one had to work to produce anything truly fine, how to actively
love the work you did, to be patient with it, obsessed by it, how to be
both humble and a perfectionist. I watched him hand-build these gorgeous
Renaissance lutes, one at a time, and his self-discipline and joy in
what he did, taught me more than a dozen books on craft. He is now an
internationally famous instrument maker, making basses for some of the
best musicians in the world. My second husband was a great influence as
well. He encouraged me to write five pages a day and then reward myself
after each writing session. For years, a third of a frozen Snickers bar
waited for me at the end of every two hours of writing. So simple, candy
for the child who did her chores, but it worked and got me past my fear
and excuses. I recommend the candy system of writing.
72 Santa Fe Literary Review