Category: The Wandering Writer

I See Tomato Soup, You See Blood

A friend of mine visited last weekend, and one of my favorite things about showing someone around Charleston is that I get to see the city through someone else’s eyes.  Often when we live somewhere, we take things for granted, barely notice them.  A fresh perspective reminds me to look at things I may see every day in different ways.

Rachel has a rather skewed view of the world (well, you do) and she always makes me notice things I’ve missed.  Take our local soup shop, Ladles.  I’ve been there dozens of times, and each time I go I walk under a sign with a ladle dripping what is presumably tomato soup.  And never think anything of it.  But, as Rachel commented right away, there are no soups quite that color red.  In fact, the logo looks very much like a ladle dripping blood.  Now every time I go I will be reminded of blood – a soup shop that could have been featured in Twilight.  Not sure that’s the look they’re going for.

While at White point gardens at the Battery, Rachel got a big kick out of our statue to the confederate dead.  Nothing unusual about having a statue on the Battery to the Confederate Defenders of Charleston.  However, it is a bit strange that they are wearing fig leaves.  As Rachel put it, no wonder the south lost the war if they were parading around in fig leaves instead of uniforms.  I’ve walked past that statue every day on my way to work, and never thought anything of it.  But it did make me wonder why.  This of course made me research that statue and all the other military relics in White Point Gardens.  Still don’t know why the sculptor depicted the defenders of Fort Sumter this way, but I did learn lots that I didn’t know about the relics there.

This is what a new perspective does for me.  It stirs my imagination, makes me ask questions, and sometimes makes me question the absurd. I have always been one who wants to know why. Visitors make me question something I’ve taken for granted.  They remind me to wonder about the commonplace as well as the unusual.

Key West Literary Seminar 2013

Key West Literary Seminar 2013 Stage
Key West Literary Seminar 2013 Stage

by Sharon Harrigan

Sharon Harrigan, a friend and fellow WriterHouse member, was the Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award recipient at KWLS this year, and I asked her to share her thoughts on the experience.  Thanks, Sharon, and congrats again on a much deserved award.

If the view out your window is anything like mine right now—snow on slippery sidewalks—let me offer you this mid-winter writer’s daydream: Flip flops and floppy hats on beach cruiser bikes to stir up inspiration. The sun so bright on the ocean you can swim in it every day of the year, like Tennessee Williams did. The descendants of Hemingway’s cats lounging at his house under flowering shrubs, just the sight of their softness somehow making your prose more muscular. Cafe con leche and guava pastries before writing workshop with Hilma Wolitzer at Judy Blume’s house. Panels and presentations by literary superstars like Colm Toibin, Brad Gooch, and Billy Collins, followed by dinners with the speakers and your fellow workshop writers at the lighthouse, near the southernmost tip of North America. Finally, after a corkscrew climb down the winding steps, a pink taxi or pedi-cab waits to deposit you in the jacuzzi at your bed and breakfast (aptly called, of course, Authors’ House).

It’s not a day dream. It’s called the Key West Literary Seminar. I was able to attend for the first time, last month, and the experience still helps me write more brightly, whatever gray days may arrive, outside my window or in my head.

The seminar takes place every January, and there are three ways you can attend—as a winner of one of the three prizes, as a scholarship participant, and as a general attendee. I was lucky enough to be the Joyce Horton Johnson Award recipient this year. For more information, see the seminar’s web site: http://www.kwls.org/

Spread the word about KWLS. I wouldn’t have known about it at all if it weren’t for my fellow WriterHouse members who won the award in previous years (hooray for Kristen-Paige Madonia, George Kamide, and CHRISTY STRICK!).  It must be something WriterHouse puts in the water, or maybe good things just happen when you’re part of a fabulously smart and encouraging literary community. Thank you, Christy, for all your tips on Key West and everything else.

Sharon Harrigan has published over three dozen short stories, essays, and reviews in such journals as Narrative, The Rumpus, and The Nervous Breakdown.

Loving the Day Job

I love history.  I’m also a water girl – though Charlottesville is beautiful, my big complaint was always that it is just too far from the ocean.  So what more could I ask than to live in this city on the coast so proud of her past?

How about a job on the Battery in one of the most photographed houses in Charleston?  I waited a long time to find the perfect place to work (no institutional hotel or office building for me), and my patience has paid off.  I started last week at Two Meeting Street Inn, a beautiful nine room inn overlooking White Point Gardens and, beyond that, the Charleston Harbor.

Two Meeting Street Inn

Besides writing, hospitality is my thing.  I love giving a guest an amazing experience, going above and beyond expectations.  I love sharing this city with newcomers.  Two Meeting Street Inn gives me the chance to do that, in a gorgeous and gracious setting.

I will need to revise my writing schedule, because my day now starts much earlier and I won’t be able to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning any more.  But I’ve always said that if you really want to write, you’ll find time.  And writing, I think, whatever time you do it, is much easier when you are happy with your day job.

So if you’re in Charleston, please come by and see me and I’ll give you a tour of Two Meeting Street Inn.  And if you want to stay in a romantic and beautiful historic home South of Broad, check us out. You’ll fall in love with Number Two Meeting, just like I did.