rebeccakuder

YSTC 10-minute play festival (& “Dust” aka my first play)

working at Omega (2018)

In January, I wrote a play.

This was accidental—I had been working on the memoir about my burned-down house (318) and used a prompt from Ariel Gore‘s literary kitchen. (Ariel sends fabulous weekly prompts. You can subscribe here.) The prompt asked us to write about a place that scared us. Because the prompt called for dialogue, I wrote some dialogue. After I finished and exhaled, I looked at the page and thought, “Is this a play?” A play—shaped on the page—would fit in the memoir. I’m allowing many & various forms/containers for the work.

My undergraduate degree is in theater, but never had I written a play.

Then I noticed that the Yellow Springs Theater Company was seeking plays for their 10-minute play festival. Hmm…so with feedback from some smart and wise friends, I buffed the thing and sent it in. The play (called “Dust”) was accepted. And because the YSTC invites writers to do as much as they want with the production, I also decided to direct and act in the play. (It has been a long while. I am working with two wonderful actors as I re-learn how to do theater.)

Want to join us?

WHEN: June 3 & 4, at 7pm

WHERE: Yellow Springs High School lawn (420 E. Enon Road, Yellow Springs, 45387)

MORE DETAILS: Visit YSTC on Facebook.

rebeccakuder

Interview with Diane Gottlieb

accidental two-sided drawing by Rebecca

I’m very grateful to the fabulous Diane Gottlieb for taking time to interview me in this life-affirming conversation about writing, mental health, trauma, bodies, and the inner critic! Please do check out the interview at WomanPause. (Thanks, Diane!)

rebeccakuder

essay at LA Review of Books

shadow of writer at Long Pond, Omega Institute, October 2017
shadow of writer at Long Pond, Omega Institute, October 2017

Here’s a link to my essay, “A Trampoline,” recently published at LA Review of Books.

This essay is part of my memoir-in-progress, 318, about my childhood home that the fire department burned down as an exercise. Gratitude to all who have lent support, especially those who read & helped with early drafts; to Nick Flynn for Memoir as Bewilderment; and to Gina Frangello, for publishing this piece.

May we all find our way, as we work our way back up.

rebeccakuder

Inbox

May Day 1983. (318. My ghost.)

I keep many emails in my inbox. I don’t always archive, delete, or (if I’m honest) even read all the messages that arrive there. What’s weird is how often the precise number of messages in my inbox is 318. Maybe I am trying to recreate that place in any way I can, even through my electronic inertia and disarray.

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short story published in CROOKED HOUSES

CROOKED HOUSES anthology by Egaeus Press
(photo by Merida Kuder-Wexler. Top wrist shown: a survivor of break & surgical mend in January 2020.)

My short story “Your House, Any House. That House” was published in Crooked Houses, a new anthology from Egaeus Press. The story was heavily inspired by the house in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where I grew up, which was burned down by the fire department (as an exercise) when the Village expanded Gaunt Park. (I am also writing a memoir about that house.)

The first printing of Crooked Houses sold out immediately, but the press plans a reprint in January 2021. It’s a great table of contents, and I’m honored to have my story included.

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(consider the commas, etc.)

Revising rough paragraphs from the house memoir…realized it was actually a handful of deflated, sad sentences wanting to be a poem so I wrote them into a poem. And right now, I’m in love with the poem.

…revision’s cool heart, still to come, and time, will tell. (But for now it’s fun to fall in love with this unplanned poem.)

rebeccakuder

Reframing (being open)

Laite Memorial Beach, Camden, ME, August 2018
Laite Memorial Beach, Camden, ME, August 2018

Each week, I email the week’s writing goals to my friend Diane. I’m grateful for this practice, because it helps me focus. (Thank you, Diane!) Today I wrote the following, which I thought I’d post here. I’m reframing a couple of things that have been getting in my way as I work on the memoir about my childhood house, 318.
Goals for this week:
1. Remind myself that I’m doing this for me, not for the publisher whose contest I plan to enter in January. The thought of pleasing someone else has become a huge, anxiety-producing barrier (someone I don’t know, someone who may want something very different from what doing, whose wants I cannot anticipate, etc.), so I am reframing thusly: I am doing this for myself. I need to please myself. It’s not an assignment someone else gave me.
2. I keep repeating “I’m lost” in the writing process. When I talk to people, I say, “I’m lost.” It is how I feel, but saying it again and again seems to be self-fulfilling. It doesn’t feel good to say “I’m lost.” I’m tired of saying I’m lost. It’s not a good kind of lost, like when you’re walking around Venice and you have no idea where you are, but you’re on vacation and there’s a gelato place so you get some melon gelato, let’s say, and it’s so delicious, and you walk a little bit more and you end up somewhere you recognize. This writing-a-memoir-lost is NOT like Venice lost. This lost feels kinda bad. So I realized this morning (as I did the morning pages from The Artist’s Way) that maybe I’m not lost, maybe I’m just OPEN. I have never been much of an outliner in my writing—it’s always been messy and organic. In that way, I’ve always been open. So maybe instead of “lost” I will start saying “open.” Being open feels much better than being lost. Being lost describes a struggle. I want to alleviate the struggle, the powerlessness.
Being open feels much calmer.

I am doing this for myself.

I am open.

rebeccakuder

Everything reminds you of what happened

multi-color fabric partial quilt front, shape of face and moons, etc.
detail from a quilt I made in college, never finished

(That thing that happens when something is consuming you, how you see it everywhere. My memoir is everywhere, apparently. Here’s one place I saw it the other day.)

Question
by May Swenson

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead

How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift
how will I hide?

rebeccakuder

(writing about math & the bones)

photo of papers on the floor, writing process
Working at Omega, October 2017

…when you hand yourself over to an hour freewrite about numbers and math, and it all adds up to the shape your bones will be when your body goes to the fire. (& instead of scrawling your usual “thank you” at the end of your freewriting, which Laraine Herring taught you in her workshop—thanking yourself and your writer self for showing up—you write “mic drop.”)

(boom.)