The Hole in the Donut

Negative space in writing

Georgia O’Keeffe, “Pelvis IV,” 1944

Dear readers and writers,

I have holes on the brain. Before you make RFK worm jokes, let me clarify. I just read the latest newsletter from the always inspiring Austin Kleon. His issue was a celebration of the life of David Lynch, whose working mantra was “Focus on the donut, not the hole.”

Lynch meant: when making a film, focus on the film itself and not all the shenanigans in the studio, the managers and agents and actors’ gripes.

I’m championing this mantra for writers working on first drafts, or even final drafts of novels/poems/essays what have you.

I usually begin my writing day by re-reading what I wrote the day before. I can come to my own work with my hypercritical internal Editor scowling at all the things I’ve done wrong, all the things that I didn’t say, all the parts that still aren’t working.

OR I can look for what’s working in the piece, which is exactly how I instruct my students and members of my writing groups and retreats to approach each other’s work.

Last week, Tom and I spent the day at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to see the beautiful exhibit of the work of American painter Georgia O’Keeffe and British sculptor Henry Moore. I was struck with how they each celebrate negative space. My sister Katryna fell in love with Henry Moore sculptures as a child because, in part, their signature holes made them easily identifiable as his.

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure

There’s such a humility in valuing what isn’t there! And when I edit my songs and novels, that’s often what I find I need to add: less. Fewer words, more space. When the writer doesn’t say how a character feels but rather shows a space where the feeling might be, the reader swoops in to fill in the blank.

Performances can often benefit from negative space. We’re rehearsing our show for the Iron Horse (which will be on February 1). There have been a lot of requests for our song “Tyrants Always Fall,” which I wrote eight years ago, a few days before the inauguration of 2017. I was furious, and so was every woman I knew, and I wanted everyone to know it. Hillary Clinton would have been sworn in as president if we were in living in literally ANY other democracy. She won the popular vote! There were more people who voted for her than for that other guy! AND she’d been disgustingly targeted by misogynists!

In solidarity with all my fellow pussy hat wearers, the song became a rocking anthem, beginning with a searing electric guitar part. It’s probably our loudest song.

But it’s now, not then. Are there more of us than there are of them? Maybe technically. But the guy who’s just been sworn in did win the popular vote. And that tyrant might have fallen once, but he didn’t stay down. He’s sort of like a Pet Cemetery creature.

So next week, we’re going to begin the song differently. More like an a cappella dirge, so that the audience has more aural space to consider their own unique connection to the first verse:

This is the truth of who I am.
And it’s taken me my whole life to celebrate, I won’t go back.
You can give me a number, slap on a label
Tell me I won’t be welcome at your table
But I won’t bow down to the tyrants anymore.
I know what to do, I’ve been here before.

We can refrain from bowing down in all sorts of ways—not just Women’s Marches, not just writing our senators, not just arguing with our GOP uncles and abstaining from buying from Amazon, Dominos, Home Depot and all the other sycophant-owned businesses.

We can, for instance, stop letting the Reality TV president get what he wants: our eyeballs and nervous systems as hostages.

Look away. But not like an ostrich with your head in the sand. More like the crafty Jason who used his shield as a mirror to approach Medusa’s hypnotic snaky hair without being destroyed by her evil magic. If you don’t know this myth, look it up!

Courage, friends. Stay with that self you’ve been getting to know your whole life.

Love, Nerissa

What I Am Loving

What I’m reading: Marking Time, Book Two in Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles, and This is Happiness by Niall Williams.

Watching: The Americans! Season two. Brilliantly written and acted, though violent. Somehow, the violence, while horrible (I’m a looker-away, peep-through-fingers kind of gal), makes more sense to me than the violence of the Sopranos did. It’s about a couple who are KGB agents in the early 80s, posing as Americans and living with their children in Fairfax County, VA, right in the neighborhood my family lived at that same time. It makes me want to meet Russians my age to ask them what they thought of Americans, and are they sad Communism is over? Do they miss any of it?

Tom and I saw the film Conclave over the weekend. I suspected I would like it simply due to the star-studded cast (Stanley Tucci! Ralph Fiennes! John Lithgow! Isabella Rossellini!) It held me rapt for the entire two hours, and I was very moved by the ending.

Last Chance for Little Blue Raffle!!! Enter the Raffle For Your Little Blue Weekend!!!

DRAWING WILL BE JANUARY 31!

What do you win? A weekend at my Little Blue Studio––which I often AirBnB on weekends at a rate of between $520-600 per weekend––to do with as you wish. Bring a partner, bring your writing, enjoy the high life in Northampton MA (we’re a little over a mile from downtown). Can’t get away in the next few months? No problem! We will find a time that works for you! Offer good for five years.*

Ways to enter the raffle:
-Join Morning Seeding & Tending (with this, you get Community Writes, too)
-Become a paid yearly subscriber to Nerissa’s Substack newsletter (you get Community Writes with this)
-Become a Wind Beneath Owl’s Wings (Founding Member) subscriber and get 24 entry tickets. If you become a founding member, you also get to be in Community Writes and Morning Seeding & Tending for as long as you retain your founding membership to Symbols & Cymbals.

Below is the AirBnB Listing for Little Blue.

Scenes from the January Retreat

January retreat photos

Retreat Schedule 2025 is almost complete!

Summer Writing Camp will be the weekend of July 14-18
September Back to School Camp will be the week of September 16-21