Nicholles Klevisha
Connector Contributor
“I didn’t know if I could write a book,” Laura Harrington said to an audience of young writers and university professors. Harrington has written across genres, produced plays, musicals, operas, and even the occasional radio drama. Winner of the 2008 Kleban for Most Promising Librettist in Musical and the 2009 MIT Levitan Prize for Excellence in Teaching, Harrington wanted to “be a beginner and reconnect with the creative process.” She did this by writing with a medium she’s never used before, a novel.
The excerpt she read was from her book “Alice Bliss.” Alice, a young girl whose father was deployed during the Iraq war, is filled with inner turmoil. In the scene, Alice tries to find distraction in her friend Henry, “one of those dorky kids with lots of interests.” One day, out of the blue, Alice “kisses him, just leans in and kisses him.” Surprised by her own behavior, Alice wonders why she did that. “He was wondering the same thing.” Harrington focuses the attention of the audience between the vulnerable girl’s and the very confused boy’s points of views, a technique she borrows from her playwriting. The scene captures the awkwardness of teenage romance and the tsunami of thoughts and feelings that occur in the small moments after such a big event. “That happened too fast. Did their lips even touch?” At the end of the scene Henry is lost in thought after Alice leaves. “What if it really was a kiss?”
Despite the innocence of the scene, “Alice Bliss” is ultimately a story about war. Fascinated by her father’s silent behavior after his return from war, Harrington has often tackled the subject in her writing. Her latest novel, still in development, “Catalogue of Birds” is set in the 1960’s and focuses on a family affected by the Vietnam War. Billy, scarred by the deadly chemical Agent Orange, deals with a silent rage as he assimilates back into society.
Harrington now teaches playwriting here at UML where her students are driven to write a play a week. She believes that young writers must develop persistence in their writing process. “They haven’t been [writers] long enough,” she said. She explained how the inner editor in writers often tells the writer that his/her ideas are bad before they’re even written. Harrington doesn’t believe in the binary definitions of good and bad ideas. The challenge is to get as many of these ideas on paper “no matter how ridiculous it sounds.” Harrington has a notebook she scribbles in for each one of her projects, preferring to write in long hand because “you can take it everywhere.”
Writers shouldn’t ignore their inner editor forever though. “Those analytical things are used later” during the revision process, which she enthusiastically endorses. She finds delight in revising and truly sees revision as what divides the pros from the amateurs. With the “tsunami of books and pamphlets” being published, writing has developed a hierarchy that “mirrors our social structure.” There are the very few shown in the spotlight, the large middle, and the vast bottom of writing that goes unnoticed. “Ideas are under assault. We need writers and thoughtful people.”
