The Work of Edie Clark

Dear Readers,
A new venture, my CD, Night Sky, recently released. To order, click on the link to the left. A book on tape, Night Sky is a recording of me reading some of my Mary's Farm essays out loud. Wish me luck. Since I first started producing books (2005), I have always responded to reader requests. And this is one more. So I thank you all for the way you respond to my work and guide me gently on my way.

The rest (below) comes from a frequently asked question:

How It All Began

I am sometimes asked how I got started writing, how I came to be a writer. At my age, it's of interest to me now to think back that far, all the way to when I was nine and my grandmother, also a writer, gave me my first typewriter, a sweet little portable Underwood with pine green enamel paint and bold black letters. I loved the gestures of writing on a typewriter, gestures that are now largely gone from a writer's world -- threading the paper in under the roller (platen I think it was called), setting it straight so the lines would type straight, setting the margins, forward spacing to the starting place, and then, like a virtuoso at the keyboard – to begin. First came the rhythm of the mechanical action of each key activating the arm that raised the characters and struck the paper, the pause for spacing, the rattle of a spurt of sentences, the "ding!" at the end of a line, and then the dramatic return of the carriage to start a new line. I especially enjoyed that part as it indicated progress, inspiration, momentum. I must have seen people typing on television or some such as I took this dramatic motion on in the way that some take on the flourishes of cigarette smoking, holding the cigarette in a certain way, drawing in the smoke, exhaling it for various effects. I think of writing on the typewriter like that, now that most all of those elements are missing from the act of committing words, sentences, paragraphs, and hopefully, an entire work, to paper. At the end of a line, I would sometimes curl my index finger around the carriage return lever and send it back to the beginning with a motion not unlike an orchestra conductor, mid-symphony. To me, I think all of that represented a kind of play-acting: to BE a writer! Behind all that affectation was some kind of dream as yet undreamed.

All that busyness at the typewriter did not make me a writer, far from it, but I like to think that there was something about that activity that somehow grew in me toward where I wanted to go. Of course, my grandmother was an inspiration, though she died when I was ten, so there wasn't much that could have passed between us except possibly her frustration, which I felt through her. My grandmother had several poems and short stories published in New York magazines (Harper's, The Black Cat) but she also wrote seven novels, none of which were ever published. Not for lack of trying. Not long before she died (at age 87), on a hot summer day, she and I were sitting on her front porch when the mailman came. He entered the porch with the mail, which included a package wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. This was her latest book, returned to her from Random House with a heartfelt rejection letter. I must have absorbed her disappointment that day. It seemed to me to be some strange, long distance recompense when, more than forty years later, Random House accepted my first book, The Place He Made, for publication.

In any case, starting when I was around ten or so, I started writing poetry, mostly inspired by a wonderful teacher I had at that time. We wrote for class and I wrote in and out of class, thrilled by the possibilities of words, what they had to say that I sometimes could not say using the spoken word. I wrote poems all through high school and college, winning a few awards, enjoying the notion that I might become a poet, like Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson. Once I graduated from college, I realized that I had to earn a living, or, at least, had to pay my rent and utilities. At the time, I had rented an apartment in Philadelphia. The idea of rent was something of a revelation. I was a child of the 1950s and my parents had not raised their daughter to think too much about career or money. They seemed to trust that whatever path I took would be acceptable. I suppose they thought that I would marry a man with an income adequate for both of us. Nothing was ever said about how I would make my way in the world.

So came the job hunt. It was 1970. Compounding my parents' indifference, my college didn't do much in that direction either and, having been a philosophy and English literature major, the last years of my education were spent chortling over how "unemployable" these disciplines were. But I enjoyed them nonetheless. And it was also the late sixties – we spent more time protesting than imagining careers. The cold water of entering the work force hit me rather hard. Soon enough, I found a job at a publishing company, which seemed at first to be a stroke of luck. If I could not find work as a writer, I could edit the works of others! In fact, I enjoyed working on manuscripts written by others. One of the first books I worked on was the sci-fi classic, DUNE, by Frank Herbert. It was in its second edition by that time and I made corrections to the original. I was very proud of that.

At night and on weekends, I worked on a novel in my little two-room apartment in downtown Philly. It was on the second floor of a brownstone just off Center City and I enjoyed looking out at the windows of similar looking buildings across the street. Those were times of intense happiness and intense sadness as I adjusted to the world through my newly adult eyes. Sometimes I felt very at home there, walking three blocks to a cozy neighborhood cafe to meet friends for supper, returning home in the surprising quiet of the late-night city streets. At times like that, the city had the feeling of the safety of an aunt's backyard. But then sometimes I felt frightened and out of my element, such as the night a knifing took place in the vestibule of my building or the morning I woke up and discovered I had neglected to lock my door before going to bed.

The editing went on for three years, I loved it and worked under a wonderful man who was my friend and mentor, John Marion. We put out novels and books about art and almost all the titles were of interest to me. I got to know the authors (I was especially nervous when I had to call Frank Herbert on the phone. My recollection is that I reached him poolside at his Miami home but that could be just the way I pictured him answering the phone) and some(such as Sterling E. Lanier, whose book, Hiero's Journey, now a classic, was the first book I took on as editor and followed through to bound book)took me under their wing, which was a good thing later on. But at the end of three years, I decided, along with the man who would later become my first husband, that it was time to move out of the city and be with the earth.

That was when the writing started for me, I still had my grandmother's little green typewriter and set it up in a number of bedrooms of the various old farmhouses we rented in both Vermont and New Hampshire before we bought 11 acres on the side of a beautiful hill in New Hampshire and built a house of our own design and with our own hands. By then it was 1976. The house was shaped like a classic Cape but with a steeper pitch to the roof to shed the loads of snow we expected. Solar panels heated our water and kerosene lamps lit our rooms at night. We could live in style without the need for electricity. Kitchen, living room, dining area occupied most of the first floor with two woodstoves, one a wood cookstove that I still use every day and the other a heating stove beside which we built a brick wall. On the other side of the brick wall was the bathroom. The woodstove warmed the bricks and heated the bathroom. We installed an old claw-footed tub and enjoyed lying in the bathtub, splashing water against the wall and watching steam rising from the hot bricks. Cozy indeed. In the basement was a piston pump which we pumped by hand every morning to fill a water tank that fed water to the sinks upstairs. It was what we called hand-pumped water from the tap -- the material for my first article, published by Organic Gardening magazine. Not exactly the kind of writing I had in mind when I first fell in love with the rhythm of typewriter keys and carriage return. But it was thrilling to write something and be paid for it.

I first started working at Yankee in February of 1978. I was hired to do proofreading two days a week. At that point both my husband and I were willing to do whatever we had to do to bring in a little income to support our homestead. I drove an old VW beetle that had no heater. My several layers of socks and heavy boots prevented my feet from freezing while driving the 34 miles from our little haven in Winchester to the Yankee offices in Dublin. My first hour at Yankee was always spent thawing out, putting my feet on the baseboard heater and rubbing my hands together to get the circulation going again.

I didn’t know much about Yankee, thought it was a magazine for old people. But I gradually realized that most everyone on the staff was in their late twenties, like me. Proofreading the articles, I became interested in the content and started thinking about stories that I might write. I had never thought about New England as a whole, but I had always loved the spirit of the place. In our Nearing-inspired house, we had a composting toilet called a Clivus Multrum, a Swedish invention that was being marketed in the United States by a surprising entity, Abby Rockefeller, daughter of David, granddaughter of John D. I suggested to Yankee the idea of writing about her and they said to go ahead. I went to interview her in her Cambridge home, parking my rusted Volkswagen in front of her aristocratic manse. I remember being extremely nervous, not only because it was the first time I’d ever gone out on assignment but also because of the possibly daunting woman I might find behind such a famous name. She came to the door in bare feet, feet that obviously rarely wore shoes. With her warm smile, she immediately put me at ease. My story about Abby and her water-saving enterprise became the first story I ever wrote for Yankee. After that, assignments came fast and furious.

I often tell people that I do not write for a living, I drive. I’ve driven way more than a million miles, worn out nine cars, divorced one husband and lost another to cancer, buried my parents, lived in five different houses, most of them in the same town, survived cancer and (hopefully) Lyme Disease and my hair has turned white. I’m amazed to report that Yankee has remained the one constant in my life. I still write for them, every issue.

In fact, most issues of Yankee since the 1980s have stories that I’ve written, whether they are little humorous quips about eccentric folks or multiple-part series about land development or water pollution. On occasion, to conceal the fact that I had written too many stories for one issue, I wrote under the names E. Sterling (my middle name) and Alice Herbert (a pseudonym Yankee kept on file for such instances).

In pursuit of stories for Yankee, I have driven the Golden Road, dodging logging trucks, all the way to the Allagash; walked part of Vermont’s Long Trail; canoed the West Branch of the Penobscot; and straddled the Canadian border, looking for the Fourth Connecticut Lake which turned out to be an insignificant beaver pond but, nevertheless, the source of the mighty Connecticut River. That was the end of my journey along the length of the Connecticut which took me all of one summer to complete and even longer to write the five-part series on the river. The series appeared in 1985-1986.

I’ve poked into the gardens of many who have since passed away but whose gardens still live with me as I work in mine. I’ve sat in numberless kitchens, jotting down recipes and enjoying the delicious results. I’ve sampled an array of chocolates for a Valentine’s Day issue, judged an apple pie contest, a chili contest and a pudding contest, and I’ve attended a wild game supper in Vermont (one of the few assignments I was unable to complete. I just couldn’t stomach the fare.) I’ve profiled a passle of small towns, as if they were people. I’ve driven all over Vermont to find out why it was considered endangered and I’ve driven the length of the Canadian border, from Alburgh, Vermont, to Quoddy Light at the tip of Lubec, Maine to see why or from what we need to be protected. I’ve taken a perilous ferry to Newfoundland and gone further afield, to Iowa and Alabama and California, to name a few places, all in pursuit of stories for Yankee magazine.

Along the way I’ve interviewed old log drivers and beekeepers, stood by while an enormous wood-burning kiln that was first built and then burned, in order to fire river clay into fine, colorful bricks. I’ve walked through the interior of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, wearing total-body protective gear while my tour guide was telling me the place was no more dangerous than a cake mix factory. I’ve interviewed bishops and movie stars, a Vermont copper miner, the man who developed the seed for the now-infamous Giant Pumpkin, a 96-year-old newspaper columnist, the similarly ancient daughter of a slave, as well as an elderly chicken farmer whose sight was restored when he was struck by lightning (but by the time I got to him, he had hired a Hollywood agent. End of story.). I’ve sat in the living room of a man whose wife was shot and killed by a deer hunter, leaving him with their twin daughters, who toddled around us as we spoke.

In these long thirty-two years, millionaires and men out of work have opened their homes to me as well as an entire congregation who would not leave their church when the bishop ordered them to in order for the church to be sold. For several nights, I slept in the pews with them and, eventually, watched them being forcibly removed from the church by the police, some of whom had tears rolling down their cheeks as they performed their duty. I also celebrated with these congregants when they reclaimed their church, where they continue to worship. (On that story, it was hard to maintain objectivity. It was as if it had been scripted by the devil.) I attended services at the Mother Church of the Christian Science Church, read their scriptures and studied the life of Mary Baker Eddy in order to write about the case of a child who died while in the care of faith healing. Over these long years, there have been stories about gravestone robbers and gravestone carvers; Jesus trees and a comatose teenager from whom thousands sought healing; fish decoys and duck decoys and magicians who bring ducks out of thin air. The stories are as endless as the colors in nature. Every story has widened my circle and deepened my understanding, of life and of the human race.

To my surprise and everlasting delight, what started out as a way to make ends meet while my first husband and I tried to live off the land became my life. In the midst of it all, my second husband, Paul Bolton, the love of my life, died of cancer. And I wrote The Place He Made which became a book about his life, our life, his love, our love, a book about cancer and treatments and about grief and recovery – overall a book about love and loss.

So when I think about writing and how I got started, I think about my grandmother and her unpublished manuscripts (now resting in my attic), about the little typewriter (still in its carrying case, also in the attic), all the poems from my adolescence (in a small bound book my father made for them, also somewhere in the attic), all those early nudges, because you just never know in this life what paths will open up and one thing is certain: the life of a writer is different for every single one of us, as different as we are from each other. But oh so satisfying.

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I hope you enjoy what you find on this website. Do let me hear from you if you have any suggestions, thoughts, or complaints. Thank you so much for visiting. Over the years I’ve come to realize that what matters more than anything, more than the publishers, more than the editors, more than the checks they pay me, what matters most are my readers.