Carol's Blog

My Blog Has a New Home

2011-09-05T15:58:00.002-04:00

From now on I'll be posting on my new blog platform, which is part of my web domain, carolhenderson.com

Within a week or so I will have set up a permanent relay so that readers will be transfered over automatically, but for now, I invite you to visit by clicking HERE.

My first post on the new blog, "Before Writing Pays the Bills," is waiting for you there.

In Memoriam: from this morning's walk

2011-08-27T08:34:00.006-04:00

I often walk through a park when I'm in Boston. As the sun was rising, I took off and found this portrait--along with a stray baseball cap, a notice about lost sunglasses, and other local info--tacked to the park's bulletin board.

Not sure if you can read the words. The bullets note how long the dog was a member of the park community and squirrel patrol. Moxie's political views favored off-leash legislation. Moxie was named for the drink, not for courage.

In just a few bullets we get to know Moxie and the humans with whom the dog shared a long, joyful life. Last bullet: Best Friend

Mother's Bad Advice

2011-08-06T13:56:00.012-04:00

When I was in high school, my mother told me: "Don't take typing. That way you won't end up being a secretary."

This is probably the worst advice ever. I had to pay friends to type my long papers in college. Remember: back then white out ruled and carbon paper. Cut and paste? Didn't exist. One mistake and you had to retype the entire page, sometimes the entire manuscript.

My husband says typing was the most useful course he took in high school. "No homework." He even enrolled in Typing II after a year of Typing I.

One summer in my 20s, I finally taught myself on a machine like the one pictured here. My husband and I were working on an estate in northern Maine--a remote spot where I had afternoons off. We had no car, nowhere to go anyway, and I had a series of interviews to type up. So I found a touch typing book and got started.

A traveling typewriter sales and repair man actually made house calls, bringing me new ribbons and taking machines away for repairs. Typing took a lot of finger strength.

My daughters say: "Mom, you bang so hard on your poor Mac."

And I say, "Yeah, and you girls learned how to type in high school."

The Book in Hand and a Reading Tonight

2011-07-21T08:12:00.010-04:00

The journey started a few years back when I offered a reflective writing workshop for a group of burned out women ministers and Christian educators--they gathered each month for a restorative morning together. We met again, and again, and began to envision a book of their writings. And now, voila! The first group reading from the book is tonight.

None of us had any idea on that crisp fall day back in 2007 that in 2011 we would be offering readings, reflective writing time, and workshops based on a book of their writings.

Writing begets writing. Meaning grows on the page.

Keep going. Even when you have no idea where you're going. Even when pages--and the hair you're yanking out--litter the floor.

Hang in there. Content yields to form, eventually. And the writing will take you places you never imagined.

I'd Rather Be Teaching

2011-07-15T14:12:00.012-04:00

“Devote myself to my students, my teaching," writes Joyce Carol Oates in her raw and oh-so-real memoir, A Widow’s Story: A Memoir. "This is something that I can do, that is of value.”

She writes these words in the desperate weeks after her husband's death, when she can barely leave her bed but can’t stand being in her house, or anywhere, alone.

She continues: For writing—being a writer—always seems to the writer to be of dubious value.

Being a writer is in defiance of Darwin’s observation that the more highly specialized a species, the more likelihood of extinction.

Being a writer is like being one of those riskily overbred pedigree dogs—a French bulldog, for instance—poorly suited for survival despite their very special attributes.

Teaching—even the teaching of writing—is altogether different. Teaching is an act of communication, sympathy—a reaching out—a wish to share knowledge, skills; a rapport with others, who are students; a way of allowing others into the solitariness of one’s soul.

Gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche—so Chaucer says of his young scholar in The Canterbury Tales. When teachers feel good about teaching, this is how we feel.

Cats Get a Bad Rap

2011-06-16T15:29:00.010-04:00

“Walter had never liked cats. They’d seemed to him the sociopath of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat owners stroke their animals’ lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs. He’d never seen anything in a cat’s face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest. . ." from Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Excuse me, Jonathan Franzen. Cats are curious.

No sooner had I set those blue manuscript files on the couch and turned away to sharpen my edit pencil than Lucy curled up on them.

Both of our cats make our business their business. Always. Get out a suitcase? Lucy is in it. Tune in to the French Open Tennis on TV? Lucy's got her eye on the ball. Meet with a client? Lucy is there. That's not curiosity?

And as for self-interest: Well, living creatures no longer experience self-interest only when they're dead.

Forget what you learned in high school English

2011-05-18T11:02:00.007-04:00

Like everybody else, I had plenty of topic-sentence obsessed English teachers and I've had plenty of students who have trouble breaking out of dreary opening beats.

Listen here to "This American Life" genius Ira Glass show how to drop that bad beginning and get to the guts of good story telling.

I found this on Jane Friedman's newsletter. Check it out.

Gotta Love Doing It .. . Writing that is

2011-05-07T08:36:00.005-04:00

In Escaping Into the Open: The Art of Writing True, Elizabeth Berg says, "What you have to be is in love. With writing. Not with ideas about what to write; not with daydreams about what you're going to do when you're successful. You have to be in love with writing itself, with the solitary and satisfying act of sitting down and watching something you hold in your head and your heart quietly transform itself into words on a page."
I saw this quote here.

Brand-Building? Just Do It.

2011-05-01T12:14:00.021-04:00

In Sunday's Times Book Review, Tony Perrottot discusses all the ways authors have promoted
themselves, for millennia:

In 440 B. C. author Herodotus funded his own Aegean book tour.

In 1887, Guy de Maupassant launched a hot-air balloon with his latest short story title emblazoned on the side.

Hemingway made Ballantine Ale ads in 1951.

And so on. Feel no shame. Just get out there, like my press agent--pictured here.

Whatever Helps . . . To Get the Writing Done

2011-04-26T12:26:00.009-04:00

Beverly Cleary, 95, author of the Ramona books and many others, writes:

"When I am writing a book I also enjoy ironing, an idiosyncrasy that probably makes me sound more domestic than I really am. Working with my hands frees my imagination."

After three delete all sessions and staring at the blinking cursor, I got out the old metal ironing board, pushed it open, and locked it into place. My writing companion cats skidded for shelter, puffed and shedding. Not a good sign.

I will take a short break, I told myself, and iron a blouse.

Okay, done. No aha moments. No breakthroughs. Sigh.

Hmm. Suddenly, I remember a rumpled shirt of my husband's. Opening his closet I am struck by the center-stage placement of the two suits he wears only to weddings and funerals--his everyday clothes jammed in the corner. No wonder he's a sartorial mess.

Fast Forward: His closet looks like the OCD fairy waved her wand: short-sleeved shirts stand at attention--like marching soldiers--all facing the same direction, neatly pressed, top button buttoned. Open my closet: more of same.

But the chapter I was writing?

Blinking cursor.

Fast Forward Again: I have put the ironing board away, especially since it quickly became home to piles of manilla files, bills, and magazines.

At last, I have found a spark, an image. Yes. Back to the computer and the project, cats by my side.

My mother and Ironing:

Platform? What is it?

2011-04-07T08:44:00.008-04:00

Everyone in my classes is asking about the author "platform."

A woman last night said, "I think it's getting out of control, all these blogs and websites and people putting so much time and effort into creating a presence on the Internet. Some day we'll all be laughing about this."

Maybe.

Some day, but not today.

And that woman, by the way, is finishing a memoir--and starting a blog.

For information and help, check out publishing pundit Jane Friedman's latest.

Coming Soon

2011-03-04T09:46:00.005-05:00

Every week, I'm going to be posting a prompt, an excerpt with reflections about something I'm reading, and a quote or insight from a writer. The approaching spring is inspiring.

Anaïs Nin said, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection."

"No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom." Michel Montaigne

Good writing. Duh

2011-02-06T10:35:00.011-05:00

After reading a recent essay, I sent up a silent entreaty to the powers that be. Spare my writing students from coming across this. (I'm not linking to it yet, on purpose.)

You see, they are working really really hard to make their memoirs powerful: to engage the reader with compelling scenes, a reliable (or intentionally not) narrator, seamless compression and expansion, well-placed flashbacks and backstory, resonant dialogue, dimensional characters, a strong story arc, and so much more.

And this writer was knocking the memoir genre: "You think you have a story to tell? You're not special enough." That sort of thing. Sometimes I go into mother-hen mode. I didn't want folks to get discouraged. They shouldn't. Their writing is good and getting better.

So, I didn't blog about the piece, didn't want to attract attention to it because writers are incredibly vulnerable. They (we) have to work hard not only at our writing but at silencing the gnarly little gremlins that sit on our shoulders and spit in our ears: "Who's gonna care about this memoir of yours? Why bother? You and your little story suck. Ha! Loser."

The problems the essayist was lamenting were not, however, in the choice of subject matter. The problems were in the writing.

Sill,l I hesitated.

Then I found this succinct rebuttal and said: Yes, yes, yes.

Onward and upward everybody.

A New Imprint

2011-01-16T12:17:00.014-05:00

Clearly the book world is a bit topsy turvy these days, like a Chagall painting.

Still, listen to this: The Pub Lab at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, has a new imprint. Lookout Books.

Under the direction of Emily L. Smith, the imprint has published its first book, a collection of short stories by Edith Pearlman. Never heard of her, right? A glowing review landed on the front page of the Sunday Times Book Review.

This is rare, for an unknown spanking-new publishing venture to hit pay dirt with book number one.

I remember the Pub Lab. I worked with it a few years back to publish a posthumous book of poems I co-edited by Sue Versenyi. A student helped with layout and production. We met in part of a prefab trailer-ish building. The lab's function was to teach students about publishing. I saw a bunch of Macs in a messy space and listened to the then-director complain about not having money for projects.

Writers take note: Many of the authors Lookout Books plans to publish will have first appeared in the UNCW journal, Ecotone.
“We want to publish poetry, essays and debut novels,” Smith said.

A Thorny Undertaking

2011-01-06T15:49:00.006-05:00

"It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of the innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it."

I read this Montaigne quote sitting in a pub at the airport yesterday waiting for my flight home from Philadelphia. I had traveled to the City of Brotherly Love because my mother was dying and indeed did die with me at her side.

Where to begin with the jumble of thoughts, images, and feelings all vying for air time. Finally I had time to sit and reflect. But where to start amidst the flutterings? I knew it didn't matter where I began--I just had to begin. Something my father said burst into my kaleidoscopic mind and lingered long enough for me to tackle it.

When my sister told him that her Episcopal priest was coming to deliver (or is it offer?) last rites and pleaded with him to be civli (my dad is a Quaker with little tolerance for religious traditions) he said:

"Hell no. I'm gonna punch the guy in the nose."

Aha. Go from there, I told myself. And I did. Sometimes a line of dialogue offers an excellent springboard into writing.

Writing about Winter Walking

2010-12-16T08:01:00.002-05:00

Walking Beside a Creek

Walking beside a creek
in December, the black ice
windy with leaves,
you can feel the great joy
of the trees, their coats
thrown open like drunken men,
the lifeblood thudding
in their tight, wet boots.

by Ted Kooser
Flying at Night
The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985

Written from a newt's point of view

2010-12-02T13:53:00.004-05:00

My daughter Colette just started teaching fourth grade this year. A friend gave her a fire-bellied newt for her classroom. Colette invited her students to write from the newt's point of view about his first week with the students. Colette has always inhabited other points of view in her own writing--since she was a little girl. She wrote novels by dogs and cultivated a family of feathers who spoke.

Here's an excerpt from what she posted on her blog for her students and their parents.

Meet our new class member, Fig, a fire-bellied newt.
The children welcomed him this week by imagining Fig’s life and writing from his point of view. This is an excellent exercise for building empathy and for understanding people and things that are different from us. To write well, it’s important to learn how to inhabit other characters. From the children’s excerpts you will learn some things about Fig’s past and about how he feels in his new environment.

I had the students start by writing: “Hi. My name is Fig and today is my first day in Ms. Henderson’s class . . .”

Here are excerpts from the children’s writings.

From Fig’s Point of View:

I’m excited for the adventures I’ll have here as long as there are no cats! I’m also a little scared. So far every kid is saying things to me like, “Cool!” “Weird!” I am also excited about learning math. I will finally be able to count my toes and multiply my rocks. I’m also pretty scared of falling out of my cage again and possibly dehydrating. I hope I can make some lizard friends and have a fig party! All we do is sit and stare at each other.
--Ryan

Luckily I’m in the one and only Ms. Henderson’s classs! I am so excited. I’ve learned from Lauren that she’s nice, sweet, funny and super smart. That’s not the only good news. I haven’t seen a single cat here, not even a kitten! But it’s a little creepy with all the students staring at me. I am just a regular kid like everyone. I am just here to learn.
It’s also a much better view here on a desk than on the top of a toilet seat!
I also like the kids in this room. So far no one looked at me and screamed. They look at me and do the “aw ooaw cute!” so I show off my really cool really red belly.
--Lexie

I am a fire-bellied newt. I have no idea who all these giants are that keep coming up to my tank to stare at me and tap on the glass. This is better than being stuck in a dark office. I am a little shy so I’m gonna curl up by the rocks and the plant to relax. But I am also excited so I am moving and swimming a lot. By the looks of this place, I don’t see any wild cats to grab me. I have gone through very crazy issues. I hope that the giants don’t think I am weird. When you are a newt life can be hard because you are so puny. The one thing I like today is I’m getting treated like a celebrity with giants looking at me. I think I’m gonna like life here!
--Yakta

I am very excited to switch to all of the tables expecially table 3. I wonder if they are all nice. I hope I learn division and multiplication. I am very glad there aren’t any cats here or else I might get knocked out of the cage and get all dehydrated and risk dying. I live in a small clear tank.
--Will

The first reason I’m excited to be here is that I can see out the windows. That might sound weird but you try being stuck in an office all day! The 2nd reason is I won’t get dehydrated I hope. If you want to look at me I’m stuck in that cage at table 5. I could at least tell you one billion things I don’t like but the most important rule is never chuck me at the ground. The worst thing about being a newt is that everyone is always starting at me and it’s seriously weird and freaky, all those giant eyes pointing at me. I’m 16. I can live up to my 60’s. I will have 50% good time and 50% bad time.
--Josef

I was very nervous at first but when all the kds came in with their smiling faces I knew this would be a good day. I am wondering what we will do the rest of the day. By the way, this is how my day started off. Bump! “Sorry, Fig!” Ms Henderson was driving me to Mills Park Elementary. I had butterflies in my stomach.
The car stopped and parked. We were there.
When we walked in the room Ms Henderson plopped me down on a table. I waited for about an hour until this loud noise went off and Ms. Henderson put something up on the promethean board. Five more minutes passed and finally some kids started coming in. They all walked over to the table that I was at but none of them sat down by me. I was worried again but this time because I thought none of them liked me.
After what seemed like an hour she stopped talking and made people pull stuff out of a cup. One of the tables were all cheering. I sat at that table today and it turned out everybody liked me!
--Shannon

I think that living here will be okay because I’m in my same box and all the same rocks are here. I also like that there is enough sunlight in here. But the best part of all is . . .NO CATS!
I don’t like that all these, what do you call them, kids staring at me all day. Well, yes, that means I’m really popular and all, but it’s starting to freak me out.
Overall, I think living here will be really fun.
--Matthew

It is awesome here with the sunlight from the glass windows and half giants (the kids to you guys), but the way here was not that good. Here is how it went. We were driving to this awesome school when the full giant, Ms. Henderson, hit a very nasty speed bump. I was bouncing like a ball.
I’m now on table 5 so there are four half giants here.
I think I’m a lizard. Bye bye giants. See you table 4 giants tomorrow.
--Kehan

I am looking forward to learning about what usually happens in room 3404 and doing what I usually do, like swim and eat. My cage is an okay place with rocks, water, and a fake plant. Being a fire-bellied newt can be fun and sometimes scary. The fun part is going new places and having new experiences (although not all experiences are fun!). The scary part is escaping from my cage and getting dehydrated and shriveling up. But other than my life-threatening situations, being a fire-bellied newt is fun.
--Josh

I have been through many crazy adventures. You won’t believe how crazy my adventures were. Luckily humans aren’t afraid of cats. It’s really hard for a type of newt like me to survive in a little cage. I may not be big but I am 16 years old. My master, Laura, kind of does a good job protecting me. I don’t play video games or work! That’s the good part of being a newt.
In my life I don’t have any cell phones, cars, shops, or anything. At least I have food. I am so surprised to see so many new kids. It’s a good thing I’m not shy! Have a very happy day!
--Mark

Right now I’m feeling really excited to be here. I can’t wait to meet all the boys and girls in room 3404. I have never been to a 4th grade class so I can’t wait to see what 4th graders do.
My cage is fun! I love relaxing in the water. I could use just a little more space and a buddy to hang out with! I love my big plant.
I think it is really fun being a fire-beelied newt. Outside of my cage, I can hear the boys and girls talking about my red belly. They are all saying how it’s so cool! I always smile when they say it.
When I grow up I want to be famous! I love hearing all the compliments I get from the boys and girls! I am also hoping to get some from my fans! I love little children.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my story.
--Gianna

I am excited and scared at the same time. I am looking forward to switching tables but first I’m staying at table 5. The cage is too small but it’ll do for now. Everyone likes me. They all came up this morning to look at me. I think they like my red belly, especially Ms. Henderson. When we were riding to school she hit a bump and I almost did a flip. I’m pretty small but I’m cool. I hope I can control myself not to get out of the new small cage. I think I’ll like it here in room 3404.
--Izzy

I’m feeling excited to be here in room 3404. My cage is a little small but it fits well. I’m looking forward to being at every table in the classroom. In my cage I love to climb up the walls to show off my belly. I’m a little scared of people picking me up and squeezing me or pulling my tail off, but Ms. Henderson told everybody the rules that Laura wants the children to obey. I love seeing all the kids in the classroom. I’ve been through some life and death situations but lucky for me, I survived. Thank you for inviting me here! Your class newt.
--Lauren

I am feeling really excited to be in this classroom, though I’m not used to it. I am looking forward to seeing everyone who is taking care of me. I feel like I’m going to learn new things every day, like meeting everyone and seeing what they’re learning today. It is fun hanging out in my cage looking around in the classroom! I’ve heard that the first week I’m here I’m going to each table so we can meet each other. (Just to let you know, I love meeting people!) It feels cool being a fire-belly newt. I can always swim around and look around, being the best class pet I can ever be!
I am staying here for a long time, having fun! I can’t wait to see what my first week here is going to be like!
--Ashley

I feel so excited to be in Ms. Henderson’s classroom. But I feel so small and shy compared to all the kids in the class.
I like to show off my stomach. It’s red—really, really red. I climb up the walls of my cage and show my stomach off for a little while. Then I climb down into the warm-cold water. It feels kind of relaxing.
I am also 16 years old and I can live up to 60, hopefully.
I know I should have mentioned this before, but I also feel really shy with all those people looking down on me, watching my every move. I hope it gets better. BYE!
--Sophia

Fig is 16 years old and he’s short. Listen to Fig as he tells you what his name is. “Hi. My name is Fig and today is my first day at Mills Park Elementary School. I’m Fig and I am happy. I’m excited and I’m not scared. I like to learn to write stories on a piece of notebook paper. I am learning! Got to go!
--Subcara

Hello parents and students! I am very happy here, but you know what? I would love a bigger house. I understand that this is a time of year when some people give gifts. Hmmm. Anybody want to chip in and get me a bigger cage? Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with what I’ve got. But I could use some more space—for swimming and stretching and relaxing and watching all of you.
--Your class pet and good friend, Fig

has always inhabited other points of view in her writing--since she was a little girl. She wrote novels by dogs and cultivated a family of feathers who spoke. When our dog Rosie ate most of her collection, Colette said: "Feather's family is ruined."

The Writing Journey: Where am I going?

2010-11-22T18:30:00.002-05:00

"To write is to embark on a journey of which we do not know the destination. Thus, writing requires a great act of trust. We have to say to ourselves: 'I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust it will emerge as I write.' Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes we have, trusting that they will multiply in the giving. Once we dare to 'give away' on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and thus we gradually come in touch with our own riches and resources." Henri Nouwen in Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith

Why aren't I writing?

2010-11-03T17:26:00.011-04:00

I met with a writing client today who is revising a terrific memoir but has trouble getting to her desk:

"I'll do anything but write," she told me. "I'll clean the trim on the stove and scrub toilets before I'll sit down and get to work. But once I do, I feel great, whole, happy."

Why don't we write when we know it's what brings us the most satisfaction? I, for one, tend to be a deadline-driven writer. On assignment, I get the job done and in a timely manner. As for my own work, well . . .I have been known to wander down many a tantalizing path before I get started in the morning.

Here's an essay on the subject from Glimmertrain.

A memoir about writing

2010-10-20T08:53:00.003-04:00

"Above all, avoid melodrama. Understate the narrator's emotional reaction. What the author withholds, the reader supplies. Establish and maintain the story's cocreation; it's essential."

The quote is from a memoir, Mentor, by Tom Grimes. Not only is this a compelling well-wrought story worth studying for its craft, it's also full of gems--even entire teaching scenes lifted from workshops--about writing.

No Stories after Supper

2010-08-11T21:38:00.009-04:00

On several of my grade school report cards, teachers cautioned my parents: Don't tell her stories or read to her after dinner. Settle her down for bed. She gets riled up easily.

I think of that advice sometimes now, as I try to calm down after listening to the powerful stories my students write and read in my classes, which, guess what, meet after dinner. Sometimes long after everybody's gone home, I pace and toss into the wee hours, my mind flooded with narratives.

I'm on break for the month of August and am reading Moby Dick Settle down? Tonight? After ingesting this robust passage? Note to self: Read only in the morning.

". . . After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale.

"He struck out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again, and went down.

"Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific, downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woollen shirt, caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared."

5 Reasons Why I Don't Blog More Often

2010-07-17T08:31:00.011-04:00

We've been making lists in my journal writing workshop these last two weeks:

1) Lists of things that give us energy (+) and rob us of energy (- )

2) And lists of why

3) Lists of beliefs and superstitions our families held when we were growing up--overt and covert

4) Lists of beliefs we hold now

5) Lists of what matters

And I just read a post, a list of 7 links for bloggers, which made me ask myself (again) why I don't blog more often.

Five Reasons I don't post more often:

1) I teach at least 4 workshops a week and feel talked out--about writing and everything else--at the end of the day. Write a post, now? Are you kidding?

2) I spend a lot of time each week editing and making post-like comments on writers' work. Go write a post? Busman's holiday.

3) I enjoy being a voyeur, anonymous, reading other people's blogs and not having to comment or post in response. I'm not responsible for or to these people in any way. And that's liberating.

4) Hmmm . . . I'm breaking a sweat. See, I don't have staying power for posts. "Just take something you've discussed in class and turn it into a post," my blog-man husband says. "But, that's work," I say. "So?" he says. And we have a tiresome little spat over who works harder. And I don't get a post written.

5) Here it is, folks. I'm not really clear about my niche. I mean I could post a lot about my mother's face, or my theories on why my cat is acting out on rugs and in suitcases, or my client who can't find drafts on his desktop. But isn't a blogger supposed to know her niche?

Summer Writing Goals: Write Them Down!

2010-06-13T10:39:00.004-04:00

I make one final request of all my students before we break for the summer: Write down your summer writing goals and send them to me.

When I have the entire workshops' goals, I email them to everyone in the group.

"Print this out," I suggest, "and post it by your computer."

And when we get together for our monthly summer sessions, we devote part of every meeting to going over each person's goals.

The act of writing down--and sharing--goals helps us achieve them.

If you're not in a writing workshop, find a writing friend to share goals with. Meet over the summer--online if not in person--and review your goals.

Questions Writers Ask

2010-05-31T00:44:00.004-04:00

As an editor and writing coach, I am often asked questions like: Am I a good writer? Do I have potential? Do you think I can sell this piece to The New Yorker?

This question will come up this week at the writing workshop I'm teaching in Doha, Qatar. Many of the fledgling writers here have had little opportunity to take workshops or discuss their literary dreams. I give them a lot of credit for signing up and showing up. I have some answers and suggestions for them but I can't tell them they'll be best-selling authors. I can't tell anyone this, of course.

In this post Jane Friedman, of Writer's Digest, offers solid responses to those Can-I-do-this questions writers so often ask.

Pushing the Boundaries: Writing Deadline

2010-05-25T12:20:00.002-04:00

Nothing like a deadline to get us all in gear.

Here are some good summer dates that will keep us working and submitting--on our

nonfiction essays. Three thousand words or fewer and the truth. I think you can do it.

A Blog? A Website? What Does a Writer Need: When and Why

2010-05-24T19:11:00.005-04:00

This is an excellent post about blogs and websites--when you need which and how to use both.

12 Submission Possibilities

2010-05-24T19:03:00.002-04:00

My students are always looking for good markets for their writing.

Some of these publications sound interesting--definitely worth checking out:

http://www.writersdigest.com/article/12-literary-journals-your-future-agent-is-reading

Lost

2010-05-23T22:59:00.006-04:00

I just lost a post. It was one of the best things I've ever written. Trust me. After some serious edits I published it.

Voila!

What appeared?

The first draft.

My honed piece?

Gone.

What!?

So this is why my husband tells me to compose in a text editor, then cut and paste into the blog. Sigh.

I should have watched the final episode of "Lost" instead of writing tonight.

Lost

2010-05-23T22:59:00.004-04:00

I just lost a post. It was one of the best things I've ever written. Trust me. After some serious edits I published it.

Voila!

What appeared?

The first draft.

My honed piece?

Gone.

What!?

So this is why my husband tells me to compose in Word, then cut and paste into the blog. Sigh.

I should have watched the final episode of "Lost" instead of writing tonight.

Weekly Writing Roundup, May 7

2010-05-07T14:08:00.041-04:00

Hey there. Every Friday I'm going to post links to a few articles and essays I've come across during the week that I hope you'll find useful and interesting. Feel free to comment; I'd love to hear from you.

What are you doing (or did you do) after college? I love this Op-Ed from the Times about the author's experience after graduating. I want to write about the cross-country tour I took with a dance company--in an old school bus and with our director's three young children. How about you?

Many of you are writing about your ancestors. Here's a craft piece on giving them flesh and blood:

A writing friend, Lyn Hawks, just published "Gramma's Day," a piece that uses a simple device to explore her grandmother's life and her own. You might want to play around with the form--using then and now.

And who better than William Zinsser to offer tips on memoir writing? (By the way, he publishes a piece every week, William Zinsser on Friday).

And for grammar geeks! Getting started on sentence diagramming:

The Big-Word Problem

2010-05-05T14:09:00.023-04:00

Recently I vetoed reading a poem as a writing prompt in a workshop--it used big words that people might not know. I didn't want the participants to spend any time having to decode the poem's meaning.

"I am so glad you didn't use a poem with words we might not get," one workshop member said. "Poetry needs to be accessible, have strong images, not difficult words."

"Yeah, I hate that," another student said. "Big words put me off the author."

I thought of the scene in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when Alice and her new rodent and bird friends are trying to dry themselves after swimming in a pool of Alice's tears. (She shed the tears when she was huge and crying about being too big to fit through the tiny door that led to the lovely garden.)

The Dodo chimes in about how to get dry: "I move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic remedies."

"Speak English!" said the Eaglet. "I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either!" And the Eaglet bent down its head to hide a smile: some of the other birds tittered audibly.

"What I was going to say," said the Dodo in an offended tone, "was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race."

Such a wild yet wise book.

Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English (originally published in 1926) advises writers to be: "direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid."

The vocabulary chapter says: "Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long."

Oops. Big word alert: Circumlocution, in case you don't know, means: a roundabout or indirect way of speaking; the use of more words than necessary to express an idea.

Well, sometimes a big word is simply the best word. Still, I try to avoid them in my own writing and in the writings I share with my groups.

William Zinsser states in Zinsser on Friday that we should write with "no unnecessary parts." Big cumbersome words that are off-putting and intimidating are, indeed, unnecessary parts.

Sugar-Coated Exposition

2010-03-23T09:41:00.007-04:00

If you haven't yet read Out Stealing Horses, do. You're in for a treat.

By page 67, the reader is really curious to know more about Trond Sander, the protagonist in this book. In chapter one, he has moved back to a cabin on a river in Norway where he spent a summer as a boy. He is a sixty-seven year old man. He seems broken but we don't know why or how. In chapter two we are with him in his childhood for some vivid and evocative scenes. By chapter five we're back to the narrative present--Trond, out walking with his dog Lyra, has recognized a neighbor. We have no idea what has happened to Trond between his teen years and now but we're hooked on the sensual, melancholic writing. We want to know more about Sander.

Here's how author Per Petterson informs us. He has our main character go into the small town to shop at the Co-op. Here's Trond Sander in the store:

"I exchange greetings to right and left, they are used to me know and realize I am here to stay and that I an not one of the holiday cottage crew who pile out here in their mammoth cars every Easter and summer to fish by day and play poker and swig sundowners in the evening. It took some time before they started to ask questions, cautiously, in the queue for the check-out, and now everyone knows who I am and where I live. They know about my working life, how old I am, that my wife died three years ago in an accident I only just survived myself, that she was not my first wife, and that I have two grown-up children from an earlier marriage, and that they have children themselves . . . " and so on.

As readers we always need to know about characters. We demand to know, and if we don't know enough we will detach. At the same time we bristle at direct exposition. So this is a great way to let the reader know in a totally believable and indirect fashion.

Sugar-coated exposition, my husband calls it.

Reading for Life

2010-03-06T11:25:00.005-05:00

I saw this on a student's email signature and had to post it.

A woman in a class this week talked about her six-year-old son saying something to her like, "You're always reading, Mom. Nose in a book."

At the time she was sitting on her couch devouring Mary Karr's The Liar's Club. She read him the part about kids shooting BB guns. He got wide-eyed.

Later, he wanted to hear more from the BB gun book.

Don't Bear It

2010-02-22T03:33:00.003-05:00

"There is no greater ______ than bearing an untold story inside you."

Maya Angelou

This is a clue in the Sunday New York Times Magazine.

The five-letter word answer?

AGONY

So don't bear. Write it! Share it.

Cluster Crazy

2010-02-13T09:06:00.010-05:00

I've been telling my students this week about the cluster: you put a word that represents something important in the middle of a large unlined piece of paper. Draw a circle around it. Let ideas and chains of thought spill onto the page: spoke, new idea, circle it, spoke, related idea--all stemming from this central theme. (Below is a cluster with revision ideas for a book I'm working on. It's hard to see but the central idea in blue/green is "book revision.")

The bubbles contain related changes and ideas.

Clusters are like outlines except they aren't linear. And I like that. It's easy to see the whole picture. I can pick a circle, any circle, and start writing.

I use clusters for all my writing projects and to plan workshops.

A woman I'm working with needs to move ahead right now writing her memoir, but she wants to come back at some point to expand a section that's incomplete. She has lots of ideas for this section and wants to record them--quickly, in shorthand. But she doesn't want her writing momentum to lag right now. Enter: The cluster.

Another client uses a cluster for each chapter of her book--and sub clusters for sections of chapters.

Try one. And let me know what you think, what you learn.

Only You Can Do Yours

2010-01-24T07:55:00.002-05:00

Henry James told Edith Wharton: "There it is round you. Don't pass it by — the immediate, the real, the only, the yours, the novelist's that it waits for. Take hold of it and keep hold, and let it pull you where it will."

What is it that is yours alone? Don't know? You'll find out by writing.

Ready Set Write!

2009-12-29T08:57:00.001-05:00

Playwright and New Yorker writer Paul Rudnick says: "As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly."

Amen.

I sit here in my spot--the morning still almost young at 8:58 AM--with the timer at the ready. But what am I doing? I am shuffling photos on facebook, reheating my coffee, confessing my undying devotion to my cats, checking email, texting with my daughter about the comfort of her new boots, enjoying watching the light pass across Linda's painting on the far wall, wondering if I should eat before writing. OK. Enough.

Timer, let's go. VAMOS!

Love that Paper

2009-12-27T10:51:00.001-05:00

Here's a good prompt poem. Take any line as a starting point and write. Remember to set the timer: 15 minutes?
http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14606

Into Our Own Experience

2009-12-15T14:08:00.004-05:00

Edna O'Brien was working in a chemist's shop in Dublin when she discovered a slender volume called Introducing James Joyce: a selection of Joyce's prose,with an introduction by T.S. Eliot.

She later said: "I opened it to a section from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the Christmas dinner scene, with the blue flame over the Christmas pudding. Up to then, I had been writing rather fancifully, with a lot of adjectives. When I read that, I realized one thing: that I need go no further than my own interior, my own experience, for whatever I wanted to write. It was truly, without sounding like St. Paul, an utter revelation to me." (Writer's Almanac)

Into our own interiors, our own experience--this is where we must go to tell the stories we can tell and to write well.

Timing Can Be Everything

2009-12-05T21:54:00.004-05:00

On my Facebook status, I mentioned that I loved timed writings and my stainless steel timer. Several people responded to the update and by email. Here are some timing ideas, starting with more about writing:

"How long do you set the time for?" someone asked me. "One hour," I said. And I set it again if I have the inclination and the space in my day.

If I'm writing in my journal, or responding to a prompt, I set the timer for 10 minutes.

I use a timer for meditation--20 minutes. That way I'm not peeking at my watch while I'm supposed to be emptying my mind.

I time my stretches after running--1o minutes. I get distracted and stop unless I hear the timer ticking. And I get really sore if I don't stretch.

To make sure I don't eat too fast, I set a timer for 20 minutes as I'm getting ready for dinner. The timer reminds me to set the table, light a candle, sit down, and appreciate my food. Otherwise I just might eat standing at the kitchen sink.

When I'm cleaning my messy, cluttered house, I set the timer for 45 minutes. When it sounds, I stop. I can only take so much.

How do you use a timer? How might you use a timer?

What Do You Expect?

2009-11-30T13:54:00.021-05:00

So here's my question: When you go to a book reading, what do you expect? And when you're the one giving the reading, what do you expect of yourself?

I hosted an event on Sunday for Michele Murdock and had fun helping her prepare for her first-ever reading.

Here's what she expected of herself. She wanted to:

--make everybody feel at ease, right away, by using humor--as in, don't worry folks I'm not nervous. And this event will be lively and fun for everybody and I won't go on too long.

--read excerpts that showed her style in engaging scenes.

--give an understanding of why she wrote the book.

--discuss some of what she experienced (and endured) while writing the book.

--express her enthusiasm for the subject matter (This biography is about Dorothy Stang, an American nun who worked for social justice in indigent Brazil).

--tell what she planned to do to promote the book.

--reveal how writing the book changed her.

And she did it, well.

My husband likes readings where authors don't read from their books--they just talk about writing the book. When my memoir came out, all I wanted to do was read. “You mean I have to talk about it too?” I asked him, "between excerpts?"

“Yes,” he said, “you do. You can always memorize things to say.”

I gulped, my stomach clutching at the thought of being spontaneous or caught off guard. I was a writer not a public speaker and convinced I’d freeze, like a deer in headlights, or be like his grandmother, who "opened her mouth and her brains flew out." I had to get over myself.

Sometimes readings are primarily readings. I remember one given by Joan Didion at UNC-Chapel Hill a few years back. She had recently published, The Year of Magical Thinking, about her husband’s sudden death the year before. And her daughter had just died. Didion was doing a short teaching gig--probably set up before both deaths--that included a public reading.

She came onstage--there were hundreds in attendance--looking her usual frail, gaunt self but more so. I couldn't imagine how she got her teeth brushed not to mention how she found legs to walk across that stage and address hundreds of fans.

After the introduction, she offered a very few words of thanks and began to read. She finished the first excerpt, thumbed through the book, took a sip of water, and began to read again. No comments. She finished that section, then read another. And another. At one point her voice got wavy and she had to pause.

The place was tomb-still. Her reading voice was mesmerizing.

When she finished her final excerpt she said something like, "I suppose there are a few questions." People lined up in the aisles behind mics.

One of the first comments came from an older man: I came out tonight to hear you and all you did was read from your book? I can read the book at home. What was the point of my coming here?

In an even, yet chilly voice, Didion said, "I was hired to give a reading and that's what I've done. That's what a reading is. Reading."

Couldn't he see how fragile she was? How tough this subject-matter? That she was first and foremost a human being? I wanted to clatter out of my seat and kick the guy in the head. So did everybody else. When he headed back to his seat, the crowd erupted: "Boo."

Didion answered several questions. She showed mettle, just getting through it. What she gave was enough, plenty, more than enough.

Fast forward to Natalie Goldberg reading at The Regulator Bookshop a while back. She should have stuck to her text--and kept her mouth shut on other subjects.

She greeted the crowd by professing her broad-grinned amazement that there were “actually independent bookstores in the South and that people actually came out to readings down here. Wow.”

Hurry up, woman. Read!

Sunday Morning Snapshot

2009-11-22T11:12:00.006-05:00

My husband usually gets out of bed before I do on Sunday mornings. I hear the slam of the screen door as he walks out to the driveway to fetch The New York Times. He shuffles around in the kitchen, and says, "Okay, okay," to our two cats, who are getting underfoot and meowing at him. I snuggle deeper into the mattress. He loads up the measuring cup with dry food and dumps it into their bowls.

I call from the bedroom: "Coffee! Coffee!"

"Okay, okay," he says. He makes two pots of expresso--mine with steamed milk, his black. I move onto the living room couch (under the blue duvet you see in the photo). He reads to me from the Times--essays, book reviews, sometimes news stories. We talk about what's happening in the world and about what he has just read: does the writing work?

He reheats my now-tepid coffee. I read some more of the paper to myself.

I stumble off the couch and into the kitchen to make him a cheese omelet and me some toast.

Some days we take a walk after breakfast before getting to work. Today I'm walking alone because he's tearing his office up looking for a lost gadget.

What do you do on Sunday mornings?

Breaking Up The Old Patterns

2009-11-07T09:12:00.003-05:00

After a workshop the other day, a woman approached me. We had made a list of 5 things we're grateful for as part of the session's closing--I like this as a send-off.

The woman told me she keeps a gratitude journal by her bed. Every night before she goes to sleep, she records 5 things she's grateful for and writes five more on waking up in the morning. She says this activity has changed her life--made her so much happier and more aware.

Another woman came up and told me she has a 27-year-old son with aspergers disorder. He lives on his own finally but can't work and has time management issues. She said she gets so tired of hearing his same stories over and over again--it's a huge stressor for her. She had written about this in the workshop. But she wanted to tell me that she and her son have started exchanging emails, writing to each other about what brings them each joy. This has helped him break out of his ritualized stories that she has heard over and over again.

Note from the Week

2009-10-30T12:10:00.001-04:00

Here's a prompt from workshops this week that brought out all sorts of truths and odd anecdotes and revelations:

"Rules I Live By"

Try it and see where you go.

Are You Writing?

2009-10-23T10:21:00.009-04:00

Today's Writer's Almanac tells us that Augusten Burroughs, Running With Scissors, was born today. He stated the obvious, the truth some writers--count me in--have to hear over and over again:

"The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work."

The kitchen timer ticks. I am in my office--alone, locked away. And this is writing time. Is posting to my blog writing? I'll think about that later. Meanwhile, I'll reset the timer.

It's On: the Countdown

2009-10-17T12:30:00.005-04:00

I am going to finish a draft of a book this November. Here's how.

Note: NaNoWriMo can work for NONFICTION writers too.

Back to School List

2009-09-21T08:25:00.004-04:00

Prompt: Make a list of supplies you needed for school. Lists can evoke a lot, in so few words.

List:

A new pen, yellow number 2 pencils, and a clean pink eraser.

A new sealed bag of 100 sheets of ruled white paper.

A new small metal pencil sharpener if I'd lost last year's.

New colorful subject dividers for my gray-blue linen-covered three ring notebook.

A new box of sticking three ring hole reinforcers--they looked like Lifesavers but tasted bad.

A new zipper-opening soft plastic pencil case with three holes--it fit neatly in the front of the three ring notebook. (I loved the pinging noise the metal rings made when I opened them.)

New white Keds for gym days. (They smelled like rubber.)

Two pairs of white anklets. (They smelled like starch and bleach.)

A new royal blue gym suit with bloomers. (Did we buy those or rent them from the school each year?)

It was a first

2009-08-25T16:13:00.010-04:00

Writing Prompt: The first time I . . .

For the first time in my life, I have looked at a puppy and said, "No, I won't take it home with me."

Here is a picture of the puppy, a papillon I visited in a pet store in Narragansett, Rhode Island. She is a 14-week-old female.

She is adorable and probably good-natured, but I've fallen in love on this vacation with another dog, Roo, who belongs to my friend Jessie. He too is a papillon--and the cutest, smartest, most mythological-looking and fascinating little dog I have ever seen.

Roo fetches tennis balls from the pond, snuggles in my lap, has the cutest trot and little ears that stand up straight--hence the name, papillon. I want him or a dog very much like him. In French papillon means butterfly; the erect ears look like butterfly wings.

Butterflies are highly symbolic for me.

Until this trip, I had sworn off more dogs--I've had enough. But now. hmmm. Roo is pure joy. Who wouldn't want that?

Meet Roo:

My husband Bill said, "I've never seen my wife-- who claims she's just 'going to take a look at a dog'-- not come home with it. And we'd have to fly this one home with us."

He sighed, resigned, knowing he would eventually love any pet that came into the house. He looked at the puppy then waited outside the pet store, wondering what I would do.

But this female I saw yesterday simply did not grab me. Her ears don't stand up, for one thing. We didn't connect. I walked outside.

"Surprise," I said. "I don't have a puppy with me."

Don't think, however, that I haven't contacted a papillon breeder in North Carolina. I have.

But it was a first for me, the first time I ever said no to a dog.

The last of summer

2009-08-16T10:59:00.003-04:00

The last book?
The last meal?
The last ocean swim?

Write about the last _________ of summer.

We aren't there yet, but autumn is advancing
--in the breeze and the smells and the light.

Write about Something That has Closed

2009-08-15T17:28:00.010-04:00

I walked by this store today, The Original Ornament, and saw the sign. I thought of the many times over the last fifteen or so years I have stopped in for a tiny repair job--a new necklace clasp, a back for an earring, a new strand for beads.

Most of what I bought cost about $1.35 and one of the clerks--usually a tattooed alternative type--did the job for me. I'm not dexterous and can't fix little pieces of wire. Everybody in there was always patient and helpful.

I thought about the time I hired folks from the store for one of my daughter's birthday parties. Each girl got a handful of little silvery and black beads and a coil of wire. They made snaky bracelets.

The store provided work stations and wire cutters and lots and lots of beads.

Here goes another small independent shop with excellent service, I thought.

So many stores have come and gone from this quaint "mall," the first floor of a converted cotton mill--with wooden floors, vast ceilings, and brick walls. The Original Ornament has been a mainstay.

I walked up and down the interior hall, reading shop signs: "20 - 70% off" "40% off." Many of the shops had no customers.

For some reason, I decided to head back by The Original Ornament and take a few photos. I guess I was feeling a bit sentimental.

"Why? The man!" A woman walked by and stopped to read aloud the magic-markered words on the leasing sign, explaining why the place was closing.

"Casey didn't close because of the man" the woman said to me. "She made bad business decisions--doubling the space. She was doing just fine in the smaller space. She owes all her creditors, big time."

I shrugged. Why was this woman railing at me about it? I have no idea who Stacy is. The owner, I guessed.

"Listen hon," she said, "it's all about business decisions--and when you make bad ones, well. I love Stacy. Really, I do. She just owes everybody."

The woman shook her head. "It's all about bad business decisions."

I wanted to say to her: bad business decisions? What about the American auto industry? What about the Walmartization of America? Every one of these stores in this mall is hurting--and probably on the way out. Bad business decisions up and down the aisle? Is that what's happening to all these small shops that offer boutique brands and good service?

I don't think so.

Perseverance: A List

2009-08-14T09:23:00.005-04:00

1. The writer Alice Adams had a bad relationship with her mother, a failed writer. (The act of writing becomes fraught with family baggage.)

2. Alice decided that if she wrote maybe her mother would like her. (Risky idea. The mother would, more likely, be jealous.)

3. In college a creative writing teacher told her to quit writing and get married. (Authority figure speaks. Hard to counter that voice and not internalize it.)

4. She got married, had a child, and the marriage failed. A single mom, she worked as a secretary. (Time to write? When?)

5. Her psychiatrist told her to quit writing and remarry. (Yikes.)

6. She did not take his advice.

Make a list of forces working against you as a writer. Now set the list aside and get back to the writing.

"Tall Woman"

2009-08-07T12:22:00.004-04:00

My god daughter Olivia Qin Buffett adores this statue in the lobby of Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan. Olivia, soon to be 21 months, stops to greet "tall woman," as she calls her, on her way in and out to visit her mother, Baolian, who has been on hospital bed rest for some time--since her membranes ruptured at 26 weeks pregnant.

Olivia is fixated by "tall woman."

Back at home, she climbed the far-side of-the-banister stairs, the staircase is blocked off by a gate, and when she got as high as she could go, announced, her free hand making a sweeping gesture high above us, "tall woman!"

Indeed.

I'm thrilled that my god daughter loves art. I do too. When I was a little girl--two years older than Olivia-- I ran ahead of my family, up all the steps of the Lincoln Monument, and ran down again, ashen, shouting, "It's a statue. It's a statue."

I had hoped to meet Mr. Lincoln in the flesh at the top of all those steps, to jump into his lap. Alas his lap was stone, but I was awed by his grandeur and have adored sculpture ever since--abstract, figurative, massive, tiny.

Olivia is also obsessed with Frida Kahlo. Baolian has a book of photos of Frida, not including her art, which is probably a good thing, since some of those images might be a bit scary for a toddler. They disturb adults, after all.

Prompt: Write about an early memory of encountering art and/or write about a very young person you admire.

(And stay tuned for more about Olivia. I can be shameless in my pride--she's not a blood relative or even somebody I get to see often and therefore wield any influence over. I can take no credit for her genius but I can and will share the wonder of her.)

The Shadowy Self

2009-08-06T12:13:00.004-04:00

Here's a prose poem that I think makes a great prompt. Write about your vices.

Fireflies

And these are my vices:
impatience, bad temper, wine,
the more than occasional cigarette,
an almost unquenchable thirst to be kissed,
a hunger that isn't hunger
but something like fear, a staunching of dread
and a taste for bitter gossip
of those who've wronged me—for bitterness—
and flirting with strangers and saying sweetheart
to children whose names I don't even know
and driving too fast and not being Buddhist
enough to let insects live in my house
or those cute little toylike mice
whose soft grey bodies in sticky traps
I carry, lifeless, out to the trash
and that I sometimes prefer the company of a book
to a human being, and humming
and living inside my head
and how as a girl I trailed a slow-hipped aunt
at twilight across the lawn
and learned to catch fireflies in my hands,
to smear their sticky, still-pulsing flickering
onto my fingers and earlobes like jewels.

by Cecilia Woloch
Carpathia
BOA Editions, Ltd., 2009

Veggies Galore

2009-08-03T09:38:00.008-04:00

I just spent the weekend in East Lansing, Michigan. So many parks, everything green and lush. It is home to Michigan State University the first land grant university in the country. My friend Susie and I drove to down scenic country roads to pick up the organic veggies for our host family. We passed corn fields, stands of evergreens and hardwoods, and vineyards--all are parts of the agricultural schools. We saw avian research centers and veterinary. In a barn we found our bags of fresh veggies and watched two young women in a lab. I asked a big friendly guy, who gave us some cukes from a mound, what they were doing. "They're analyzing garden weeds," he told us.

The next morning we hung out at a farmer's market. Such a super place to visit--in the summer!

Writing Prompt, July 31: Shakespeare

2009-07-30T21:53:00.002-04:00

Write about a Midsummer Night's Dream. One of yours or Shakespeare's.

Writing Prompt, July 30: Sickness

2009-07-30T10:30:00.002-04:00

I just talked to a friend today who stayed home from work because her daughter is sick--and home from day camp. They are on their way to the pediatrician. I remember getting a call when our daughter got sick at overnight camp. When we went to pick her up, not only did she have a raging throat and a fever, she was also covered in poison ivy.

Write about getting sick in the summer.

Writing Prompt, July 28: Summer Storms

2009-07-28T08:33:00.005-04:00

Write about summer storms.

I couldn't resist this poem, from today's Writer's Almanac. I love "by a string of buttered days," "wallowed in this picnic sun," a clump of daisies nodding by the road," "the dog cowers," the shutters banging out their warning," etc.

Counting Thunder

For several weeks the weather has been mild
And we have wallowed in this picnic sun,
(Our baskets stuffed with bread and wine) beguiled
By a string of buttered days, which one by one

Have lulled us into such complacency
That any thought of rain or want or cold
Would seem killjoy to a mind disposed to see
A clump of daisies nodding by the road.

But lightning flash upon the ridge portends
A sudden change of weather is at hand.
Caught unaware, we face the rising wind
And count the interval before the sound

Of thunderclap announces the return
Of darker times we had soon forgotten.
The dog cowers. The weather vane turns
Wildly, and we scramble forth to batten

Down the shutters banging out their warning.
No use pretending storm clouds won't draw near.
They're certain now. The anvil head is mounting
High above the things we've held so dear.

We light the lantern as clouds obscure the sun,
And gather frightened children in our arms.
The lightning flash and thunder merge at one,
And we hunker down beneath the raging storm.

by Robert Hass
Counting Thunder
David Robert Books, 2008

Writing Prompt, July 27: Hats

2009-07-27T08:06:00.005-04:00

I just read that Joseph Mitchell wore a fedora to work every day. My dad wore one too. In the summer Mitchell wore a straw fedora.

Write about summer hats.

Notes:
I'm going to write about my dad and his hats and about how now at age 91 he still takes his hat off when a lady gets on an elevator. So when we ride the elevator together at his retirement home, he pulls his hat off right away, as the elevator doors open for us. Some traditions die hard. He has lost control of so much in his life but he remembers to remove his hat.

His many floppy tennis hats worn on the court, on his sailboat, and in his garden.

The straw hats he and all his Princeton classmates wore at reunions.

Writing Prompt, July 26: Hours

2009-07-26T17:44:00.000-04:00

Write about "summer hours."

Writing Prompt, July 25: By the Road

2009-07-25T08:43:00.004-04:00

"For many years Henry Kitteridge was a pharmacist in the next town over, driving every morning on snowy roads, or rainy roads, or summer-time roads, when the wild raspberries shot their new growth in brambles along the last section of town before he turned off to where the wider road led to the pharmacy."

(opening sentence of the novel Olive Kitteridge)

Write about a familiar road in summer.

Writing Prompt, July 24: Color

2009-07-24T09:30:00.002-04:00

As I look out at the verdant lawn and trees, the color green screams out at me. There has been so much rain here in Boston this summer that everything is incredibly lush. Though I've never visited, I imagine Ireland looks like this: emerald grasses and deep green leaves.

(I'll add a photo or two when the driving rain stops.)

Write about the color green.

Writing Prompt, July 23: Listen Up

2009-07-23T07:18:00.008-04:00

Write about summer sounds. You might want to start with a line from this poem, from today's
Writer's Almanac:

Soundings

In the afternoon of summer, sounds
come through the window: a tractor
muttering to itself as it

pivots at the corner of the
hay field, stalled for a moment
as the green row feeds into the baler.

The wind slips a whisper behind
an ear; the noise of the highway
is like the dark green stem of a rose.

From the kitchen the blunt banging
of cupboard doors and wooden chairs
makes a lonely echo in the floor.

Somewhere, between the breeze
and the faraway sound of a train,
comes a line of birdsong, lightly
threading the heavy cloth of dream.

by Joyce Sutphen
Naming the Stars
Holy Cow! Press, 2004

Writing Prompt, July 22: Deliciously Fresh

2009-07-22T08:49:00.008-04:00

(A summer dinner of stuffed squash, sauteed squash, and tomato prepared (and veggies grown) by Maria Hitt.

Write about a favorite summer meal. Include recipes. Write the entry as a poem (in honor of Frank Mc Court) who engaged his high school students by having them recite as poetry their family recipes.
Invent and post here a summer salad.

Writing Prompt, July 21: Portraits of Place

2009-07-21T08:30:00.002-04:00

Sontag writes, in Susan Sontag Reborn: Journals & Notebooks 1947-1963

"Athens would make a good setting for a story--about foreigners, traveling. It has lots of clear-cut and attractive props.

The plump American queens of Athens, the dusty streets filled with construction work, bouzouki bands in the taverna gardens at night, eating plates of thick yoghourt and sliced tomatoes and small green peas and drinking resinated wine, the huge Cadillac taxis, middle-aged men walking or sitting in the park fingering their amber beads, the roasted corn sellers sitting on street corners by their braziers, the Greek sailors in their tight white pants and wide black sashes, strawberry sunsets behind the hills of Athens seen from the Acropolis, old men in the streets sitting by their scales who offer to weigh you for one drachma--"

Go into town or the city and make a list of the "clear-cut and attractive prompts" around you.

Writing Prompt, july 19: Bathing

2009-07-19T10:49:00.002-04:00

Write about the bathing suits of your life.

Writing Prompt, July 18: Reunion

2009-07-18T16:29:00.002-04:00

Write about a summer family reunion. You might want to use a line from the poem below to get started.

Family Reunion

The divorced mother and her divorcing
daughter. The about-to-be ex-son-in-law
and the ex-husband's adopted son.
The divorcing daughter's child, who is

the step-nephew of the ex-husband's
adopted son. Everyone cordial:
the ex-husband's second wife
friendly to the first wife, warm

to the divorcing daughter's child's
great-grandmother, who was herself
long ago divorced. Everyone
grown used to the idea of divorce

Almost everyone has separated
from the landscape of childhood.
Collections of people in cities
are divorced from clean air and stars.

Toddlers in day care are parted
from working parents, schoolchildren
from the assumption of unbloodied
daylong safety. Old people die apart

from all they've gathered over time,
and in strange beds. Adults
grow estranged from a God
evidently divorced from history;

most are cut off from their own
histories, each of which waits
like a child left at day care.
What if you turned back for a moment

and put your arms around yours?
Yes, you might be late for work;
no, your history doesn't smell sweet
like a toddler's head. But look

at those small round wrists,
that short-legged, comical walk.
Caress your history—who else will?
Promise to come back later.

Pay attention when it asks you
simple questions: Where are we going?
Is it scary? What happened? Can
I have more now? Who is that?

by Jeredith Merrin
Bat Ode
The University of Chicago Press

Writing Prompt, July 17: On a Walk

2009-07-17T08:25:00.003-04:00

Take a walk and look for animals. Sit outside and write about what you see.

Writing Prompt, July 15: In a Garden

2009-07-15T07:45:00.005-04:00

Sit in a garden and write. What do you hear, smell, see? What's crawling on the earth? Observe the sunlight on the plants. Feel their leaves.

". . . I have salvaged dead wood from the grove of trees behind the flower bed, have made a crude bench from this. I sit there and I look at the cascade of Sweet Briar Rose, at the brush of lavender, and I try to imagine the Saffron crocus growing between them.

"I have cleared the tangle of trees above the flower bed so that now the sun moves over the garden. I can see where it falls, what it touches. There are blackbirds calling from the woods."

from The Lost Garden, by Helen Humphreys

Writing Prompt, July 14: Traveling

2009-07-14T08:44:00.003-04:00

Write about a summer trip you took when you were a child. I am the bonneted baby on my grandmother's lap and don't remember waiting for this flight. I think I'll write about it anyway.

Writing prompt, July 13. A July birthday

2009-07-12T08:36:00.011-04:00

Write about a July birthday--consider writing about somebody you don't know. Or maybe it's the birthday of one of your characters.

Every July, there is a four-day gathering at Walden Pond to celebrate Thoreau's birthday. The Thoreau Society was founded in 1941, making it the oldest society devoted to an American author. It's also the largest.

Thoreau wrote, "I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

(From the Writer's Almanac, July 12)

Writing Prompt, July 12:

2009-07-12T07:34:00.003-04:00

Write about poison ivy, red ants, ticks, bed bugs, mosquitos, chiggers, or . . .

Writing Prompt, July 11: Is it safe . . .

2009-07-11T13:26:00.003-04:00

Prompt: "Is it safe to go back in the water?"

Writing Prompt, July 10: A Favorite Book

2009-07-10T07:44:00.004-04:00

Prompt: Write about a favorite summer read from childhood. What did you love about the book? Where did you read? In a hammock, on a porch, under the sheet at night with a flashlight?

Writing Prompt, July 9: Watermelon

2009-07-09T07:37:00.003-04:00

Prompt: List everything you can think of about watermelon--words, phrases. Don't think. Just write.

Writing Prompt, July 8: Warm Weather Rock

2009-07-08T16:23:00.006-04:00

Prompt: Think about a song that celebrates summer and write.

For me, first up is "Hot Town, Summer in the City," by the Lovin' Spoonful and that steamy July back in 1966.

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city . . .

Writing Prompt, July 7: Step Onto the Ferry

2009-07-07T10:53:00.007-04:00

Prompt: Write about taking a summer ferry ride.

I love this opening from Step Onto the Ferry, and Summer Begins

The piece by Lili Wright appeared in the Sunday "Travel Section," when the New York Times still offered a back-page travel essay.

Without a doubt, ferries are my favorite way to travel. I would take a ferry to California if I could. I would take a ferry to France.

Sure, ferries are slow and heavy. They can be rusty and cranky and can grunt when you least expect it. They have dirty windows and plastic seats without cushions. Ferries are the frumpy, weak-coffee serving, wiener-roasting rec rooms of transport, but I prefer them to any other means.

A ferry trip feels like a clean beginning, an ending to whatever happened before. As you leave land behind, you also leave behind that worn-out, crusty you who had lost her sense of humor and possibly her grace. . .

Summer Prompt, July 6: Overheard

2009-07-06T10:00:00.002-04:00

Prompt: Write an overheard dialogue between two people sitting out on a screened porch on a hot July night. Set this up by introducing the reader to who is eavesdropping and why? Where is the listening during this overheard conversation?

Writing Prompt, July 5 Summer heat

2009-07-05T09:30:00.001-04:00

Prompt: Pick a line or a word or an idea from this poem and use it as your starting point.

A Warm Summer in San Francisco

Although I watched and waited for it every day,
somehow I missed it, the moment when everything reached
the peak of ripeness. It wasn't at the solstice; that was only
the time of the longest light. It was sometime after that, when
the plants had absorbed all that sun, had taken it into themselves
for food and swelled to the height of fullness. It was in July,
in a dizzy blaze of heat and fog, when on some nights
it was too hot to sleep, and the restaurants set half their tables
on the sidewalks; outside the city, down the coast,
the Milky Way floated overhead, and shooting stars
fell from the sky over the ocean. One day the garden
was almost overwhelmed with fruition:
My sweet peas struggled out of the raised bed onto the mulch
of laurel leaves and bark and pods, their brilliantly colored
sunbonnets of rose and stippled pink, magenta and deep purple
pouring out a perfume that was almost oriental. Black-eyed Susans
stared from the flower borders, the orange cherry tomatoes
were sweet as candy, the fruit fattened in its swaths of silk,
hummingbirds spiraled by in pairs, the bees gave up
and decided to live in the lavender. At the market,
surrounded by black plums and rosy plums and sugar prunes
and white-fleshed peaches and nectarines, perfumey melons
and mangos, purple figs in green plastic baskets,
clusters of tiny Champagne grapes and piles of red-black cherries
and apricots freckled and streaked with rose, I felt tears
come into my eyes, absurdly, because I knew
that summer had peaked and was already passing
away. I felt very close then to understanding
the mystery; it seemed to me that I almost knew
what it meant to be alive, as if my life had swelled
to some high moment of response, as if I could
reach out and touch the season, as if I were inside
its body, surrounded by sweet pulp and juice,
shimmering veins and ripened skin.

by Carolyn Miller, from Light, Moving. © Sixteen Rivers Press, 2009

Writing Prompt, July 4:

2009-07-04T08:16:00.002-04:00

Write about a struggle you've had--or are having--with dependency.

Writing Prompt, July 3: Summer Camp

2009-07-03T09:24:00.011-04:00

Write about summer camp.

If you didn't go to camp, pretend you did and write about that. Or make up a story about somebody who did go.

I found a letter in my childhood keepsake box, "my treasures," addressed to my older sister Nancy and me, from our friend Dodie Pettit, about being at overnight camp:

Please excuse my writing because I am on my bed. This is rest hour. Carol -- I hope you can read script. . .Tonight the Iroquois are going to put on a tribe show. I don't know what it is because I'm a Mohegan and it's a secret.

Thursday our cabin (cabin 7) canoed to Trigger Island for a cookout. We went skinny dipping and tipped the canoes. . .

Dodie has drawn a tiny map in the letter. You might want to create a map of a camp or a camp trail and write about that.

Writing Prompt, July 16: Sorrows

2009-07-02T10:19:00.003-04:00

"All sorrows can be borne if you tell a story about them."
Karen Blixen

Write about a summer sorrow.

Writing Prompt, July 2: A Summer Word

2009-07-02T01:47:00.003-04:00

Pick a word that captures a feeling of summer. Write about it. Here's something I wrote in a prompt workshop. Some of you have heard it. My word: Dawdle

Dawdle:

I watch the two little bodies walking down the beach at the water’s edge where the sand is cooler. I can see their shoulders held back, proud of their solo mission, big girls off alone without an adult. As they blur and become dots in the mirage of summer heat, I gaze farther down the beach at their destination, the little gray shingle box of a store, its blue postage size flag rippling.

I imagine their joy at entering that odd little room with its saggy wooden floors, the screen door that slaps shut, and its short shelves holding only the necessities—a few tubes of toothpaste, the package of Oreos, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, paper towel. And at the far end, the magical Mary Poppinsish penny candy counter with glass jars of Mary Jane’s, Hershey Kisses, Reese’s cups, candy cigarettes, Tootsie Rolls and Airheads.

Before they left I reapplied sun screen to their freckled pink faces, insisted they wear long tee-shirts over their swim suits, tucked their salty hair behind their ears, and plopped their pastel baseball caps on their fair heads. Each girl clutched a quarter in her fist.

They will return, waving their little brown bags of melting chocolates and sticky wax papered treats.

My last words to them, these little girls aged eight and five, after promising a swim when they get back, the last words I say to them are, “Don’t dawdle.”

T-shirt Truth

2009-06-13T10:21:00.009-04:00

I saw this T-shirt at a street fair in Cambridge, MA, last weekend--part of the first annual Dance For World Community Festival. The festival was organized by the Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre and is a project dedicated to expanding the role of dance in local communities. Along with all the tasty food, the festival featured lots of dance groups--from African dance to modern to ballet--and free classes in many dance forms.

I felt like I was stepping into the past, into an era when street theater ruled and community involvement in the arts mattered. I was also stepping into my own past, when I was a modern dancer rehearsing and performing in Cambridge and then New York.

Write about something that really mattered once and doesn't anymore.

Writing Alone, Well Almost

2009-05-25T14:00:00.008-04:00

Sitting at my hotel room desk, writing, I look up--gloating just a bit--over the view, the quiet, and the privacy.

I could sit here in the buff, I'm thinking.

Blue bliss.

Oops. What are these guys doing? End of revery.

Wide Open Desktops

2009-05-23T07:15:00.019-04:00

At home, I have an office. It's my very own space. My files spill from the black metal drawers; cardboard boxes and stacks of paper litter the desk and floor; books cram the shelves. I feel fortunate to have a nook I can call my own--cinderblock walls, pockmarked drop ceiling, buckling linoleum floor and all.

Truly, I'm grateful. It's just that I never write in there. In fact, I never go in there if I can help it. I write on my laptop, in a chair in the middle of everything--in my living room.

My office has become a time-out place, a "get me out of here, NOW" zone. The tiny room seems more like a hall, a breezeway--if only there were a breeze--between the children's former playroom, now morphed into a saggy-couched entertainment center, and my husband's office.

His office? My husband's mother gave him an apt nickname: kudzu. Last night, when I was trying to squeeze past the flight attendant who was pushing the dinner cart down the economy aisle, I said to myself, this experience reminds me of something. What? Ah, yes. Trying to get around in my husband's office.

Every day some of kudzu's stuff migrates into my space.

Here, in a hotel in Doha, Qatar, I have a curvy wooden desk holding only the books and the one manilla file I brought with me. Nobody passes through. Nothing piles up. All I hear is the hum of the airconditioning. I could get a lot of writing done here.

But I could at home too. In a tiny corner of his house, Paul Silvia wrote How to Write A Lot. The book features a workplace photo--desk, lamp, laptop, trash can. Period. Kind of like my photo above. His modest setup proves, he tells us in no uncertain terms, that we don't need retreats or fancy office digs in order to write, that complaining about our space, or lack of it, is just another excuse for not writing.

In my dreams I'm writing at a clear-surfaced home office desk--the room clean and quiet. Right now, awake, nothing trumps a hotel.

Seriously. We're cats.

2009-04-30T08:45:00.004-04:00

This is our last post for a while. Yes, we've missed a few days but what do you expect? We're cats. Just try to train us.
Write about your attempts to tame or train something. And good luck.

Shadows

2009-04-28T18:56:00.003-04:00

Write about your shadow, or somebody else's.

Sharing a bed

2009-04-27T16:08:00.001-04:00

Write about sleeping with somebody.

What do you expect?

2009-04-26T17:45:00.002-04:00

Some of you are wondering why we don't post at the same time every day, why we miss some days. We are cats, that's why. Need I say more?
Write about what you expect.

Count on him

2009-04-24T12:21:00.002-04:00

I can always count on him to make messes for me to get into.
Write about somebody you can count on.

Who is smarter?

2009-04-23T18:15:00.003-04:00

This is our new cousin Mimi, who also likes books. We're afraid she's smarter than we are.
Write about a fear.

Where to sit

2009-04-22T18:02:00.003-04:00

What? How to choose a chair? What are these people doing?
Write about picking a place to sit.

Time out

2009-04-21T12:51:00.001-04:00

Write about time out or spending time in the corner.

Who are you, really?

2009-04-20T15:27:00.001-04:00

Write about a time when you pretended to be someone/something you aren't.

(I've given this prompt before--not in this context--and some creatures can't come up with anything. I'm embarrassed to admit that it's easy for me. I even pretend to be a dog sometimes.)

A Chair of One's Own

2009-04-17T05:54:00.002-04:00

Virginia Woolf writes about having a room of one's own for writing--I don't need a room of my own, as long as they have rooms and piles of papers I can lie on. What I do like is a chair of my own. And this is one of mine.

Write about a favorite chair, a favorite place to sit or stretch out.

Feeling stuck.

2009-04-16T07:39:00.002-04:00

Write about a time when you felt stuck.

Where is it?

2009-04-15T18:17:00.001-04:00

Write about looking for something ordinary that you can't find.

Feeling Framed

2009-04-14T15:26:00.003-04:00

Write about a time you felt framed.

We're so glad

2009-04-13T16:11:00.003-04:00

We're so glad we're cats and not pigs. Write an ode to what or who you are.

And here's a paean to the onion, which, by the way, we wouldn't dream of eating.

An Easter Centerpiece

2009-04-11T15:37:00.005-04:00

She shoos me off tables and counters when people are over but, hey, I look good on the sideboard, better than the side dishes.

Write about an Easter dinner.