Upcoming WordPlay

PROJECT BOOK COASTAL WRITING RETREAT: Connect with Your Creativity at the Sunset Inn and Learn How to Bring a Book into Being    

One spot left!

Do you have a book in you ready to come out? Come renew yourself, whether you are a practicing writer, closet writer, or as-yet-to-pick-up-the-pen writer. You'll also learn what you need to know to bring a book into being. The tools you'll learn will spur your imagination, and can be used to create nonfiction, fiction, and/or poetry -- the choice is yours. There will be ample free time to savor your  private room with king-sized bed, private bath and balcony, the large porches with rocking chairs and swings, and the coastal setting. The Sunset Inn is a five-minute walk from Sunset Beach and is next to a peaceful marsh where herons and cranes live. You'll have your choice of rooms, each with its own distinctive style and color scheme. You'll return home refreshed, with new ideas and energy for your writing. $438 includes writing sessions, two nights' lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch (hotel tax and Saturday dinner at a local restaurant not included).

WHERE:  The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468 
WHEN:  Friday, November 8 - Sunday, November 10, 2013
TO REGISTER: Contact the Sunset Inn at 888.575.1001 or 910.575.1000 (if you would like to handpick your room, view your choices here  first, then call). Because the Inn is holding rooms for you, our participants, they are blocked off as unavailable online. Register soon by phone -- this is a popular event and there are only 8 spaces available each weekend. The Inn will hold your reservation with a credit card.

EVERY PICTURE HOLDS A STORY (Writing Inspired by Visual Images)

Would you enjoy using pictures, post cards, and other visual art as writing inspiration? Are you interested in preserving the stories your photographs could tell, for yourself or future generations? Come explore the use of visual images as a means to create powerful fiction, non-fiction, and/or poetry and learn foolproof methods for capturing treasured family stories. Participants are encouraged to bring images of their own they would like to work with, especailly photographs. A wide variety of images will be provided as well. Also needed: a notebook and pen. All levels welcome. $49 /1 session.

WHERE: Queens University Sports Complex, Tyvola Road
WHEN: Monday, November 18, 9:30am-12:30pm
TO REGISTER: http://lifelong.queens.edu/CourseStatus.awp?&course=13FPEPHS

See  http://wordplaynow.com/current.htm  for more details and more WordPlay opportunities. 

 WordPlay Featured Writing

An Excerpt from Spinning Words into Gold

by

Maureen Ryan Griffin

Where You Have Written

When I heard Naomi Shihab Nye in the summer of 2002, I was struck by the places her poems were conceived and/or written: in her own home, of course, but also in a hotel room, on a bus, in an airport, at a canoe rental shop, and on an airplane. Even at Niagara Falls. She told us that, unlike many people, she likes airport waits. They provide precious writing time.

Nye got me thinking of where I have written in the course of my life. I, too, have written on a bus, a Greyhound ride from Pennsylvania to Arizona. And in a tent at Girl Scout Camp, and on a park bench in Paris, where a man in uniform charged me to sit. Then there was the Mercyhurst Prep School library, where I penned passionate letters asking that age-old, teenage question, "Why don't you love me anymore?" when I should have been studying. Perhaps the best place I ever wrote was on the lawn of the Glen Iris Inn in Letchworth State Park in western New York, because as I sat there many years ago, scribbling in my journal, a woman walking by asked, "Are you a writer?" and I took a deep breath and answered, "Yes," claiming myself as a member of the tribe for the first time.

Wander through your memory to recall where you've written.

Where You Like to Write

Some people can't write at home, because they can't ignore the work waiting to be done all around them. My student Judy Feldman was a case in  point. She came into class frustrated several weeks running because she hadn't written. As other students shared writing they'd done in various locations outside their homes, she got the message. She took herself out to a beautiful new bookstore café -- twice. Sipping cappuccino, she wrote a short story so strong and convincing that everyone in class thought it was autobiography.

Some people can't write when they're not at home, snug in their own familiar chair. For them, the visual stimulation or the distractions of street noise disrupt their train of thought. Like Virginia Woolf, they believe in the  importance of having "a room of one's own." (Although a room of one's own is not always, as my mother would say, what it's cracked up to be. Mario Puzo of The Godfather fame used a portion of his royalties to build himself a large, well-appointed studio in his backyard, only to find that he wrote much better at his kitchen table, smack in the middle of his family's comings and goings.)

Whether we write better at home or away from home, many of us, like Mario Puzo, do have a favorite writing place. It's great to have a comfortable  spot to go to, one so associated with pen, pencil, or keyboard that when we plop down there, words automatically flow out. 

Where is your favorite place to write?

Where You've Never Written Before

If you have a favorite place to write, why would you want to write anywhere else? Well, for one thing, it's good to stay flexible, so that if circumstances in your future require travel, or time in waiting rooms, your words can still flow. Naomi Shihab Nye, for example, spends much of her time giving lectures and workshops across the country. If she could only write at her favorite table, she wouldn't be the prolific writer that she is.

There's also the thrill of adventure that comes when we boldly write where  we have never written before. (Sorry, I took a class in college on the Age of the Enlightenment, and our professor was such a Trekkie that his entire syllabus related the Enterprise's voyage to the Enlightenment. As our grade depended upon memorizing episodes of Kirk and crew, my mind just goes there every so often.) Where was I?

Oh, yes, boldly writing in new places. There's energy in this practice. I often ask students to write in a place they've never written before, and offer a prize to whoever writes in the most interesting place, as voted on by the class.

Elsa Safir won one week by writing during a football game in Ann Arbor, Michigan during her husband's 35-year college reunion. Virginia Brien followed by writing, over a week's time, in every chair in her house. I had to try that one for myself.

I never realized how many chairs we had-chairs in the kitchen, chairs in the living room, chairs in my children's rooms-it was fun to take a turn in each. I felt a little like Goldilocks, testing chairs in the bears' house.

Where have you never written?

MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You , and two collections of poetry, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."

Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn -- and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours!