Volume II, Issue 42 December 4, 2013 |
Dear ,
Is life really like a box of chocolates? WordPlayer Marann Mincey explores this question in a blog post she wrote while attending a recent Coastal Writing Retreat. (She's third from the left in this photo I took of some of the participants as they enjoyed a beach stroll 1,140 nautical miles north
of where Marann now lives.)
You can check out Marann's blog, "Trading Shores" below. (And see a photo of her 1,140 nautical miles south, in sunny Puerto Rico.) Every time I have the good fortune to spend time with Marann, I'm inspired by her courage, zest, and generosity -- not to mention the fresh perspective she brings to her writing, and to life.
December is often a month when we operate on auto pilot. We can wind up engaging in the same frenzy of activities we have in years past without considering whether trying out a different "flavor" would make our lives more vibrant, our hearts wider open -- even if it's a flavor life gave us instead of one we chose. This December, I challenge you to take a bite out of a new experience for the sheer aliveness of it. Eat something you've never eaten before. Listen to something you've never listened to before. Go somewhere you've never been. And you don't have to travel 1,140 miles, nautical or otherwise -- bet you can do that within a one-mile radius of your own home. And then, of course, write about it.
After all, as Natalie Goldberg says in Writing Down the Bones, ""Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and detail." Love and light,
Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
THE 2013 WINTER WRITING RETREAT (Writing - and More - as Renewal / Creating New Writing)
Renew and delight yourself. Seasonal retreats are opportunities to create new pieces of writing and/or new possibilities for our lives. Enjoy various seasonal prompts; they have not failed to elicit beautiful material that can be shaped into essays, poems, stories, or articles. After a communal lunch, you'll have private time which can be used to collage, work with a piece of writing from the morning, or play with a number of other writing prompts and methods. You'll take home new ideas, new drafts, and new possibilities. $97 includes lunch and supplies. WHERE: South Charlotte area. Details will be provided upon registration. WHEN:
Saturday, December 21, 2013,10 am - 5 pm
TO REGISTER: click here to register online with PayPal or a credit card.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION (Fulfilling Writing Dreams and Goals; Creating New Writing; Revising and Polishing Your Writing)
Available Both Mornings and Evenings This class is designed to fulfill your writing dreams and projects. You'll set goals and support structures and watch your writing flow! You'll also get feedback on your work (any genre) and learn revision tools. Jumpstart your pen and receive the knowledge and inspiration you need to write, whatever your preferred genre. Each week, writing prompts will generate material for new writing or further a piece in process. Through examples of accomplished writers, you'll learn techniques to aid you right where you are in the process. $407 for 13 sessions.
WHERE: Both morning and evening classes will be at Covenant Presbyterian Recreation Center, 1000 East Morehead Street, 28204. Click
here for map.
WHEN: Morning Class,
Wednesdays, January 15 & 22, February 5 & 19, March 5, 19 & 26, April 2, 9, 16 & 23, May 7 & 14; Snow date, May 21
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR MORNINGS WHEN: Evening Class,
Thursdays, January 9, 16 & 23, February 6 & 20, March 6, 20 & 27, April 3, 10 & 24, May 8 & 22; Snow date, May 29
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR EVENINGS
THE GIFT OF MEMOIR: WRITING PERSONAL AND FAMILY STORIES
(Preserving Family History / Writing for and about Your Family / The Art of Memoir) Our life stories are a precious legacy. Putting them in writing is a gift to all who know and love us-they can be treasured and enjoyed for generations to come. It is also a gift to ourselves. As best-selling author Rachel Naomi Remen says in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom
, facts bring us to knowledge, but stories bring us to wisdom. If you are interested in writing family and/or personal life stories-those significant tales of adventure, transition, love, loss, and triumph, as well as lovely everyday moments from times past or the present, come learn specific tools and techniques to retrieve and record them. $295 for 10 sessions.
WHERE: Covenant Presbyterian Recreation Center, 1000 East Morehead St., Charlotte, 28204. Click
here for map.
WHEN: Thursdays, 10 AM to noon, January 9 & 23, February 6 & 20, March 6 & 20, April 3 & 24, May 8 & 22. Snow date May 29.
TO REGISTER:
Click Here
PROJECT: BOOK (Writing / Publishing Your Book-length Writing Project) / 2 Saturdays (Note: this Project: Book workshop is in Charlotte; scroll down further for the one at the Sunset Inn at Sunset Beach.)
A hands-on workshop for any writer who would like to write and/or submit a book for publication and 1) doesn't know how, 2) doesn't get around to it, 3) feels a) intimidated, b) confused, c) overwhelmed, d) uninspired, 4) all of the above! You will gain working knowledge of the steps you need to take and the procedures and documents that are necessary (query vs. cover letter, book proposal, overview, synopsis, outline), as well as an introduction to today's publishing world (major publishers, university presses, small presses, self-publishing, and print-on-demand). Note: Class doesn't include critique of your book manuscript. $197 for 2 sessions, includes lunch for both days.
WHERE: Covenant Presbyterian Recreation Center, 1000 East Morehead St., Charlotte, 28204. Click
here for map.
WHEN: Thursdays, 10 AM to 4:30 PM, January 9 & 23, February 6 & 20, March 6 & 20, April 3 & 24, May 8 & 22. Snow date March 29.
TO REGISTER:
Click Here
WRITE YOURSELF
Reap writing's benefits-physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Start the new year by giving yourself the gift of exploring how creative writing (journaling, memoir, poetry, fiction) can enrich your life, and what your writing can provide for others. You'll learn a number of fun, easy approaches to the writing process. Ideal for beginners and anyone interested in renewing and expanding their writing and their relationship to self, others, and the world. This class is offered FREE! WHERE: South County Regional Library, 5801 Rea Rd Charlotte, NC 28277
WHEN: Tuesday, January 14, 6 - 7:30 p.m.
TO REGISTER: Call 704-416-6600
COASTAL WRITING RETREATS IN February 2014: Connect with Your Creativity at the Sunset Inn (February 21st through 23rd) and/or Learn How to Bring a Book into Being (February 28th through March 2)
Come renew yourself, whether you are a practicing writer, closet writer, or as-yet-to-pick-up-the-pen writer. 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).
Check out more details on the Sunset Inn's website. WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468 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. See
http://wordplaynow.com/current.htm
for more WordPlay opportunities. Meet Marann Mincey
Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do," and Annie Dillard says, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." Marann spends her days writing, consulting, philosophizing, loving, travelling, reading, exercising, learning and recreating. She also likes to sing, dance, take pictures and even sometimes paint them. In general, she considers herself an explorer (in all senses of the word) with a fierce love for family and friends, just not a belief that she must live next door to them to express it.
Marann writes novels, creative nonfiction essays, feature articles, interviews, short stories and the occasional poem. She also hosts a travel blog which chronicles her nomadic lifestyle over the last three years, which took her from Nicaragua to China to Europe, as well as her observations now that she's landed in Puerto Rico for a while. You can read it here: http://celinamincey.wordpress.com/
WHAT MARANN SAYS ABOUT WORDPLAY:
When writing with Maureen, stories will emerge you didn't know were inside of you. Your fellow workshop participants will take risks that surprise you and shed their personalities to become authentic story tellers. You simply must experience it to realize the power of Maureen Ryan Griffin's writing courses. She provides insightful, though-provoking prompts that encourage a variety of writing styles and types. The creative, supportive atmosphere she creates seeps in and takes hold so that her writers reach new depths and produce a different caliber of writing. She describes herself as a "midwife of dreams" and she realizes this role in many capacities. I am grateful for working with her, writing with her, and just knowing her!
Featured Writing Trading Shores by
Marann Mincey
I woke up this morning to the same sun, the same North Atlantic Ocean, the same hue and grit of natural sand, only I was 1,140 nautical miles north of my island and 40 degrees cooler.
On my sunrise walk of which I'll share a grainy, dumb-phone snapped photo, I was thinking about a phrase, one I bet you can't even read without hearing it in a particular Southern drawl.
Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. Did you mentally preface it with "My momma always said?" So popularized, it is difficult to speak the phrase without slipping into an imitation of Forest's accent.Try it.It's ingrained.
A few months ago, my parents and I were picking through a candy sampler we'd received as a gift. I'd select a shape, take a small bite, wrinkle my face at the unwelcome taste of orange crème or mint, then pass it on if Mom or Dad were willing to eat it, or toss the piece into the highway ditch if they weren't. We profess to suspect variety from life. We have lots of platitudes like "you never know." There are 3,000 quotes on Goodreads tagged as "living life to the fullest." We're always hoping to get something else. We'll have more, make more, travel more, love more, be more...
someday. While what we actually do is reach back down and grab from the same box of life as if we know exactly what flavor we'll grab.
That people we love won't die, jobs we work won't end, health we have won't fade, friends we make won't stray. We are shocked, indignant even when it gives us something other than the almond nougat we wanted. Why me? How could this happen?
My latest reading kick has taken me to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the early 1940s. Fresh-faced farm girls recruited out of high school from places like Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, and Auburn, Alabama, moved to an undisclosed location to watch dials and turn knobs for gauges which they didn't know what controlled. The scale of operation and patriotism is unfathomable today. 75,000 people secretly living in barracks, trailers and hutments, being transported by an 800-bus fleet on 300 miles of private road, performing tasks they didn't understand without asking questions. All that sacrifice and willingness based singularly on faith in the government's promise: it was important to the war effort.
Can you imagine a country girl's reaction to the first image of a person's melting skin? Could she recognize her own fingers that for two years turned a dial she now knew helped produce atomic destruction? It may be true she was part of a top secret war project, but she's still unprepared to wake up to a different day. It's impossible to say how long war would have raged or how deep the world's psyche scarred. The morality of the atomic bomb will perhaps be forever debated. Its creation though, is an undeniable testament to what can be done when a chance is taken and believed in, and proof there are always consequences to taking chances.
We can't go back and undo a choice no more than we seal back the bitten chocolate piece. We can't assign reasons to why our piece turned up coconut when we wanted caramel. We can't ever, really, know why. What we can do is reach out, grab a piece of life, take a big bite, and see what flavor we get this time. What a waste some people might say as you try, taste, and spit out another experience. If using life is wasting it, I say waste away. Don't leave it wrapped in foil afraid of what's inside. The sun, the sea and sand are only the same if we leave on the lid content to admire its calligraphied surface. In Nick Hornby's novel
A Long Way Down, a character is on her way to commit suicide when it occurs to her how silly it is to be fearful, in that particular moment, of walking in the city at night. Later she reflects, "There isn't so much to be afraid of, out there. I can remember thinking it was funny to find that out, on the last night of my life; I'd spent the rest of it being afraid of everything."
~ Marann Mincey You can connect with Marann here:
Blog: http://celinamincey.wordpress.com/
Website: http://marannmincey.com/
WordPlay Now! Writing Prompt
This is WordPlay -- so why not revel in the power and potential of one good word after another? This week, it's "bite." Write about a time you (or a character) took a risk and tried something new, something completely out of your comfort zone. Flesh out the story with specific details -- the who's, where's, what's, when's, how's, and why's. |
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! |
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