Upcoming WordPlay

COASTAL WRITING RETREAT: Connect with Your Creativity at the Sunset Inn (Writing--and more--as Renewal and Inspiration) / 1 weekend session

Back by popular request: a weekend writing retreat full of activities to reconnect you to your creativity. Renew yourself, whether you are a practicing writer, closet writer, or as-yet-to-pick-up-the-pen writer! The techniques and prompts we'll use will spur your imagination, and can be used to create nonfiction, fiction, and/or poetry-the choice is yours. There'll be ample free time to savor your beautifully appointed private room with king-sized bed, private bath and balcony, the large porches with rocking chairs and swings, and the coastal setting. For more information on the Sunset Inn, which is a five-minute walk from Sunset Beach and is next to a peaceful marsh where herons and cranes live, see www.thesunsetinn.net. You'll have your choice of rooms, each with its own distinctive style and color scheme. Return home refreshed, with new ideas and energy for your writing.

$378 for writing sessions, two nights' lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch (hotel tax and Saturday dinner at a local restaurant not included). Additionally, for those who might like to stay another day to work on their writing, or to just enjoy the beach, the Inn is offering Coastal Writing Retreat participants the opportunity to stay Sunday night, February 23, at half price.

You'll need a copy of Spinning Words into Gold, available for $23.54 at the retreat. Or order a copy now via PayPal/credit card.

WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, February 21 - Sunday, February 23, 2014*

(Note: There are two separate Coastal Writing Retreats. Friday February 28 - Sunday, March 2 will be a PROJECT: BOOK Retreat. See below for more information if you are interested in this.)

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. Also, please let the Inn know when you call if you are interested in staying Sunday night, February 23, at half price. The Inn will hold your reservation with a credit card. 

PROJECT BOOK AT SUNSET BEACH: GET YOUR BOOK OUT OF YOU AND INTO THE WORLD (Writing/Publishing Your Book-length Writing Project) / 1 weekend session

A hands-on workshop for any writer who would like to write and/or publish a book and
    1) doesn't know how
    2) doesn't get around to it 
    3) feels
                a) intimidated
                b) confused
                                c) overwhelmed
                                d) uninspired
                e) all of the above
You'll 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, e-publishing, and print-on-demand). Note: Class doesn't include critique of your book manuscript. 

There'll be free time to savor your beautifully appointed private room with king-sized bed, private bath and balcony, the large porches with rocking chairs and swings, and the coastal setting. For more information on the Sunset Inn, which is a five-minute walk from Sunset Beach and is next to a peaceful marsh where herons and cranes live, see www.thesunsetinn.net. You'll have your choice of rooms, each with its own distinctive style and color scheme.

$408 includes Project: Book sessions, two nights' lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch (hotel tax and Saturday dinner at a local restaurant not included). Additionally, for those who might like to stay another day to work on their writing, or to just enjoy the beach, the Inn is offering Coastal Writing Retreat participants the opportunity to stay Sunday night, March 2, at half price.

You'll need a copy of Spinning Words into Gold, available for $23.54 at the retreat. Or order a copy now via PayPal/credit card.

WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, February 28- Sunday, March 2, 2014
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. Also, please let the Inn know when you call if you are interested in staying Sunday night, March 2, at half price. The Inn will hold your reservation with a credit card. 

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

WordPlay Essay

 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

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BY EDGAR A. POE.

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CHARLES DICKENS, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an examination I once made of the mechanism of "Barnaby Rudge," says -- "By the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his 'Caleb Williams' backwards? He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting for what had been done."

I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the part of Godwin -- and indeed what he himself acknowledges, is not altogether in accordance with Mr. Dickens' idea -- but the author of "Caleb Williams" was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage derivable from at least a somewhat similar process. Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before any thing be attempted with the pen. It is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.

There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing a story. Either history affords a thesis -- or one is suggested by an incident of the day - or, at best, the author sets himself to work in the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his narrative -- designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from page to page, render themselves apparent.

I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping originality always in view -- for he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest -- I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, I consider whether it can best be wrought by incident or tone - whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone -- afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect.

I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written by any author who would -- that is to say, who could -- detail, step by step, the processes by which any one of his compositions attained its ultimate point of completion...

Read the essay in its entirety here.

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!