Volume V, Issue 2 January 11, 2016 Dear ,
Over time, my husband Richard and I have developed a number of pet names for one another, and since our grandson's been born, we've lavished a number of them on him, too, but when I read One Hundred Names for Love, Diane Ackerman's inspiring story of helping her husband make an "against-all-odds return to conversing and writing after a stroke that left him with
global aphasia, I realize we have been missing out on all manner of possibilities for what's in a name! (See the excerpt below for some examples, O Gorgeous Moon Ascending.)
It's no wonder that One Hundred Names for Love was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book
Circle Critics Award. As Donna Seaman wrote in her Booklist starred review, it's "a gorgeously engrossing, affecting, sweetly funny, and mind-opening love story of crisis, determination, creativity, and repair." It's also a book that answers Romeo's question, "What's in a name?" in lavish measure.
For the names we call our loved ones, our characters, even ourselves, have power... Check out the featured writing and prompt below and see if you don't agree.
Love and
light,
Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
UNDER CONSTRUCTION: YOUR
WRITING Starts tomorrow, Tuesday, January 12
1 spot left! (Fulfilling Writing Dreams & Goals; Creating New Writing' Revising & Polishing Your
Writing)
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 and methods. Each week, writing prompts will generate material for new writing or further a piece in process, whatever your preferred
genre. Through examples of accomplished writers, you’ll learn techniques to aid you right where you are in the process.
WHERE: South Charlotte area. Details will be provided upon registration
WHEN: Tuesday evenings, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. January 12, 19 and 26 February 2 and 16 March 1, 8 and 22 April 5, 12, 19 and 26 May 3 COST: $419 TO REGISTER:
Because this class is nearly full, if you would like to register, please email us directly at info@wordplaynow.com for details.
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THE HEALING POWER OF WORDS WRITING RETREAT AT SUNSET BEACH
(Writing As a
Healing Process)
What benefits can writing provide — physically, mentally, spiritually? Are some ways of writing more healing than others? And can we create quality literary work as we heal? In this retreat that incorporates recent discoveries in the field of mind-body-spirit connection and Dr. James Pennebaker’s ground-breaking ideas on writing as a
way to move through loss and grief, you’ll learn methods of writing that help navigate loss and grief on your life path of growth and wholeness.
WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, February 19 – Sunday, February 21, 2016*
TO REGISTER: Contact the
Sunset Inn at 888-575-1001 (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 7 spaces available.
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COASTAL WRITING RETREAT: Connect with Your Creativity at the Sunset
Inn 2 spots left! (Writing—and more—as Renewal and Inspiration)
Renew yourself and reconnect with your own creativity, 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. $378 for the weekend beginning Friday, February 26 through Sunday, February 28. The Coastal Writing Retreat includes writing sessions, two nights’ lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch (hotel tax and Saturday dinner at a local restaurant not included). Want to extend
your retreat? If you’d like to stay another day to write, or to just enjoy the beach, the Inn is offering to Coastal Writing Retreat participants the opportunity to stay Sunday night, February 28th, at half price. (Extra retreat sessions are a possibility too. Email info@wordplaynow.com if you’re interested.)
WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468 WHEN: Friday, February 26 – Sunday, February 28, 2016*
TO REGISTER: Contact the Sunset Inn at 888-575-1001 (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 2 spaces available.
More WordPlay opportunities here. WordPlay Featured Writing
An excerpt from Chapter 26
of
One Hundred Names for Love
by
Diane Ackerman
“MA BÊTE, MA BELLE BÊTE,” MY BEAST,
MY BEAUTIFUL BEAST, I sweet-talked to Paul one day, quoting from a movie we both knew well.
In Jean Cocteau’s exquisite 1946 film La Belle et la Bête, a rose-adoring, art-collecting, sensitive beast is the avatar for a prince, whom an evil fairy has turned into a hideous monster (until he can find true love, despite his ugliness).
It was based on a popular eighteenth-century European fairy tale about a search for a lost husband. We both adored the magical film, which we'd seen eleven times, often enough for Paul to decipher the Latin on the back of the Beast’s chair, which reads: "All men are beasts when they don't have love."
“Ma Bête, ma belle Bête," I whispered.
Automatically, Paul responded, also quoting [from the film]: "Je suis un monster. Je n’aime pas les compliments.” I am a monster. I don’t like compliments.
Just as I’d
sometimes called him “ma Bête” in bygone days, he’d sometimes called me “ma Belle,” but that had been one of the simplest of all his fanciful names for me. For him, playing in the sandbox of language had meant building ornate castles. As well as his dictation was going and his speech improving, he still had difficulty combining words to form images. And he deeply lamented the loss of decades of daily pet names and endearments. He’d loved creating and bestowing names of all sorts—wildly
whimsical, just feasible, or apropos: ∏, Moon, Paprika Cheeks, Bush-kitten. We'd both relished the Native American spirit of naming, in which a Hopi female might be called "Beautiful Badger Going Over the Hill," "Child of Importance," "Spider Woman at Middle-age," "Butterfly Sitting on a Flower," "Overflowing Spring," "Beautiful Clouds Arising"; and a male "Where the Wind Blows Down the Gap," "Short Rainbow," "Throne for the Clouds," "Joined Together by Water," "He Who
Whistles."
There was a time, long ago, when all names described personal attributes, origin, or the hopes of parents, when names could be allegories that determined someone's fate. A time when naming was magic, knowledge, possession, and a shaman could inflict injury by mishandling someone's name. A time when you only shared your true name with
someone you completely trusted. What spells Paul and I had cast with our secret names for one another.
Passing by the back door, when Liz and Paul were wading at the shallow end of the pool, I heard her ask him, "Do you have a pet name for Diane?"
~ Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love, Chapter 26 Read more, or purchase the book on 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
"name."
PROMPT:
Ready to do some bona fide wordplay? Pick someone you are (or one of your characters is) very fond of. Now come up with ten pet names for him/her. Pull
out the stops, taking inspiration from the excerpt from One Hundred Names for Love above, or here on WordPlay's Recommended Memoir page.
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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