Volume V, Issue 7 February 15, 2016 Dear ,
I can't help but to think about cats these days, since there are currently three of them living with me and my husband Richard, though only one of them is ours. (Sir Winston
Kitten Griffin, the one in the middle, right next to where I was when I got up from my reading to take this picture.) The other two, Rex and Jerry, belong to my daughter Amanda, her husband Ross, and my grandson Rhys, who are all living here for a while because their house is on the market and
they're moving to Washington, D.C.
While I'm going to miss having them twenty minutes away, I'm doing my best to look on the bright side—we have lots of sleepovers ahead. And we can take advantage of all the art, history, and culture available in D.C. when we go for frequent visits. Meanwhile, it's great fun to spend lots of time with Rhys and family,
including the cats, who, it turns out, are just the thing for one's writing life, if Ernest Hemingway and Elizabeth Minkel, whose New Yorker essay "Writing with Cats" is featured today, are right.
Ernest and Elizabeth are not the only ones. Here's what poet May Sarton said about writing with cats: "My cat likes to go out at one in the morning, so I have to let him out. And at two he meows to come in. [While he is out] I make notes for poems. And then in the morning… I work at them. I would not still be a poet without the
cat."
How about you? Does a cat serve as your best writing critic, encourage your words with purring, or have habits that serve your writing discipline? Or, perhaps, you love to hate felines? If you can't write with them, perhaps you can write about them. (See this week's writing
prompt.)
Love, light, and a trio of meows, Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
THE HEALING POWER OF WORDS WRITING RETREAT AT SUNSET BEACH
4 spots left! Starts this Friday! (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 4 spaces available.
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COASTAL WRITING RETREAT: Connect with Your Creativity at the Sunset
Inn 1 spot 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 is only 1 space available.
More WordPlay opportunities here. WordPlay Featured Writing
Writing with Cats
by
Elizabeth Minkel
I don’t want to start any fights here, but I think I might have definitive proof that cats are superior to dogs. Wait! My argument is vaguely literary. (Perhaps a disclaimer is in order: I do in fact have a cat, and a vaguely literary one at that: she’s called Orlando, after the Virginia Woolf novel; her first week in my care was a little confusing, gender-wise.) The other day the folks over at HarperPerennial drew my attention to two fantastic time-wasting sites: Jill Krementz’s photos of writers with their dogs, and Writers and Kitties, a blog that compiles, well, exactly what it says on the tin. Lots of the pictures on both sites are pretty charming, but I think there’s something special about all those authors posing with their cats, and I’m trying to figure out why. No, it’s definitely not because I am a cat person.
Writers lead lonely lives. Cats are particularly good pets for people who sit alone at their desks day and night, pulling out their hair and making coffee, and they’re deeply habitual creatures, which can help the undisciplined among us. Jennifer Egan, who won the Pulitzer just this week, confirmed that feline companionship is key to her literary greatness: “My cats are a big part of my work life,” she told the Wall Street
Journal. “They’re in and out of here all day long.” It doesn’t take more than a few shots of writers actually clutching cats as they scribble away to realize that having them around might be fairly helpful. (Orlando is currently wedged between me and my laptop; the purring helps.)
But maybe it’s something deeper than that. Take the words of Ernest Hemingway, arguably the most famous cat
lover in the history of literature (anyone who’s tripped over Archibald MacLeish or one of the other eight thousand polydactyl cats at the house in Key West can attest to that). “A cat has absolute emotional honesty,” Hemingway once wrote. “Human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.” The idea could open up a world of metaphorical possibilities for the fiction writer, but I’d rather take it more literally. Dogs might be great to read to, with their
perpetual, wide-eyed lack of judgment, but cats are great to write to: brutally frank, and always a little bit critical. And is there anything more satisfying, after a day of cool disinterest, than a cat’s appreciation and approval?
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
"cat."
PROMPT:
How do you (or one of your characters) feel about cats? Write a scene, essay, poem, or other writing that features a
cat. 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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