Volume V, Issue 49 December 5, 2016 Dear ,
Sometimes, to gain some perspective, to get inspired, it helps to go somewhere far away.
Like WordPlayer Ben Romine, whose new book Root of the Sacred Tree is featured in this week's zine, who traveled to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota for inspiration early in the writing process. It was such a pleasure and privilege for
me to consult with Ben, and to edit his moving, lyrical, and often laugh-out-loud novel. (And I am so happy to feature Ben's book that honors Native American values so soon after the latest news from Standing
Rock.)
Like my son Dan, pictured here at the Grand Canyon just last week.
This is his third trip to the G.C. (I've been there five times, never with him, though one of those trips was with his dad, to celebrate our 30-year wedding anniversary.) Dan and I were both born
with wanderlust; we are both amazed at how far it has taken us.
While Dan's not a writer, faraway vistas inspire him nonetheless. And they inspire me and my writing. Please indulge my sharing a poem I wrote for Dan nine years ago in one of my Gift of Memoir classes:
To My Son at Eighteen
After Peter Everwine’s “How It Is”
This is how it is— You call to tell me you’re on your way to the Y instead of home
for dinner. Yesterday, it was running at McAlpine Greenway. Last weekend, backpacking in Transylvania County.
Where is the boy who sat for hours in one spot building intricate structures with blocks that once belonged to my brothers?
How long has it been since you told me you were going to buy the house next door to live in when you grew up?
How
far, how far will you go from here?
I have to chuckle, living with the answer to this last question. My son now traverses the country for his job; the photo above was on a long haul from Charlotte to LA, leaving the day after Thanksgiving. (What joy that he got to eat turkey with us first!) And right now, he's on vacation
in Costa Rica with his girlfriend. I did see the writing on the wall...
What about you? In this season that celebrates a woman great with child who traveled a cold road from Nazareth to Bethlehem and wise men who "traversed afar" to meet an infant in a manger, what far-off places can inspire you and your
writing? Maybe it's somewhere you've been. Maybe it's somewhere you would love to go. (Armchair traveling counts; that's what imagination is for.) Maybe it's somewhere history has been made, like Standing Rock.
Hope you will steal a few moments away from the hustle and bustle to dream of—and write about—a far-off place.
Love and light,
Upcoming WordPlay
WINTER WRITING RETREAT (Writing as Renewal/Creating New Writing/
Tools for a Writing
Life)
Renew and delight yourself. The Winter Writing Retreat is an opportunity to create new pieces of writing and/or possibilities for our lives. Enjoy various seasonal prompts; they 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 17th, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
TO REGISTER: To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions. Click here to pay online, using PayPal.
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UNDER CONSTRUCTION
(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.
WHEN: Tuesday evenings 7:00 to 9 p.m. and Wednesday mornings, 10:00 to noon, starting in January, 2017.
TO REGISTER: If you’re interested in attending, please email us at info@wordplaynow.com for more information.
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GIFT OF MEMOIR
(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.
WHEN: Thursday mornings, 10:00 to noon, starting in January, 2017.
REGISTER: If you’re interested in attending, please email us at info@wordplaynow.com to be put on the waiting
list.
More WordPlay opportunities here. WordPlay Success Story
"Then some good friends asked to read the book and began yapping at me to get it out there. And that’s how I met Maureen, the next savior/magician/splendid cheerleader."
Meet Ben Romine
Ben Romine enjoys life in the foothills of western North Carolina. He writes, hikes, reads, sees a few clients, fishes, works
wood, and assists his wife, Jan, in tending a menagerie of dogs, cats, rescued horses, and a parrot who hates him. Before retiring, he was a university administrator and after that, a psychotherapist. His spread is aptly named Rancho Neurotico!
His formal education included stops at Carson-Newman College,
Florida State University (B.A.) and Duke University (M.A. and Ph.D.) A year at Duke Divinity School revealed that the answers to his questions were not be to be found in books.
More practically, his education occurred in venues as rich and diverse as south Georgia athletic fields and courts; a counseling office in
Charlotte, NC; the forests and mountains of the Appalachian Southern Highlands; confrontations and connections in and around the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; and countless tables surrounded by wise and trusted friends both very late at night and, recently, in more sedate lunch venues.
The seeds of the story
grew out of a life-long fascination with the culture of the plains Indians that was triggered by the pictures in his earliest favorite book (now in the safe-keeping of his grandson). But it led inexorably to a deep appreciation of the People themselves—their courage, cultural strength and the profound spiritually that continues to nourish and undergird so many.
What Ben says about
WordPlay
"I’ve enjoyed writing for as long as I can remember but I never took it seriously. My papers in college and graduate school were generally well received, and I enjoyed a reasonable degree of success in publishing academic papers. But I never faintly considered myself A Writer.
But one day, just as the managed care industry was squeezing the joy out of practicing psychology, a friend in the film/theater business dared me to try to write a screenplay. It was a disaster. I don’t particularly enjoy most movies and I certainly didn’t know anything about writing a screenplay! But it gave me something to do in the evenings and after a while, some words and paragraphs began to present themselves. It didn’t happen
overnight but that’s exactly how it came to feel. Things—words, thoughts, characters, conversations—just began to arrive in my mind and it was my job to record them. I forgot the screenplay and just wrote. And wrote.
Then it stopped. Nothing. Silence. I told my wife that I either had to quit the project or go to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota where my imagination had led me.
She gave me her blessings and I booked a ticket planning on a ten-day stay. That was the only thing I planned. I left with no agenda and no itinerary. The Guides had led me that far; I felt confident that they could handle the job.
What a trip it was! Having no questions, I received no “answers” but I discovered what the book was about. And I returned with the conviction that no matter
what happened with the manuscript, the journey was reward enough.
I went through the Find-an-Agent thing and was encouraged by handwritten notes and invitations to submit more material. One asked that I withdraw the manuscript from the agent market for six months while they decided whether they wanted the project. Through it all I promised that I would never Self Publish! And I gave up, still
believing that the journey was all the reward I needed. No more letters of inquiry. A long period of dormancy followed.
Then some good friends asked to read the book and began yapping at me to get it out there. And that’s how I met Maureen, the next savior/magician/splendid cheerleader. Most of you who read these words will appreciate what a fortunate event that
was.
The final chapter included finding Lulu Self Publishing Company. (Never say never.)
I wish no one before me had said, “If I can do it, anybody can.”! I’d like to have coined the phrase. It took a dare, some fun evenings, a trip to South Dakota, and a lot of twists and turns. And Maureen, of
course! But, boy! What a trip! I’d recommend it to anybody."
Featured
Writing
an excerpt from
Root of the Sacred Tree by
Ben Romine
Montana was not his destination when he fled Charlotte, North
Carolina. At the time, he had exactly nothing in mind except getting out. Away. The direction and endpoint didn’t matter. Only just Far.
Nor could he identify the moment he decided to return to Big
Sky Country. It could have been somewhere in Tennessee, or East Arkansas—or maybe during the second day. At some point, though, it occurred to him to revisit the spot where he and Laura had shared some of their finest, most cherished moments.
A brief stop…touch it and move on. That was his thinking as he drove hard on the third day toward Bozeman and then beyond to the village of Ennis.
But what started out as lunch at the Ennis Cafe and a nostalgic stroll down Main Street turned into six weeks and a serious reconnection. Too many memories to shake
easily.
There had been tight lines and beautiful fish. Riffles and whitewater. The unexpected thunderstorm that had rolled in from above the pasture, catching them both by surprise and drenching them down to their
last fiber. The Big Sky, which to him at the time seemed minuscule compared to her energy and the effect it had on him. Love and moisture.
So 15 years later, he returned to O’Dell Creek and set up camp
exactly where they had pitched their tent and spent their honeymoon. For the first ten days, he didn’t leave except once for groceries and again to escape a blue norther that swept through.
He fished some. But mostly he recalled conversations and how her breasts felt against his back when she held him in the sleeping bag at night. The way her laugh sometimes started in her nose, and how her thigh rested on top of his. He didn’t just let the memories come—he ransacked his mind for them, abandoning himself at last to his grief.
His first week back on O’Dell was Hell. A total blur.
But at
some point during the second week, his tears became less toxic, and he actually began to smile at some of his recollections. The time she had slipped a trout into his side of the sleeping bag. The morning she had substituted worms, complete with
dirt, for the flies he had so carefully tied the night before.
Then, by the beginning of the third week, the waters of the creek began to rise again, not only in the creek itself, but in his soul. By week four, he was Home. And after week five, he felt that he had retired the mortgage and owned the place. Laura was never far from his mind; he “talked” with her from time to time during the day. But he was beginning to experience a joy he’d almost forgotten.
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 "far."
PROMPT: Write about a faraway place that is important to you or one of your characters. It can be a place from the past, a place in the future, or a place that captures the imagination for any
reason.
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 three collections of poetry, Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. One of her long-held dreams came true in July of 2015 when Garrison Keillor read one of her poems on The Writer's Almanac. 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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