Volume IIII, Issue 6
February 9, 2015
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Dear ,
Happy
Valentine's Day! We all associate this February holiday with romantic love (hence the photo of me and my husband, Richard, celebrating our 30-year anniversary last April at the Grand Canyon), but there are many, many other kinds of true love. Like, say, the love we feel for our children (here are our two, Dan and Amanda) -- which leads us to delight in our children's love for one
another. How it warmed my heart to see this selfie on my daughter's Facebook page with the caption "I love my baby brother."And the circle of true love just gets wider and wider -- beyond family, friends, and even acquaintances to, sometimes, total
strangers who touch our hearts in connected moments.
Then there's the true love we feel for special pets, special places, special pastimes -- like, say, writing. Which brings me to the idea of true muses. (You knew I would get to that, right?)
While, formally speaking, the Muses are the
nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne who preside over knowledge and the arts, we tend to use this word that also means to ponder and contemplate to refer to someone who inspires our creativity. Myth has it that our muses pick us, rather than our picking them, and today's featured writing by WordPlayer Katherine Harris is a great example of this. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did when Kathy shared it with our Gift of
Memoir class. It's a piece that proves that even when muses have their own best interests at heart rather than ours, they can still truly inspire us to write.
May all your loves -- and all your muses -- conspire to make this Valentine's Day your most inspiring one yet...
Love and light, Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
COASTAL WRITING RETREAT Connect with Your Creativity at the Sunset Inn (Writing—and more—as Renewal and Inspiration) Only three spaces left! 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 20 through Sunday February 22. 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). 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 to Coastal Writing Retreat participants only, the opportunity to stay Sunday night, February 22, at half price. WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, February 20 – Sunday, February 22, 2015 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 3 more spaces available. ----------------------------------------------------------------- THE HEALING POWER OF WORDS (Writing As a Healing Process) Only three spaces left! 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. You will choose your ideal balance between community time and solitude as you use writing as a transformational tool in any way that best serves you. And, if you’re looking, you’ll find the genesis of new poetry, creative non-fiction, and/or fiction. Note: Tears honored. Laughter likely. Inspiration guaranteed. WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, February 27 – Sunday, March 1, 2015 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 3 more spaces available. -----------------------------------------------------------------
SPRING WRITING
RETREAT (Writing as Renewal / Creating New Writing / Tools for a Writing Life) Renew and delight yourself. The Spring Writing Retreat is an opportunity to create new pieces of writing and/or new 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, March 28th, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
TO REGISTER: To register securely online
with your credit card, click here. To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions.
More WordPlay opportunities here. WordPlay Success Story
"Maureen teaches her students to be “mindful” and “present.” She gives us the skill to interpret and express our creative souls by just putting pen to paper. And she gives all of this with love and caring, and with the tremendous artistic passion that is hers."
Meet Katherine Harris
Katherine was born in Connecticut, but she says she’s a New Yorker, through and through. She spent twenty years in New York and Los Angeles, working as an actress. She met her husband “on the road”
doing the Straw-Hat Circuit—”Summer Theater.” Her husband was a transplanted Charlottean, so, after their daughter was born, the Country Life started to look mighty good to them. They left the Big Apple, and moved to Charlotte. Katherine became an English teacher, always working Theater Arts into her curriculum.
She has always loved reading and yearned to write, and one day, while
searching through a CPCC catalog, she saw a description for a class designed for people who "had yet to put pen to paper.” That “Wordplay” class in 2008 got her artistic juices flowing again. She has been putting her “pen to paper” ever since. Maureen’s classes have given her the courage and the joy she was looking for, and the skill to express her “inner artist” through pen and paper.
What Katherine says about WordPlay
If you’ve ever visited New York, you know that people there love to talk. And talk. And talk. You can be standing at
the deli-counter, waiting to order a ham sandwich, and you’ll hear at least three life stories from the people surrounding you. People in the West Village love to share their thoughts with anyone who is willing to listen. Anyone.
In Charlotte, well, not so much. Charlotteans tend to be quieter. They keep their
thoughts to themselves. At least that's been my experience. When I moved here with my family, I noticed the reserve, the desire for privacy, the reticence to share. I sorely missed the din of words, and the exhilaration of ideas floating about in New York delis, in buses, in department stores. Then I found “Wordplay” and Maureen.
Maureen has shown me how to discover the stories that are out there. She has shown me how gather them, and arrange them, and make them part of my own experience. Maureen teaches her students to be “mindful” and “present.” She gives us the skill to interpret and express our creative souls by just putting pen to paper. And she gives all of this with love and caring, and with the tremendous artistic passion
that is hers. She gives us "Wordplay."
Featured
Writing
Black Silken Muse
by
Katherine Harris
Oh, rats! There she goes again, sitting in front of that infernal
machine. Why does she spend so much time with it when she could be with me? She could be admiring my fabulous face, and admiring my deep green eyes that glow in the dark. She could be stroking my long black hair, running her hands down my back, starting at the back of my neck and ending at my tail. Everybody says my hair is so soft, so sleek, so wonderful to touch. We could be rubbing noses right now...we could be pressing our warm bodies together, feeling the warmth and happiness that comes
from mutual love and admiration.
Instead she chooses to fondle that cold, hard, metal machine. Did I say “fondle”? I meant to say “pounds.” “Pounds” away at the keys of that machine. But why? Why do that, when I’m right here, ready and able to give her all the inspiration she’ll ever need? I plead with her to scratch behind my ears and whisper sweet nothings into my pointy little ears.
Shall I leap up on her desk and gently place my paw on her hand? I’ll gaze into her eyes, as if to say “Love me. Love me first!”
I know. I’ll leap into her lap, I’ll squeeze myself beneath that wooden desk and I’ll poke my head out and stare up at her. I’ll purr loudly and longingly...making a sound so sweet, no human could resist. And she’ll stop doing whatever it is she’s doing and she’ll pick
me up, and stroke my silken hair…
Oops! She pushed me! She pushed me off her lap and onto the floor! Is what she’s doing that important? So important she chooses that instead of me?
Wait. I’ll hop up on the table and place my head between her and that screen. She’ll have to look at me. She’ll look at me, and remember how much we have between us. She’ll remember that I am her first
love. And she’ll remember that it’s five o'clock, and it’s time to feed me.
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 "love." I
love that this cat who has such self-serving love for Katherine Harris turned out to be one of her muses, inspiring this feline love story.
PROMPT: Pen a love story of your own, real or imaginary, in any
genre you like. Keep it specific by focusing on one particular person, time, and place. Or, if you'd rather, amuse yourself by writing about a time one of your muses inspired you, as Kathy did.
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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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