Volume IIII, Issue 23
June 8, 2015
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Dear ,
Katherine McIntyre,
a delightful octogenarian who graced my classes when I first began teaching over twenty years ago, was fond of quoting H.L. Mencken: "I'm not an individual, I'm a mob." (Hard as I have looked, I have not yet been able to find this quote; make note that I am quoting Katherine quoting Mencken.)
Regardless of its source, I love this quote, and it has stayed with me -- it reminds me of words I copied into my
little black book of gathered bits of wisdom back in 1974 or so: "Sometimes I'm so many somebodies, I wonder if I'm anybody at all." ("Snoopy," in a Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strip.)
We human beings seem to be designed with a number of different -- sometimes conflicting -- desires, interests, and motivations. And as writers, understanding these individual voices
within ourselves and others can only be a good thing. It helps us avoid creating cardboard, one-dimensional characters (real or fictional), and it also helps us to understand and take care of ourselves and others. See below for a small tale about this via a writing session with my friend Vivé Griffith, whom you met here the Word-zine back in March, and this week's writing
prompt.)
Hope you have a great time delving into the members of your "mob" -- and may they all treat each other as well as you deserve -- which is the utmost respect, honor, and appreciation!
Love and light,
Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
SUMMER WRITING RETREAT (Writing as Renewal / Creating New Writing /Tools for a Writing
Life) Renew and delight yourself. The Summer 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, June 20th, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 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's] friendship has been one of the sustaining forces of my writing life,
and I’ve loved watching from afar as she has become a force in so many
other people’s writing lives through
WordPlay." Meet Vivé Griffith
Vivé Griffith is a poet and essayist who lives in Austin, Texas, where she directs Free Minds, a program offering free college humanities classes to low-income adults. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Oxford American, Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. You can read her blog here.
My friend writes beautiful paragraphs to pair with photos for her blog Pics and Paragraphs (picsandparagraphs.com). "Early Arrival" is one of her recent posts.
The photo and setting reminds me of an "interior mob" moment the two of us had some years ago, back when we lived in the same town and could get together often to share a restaurant booth and write.
Sometimes we'd write about whatever was moving through us at that moment, as Vivé does in "Early Arrival"; sometimes one or both of us would bring a prompt from whatever we'd
happen to be reading. Once, I brought a prompt from Kimberly Snow's book Writing Yourself Home: A Woman's Guided Journey of Self Discovery that invited us to envision our subpersonalities. (See the prompt below for details.) It was not only a lot of fun to do, but we had a great conversation afterward that really made a difference for each of us right where we were in our lives. Somehow, giving voice to these different parts of some of who had very different goals and desires,
helped us to see why we'd been feeling stuck in certain areas and to find a better balance.
This prompt may really make a difference for you if, say, you always choose other activities instead of writing, even though a part of you really yearns to. You may find that getting to know your writer better will allow you to see writing possibilities in ordinary moments of your day and capture them, like Vivé does here:
Featured Writing Early Arrival by Vivé Griffith
 Before they unlock the doors, I loiter outside the tea house. It’s a new feeling, this arriving early, beating the traffic instead of sitting frantic in the middle of it. Inside, every table is set with white napkins. Plates are stacked, teapots in their shiny stainless steel lined up and waiting. Scones, so many scones. And spoons,
and ramekins of jam, and rice paper soaking for spring rolls. The diners will come. The time will come for me to head to a doctor’s appointment then meetings then emails I don’t feel like sending. The week will begin. And my omelet—mushroom, tarragon, goat cheese—will be the first they make for the day.
May 26, 2015 What Vivé says about WordPlay
Maureen and I met more than 20 years ago on a writing retreat in the NC mountains. The retreat leader connected us to carpool, and we chugged up the steep roads in
an old VW already deep in a conversation that would last decades. Her friendship has been one of the sustaining forces of my writing life, and I’ve loved watching from afar as she has become a force in so many other people’s writing lives through WordPlay.
When I registered for her fall Coastal Writing Retreat, my primary goal was to see Maureen and our dear friend Dede and enjoy another retreat together. But as is so often the case in my times with Maureen, there was magic afoot. I
met amazing people (Hello, Sunset 8!), connected to my creative life in powerful ways, and wrote pieces I believe will form the base of my next poetry collection.
On the last morning at Sunset Beach, Maureen asked us to write a praise song. The piece I wrote about the Kindred Spirit—a mailbox on the beach where people fill notebooks with their wishes and prayers—reminded me how much I want my poetry to honor the small miracles of our lives, to find the holy in the
everyday.
I write paragraphs to pair with photos for my blog Pics and Paragraphs (picsandparagraphs.com). Whatever else is going on, I am paying attention and finding what needs celebrating. For that, I am grateful.
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 "mob."
PROMPT:
(You can do this for yourself or one of your characters.)
Picture a bus (a Greyhound? A tour bus? A schoolbus) that contains all your different subpersonalities coming to a stop right in front of you. Describe each of them as they disembark from the bus. You can think of
your subpersonalities by role, passion, responsibility, or any other criterion. (For example, your writer, your practical self, your Broadway star, your rebellious teenager, your frightened child, your wise side, your loving mother or father, your bohemian, your chef). Who gets off the bus first? Who gets off with another member of the mob, and who gets off alone? Is there anyone who doesn't get off the bus at all? (I had one of those.)
After you've imagined each of these subpersonalities as its own character, complete with clothing choices, mannerisms, etc., consider how you can give each of these a voice, in your life and/or in your writing. (For example, I have picked up my guitar again after many years because I missed my 70's folk singer. And I take my monastic monk on retreat at least a few times a year so she can have the solitude she craves. And I have a poem in
Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong called "Living with Miss Stakes" in which I describe -- and have a dialogue with -- a member of my interior mob I've named Miss Lila Ivy Hope Stakes. I do love to WordPlay!)
If you're a fiction writer, explore the "mob" inside one or more of your characters, and weave what you learn into your stories, either directly or indirectly.
Adapted and expanded from Kimberly Snow's book Writing Yourself Home: A Woman's Guided Journey of Self
Discovery
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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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Before they unlock the doors, I loiter outside the tea house. It’s a new feeling, this arriving early, beating the traffic instead of sitting frantic in the middle of it. Inside, every table is set with white napkins. Plates are stacked, teapots in their shiny stainless steel lined up and waiting. Scones, so many scones. And spoons,
and ramekins of jam, and rice paper soaking for spring rolls. The diners will come. The time will come for me to head to a doctor’s appointment then meetings then emails I don’t feel like sending. The week will begin. And my omelet—mushroom, tarragon, goat cheese—will be the first they make for the day.