Volume IIII, Issue 38 September 21, 2015 Word of the Week: amnesty Dear ,
From time to time almost all of us writers need to grant ourselves—and each other—amnesty for the self-inflicted, cruel crime of not writing, despite our best intentions.
Yes, we
wanted to, we meant to, we planned to...and we didn't. For whatever ironclad or flimsy reason, we just aren't, weren't, haven't been writing. The days, weeks, months, or maybe even years have gone by, and we are disheartened, defeated, demoralized.
It's time to leave those bars behind and step out into the
sunshiny experience of fresh words on a page. And while no one can really spring you from "Not-Writing Jail" but yourself, I am more than happy to be the one to sanction and expedite the process! Just print this zine, clip out the above card, and mosey on down to the prompt below to restart your writing life.
And on your
way down, you can check out this photo of my husband and me enjoying a gorgeous, sunshiny day in downtown Durham with my brother John and his wife Cindy, who recently became North Carolina residents. It's good to be able to see them more often—and it's always a comfort to see glimpses of our mom 13 years after losing her, like
her "Three Bears" cookie jar at home on a shelf in his new kitchen. Poor John had to share a bedroom with me for far too many years. His most enduring memory? How he couldn't keep me from "singing him to sleep" to the tune of "Three Little Angels"
against his ever-escalating entreaties to stop already...
For that, no doubt, I should be thrown into a special jail just for big sisters who torment their baby brothers. Thankfully, John has granted me amnesty. (At least I think he
has...) Love, light, and happy writing, Upcoming WordPlay
FALL WRITING RETREATonly three spaces left!
(Writing as Renewal / Creating New Writing
Tools for a Writing Life)
Renew and
delight yourself. The Fall 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, October 3rd, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
TO REGISTER: To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions. To pay online, please click this secure link. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PROJECT BOOK: GET YOUR BOOK OUT OF YOU AND INTO THE WORLD
(Writing/Publishing Your Book-length Writing Project) A hands-on workshop for any writer who would like to write and/or publish a book and
1) doesn’t know how
2) doesn’t get around to it
3) feels
a) intimidated
b) confused
c) overwhelmed
d) uninspired
e) all of the
above
You’ll gain clarity, confidence, direction, momentum, and working knowledge of the steps you need to take and the procedures and pieces that are necessary (overview, synopsis, outline, and all that jazz), as well as an introduction to today’s publishing world (major publishers, university presses, small presses, self-publishing, e-publishing, and print-on-demand). We'll talk
about marketing, too, whether you're an introvert, extrovert, or ambivert. $418 (plus tax) includes retreat, lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch.
WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, November 13 – Sunday, November 15, 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.
Find out more here.
More WordPlay opportunities here. WordPlay Featured Writing For me, and perhaps for you, too, writing flows best when I allow whatever thoughts and emotions are between me and whatever piece or project I'm working on a place to land.
This example from the "Why" chapter of Spinning Words into Gold, in which I discuss how to tap into the many benefits writing can provide, one of which is healing.
"All week, I have been wanting to write about..."
from Chapter 2
When I’m dealing with a tough time, writing helps me to move through the emotions and get to the proverbial other side. I wrote this journal entry in February of 2002, about three months before my mother, who was terminally ill, died. I’d just come back from a visit with her, and had been reading Thomas Lynch’s The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. Lynch is a poet as well as an undertaker, and the book is a lyrical examination of the way we as a culture face (or refuse to face) death. The book and the visit were roiling about in me, and it was a great comfort to me to spill out my thoughts and feelings:
All week I have been wanting to write about my mother in a color of lipstick she would never have worn, rouge on her cheeks, her hair styled in a trendy wisp of bangs—all for me, thanks to some well-intentioned staff member who knew “Pat” had a visiting daughter and “fixed her up,” my mother in a wheelchair with no use of her hands and it broke my heart, that lipstick, seeing my mother looking so unlike herself. She rarely wore makeup and never, never that color—she was a true red.
I wish I’d saved her lipsticks—the really nice ones in gold cases—I must call Dad today and ask. If it’s not too late. I don’t know what I’ll do with them. I don’t know what to do with this desire to take care of my mother. How could I handle the bathrooming, the feeding, the physical therapy? And my dad is happy in Erie, especially now that the Sisters of Saint Benedict have adopted him to do maintenance and repairs at the House of Healing. He’s so happy to have problems to tinker with—the passion in his voice as he spoke of finally sawing through a rusted old pipe! I never heard him talk of my mother in that way—she was a problem he couldn’t solve.
And what about my mother? I want to be there for her and I’m so far away. Reading in The Undertaking about social death and metabolic death, I see that my mother is not dead to me, as she is to many others. And that’s why I want to be with her when she dies. I want to hold her hand during that passage and I’m
so scared it won’t go that way. This is what I really want, not that gold lipstick case. No, I want that, too, I want it all and some days I am not a big enough container for all I want. Enough. All week I have been wanting to write about
the snow falling and what an inconvenience it felt like, worrying about my flight being delayed and a little voice inside crying You don’t even see how beautiful it is! Can you stop and look? But I didn’t.
Can I write to the other side of sadness? If I just take it all as life, this moment, I don’t have to. Sad is sad. “This room and everything in it”—that
beautiful poem by Li-Young Lee came floating into my morning pages today and that Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin movie—All of Me, why not take all of me—what if I didn’t care that my mother was wearing the wrong lipstick? What if it was exactly
right—or better, if things weren’t wrong or right, if they just were.
Writing this journal entry also spurred me into action. I called and told my father how much it mattered to me to be present at my mother’s death.
His father had died while my dad was at the Coast Guard Academy, and his mother had written him some weeks after the fact, so I was afraid he wouldn’t think to call me.
I was able to be with my mother at the end of her life, and articulating these thoughts helped me to accept each moment of her life and death just as it was when the time came.
~ Maureen Ryan Griffin
Learn more about Spinning Words into Gold (or order a copy) here. 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 "amnesty."
PROMPT:
Set a timer for ten minutes and begin with the words, "All ___ (day, week, month) I have been wanting to write about.... Keep your hand moving until the timer goes off. Here's the great thing—even if you have no
idea what you've been wanting to write about, this exercise still works.
A challenge: Try this prompt every day for one week, and watch what happens to your relationship with writing...
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! |
|
|
|
