Volume VI, Issue 45 November 6, 2017 Word of the Week: beginnings “Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Dear ,
Happy "Now-vember"! As in, the best time to begin something good and/or important is so often NOW.
A beginning doesn't have to be neat and tidy, noteworthy,
exemplary. It can be messy, imperfect, and, yes, even late in the game.
For example, this is my friend Wendy, who caught her annual falling leaf on our walk together at Four Mile Creek Greenway on Saturday. (I caught mine this morning.)
You may not make it a point to, every autumn, catch a leaf as it falls through the air. Wendy and I just started two years ago, after a walk in the woods with our good friend Kathy Currlin, who's been
catching a falling leaf every fall for many years now.
Wendy and I both thought it was a ritual worth beginning, even if we were decades late to the leaf party! And so . . . we began.
If you read the zine last week, you heard about November being National Novel Writing Month
(NaNoWriMo), and you know that I used NaNoWriMo last year to propel my memoir forward. I decided to do the same this year, and invited my Word-Zine readers to play along with me by posting their word count on my Facebook page (www.facebook.com/wordplaynow) along with one sentence from the day's writing.
Maybe you didn't see the invitation. Maybe you needed time to think about it before committing. Maybe you think you missed your chance.
Well, it's not too late, because it's still "Now-vember," and because you can gain momentum in your writing project in any way that suits you.
My goal is to write at least one sentence a day, each for a different experience during my time in Texas with my husband: so far, so good! Wendy has
decided to do a "demi-NaNoWriMo," a term I made up for writing a lot during the second half of November. She's figuring out exactly how much writing she'll do so she's ready once the 16th of the months rolls around. If you were going to begin taking advantage of Now-vember to write more, what would you commit to?
And if you're just not interested or motivated (or for an extra bonus), this week's featured writing is an excerpt from a book that can help you write better Beginnings, Middles &
Ends. Author Nancy Kress suggests focusing on four qualities as you begin your novel: "character, conflict, specificity, and credibility." (Including these in creative nonfiction and memoir works, too!)
May Now-vember find you beginning
something that makes your heart sing.
Love and light, Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
THE FINE ART OF COOKING UP A POEM (Learning from Poems You Love)
Everything you need to know about writing outstanding poetry is embedded in the poems of the poets you
love—in the form of “poetic ingredients” that comprise their outstanding poems. Learn how to use any poem you love to inspire and instruct you in crafting your work in this hands-on workshop.
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(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 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, December 16th, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00
p.m.
More WordPlay opportunities here.
Featured
Writer
Nancy Kress
Photo courtesy of http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/WorldbuildersSFnF-Portfolio/ Featured Writing
An Excerpt from by Nancy Kress Chapter 1
THE VERY BEGINNING: YOUR OPENING SCENE
You are an editor. You have in front of you a large pile of unsolicited short
stories, or an even larger pile of first novels. You also have an editorial meeting in two hours, three phone calls to return this morning, and a problem with the art department that you wish would go away by itself but which probably won't. You pick up the first manuscript in the pile and start reading it. How far do you get before you decide to finish it or to put it back in its self-addressed stamped envelope with a form rejection slip?
Before we answer that question, let's look at the other end of this fictional communication. That's you, the writer of this story. You've worked hard on it. You have hopes for it—if not fame and fortune (at least, not right off), then certainly publication. This manuscript is important to you. In an ideal world, the editor would give this story the same
attention you did, reading it without distraction (perhaps sitting in a wing chair in a cozy, book-lined study), with care, all the way through.
But this is not an ideal world. The truth is, you have about three paragraphs in a short story, three pages in a novel, to capture that editor's attention enough for her to finish your story. With busy editors, the biblical prophecy is, alas, too often
true: "The first shall be the last."
Does this discourage you? It shouldn't. It's just a fact of literary life, like overdue royalty statements and inept reviewers. And unlike those regrettable phenomena, this can work to your advantage. Once you know that you have just three paragraphs to create a good first impression, you can spend your time rewriting and polishing that opening until it
convinces an editor to keep reading.
You can deliberately incorporate the qualities that make an opening interesting and original: character, conflict, specificity, and credibility. These are, of course, elements that are present throughout the entire length of successful stories and novels. However, for beginnings they have particular applications and forms. But before we consider these
four elements, we must consider something even more basic to the success of any story beginning—and its middle and its end. This crucial concept is the implicit promise.
THE IMPLICIT PROMISE: FRAMEWORK FOR THE WHOLE
Every story makes a promise to the reader. Actually, two promises, one emotional and one intellectual, since the function of stories is to make us both feel and think.
The
emotional promise goes: Read this and you'll be entertained, or thrilled, or scared, or titillated, or saddened, or nostalgic, or uplifted—but always absorbed.
There are three versions of the intellectual promise. The story can promise (1) Read this and you'll see this world from a different
perspective. (2) Read this and you'll have confirmed what already want to believe about this world; or (3) Read this and you'll learn of a different, more interesting world than this. The last promise, it should be noted, can exist on its own or coexist with either of the first two....
~ From Beginnings, Middles & Ends by Nancy Kress, available on Amazon 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
"beginnings."
PROMPT: Read the excerpt above from Beginnings, Middles & Ends. Either write or rewrite the first three paragraphs of a story, essay, memoir, or other prose. How will you make your character, come alive
for your reader? What conflict will you introduce? What specific details from the physical world will you include? How will you establish credibility? And are you establishing both an emotional and intellectual promise?
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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