The WordPlay Word-zine Volume VII, Issue 19 May 14, 2018 Dear ,
Oh my gosh, can you tell how much fun we all had spinning words into gold this past week at the John C. Campbell Folk School? (Where, by the way, they have wonderful homemade bread,
though that's not how I came up with the word of the week.) I was so grateful to have my beloved friend, and partner in crime...I mean, in creative writing, Wendy H. Gill as my assistant (she's the one being given "bunny ears" in this photo) to support this amazing group of writing students.
We had just finished giving a reading of
our work to a resoundingly enthusiastic audience and were feeling pretty great. (It's not too soon to mark your calendar for next May's Folk School writing class, Write Like a Genius, May 26 - June 1, 2019.)
I got home from my week of teaching in time to savor Mother's Day, with all my children checking in with sweet messages that made my heart happy. And I wish YOU a Happy Belated Mother's Day, because, after all, we all, male and female,
"mother" each other, and we all have/had a mother.
In honor of mothers of all descriptions, this week's featured writing, by WordPlayer Scott Hicks, reflects on the richness of his own mother's
love. This beautiful writing was Scott's response to a writing exercise in which I asked them to "Sprawl" about the word bread, considering any and all of its meanings: literal, metaphorical, philosophical/ethical, and mystical. (Huge thanks to WordPlayer Linda Matney for sharing a talk she heard by chef and author Peter Rhinehart that explored these ideas, from planting wheat seed to thrashing
sheaves to grinding wheat to adding leavening so that bread can rise, then be transformed through its death so that we may eat it and live. And more about Sprawling and bread in this week's prompt.)
When Scott finished reading what he created using this prompt, I asked him on the spot if he was willing to share. I'm so glad he agreed. Sometimes what spills out of our pens is beautiful just as it is, and this is one of those times.
Enjoy... And write your own piece that begins with the word
bread and can grow in any direction into anything you may wish to say, even if you have no idea what that is.
Love and light,
Maureen
Upcoming WordPlay
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
NOW TAKING REGISTRATIONS FOR FALL 2018! 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.
* For the benefit of participants, an audio recording of the class will be made
each week so that participants are able to listen to classes they miss and/or review material covered at any convenient time and place. These recordings are available throughout the class session, along with all handouts, in a shared Dropbox folder.
WHERE: Covenant Presbyterian Recreation Center, 1000 East Morehead Street, Charlotte, 28204. Click here for map.
WHEN: Wednesday mornings from 10:00 a.m. – noon, starting in September 2018. (Other class time/day of the week may be available.)
COST: $435 TO REGISTER: Please email us at info@wordplaynow.com to start the registration process by filling out a short "Clarity
Tool" to share your writing dreams and goals and where you are in the process (anywhere you are is a perfect place to begin).
-------------------------------------------------------
GIFT OF MEMOIR WRITING PERSONAL AND FAMILY STORIES (Preserving Family History; Writing for and about Your Family; The Art of Memoir)
NOW TAKING REGISTRATIONS FOR FALL 2018! 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.
* For the benefit of participants, an audio recording of the class will be made each
week so that participants are able to listen to classes they miss and/or review material covered at any convenient time and place. These recordings are available throughout the class session, along with all handouts, in a shared Dropbox folder.
WHERE: Covenant Presbyterian Recreation Center, 1000 East Morehead Street, Charlotte, 28204. Click here for map.
WHEN: Thursday mornings, 10:00 a.m. – noon., starting in September, 2018.
COST: $285
TO REGISTER: Please
email us at info@wordplaynow.com to start the registration process by filling out a short "Clarity Tool" to share your writing dreams and goals and where you are in the process (anywhere you are is a perfect place to begin).
WordPlay Success Story "[Maureen] turned out to be much more than a writing teacher.
She once said that she saw herself as “a midwife of other people’s dreams”
… perfect." What Scott says about WordPlay "A few years back I signed up for a writing class with my wife at our church. I had been a sort of tortured poet during my twenties, like so many others, but it had been years since I’d done any writing.
Enter Maureen Ryan Griffin. She turned out to be much more than a writing teacher. She once said that she saw herself as “a midwife of other people’s dreams” … perfect. Under Maureen’s effervescent tutelage words began to pour from me like water from a gushing hydrant. They have not ceased.
Today I write because I need to. I write because it makes me feel alive and I can heal and grow and touch a truth I once thought lost to me.
Yes, we did write in the class, but we actually did so much more. Maureen sees existence through a magnifying glass of compassionate intensity. So we cried and laughed. We traveled through the lives and hearts of one another in a way I have never experienced. So much has come as a result of Maureen’s tutelage and friendship. Several of us contributed to the anthology Imagining Heaven, the philanthropic heart-child of Linda Matney. I was honored to read the piece at Sensoria
(CPCC) with Maureen at my side. I’ve also written and read commentaries on the radio for NPR since that first class. The local newspaper published a couple of my pieces. Two prose poetry pieces have been published by local publisher Main Street Rag—all as a direct result of Maureen’s encouragement and direction. I have also been fortunate to be published three times by “elephantjournal.com” a rather popular online magazine geared to the yoga community.
We have
a college age son (a fraternal twin) that has survived bone cancer and limb salvage. Prayer, meditation, and writing have been my salvation. Each agonizing step is lifted up and in so doing I am freed from depression and fear that want to at times drag us under.
My life has been a tangled and arduous road that is fodder for story and a message of redemption. It is my story and largely thanks to this wonderful “midwife of other people’s dreams”, I can tell it."
Poor?
by
Scott Hicks
My much younger brother looked at me once, misty-eyed during a conversation, and said, “I always felt sorry for you because when you were a kid and Dad was gone, you and Mom were so poor.”
I was shocked. Mom had always had a good job with the phone company. She’d had to ride a bus to work. We didn’t have a car for the longest time. We rented, but she would iron our clothes and buy at Belk’s basement sales. I’d get the occasional ice cream cone and maybe even a matinee at the Plaza
Theatre, where I’d walk after Saturday chores.
When I think of poor I think of Jean Valjean stealing the loaf of bread or ghettos, Africa or maybe the Great
Depression or the Dust Bowl or the Irish in Angela’s Ashes where the father drinks the dole and the children have no food to eat.
“Stevie, we weren’t poor. We just had to pinch pennies but were fed and clothed and happy. I had a
bicycle and eyeglasses and a good coat. It never crossed my mind we were poor. Everyone in the neighborhood was about the same.”
But him saying it has always stuck in my mind. It’s like my heart stopped.
“Give us this day our daily bread,” and I recall all the humanity of Dickens and Toni Morrison, the Conchs of Hemingway and the masses of Galilee putting morsels of bread and fish in their parched mouths, staring at their ragged robes and dusty, bleeding
feet; imagine tears in their eyes as He shares the Good News and they are fed the bread of hope and salvation.
Poor… what is poor? It’s not a little boy with books and a back yard and a Mom that makes him proud walking pretty to the bus
stop, holding his hand and smiling her love upon him.
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 "bread."
PROMPT: Explore what you could write about bread—through any and all of its meanings:
literal, metaphorical, philosophical/ethical, and mystical—by using the Sprawl:
- Put the word bread in the middle of a blank sheet of paper.
- Moving out from that
center, free associate words and phrases for ten minutes, letting one lead to another. When one strand of your Sprawl runs out, come on back to the center and go out in a different direction. You may want to circle your center word, or all your words. You may want to connect your words and
phrases with lines. Experiment.
- Look over your Sprawl. Allow your eyes (and your brain) to take in the words and phrases and ideas, and let a writing subject, and form, to come to you.
- Craft a piece of writing, using as many, or as few, of the words and phrases in your Sprawl that you care to, in any order.
Vary this process to suit yourself and your words. (You'll find more about the Sprawl in my writing handbook Spinning Words
into Gold.
It's fun to play with prompts in community with fellow writers, and to be able to share the results when you're
done. You can find out about WordPlay classes, workshops, and retreats here. 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. You can listen to it here. 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! |
|
|
|
