Volume VII, Issue 51
December 24, 2018
Dear ,
If you celebrate Christmas, may it be merry! And whatever you are celebrating from now through the beginning of the New Year, may your moments shine with love and joy!
I'm taking some time off to be with family, so this will be your last Word-zine of the year. As I was reading through the multitude of thoughts, affirmations, and other tidbits I've been stockpiling for years in the "Quotes" folder on my laptop for a project I'll be telling you about soon, I stumbled across a lovely
excerpt from Truman Capote's short story "A Christmas Memory."
It's a mostly autobiographical tale about a young boy, "Buddy," and his older cousin, who is not named but, in later adaptations, is called Sook, as they prepare for and celebrate Christmas together.
I first read it the Christmas of 1967, when I was 11, in a Scholastic Book Club book called The Gift of Christmas my mother got me for Christmas. (She surprised me by purchasing it on my older brother Tim's form instead of mine.) Oh, the joys of the Scholastic Book Club! But that's another story, if you didn't have this
particular pleasure when you were in elementary school.
"A Christmas Memory" was not like any story I'd ever read before, filled with a blend of wild, eccentric joy; a deep, abiding, generous love, and a gentle ache of melancholy that, at the time, I only understood the edges of. I have never forgotten reading this story by a Christmas tree that held some of the same ornaments as the tree I
am looking at now. I hope you enjoy the excerpt I'm sharing with you today, and that it evokes some shining moments of your own.
Love and light,
Maureen
Upcoming WordPlay
UNDER CONSTRUCTION: YOUR WRITING:
(Fulfilling Writing Dreams & Goals;
Revising and Polishing Your Writing)
(Preserving Family History; Writing for and about Your Family; The Art of Memoir)
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.
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 on January 16, 2019.
(Other class time/day of week may be available. Email for more information.)
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.)
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WRITING WITH HEART, MIND, BODY, AND SOUL
Do you wish you knew the secret to creating writing that readers love? And when and how to show versus tell? Then this workshop is perfect for you, whether you write fiction or nonfiction, memoir, essays, short stories, or novels. You will learn to identify and practice the use of showing and telling through the lens of the four
“elements” of human being: heart, mind, body, and soul. Whether you’re a new, rusty, or accomplished writer, you’re sure to learn something new about the art and craft of writing prose that will leave you—and your readers—more satisfied with your work.
WHERE: Morrison Regional Library, 7015 Morrison Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28211
WHEN: Wednesday, January 9th, 7:00-8:30 p.m.
COST: Free!
TO REGISTER: To register online, please visit the Morrison Regional Library website here.
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COASTAL WRITING RETREAT
AT THE SUNSET INN
Connect with Your Creativity at the Sunset Inn (Writing—and more—as Renewal and Inspiration)
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. $418 + room tax for the weekend
beginning Friday, February 22nd through Sunday, February 24th. 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).
Want to extend your retreat? If you’d like to stay another day to write, or to just enjoy the beach, the Inn is offering Coastal Writing Retreat participants the opportunity to stay Sunday night at half price.
(Extra writing retreat sessions are a possibility too. Email info@wordplaynow.com if you’re interested.)
WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, February 22nd – Sunday, February 24th, 2019
COST: $458 + room tax for the weekend
TO REGISTER: Please contact the Sunset Inn directly at 888.575.1001 or 910.575.1000. If you would like to handpick your room, view your choices here first, then call.
More WordPlay opportunities here.
. . . But when it comes time for making each other's gift, my friend and I separate to work secretly. I would like to buy her a pearl-handled knife, a radio, a whole pound of chocolate-covered cherries (we tasted some once, and she always swears: "l could live on them, Buddy, Lord yes I could—and that's not taking his name in
vain"). Instead, I am building her a kite. She would like to give me a bicycle (she's said so on several million occasions: "If only I could, Buddy. It's bad enough in life to do without something you want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want them to have. Only one of these days I will, Buddy. Locate you a bike. Don't ask how. Steal it, maybe"). Instead, I'm fairly certain that she is building me a
kite—the same as last year and the year before: the year before that we exchanged slingshots. All of which is fine by me. For we are champion kite fliers who study the wind like sailors; my friend, more accomplished than I, can get a kite aloft when there isn't enough breeze to carry clouds.
Christmas Eve afternoon we scrape together a
nickel and go to the butcher's to buy Queenie's traditional gift, a good gnawable beef bone. The bone, wrapped in funny paper, is placed high in the tree near the silver star. Queenie knows it's there. She squats at the foot of the tree staring up in a trance of greed: when bedtime arrives she refuses to budge. Her excitement is equaled by my own. I kick the covers and turn my pillow as though it were a scorching summer's night. Somewhere a rooster crows: falsely, for the sun is still on the
other side of the world.
"Buddy, are you awake!" It is my friend,
calling from her room, which is next to mine; and an instant later she is sitting on my bed holding a candle. . . . We huddle in the bed, and she squeezes my hand I-love-you. "Seems like your hand used to be so much smaller. I guess I hate to see you grow up. When you're grown up, will we still be friends?" I say always. "But I feel so bad, Buddy. I wanted so bad to give you a bike. I tried to sell my cameo Papa gave me. Buddy"—she hesitates, as though embarrassed—"I made you another kite." Then
I confess that I made her one, too; and we laugh. The candle burns too short to hold. Out it goes, exposing the starlight, the stars spinning at the window like a visible caroling that slowly, slowly daybreak silences. Possibly we doze; but the beginnings of dawn splash us like cold water: we're up, wide-eyed and wandering while we wait for others to waken. Quite deliberately my friend drops a kettle on the kitchen floor. I tap-dance in front of closed doors. One by one the household emerges,
looking as though they'd like to kill us both; but it's Christmas, so they can't. First, a gorgeous breakfast: just everything you can imagine—from flapjacks and fried squirrel to hominy grits and honey-in-the-comb. Which puts everyone in a good humor except my friend and me. Frankly, we're so impatient to get at the presents we can't eat a mouthful.
Well, I'm disappointed. Who wouldn't be? With
socks, a Sunday school shirt, some handkerchiefs, a hand-me-down sweater, and a year's subscription to a religious magazine for children. The Little Shepherd. It makes me boil. It really does.
My friend has a better haul. A sack of
Satsumas, that's her best present. She is proudest, however, of a white wool shawl knitted by her married sister. But she says her favorite gift is the kite I built her. And it is very beautiful; though not as beautiful as the one she made me, which is blue and scattered with gold and green Good Conduct stars; moreover, my name is painted on it, "Buddy."
"Buddy, the wind is
blowing."
The wind is blowing, and nothing will do till
we've run to a Pasture below the house where Queenie has scooted to bury her bone (and where, a winter hence, Queenie will be buried, too). There, plunging through the healthy waist-high grass, we unreel our kites, feel them twitching at the string like sky fish as they swim into the wind. Satisfied, sun-warmed, we sprawl in the grass and peel Satsumas and watch our kites cavort. Soon I forget the socks and hand-me-down sweater. . .
.
"My, how foolish I am!" my friend cries,
suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when he came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that
shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are"—her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone—"just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."
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 "shine."
PROMPT: Write about a moment (real or fictional) filled with "shine" in any genre you like.
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.
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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