Volume VI, Issue 10 March 6, 2017 Dear ,
In case you're wondering, this week's subject line is pulled from the featured writing of the week, The Huguenot Thief. I am so excited to be sharing this book, and its author, LK Clement, with you! Isn't this a great cover?
I'm so excited about this book, in fact, that I have a signed copy all ready to give to my sister and brother-in-law
when I see them later this month. Linda's story pulls me in from the very first page.
One of the reasons I have loved fiction since I was a little girl is because of its power to
draw me into a world so real that I often forget while I'm reading that it's imaginary. I love that Linda's character Kate, whom you'll meet below, herself enjoys the power of feeling that she's inside the minds of others.
This week's prompt will give you the opportunity to try your hand at it. Hope you enjoy this exercise I dreamed up just for
you!
Love and light, Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
POETRY ROCKS! (Learning the Ins and Outs of Poetry; Strengthening Your Writing Skills; Adding a New Layer of Literary Beauty to Your Life)
Would you like your writing — prose and/or poetry — to be more graceful, powerful, beautiful? Do you sometimes find poetry confusing or intimidating and wish you could “crack the code”? Or do
you enjoy writing and reading poems, but want a more thorough understanding of what makes a poem good? Then this poetry extravaganza is for you.
Expect a good time exploring what makes a poem a poem, gaining the knowledge you need to confidently create and revise poetry, and strengthening your writing skills in all genres.
You’ll also have the opportunity to ask any question you’ve ever had about poetry but were afraid to ask.
It would be a joy and an honor to share what rocks about poetry with you! HERE’S WHAT YOU GET:
- 23 poetry creation tools, delivered one per day (Monday through Friday) to your inbox — in honor of National Poetry month. Use them as you get them, use them when you can, use them over and over to create poems. Each tool zeroes in on one aspect of poetry and provides an innovative method to approach writing a poem. Many of them are great for creating prose, too. The tools
include:
* a purpose, so you’re clear what you will learn
* background information when helpful
* “how-to” directions to create a poem
* an example that illustrates the poetry tool in action
* a short reflection to solidify the concepts
covered
* “Hone Your Craft” suggestions for further exploration
* a short reflection to solidify the concepts covered - A PDF document of each tool that you can print or save on your computer
- An audio recording of each
tool, so you can learn by listening and/or reading
- Instruction on the role of audience, reading like a writer, and the process of revision, including a handy Revision Checkpoint Chart — this information can be applied to strengthen your prose as well as poetry
- Additional poetry resources
- An e-book that contains the information and resources covered, as well as your 23 poetry creation tools for ongoing use
WHERE: From the comfort of your own home, via phone, web, or
replay WHEN: Any time you want! And once you receive all 23 tools, they’re yours to keep, which means that you can keep using them for years to come. COST: $45 TO REGISTER: Click this link to pay through PayPal. For more information, or to pay via check, please email us at info@wordplaynow.com.
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WRITE YOURSELF! (FOR TEENS) WORKSHOP
FREE! Explore how creative
writing can enrich your life with writer and teacher Maureen Ryan Griffin. You’ll learn fun, easy tools to help your words flow. Whatever your interest, you’ll enjoy this informative workshop.
WHERE: South County Regional
Library. 5801 Rea Rd, Charlotte, NC 28277
WHEN: Saturday, April 1st, from 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
COST: Free!
TO REGISTER: To register online, please visit the South County Regional Library website here.
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WRITING OUR WAY TO HAPPINESS (Learning New Practices and Strategies for Our Writing and Our Lives; Creating New Writing; Expanding Our
Well-being)
Come explore time-tested ways writing can increase your happiness level! This class will not only teach you how to use writing as a tool to increase your sense of well-being, but also jumpstart your pen and provide inspiration and knowledge about the process of creative writing, whether you want to write memoir, fiction, nonfiction, or poetry.
For writers of all
levels, including beginners, who are interested in expanding their writing practice — for personal fulfillment or for publication.
$630 for one week-long session (lodging and meals are additional – options can be found on the Folk School website)
WHERE: John Campbell Folk School, 1 Folk School Road,
Brasstown, NC 28902
WHEN: Sunday, May 28th – Saturday, June 3rd, 2017.
TO REGISTER: Visit the John Campbell Folk School webpage for more information, and to
register.
More WordPlay opportunities here. WordPlay Success Story
"Maureen’s encouragement and gentle manner of pointing out alternatives was exactly what this newbie writer needed."
Meet Linda Clement
LK Clement (Linda) has spent a good bit of her life moving, not by choice, but because of the US Navy, which doesn’t care much if the children of their service members would rather stay put. At the time, it seemed
immensely unfair, as most adult decisions appear to a child, but the roaming around her family engaged in, from Florida to Massachusetts to Maryland to Morocco, engendered a love of different cultures that has propelled her to travel, write, and study the great civilizations of our world.
She received a liberal arts education from the University of South Carolina, then, by accident, ended up
spending almost thirty years in the software industry. During her career, she wrote proposals, marketing materials, sales brochures, and, of course, endless emails. Her writing skills were born in these tasks, as painting a vision for customers calls upon the writer/presenter to exercise immense creative powers.
Her first book, The Huguenot
Thief, was published in December 2016. Linda likes to say it is her first acknowledged work of fiction.
What Linda says about WordPlay "Five years ago, a colleague suggested I write a book. I was intrigued and flattered by his certainty that I could, indeed, write a novel. The story of how a Huguenot ancestor came to Charleston became the kernel of a thriller that featured action in Charleston, Istanbul, and Paris, all places I love. I spent a few months writing (and rewriting) 20,000 words, then found Maureen. My question to her was—Should I continue, or find another outlet for my right-brain
held back by a left brain career?
She reviewed my manuscript, and, as nicely as possible, told me my punctuation skills were terrible, but that I had talent in telling a story. What did I do next? I enrolled in “Under Construction.”
In Maureen’s class, I began to learn the subtleties of
writing: point of view, “show-don’t tell,” and the art of using the best words, in the most appropriate order, to create a picture in the reader’s mind.
Why write “walk” when your character can stroll, saunter, amble, trudge, plod, dawdle, hike, tramp, tromp, slog, stomp, trek, march, stride, sashay, glide, troop, patrol, wander, ramble, tread, prowl, promenade, roam, or
traipse?
The feedback from class members was invaluable, and humbling, as I learned to “kill my darlings,” and banish adverbs.
Maureen’s encouragement and gentle manner of pointing out alternatives was exactly what this newbie writer needed. Even her encouragement to sometimes “do nothing” but
think about your writing eased my mind when I just couldn’t come up with the energy to write. Finally, five years after Maureen’s first critique of my writing, I became a published author.
The Huguenot
Thief was published on December 5, 2016. I chose to use a hybrid publication method, and worked with Gatekeeper Press to bring a softcover, e-book, and hardcover to market. So far, my reviews in Amazon have been five star, and I’m absolutely thrilled with the feedback. A sequel is in the works."
Featured
Writing an excerpt from The Huguenot Thief by Linda Clement
PART 1
Charleston: Present Day Chapter 1
A mockingbird woke Kate, as it had every morning for the six months she and her husband Jack had been in this rental house. Its song was a bit louder today. Perhaps on this April morning it was calling for a mate. The bird always perched on the same branch: a branch right outside their bedroom window, a branch she had asked Jack to saw off in the hope the bird would find another location to practice its repertoire. He had reminded her that the branch was attached to
an ancient live oak that couldn’t be touched without prior approval from their landlord, and maybe even from the city, given the size of the tree. Their small house was in Harleston Village in downtown Charleston, a fine location to be sure, but Kate missed their former home—a cottage on the Ashley River, a house lost in the tumult of the financial downturn when they couldn’t pay the mortgage. Jack’s construction projects had disappeared almost
overnight.
At tune number five, she sat up and pulled a strand of her hair from Jack’s fist. As he slid to her side of the bed, she caught sight of her forearms, the skin puffy and red with scratches. This was the second time in the past week she had awakened to see these welts. Without telling her doctor or Jack, she had lowered the amount of lithium she took each day, attempting to find a dose
that did not make her feel as if she was watching her life rather than experiencing it. This self-marking, which had occurred before in her manic episodes, meant she had lowered it too much. If Jack saw her arms, he’d demand that she return to a psychiatrist, her husband always optimistic that there would be a new psychotropic drug for Kate to try.
A fellow patient in hey psychiatrist’s office
had once described his moods to her as a roulette wheel—mania red, depression black. He told her he never knew what color was going to come up every morning. Kate supposed a life somewhere in the middle, neither red nor black, should be her goal, but she was hoping to get a just a little of her mania, always productive, back into her life by lowering the lithium.
No matter how detailed she made
the description, Jack couldn’t comprehend the feeling of omnipotence a mania delivered. During the few times he had witnessed a full-fledged episode, Kate knew she must have appeared dangerous and reckless. What he observed—the endless talking, writing for days, not bathing or eating, had frightened him. From Kate’s point of view, though, one of her manic episodes had helped her create her most well received work, a book on female French saints. She had been able to put herself in those women’s
heads, imagining their exultations and their terrors. How could she explain to anyone the intimate power of feeling that you were in the mind of someone who had been dead for centuries?
~ the opening of "The Huguenot Thief" 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 "power."
PROMPT: Imagine yourself inside the mind of someone other than yourself. You can choose a real person, living or dead, whether or not you've ever met him or her; or someone else's fictional character; or one of your own.
Decide upon a particular room, a time of day, another person who is present, a sound, and a visual observation that you will include in your writing. (Did you notice that I'm mirroring Linda's scene above, in a bedroom in the morning with a husband, the sound of a mockingbird, and scratches on her arms?)
Now,
write a few paragraphs from the point of view of this person. What is he/she feeling, thinking, experiencing in this moment?
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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