Volume VI, Issue 33 August 14, 2017 Dear ,
Greetings from the Erie, PA airport! I squeezed in two more brief trips this past week,
one to Tybee Island, GA with my girlfriends of over 35 years (we are each godmothers to one or more of each other's children) ... ...and one to Rochester, NY, via Erie, PA, where my sister lives, for a Ryan family reunion. My dad was the oldest of eight children, and while all 44 of us cousins who are their progeny couldn't be there, we made
a good showing! Here I am with my Dad's two remaining siblings, my sweet Aunt Joan, who remembers my earliest poetic attempts (laughing my head off in the car at two years old after I heard the words "Hiawatha Boulevard" and repeating "Hia-wa-wa Bull-a-bull" over and over again; we all have to start somewhere, right?) and my dear Uncle Joseph, who looks so much like my dad that seeing him makes me want to cry. Earlier today, my brother Mike, my sister, Mary, and I visited old Erie haunts. Here's a selfie in front of the house in Erie Mary, Mike, and I moved
to in 1963. (It had blue shutters back in those days.) So what does any of this have to do with "faults"? Well, I'll tell you... since Richard and I visited the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in charming Baddeck, Nova Scotia last month, I've been thinking about this historical figure I grew more and more fond of by the minute as I learned about him. For one thing, while Bell's fame and fortune was a result of having been the first person to design and patent a telephone, as history.com puts it,
"Bell always described himself simply as a 'teacher of the deaf,' and his contributions in that field were of the first order." For another, he was far more interested in following his passions than being a business man, and is responsible for a wide range of inventions. The Aerial Experiment
Association, formed by Bell with Glenn Curtiss and several other associates in 1907, developed several flying machines, including the Silver Dart, which was "first in flight" in Canada. From all appearances, he was
beloved by his family, associates, and fellow residents of Baddeck. He was generous, especially to his wife, and treated her as more than an equal.
AND he had his faults! In fact, his father sent a letter to the young woman Bell was in love with, listing them. The excerpt on view in the museum
made me smile, as I hope it will you, and you can read it in French as well as English, should you desire, as every exhibit was in two languages. (It's this week's featured writing.)
Thinking about Bell's faults, which are at least as endearing as they are irritating, got me to
thinking about how much our faults define our characters. We may struggle all our lives to overcome them, with varying degrees of success, but they are an important part of who we are, and are often what make us lovable to others. And they certainly make us interesting!
When people are too perfect, either in real life or in the books we read, don't we find them, well, a little dull? And even, perhaps, phony? It's standard advice for all fiction writers that a "well-rounded character" must have a few faults, to make them human.
Spending time with my family and longtime
friends has made me grateful for the way that they love and accept me, faults and all. Would I feel as fully loved if I thought I'd been able to hide my faults from them?
This week, explore how your faults, along with the faults of your family, friends, and the people you write about, make them the fully human, lovable characters they
are.
Upcoming WordPlay
UNDER CONSTRUCTION:
YOUR
WRITING (Fulfilling Writing Dreams & Goals; Creating New Writing; Revising & Polishing Your Writing)
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.
We offer both a Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning class to fit your schedule.
Tuesday evening class:
WHERE: South Charlotte area. Details will be provided upon registration.
WHEN: Tuesday evenings, from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. September 12, 19 and 26
October 3, 10, 17 and 24
November 7, 21 and
28
December 5 and 12 COST: $425
TO REGISTER: If you’re interested in attending, please email us at info@wordplaynow.com to
be put on the waiting list.
Wednesday morning class:
WHERE: Covenant Presbyterian Recreation Center, 1000 East Morehead Street, Charlotte,
28204. Click here for map.
WHEN: Wednesday mornings, 10:00 a.m. – noon. September 13, 20 and 27
October 4, 11, 18 and 25
November 1, 8 and 29
December 6 and 13 COST: $425
TO REGISTER: If you’re interested in attending, please email us at info@wordplaynow.com to be put on the waiting list.
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THE GIFT OF MEMOIR: WRITING PERSONAL AND FAMILY
STORIES (Preserving Family History; Writing for
and about Your Family; The Art of Memoir)
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. September 7 and 21
October 5, 19 and 26
November 9 and 30
December 14 COST: $275
TO REGISTER: If you’re interested in
attending, please email us at info@wordplaynow.com to be put on the waiting list.
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FALL WRITING
RETREAT
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, September 23rd, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
More WordPlay opportunities here. Words from Alexander Melville Bell
about his son, Alexander Graham Bell, to his future daughter-in-law,
Mabel Hubbard
"Alec is a good fellow and, I have no doubt, will make an excellent husband. He is hot-headed but warm-hearted - sentimental, dreamy and self-absorbed, but sincere and unselfish. He is ambitious to a fault, and is apt to let enthusiasm run away with judgement... With love you will have no difficulty in harmonizing...I have told you all the faults I know in him, and this catalogue is wonderfully short.
Alexander Graham 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
"faults."
PROMPT: Write about someone's faults, whether they're your own, a friend or family member's, or a fictional character's, in any genre you like.
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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