Volume X, Issue 8
February 22, 2021
Word of the Week: glimmer
Dear ,
What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word glimmer?
For me, it's fireflies. While I've never seen them work their magic in a field with lupines, this photo was just too filled with glimmer not to share.
Mike Lewinski from Tres Piedras, NM, United States, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
I've loved fireflies (or lightning bugs, as my Southern-born and bred husband calls them) since I was a kid, and I loved sharing them with my kids. Here's a little excerpt from a poem I wrote for our daughter Amanda, who was born in June:
My daughter on her 4th birthday
Counting one two three
All the way to seven fireflies
Four for her she says
And three for her little brother
I still remember that evening vividly, how we sat in the swing together sharing ice cream, dusk, then fireflies, and her thinking to gather some in a jar (with holes poked in its lid, of course) for her baby brother as well as herself. And how, before bed, we set them all free.
I've noticed a severe drop in the number of fireflies in our neighborhood with great sadness. (Learn more about why this is happening and what you can do to help here.) And my heart aches at the damage we human beings keep inflicting on our beautiful earth.
So does author Pam Houston's heart. The description of her 2019 book Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country* reads, in part: . . . Deep Creek delivers Houston's most profound meditations yet on how "to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief . . . to
love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive."
This is only one of the reasons I am so grateful to my brother Mike for gifting me with a copy recently. (Mike lives in Colorado, too, and has also experienced raging Colorado wildfires.) Houston's deep love for the natural world shines through the pages as she writes of how she came to own a homestead in the Colorado Rockies and about her life there with "her devoted Irish wolfhounds and a
spirited troupe of horses, donkeys, and Icelandic sheep." She writes as well about her travels to Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. And Florida. Oh, she has a great story about Florida in here! But her story of healing from a very painful childhood is woven in here, too, as are passages about her work teaching writers, and sharing about her own journey as a writer and her writing process.
One of these passages, which contains an approach to writing I'm eager to try, is today's featured writing. I hope reading it—and the accompanying prompt, adds a bit of glimmer to your week.
Love and light,
Maureen
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* “Hone Your Craft” suggestions for further exploration
* a short reflection to solidify the concepts covered
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More WordPlay opportunities coming
soon.
Stay posted!
I have always believed that if I pay strict attention while I am out in the physical world—and for me that often means the natural world—the physical world will give me everything I need to tell my stories. As I moved through my day, I wait to feel something I call a glimmer, a vibration, a little charge of resonance that says, "Hey writer, look over here." I feel it deep in
my chest, this buzzing that lets me know the thing I am seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting on the outside is going to help me unlock some part of a story I have on the inside. I keep an ongoing record of these glimmers, writing down not my interpretation of them, not my imagined connection to them, not an emotional contextualization of them, but just the thing itself. Get in, get it down, get out and move on to the next glimmer. Then, when I have some time to write, I read through the glimmer files
in my computer and try to find a handful that seem like they will stick together, that when placed in proximity with one another will create a kind of electricity.
I try to keep my big analytical brain out of this process as much as possible, because I believe my analytical brain at best only knows part of the story and at worst is a big fat liar. I believe—like religion—that the glimmer, the metaphor, if you will, knows a great deal more than I do. And If I stay out of its way, it will reveal itself to me. I will become not so much its
keeper as its conduit, and I will pass its wisdom onto the reader, without getting in its way.
In addition to being my method, the way I have written every single thing I have written, it is also the primary way I worship, the way I kneel down and kiss the earth.
Learn more about Pam Houston's Deep Creek and/or order it here.*
* For sharing this book with you, Amazon will share a small portion
of their proceeds with me if you decide you'd like to purchase it.
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 “glimmer.”
This week, start your own "glimmer files." Spend some time in the physical world (if possible, make this the natural world) and "pay strict attention." Look for "glimmers" in what you see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. And then write down "not [your] interpretation of them, not [your] imagined connection to them, not an emotional contextualization of them, but just the thing itself." See if you can capture "a
handful that seem like they will stick together," and create a piece of writing from them.
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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