Volume VIII, Issue 17
April 29, 2019
Word of the Week: measure
Dear ,
I met Tom McConnell, this week's featured writer, at the Upcountry Literary Festival last month. Here we are with festival director Randall Ivey shortly after Tom's reading from his 2018 novel, The Wooden King, shook me awake and had me see the importance of "taking the measure of everything," a line from The Wooden King.
I'm always fascinated by the story of how a book comes into being. This one grew from Tom's selection
as a Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic in 2005. The stories he was told by his "best and most gracious landlady," her parents, their neighbors, and others haunted him so that he felt there was nothing he could do but weave them into a novel that opens in Czechoslovakia in 1939 when the Nazis invade.
Publisher Hub City Press captures the heart of this book in these words:
In the spirit of Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale and Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, The Wooden King explores
denial, desire, and family drama against the lyrically rendered
backdrop of World War II, deftly navigating “the simple difference
between what we do and what we ought to do” in the face of
rising totalitarianism.
And so do the reviewers of this book, including these three authors:
The Wooden King is a profound and timely meditation on one man caught between allegiance to his family and to his country. Thomas McConnell vividly renders the dark ironies of history, but readers will encounter compassion, decency, and courage also. What an excellent debut!
——Ron Rash, author of The Risen
“In these troubled times, it is particularly fitting that a book like The Wooden King should come along. In the middle of World War II, and in the middle of the novel, a character says, “What are we going to do about the horror we find ourselves in?” He goes on to say, “We must act or not act.” With tyranny to the left of him and tyranny to the right and emotional turmoil at home, Viktor Trn, the protagonist, hardly knows what good if any he
can do to survive, let alone prevail, but act he must. The Wooden King serves as a sober reminder of the perils of complacency and inaction in the face of injustice and oppression. Thomas McConnell has given us a powerful and important book."
——Joseph Kertes, author of The Afterlife of Stars
It is a beautiful burden to read this master writer's tale. The Wooden King is for the best of readers, for historians, and for those who want to change the future.
——Emöke B’Racz, Store Owner and Founder, Malaprop's Bookstore
I think you will see the power and beauty of this novel in the excerpt below, as I did when I heard Tom read it. And that the word "measure" will take on a new resonance for you.
Be sure to scroll on down to the writing prompt, so that you can explore this meaning-laden word for yourself.
Love and light,
Maureen
Upcoming WordPlay
THE SEVEN ENERGIES OF WRITING
ONLINE CLASS
(A Holistic, Whole Brain Approach, with Accompanying Tools and Strategies To Enhance Creativity, Productivity, and Writing Pleasure)
If you’ve ever had a hard time getting started writing, finishing what you’ve begun, or gotten stuck in the middle (AKA writer’s block), knowing how to engage in the most helpful “energy of writing” for you at each stage of your process—and on any given day—will be a game-changer. In this class, we’ll explore—and practice—the ins, outs, and benefits of all seven
energies of writing. You’ll learn invaluable tools and strategies you’ll use again and again to write with maximum ease and effectiveness. Yes, you can be more productive, creative, and fulfilled, no matter what kind of writing you do or how experienced you are.
WHERE: The comfort of your own home
WHEN: Tuesdays, May 14th and 21st, 2019 from 7:00 until 8:45 p.m.
COST for Workshop and Materials: $67
* For the benefit of participants, an audio recording of the class will be made so that participants are able to listen to parts they miss and/or review material covered at any convenient time and place. These recordings are available, along with all handouts, via private online links.
TO REGISTER: To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions. To pay online, please click this link to pay through PayPal.
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POETRY ROCKS!
(Learning the Ins and Outs of Poetry; Strengthening Your Writing Skills; Adding a New Layer of Literacy 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.
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 the web.
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: To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions. To register for Poetry Rocks online, click here.
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WRITE LIKE A GENIUS
AT THE JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL
(Expanding Our Creativity; Learning New Tools for Our Writing and Our Lives; Creating New Writing)
Discover your own genius as you learn to apply seven fascinating approaches of Leonardo da Vinci to your writing. These techniques enliven non-fiction, poetry and fiction. Expect fun, inspiration and writing galore in your preferred genre, with opportunities to share
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WHERE: John Campbell Folk School, 1 Folk School Road, Brasstown, NC 28902
WHEN: Sunday, May 26th – Saturday, June 1st, 2019
COST is $630 for one week-long session
(lodging and meals are additional – options can be found on the Folk School website)
TO REGISTER: To register, please click this link to register through the John Campbell Folk School website.
Class size limited to 8.
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CLASSES AT CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION
WRITING OUR WAY TO HAPPINESS
(Week 2)
Come explore research-tested ways writing can increase your happiness level. You’ll learn how to use writing as a tool to increase your sense of well-being, as well as 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.
WHERE: Chautauqua Institution. 1 Ames Ave, Chautauqua, NY 14722. Alumni Hall Poetry Room
WHEN: Monday, July 1st – Friday, July 5th, 2019. 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
COST: TBA
TO REGISTER: Register directly through the Chautauqua Institution website
here
TELLING YOUR LIFE STORIES WITH GRACE
(Week 7)
Our life stories are a precious legacy, imbued with grace we can often see only in hindsight. Capturing these stories “gracefully” in words is a gift, not only to ourselves, but to those who love us – they’ll be treasured for generations to come. Come learn engaging tools and techniques to retrieve and record your adventures, loves, losses, successes, mistakes, and more with ease and, yes, grace, no matter where you
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WHERE: Chautauqua Institution. 1 Ames Ave, Chautauqua, NY 14722. Hultquist 201B
WHEN: Monday, August 5th – Thursday, August 8th, 2019. 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
COST: TBA
TO REGISTER: Register directly through the Chautauqua Institution website
here
DELICIOUS MEMORIES
(Week 9)
Food not only nurtures and sustains us, it’s also a rich source for writing. We’ll explore our culinary connections as we write of when, where, what, with whom, how — and even why — we ate. We’ll also learn from the work of accomplished writers. You can use the tools you’ll learn to create a family cookbook, individual essays, stories, or poems, scenes in fiction or memoir, a food blog—or just for your own
pleasure.
WHERE: Chautauqua Institution. 1 Ames Ave, Chautauqua, NY 14722. Hultquist 201A
WHEN: Monday, August 19th – Thursday, August 22nd, 2019. 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
COST: TBA
TO REGISTER: Register directly through the Chautauqua Institution website here
More WordPlay opportunities here.
Thomas McConnell’s work has appeared in the Greensboro Review, the Southeast Review, the Connecticut Review, the Cortland Review,
Shenandoah, Story|Houston, Watershed, Birmingham Arts Journal, Calabash, Yemassee, the Emrys Journal, the Charleston Post & Courier, Crossroads: A Southern Annual, Writing Macao, and Ars Medica among other publications. His awards and prizes include an artist’s grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the South Carolina Academy of Authors Fiction Fellowship, the World’s Best Short-Short
Story, the Hackney National Literary Award for the Short Story, Porter Fleming Awards for Fiction, Essay, and Drama, the South Carolina Fiction Project, the H.E. Francis Award, and the Hardagree Award for Fiction. His lectures and readings have taken him to Istanbul, Berlin, and the Sorbonne in Paris. A Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic for 2005-2006, he taught American literature and creative writing at Masaryk University. His novel of the Czechlands in World War Two, The Wooden King, was published by Hub City Press in 2018. The novel won the gold medal for Best Wartime Fiction for 2019 in North America in the Independent Publishers Book Awards and is a semifinalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award.
One evening at dinner Aleks had a story to tell.
“Three men came to my school today.”
“Are you such ruffians,” Miroslav smiled, “that it requires six extra hands to teach you?”
“They didn’t teach us. One only watched. He watched the other two. One man had a notebook and he wrote down what the first man said.”
“And what did the first man say?”
“Numbers.”
“Only numbers?”
“Yes.”
“Why was this?”
“The man had an instrument.” Aleks chewed some potato. “In German why is ‘warum.’ Isn’t that a funny word? Like an engine. Like the engine of a car.”
“Aleks,” Alena said. “You eat like a farmer. Chew with your mouth closed.”
“You have one like it, Grandfather. With two legs, measuring legs. To tell the distance apart.”
“Calipers?”
“Yes. I think. Calipers.”
Trn and the old man glanced at one another.
“And what did the men measure?”
“Just one man did the measuring.” Aleks took another bite, chewed. “Our heads.”
Alena saw them before they could shift their eyes away again.
“How can I chew with a closed mouth?” Aleks asked. He swallowed. “They measured our eyes and noses. The metal was cold but not sharp. Not really. They measured us all, all over our
heads. Franto said it hurt but I didn’t think so.”
Aleks’s tines shrieked against the china clay and Trn winced.
“They moved up and down the rows. Warum did the men measure our heads?”
He looked into each face, stopped at Trn’s. Alena looked at him too before she stared at her father.
“Daddy, why are you watching your food?”
Finally Miroslav said, “You know the Germans. They are great ones for numbers. For information. Data their scientists call it. They are great collectors of data. They travel the world,
taking the measure of everything. For their sciences.”
“Will the man come to measure your heads?”
The cabbage congealed to Trn’s plate but it felt hung in his throat.
He coughed, said, “Have you finished your lessons for tomorrow?”
“I have one column of maths.”
“Best to finish it now. The electricity may go out and you don’t want to have to do your sums in the dark again.”
The boy furrowed potatoes with his fork.
“Is this politics?”
“No,” Trn said. “Only mathematics.”
When the room was quiet, when they could hear Aleks telling over figures to himself at the kitchen table, Alena said, “I want to know why they are measuring his head.”
Trn glared, leaned to close the door.
“You know very well why,” her father hissed.
“Tell me then.”
“To see what they are going to do with him. To see if he is Aryan. Or a Jew.”
“He is no Jew, they know that. They can see he is no Jew. All the Jews already have their stars.”
“So you don’t have to worry about that,” Trn said.
“The old quarter is the Milky Way, that’s what everyone calls it. Nobody in his family has a J stamped in his identity card. So why then? Why this measuring?”
“Because they can read our blood,” her father said. “If we aren’t Aryan, if we are too much Slav to be made German, then we are to be sent to arctic Siberia when Russia is conquered.
This place will become another gau of the Grosses Deutsches Reich.”
“How do you know this?”
“Everyone knows this.” His thumb jerked toward the black curtain behind him. “Everyone. Haven’t you listened? Those trucks that come to examine us for consumption, these mobile clinics,
what do you suppose they’re really doing? Think. They won’t let Czechs marry Germans without their approval. They study pictures of them naked before they decide. So you tell me, what is the end of that? The end of registering our noses and indexing the color of our eyes to a patch on a board? Why does everyone suddenly need a new identity card since Heydrich came? We are being numbered. Can’t you see? Weighed and divided. We are less than an inferior race. We are a foreign body, a vermin. A
bacillus.”
She rose and snatched the plates into a clatter. A knife rang against the tile of the floor as she pressed past Trn into the kitchen. In the sink water splashed and drowned Aleks’s
counting.
Trn leaned to retrieve the knife.
“Calipers on school children,” Miroslav said. “My god. If that’s not hell’s own trigonometry.”
Trn watched their dim light glint across the dull blade.
“There’s nothing to be done,” the old man said. “Nothing you can do.”
“You know as well as I do,” Trn said. “Siberia may very well be the best that can happen.”
~ From The Wooden King, available for purchase 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 "measure."
PROMPT: Take a few minutes to look through the multitudinous definitions of "measure" that showed up in my Google search results, and in how many different areas, such as science, mathematics, science, and music. And this doesn't count the phrases in which it's included, like "beyond measure," "for good measure," "measure one's words," and "take the measure of."
re" keeps appearing in the dialogue in the excerpt above. Then create a dialogue of your own that includes the word "measure." This could be fictional, of course. But you can also think of a time when you and at least one other person conversed about any kind of "measuring," and recreate the experience, in prose or poetry.
Search Results
verb
verb: measure; 3rd person present: measures; past tense: measured; past participle: measured; gerund or present participle: measuring
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ascertain the size, amount, or degree of (something) by using an instrument or device marked in standard units or by comparing it with an object of known size.
"the amount of water collected is measured in pints"
| synonyms: |
take the measurements of, calculate, compute, estimate, count, meter, quantify, weigh, size, evaluate, rate, assess, appraise, gauge, plumb, measure out, determine, judge, survey More |
| antonyms: |
guess, estimate |
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be of (a specified size or degree).
"the fabric measures 45 inches wide"
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ascertain the size and proportions of (someone) in order to make or provide clothes for them.
"he will be measured for his tuxedo next week"
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take an exact quantity or fixed amount of something.
"she helped to measure out the ingredients"
| synonyms: |
mark off, mark the boundaries/limits of, measure out, demarcate, delimit, delineate, outline, describe, define, stake out More |
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estimate or assess the extent, quality, value, or effect of (something).
"it is hard to measure teaching ability"
| synonyms: |
choose carefully, select with care, consider, think carefully about, plan, calculate
"I had better measure my words"
|
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judge someone or something by comparison with (a certain standard).
"she did not need to measure herself against some ideal"
| synonyms: |
compare with, contrast with, put into competition with; More |
-
reach the required or expected standard; fulfill expectations.
"I'm afraid we didn't measure up to the standards they set"
| synonyms: |
come up to standard, achieve the required standard, fulfill expectations, fit/fill the bill, pass muster, do well; More |
| antonyms: |
fall short, fall short of |
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scrutinize (someone) keenly in order to form an assessment of them.
"the two shook hands and silently measured each other up"
| synonyms: |
evaluate, rate, assess, appraise, judge, adjudge, weigh up, size up, survey
"the two men shook hands and silently measured each other up"
|
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ARCHAIC
travel over (a certain distance or area).
"we must measure twenty miles today"
noun
noun: measure; plural noun: measures
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a plan or course of action taken to achieve a particular purpose.
"cost-cutting measures"
| synonyms: |
action, act, course, course of action, deed, proceeding, procedure, step, means, expedient; More |
-
a legislative bill.
"the Senate passed the measure by a 48–30 vote"
| synonyms: |
statute, act, bill, law, legislation
"the Senate passed the measure"
|
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ARCHAIC
punishment or retribution imposed or inflicted on someone.
"Sir Walter had hard measure dealt out to him by his vain and weak sovereign"
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a standard unit used to express the size, amount, or degree of something.
"a furlong is an obsolete measure of length"
| synonyms: |
system, standard, units, scale
"the original dimensions were in imperial measure, 15 inches on each side"
|
-
a system or scale of standard measuring units.
"the original dimensions were in imperial measure"
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a particular amount of something.
"a measure of egg white as a binding agent"
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a standard official amount of an alcoholic drink as served in a licensed establishment.
| synonyms: |
portion, quantity, amount, quota, ration, allowance, allocation
|
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a container of standard capacity used for taking fixed amounts of a substance.
-
a graduated rod or tape used for ascertaining the size of something.
| synonyms: |
ruler, tape measure, rule, gauge, meter, scale, level, yardstick
"use a measure to check the size"
|
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MATHEMATICS
a quantity contained in another an exact number of times; a divisor.
-
PRINTING
the width of a full line of type or print, typically expressed in picas.
-
a certain quantity or degree of something.
"the states retain a large measure of independence"
| synonyms: |
certain amount, amount, degree, quantity
"the states retain a measure of independence"
|
-
an indication or means of assessing the degree, extent, or quality of something.
"it was a measure of the team's problems that they were still working after 2 a.m."
| synonyms: |
yardstick, test, standard, norm, barometer, touchstone, litmus test, criterion, benchmark
"sales are the measure of the company's success"
|
-
the rhythm of a piece of poetry or a piece of music.
| synonyms: |
meter, cadence, rhythm, foot
|
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a particular metrical unit or group.
"measures of two or three syllables are more frequent in English prose"
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NORTH AMERICAN
any of the sections, typically of equal time value, into which a musical composition is divided, shown on a score by vertical lines across the staff; bar.
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ARCHAIC
a dance, typically one that is grave or stately.
"now tread we a measure!"
| synonyms: |
dance, step, caper, hop
|
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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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