Volume IX, Issue 05
January 29, 2020
Word of the Week: compassion
Dear ,
Who or what do you feel compassion for? And how might compassion help you write about these subjects with substance?
Compassion deserves pondering by all of us sharing the planet.
This week's featured writing is a well-done craft essay from Brevity
magazine with insights on this topic. I hope you find it both insightful and useful.
I've long been a fan of Brevity, a magazine that "publishes well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief (750 words or less) essay form." They have "featured work from two Pulitzer prize finalists, many NEA fellows, Pushcart winners, Best
American authors, and writers from India, Egypt, Ireland, Spain, Malaysia, Qatar, and Japan." And you might love knowing that they "have also featured numerous previously-unpublished authors, and take a special joy in helping to launch a new literary career."
So if you're looking for a market for your short essays, or want to begin writing essays, Brevity's website is a great resource.
Here's to compassion with substance to back it up, in and out of the written word.
Love and light,
Maureen
This week, I'm featuring a conference at which I'm honored and delighted to be giving a presentation at this March. Barbara Brown Taylor is one of my favorite authors and speakers!
Early bird registration, which comes with a discount, ends January 31. Details below.
If you write, or read, books that matter – books with substance and soul – then this is the place for you.
Writing for Your Life welcomes you to Christ Episcopal Church at 1412 Providence Rd. in Charlotte, NC for our next Writing for Your Life Spiritual Writers’ Conference! The conference is open to all who are interested in spiritual writing, as well as those interested in reading spiritual books (more on that below!). Speakers
include Barbara Brown Taylor, other popular Christian authors, and representatives from the Christian publishing industry. The main conference will take place on March 24-25, 2020, with an optional post-conference seminar: The Business of Being a Spiritual Writer
(separate registration required) on March 26.
In addition to Barbara Brown Taylor, our speakers include: authors Leighton Ford, Margot Starbuck, J. Dana Trent, Patrice Gopo, and Kathy Izard, and literary agents Kathryn Helmers and Jevon Bolden. You can learn more about each speaker through the links below. Also participating in the conference will be Park Road Books,
CharlotteLit, AK Classics, WordPlay, and authors Kate Rademacher, Niki Hardy, and Erin Hall.
For the first time this conference includes a Reader Track. These will be breakout sessions where our speakers present on some aspect of reading spiritual books, rather than writing them. But all breakout sessions are open to all attendees, and you will not need to select anything in advance.
Early-bird tuition (through January 31) for the main conference is $329 and includes all General Sessions and Breakout Seminars (both Writer and Reader Tracks), lunches, morning refreshments, small group meetings with speakers and others, and an open-mic session. (After January 31, tuition will be $359.)
Writing for Your Life is pleased to offer 1.0 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for pastors for this writers’ conference. Writing for Your Life is a member of the Association of Leaders in Lifelong Learning for Ministry (formerly the Society for the Advancement of Continuing Education for Ministry).
Registration Now Open! Click on the link below to pay for your registration (credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, or PayPal Credit are accepted; all payments are processed through PayPal). After you pay, an email confirmation will be sent to the name and email address you
enter into PayPal (or the one associated with your PayPal account) within 5 days. If you need to change the name or email address please let us know.
CLICK HERE to pay for your registration.
More WordPlay opportunities coming soon. Stay posted!
What Do You Care About?
How Compassion Leads to Dynamic Writing
by
Mary Ann McSweeny
Here's Brevity magazine's intro to this Craft Essay:
On Writing With Substance and Compassion
January 23, 2020
In her new craft essay, Mary Ann McSweeny illustrates why compassion should be one of the underlying components of all stories, and she explains how it is only when the writer remains a “detached witness” that compassion can flourish. McSweeny provides a list of questions and a brainstorming exercise for writers to immerse their characters and narrators in substance and compassion:
When I read my own work and that of others, I ask myself: Does the writer have compassion for the character on the page? Does the writer know the character’s life history, background, biography? Does the writer understand how the character has arrived at the point where the story begins? Has the writer somehow entered into the character’s struggle? With the personal “I” narrator: Does the writer portray the narrator’s struggle with an understanding of the
narrator’s weaknesses, fears, or defects without trying to control the outcome of what’s happening?
Substance is not writing about compassion; it is writing with compassion so that the reader feels the writer’s authenticity.
Read the rest of this exceptional craft essay in our latest issue (of Brevity).
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 “compassion.”
PROMPT: Here is a great prompt directly from this week's featured writing from Brevity magazine, "What Do You Care About? How Compassion Leads to Dynamic Writing" by Mary Ann McSweeny:
Try this exercise as you discern what gives authenticity to your own writing: Sit in a quiet place, eyes opened or closed, pencil and paper by your side. Clear your mind of its busy-ness. Feel your heart space—calm, deep, full of wisdom. Ask yourself: What do I care about? Let the answers arise in their own time and way. Write down the things, concepts, or people that surface in the stillness. Choose one and take ten minutes to write about it.
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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