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Eat Pray Love Kvetch Appreciate Understand

By Lynn, August 30th, 2010 | Click to Comment

As we gathered after a summer hiatus, we discovered each of us had read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, or seen the movie, or done both. A lively discussion followed. We examined a number of points of view, ours and those of other public commentators.

One writer was disappointed that the movie glossed over the story of Gilbert’s purchase of a home for Wayan, an ostracized divorced mother in Bali. I agreed that the story was amazing but then I found myself irritated with Gilbert for what I thought was self-aggrandization. We examined the idea that often what bothers us about another is a problem we have with ourselves. I chewed on that notion after I left.

For me it seemed a self-congratulatory tale, a do-gooder seeking praise. But it wasn’t really. It was a story of one woman shepherding resources at her disposal to improve another woman’s daily life. That Gilbert claimed the good work was what irritated me.

Why? Because I have been taught that modesty is a woman’s way. Other people may praise you, but you must not toot your own horn. It felt like Gilbert had gotten away with something that she, as a woman, should not. The irony is that I often write about the curious tendency of women to censor the behavior of other women–and here I was doing just that.

I appreciate now that Gilbert was showing women how to claim actions. As women we must. Too many works by women, artistic, social, political, and religious, have gone unnoticed, sometimes due to modesty, sometimes due to malicious intent. I am glad to have been brought to this understanding and am glad to toss away a fossilized belief. Let’s allow for self-celebration. Let’s claim what we do.

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Creativity, Lynn Pruett, Uncategorized —

How Bullriding Is Not Like Judging a Literary Contest

By Lynn, June 18th, 2010 | 1 Comment

This week I attended a bullriding contest and I judged a literary contest. I observed some differences between the competitions. In bullriding, it’s the rider, the clock, and the bull. The rider who stays on the longest wins. That is the simple method of determining the winner, without consideration for style, or conflicts overcome, or originality in setting or situation. The story is always the same. The bull wins.

In a literary contest, there are many variables, the most crucial being the judge’s sense of what is the most valuable characteristic of a written piece. After years of judging, teaching, and writing, I’ve decided that structure matters very much. Is it a story, first of all? Does it satisfy the requirement that there is a conflict that has been dealt with? I read first, not in an analytical way, but for pleasure. One of the pleasures of reading a good story is the sense of satisfaction and completeness a reader feels when the story ends, as in the stories by Kim Edwards, Michael Knight, Charles Baxter, and Barbara Fisher. This understanding is felt or known, but the reader may not immediately be able to articulate why the story has created such satisfaction. Then, if one is a judge, one can return to the story and see how and why she felt that the story was successful. I start with that response to a story. Then I consider voice, vision, and acumen with language. Once, in the past, I liked the third place story best, because of its language and imagination and voice, but I did not choose it as the “best” because its structure was more flimsy than the winner’s was.

I find that a number of stories show tremendous promise but have been sent out before they are completely finished. That is the most common reason why a story does not win. It needs a few more turns on the spit, for more fat to drip out, more flavor to be tendered in.

Bullriders rarely go into the ring until they are ready. There’s too much at stake. For writers, submitting to subjective judges, it’s harder to know about a story’s readiness. So I suggest that writers master structure as a necessary skill. If you do so, you will go far in your quest for the prize.

Comments (1) — Categorized under: Creativity, Lynn Pruett —

Try again. Fail better.

By Gail, June 7th, 2010 | 1 Comment

Once school is out, at our house the summer break means everything changes: the habitual imperatives lifted, all the rhythms of our days are renegotiated.

I’m recognizing both the opportunity this change in daily obligations presents to us, and am also feeling the weight of possibility. Several weeks ago I spoke to a writer-friend who finished the first draft of a novel and shed some work obligations so that she could concentrate on revision and re-writing. Yet even though this was her intention, she declared, her immediate response to an open schedule was to get less writing done! Once she eliminated the usual time constraints that used to press her to squeeze in a little writing here and there, the wide open field of newly available time quickly got filled with neglected household tasks and other activities she’d pushed aside in her previous desire to just get some pages done every single day.

This complaint is not new to me: many writer-friends have observed themselves in similar predicaments—what seemed like a good change to “free up time” instead disrupted former habits, and meant that they were getting to the page less than they used to be when they were busier.

Grateful for this reminder, I’ve gone back to my own beginnings, and picked up two supports that helped me first establish a writing time.

First, I’ve started yet another “process journal,” a place where I’m recording which habits or practices help me get to the page and those that prevent my attending to my own work. Simply observing and recording my successes and failures helps me bring attention and intention to daily writing during a summer that lacks the usual structure in my schedule.

Second, I’ve picked up, yet again, a wonderful book by Gail Sher called One Continuous Mistake. The title comes from her chapter of the same name where she reports: “The effort to stay centered in one’s self, minute after minute, is what Dogen Zenji meant when he said that Zen practice is one continuous mistake” (page 54). Thus, the Zen practitioner never attains complete attention, but also never allows her failure to discourage her. Instead, she keeps returning to her effort. That continuous return is a kind of success which all the failures do not wipe out.

So I begin my summer with a sound bite running through my head—this very truth, as Sher reports Samuel Beckett using in his writing instruction: “Try again. Fail better.”

Comments (1) — Categorized under: Creativity, Gail Koehler, Setting Goals — Tags: consistent effort, Creative Cycle, discoveries, failure, perseverance, writing practice, writing success, writing work

The Things that Keep Us Going

By Susan, May 31st, 2010 | 1 Comment

This past weekend was the Spalding University MFA in Writing homecoming. It was an event put together by our fabulous Alumni Association, offering inspiration and replenishment for our work as writers.

All writers need that from time to time. We need the chance to learn from the literary old masters, to dwell in the carefully wrought sentences from a depth not often plumbed in a headline world. We need the stimulation of new ideas as well, and the chance to explore unfamiliar forms and media.

We need companionship in the split-brain effort of valuing the art of writing itself, while taking on the necessary tasks to develop a writing career. In the places where our stories meet, new insights sometimes arise. We all need writing friends to come home to.

Those of us gathered there drank once again from the well that challenged and nurtured us during our time as students. And we were reminded that the dowdy virtues of perseverance and dedication are nonetheless common elements in most stories of literary accomplishment. Along the way, the friends who value excellent work, as well as the approach to life that allows us to recognize and appreciate it, make the journey itself worthwhile.

There’s an excellent article by Jane Friedman at Writer Unboxed, entitled “The Only Way to Know if You’ll Be a Successful Writer.” It offers the kind of encouragement along these lines that we all need. Enjoy!

Comments (1) — Categorized under: Creativity, Susan Christerson Brown — Tags: inspiration, Spalding MFA

Getting Organized, A Fairy Tale

By Mary, May 24th, 2010 | 3 Comments

Before

First, a disclaimer. I’m in no way a neat freak. Housework has been on my list of things to be avoided at all cost since I was old enough to know that homes are not self-cleaning. I would use my last dime to pay someone to clean for me and consider it money well spent. Nevertheless, I hate working in a messy environment. Go figure. I even clean the kitchen and put stray dishes in the dishwasher before I start dinner. Like I said, go figure. So when I started to avoid my sewing studio, I knew exactly what the problem was- it needed cleaning.

Periodically I’d take a deep breath and open the door, determined to bring some order to the space. I would look in horror at the mess, the detritus left by unchecked creativity. Were the heaps of material growing? Did the magazines hurl themselves from the shelves? Jumbled fabric demons with thread hair lurked under my sewing machine and taunted me, hissing, “You’re not the boss of me!” So I ended up closing the door again, trying not to imagine the fabric scraps dancing with the dust bunnies on the floor.

Things came to a crux two weeks ago. With a deadline looming, I had to get some work done. But things were so bad in the studio that I could no longer see any of the flat surfaces in the room. And that included the floor. There was no way I could start something new surrounded by such chaos. In desperation, I did what any sane woman would do. I cried. Then I picked up the phone and called for help. Help arrived in the form of a professional organizer named Kathy Needy. She calls herself the DeClutter Doc, but I call her my fairy godmother. When she came to the house for an initial consultation, I must admit I was worried that she might take one look at the place and run screaming from the room. Instead she looked calmly around and said, “This is a beautiful space!” I knew immediately that she was gifted with uncommon vision and the ability to look at something and see not what it was but what it might become. It was a beautiful space, and Kathy was just the person to help it reach its full potential!

My Fairy Godmother and her assistants

She returned last week with her two lovely assistants, Kristy and Laura, and piles of boxes. They set to work immediately, their movements a ballet of organization. They conquered the huge piles by dividing them into multiple smaller piles and then putting them away. They assembled shelving and filled it with my painting supplies, all neatly sorted. They constructed a clever grouping of wire baskets that not only tamed my out-of-control fabric, it gave me another table surface to use. They took the vacuum cleaner out of the closet and chased the dust bunnies and scraps out from under the furniture. They sorted and filed and filled large plastic garbage bags with trash. All I had to do was stand back and watch, occasionally answering questions about the value of one thing or another. It was amazing, it was a miracle, it was magic. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Kathy had pulled out a magic wand and chanted, “Bibbity-bobbity-boo!”

After

By the end of the day, my studio was transformed. Everything was in its place, neatly accessible. My painting supplies had their own place out of the way. My design wall was cleared and ready for work. I could see the floor and no more dust bunnies! The area around my sewing machine was clean and quiet with no hissing demons underneath. Kathy and her crew bounced down the stairs and out of the house leaving behind complete order and the smell of lemon Pledge. I stood in the doorway, surveying my sparkling studio, and made myself a promise. I will never, never go messy again. And as I work happily drawing up designs for new quilts, I know that I can create again thanks to my fairy godmother Kathy Needy, at DeClutterDoc.com.

Comments (3) — Categorized under: Creativity, Mary Alexander —

The enduring power of words

By Gail, April 27th, 2010 | 2 Comments

The last thing I expected to hear when my twelve-year-old son sidled up to me Saturday afternoon was him, asking casually: “Where’s the Velveteen Rabbit?”

A confession: as a wordaholic, I used books to parent in ways that felt vaguely like I was cheating in the game of motherhood. I was shameless, reading to distract, entertain, surprise and astonish, to soothe, and to brighten long dull patches—to have words in my mouth far more courageous, wise and curative than any I could have come up with on my own. Certainly we went through picture books the boys chose for themselves, of dinosaurs and earth-moving machines, demolition derbies and space adventures. But I also had a private stash secreted away for the times the coin of my abilities was spent long before the day was done. I couldn’t have loved my boys more intensely, and yet there were times I was poured out, squashed flat, by sleep deprivation and the unceasing needs of those very children. Then, the audience needing distraction, calming, and exemplary modeling was not a child, but me. The Velveteen Rabbit was a story for those times, as Margery Williams’ tale of the Rabbit who learns to be Real only after his shiny surface has been loved off suited my stretched-thin mother-self precisely.

Since it was a book I read for myself, I never would have guessed it would the one my son would recall or request. In fact, he said he needed the book for a language arts assignment to bring in a favorite childhood story to read aloud. I have yet to ask his teacher if she knows what a gift she bestowed with this requirement.

He reads on his own now, of course—this proto-man-child who is taller now than I. His choices are great tomes of adventure and mystery. But for the time it took us to read the Velveteen Rabbit together again, it was as if he were again the tiny child he was so long ago. When we were done, he nodded sagely, and said “that’s a good book,” as he lifted it from my hands.

Of course not all of us will necessarily write a classic on the order of Williams’ Rabbit. But I am renewed in my faith in this power words have. Her words, published in 1922, rescued the harried mother I was years ago and have managed to embed themselves into the heart of a boy in spite of his need to be “manly” around his friends. This is a special kind of magic that is far beyond what Williams called in her book “nursery magic,” bursting past any nursery walls she knew, to continue living in ways she could not have possibly imagined.

In the face of this kind of enchantment and power, all I can offer up is gratitude—and a renewed desire to dip into that well, that power, myself.

Comments (2) — Categorized under: Creativity, Gail Koehler — Tags: children's books, discoveries, Margery Williams, mothering, perseverance, power of words, Velveteen Rabbit, writing work

Language and Silence

By Susan, March 29th, 2010 | Click to Comment

For the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about writing in the context of these words from John O’Donohue in his beautiful book, Anam Cara.

Behind Celtic poetry and prayer is the sense that the words have emerged from a deep, reverential silence….

Fundamentally, there is the great silence that meets language; all words come out of silence. Words that have a depth, resonance, healing, and challenge to them are words loaded with ascetic silence. Language that does not recognize its kinship with reality is banal, denotative, and purely discursive. The language of poetry issues from and returns to silence.

Writers are often asked how they make space and time for their writing. Those outer, observable rituals and routines are important for getting the work done, but they correspond to an inner state of mind necessary to do creative work. Making time to write is important, but so is achieving the silence that yields work that is true and resonant. Even when our work is collaborative, it is much like what O’Donohue describes as a genuine conversation, when people explore the unknown together, patient with “the silence from which words emerge.”

Deep inner listening allows us to bring something new to light. We have to dip below the surface of everyday discourse to reach the place where our best work comes from. Authentic characters, evocative images, and insightful observations don’t come off the top of our heads. They rise up from deep within.

Good work comes from a place deeper than anything we can decide to accomplish. Our work, discipline, and effort help give us access to that place, but what we seek lies beyond our means of extracting it. It is a gift, for which we wait in silence.

What helps you to listen?

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Creativity, Susan Christerson Brown — Tags: inspiration, Silence

Tips for Revising

By Jan, March 22nd, 2010 | 1 Comment

Sometimes it takes me an entire week to solve the Sunday New York Times crossword. Not long ago I put the finishing touches on my solution to the puzzle. Smack in the middle I penciled a circle around one particular intersection of across and down. I had expended all mental effort possible over whether the answer to “Yanks and others” could really be “ALers,” which made the cross clue “Strand” solve as “enisle.” I stashed my pencil and checked my grid against the solution. This week, they matched.

It felt a little bit like the protocol I follow when revising a piece of writing: give it a try; come back to it after taking a break; use a pencil with a good eraser—it makes editing easier.

Revision, one of the most important steps of any writer’s process, means following different strategies at different stages. For your writing to achieve its best, you’ll probably have to engage in a revision process that’s more complex than the simple steps I mention above.

One of the best conversations that took place at the Carnegie Center February Writer’s Retreat led by KaBooM resulted in shared wisdom about revision strategies that work. The ideas generated are summarized below.

Writing can be being something like weaving threads into cloth. Sometimes the cloth has to be cut up and refashioned into a different cloth; sometimes the cloth has to be tailored so it becomes a well-fitting garment.
Distance yourself from the material—then look back at it for a leap, a lurch, or a life pulsing. Circle that leap and write it on a fresh sheet of paper. Start making a mind map by drawing lines out from the circle (like spokes around a wheel). Put words on the lines as associations come to you.
Ask yourself about the purpose of a scene. Is it present only to advance the plot or is it also doing something else? Check for sensory detail—have you covered each of the senses? You may need to help the reader see what you see. Add noise and taste and smell. Be sure the sensory world is present in your writing.
Remember that perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to remove. It is sometimes necessary to kill your darlings.
Underline adverbs and adjectives and replace them with strong verbs when possible.
Don’t be afraid to try another starting point.
Look at models of writing that you respect. (Cf. Francine Prose’s book Reading Like a Writer.)
Join a group—find readers who are critical but supportive, who can give you ideas on how to make something right.
Read your work outloud. Use the mirror test. Look in a full-length mirror and read your work to yourself.
Go do something physical for a time. Walk, do the dishes, or solve a crossword puzzle.

Comments (1) — Categorized under: Creativity, Jan Isenhour — Tags: Creative Cycle, Revision Strategies, writing work

Writing from the Senses

By Susan, March 1st, 2010 | 4 Comments

During the recent writing retreat led by KaBooM we focused on entering our writing through the senses, and invited a visit from the muse by setting up sensory stations for participants to enjoy. We offered images and textures, and images that were textures in the form of Mary’s quilted paintings. Bells and rattles and rhythm instruments made a variety of intriguing sounds. Tastes including fresh fruit, dill pickles, chocolate, and lemon marmalade also held a wonderful aroma. Other scents, most in containers covered with plain brown paper, included:

A tin of brown shoe polish
Tide laundry detergent
Rubbing alcohol
Murphy’s Oil Soap
Joy dishwashing liquid
Campho-phenique
Desitin diaper rash cream
Lavender soap
Homer Formby’s Tung Oil
Garlic powder
Almond extract
Oregano
Coconut extract
Crest toothpaste
Colgate toothpaste
Cedar
Herb vinegar
Molasses

Are there associations that arise as you read these lists? Are memories stirred just by thinking about these sensations? It’s a reminder of how deeply imprinted sensory experience is.

One participant spoke of how powerfully a sensory cue brought back slices of life—enough to reshape his writing plan for the day. I too have found that certain scents do more than remind me of another time of life; they actually take me there once again and put me in touch with what I might otherwise have forgotten.

Those memories are multi-layered with all kinds of sensory information. The scent of cold cream can show us a bedroom from long ago, the sound of a school bell may evoke the scratch of a new sweater, a taste of home may place us amidst the voices of people long gone. Our deep remembering is brought to life by recalling the memories of the senses, memories carried in the body as well as the mind. Writing gains power when we put them on the page.

We encouraged everyone to explore and follow where their senses took them. It’s an experience that doesn’t end with the close of the retreat, and we invite you to take part as well.

Comments (4) — Categorized under: Creativity, Events, Susan Christerson Brown — Tags: inspiration, writing prompts

Try This! At the Saturday February 27 Writing Retreat!

By Jan, February 22nd, 2010 | 1 Comment

How easy to love a word like retreat that lives in the world both as action and as thing! How fortunate to look forward to a day of renewal in the company of like-minded individuals! How important this time we take for our work and our writing selves!

Join members of KaBooM on February 27 from 10 am to 4 pm at the Carnegie Center for a “Saturday Writing Retreat: Try This!” We’re assuming that it’s your dream—as well as ours—to have an entire day without agenda or distraction—to have nothing to do but write, write, write. Bring work in progress or a notebook and pen to capture new words. We’ll present invitations to write from our book, When the Bough Breaks, or you are welcome to develop or extend a piece you’ve already begun.

If you prefer working on a laptop, bring a flash drive as you’ll have access to a printer. Maximize your writing time by bringing a brown bag lunch. Day also includes time for sharing and responding.

The cost for the retreat is $100. Our goal is to make sure your well as a writer is replenished many times over, your store of words restocked and ready to go. We look forward to retreating with you!

Comments (1) — Categorized under: Creativity, Events, Jan Isenhour —

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