KaBooM WritersKaBooM Writers

Welcome to the online presence of KaBooM, a writing group that has sustained the creative lives of a diverse group of women for over a decade. We hope that getting to know us will inspire you, too!Welcome to the online presence of KaBooM, a writing group that has sustained the creative lives of a diverse group of women for over a decade. We hope that getting to know us will inspire you, too!

Welcome to the online presence of KaBooM, a writing group that has sustained the creative lives of a diverse group of women for over a decade. We hope that getting to know us will inspire you, too!

The KaBooM Writers Notebook: Our Blog

13 Years of KaBoom; How on Earth Did We Get Here?

By Mary, February 20th, 2011 | Click to Comment

Lynn, Mary, Jan, Gail, Pam, Susan, and Leatha

A question I ask often myself is how on earth did I get to be this old? And the answer is always the same- one second at a time.  I am sometimes asked the same question about KaBoom. How on earth have we stayed together for 13 years? The simple answer, of course,  is one meeting at a time. But as with age, the simple answer doesn’t tell the whole story. After much reflection I have come up with reasons both general and personal that have contributed to the success of KaBoom. I am listing  these suggestions in the hope that they may help someone who is looking to create a similar writing group.

General

Size: Like Goldilocks, we have kept our group neither too large nor too small. Eight seems to be the upper limit to allow time for full discussions of each other’s work. We like the intimacy of a smaller group, but try not to fall below four in order to ensure a variety of opinion and style.

Membership: New members should be agreed upon by all members. It’s best to say no if there are doubts about someone before they meet with the group. All shoes do not fit all feet and all writers do not play well in group settings. If a problem arises with someone after they have joined, the others should approach that person as a group, explain their concerns, and try to reach a solution.

Place: A neutral meeting space has been important to us. It should be a convenient location with plenty of parking and a tolerance for raucous discussion. We usually don’t meet at a member’s house so no one has to clean up or feel obliged to provide sustenance and so all can simply enjoy being together.

Time: Pick a regular meeting time, recognizing that at various points in life, members may have more demands on their time and that these demands will fluctuate. Don’t sit there with a stop watch waiting for late offenders. Simply begin your discussion and let the late ones catch up when they can. Over time it always seems to even out.

Personal

Be tolerant. We are all struggling and sometimes the things that irritate us most about others are the things that secretly irritate us about ourselves.  Kindness is an important component of our group dynamics and seems to be the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine of honest criticism go down.

Be honest. If we don’t tell each other the truth about our work, believe me, someone outside will. Honesty fosters trust and although we don’t always agree with each other, an honest discussion enhances our work and helps us see it as other see it.

Be committed. You won’t always feel like going to a meeting, reading another manuscript, or discussing someone else’s writers block, but those times pass, and then it will be good again. If something isn’t working for you in the group, speak up before quitting. Anyone can quit, but not everyone can find a group of like minded people with which to share a creative life.

Have fun! This may be my most important suggestion. Laugh, tell jokes, and share life with one another. Don’t take yourselves too seriously even as you struggle to produce serious work. And maybe 13 years from now you will look at your writing group and marvel at the way time passes, one second at a time!

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Creativity,Mary Alexander — Tags: ,

The Other Food for the Writing Life

By Susan, February 16th, 2011 | 2 Comments

At a meal I once shared with a charming five-year-old, the precocious kindergartener wasn’t much interested in finishing her lunch. “I’m full,” she insisted when her mother urged her to eat. But dessert looked good. Her mother logically pointed out, as mothers have done for longer than I can remember, that her daughter had said she was full. My young friend was undaunted. “Dessert is for my other stomach,” she replied. “It’s still hungry!”

There are two kinds of work that feed a writing life. One is the creative effort that allows us to bring a piece of writing into the world. It’s the expression of what we have to offer, refined and polished until it reaches the form that connects with a reader.

The other is the work toward the goals we have for our writing. It’s the task of finding places to send finished pieces, learning how to query agents and editors, and figuring out ways to promote our work.

Both kinds of work—doing the writing and finding its audience—are necessary if we are to connect with readers. But while I have a great appetite for the writing work, the business and promotion aspect is less appealing. This is what has me thinking of my young friend and her two stomachs to feed.

In this case, both kinds of food matter. If dessert seems dispensable to you, think of it as more of an Italian meal with a fish and a pasta course. Or a simple repast of soup and a salad.

The point is that in order for our writing to find readers, we need both a creative and a business life. We need quiet hours to work and social hours to connect with others. It can be hard to keep both going at the same time. But it’s important to not only write (and finish!) stories but to send them out. To not only edit poems but to share them at readings. To not only conceive of new essays but find new places for them. Our job is to make our writing as good as it can be, and to learn about the publishing world as well.

The writer in us will often think she’s had her fill of work, whether it’s one kind or the other. This may happen daily, or even more. At those times it’s good to remember the other stomach—the one that wants something different—and feed them both.

Comments (2) — Categorized under: Susan Christerson Brown — Tags: , , ,

Rush Slowly

By Jan, February 10th, 2011 | Click to Comment

At the beach bar and restaurant near our rental unit, this motto is printed everywhere: on the backs of t-shirts, on the menu, as the name of the boat moored in the shallow bay. Most comically it’s scrawled across the screen of a pink cell phone nailed to the post that supports the bar’s canopy. You can’t help but come face-to-face with this piece of island wisdom as you place an order for rum punch or an iced bucket of Carib beer.

The barkeep exemplifies the motto in action. He blends pina coladas and gets them to the table in seconds. His rush is a controlled one, an economy of movement appropriate for a tight space. His eyes, however, stay fastened on the Caribbean and the distant cloud-covered vista of Nevis.

“Rush slowly” tantalizes like any other oxymoron, with its easy wit and mild tension. What might it mean? Is it good advice to take home, to pack in my suitcase next to the sack of nutmeg, the batiks, and the new recipes for Caribbean stir-fry?  Or is it a vacation platitude that resonates most strongly read on the back of a t-shirt through a beery gaze?

What does it mean to rush slowly? There’s the possibility of rushing to accomplish, to load a life with people, places, sensory observations, books, art, movies and other artifacts of culture, to engage in thoughtful conversations, to do meaningful work. To pack it in, to open it up, to be busy not for the sake of busy-ness, but for the sake of a full life.

Then there is the reminder to do it slowly, not with a hesitant or lazy step, but with a thoughtful one, with a mind that savors and reflects, considers and adjusts, takes in new information, processes and assimilates, seeks not just experience but also improvement and change.

From my terrace overlooking Turtle Beach, I hear one man call to another, “No problem.” I knew this island motto already and saw great wisdom in it. But as a general directive for living, there’s probably more to be gained with “rush slowly.”

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Jan Isenhour — Tags: ,

Learning in Retrospect

By Susan, January 19th, 2011 | 1 Comment

To our delight, Normandi Ellis has moved back to Central Kentucky and rejoined KaBooM. She’s a gifted writer, an inspiring teacher and workshop leader, and a woman of wisdom. We’re happy to have her with us again.

As we embark on a new year, she’s leading the group in a series of exercises looking back at the year behind us and ahead to the year to come. These are taken from a workshop she offers at the beginning of every year, called The Night of the Mothers. It’s an energizing way to assess where we’ve been and discern where we want to go.

This week we considered which month of the past year was our “lead month,” the one that gave the year its direction. We sifted through twelve months of calendars, checkbooks, or emails to find the place that held some kind of shift: a birth or death, a beginning or ending, a change in finances, work, health, or family. We then spent ten minutes each writing about that month, the previous month, and finally the month following.

As I paged through my calendar, I realized that I almost never take time to do this. Trying so hard to move forward, I rarely look back with this kind of intention. Moments from the past remain with me, but patterns are much more clear with a review of days I might otherwise forget.

Those patterns can teach us about ourselves. We learn what helps us respond to challenges, and what helps us live a full life. In becoming familiar with patterns that have unfolded in our lives, we can better recognize them when they show up again. And we are better able to choose whether to repeat them, or not.

Looking back can reveal surprising insights into the conditions that allow us to work creatively and productively, which is step one in trying to recreate them as best we can. In looking at how we spent our time, who we were with, how quiet or busy our days were, and what captivated us, it’s easier to see what worked and what didn’t. The things that energize and those that weigh us down become clearer.

It took an hour or so to do the exercise and for each of us to read back some portion of what we had written. It led to a deeper understanding not only of our individual lives, but the collective energy of the group. Sharing those words allowed us to hold the year with the support of one another, witnessing the change, loss, learning, and growth we experienced.

It was one of the richest hours I’ve spent this year.

Comments (1) — Categorized under: Susan Christerson Brown — Tags: , ,

Contrary Needs

By Lynn, January 10th, 2011 | Click to Comment

As a writer, I have two strong and contrary needs, one for solitude and one for community. I once spent a month at a retreat where there were specific rules about community and solitude. Writers and artists breakfasted together and shared the evening meal, but between the hours of 10 am and 4 pm there was to be no conversation. These rules demonstrated the perfect understanding of the contrary needs of the actively creative person.

I don’t live in such a place now.

In solitude, the need I’d say I prefer to gratify more, I write with delight and anguish in private. It’s delicious to be alone with the imagination in a protected space where anything is possible. But, if the post man always finds me in my pajamas, or my children do after they’ve been at school all day, then I have some ‘splainin’ to do. Is this normal? Am I normal?

A community of writers validates this private self. It  offers the opportunity to talk with people who know the vocabulary, practice the struggle, and read books in a similar way. They understand a publication in a small magazine with a readership of less than a thousand is a coup, an occasion for a hand spring when it arrives at the door, much to the befuddlement of the post man.

It is fun to socialize and to feel a part of a community of like minded souls. Hearing a good reading, discussing a problem of construction, or a brand new excellent book or a bad one, links to the happiness inside: I am a member of a tribe. I belong here.

Sometimes this sense of belonging is too seductive, drawing the writer into on-line discussions or too many post-workshop get-togethers and the private life of writing suffers.

When I have over-indulged in community, I long for solitude and return to my desk, dreading meetings, feeling akin to Charles Dickens, who once said, that knowledge of an impending appointment can ruin an entire writing day. I feel that way, too, if my writing must be curbed for a meeting, even if I likely can’t sit for five hours in my chair until the appointed time. It’s the idea of interruption that adds anxiety to the act of writing in solitude.
Yet, in this 21st century in America, I appreciate the opportunity for both privacy and community. It seems a fortune to be able to reconcile the contrary needs. Thank you, fellow writers, for claiming this strange compulsion for self-expression and for insisting its needs be met.

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Lynn Pruett — Tags: ,

Is there anything so real as words?

By Gail, December 15th, 2010 | Click to Comment

“Magazines all too frequently lead to books, and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.”~Fran Lebowitz

I often think of this quotation from Fran Lebowitz after I’ve started reading something when I should be doing something else.  “Just a little,” I tell myself.  I’ve glanced at the clock.  Then, I swear, it only felt like a moment.  I’ve only just gotten up a good head of steam on the story.  The clock must be lying!  But there they are again, the rest of my life’s obligations rudely insisting on interrupting a really good read.   For us tough cases, of course it’s not just magazines that lead to books.  Books lead to books.  All the time.

Just the other day, I picked up my first Christmas present to arrive in the mail.  A dear friend sent me Betsy Warland’s Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing. I opened it just about the time a responsible adult, a prudent person, would probably start thinking about making dinner.  “The act of reading is the act of belief,” says Warland.  And she had me.  Within the next few pages, she prompts: “As an exercise, you may find it useful to pull a number of books off the shelf and read only the first page of each.”    What a good idea.  Lots of writing teachers suggest exactly this.  What harm could a first page or two do, just before opening the frozen broccoli?

But because for me reading is like candy—who can stop at just one page?— before long I’ve read the first 50 pages of The Picture of Dorian Gray.   My children come into the kitchen.   The stove is cold.  All they can smell is my afternoon coffee. “Isn’t it time for dinner?” they ask.

It’s Oscar Wilde’s fault.  Not mine.  I hang the blame on the characters Lord Henry Wotton and Dorian himself, and more than that, on (page 36), “Words!  Mere words!  How terrible they were!  How clear, and vivid and cruel!  One could not escape from them.  And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed … to have music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of a lute.  Mere words!  Was there anything so real as words!”

But because kids can’t eat words, they finally convinced me to put the book down.  Dinner got made and eaten.

And today.  Well, today is a new day.  I can try reading the “only the first page” of a couple of books again today.  Before breakfast.

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Gail Koehler,Setting Goals — Tags: , , , , , ,

Falling Apart: In Defense of Procrastination

By Mary, December 6th, 2010 | Click to Comment

When I was in high school, I had a wonderful piano teacher, Mrs. Blackwell. A few weeks before my senior recital, I drove my family crazy practicing the same tricky sections over and over, trying to get the music as close to perfect as I could. Then, a few days before recital time, the music that I thought I had perfected fell apart under my fingers. Suddenly, I hit all the wrong notes and couldn’t remember entire passages. Instead of advising me to practice more, Mrs. Blackwell patted me on the back and told me to play something else for a few days. Something fun. She said, “Don’t worry, Mary. You’ve worked hard and the music is still there. Sometimes things fall apart just before they come together.”

It was hard to follow her advice. I wanted perfection, after all, and the only way I knew to achieve it was to work harder.  But being an obedient student, I put aside the broken pieces and played something else instead.  Then, on recital night, the music flowed. It wasn’t perfect, of course, I never managed perfection, but it was very good. It was better than I had ever played it before. It was a miracle!

It’s been over forty years since I graduated from high school. I went to college as a music major and graduated as an art major. I married and raised two children who have given me four wonderful grandchildren. I’ve continued my work in art and branched out into writing. Yet, the advice given such a long time ago by a gifted music teacher still comes to mind when I’m struggling to perfect a paragraph or finish a quilt and it’s not going well. I back off, work on something else for a while. Then, when I return to my project, I tackle it with a renewed spirit and see solutions to problems that before appeared unsolvable. I call this method creative procrastination and see it as part of the process. Mrs. Blackwell was right. Sometimes things fall apart just before they come together.

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Creativity,Mary Alexander —

Blog Hopping

By Jan, November 29th, 2010 | Click to Comment

I wonder how many of you have followed links to other blogs, hopping like a frog from one to another only to find yourself on a strange new lily pad far from your starting point?

The blogosphere can feel like a vast and impersonal pond, filled with lily pads that often disappoint.

That’s why I’ve elected to share some blog shout-outs with you. The blogs mentioned in this post were generated right here in Kentucky by writers well within the 100-mile radius that marks the boundary of local. These pads are worth checking out!

Our old friend Crystal Wilkinson is blogging at http://crystal-wilkinson.blogspot.com/ Titled “Writing with Your Spine,” Crystal’s posts concern writing, reading and publishing. Her posts are full of Crystal’s own brand of spunky wit, and she has even thrown in a writing exercise or two. It’s almost as good as spending a couple of hours with her at a writing workshop.

The organization Kentucky Young Writers Connection is posting weekly pieces by Kentucky writers at http://www.youngwritersconnection.org/ Click on “KYWC Blog.” Thirty Kentucky writers have agreed to talk about their early experiences with writing, and so far about ten of the posts are available on-line. This is a great resource to use with students as the posts are vetted so they are appropriate for middle- and high-school students.

Two women who do the splendid work of bringing us the annual Kentucky Women Writers Conference—Julie Wrinn and Vaughan Fielder—each have new blogs. Find Julie at http://jkwrinn.blogspot.com/ where her latest post is titled “In the Bosom of a Book Group.” Find Vaughan at http://kwwcnotes.blogspot.com/ where her post talks about the organization “Girls Write Now!” Julie and Vaughan pledge that literary advocacy and feminism, the dual mission of the conference, will be their guiding themes.

And don’t forget to click on those two links hanging out on the sidebar: Sherry Chandler’s Blog and Mildly Mystical. These two are always worth a hop!

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Jan Isenhour — Tags: ,

Our Writing is More than Our Words: Cutting What Does Not Serve

By Susan, November 2nd, 2010 | Click to Comment

This is not the post I was going to offer you this week. For days, I tended and tweaked that one—about how words and sentences work together in service of something greater. I tortured that metaphor within an inch of its life, thinking I was getting closer to a finished piece. Then I read it again, and saw it was time to start over. Unfortunately, words and sentences sometimes don’t serve anything greater at all.

There are many ways writers describe cutting work we’ve labored over. “Killing your darlings” is one. “Letting it go” works for writing and for life in general. “Seeing what is not working” is part of the process of revising.

At our KaBooM meetings, reading each other’s work in progress, we often discuss where the piece should start. It’s not unusual for one of us to jettison pages of work, often writing that is carefully and beautifully crafted, because we’ve realized that in those pages we were “writing our way into the piece.” The writing that leads to the beginning is essential to the writer, but the reader doesn’t need it.

Even for this simple post, first written by hand on a legal pad, words and phrases are marked through, false starts and extraneous paragraphs are squiggled over.

Do write from the heart, without an editor’s eye, in that early phase when the work is about catching wisps of thought and imagination and giving them form. But once those drafts are written, remember that a writer is also called to be an editor, and it takes a tough editor to make good writing.

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

Letters From Home

By Gail, October 19th, 2010 | Click to Comment

The birth of my first child changed my life in such a myriad of ways, I did the only thing I could think to do as a writer: I wrote about him and the new me I was discovering.  I wrote to document and to understand, because the contradictions of my new life baffled me, both my deep love for the baby and the bewildering grief at leaving my old life behind.  I wrote in my journal, and I wrote letters to friends.  When they responded, I wrote extravagant thank you notes.

Now that child stands taller than I do, those early days sometimes seem like a place from long ago, a home I left behind.  But one friend kept every missive I sent her about my new baby, and recently gifted me back a box full of my letters to her.

I sift through those physical artifacts, and their tactile presence places me back in those early moments as a new mother, when to keep back the tide threatening to overwhelm I scrawled a line or two and stuffed it in an envelope.  The need to post the letter gave me a reason to get out of the house, to pack up the baby I was still learning, so I could send out my latest struggles, and even my celebrations—send them to someone far outside the daily cycle of tending, feeding, caring.

When is the last time you wrote or received a letter—a physical memento of emotions, desires, connections?

This year the National Day on Writing takes place on Wednesday, October 20.  The day is a national celebration of writing sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and officially recognized through a congressional resolution.  Locally, the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning is sponsoring “Letters From Home: A Glimpse of the Bluegrass Through Handwritten Words,”  an event designed to encourage the public to write and send longhand letters to friends, family, and U.S. soldiers.

So tomorrow, I’ll be writing new letters from my home in the Bluegrass, at Good Foods Cafe from 11 to 1.  The Cafe is one of 14 locations around Lexington where you can celebrate National Day on Writing by composing a handwritten letter with other writers.  (You can find the full list by clicking the link to the Carnegie Center’s web site, above.)  The day’s events will culminate at the Carnegie Center for a community reading and celebration at 5:30 PM.  Participation in National Day on Writing activities is free and open to everyone.

Come write with other writers.  Make a new artifact or two.  Post your letter and send out your words, from the home you’re in at the moment, into the world.

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Carnegie Center,Creativity,Gail Koehler,Jan Isenhour — Tags: , , , , , , ,
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