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

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: , , , , , , ,

Let’s Put on a Show

By Mary, October 11th, 2010 | 2 Comments

I love old movie musicals. Particular favorites of mine are the show within a show variety where teens would gather together to solve some financial problem by putting on a show. Within a few days these enterprising young people produced a show with amazing singing, dancing, and costumes that not only saved the theater, school, or whatever the needy cause but also resolved all of the romantic entanglements of the young stars. Everybody would come together in the last scene holding hands and belting out the final number with shining, happy faces.

Of course, in real life, many of those young stars went on to lead tragic lives complicated by alcohol and drugs, multiple love affairs and marriages. Putting on a show in public to cover up their very real problems only exacerbated them and the money they made didn’t solve anything in the end. Their personal show within the show too often closed early without the happy last scene.

I recently had the pleasure of putting on a show of my art quilts at the Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg. It was my first solo show and I spent the better part of the year preparing for it. I was surprised and honored by the number of people who came to see my quilts but I also experienced a form of stage fright. As gratifying as it was to see my work displayed in such a beautiful setting, it was terrifying as well. It was difficult to listen and watch as people looked and discussed my work. But I also had my own part to play in the show. I had to answer all the questions and pretend to be unfazed when someone made a remark about the price that I had put on a particularly large, complicated piece. Nobody knows the real worth of a piece of art more than the artist themselves and having to translate that worth into a dollar value is a daunting task.

Does putting on a show solve our financial problems? Sometimes, perhaps. I didn’t make a sale at my show, but I did have someone call several days later about doing a commission piece. Selling is a validation of the worth of our work. But most of us don’t create only for the money. I can think of many easier ways to make money than by making art. The show is only part of the process and the show within the show is the actual time spent in creative activity. That’s where the drama, the comedy, the tears and the laughter are found. And if we’re very lucky and work hard, that’s where our happy ending lies.

Comments (2) — Categorized under: Creativity,Events,Mary Alexander —

Finishing a Novel

By Jan, September 25th, 2010 | Click to Comment

We’re about six weeks away from the next installment of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Are you trying to decide whether to participate? Perhaps you’ve got a great character in mind. Perhaps you’ve already imagined a breathtaking opening scene.

Your problem, as you often confess to your writing friends, is that your life seems to be full of starts but skimpy on finishes. And truth be told, once that breathtaking opening scene is written, you don’t have any idea where you’re going next.

I just finished a novel. While I didn’t finish it in a month, I did reach the end of a draft in just under three years. Considering this is the first novel I’ve finished, I’ve set a world’s record for me. Now I want to figure out what I’ve learned, with the hope of next time beating my personal best.

Narrative arc. If that phrase makes you nervous, take heart. It was important for me to realize that narrative arc was something I could pay attention to after I had a narrative. Instead of predetermining plot, I relied on those aforementioned great characters to lead the way. I put them in contact with one another and watched the scenes unfold one by one, or “bird by bird” if you will.

Write by hand. It sounds practically pathological to suggest greeting something as intense as NaNoWriMo armed with nothing more than your writer’s notebook and favorite pen. However, I found this process useful. I needed to slow my brain so I could envision the scene, hear characters speak, and set it down on paper. Writing by hand let me overhear the undertones of conversations and envision actions. The eventual typing of scenes got tedious at times, but never so tedious that I switched to composing on the computer. The slow paying of attention yielded too large a payoff.

Attend writing classes, writing group meetings, and writing workshops. All  offered ideas that kept me going. The trick is to manipulate any assignment you receive so it meets your needs. For example, if the workshop leader brings a plastic bag filled with paint chips with exotic names (Fire on the Mountain?), imagine the conversation your character might have about that chip and where and how such a scene might fit into your narrative. Does it reveal character? Advance the action? Provide a much-needed concrete detail? Once you’ve got a project going, make writing workshops work for you. I can’t imagine any workshop leader not applauding such a practical and necessary ownership. Check out the opportunities at the Carnegie Center. Writing Practice is a flexible way to push ahead.

Recently one of my students, a retired police officer who is finishing his own book, reminded me of this E.L. Doctorow quotation: “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

And pulling into your final destination is every bit as sweet.

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

Paying Attention

By Susan, September 15th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Diane Ackerman signing books following her talk at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Sept. 11, 2010

In her recent talk as part of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Diane Ackerman shared with her audience the value she has found in paying close attention. It’s clear that her books grow out of her keen observation of the natural world. But she spoke also of the solace she finds in nature, when she can “loll in wonder’s swaying hammock.”

She described finding moments of transcendence during her husband’s illness at those times when she was able to bring her attention to the natural world. When fully present to some aspect of nature, the weight of other concerns eased. Even nature found in “the manicured wilderness of the city” offers such an escape. It takes us outside of ourselves.

Our work, our careers, our lives are shaped in large part by where we place our attention. Noticing the wonder of the world we inhabit is an ability that grows from both freedom and discipline. We need the liberty that allows our perception and thoughts to wander, absorbing the beauty and drama of this amazing earth. Yet when we are caught up in our individual lives, it takes strength and discipline to look beyond ourselves.  Curiosity and openness put us in touch with the world, while focus and discipline allow us to engage deeply with it so that we can create work and offer something back to the world.

Ackerman’s talk was a reminder that the skills of observation we rely on as writers are the same skills that refresh and strengthen us in the midst of living. The ability to be present, to really pay attention, to notice the life unfolding all around us, is the way toward “the satisfying state of mind we sometimes call joy.” The writing life teaches us a rich and rewarding approach to living.

Then there is the work of writing about what has engaged us. Ackerman described her own process of beginning new work as the task of picking something to focus on, then thinking of something, anything, to say about her subject. A process she described as “trying to get the goose of creativity to lay a golden egg.” Her method, however, is workmanlike: Write a sentence. Then write another about that sentence. And so on.

Inspiration is everywhere, but the work of writing is always specifically here, in this particular place, with this subject, on this page, with these words. Attention focused outwards will lead us to our work. Attention focused on the work will lead us to accomplish it.

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

On inspiration that makes you more yourself…

By Gail, September 9th, 2010 | Click to Comment

This year’s Kentucky Women Writer’s Conference begins with the Gypsy poetry slam tomorrow night.  Workshops follow on the weekend.

KY WWConference

At last year’s conference, we at KaBooM had just launched our book, When the Bough Breaks.  We led a panel discussion that was well attended, well received, and really fired us up for a season of selling the book and making ourselves available to other writers.  It was a wonderful, busy, exhilarating time, a very “put yourself out there” time.

Just prior to the conference, this week I’ve been re-discovering singer-songwriter Emily Haines, whose musical work spans many groups and moods.  For example, she’s appeared with the Canadian band Metric on David Letterman, and has a solo album of her own called “Knives Don’t Have Your Back.”  I’ve been enjoying her pure voice accompanied often only by her piano playing.  And then there’s a Youtube video that captures her reflections on how much she needed a writing retreat in Buenos Aires.

The tone of that video is completely affirming.  And I’m remembering a line from an interview she gave in 2007.  When asked about role models, she said: “everybody needs people to inspire them. The most valuable make you want to be more yourself, not more like them.”

So at this year’s KWWC,  I’m in a very different place, and am looking for …. well…  I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for.  But since that’s the great thing about a conference,  my plan is to be open to the deep, warm-hearted, generous, creative people who make themselves available to complete writing strangers, for just this eye blink of time that a two-day conference represents.  In my imagination, I’m polishing a tuning fork when I write these words,  thinking of the satisfying hummmmm that reverberates when a tone is adjusted and reaches that instant it’s in tune.

The two notes echo back and forth off each other and vibrate out into the wider air, moving out of the essential “tuning” period and out into the larger world.

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Creativity,Events,Gail Koehler — Tags: , , ,
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