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

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.

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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: ,

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?

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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.

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Clearing the way for discovery

By Gail, February 16th, 2010 | Click to Comment

As I write uncharacteristic weather is demanding energy and attention and this morning while I shoveled drive and walks yet again, my mind turned mildly allegorical.  Born in Canada and sojourning in a half dozen different climatic zones, I’ve developed a discipline towards snow removal that, on reflection, serves me well when I apply it to my writing work.

As soon as conditions permit, I clear what’s on the ground: this causes my children, raised in Kentucky, no end of bafflement.  “Why bother?” they demand (hoping to dissuade me from insisting on their involvement in my odd behavior).  Because they asked, I delight in pointing out the advantages of my method.

Doing the work immediately means I get a sense of conditions “in the field.”  I know how the wind feels, I see up close what kind of snow this is.  Once I’m out, I notice details I’d never have seen from the window or on a quick scurry from warm house to car—the weather ceases to be just the stuff I have to slog through, and begins to present unique joys (this morning’s dusting, for example, had those large crystals that reflected jeweled light).

In addition, keeping up with the task means it’s rarely overwhelming: I live in Central Kentucky where the snowfall is never heavy.  Though my back and knees could never handle a deep snow, regular moderate effort serves me well here.

In fact, there are unexpected surprise benefits for my having simply done the work.  Yesterday, though the temperature never officially rose above freezing, the simple act of clearing what was on the ground meant that the day’s light reflected off the surrounding banks of snow and heated up the exposed drive and walks, so that by the day’s end everything was completely clear, down to the pavement.   Oh, sure, it snowed again last night, but this morning there was no accumulated, hard-packed neglect that threatens underneath this morning’s small collection.  In past snows, I’ve seen neighbors hacking away at dangerous ice once things begin to melt; our regular effort means our small plot harbors no hazards that demand such hard labor.

The analogy breaks down, of course, at many levels.  But I’m reminded that regular attention to the writing prevents despair and the feeling of defeat, and leaves the way clear for inspired discoveries to shine unencumbered.

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