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

Hungry for Good Writing

By Gail, July 12th, 2010 | Click to Comment

Homegrown Authors! KaBooM at the Lexington Farmer's Market: photo by Susan C. Brown

This past Saturday members of KaBooM were at Lexington’s Downtown Farmer’s Market at a booth cosponsored by the Morris Book Shop and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning called “Homegrown Authors.” The event turned out to be one of the most successful sales days ever for our group; you might want to check out the Morris Book Shop site for details on more selected Saturdays this summer when you can meet area authors and buy signed copies of their books.

But as Jan said in her immediate previous post, these days are not only about selling the book. Continuing her theme, I’d like to reflect on what I learned from our time at the book table on Saturday: many of the folks we met at the Farmer’s Market are hungry not only for fresh, locally grown produce.

They are hungry for good writing.

We set up the sewing frame to let people know that the object we were selling was hand-sewn, and a number stopped to have conversations about book binding and the beauty of hand crafts.

Sewing Frame entices passersby to see hand sewn signatures: photo by Susan C. Brown

But an even larger number of passersby were fascinated by the content of When the Bough Breaks.  One person who read through the table of contents was completely stopped by the title of Lynn’s short story.   “Heartichoke!” she called out: “Oh, isn’t that just perfect, that’s exactly what it’s like!”  She bought three copies.

A retired English teacher stopped to tell us of his frustration that high school students are not guaranteed opportunities to do their own writing in English classes.  We showed him the structure of our book: the brief essays after each entry that reflect on the creative process and the role the group plays in our continually developing craft; followed by individual writing prompts—“Try this”—to encourage written responses.  At that, he was sold, too.

And a number of folks were simply pleased as punch that this joint venture meant they could buy literature with their produce: “that’s fantastic,” they said.

We couldn’t agree more.

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Events, Gail Koehler, Jan Isenhour, Lynn Pruett, Susan Christerson Brown, Uncategorized, Writing Exercises — Tags: , , , , , ,

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: , , , , , , ,

Leaving a Paper Trail

By Jan, May 17th, 2010 | Click to Comment

This Saturday, May 22, I’ve been invited to speak at a conference called “Meeting the Challenges and Opportunities of Aging,” sponsored by our local government. As I recall, the last time I spoke at this event, the title included only the word “challenges” and neglected to mention “opportunities.” Perhaps the event organizers know that I have since entered a new decade and hoped to soften the blow.

My topic will be “Leaving a Paper Trail,” and I plan to encourage attendees to set their life stories down on paper. I know what it’s like when a loved one leaves no written record, because when my mother passed away in 2004, she left no paper trail: few letters, no journals or diaries, not even any lists from which to tease secrets. She had assured me that family records would be available in the central section of a behemoth-sized family Bible, but when I opened its yellowed pages I found what I call “the family tree in winter”: all black outline with no leafy verdancy to give it bulk and color.

I plan to make the case that it is essential to tell our personal stories, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem. My rationale came to me as I read Diane Ackerman’s nonfiction book, The Zookeeper’s Wife, in preparation for her upcoming September visit to the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. Her book focuses on the director of the Warsaw Zoo and his wife, who worked with the Polish Underground Movement during World War II. They successfully helped approximately three hundred Jews, hiding them both in their villa and on zoo grounds, in outbuildings and animal cages.

The book is filled with details of their lives as zookeepers: the particular personalities of the animals they kept as pets, an inventory of a beetle collection developed by a Jewish friend, the layout of the Warsaw ghetto, the names of trees. I won’t remember all the details that Ackerman includes, but my sense of the reality of the Holocaust in Poland is heightened and enriched by this reading. As a friend commented, “It supplies a micro-story to accompany the macro-story.” The book describes acts of individual courage and sets them against the drama of the larger war effort.

I now understand why college history courses didn’t always work for me. The sweep of history was overpowering. It’s when I consider individual stories that I am able to do the slow work of understanding, one life at a time. In this way I have been encouraged to continue as a lifelong student of history. I’m willing to bet that Saturday’s conference includes people who have important micro-stories to set down on paper, which will add threads of understanding to large and complex historical events.

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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.

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Spring into a New Writers Notebook

By Jan, April 12th, 2010 | Click to Comment

I bought a new writers notebook over the weekend. As I planned my blog post, I realized that I had already written about reading an old notebook as I made way for the new (Nov. 30, 2009).

I observed that my summer/fall writers notebook was full of plans for When the Bough Breaks: production schedules, numbers of copies, notes for who would staff which book fairs at what times. It was all about the business of writing, necessary to be sure, if not exactly the date that invited me to the dance in the first place.

In looking through my winter notebook, I noticed a couple of things. For one, I filled it up faster. It took just four months to write my way to the back cover. However, quantity should never be confused with quality.

Instead, I focused on the nature of those contents. My winter notebook holds more starts, more responses to prompts offered in writing practice, rich notes from two conferences, a few short poems begun during a Saturday seminar, even a sketch of a murex shell that I picked up on the beach at Sanibel.

I complained a lot this winter. The cold was dispiriting; the snow and gray skies oppressed me, turned me inward. I kept repeating that this year, winter got me down. But my notebook bears witness of a fruitful time, a time of productivity, of nurturing seeds that may grow into something larger.

Once again, the evidence of my notebook corrects my misapprehensions and reminds me that I somehow kept pace with the world as it turned toward longer days.

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

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.
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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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