Newsletters
September Newsletter
Not everyone is as sure as this bee
Not everyone is as sure as this bee heading towards the desired center of the sunflower. For many of us, the summer is a time to take a break from writing projects and just unwind and refresh. I know for myself returning to work on my long-term project seems a bit daunting. Meshing creative work with demands of everyday life feels almost impossible. In order to get back to what I love, I’ve returned over the last month to some habits that got me started with writing and ones that keep me going. Perhaps there’s something for you, too.
Seek other writers and creative people. I am so grateful for my writing community: my own workshops, my regular writing group with an AWA leader, my AWA colleagues, and my poetry group. Connect with others and plan to meet, share work, or just talk about writing. Maybe attend readings or lectures. Hold your own writing salon. Do a gallery walk. And write.
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Reread and revise your old work. In the spirit of being less critical and more celebratory, I reread work that pleases me, and noticed what’s working and then revamped some old poems. Start small here and pick one piece.
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​Surround yourself with which inspires you. On my daily walks, I’m returning to a podcast series I love, Poetry Unbound. And on a rainy day, I pulled out books from the shelf: poetry, memoir, fiction, writing techniques. I’m savoring what I find speaks to my creative self. (Yes, I write in my books;) Try to set aside sometime every day to devote to this and see what comes.
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​Try a new, creative endeavor or return to one for new perspectives: I’ve taken so many photos over the past years. Going back through them gets me to think of the stories within the frame, before the frame, and after. And I’m dancing more—in the kitchen when cooking or on the porch.
Being in nature: For me, being in nature is a must. Walk the same path every day and look small changes.
If you have a particular practice which gets you in the writing mode after a break, email me, and I’ll share it in my next newsletter.
In the Spirit of Writing.
Summer
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Let the Form Choose You
Stories arranged by nature need no editing. The text, imagery, and structure are provided for us. But how do we as writers know what form works for our art?
Twyla Tharpe, dancer, choreographer, and writer suggests in her book, The Creative Habit, Learn It and Use It For Life, artists think of form and material functioning together. She suggests asking which form “confines”, “concentrates” or “liberates.”
As a classroom teacher, my students often asked me what form should they choose for their writing— essay, poem, short story, novel, or hybrid? I’d tell them what I felt to be true: Let the form choose you.
So how does that happen? I honestly don’t even know, but I do know some ways in which how this happens for me:
sometimes the lines naturally fall into a pattern
sometimes I see it on the page after the free write or initial drafting
sometimes it feels right- feels right in my body, or even feels right as I look at the page
sometimes I dream about it or sleep on it and the form comes
sometimes the rhythm, imagery or verbs tell the form what to do
and sometimes if the form isn’t working, I take it apart, cut it up line by line, the ending becomes the beginning, the poem becomes prose, the prose becomes a poem, etc!
I’ve also come to realize I cannot have a successful writing when I decide I must write a sonnet and then sit down to try to write one without having the generated material in free writing. Attempting to write in a specific form without thinking of how the subject matter fits the form always ends in frustration. Sometimes it’s only if I let loose my grip a bit that I to see possibilities of feathers next to stones, next to shells, next to smaller pebbles.
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In the Spirit of Writing.
Summer
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