October 30, 2012

Hi writers:

A confession: I am a wretched flyer. I let all of the “shoes off, shampoo bottles visible, throw away your yogurt” rules bother me and make me feel small. And I opt out of walking through the x-ray scanner because it is creepy, not necessary, and because research suggests that the radiation reaches our organs.

This weekend during travel in New York, after I opted for a pat-down, an airline employee tried to persuade me into the machine by saying, “There is a good chance your personal belongings might get stolen while you wait.” I boiled in silent helplessness for a few minutes, got the pat-down, retrieved my (unstolen) belongings, and then decided to write the airline an irritated citizen letter. In that act of articulating my complaint, I thought of one more reason why writing can be a thing of such value.

PROCESS: WRITING FOR CHANGE

This weekend reminded me that writing, or speaking or even language at all, is first about change. If we have everything we need and the world is just as we want it, there is nothing to say except for an occasional “isn’t this nice?” It helps, in the writing process, to remember this. Words are intended to change things.

Try this: In writing dialogue, try only including words in which one character is asking for something – be it respect or a piece of pizza or a kinder world. Think about the hidden “wishes” of words.

FEATURED VENUE: MILK SUGAR

Milk Sugar publishes writing with all sorts of unexpected takes on the universe. The editors say “there are no delusions of grandeur here, just good, solid and creative writing.” They are accepting new work through March.

Submission guidelines here: http://www.milksugarliterature.com/submissions.html

PROMPT

Write a short piece objecting to something. (10min)

October 23, 2012

Hi writers:

I’ve been thinking about writers and waste. A friend of mine who is a great and many-times-published writer throws away half of what she writes. An even-more-published friend throws away two-thirds. Good writers write more than they use. When facing this severe fact, it helps me to remember why we write. We write to remember. To explain. To memorialize somebody. To understand how we feel. To capture beauty. To preserve a memory. To connect with others. We write in order to figure out what we really want to say.

PROCESS: FRESH SLATE

The idea of writing pages and pages before figuring out what we want to say is often referred to by the ugly word “prewriting,” and it is a branch of the even uglier phrase, “killing your darlings.” I prefer to think of these hidden pages as compost: life-matter or mind-matter that recycles itself into new material, new energy, new sentences. For this reason, I always have a “Compost” file for any given project, as well as files titled “Draft 1, 2 etc.” I always begin a new draft as a blank Word document, instead of simply renaming the old document. That way, I can bring in only what is truly necessary and fill the blankness with new writing that is sharper and lovelier than the old.

Try this: If you are stuck on a project in which you already have FAR too much material, try letting go. Think of that material as compost. Start over fresh. Trust that the writing you’ve done will make the new writing better and truer to the ideal (and final) version.

FEATURED VENUE: THE SNOWY EGRET

The Snowy Egret is the oldest independent U.S. journal of nature writing. Their editors look for essays, articles, or stories that focus on “human interaction with the natural world as it is or was rather than as we might imagine or wish it to be.”

Submission guidelines here: http://www.snowyegret.net/primary_pages/submit.html

PROMPT

“_____ , now and then.” [Fill in the blank with any word]. (10min)

October 16, 2012

Hi writers:

I finished reading a powerful book called The Buddha in the Attic that is written in third person plural: we … we … The story follows the emigration of Japanese “picture brides” to the U.S. in the early 1900s, and I was struck by how the book’s voice pulled all of the women together, giving them both individual quirks as well as a shared struggle. I am thinking now about the many dimensions a writing voice can take, outside “I,” “he/she,” and even the less common “you.”

PROCESS: A GROUP PORTRAIT

Good advice to all writers who are creating a world for readers to live in: consider the environment. How do politics work? What is the population? What would a map of this place look like? Is it warm, cool, rainy? What do the trees look like? Do people live in houses or some other form of dwelling? What foods are likely to be found on people’s plates? Questions such as these give a group portrait of a given world. The main character (if there is one – in the book I just finished there is not) can be at once representative of these group ways of being, as well as his/her own person who questions some of these world’s ways.

Try this: Create a (unpublished) Wikipedia page for the world you are writing, as a way to brainstorm all of the fast-facts that influence the people living and playing out stories there.

FEATURED VENUE: THE GROVE REVIEW

The Grove Review does two things differently than most other literary reviews out there today: it accepts only snail-mail submissions, and it pays a small ($50) honorarium to the writers and artists it publishes. It is based in Portland and publishes work from everywhere.

Submission guidelines here: http://thegrovereview.org/?page_id=11

PROMPT

Find an earlier piece of writing in first person (I) and rewrite it to make it plural (we). (11min)

October 9, 2012

Hi writers,

I’ve been thinking about vulnerability in writing, one of those hard-to-define qualities that is invisible but can make or break a story. In my earliest writing, readers complained that there was not enough vulnerability, I think because I as the writer wasn’t comfortable yet with the idea. But guarded and jaded characters, like guarded and jaded people, are really hard to get to know. And in life, we may take the time and be rewarded … but in reading, if we cannot love or at least understand a character, we are ultimately not going to care. An argument for going a bit soft, maybe?

Elisabeth

PROCESS: CREATING SOFT SPOTS

When describing a character, either real or fictional, it is necessary to reveal what they do not like, do not know, cannot forgive, or cannot reveal in themselves. Good writing places scenes that reveal these vices alongside scenes that reveal virtues.

Try this: Consider making a pros and cons list of your character’s qualities, trying to make them of equal length, and focusing especially on qualities that, depending on the light, are both pros and cons. Jot down notes about ways you might reveal these qualities in action.

FEATURED VENUE: CAMAS

“Deeply inspiring” is what Terry Tempest Williams has called Camas, a literary journal based in the Environmental Studies Graduate Program at the University of Montana. Until October 15, Camas is seeking writing and photography that explores the idea of “work.”

Submission guidelines here: http://umt.edu/camas/Submit.aspx

PROMPT

“They became friends after…” (8min)

October 2, 2012

Hi writers,

A strange story is playing out in my house this week: my beloved, badly behaved corgi, who has lived with me since she was eight weeks old, just moved to a new home on the outskirts of Boise with a corgi breeder and her family of corgis. I had feared a great number of things for the end of my dog’s life. She is not a “good dog” and never really has been. People say that stories are either comedies or tragedies. For me this feels like neither, but it does feel like the right ending – after ten years of living among (and antagonizing) the people who love her, she will return to her roots, a life surrounded by her own breed. So her ending, although I won’t get to witness it, I suspect will be good.

Elisabeth

PROCESS: RIVER TIMELINE

This wonderful technique, which I’ve adapted from Lisa Dale Norton’s book on memoir, has been one of my most helpful writing tools. The how-to is easy: draw a river (or a bendy line) that represents a certain period in your life, labeling each river-bend as a turning point: one of those moments after which things were different. The river-bends (aim for 8-12) become your writing prompts. Written and reshuffled, they form a short memoir.

Try this: Before starting your river timeline, set a beginning point (“this story started when…”) and an ending point (“the questions posed by the beginning were answered when …”)

FEATURED VENUE: 100 WORD STORY

100 Word Story accepts stories that are exactly one hundred words long, a length that requires the writer to question every word. The result is a glittering mosaic of stories.

Submission guidelines here: http://www.100wordstory.org/submit/

PROMPT

“It took years for this habit to start causing trouble.” (10min)