The primary relationship between my poetry and fiction is that I wrote both of them. And there have been times when I have published the exact same piece as poetry and as fiction, so there is definitely a blur.
— Stuart Ross
What I want to do in my workshops — and my mentoring — is to expand the possibilities for writers I’m working with: introduce them to new writers and works and ideas and writing strategies, shake them out of their habits and assumptions and complacencies. I want to introduce them to new experiences, help to expand their palettes, dare them to do something in their writing that they are resistant to or uncomfortable with. I like when they write something and say, “Holy shit, did I write that?”
— Stuart Ross
I don’t see my writing as a way to discover myself, but instead as a way to explore my interests, to amuse myself, to connect in some way to people outside of myself (however few those people will be), and hopefully provide some amusement for them, or get them to think in ways they find interesting.
— Stuart Ross
This was the 10th masterclass, and probably my favorite class of all of them. It was run by Stuart Ross, who is a poet and author, and actually lives in my small town. He may have even been part of my poetry group at one time, but that would have been many years ago. Anyway, we did more writing in this masterclass than in any of the other classes, and it was fun!
First, he had us use “I remember” to start writing a list. An author by the name of Joe Brainard wrote an entire book of things he remembered – it’s called, I Remember, and is available in both tree and e formats.
I don’t think we were required to write them in a linear format, but mine was, harking back to my childhood. I’m not sharing the whole thing because it’s too long, but I’ll give you the gist of it because it’s pertinent to the next part. I “remembered” when I was little and our cat killed the canary that used to belong to my grandfather. This was back when we had a milkman and a breadman come to our door, and I remembered my mother yelling at one of them for letting the cat out. We never saw the cat again. Then my sister told me my dad had buried Rickie (the canary) in the big communal sandbox and I naturally started digging in it to look for him.
The next thing he had us doing was to take one “I remember” and expand on it, but in the present tense. I don’t care for writing in the present tense so I don’t usually, but I did for this exercise.
You go into the kitchen looking for a snack and see the empty bird cage. The family cat, Fluffy, killed Rickie, the canary that had come from your grandfather’s house. You mope around, trying to figure out where Rickie had gone (you’re only 4). Finally, your sister tells you that he’s dead, and that your father buried him in the sandbox. You get the big spoon from the drawer in the kitchen and go out to the sandbox in the middle of the greenspace and begin to dig.
Now I can’t be 100% sure of the next exercise, because I didn’t jot down, just the results. I think this is one where we wrote a line on a page, then exchanged pages with several different people, and continued writing about someone else’s first line. Mine was in the form of a poem (I don’t know if that’s what we were supposed to do or not).
“When I do grow up”
I’m going to stop being confused
I am going to have all the answers to life’s questions
and I’m going to know what my path is
instead of floundering around
like I’m doing now.
When I do grow up
I’m going to travel
to all the places I dream of.
I’m going to immerse myself in other cultures
and come away stronger
better.
When I do grow up
I’m going to have it all.
Dream big, right?
For the next exercise, he had us listen to a couple of poems he wrote, and while we did so, we were to pluck out any words or phrases that jumped out at us, add some words of our own, and create something of our own.
Paper bags, skating in the wind.
The night sky filled with stars
like flashbulbs popping.
Things are getting out of hand as
a great, horizontal wind
drifted over the horizon,
a flock of balloons
fleeing before it.
The sound of a piano
spirals to the horizon.
And our final exercise was to write down a couple of words, pass the paper to your neighbor and they’d write the next couple, then back to you, etc. This was kind of fun, and made for some hilarious results. Ours wasn’t one of them. LOL
Stuart had a few other suggestions for getting unstuck in your writing. There’s a site called UbuWeb and one called Pennysound where you can apparently go to hear poetry spoken aloud, and try to find inspiration from someone else’s work.
For inspiration, watch experimental films without the sound on. Listen to poetry in foreign languages, it’s all about the rhythm and not the words. Take a story, pick the seventh word, and replace it with a random word and make a new story.
And the two I’m itching to try, take a short story of your own and go to Google translate. Translate it into a different language. Then translate that version into a different language. Do that six times to see what you end up with.
Finally, take two 1-page stories. Print them out. Tear the pages in half vertically and paste the opposite sides of the stories together to make a whole new story (or two).
I really hope Mr. Ross is participating in Writersfest next year – I can’t wait to see what he comes up with!
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
WORDAGE REPORT
I’d say this was a pretty good week, writing wise, especially when you add in my NaNo words, which I am not including in my wordage totals because I feel that it’s not a regular thing, just a one month a year thing, and that’s going to throw my whole word count off.
My best day of writing took place in my office, after I evicted the kittens. This was after I spent two hours moving plants and various other stuff off the window ledge and the bookcase under it, and shelved the books and blank journals that were stacked on my printer. Man, they were being pesky!
Good news! I got the blurb and the tag line done for Magical Mayhem (sort of) and bought the pictures for my cover which my lovely daughter melded together for me. I think she thought I was a little crazy when I told her what I wanted, but if you read the book, you’ll find out just how perfect the cover is.
NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1,805+596+242+813=3,478
DOWN 858 words from last week
Goals For Next Week:
Get my blog posts done on time and stay on track with NaNo.
NANO
Seeing as NaNo didn’t officially start until Tuesday, I’ve only got five days to show for my effort – Tuesday through Saturday. Next week it’ll be Sunday through Saturday.
If you have a NaNo account, you’ll see that I changed the cover of my project. That’s because I went with the SNI (shiny new idea). It’s a strange science fiction/paranormal mash up. But obviously it’s working because I’m right on track with it.
I gotta admit though, I’m not feeling the NaNo buzz this year. I’m getting the words done, but I’m just not feeling that rush of excitement. That being said, I’m enjoying working on something new for a change. It’s been a while since I wrote a whole novel (last year’s NaNo was 30 short stories)
I’m starting with back story. Pages and pages of backstory. At first I figured I was writing it because it was stuff I needed to know, but I probably wasn’t going to keep any of it. However, there’s so much of it that I’ll probably keep at least some of it, albeit in a much abbreviated form.
1415+2097+1526+1677+1694=8,409
Total NaNo words – 8,409
Expected Goal – 8,335
EDITING:
X pages
In going over Magical Mayhem one last time before sending it off for formatting, and aside from finding a few more typos, I found many places where the space between words was missing. I have no idea how this happened. Is it because I saved it to a USB stick? Is it because I was working in two different versions of Word? I have no clue.
I ended up spending a good portion of my Saturday adding the spaces and changing the name of the animals they were riding to something more elvish. For some reason, the “find and replace” didn’t work the way it was supposed to. And also, my even page numbers disappeared. Not the pages, just the numbers.
Goal For Next Week:
No promises on the editing – we’ll see how it goes with NaNo first.
MARKETING:
On suspension until after Christmas
TECH & TRAINING:
I’d still like to figure out Dropbox. At the very least I want to be able to backup to it automatically like I did before Staples got a hold of my laptop. Man, I’m still mad at Staples. Never again! And for extra back up protection, I’d like to unbox my external hard drive and start backing up to it as well.
Goal For Next Week:
Figure out how to set up the automatic back up for Dropbox. Set up external hard drive.
POETRY WEDNESDAY:
I have to confess, I fully intended to just recycle some old poetry posts for this month, but I got the post for the form I shared done on Monday. I did this because I figured I’d be doing well to get my NaNo words in, let alone anything else, so I did it super early.
Goal For Next Week:
Share a new poetry form. Or an old one – we’ll see how NaNo’s going
CRAFTING:
No crafts, not even a thought about crafts, but I have a guild meeting this week so I’ll at least do something there.
Goal For Next Week:
Figure out dragon pillow for granddaughter.
WHAT I’M READING:
I finished reading The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris, by Daisy Wood, and I liked it enough that I bought another book by that author, The Clockmaker’s Wife.
Goal For Next Week:
Spend a little time each day reading.
GOAL REVIEW:
The blog posts were all up, and on time, even my serial installment (which kind of surprised me). And, wonder of wonders, I’m right on track with NaNo. By George, I think she’s finally getting the hang of it!
The extra editing on Magical Mayhem was a little unexpected. I opened it up to make a few extra changes and there were spaces missing between some of the words, which my editor had dinged me on before and I’d already fixed. I have no idea what was going on with that, but it was very frustrating because I had to go over all 300+ pages again.
I really need to get my Dropbox backup set up again, or at the very least the external hard drive. I’m not sure I trust the USB sticks for backup anymore.
I surprised myself by sharing a new form of poetry last week, but I was not surprised to get no crafts done. If I can get myself organized I’d like to get started on some Christmas crafts, but I’ve put the craft room organization on hold for now so who knows.
It seems every year there’s some kind of impediment to my NaNo plans. This year it’s a strike by CUPE, the support staff for the schools. Without them, the schools can’t stay open, which means I get the pleasure of my granddaughter’s company on a (week) daily basis.
Still, that wouldn’t be so bad, except it’s not just a matter of keeping her entertained. The school board has decided to instigate online learning like they did during the pandemic. To make matters worse, she’s in French immersion, so all her instruction is in French. Yikes!
It’s going to be an interesting week ahead!
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