Writing Through the “I”

Poetry empowers the simplest of lives to confront the most extreme sorrows with courage, and motivates the mightiest of offices to humbly heed lessons in compassion.
― Aberjhani

...when a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also are inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was...this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art.
― Orhan Pamuk

Writing poetry is a passion, ignited by thoughts, fueled by ink. A way to travel through another mind, where souvenirs of tears are tucked away inside your soul. Or leave you with smiles for miles, depending on which route you go.
― Renee Dixon

This was the 8th Masterclass at Writersfest, presented by Nancy Jo Cullen, a Canadian poet and short story writer.

The blurb for this claimed we would explore how to transform personal experience into poetry. To my mind, all poetry is personal, whether you’re sharing an experience or not, but still, I thought it would be interesting.

We began with a discussion of fiction and poetry and I didn’t take many notes, other than writing down a cool idea for a collection of verse.

According to Ms. Cullen, poetry is a vehicle to express feelings, thoughts, and ideas. Poetry using the “I” exposes you as a poet. There should always be some kind of arc in a poem.

Think of the poem as having a speaker – ultimately, it should be a performance. Although it takes direction from emotion, you need to distance yourself from that emotion. Instead, look for vivid things to share.

For our first exercise, we were to write five sentences to create a narrative of home, expressed as a poem:

It stands halfway down a hill
beside a busy road
inside is love and comfort
shiny wooden floors
and a kitchen smelling of bread.

Our second exercise was to write about the same home again, but using different images and words:

Use the side door, the front is only for company
The living room, with its huge fireplace, is seldom used for living
Needlepoint covers the seats of the dining room chairs.
There are faces in the wallpaper of the guest room –
A blonde man with a beard, hiding amongst the roses.

We did this again for our third exercise, but expanding the images:

Cleaning is done by invisible elves, but only when we’re not there to see it
Picnic lunches on the sunken, flagstone patio
Climbing the hill through the woods to reach heaven
Sweet peas, rioting along the road and in the fields
Carefree summer days followed by slumbrous nights.

For our final exercise, we were to write a sonnet using the images from the above three exercises:

When I think of home, I see
halfway down a busy hill
the house tucked ‘neath the walnut tree
with flowers on its window sill.

Enter through the kitchen door,
The kitchen smells of bread and spice
All the treats that we adore;
The wooden floors are smooth as ice.

My aunt was never seen to clean
We thought it done by phantom elves
Who trod the flagstone paths unseen
Through blooming sweet peas in the dells.

Home was love and open arms
A haven safe from all the harms.

Okay, so maybe it’s not the best sonnet I ever wrote, but it’s not bad for the limited we had to write in.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

This week I seemed to maintain a steady pace, although I didn’t pull ahead, as I’d hoped to be able to do. I had a couple of social obligations that, while pleasant, were a little time consuming. Actually, now that I think of it, every day except Friday had something else going on. Naturally, the kittens are still proving to be a bit of a distraction.

The hubby was not very receptive to the idea of putting up shelves above the medium sized bookcase I have beside my desk so I can get my plants off the window ledge, so I solved the problem by buying a taller bookcase to replace it. I figured the top two shelves would work great for plants.

The kittens and I had fun putting it together, but they were no help at all when it came to helping me figure out where to put the bookcase it was replacing. I didn’t like it behind my desk, and the only other place it might work meant blocking the window slightly, plus I’d have to unload it to be able to move it.

But then I discovered the new bookcase was not as wide as I thought it was, and the two bookcases just fit side by side against the wall beside my desk. Woot! However, I still didn’t get any extra writing done in my office because now I need to re-arrange bookshelves. LOL

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 2,455+462+298+1,024=4,239
Extra poem – 97 words
Total Words: 4,336 

UP 624 words from last week

Goals For Next Week:
Get my blog posts done on time and stay on track with NaNo.

NANO
Yes, I know NaNo doesn’t start until Tuesday, but I’m adding this category now as part of the NaNo prep.

No words yet, of course, but I have ideas. Lots of ideas. If anyone is my buddy on the NaNo site, you’ll have noticed I broke with tradition and declared my project last week, including putting up a cover. Normally I wait until November first, which is usually when I make up my mind.

And true to form, as soon as I put up the cover, a completely different idea popped into my head and I think it has even more potential – if I can figure out how it ends. It needs a little plotting and I don’t know if I’ll have time for that. If I start it as is, I can probably complete the story but it won’t be pretty.

AND THEN I considered doing another 30 days of flash stories. I had such great success with them last year. And I already have an idea for the first one that I really like. If I’d thought of this idea sooner, I could write more in this vein, but it’ll take some research.

So at this point, what I do for NaNo is anybody’s guess. Including mine. ;-)

EDITING:
16 pages
Finally, I got some serious editing done. But it was for someone else. LOL I had the pleasure of working on the final story in Alex Westhaven’s Death by Veggies series which is due to be released on Halloween.

If you can’t wait that long for your thrills and chills, you can download her story Jack from Amazon for free.

Goal For Next Week:
No promises on the editing – we’ll see how it goes with NaNo first.

MARKETING:
Okay, I think I’m going to suspend the whole marketing thing until the new year. It’s been months since I submitted anything, it just hasn’t been a priority. And with NaNo starting in a couple of days, and then Christmas right after that . . . Yeah, the new year it is.

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. 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:
Last week’s form was a little more complicated than the one from the week before, but it had eight syllable lines, and I like eight syllable lines. :-)

I also wrote a very sad little poem for my poetry group, which met Wednesday night. It was only 97 words, but it still counts.

Goal For Next Week:
Share a new poetry form.

CRAFTING:
I crocheted a dozen bookworms in a variety of colours for the craft sale my stitchery group is taking part of in December. We had a meeting Tuesday morning, and this week I’ll be meeting with the others on the craft sale organizing committee.

I’m not sure how much crafting I’m going to be doing during NaNo, but hopefully I’ll be able to carve out a little time.

Goal For Next Week:
Figure out dragon pillow for granddaughter.

WHAT I’M READING:
Reading? Who has time for reading?

Okay, I did treat myself to a new book when I grocery shopped - The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris, by Daisy Wood, but I’ve only read about half a dozen pages in it. It looks pretty interesting, so hopefully I’ll be able to make time to read more this week.

Goal For Next Week:
Spend a little time each day reading.

GOAL REVIEW:

It was a busy week, I tell you what. But despite that, I still got my blog posts up, and on time, too. And my serial installment actually ran a little long. I had a great time editing that story for Alex Westhaven – she just gets better and better, leaving me with less and less work to do. If only I could have that much enthusiasm for my own editing. LOL

I already mentioned that I’m putting the marketing on hold until the new year, and I’ll probably do the same with tech and training once I get Dropbox set up properly. I’m seriously considering recycling old post for my poetry Wednesdays for the duration of NaNo. Some days the poetry can take a lot of time and I don’t know that I’ll have it to spare.

While I did get my bookworms made, it was a near thing. November would be an optimal time to do Christmas crafts but, you know, NaNo. I can’t believe I did so little reading last week! I think I need to make time for it in the week ahead, because it’s a great way to relax the mind.

It was a busy week, but a good one, and looking back I may not have done any words beyond my blog posts, but I still felt pretty productive.

Here’s to the week ahead!

Writersfest Baby!

When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre.
— Sandra Cisneros

In workshops, writers are often told to read what is being written now, but if that is all you read, you are limiting yourself. You need to get a good overall sense of English literary history, so you can write out of that knowledge.
— Theodora Goss

The writing workshops and programs that are everywhere have encouraged writing. And if that produces more writing, it's also producing more readers of an elevated level. So all in all, a good thing.
— James Salter

After a three year break I’m back at the Kingston Writersfest. Four days of masterclasses and author stage events. Not to mention four days of living in a hotel with a room to myself and not having to cook or clean. ;-)

Once again I got a festival pass, but this year I came for all four days. Well, technically it was five, but there was only one masterclass on Wednesday so while it was included in the package, I didn’t think it was worth the price of another night in the hotel. But I did spring for one of the live stage events – a reading by fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay.

Part of the fun of going to something like this is sharing, so in the next few weeks I’m going to share a few of the things I learned/wrote. We start with Life Lessons: Telling Your Story, presented by Armand Garnet Ruffo. In it we learned how to put more of ourselves in our writing.

“The rawness, the emotional response is what you want to get on the page.”
– William Faulkner

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself, the tension that we have inside us. Memories are chaotic and visual, we remember what we see in snapshots. It is easier to remember trauma, heightened emotions. If you can feel it in the body, you’re on to something.

“Did it move you?” That’s the writing we go back to, that stands the test of time. Emotions and memories are connected, one leads to another. The tension and emotion is more important than the conflict it arose from. This is what we can explore. This tension is what draws the reader in and makes them want to keep reading.

Snapshots of memories are imbued with emotion. If we look at them like a string of pearls, one bleeds into another. It doesn’t need to be smooth and circular, but they’re all connected. With a snapshot you’re focusing on one memory at a time. You write dot by dot instead of all at once.

Everything begins with character, the character tells us to come along for the journey, it’s the driver for the plot. What are we interested in when we read? Character.

Exercise #1 – look through a backwards telescope to see the ring and narrow the focus on a single snapshot. Write as much detail about the snapshot as you can and then see where it leads you. Write it as a stream of consciousness.

The air was chilly, which is why I was wearing my snowsuit – the red one made of quilted nylon with a red pompom on the tip of the hood. There are women’s voices in the background, my mother and her friend Mrs. Carver. This was back in the day when children respected their elders, never calling them by first names or nicknames or honorary names. She was Mrs. Carver, wife of Red Carver, who was my father’s friend. Red and my father were in the army, stationed together here at Camp Borden. The Carvers had children as well, two sons, older than me, as old as my sisters. My closest sister was seven years older than me, making me the baby, or most likely the pest. Mrs. Carver sewed up little stuffed animals for a church bazaar and gave my sister a pink calico pony and me a pink calico dog. I really wanted the pony. Funny, I can remember those pink calico toys but I can’t remember if my mother aldo made anything for the bazaar. While the ladies talked, I toddled about the kitchen. “Be good” and “Don’t touch anything.” Be good was a refrain I’d hear time and again, until it was engraved in my heart. Being good was my default, seared into my soul along with “Good girls do this” or “Good girls don’t do that.” It shaped my life in ways I never realized until I was an adult looking back. “Good girls don’t fly off to foreign lands and take pictures” so I gave up my dream of becoming a photographer and never quite found anything to take its place.

Isolate a couple of snapshots from your memory. Write a detailed paragraph or two about them. Keep the snapshots narrow. What do you see? Grab these images and create something new. Take two of these snapshots and look for the cross-connections.

I invite you to give it a try yourself. What have you got to lose?

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

The good news is I brought the total words up again, the bad news is that it wasn’t extra words, just longer blog posts, same as last week

I’m actually surprised my words were up a bit. I guess the whole “making lists and prioritizing” thing works after all. I had a lot on the go last week, even before I came to Writersfest. And as much as I would have liked to write the installment of the Pond before I left, that didn’t happen, I wrote it here (and was only 10 minutes late posting it).

I have been writing a lot since I’ve been here (today is the last day) but only during the masterclasses (well, and this blog post and Friday’s post). It might have been a different story had I left my new Lynsay Sands book at home. ;-)

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1,859+879+307+805=3,850
Poetry – 65 words (included in blog post)
Total = 3,850

Goals For Next Week:
Increase the words

EDITING:
Finished
I am done, done, done diddly done! Magical Mayhem is done. Now all I need is the cover, blurb, and tag line. Dare I hope that I’m able to have it finished for a Christmas release?

Goal For Next Week:
Dig out An Elemental Spirit and start the edits on that.

MARKETING:
No Marketing. Not even an attempt at marketing. Too much other stuff on the go.

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two flash stories and one poem.

TECH & TRAINING:
Well, no tech, per se. But I have been learning an awful lot here at Writersfest.

Goal For Next Week:
Check out the features of Dropbox.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
The Jisei wasn’t so much of a form as it was a type of poem. But I did write three entirely new examples for it and I’ve never done the Chinese Kanshi form before, so I’d say it’s close enough.

As far as an anthology goes . . . Yeah, again, it was a busy week and I just didn’t have time to get started on it.

Goal For Next Week:
New form to share. Start compiling the anthology

CRAFTING:
This is one of the things that took up so very much of my time early last week. Tuesday I had meeting with my stitchery group and it was time to make good on my promise to deliver items for the Christmas craft sale. What I made wasn’t hard – hand sewn felt stars and my traditional snowmen and penguins – but they were time consuming to make.

And I got to wear my hand embroidered blouse to the stitchery meeting – the ladies were all suitably impressed, which was not why I did it but it was a nice bonus.

And of course, because I don’t have enough to do, I signed up for an upcoming class on making felt poppies, presumably in time for Remembrance Day in November.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on the cancer afghan. Work on pansy pillowcases.

WHAT I’M READING:
The only book I read was After the Bite by Lynsay Sands, and that pretty much took up all my spare time during Friday and Saturday at Writersfest.

The Writersfest organizers had a book store set up and I may have bought one or two or five books by some of the participating authors. Can’t wait to start reading them.

Goal For Next Week:
At least start my list of books so I can update my Goodreads account!

GOAL REVIEW:

The extra words thing is hard to pin down because I although I have been doing quite a bit of writing during my masterclasses, it’s all hand written so it’s difficult to calculate. But I was on time with my posts, or almost on time. I was only 10 minutes late with my serial installment. But again, there were no late nights involved.

Just as well that I don’t have those pesky games on my laptop anymore because I wouldn’t have had time to play them. It was a really busy week, did I mention that?

I got a big chunk of my Christmas crafts done, and delivered, so that was a big weight off my mind. This is something that can be ongoing, but at a less frantic pace. I don’t think I’ll be making any more penguins or snowmen, but the felt stars, and maybe some gingerbread men, are something I can do while watching TV at night.

As much as I’ve enjoyed being here, I’m also looking forward to going home today and this week I can start working in my office.

Happy writing.

Finding the Sweet Spot

Work-life balance means that you have managed to find that sweet spot where you're pushing yourself at work, and then taking time off to recharge.
― Johannes Larsson

Take a break from the stresses of life and use that time to rediscover the important things that matter to you most. We all deserve an anti-stress day to recharge our batteries.
― Dee Waldeck

The sweet spot is about shifting the small gears, the ones that rotate relatively easily. And because all the gears are interlocking, when we tweak a small gear, large gears start to move—effortlessly—as well.
― Christine Carter

Sweet spot can mean many different things to different people. In sports it can mean the maximum result for the minimum effort. In business it can mean finding that one thing you do best that will earn you the most profit. In geology it can be the perfect spot to drill for oil.

For me, the sweet spot is all about time, finding a balance to get all the things done I want to accomplish. I used to think I needed to carve out big blocks to get things done, which is probably why it didn’t work. Got a poem due for the poetry group? A sewing project that needs finishing? Some editing work to do? Well, you’d better make sure you have a clear day for it.

The problem with that is, even when I clear a block of time to do something, that doesn’t guarantee it gets done. And even when it does, that’s all I get done. Case in point this week.

Monday, I spent the day working on some embroidery. That was pretty much all that I did. And at the end of the day I looked back at what I’d done and it didn’t seem like much progress for the amount of time I spent working on it. I spent another day working on a poem. I neglected the several other things that needed doing, and at the end of the day all I had to show for it was a single poem, one that still needs work.

But yesterday I tried something different. I crocheted a few rows on the afghan I’m working on. I worked on the wordage report of this blog post. I read a couple of chapters of a book. I did some stitchery. I did some more reading. I finished the wordage report. And at the end of the day I looked back and I was pretty happy with what I accomplished.

I didn’t finish the afghan, or the book, or even this blog post. But by doing a little bit of all of them I made progress on each of them. And I even had time to check out a local craft sale.

Maybe I didn’t have some great epiphany, but it did occur to me that I’ve been going about things the wrong way. Maybe the answer for me is little blocks instead of big ones.

I think I started to subconsciously realize this when I ditched the “marketing Monday” and “techno Tuesday.” Instead of spending an entire day at those things (and not getting anything accomplished) I decided to spread them out over the week.

The other benefit of working in shorter blocks of time is that I’ll get more variety to my day. I won’t get burned out on a project, like I often do when I go to town on a craft.

Now I’m not saying this will work for everything. NaNoWriMo, for instance, will require bigger blocks of time. And when I go on a cleaning/organizing binge, that’s one of those things that’s best done all at once and as quickly as possible before I run out of steam. But for I think it will work for day to day things, and I’ll be left with that sense of satisfaction at the end of the day.

One step closer to getting back on track.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

Had a few extra words, in the form of an extra poem, but that was all. My over all word count was up though, but all that means is I was a little wordier on my blog posts.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1,435+727+271+731=3,164
Poetry – 125 (included in blog post) + 215

Total words: 3,379

Goals For Next Week:
Try and add in some extra words to that total.

EDITING:
21 pages
Slowing down a little, but any progress is good progress, right?

Goal For Next Week:
Keep working on Magickal Mayhem.

MARKETING:
*sigh* No Marketing. Once again it just doesn’t seem to be a priority with me.

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two flash stories and one poem.

TECH & TRAINING:
Yikes! No Tech or Training. I don’t know what the heck I was doing with all my time, but it certainly wasn’t learning anything new.

Goal For Next Week:
Learn something new.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
Explored the French Cinquain form and, seeing as it’s a somewhat short form, wrote three separate poems using three separate rhyme schemes as examples.

The monthly gathering of my poetry group was Wednesday – this month’s poetry prompt was “message in a bottle.” My poem was longer than I expected, and I rather like it, but when reading it out loud I kept expecting it to rhyme and it was (to me) a bit jarring when it didn’t. So I’ll need to fix that. Meanwhile, to make up for the poem not being quite finished, I printed it on parchment and got some glass bottles from the dollar store to put them in – messages in bottles, as it were.

Goal For Next Week:
Fix bottle poem and find a new form to share.

CRAFTING:
I took a day for stitching and now have four out of six pansies finished on the pillowcase. Slow going or what? There’s a border above and below the pansies and I have no idea what colours I’m going to use on that, and I’m going to have to figure out how to restamp a couple of sections of just that border where the first application was too faint to see.

I did not get the sewing machine set up and working again, so I did not get my skirt and blouse finished, although I did find another dress to cannibalize for another skirt. I did finally pull out my crocheting so I have it handy to work on in the evenings while watching T.V. and I came up with the brilliant idea that I could knit/crochet a couple of sweaters to also go with the skirt I’m working on so I can get some use out of it over the winter as well.

And then I down-loaded the instructions for a “huswife,” which is a small sewing kit that you can roll up and take with you – kind of like a needlebook, but I think it would be even handier. And I printed off instructions for a thread-catcher, which seems easy enough, just time consuming. So many projects, so little time!

Goal For Next Week:
Keep working on the pillowcase. Work on the cancer afghan. Get the sewing machine working and finish my skirt and blouse.

WHAT I’M READING:
Still haven’t updated my Goodreads account – the longer I put it off, the worse it’ll be but I just can’t seem to bring myself to do it. Maybe I should start by making a list of the books I’ve read since my last update, although it’s been so long for most of them that I’ll have to guess at the dates.

I went back to reading The Lost Girl Found. by Maisey Yates, but truthfully I didn’t spend a lot of time reading last week because I’m only about a third of the way through it. I’m enjoying it though.

Goal For Next Week:
Suck it up and update my Goodreads account!

GOAL REVIEW:

While I didn’t get any extra words in, except for that one poem, I still felt I did pretty good on my goals last week. I’m still a bit of an all or nothing kind of gal – spend a whole day working on my stitchery, spent another whole day working on my poetry – so I need to work on that a bit.

No tech or training, but also not as much time wasted on mindless games. Still haven’t tackled the shredding, but I was in the office to do my editing.

Gardening-wise, I should really take a picture to show how pathetic my garden is. I picked cucumbers off the fence (my neighbor told me too) and the green beans on our side of the same fence. I also picked my green beans, but there wasn't nearly as many of them.

I have a plan to make the spare bedroom more craft friendly. It won’t be a complete craft room, not with the bed for guests in it, and it’s going to be a long, convoluted project worthy of a blog post in itself some day when (if) I finish it. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it. :-D

Happy writing.