Writing Full Tilt

In 1978, Carolyn Forché published her poem “The Colonel.” Debates ensued about whether this piece of writing is truly a poem or whether it is prose. At first glance it looks like a poem, a thick, narrative poem. On closer inspection, critics decided it is actually prose with full sentences connected by a storyline. So which is it? And was this the moment when the prose poem was born? With a different arrangement on the page, “The Colonel” comfortably rests inside the structure of a prose poem. Here’s the thing. “The Colonel” brings into relief the truth about Art. Yes, there are genres. But there are no electric fences between them. There is, however, electricity that connects them. A poem like “the Colonel” can be shaped as a ‘traditional’ poem or it can be shaped to be a prose poem, justified both left and right, or it can be shaped again with paragraphing and separated dialogue to become flash fiction. The Poetry Foundation defines prose poems as “A prose composition, that, while not broken into verse lines, demonstrates other traits such as symbols, metaphors, and other figures of speech common to poetry.” But these elements are not unique to poetry. Amy Lowell’s “Bath” is a fine example, where we recognize vivid imagery, internal rhymes, and a decided rhythm. Flash fiction is a close cousin to prose poetry, because it is a compressed narrative, relying on poetic elements to deliver a complete story in anywhere from 100 to 1000 words, depending on the publication. Franz Kafka’s “Give It Up!” is a 128-word display of how flash fiction works. These formatting choices are discretionary and cross back and forth among these genres. The question then is what suits the intention of the writer best? What form conveys the energy and the meaning best? What form affects the reader the way the writer wants the reader to be effected? A poem should contain poetic elements. Prose should have a narrative. Prose easily embodies poetic moments, and poetry can hold a story. We writers can experiment with form until we’re satisfied that the shape of our work fits the content. We get to choose.

Upcoming Events

Available for pre-release purchase:

iPg Independent Publishers Group https://www.ipgbook.com/maud—addie-products-9781646030606.php?page_id=21

Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Maud-Addie-Maureen-Buchanan-Jones-ebook/dp/B08C3ZGWV8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3PO45QV97C57U&dchild=1&keywords=maud+%26+addie&qid=1601324587&sprefix=maud+%26%2Caps%2C156&sr=8-1

Join Maud & Addie on Instagram: maud.addie
and
Facebook: Writing Full Tilt

Online Weekly Workshops:

Thursday Evenings, 6:30 – 9:30 p.m., ten weeks beginning December 3, 2020, ending February 18, 2021. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/ $450

Friday Mornings, 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., ten weeks beginning December 4, 2020, ending February 19, 2021. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/ $450

Monday Evenings, 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m., eight weeks beginning November 9, 2020, ending January 18, 2021. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/ $320

Tuesday Mornings, 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., eight weeks beginning November 10, 2020, ending January 19, 2021. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/ $360

Prompt Photo

Discipline is a tricky word for artists. It is for me, at least. As a noun, there’s the larger, inclusive meaning: a branch of knowledge and there’s also the practice of training oneself or another to obey rules. Sometimes a method of correction for disobedience is understood as part of the definition. As a verb, it means to train oneself or another. For a writer, discipline can mean sticking to one project until it’s completed or focusing entirely on one genre. This approach offers a continuing and deepening understanding of the way we want to express ourselves and can continue to narrow, so that writing becomes exclusively poetry which becomes only sonnets. There is merit to immersing oneself in this way. We live inside a form and the world is transformed and understood within the guidance of this sensibility. But there is a limitation as well. What if what we want to say is not best suited to the form we have chosen? Or it has been imposed upon us through work or culture? Inside this dilemma can live the seeds of writer’s block. Human nature likes resistance, and it likes an escape hatch. It also likes variety as the cliché says. When inspired to write, the form often finds its voice along with what is being said. How do we know if a piece of writing is best suited to a sestina, flash fiction, or a scene in a novel? If we choose the form first, does the meaning bend to fit the structure? These are questions that writers ask before, during and after they write. If applying strict discipline, the parameters are set and creativity partners with logic. A powerful duo. But there is also an argument to be made for letting ourselves wander into our writing, finding what wants to be written and following it. Much like a dog detecting enticing scents full of important information about what else is out there in the wild woods. Being let loose is a wonderful cure for being stymied in a project. The joy of writing anything that comes can actually help develop and finish the Big Project rather than create a diversion from it. The cross pollination of poetry and prose is also fertile ground for developing both disciplines. How many incredibly poetic lines have you discovered in a novel? How many vivid scenes have played out before you as you read a poem? The fabulous thing about art is that there are no real borders between genres, and letting ourselves write through those filmy scrims is exciting. Of course there comes a time when the chapbook or the novel needs to be made presentable for an audience of more than one. Then discipline and focus are the right companions. At the outset, and for a goodly length of any creative endeavor, letting the mind meander enriches expression. For me, it’s much like when I was a kid. I had school clothes and play clothes. I liked them both and knew what each meant. In play clothes I explored and discovered what I chose. In school clothes I attended to and learned what was expected of me. Off leash or tight reins. Each serves the writer when we allow ourselves the freedom to choose.

Upcoming Events

Available for pre-release purchase:

iPg Independent Publishers Group https://www.ipgbook.com/maud—addie-products-9781646030606.php?page_id=21

Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Maud-Addie-Maureen-Buchanan-Jones-ebook/dp/B08C3ZGWV8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3PO45QV97C57U&dchild=1&keywords=maud+%26+addie&qid=1601324587&sprefix=maud+%26%2Caps%2C156&sr=8-1

Join Maud & Addie on Instagram: maud.addie
and
Facebook: Writing Full Tilt

Online Weekly Workshops:

Thursday Evenings, ten weeks beginning September 17, 2020 https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

Friday Mornings, ten weeks beginning September 18, 2020, https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

Monday Evenings ten weeks beginning September 14, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/

Prompt Photo

                        for Pat Schneider  6/1/34 – 8/10/20

Hot cornbread in cold milk.

Singing all the way home from Chicopee.

The way she said Missouri and diabetes.

Her long legs and the sweep of her skirt.

Hands steepled before her mouth.

The private shorthand catching the exact words.

Index cards.

Stones like temples.

Elizabeth’s pen.

Everyone remembers the brownies, the smell as they enter the hall. That front hall, the liminal space of dreams before finding a place in the circle. Dreaming came fast or hard or strange or a thousand other ways.

It’s always like that with dreams.

She told me once—if you lose your words, lose your place, or your way, close your eyes, breathe gently, relax, let your mind wander. It will come back to you. All of it. All of what you need. It hasn’t disappeared. This story is still yours, all the words.

She was right. She was talking about a notebook of writing I had lost. I was distressed. I am distressed again, having lost the words we said to each other, the humanness we shared until we no longer could.

I close my eyes, breathe, and enter the hallway, the coat pegs on the right, the deacon’s bench on the left, the stairs just there, and ahead the room of writing, the kitchen beyond, each in light and shadow. In the middle ground, the chair, its turtle cushion, where she sat, placed her feet. The low side cabinet against the wall where she set her pad of paper and her pen. This room where she said to us: Let’s write. Take what comes.

We dreamt with her, every one of us—each in our own wandering and creations. She, dreaming with us, the hum of her pen nudging us forward.

We were welcomed once or a hundred times into that hallway. And there’s no reason now to turn back. We are in; we are held. It will always be so. We shape our own hallways and rooms and chairs. We welcome others and others beyond them.

She is easing back.

Hot cornbread and cold milk.

Later, a glass of diet Dr. Pepper on the porch swing.

If you dream long enough,

there’s a cave in Missouri,

a convent in County Cork,

a small waterfall in Massachusetts;

a room with your chair,

and a suitcase full of magic

for always.

Upcoming Events

Release Date: May 6, 2021: Maud & Addie, a middle-grade novel. In 1910, sisters, Addie and Maud Campbell are swept out to sea off the coast of Nova Scotia. With a half-filled picnic hamper, a carriage blanket and their wits, they survive the North Atlantic and landfall on a deserted island. As castaways, their resilience, courage and inventiveness are tested.

Join Maud & Addie on Instagram: maud.addie
and
Facebook: Writing Full Tilt

BREATHING WHILE BLACK Virtual Exhibit at Augusta Savage Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Tuesday September 1, 2020 6:00 p.m. Terry Jenoure, Director http://www.fineartscenter.com/augusta

Third Eye on the Prize Poetry by Debra Sansone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4fGFprcLj8

Prompt Photo

We take workshops, classes, read books, go to seminars and lectures. We follow the gurus of the writing world who tell us the inside scoop on how to best get our ideas and images on the page. We want to believe in the magic. Or we want the guaranteed formula. The gurus offer different approaches, a variety of attitudes, a multitude of tricks. And they are all correct. Because what they offer works for them. And it’s likely it will work for us too. And/Or not all of it will work for us. But we won’t know for sure until we try, and it’s while experimenting that the genius happens. Does getting up at 4:00 a.m. light up your page? Does mapping out your novel first with deep backstory and psychological knowledge of your characters? Does winging it on the fly? Do you like setting aside weeks or do you thrive in short bursts? Is it better for you to pull over on the side of the road and burn up a few pages? What pens do you like? What sized notebook or position for your laptop? Is it chocolate, spicy potato chips or a chipotle sandwich that sustains you? Outside or inside? By a window or in a closet? Noise cancelling headphones or heavy metal blasting? You see? The gurus have it right because they have tried it all and found the writing process that sustains them. And here’s the real insider info: No one has just one process. Switching it up because of time constraints, mood, energy level, the genre or the weather is a real response to getting ourselves to our page. We get to decide. We are real writers with our own process that adapts, evolves, and stays true to us. Try everything on and and the magic carpet will reveal itself.

Upcoming Events

Release Date: May 6, 2021: Maud & Addie, a middle-grade novel. In 1910, sisters, Addie and Maud Campbell are swept out to sea off the coast of Nova Scotia. With a half-filled picnic hamper, a carriage blanket and their wits, they survive the North Atlantic and landfall on a deserted island. As castaways, their resilience, courage and inventiveness are tested.

Join Maud & Addie on Instagram: maud.addie
and
Facebook: Writing Full Tilt

Online Weekly Workshops:

Thursday Evenings, ten weeks beginning September 17, 2020 https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

Friday Mornings, ten weeks beginning September 18, 2020, https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

Monday Evenings ten weeks beginning September 14, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/

BREATHING WHILE BLACK Virtual Exhibit at Augusta Savage Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Fall 2020. Terry Jenoure, Director http://www.fineartscenter.com/augusta

Third Eye on the Prize Poetry by Debra Sansone. Pre-publication order through August 14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4fGFprcLj8

Prompt Photo

Black voices have always unequivocally articulated how white people benefit from being white. Black voices have taught me to listen, to take responsibility for my own level of awareness and to continue to educate myself about racial inequity. In this newsletter I invite you to pay attention to the powerful and varied voices of these and other Black writers and leaders. Begin to ask and don’t stop asking: “What will I do to end white privilege?” Find a sustainable, to-the-end-of-time, way to participate, contribute and begin to make reparations.

I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.  Harriet Tubman

Writers & Leaders

Kwame Dawes  Poet and Novelist  Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and editor-in-chief of Pairie Schooner. http://kwamedawes.com/

Sonia Sanchez  Poet. Instrumental in introducing black-studies courses into university curricula.  https://soniasanchez.net/

Angelina Weld Grimké  Essayist, Playwright, Fiction writer. Pivotal figure of the Harlem Renaissance. First African-American woman to write a publicly performed play.  https://poets.org/poet/angelina-weld-grimke

Saeed Jones Poet: Prelude to Bruise. BuzzFeed editor, created a literary journal and a $12,000 fellowship for emerging writers. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/saeed-jones

Claudia Rankine  Poet: An American Lyric. 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award. Frederick Iseman Profesor Poetry at Yale University. Founded a multi-disciplinary collaboration called the Racial Imaginary Institute. http://claudiarankine.com/

Tracy K. Smith  Poet: The Body’s Question, Duende, and Life on Mars. Poet Laureate of the United States 2017. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tracy-k-smith

Nikki Giovanni  University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, civil rights activist and renowned poet. Black Feeling, Black Talk; Black Judgement, bothconsidered crucial products of the Black Rights Movement. https://nikki-giovanni.com/

Staceyann Chin: Poet. Co-wrote Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam, performs spoken-word poetry and teaches at Brooklyn’s Saint Ann’s School. Won 1999 Chicago People of Color Slam and WORD: The First Slam for Television. @staceyannchin

Aafa Michael Weaver  Poet: Water Song, Spirit Boxing, City of Eternal Spring, The Government of Nature, The Ten Lights of God. Received Pew Fellowship, Fulbright Scholar appointment to Taiwan. Held Alumnae Endowed Chair for 20 years at Simmons College.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/afaa-michael-weave

Terry Jenoure Musician, writer, visual artist and educator. Director Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Consultant for National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace Readers digest Fund, the Ford Foundation and the Connecticut Commission for Arts Tourism.   https://www.terryjenoure.com/

Nikky Finney: Poet: Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry, Head Off & Split, Rice, The World is Round, Sweet Box of Words. John H. Bennett. Jr., Chair in Creative Writing and Southern letters in both the Department of English Language and Literature and the African American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina. https://nikkyfinney.net/about.html

Ntozake Shange  Playwright, Poet, Novelist and more: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/when the Rainbow is Enuf.  Spell No. 7 won an Obie.     https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ntozake-shange

Rachel Cargle Writer, Lecturer, public academic, and founder of The Loveland Foundation.   https://www.rachelcargle.com/   @rachel.cargle

Aja Barber  Writer and sustainability expert.   @ajabarber  https://www.patreon.com › AjaBarber

Alicia Garza  Writer, public speaker, Special Projects Director for National Domestic Workers Alliance, and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter network.  https://aliciagarza.com/  @chasinggarza

Ijeoma Oluo  Speaker and author of So You Want to Talk About Race.  http://www.ijeomaoluo.com/  @ijeomaoluo

Monique Melton  Anti-racism educator, author, speaker, and host of the Shine Brighter Together podcast.  https://www.moniquemelton.com/  @moemotivate

Tamika Mallory  Co-president of the Women’s March movement, Co-founder of Until Freedom, and a champion for social justice. https://www.kepplerspeakers.com/speakers/tamika-mallory  @tamikadmallory

Megan Torres  Licensed social worker, writer, therapist, and racial justice advocate.  https://megantorres.me/  @trustmeimasocialworker

Brittany Packnett Cunningham  Activist, writer, educator, co-host of Pod: Save the People and co-founder of Campaign Zero.  https://brittanypacknett.com/  @mspackyetti

Austin Channing Brown  Writer, speaker, producer, and author of I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. http://austinchanning.com/  @austinchanning 

Autumn Gupta and Bryanna Wallace  Justice in June Become Better Allies:  https://justiceinjune.org/

In these weeks full of words like isolation, quarantine, flattening curves, N95 masks, social distancing and ventilators, it can be hard to find our own words. We miss our free-range poetry, and our independently-minded characters. We can feel trapped both in our homes and in our heads. Struggling with what to say seems appropriate right now. Our brains and hearts are overwhelmed. Who are we to play in our art when everything and everyone hurts? But this is the function of Art. The inspirational gold awaits at any moment when we bring ourselves to the page, and Take What Comes. Don’t dodge what is right in front of you. This is the moment we are given. Chronicle it, explore it, describe it, say it. I learned this lesson from my grandmother, Anna Elizabeth Jones. Her younger sister, Loretta, died in 1918 from the Spanish flu. Knowing my grandmother, I also know that Loretta shared her older sister’s humor and grit. At 19, she must have been an incredible young woman. Anna was one of the first telephone operators in New York City. She visited her sister in the hospital on her lunch hour and told her that she would be back that evening to visit again. Anna returned at 6:00 p.m. only to be told that in the intervening hours, Loretta had died. I have my grandmother’s eyes as she talked to me. I was a child and did not know to ask more questions. I did not want to cause my grandmother pain by wanting more details. But even in its brevity, I have this family story, and I know something of what my family experienced and what New York experienced at that time. I can see my grandmother sitting in a hospital hallway; I can hear the sound of traffic on the street below; I can feel my grandmother’s hand as she holds mine as she remembers. We live in history every moment. But some moments are underscored by triumph or catastrophe. Both are agents of profound change. Whether writing from memory or imagination, your writing will articulate this moment in poetry or prose. Take what comes, put your fears, your second-by-second strategies, the statistics, the vocabulary, the images, the conversations, the artifacts into your writing. Allow your writing to be where you are, where the world is. Escaping into writing is right too, both kinds of writing help us find balance. It’s also right to grapple and process. I take heart from my grandmother’s willingness to share her sister with me. I heard sorrow, but I also heard courage and love.

Upcoming Events

Join Maud & Addie on Instagram: maud.addie
and
Facebook: Writing Full Tilt

All Workshops Are Now Online

Online Weekly Workshops Amherst, Massachusetts: Thursday Evenings & Friday Mornings, seven weeks beginning July 2 & 3, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

Online Weekly Workshops: Monday Evenings six weeks beginning July 13, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/

Two-Day, Online Craft Seminars: Each seminar consists of four, 3-hour sessions focussed on elements of craft specific to a genre. Writing generated through prompts, followed by reading, discussion and examination of how choices shape effect. Give yourself a stay-at-home writing retreat! Cost: $200 for each seminar Poetry July 5 & 6 Memoir August 9 & 10 Fiction August 11 & 12

August Retreat Hawley, Massachusetts: Postponed to 2021 Four days of writing bliss. The setting is perfect for allowing your writing to emerge! https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Writing Retreat in Malibu California February 22 – 25 2021: Serra Retreat Center overlooking Malibu Bay with tiled fountains, and hidden gardens offer the perfect winter getaway and a place to wander into your writing. All writers welcome, no matter the genre or experience level. There’s still room for you! https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Prompt Photo

I hope you and all those you love are safe and well. A friend reminded me how lucky I am to have clean, running water, electricity, a phone and a computer, to have enough food and a sturdy roof over my head. I am wealthy beyond my needs. We talked about our fears and the ways we can spin into panic. What If often looms larger than we can manage. The counterbalance to what if is right now. Right now, I am fine. Right now, I can breathe in and out and look around. And, if I choose, I can move What If into my writing. From memory, what if something small was changed in a family story? What if someone said something different, or if I had known what I know now? What if it had rained that day? Or what if I had loved canned peas? As writers we can move in time and we can revisit past moments. We can also translate memory into fiction. From imagination, what if a character can’t cross a street? What if two characters learn something about each other they didn’t want to know? What if the landscape in which a story takes place offers a surprise? What if the potatoes for dinner have already sprouted? As writers we have the power to exist in other times and places, and within other beings. We can transform our What Ifs in infinite ways. Take this time to indulge this ability. Pay attention to the changes around you, use these in your writing. Chronicle your experiences, your daydreamings, and, yes, your fears and hopes. What we writers do best is channel our emotions into poems, stories, essays, novels, epics, and songs. Give yourself this medium to stay balanced, and share what you have written. We writers can help one another by listening. Letting someone know they have been heard is one of the most healing acts one human can give another. Find a writing partner, or two, or ten. Hear each other’s voices from the page. Let someone hear yours. The What Ifs will be turned into Art.

Upcoming Events

Join Maud & Addie on Instagram: maud.addie
and
Facebook: Writing Full Tilt

All Workshops Are Now Online

Weekly Workshops Amherst, Massachusetts: Thursday Evenings & Friday Mornings, ten weeks beginning December March 5 & 6, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

Online Weekly Workshops: Monday Evenings eight weeks beginning March 16, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/

August Retreat Hawley, Massachusetts: August 9 – 12, 2020 Four days of writing bliss. The setting is perfect for allowing your writing to emerge! https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Writing Retreat in Malibu California February 22 – 25 2021: Serra Retreat Center overlooking Malibu Bay with tiled fountains, and hidden gardens offer the perfect winter getaway and a place to wander into your writing. All writers welcome, no matter the genre or experience level. There’s still room for you! https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Prompt Photo

You have written and written, edited and revised. You want to share your work with a larger audience. You want to send your work OUT! But where? Exactly how does this process work? When you begin to look at the possibilities the choices seem infinite. With online journals proliferating at light speed, the options can flatten any hopeful writer. Don’t be daunted, don’t despair. Here are a couple of strategies that will help you on your way.

To scale back the vast and random universe, look for calls for submissions to anthologies dedicated to a particular subject. Some examples: anthologies can be collections of writings about mountain climbing, surviving cancer, adoption, gardening, or climate awareness. Poets & Writers, a monthly publication, has a classified section that lists contests and calls for submissions that often include anthologies. It’s an excellent source of reputable publications that will treat your work with respect

Another great source for where to publish your work is Submittable, which is not a journal but a newsletter and a service. The monthly newsletter offers listings of journals open for contests and regular submissions. The service allows you to send your work to many journals through Submittable, which then keeps track of work as it goes through the editorial process.

Duotrope is another excellent option. Like Submittable, it has up-to-date listings of publications, publishers, and agents, and tracks the journey your writing makes. Almost every journal asks for a small fee to accompany a submission. These fees keep small presses alive and are tax deductible if you earn your living through writing.

Spend some time looking at the journals you find through these listings. If you like what you find, then this is likely a good match. If you don’t, it’s not because the journal isn’t worthwhile, it simply has a different aesthetic than you. Move on. Once you’ve sent off your work, let it go; the editors are probably volunteers and it will take time before they focus on your writing and make a decision. Send your work to two or three journals at the same time. If one of them decides to publish something of yours, be polite and let the other journals know that you are withdrawing your work from their consideration.

Finally, if your work does not receive the desired, much anticipated Yes, take heart. Now you know the array of possibilities waiting for you. Send yourself out. Again. Again. Yes will arrive.

Upcoming Events

Join Maud & Addie on Instagram: maud.addie
and
Facebook: Writing Full Tilt

Weekly Workshops Amherst, Massachusetts: Thursday Evenings & Friday Mornings, ten weeks beginning December March 5 & 6, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

Online Weekly Workshops: Monday Evenings eight weeks beginning March 16, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/

August Retreat Hawley, Massachusetts: August 9 – 12, 2020 Four days of writing bliss. The setting is perfect for allowing your writing to emerge! https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Writing Retreat in Malibu California February 22 – 25 2021: Serra Retreat Center overlooking Malibu Bay with tiled fountains, and hidden gardens offer the perfect winter getaway and a place to wander into your writing. All writers welcome, no matter the genre or experience level. There’s still room for you! https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Prompt Photo

Writers, in fact all artists and designers, think and talk about form. What is the correct form for any piece of writing? If you were called to build a raft such that it could be sent down a river and have that raft arrive intact so that a person at another place along the river could catch the raft and use it with confidence, what kind of raft would you build? Perhaps you would want to know something about the river: how deep, fast, rocky, cold. Perhaps you would want to know what materials are available for building the raft: type of wood, strapping, caulking, fabric for a sail, paddles. Perhaps you would want to know what tools are available for constructing the raft: saw, hammer, screwdriver, rope. But maybe first, you would want to know why you are building the raft and who you hope will be downstream. You want your raft to float, sustain, navigate, survive and carry your intentions and do the same for the person waiting on shore as the raft arrives. Maybe that’s like writing. But maybe it isn’t. Maybe the purpose of the raft is to float us, to carry our emotions, experience, and imagination so that we don’t drown. And maybe how we create the raft works both ways. Deciding which comes first, function or form, is up to us. But often, just like with building a raft, the purpose comes first. What do we need to say? How we say it may come spontaneously. And that first urgent expression may carry all the energy and clarity in a perfect form. But it’s also possible that our first draft needs a sturdier, more careful raft. We need to shape our need into something that will float downstream and arrive at another’s riverbank. Always, in choosing form, the question is how much the raft is only about form and how much of the original intent is preserved. It’s a delicate dance that calls upon our craft and our understanding of what we want to say. Form can not only contain and sustain, but it can illuminate our meaning. Form can also submerge our meaning if we let it overtake our words. The river of our genius deserves balance and motion, and the raft should be a worthy conveyance.

Upcoming Events

Writing Retreat in Malibu California February 3 – 6 2020: Serra Retreat Center overlooking Malibu Bay with tiled fountains, and hidden gardens offer the perfect winter getaway and a place to wander into your writing. All writers welcome, no matter the genre or experience level. There’s still room for you! https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Online Weekly Workshops: Monday Evenings eight weeks beginning March 16, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/

Weekly Workshops Amherst, Massachusetts: Thursday Evenings & Friday Mornings, ten weeks beginning December March 5 & 6, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

August Retreat Hawley, Massachusetts: August 9 – 12, 2020 Four days of writing bliss. The setting is perfect for allowing your writing to emerge! https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Prompt Photo

You deserve a perfect star with one perfect seed. You deserve pods slyly open, an embroidered star with eight radiating points. You deserve a weathered husk, bark hard and mottled brown. You deserve a gnarled star in the palm of your hand, a star with creased pockets holding tired tears and a smooth star to loosen worry. You deserve a star of pointed shoes for every direction, a rasping star for staying home. You deserve a star for being worn down and holding tight, for being your own magi and the wisdom of figuring it out. You deserve a perfect fallen star, the glow gone, the wonder almost burned away, the aura shrunk. You deserve the star that pulls you in, makes you squint and hunch over. The one with a scent of play and true reckoning.

Bring your stars down to earth. Wish on every one: Eight-pointed arachnid stars; Chrome hubcap stars; Soldered circuit board stars; Laced-up grommet stars; Licorice stars; Polished fork stars; Straight pin stars; Seed pod stars. Are you wishing? Are you matching your wish to the right star? A stop sign star grants one quarter minute of inhale and release. A shopping cart star gives a half aisle of gliding back to silly. A zipper star, well, that’s just up and down fulfillment. A fountain pen star helps you splash it out. And a garden hose star hears every wish for starting over. A whisper star in the ear transports you, and the slipper star makes your safest wish come true.

Happy New Year with more gratitude than there are stars!

Upcoming Events

Writing Retreat in Malibu California February 3 – 6 2020

Serra Retreat Center overlooking Malibu Bay with tiled fountains, and hidden gardens offer the perfect winter getaway and a place to wander into your writing. All writers welcome, no matter the genre or experience level. Please join me this February! https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Online Weekly Workshops: Monday Evenings eight weeks beginning January 6, 2020. https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/

Weekly Workshops Amherst, Massachusetts: Thursday Evenings & Friday Mornings, ten weeks beginning December 5 & 6, 2019 https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

August Retreat Hawley, Massachusetts: August 9 – 12, 2020 Four days of writing bliss. The setting is perfect for allowing your writing to emerge! https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Prompt Photo