Category Archives: writing process

Immigrants, Centos, and Celebrations

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Last night I read at the annual 30 Poems in November reading, an annual event where each writer who participated in the fundraiser is asked to read one poem. Meanwhile, I’ve been overwhelmed by my writing/book-marketing to-do list, at the top of which is wrestling these poems to have something to send to donors by the end of the month, and continuing to spread the word about Immigrants through my web of connected networks while taking the first dips into investigating blogs, podcasts, social media sites, etc. where I don’t have a personal connection. (NOTE: Any suggestions are welcome!!!)

Most moving at last night’s reading was hearing from three of the students at the Center for New Americans who shared heart-felt writing in both English and their native languages, as well as their deep gratitude for the hard-working teachers at CNA who are helping them build their new lives.

As the negative rhetoric around immigrants starts to build again, with Republicans in Congress demanding changes in immigration policy in exchange for aid to the Ukraine that would make it even harder for people threatened by violence to escape to the safety of our country, I’m remembering a writing workshop I co-led for women in the border camp. We introduced the beautiful picture book, Somos Como Los Nubes (We Are Like the Clouds) by Salvadoran poet, Jose Argueta, which talks about the hopes and dreams of Central American children walking thousands of miles in search of safety.

Then we asked the women to write or draw their response to the book. One woman sat and started to cry. “I can’t write,” she told me. Having heard this many times from leading writing workshops for most of my adult life, I mustered up my Spanish to give her a pep talk on writers’ block. But she wasn’t talking about writers’ block. She was talking about illiteracy. I felt so embarrassed as I asked a more fluent Spanish speaker to act as her scribe, but recognized that my embarrassment was nothing compared to hers. And when it was time for her to share, her story, like every story we heard that day about kidnapping, lost livelihoods, rape, threatened or dead children broke our hearts.

While only one of the stories in Immigrants is about the border, I wrote the book to showcase all the ways that immigrants interface in our lives. While some of the stories are more political than others, in all of them, the human story takes center stage. As I worry about all the ways the U.S. is becoming less safe, it feels like an impossible nightmare to think about leaving my home to go somewhere strange and potentially unwelcoming, especially today as the winter sun is slicing a comforting wedge of light through my large porch windows. Yet, that’s what the immigrants coming to this country did–an act of incredible bravery to leave everything you know. And that’s what people displaced in wars have to do, with no opportunity for choice.

But I didn’t read a poem about politics last night. My poem, a cento, was about loving the world despite its difficulties. A cento, which is a collage of lines from other poems, might be a bit of a cheat, but hey, when you have to write 30 poems in a month, sometimes you need to take some shortcuts. And the fun thing about this one was that I only used poems for source material from the prompts that were sent out every day to participating writers.

So next time you’re stuck, leaf through some poems and write down lines that strike you (best if you’re not sure why) and then try to meld them together. I guarantee, this will be fun, even if you’re just tasting other people’s words, whether or not you come up with a poem of your own. Here are the first few lines of my cento. Poetic sources are from Mary Oliver, Dean Young, Mahmoud Darwish, Winnie Lewis Gravitt and Richard Fox.

VOCATION

My work is loving the world.
Because of you, I’m talking to crickets, clouds.
I have a saturated meadow,
where, like plants sprouting where they don’t belong,
sorrow, grief and trouble sit like blackbirds on the fence
scanning the topography of prayer

Poem Wrestling

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Today I completed Poem #30 for the 30 Poems in November fundraiser for the Center for New Americans–a day ahead of schedule, Whew!

Since tomorrow is still November, I may attempt a final poem. Usually, I like to write a cento (a collage poem using lines from other poems) from all the poems offered as prompts over the month. That will enable me to drop a poem that’s not working when I compile my collection of 30, kind of like having the option to eliminate the lowest grade on a series of quizzes!

Of course, at this point, many of these baby poem-drafts aren’t working too well, and getting rid of only one won’t solve that problem. That’s where poem-wrestling comes in. My December writing focus will be on honing these poems into a shape I can share with those who donated to the fundraiser without being too embarrassed about them, even though most of them will still be far from my perfectionist standards.

But perhaps, part of this practice is also about being more comfortable showing my flaws in public–as I did, last weekend when I was asked to be part of the rotation of family musicians and play five minutes of background music on the piano for the appetizer hour of my nephew’s wedding celebration. I NEVER play the piano in front of other people, as those who are familiar my journey back to claiming my piano-playing past (which I wrote about in my not-yet-published memoir, Imperfect Pitch) already know. But I said yes, because I’m loyal to my family and my brother assured me no one would be listening. So, here I was, first on the list of the family players approaching the ivory among the (thank heavens) rising din of chatter. I pretended I was alone and played the pieces I’d prepared, even adding a little klezmer-inspired tune I’d composed on the spot the day before when humming to my grandchild to get him to take a nap.

I actually had fun, because I really was able to play as if I were alone in the room. And I think that’s what I’m going to have to do as I wrestle these 30 poems–pretend I’m alone in the room and see where they want to go without thinking too much about the added pressure of having to share them.

What will poem wrestling entail? Many things, but briefly–zeroing in on what the poem is really about and then thinking about whether each image builds on that or feels like a random aside. Also, looking closely at language and form: how do the words sound on the page. I play a lot with rhythm and repetition of sound patterns. I also look for places I can improve enjambments or use space more strategically.

And because I’m a perfectionist, I’m often writing 3 or 4 or 5 versions of each poem, then letting a version sit for a couple of days before reviewing it. Sometimes I’m so bemused by what I’ve done as in that funny Christine Lavin song, What Was I Thinking, I go back to an earlier version.

And as the days of December wane and my deadline for sending the poems to donors looms, like the cat hesitating at the open door, (an image in the poem I wrote today) I’ll just have to go bravely into the headwind.

 

 

Mindfulness and Found Poems

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We’re a week into 30 Poems in November, and I have eight poems. The days leading up to this practice (as I wrote about last week) always feel like the hardest, especially in those moments before I squeeze out the first poem and realize, hey, it isn’t so bad. I can do this. And suddenly something shifts. I enter November, a month that’s always been a downer for me due to the sudden onslaught of afternoon darkness, in a new state of mindfulness that starts to mitigate the pressure to produce. I can’t explain exactly what that is, but the practice of capturing something in a poem every day puts me in a headier zone, and I start to look at things differently. Even today, when I sat down to try to write Poem #9 and came up empty (so I started to write this blog post instead), I found myself intrigued by the leaves’ dance outside my window in that brilliant, but all-too-fleeting  sun.

Knowing that I’m impacted by Seasonal Affective Disorder raises the stakes on my personal to-do list. Not only do I have to write 30 poems in November, I have to get outside every day, targeting the time when the sun is at its strongest. This puts a crimp in my writing schedule since the morning light is the best. There’s nothing more demoralizing than watching the sun beginning to sink over horizon at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. But morning is also when my writing brain is at its best, so something has to give.

Still, outdoors is a great place to be mindful. When I’m out with my 13-month old grandchild, I try to tune in to what he might be noticing: the birds tweeting, the random ding dong of the wind-chimes, the thrill of a spread of cool garden rocks to sift through, and hold, and fling down, listening to the satisfying clink. These were some of the images that made it into my poem yesterday.

And even though I strongly recommend it, you don’t really need to go outside if that doesn’t call to you. Today, one of the prompts I received in my Zoom writing group was to use found words to create a poem. Simply open up a book and circle random words, or pick a passage and erase sections of it, creating a poem out of what’s left. Or, make a poem out of random newspaper headlines (if you can stand writing something that’s likely to be depressing). Or, as I started to do, list what you notice about your surroundings. My cat, who has taken over my yoga mat, is SO content basking in the sun. And those fuzzy empty slippers by the porch door sure look cozy.

I didn’t end up using these images this time, but I did write a found poem from a cookbook I have called Flavors of Jerusalem, which helped me process a lot of the difficult feelings I’ve had about the conflict without the need to be didactic or even mention the war. Metaphors are great in that way. I’d much rather write about cumin and paprika than airstrikes. And mindfulness is a way of thinking about what these spices evoke, and tuning in to which images: spices, cats, slippers, or whatnot, you might need to enhance the flavor of your writing.

Confessions of a Prompt Queen

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I’m writing this post today in celebration of being featured today in Rattle Magazine’s tribute to prompt poems.

And while I’m not a fan of bragging, I can’t help being delighted to be published in such a reputable magazine that I like so much–makes it worth all the hours of submission/rejection drudgery.

One of my writing groups calls me The Submission Queen because I spend so much time trying to get my work out there and encouraging others to submit, as well. But I’d prefer to think of myself as The Prompt Queen. Truly, I don’t know where I would be in my writing life without prompts.

I’d written all through high school and in college (as an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing) and slogged my way through a couple of drafts of a novel, but I didn’t feel like I’d even begun to find my voice until my late 20s, when I took my first workshop with the late but immortal Pat Schneider of Amherst Writers & Artists. Choose an object, Pat would say as she’d lay out a bouquet of ordinary things on the coffee table: an egg beater, a hand-crocheted doily, a jar of French’s mustard, a hammer with nicks on the handle. And if you don’t know why you’re choosing it, that’s a good thing. Then write whatever this object inspires you to write. 

There was something about the freedom granted, the atmosphere in the room to say anything (or nothing–no one ever had to share their writing) that unlocked a gate in me, and in nearly everyone that took part in this process, whether we wrote about childhood memories this object evoked or sauntered off on some surrealistic language adventure where the object had, at most, a cameo role.

Pat would usually follow up her object exercise with pictures, or lines from poems, or a collection of things to smell or touch, or a meditation to bring back a memory or dream scene. It didn’t really matter what she offered. Following the prompt bypassed my inner critic’s need to write something “good.” I could simply pick up my pen and play, and with that playfulness came surprising turns of language and metaphors and scenes from my subconscious I would have never conjured up with my mind on more active patrol. So, I’ve continued to seek prompts wherever I can find them: in writing groups, in online subscriptions, or in my own collections of poems and pictures.

This doesn’t mean that all prompts work for me or that whatever I write comes out perfect and polished. I still file away a lot of this writing in the dead zone in my computer marked “Inactive.” But often I’m able to take what I wrote in a prompt and wrestle it into a poem, or flash fiction piece, or develop it further into an essay or short-story. Occasionally I’ve used prompts to enhance scenes in my novels or longer creative non-fiction projects.

And whether what I write turns into something finished or not, I have fun! And I often get to vicariously release whatever useless stressful thoughts are gnawing at me in a creative and playful way. In these dark times, there’s a lot to be said for the value of playing.

Revital Salomon, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

So, if you choose to read it, I hope you enjoy my Rattle poem (while I enjoy my 15 minutes of fame). And here’s a link to the poem (prompt) that inspired it.  And a picture of the moon, because that also could have been a prompt that inspired this poem.

And to jumpstart your own prompt process, I highly recommend Pat Schneider’s book, Writing Alone and With Others.

Making Friends With Your Writing

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I’m glad I’m better at my relationships with humans than I am in my relationship with my writing. With humans, I’m loyal: I’ve been with my husband for over 40 years, and I have some dear friends who have been in my life for even longer. None of the people I’m close to are perfect, and none of these relationships have been bump-free. But, we work out our differences and I can genuinely love these people despite whatever frictional annoyances arise between us.

But my writing, that’s a different story.

Usually, when I first write something one of two things happen: (1) I dismiss it immediately as a ramble or rant, suitable only for my own cathartic release, and either file it in the folder marked “inactive” or don’t bother to save it at all, or (2) I fall hopelessly, madly in love with my words, convinced this is the best thing I’ve ever written, and perhaps the best thing ever written on the planet because what I had to say matters so much. The love factor generally lasts for 24-48 hours, enough for an intensely passionate hook-up before I look at the piece again and, at worst, wonder if it belongs in category #1, or at best, think… Meh…

So what’s a girl to do?

elisfkc from Orlando, FL, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

As enticing as the fairy-tale version of love, complete with handsome princes (or princesses) and happily-ever-after might be, it’s unsustainable. In writing, as well as in life. As with people, your relationship with your writing can be complicated. And it can change not only over the course of years, but also the course of moments, depending on your mood and your attitude. And if, like me, you struggle with keeping your inner well of self-criticism from flooding your being, it’s good to have a strategy.

For what it’s worth, here’s mine:

(1) When I totally love something I’ve recently written, it gives me pleasure to share it pretty immediately, breathing more life into it by reading out loud. My various writing communities are my best audience for this, but I’ve also occasionally shared a piece with close friends who understand the writing process. I make sure to tell them only to comment on something they liked or how the piece made them feel, not to offer any criticism.  

(2) After the initial surge of elation has passed, I put the piece in a file I’ve marked “Work On” and don’t look at it until at least the next day. Many writers I know recommend not looking at a first draft for at least 3-4 weeks, but I find that I sometimes lose or forget the energetic nugget of what I’m trying to communicate if I wait that long. In my next writing shift, I read the piece again as if someone else had written it and asked me for feedback. This helps me keep my own self-criticism somewhat tempered. I mark the places I like and the places that seem murky. And then I dig in and revise, writing notes to myself along the way like WTF are you trying to say here? 

(3) I repeat this process in every writing shift, reading as non-judgmentally as I can, and making revisions. Sometimes the revisions make me feel elated–Wow, that’s brilliant! I say to myself. And off it goes into the “Send Out” file. Other times, I say, this is so cliched, confusing, pedantic, etc. While this may sound like more self-criticism, it’s also when I know I’ve reached a point where I can’t bring the piece any further by myself. So I ask myself if the piece still has energy for me. If yes, I bring it to a writing group. If no, it goes to the “Inactive” file.

(4) Every few months or so, I go to the inactive file, and see what’s there. Surprisingly, under the chaff are always a few gems, some of which I don’t even remember. I wrote this? I say to myself, as I once again feel the energy in the words. Wow! Now I think I know what it needs. And off it goes again into the “Work On” file, en route, hopefully, to the “Send Out” file.

I’m glad that my process of managing friendships doesn’t involve these elements of selection and rejection (except for people I’ve recognized as toxic to my mental health or writing process). But even in relationships, sometimes a small break can be all you need to rekindle the flame to see the good in the people you love. It does seem to work that way with words.

 

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Getting Lost

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I loved my recent trip to Japan, despite how many times I got lost.

The worst instance was when my husband and I were dragging heavy suitcases searching for our AirBnb. In the heat (95 feels like 106) we walked in circles for an hour, trying to follow directions that said: get out of the subway station (which exit?), walk under an underpass (there were at least three), turn left at the brown building (which one–nearly all the buildings were brown), then walk “a little while” and turn right at the big tree (of course, more than one tree). To the host’s credit, there were thumbnail photos of each step, but the views looked like everywhere else in the neighborhood.

Why didn’t I try Google Maps? I did, but the app didn’t recognize the transliterated address. It was only after we stopped a kind woman walking on the street that she was able to paste the Japanese address into her phone and locate the place instantly–right around the corner from where we were and only four minutes from the subway station. Apparently Google maps in Japan often doesn’t recognize transliterated addresses. And even when it does, the streets you’re supposed to turn on are written in Japanese characters, with vague instructions like “head Northeast.” If I were a Millennial, I might be better at holding the phone up and following the blue dot, as the younger members on our trip seemed to do effortlessly, but for every time I was able to navigate to a subway, restaurant, or sight-seeing venue, there were three more times I found myself suddenly going in the wrong direction (not to mention all the times I did, eventually, make it successfully to a targeted restaurant, only to find it closed when I got there).

But travel can be like that. As can writing. While it may not seem so at the time–especially in the heat with suitcases–there can be joy in the quest if you can recognize and accept that you may not get to your destination as easily as you might wish to.

All my novels have taken years to write because I kept veering off course. Even though I kept a consistent schedule, I didn’t know what wasn’t working until I’d spent several drafts on the wrong path–which was ultimately a lot more of a time sink than the day we took the bullet train in the wrong direction. It was only after I gave a few characters personality transplants, switched the points of view and totally revamped plot points several times that I felt confident that I was finally following the blue dot of the true story. Or was I? Even now, the back of my mind churns as the Google Maps arrow wobbles: What if I changed all the first person points of view to third person? Would that be stronger and more consistent? Do I have the energy and interest right now to take the plunge? 

Some books on novel-writing advise people to spend time plotting out the story’s trajectory and developing the characters through extensive bios before writing a word. If you can do that, more power to you. I know I need to feel the thrust of the book by immersing myself in a situation before doing that kind of development work, so I usually wait until I have a draft or two done before tackling any of that. And I also know that even if I did try to plan everything in advance, I’d still find myself veering off my set map. This is a good thing. As Robert Frost said, No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.

It’s a lesson I wish I’d taken to heart at the time, taking cues from my husband, who oohed and aahed as he snapped photos of temples and pagodas that suddenly appeared among all the brown buildings, instead of fuming in frustration at that elusive blue dot.

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Self-Sabotage: The Minefield of Shortcuts

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Yesterday, I slipped on a wet floor and banged up my knee. And today, I’m determined to baby it. So no yoga class, and certainly no race-walking or bouncing around to cardio videos. This is a huge break in my pattern of always physically trying to do as much as I can despite whatever minor discomfort I’m experiencing. But it’s time to face the fact that I’m older; my body is more compromised, and the last thing I want to do is let a small injury turn into a large one because I didn’t give it time to heal.

Meanwhile, my hungry mind is alluring me with alternatives. Maybe I can do a restorative yoga video, or try a flat, non-strenuous half-hour walk. Or find a spot where I can sit at the edge of the garden and pull a few weeds. Since my knee doesn’t really hurt that much, these messages sound tantalizingly sensible, even though I know I should make sure to be careful. Still, what’s wrong with taking a couple of shortcuts to make my day feel more settled and normal?

And is my resistance to having a day with minimal physical activity connected to knowing that if I don’t do any of these routines, I’ll have a lot more time–i.e. too much time–to face the blank page?

Sometimes I wonder if filling up my days with routines–even healthy routines–is one of the ways I sabotage my creativity. If I know I only have a couple of hours in my day that are designated for writing, I can easily fill them with smaller writing tasks like revisions, or submissions, or blogging, or marketing/political writing, or editing/reviewing work for others. And while all of these are important in my writing life, focusing all my attention on them can mean never getting to the next big project, especially if I convince myself that to tackle something larger, I need more mental bandwidth and bigger chunks of time. Yet a day like today, when I have a lot of open time, feels like one of those expansive western landscapes I wrote about on my recent trip to California. They are undeniably gorgeous and awe-inspiring, but they also leave me unsettled.

Even when I am more engaged in my writing life, another way I sabotage my creativity is going for the “easy out” when working on a piece, because I’m often just trying to get it done rather than really examining its total potential of where it can go–in other words, taking the shortcut. This isn’t because I have any real time constraint. I can always come back to something the next day or the next week or the next month, and often do. However, it feels as unsettling as an open landscape or open day to leave things unfinished for too long.

True confessions: I’m three-quarters into this open day, and I’ve cheated. A lot. Instead of facing the bigger contours and potential of the blank page, I made a batch of granola and put up a pot of dried chickpeas to incorporate into dinner. And I did take a slow 30-minute flat walk with hiking poles, and spent about 45 minutes on some very easy gardening, neither of which compromised my knee. But though I kept my focus on smaller writing tasks, I’m grateful that in addition to sending out two poetry submissions, I stumbled on some new and useful insights that helped me revise a couple of poems I’ve been stuck on (and that I’d previously sabotaged myself with by thinking they were finished). And I wrote this blog, which means, at least, that I’m accepting and acknowledging the pattern. So while I still might be seduced by the ease of shortcuts, I’ll make a point of treading even more carefully through the minefield.

 

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Centering Home

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Returning from vacation often brings me face-to-face with that moment when the world pricks hard enough to make me sit up and notice that I’m no longer in that carefully constructed bubble of paradise geared to distract me from my life. And this time felt harder than usual. The daily news, successfully willed to a microscopic wisp at the edge of my consciousness as I lay in a hammock overlooking the mountains of Kings Canyon National Park, started to burn at my skin again, its smoky haze penetrating the air like the remnants of a wildfire. And my to-do list, which I could easily reduce to a vague thought and make it sound almost pleasurable in my mind while walking through a grove of foggy sequoias, now felt gargantuan–a tottering avalanche ready to tumble at any moment and bury me in its angry cascade.

Usually I can counteract these post-vacation moments fairly quickly by pivoting back into routines, but for some reason, this time it took over a week to get my bearings. I just want to get back to my life, I kept telling myself, feeling more and more frustrated as the days slipped away but the tasks on my plate stayed constant–or grew. And that led me to question, What was this thing I was referring to as “my life?” What was it I was trying to get back to that wasn’t happening?

On each of those initial post-vacation days I was doing familiar things: walking or biking, gardening, cooking, catching up with friends I hadn’t spoken to or seen while away. And on the days I took the time to assess whether I’d enjoyed my day, I could clearly express gratitude for the many parts of it that pleased me.  So what was missing?

Note: I did not put “writing” on the above list.

However, I was writing on many of those days. Mostly, I was pulling out half-finished poems and chewing on them, making a few tweaks, and putting them away again, not feeling very satisfied, or, more importantly, connected to what I was writing. And because I had such a long to-do list, it was easy to get up after a few minutes and do something else, before giving myself the chance to really revisit what I’d been writing and reset my creative clock.

And being disconnected from my writing made me feel disconnected from my life.

A week after returning from my vacation, I had a writing date with my friend, Lanette, which meant that for two whole hours I had to sit with her on the porch of Barstow’s Dairy Store (a great place to write, if you’re in western MA) and keep at it. I highly recommend writing dates with friends (either in-person or on Zoom) as a way of getting going. In addition to enjoying a brief visit before writing, I couldn’t just tweak a poem or two and then get up to succumb to the call of the unpaid bills or the weedy garden, because at the end of the session I knew we’d be reporting to each other on what we’d done and possibly sharing some of our work. Even as I flitted from poem to poem and took several breaks for Wordle and its Dordle and Quordle variants, not to mention checking email and social media, I kept coming back–until I could look at a poem and remember why I wrote it and why it might still matter. And that helped me finally make the shift back to my creative center.

Since then, I’ve been just as busy with tasks, social and family stuff, but I’m feeling totally differently about my life. I’m now connected to my words and my reason for writing them–even as I might continue to sift through and change them. And that means I’m home.

 

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