Drew Myron's Blog, page 54
February 27, 2014
Thankful Thursday: Resist and List
A heavily edited manuscript by John Dickinson, known as "Penman of the Revolution."
Oh, hello, it's Thankful Thursday. Again, already. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate life — from the petty to the profound.
On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for:
1.
The first clutch of daffodils
2.
Strong coffee & real conversation
3.
Soothing classical music that plays while I'm on (terminal) hold with the insurance company
4.
Skiing under a bluebird sky
5.
Brave, a lipstick, and a critical tool in the fake-it-til-you-make-it approach to life
6.
An editor who returns my work with pages of red-ink revisions
7.
Online shopping, and the miracle of purchased items actually fitting
8.
Pisces. Perceptive, creative, sensitive. Thankful I have so many good Fish in my life.
9.
This practice of pausing for gratitude. At my most resistant, when I'm gloomy and frayed with the effort it takes to find a thread of thanks, it really is true that when I sit down and focus, gratitude gains speed and power. Inevitably, I find myself genuinely thankful.
February 25, 2014
3 Good Books
So this is fun.
What It Is, by Lynda Barry — a 3 Good Books pick from Hannah StephensonOver at Push Pull Books, I'm peeking into private lives, nosing around writers and artists to discover the books that fuel their work.
3 Good Books invites writers & artists to share their favorite books on a given topic. Why? Because books stir creativity, and creating expands life.
Want some bookish inspiration? Go here to see suggestions from writer Hannah Stephenson.
February 20, 2014
Thankful Thursday: Letters
Richard Scarry
In this short month of longish days, I'm drawn to pen and paper, to the sound of thought as it crosses the page, to the intimate quiet of letters.
The other day I wrote a letter to myself, urged me to Get a grip.
Last week, I wrote a letter to my younger self, said You are good.
I write letters in my head. For days, we correspond, though you never know.
Some days I look forward to just one thing: opening the mailbox to find a version of you. I rip the envelope, holding my breath.
It's a wonder, really, how I can write from the heart, from the head, from miles away, and just a few days later, I am in your hands. There is miracle in this exchange.
"To say what letters contain is impossible," writes Anne Carson in The Beauty of the Husband. "Did you ever touch your tongue to a metal surface in winter — how it felt not to get a letter is easier to say . . . In a letter both reader and writer discover an ideal image of themselves, short blinding passages are all it takes."
It's a Month of Letters.
Thank you for stamps and envelopes. For postcards and notes. For the scribble, the scrawl, the shaky hand. For an "audience of one." Thank you for sending light when you write.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to give thanks. What are you thankful for today? A person, a place, a thing? A story, a song, a poem? Tell me, what makes your world expand?
February 18, 2014
Season the soup
Sometimes I want some sort of magic.
Reading a great book or a stunning poem, I ache for the ability, the luck, the something, to write so well. I get hungry.
Do you feel this too?
We want a recipe. So we scour and scratch and ask, how, how, how, how? We know, and we don't, that there is no one answer. But we're desperate and so we search for suggestions, hints, directions.
I like this approach, from William Stafford in Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer’s Vocation:
For me, poetry is not like the jeweller’s craft . . . polishing, polishing, always rubbing it more and more. It’s more like the exhilaration of getting somewhere. It’s like running fast and your elbows and knees may not always be exactly right . . but you’re really getting somewhere. That’s the sort of feeling writing a poem has.
I know this feeling. When I'm in the zing of creating it feels both so good and so fleeting that I write faster and faster, chasing words across the page. Like Stafford, my mind is all elbows and knees.
But don't be fooled; Stafford was his own diligent editor. A rush of words, while exhilarating, is just a good start, as he shares here:
I feel revise means ‘more . . . more . . . more.’ The feeling at the time is not that this poem is bad, but that there must be other. And there must be more. So I drift back through the poem with something of the same welcoming feeling I had when I began. I may get different signals and change something, but it’s not changing things with a stern face. Rather, it’s a welcoming one.
I like the idea of approaching revision, an activity often met with dread and uncertainty, with a welcoming spirit. Because we often search for what to cut, it feels refreshing to wonder what can I add? When making soup, we don't take away; we add salt and seasoning. We let it simmer, then enhance.
What's your best recipe for writing and revising? How do you make soup?
February 13, 2014
Thankful Thursday: Grand!
Coffee & other loves at the Village Bean in Yachats, Oregon.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express gratitude for people, places, emotions, and more. Please join me. What are you thankful for today?
February 9, 2014
Try This: Get Familiar
Familiarity may breed contempt but what if you pushed through contempt to force a fresh perspective?
Routine can make us tune out and fog over. And in mid-winter, when the holiday glow is long gone and the promise of summer is impossible to hold, the monotony can feel overwhelming.
But because the answer to challenge is almost always to work through rather than against, I'm doing my best to embrace the same old, same-old routine of life. In fact, this week I've urged and encouraged the familiar to settle into my writing.
Every day this week I've set aside 15 minutes to write about marigold garden. I have no attachment to marigolds, and don't enjoy gardening, but this topic has, quite surprisingly, stretched me. With these two words, I've reached back to recall companion planting, salsa, a funeral, hot summer days, and the creation of the Mariposa Community Garden in Denver. These two words have taken me places!
Try this: From the nearest book, randomly choose a short phrase or a string of two to three words. Don't think, just pick.
This is your phrase, and each day you'll write on or about this phrase. Again, don't think, just write. Let the pen explore ideas and connections. See where the phrase takes you. Don't make sense. Or do. Let go.
Tomorrow, write again using the same phrase. And the next day, do the same. Use this phrase for one week.
You may grow frustrated, or bored, but keep on. When you push through the familiar, when you explore it from all angles and depths, your mind and body grows restless, then fevered, to find fresh ground. You move beyond what you think you know.
Try it, and let me know where this writing practice takes you.
Try these others too:
Try This: Postcard Poems
Try This: Alphabet Poem
Try This: Morning Read & Write
Try This: Book Spine Poetry
February 3, 2014
Love that line!
I said I thought that when art took trauma and turned it into form, maybe it was the marriage of innocence and intention that mitigated our terror, that helped us love the world when the world was least lovable.
— from Contents May Have Shifted
a novel by Pam Houston
January 30, 2014
Thankful Thursday: Signs
Portland, Oregon - from The Joy Team
1.
On the beach this week, I find a heart-shaped stone, and then another, and another. I feel silly and self-conscious, wondering, Is this love, or am I just desperate for a sign?
2.
In a quiet room, we meet. We're 10 minutes into talking when I realize nothing I say can change her pain. So we write about one good thing that happened this week. It takes just five minutes for us to settle into a singular memory and ride that joy for an entire hour.
3.
Sometimes I read my horoscope late at night to see if forecast matched reality.
4.
I'm reading aloud when unexpectedly my voice cracks and tears follow. While I don't fully understand what I've read, something registers:
"But there is another class of men," writes Frederick Buechner, "at their very best they are poets, at their worst artful dodgers — for whom the idea and the experience, the idea and the image, remain inseparable, and it is somewhere in this class that I belong."
5.
In a rush of traffic, I'm anxious. I'm not looking for a sign when I spot a real one, a billboard of just three words: "You are enough."
It's Thankful Thursday. Please join me in a weekly pause to express gratitude for people, places, signs and more.
What are you thankful for today?
January 28, 2014
Does the page still bleed?
via Austin Kleon
Let us now travel back in time:
Remember when you wrote on paper, and your teacher/boss/editor would mark up your work with so much red ink you'd go dizzy? "The page is bleeding" you'd say, sigh, and then gather strength to make the changes.
Remember this?
Recently, I marked up a manuscript and the young writer stared at me with a mix of horror and confusion. I had ruined her work with the ugly marks of a mysterious language.
Is this editing shorthand — long used by reporters and editors — now extinct? Does anyone write on paper anymore?
It's okay, you can tell me: Am I the last one out, and it's time to turn off the lights?
January 23, 2014
Thankful Thursday: What's a typewriter?
People give me things.
This week my husband gave me the thrill of ebay, and I promptly scored a pair of knee-high, leather boots (in camel — my favorite neutral).
Reb gave me the word temperance. Not the Ken Burns Prohibition sort requiring rash abstinence, but a gentler form of the word that suggests that of the middle way, of calm. The minute she presented the word, it fit. I've been wearing this word all week, as mantra, as reminder.
Dee gave me this necklace, and an explanation that made me sigh:
"I was in a small store where these were displayed. A mom was talking to her daughter about how these necklaces looked like typewriter keys. Typewriter keys! the daughter responded. What are typewriter keys? The mother shrugged off the question and went on looking through the store.
I wanted to grab the little girl and tell her that typewriters are where secrets are kept and you have to be very special and very talented to uncover the secrets of the keys . . . The necklace called to you."
On this Thankful Thursday I am grateful for gifts, and the people who give them.
It's Thankful Thursday! Please join me in a weekly pause to express gratitude for people, places, things and more. What are you thankful for today?
