Drew Myron's Blog, page 69
August 26, 2012
3 Things That Make a Writing Class Shine
I need more structure in my writing life, I recently admitted to a friend. I'm not getting to the page often enough.
Her suggestion? Take a writing class.
She's right.
After a summer of leading writing workshops -- from a two-hour session to a five-day camp -- it's time I fill my own well. As I've mentioned before, a writing class gives you permission to focus on your creative life, and provides structure, too. Once I've signed up and paid, my lazy habits typically take a back seat to a sense of purpose and a desire to get my money's worth.
As I search for a class in this back-to-school season, I'm mulling just how to avoid the eh and get to the excellent ? Combining my experience as both instructor and student, I offer a few suggestions (and encourage you to share your ideas, too):
Three Things That Make for a Great Writing Class
1.
Size matters.
No less than five students, and no more than 12. That's my preference. I like the intimacy a small group provides. Some writers gravitate to a grander scale, preferring to observe and fade into a larger group. But I like up-close and personal. I want time to write and share. Small classes, I find, allow more in-depth exchange.
2.
Great writers are not necessarily great teachers.
Some of my best teachers are not my favorite writers. They're excellent writers, to be sure, but not necessarily matched to my writing style. While it's important to learn from accomplished, respected, professional writers, don't be wooed by big names and bestsellers. Don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. I've gained the most valuable skills from lesser known writers whose writing is least like my own.
3.
Balance, in all things.
A great teacher offers a balance of personal and professional interaction, along with an equitable blend of writing time to discussion time. Students don't want to endure long monologues. We wanna write! (yes, we're self-centered). A great teacher will also balance warm encouragement with clear direction, and lively discussion with focused lessons and sincere feedback.
In a really good workshop, I sometimes feel I've stumbled upon a rare experience, and the class is a beautiful alchemy that no rules can explain. Have you felt this, too? Perhaps it's the mix of personalities, or the timing, or the alignment of planets. There is a mystery, an intriguing combination, that makes a class shine.
What do you think? What's your most memorable writing class, and what made it great?
August 20, 2012
Love that Line: The problem with joy
Once, back in my twenties, all I wanted
to do was to throw my life away.
But then, somehow, usually by accident,
you experience joy. And the problem
with joy is that it binds you to life;
it makes you greedy
for more happiness.
— Charles Baxter
from The Cousins
appearing in The 2010 Best American Short Stories
August 16, 2012
Thankful Thursday: Anticipation
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places and things that bring gratitude and joy.
Today, I am thankful for the eager, uneasy wait of good things — around the corner, down the street, at the next bend, even into the next week. Something good is surely ahead.*
What are you thankful for today?
* pssst --
Have I mentioned how much I love letters?
Please, don't
be shy:
Post Office Box 914
Yachats, Oregon 97498
August 14, 2012
Poetry in (Unexpected) Public Places
I spent the weekend with poets — not at a writing workshop, a reading, or a sprawling literary conference, but at the Denver County Fair.
Yes, a county fair. We read poems on the Farm & Garden Stage, surrounded by blue-ribbon pies and clucking chickens (also zombies and drag queens). Now in its second year, the Denver County Fair was created by my favorite artist (Tracy Weil) and event guru (Dana Cain) as a modern interpretation of the traditional fair. It's a super-charged mix of country living and urban crazy.
And the event, I'm happy to note, includes a poetry contest. Ribbons and a cash prize are awarded to poems on the theme of agriculture, food, gardens and farms.
On Sunday afternoon, a vigorous audience leaned in to hear poets read their work. A few steps away, poems were displayed on pegboards, sharing space with top tomatoes and pretty preserves.
After ribbons were awarded, hands shaked, and applause faded, the stage was cleared and prepped for the next event: a how-to-make compost demonstration. It seemed a fitting follow.
Finding poetry in unexpected places is a great reminder that art lives in the nooks and crannies of our busy, often complicated, lives. Next to chickens, before the compost, and all through the harvest.
The 2012 Denver County Fair First Place, Blue Ribbon Poem:
What We Make
for Frederick H. Stitt
This is a very old recipe.
The kind your hands know
better than your head.
Take the zucchini
from the fridge. Think of your job,
of your husband working late,
of your father
who fell last week,
more than a thousand miles away.
Think of the bruises that blossomed,
black then green, on his forehead,
across the span of his ribs.
Grate the zucchini.
You will need three cups
and one of mozzarella.
Break three glorious
lop-sided, orange-yolked eggs
and think now of your father
as the young man turned from the camera,
modeling suits in a catalogue—
his frame that broad and fine.
Add flour, oil, salt and pepper,
loads of fresh basil, baking powder.
Let the onion do its worst.
Think of your dog,
his sturdy joints
going stiff,
even his wag an ache,
and how he goes to his leash
still, every time, in a lather.
Mix and load into a butter-greased,
8” pan. Think of the rich flesh and rough stones
of peach season,
which is right now every morning
bursting the day open
in your mouth. This is August.
Bake a while at 350˚.
It will rise. It will fall. It will mingle
with fresh tomatoes and Romano.
Think. It will be delicious.
And then, one bite at a time,
it will be gone.
- Kathryn T.S. Bass
August 9, 2012
Thankful Thursday: Sun is just the start
1.
Sun.
2.
Sun on a lake.
3.
Sun on a lake in summer.
4.
Sun on a lake in summer, and swimming.
5.
Sun on a lake in summer, and swimming, immersed in the quiet of water lapping against boat.
6.
Sun on a lake in summer, and swimming, and I am immersed in the quiet of water lapping against boat, and later I turn pages of a good book and feel the need to do nothing more than absorb heat, water, and stillness -- and feel a fullness only gratitude can bring.
Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places & things.
What are you thankful for today?
August 4, 2012
August 2, 2012
Thankful Thursday: Instead
Appreciation, my horoscope demands.
Later, this song turns up. I hit Shuffle; my iPod declares Genius. The song plays again.
Everything is sign. So, I give in. On this Thankful Thursday, I share with you my (unofficial and unrelenting) theme song:
Instead
Instead of feelin' bad, be glad you've got somewhere to go
Instead of feelin' sad, be happy you're not all alone
Instead of feelin' low, get high on everything that you love
Instead of wastin' time, feel good 'bout what you're dreamin' of.
Instead of tryin' to win something you never understood
Just play the game you know, eventually you'll love her good
It's silly to pretend that you have something you don't own
Just let her be your woman and you'll be her man.
Instead of feelin' broke, buck up and get yourself in the black
Instead of losin' hope, touch up the things that feel out of whack
Instead of bein' old, be young because you know you are
Instead of feelin' cold, let sunshine into your heart.
Instead of acting crazy chasin' things that make you mad
Keep your heart ahead, it'll lead you back to what you have
With every step you're closer to the place you need to be
It's up to you to let her love you sweetly.
Instead of feelin' bad be glad you've got someone to love
Instead of feelin' sad, be happy there's a god above
Instead of feelin' low, remember you're never on your own
Instead of feelin sad, be happy that she's there at home
She's waitin' for you by the phone
So be glad that she is all your own!
Get happy
She's waitin' for you by the telephone.
So get back home!
It's Thankful Thursday , a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places and things that bring gratitude and joy. What are you thankful for today?
July 30, 2012
Lines that bring me back
For the lonely, the bridge is a seam
between two skies.
- excerpt from Golden Gate
It's heartbreaking some days, the beauty of language.
I have walked away, away from words. Between productivity and creativity, a division is made and I have lived in an urgency to get this done and that started. Everything is a checklist to the next set of things undone things, people untended.
Deep in the fog of work and chores, I have wasted days. Still, words stirred, called to me. Come back, they urged.
The birds move like ballet dancers in the air
but sound like truckers at a roadside bar.
- Debra Smith
from Terns flock to Everett paper mill after it closes
Today, I woke again, startled. After days of numb, I am drawn to an evocative line, a catchy phrase, the whirl of words. How had I missed them? How I had missed them!
Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed
the blueprint to a life
It is a presence
it has a history a form
Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence
- Adrienne Rich
excerpt from Cartographies of Silence
What words call you? What lines or phrases draw you in, bring you back to yourself?
July 25, 2012
Thankful Thursday: Small Change
A wave sloshes toward me, clear, carrying, apparently, nothing. No shell, no seaweed strand, no color-glisten I can see. It spreads its froth out along the sand, sinks, and seems to retreat. The beach looks unchanged, though I know now not to trust that appearance. If there is such a thing as transformation, perhaps the smaller manifestation is often the more reliable. Perhaps if we're lucky, we might salvage the small or unrecognizable as an agent of perception, the thing that prompts the imagination to focus and funnel, to be the lime door we might occasionally walk through, the trigger, finally, to some larger question.
- Barbara Hurd
from Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts
and What Remains
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places and things that bring gratitude and joy.
Today, I am thankful for the words of others — those dense, deep ideas that trigger my heart and stir my mind.
What are you thankful for today?
July 24, 2012
Try This: Five Things
It's been a string of busy days, allowing little rest and even less reflection. My writing life needs some feeding. Yours, too?
Between errands, work and household chores, there's sometimes little room for creative life. A few of my friends show great discipline by writing in life's tight spaces: in the waiting room, on the ball field, in the dark of dawn. I'm not (yet) so determined.
But last night, restless with the void of my own written words, I squeezed in a brief, before-bed writing session — and it felt great!
As inspiration I turned to Twenty Things Morning Reveals, a keen example of acute observation, in Kathleen Dean Moore's book Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature.
I used her example — but I started small, with just five things. I found the more I wrote, the more I wanted to keep writing (Isn't this usually the case, and why do I need constant reminder of this fact?).
Six Things Today Revealed
1. At 7am, low tide, light shines on mossy rock, turning the beach into a beautiful green glow.
2. A sunny summer morning on the Oregon Coast feels like a crisp Colorado autumn. Is everything something else, a trigger for days long passed?
3. A clutch of foxglove line my path. Life is lush, always growing.
4. Rain draws near, grows heavy, stretches my fear.
5. Momentum matters. Once I begin — making, doing, being — it's easy to keep going.
6. The moon is a butter-yellow crescent, a sideways smile, a comma. Can I carry this pause into my sleep? Can I slow every memory into a soft, steady dream?
Try This: Write your own Ten Things (or two, five, twenty, or more). This prompt is a great exercise in observation. Tell me how it works for you. Or, even better, share your results in the Comments Section below.
