Drew Myron's Blog, page 76
January 26, 2012
Thankful Thursday: Holding
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places (& poems) in our lives. Please join me. What are you thankful for today?
January 24, 2012
From sizzle to fizzle?
Ask - collage by Drew Myron
As January comes to a close, has your resolve faded? All that pop and sizzle gone to fizzle?
For weeks, I've heard the zealous plans of overachievers: This year I will write a book! I will write everyday! I will get published!
My head aches. My heart sinks. Big goals may be good for some but I can't take the pressure. Bite-size tasks work best for me.
I take heart in knowing the race to accomplish is best achieved in small daily steps. Like an exercise routine, I'm aiming for consistent effort, not exhaustion. To that end, I've culled ideas from friends and colleagues to offer key ways to feed your writing life.
Three Ways to Re-Ignite
• Write in Short Bursts
A friend of mine writes in small slices. In line, at the grocery, in the waiting room. "I have written something poemish every day this week," she tells me. "I tend to want to wait until I have a length of time open before I dive in [to write]. This year I am writing in the short bursts as well."
• Make a Collage
My favorite kind of art project is one requiring limited artistic ability. Collage is the answer! Simply page through magazines and clip words and pictures that draw your eye. As you arrange images on a blank page you may be surprised to discover themes and ideas that will spur a poem, a story, or more.
• Pick a Word
At the start of every year, many writers take inventory of their lives and goals and choose one word to guide them through the year. This can be a fun and powerful process. Choosing a word forces you to focus while also providing powerful direction. Molly chose persist. Auburn picked certainty. Sage's word is, um, not printable. When you open yourself to possibilities you allow conscious and unconscious forces — some might say the muse — to direct your steps (and words).
How about you: What are you doing to feed your writing life?
How do you create and maintain a writing routine?
January 21, 2012
Out of everything broken
Today, I'm hosting a William Stafford Celebration. It's one of 62 events taking place this month.
The Stafford Celebrations began 13 years ago. Now readings and events take place every January across the globe, and not just in Oregon (where he spent most of his life) but also in Japan, Malaysia, Scotland, Mexico and Sweden.
In a world of so many writers, why do we celebrate one man?
In part because William Stafford was one of America's most prolific writers. He wrote over 20,000 poems and more than 50 books — and his first book wasn't published until he was 46 years old. He taught at Lewis and Clark College for 30 years, served as Oregon Poet Laureate, and earned a National Book Award.
He was also a pacifist. During World War II, he was a conscientious objector. He spent the war in Civilian Public Service work camps in Arkansas and California, where he did work for the U.S. Forest Service.
After decades of writing, teaching and encouraging other writers, William Stafford died in 1993 at 79 years old.
He believed that treasures were to be found beneath your feet, and that searching for things that fit together was to follow the "golden thread." About his own work, he once said, "I have woven a parachute out of everything broken."
Today's event, and all the Stafford readings, celebrate the life and work of an accomplished poet, but just as importantly — maybe more importantly — these gatherings encourage creative expression and urge us to make beauty "out of everything broken."
You Reading This, Be Ready
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life —
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
- William Stafford
January 18, 2012
Shaped by Place
"A shore pine in offshore wind," by Mark Fletcher.
Living between forest and sea, I have one eye to the wind and the other to water. I live in a remote small town tucked against a temperate rainforest that sees over 70 inches of rain each year. It is habit now to search for water's sneaky mark, along each seam and crevice, every window and door.
On this rugged shore, I am shaped by landscape, sculpted by the harsh practicalities of living on water's moody rim. I am living on edge, against a churning sea. Even my dreams are water-logged. I am wading, flooded, soaked. Everywhere leak and loss.
For the last 12 hours, I am braced against a steady storm. A frenzied mix of drenching rain and 100 mile per hour winds have toppled trees, turned trucks, closed roads, pounded doors and rattled glass. All night, windows heave, and tree limbs knock and pop against the house.
This morning I wake, blearied and headached, to the same soaking rain. Lights flicker and tease. Several hours into morning, there is no hope of sun and little light, just a dark gray sky a shade brighter than night.
And yet, and yet. The storm will pass, as they always do. The rain will cease. Beauty will return, brilliant enough to make me ache. The forever ocean. A forest so green and lush it seems make-believe. The trees here touch sky, touch something in me endless and tender.
There is tension in this chasm, a beautiful contradiction that urges introspection, expression, words. I am dry and safe, and shaped — very shaped — by this place.
Are you shaped by place? How does landscape and weather influence your writing?
January 17, 2012
And the winners are . . .
. . . Wendye Savage
Congratulations Wendye, you are the lucky recipient of How to Make A Living As A Poet by Gary Glazner. Please send your mailing address to: dcm@drewmyron.com
. . . Gisele Vincent-Page
Congratulations Gisele, you've won 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell: A Guide to Getting and Staying Published by Chris Hamilton-Emery. Please send your mailing address to: dcm@drewmyron.com
Many thanks to all the readers and writers who entered the drawing and offered writing inspiration. Your participation is much appreciated. Write on!
January 15, 2012
Live happily ever after
Last chance! I'm giving away two great books, and will draw names and announce winners on Monday, January 16, 2012. Win one of these books and you'll write poems, make money and live happily ever after. *
How to Make A Living As A Poet
- by Gary Glazner
101 Ways to Make Poems Sell: A Guide to Getting and Staying Published
- by Chris Hamilton-Emery
Winning is simple. Just leave your name in the comment section below. If you like, tell me the book that gets you inspired to write. On Monday, January 16, 2012, I'll choose two names in a random drawing. You could be a winner. It's that easy!
Feeling shy? Zip me a private email — dcm@drewmyron.com — that says I want to win.
* Results strongly encouraged but not guaranteed.
January 13, 2012
Thankful Thursday: A Note
I am thankful for this thank you note.
And for gratitude expressed with pen and paper.
How simple, how profound. How easy it is to make me smile.
It's Thankful Thursday! Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places & things that bring joy. What are you thankful for today?
January 11, 2012
The Year Ahead in Books
One year closes, another opens, and the reading list expands. Today, in the conclusion of the Great Books Lists, I'm looking ahead.
8 Books I Am Eager to Read in 2012
Or: Of the zillion books to read, these are at the top of my list.
These books are not necessarily newly published, but new discoveries to me.
NON-FICTION
Steal Like an Artist
by Austin Kleon
Best known for his Newspaper Blackout Poems — poetry made by redacting words from newspaper articles with a permanent marker — artist/writer Austin Kleon is back with a book of ideas and illustrations to guide a creative life.
Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America
by Helen Thorpe
A book that explores "how achingly complex the whole question of who we punish for entering the country illegally really is," wrote O magazine. "Yadira, Marisela, Clara, and Elissa, are the offspring of Mexican parents living in Colorado at or below the poverty line. All four finish high school with distinction and go on to college. But there's a profound dividing line: Clara and Elissa have papers; Yadira and Marisela are illegal. As the years go by, the consequences of being undocumented multiply: no getting on a plane ever, no driver's license, no financial aid, no good way to convert that degree into a profession. Without a nation, practically speaking, to return to, these are the limbo children."
FICTION
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
by Maile Meloy
The New York Times listed this short story collection in its Ten Best Books of 2009. "Meloy's concise yet fine-grained narratives, whether set in Montana, an East Coast boarding school or a 1970s nuclear power plant, shout out with quiet restraint and calm precision."
Blueprints for Building Better Girls: Stories
by Elissa Schappell
"The eight stories here concern women operating under a post-1960s, post-Friedan, "you can have it all" ethos passed from mother to daughter to sister," explains the New York Times Book Review. "Schappell's book crackles with the blunt, cynical humor wielded by people chronically on the defensive. Her women are caustic and witty, even in the face of sorrow."
All the Dancing Birds
by Auburn McCanta
This fictionalized account of a woman living with Alzheimer's, is not yet published — and it needs to be! Auburn McCanta's first full-length novel has earned accolades and awards from the National Writers Association and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association but does not yet have a publisher. I have fingers crossed that 2012 is the year this moving, important book sees print.
POETRY
Fuel I may never catch up in reading the work of my favorite poet. There's just so much. Fuel, published in 1998, is one of Nye's most acclaimed volumes and is just one of 21 poetry books. She's also written essays, a young adult novel, chapbooks, and songs.
The Book of LamentingCombine a great title, with a great poetry press, and you've got an addition to my reading list. I'm eager to read work that poet Yusef Komunyakaa says, "brims with darkness and light . . . the emotional landscape here is rounded and shaped through an imaginative exactness and sobriety."
Facts About the Moon
(also: The Book of Men)
by Dorianne Laux
I'm a bit late to the party, so I'll start with Laux's latest work — her fourth and fifth volumes of poetry. "Laux writes gritty, tough, lyrical poems that depict the actual nature of life in the West today," says Philip Levine, U.S. Poet Laureate.
What's on your list? There's always room for more.
Want to share more favorites? Let's talk books. Join me on Goodreads.
January 5, 2012
Thankful Thursday: Coffee & Conversation
Shirley and Drew at The Village Bean in Yachats, Oregon.
So much of my time is spent alone — writing, revising, reflecting. On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for writers -- near and far, in person and in email -- who become friends, who shake me from myself, who make room in their worlds for (yet) another writer.
It's Thankful Thursday! Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places & things that bring joy. What are you thankful for today?
January 3, 2012
Inspiration, Invigoration & A Book Giveaway
Are you feeling lucky? The Great Books lists continue, and as an added bonus we've got a book giveaway. (Keep reading. Reward at end!)
To give my sluggy self a much-needed nudge, I'm always game for a self-help book. It's even better if I get a shove in the writing rear. In this spirit, I offer a longish list of my favorite stop-whining-and-get-writing books.
For Writers
Books that inspire, encourage, educate & motivate:
Every Writer Has A Thousand Faces - by David Biespiel
Writing Down the Bones - by Natalie Goldberg
On Writing - by Stephen King
Bird by Bird - by Anne Lamott
Journal of a Solitude - by May Sarton
The Forest for the Trees - by Betsy Lerner
The Practice of Poetry - by Robin Behn & Chase Twichell
Poemcrazy - by Susan G. Wooldridge
Poetry Everywhere - by Jack Collom & Sheryl Noethe
Now that we're pepped up and ready to write, let's press on! I'm giving away two great books. Win one of these and you'll be armed with information, motivation and verve:
How to Make A Living As A Poet
- by Gary Glazner
101 Ways to Make Poems Sell: A Guide to Getting and Staying Published
- by Chris Hamilton-Emery
Wining is simple. Just leave your name in the comment section below. If you like, tell me the book that gets you inspired to write. On Monday, January 16, 2012, I'll choose two names in a random drawing. You could be a winner. It's that easy!
Feeling shy? Zip me a private email — dcm@drewmyron.com — that says I want to win.
