Sophfronia Scott's Blog: Sophfronia Scott, Author, page 30

The Importance of Creativity Playdates

If you’re a writer and a parent (I am) you probably schedule or once scheduled many playdates for your children. When was the last time you booked one for yourself? I’m not talking about hanging out with your friends, (although you could include them in this adventure) I’m talking about a creativity playdate. This is time you set aside for yourself to do something that fills your well of inspiration. A creativity playdate can be simple and close to home—sitting in your favorite chair perusing gorgeous coffee table books. Or it could be a mini field trip that gets you out of the office and into a new environment: a trip to a museum or a public garden which would be ideal now because spring bulbs will soon bloom. It could even be a big trip: My recent Vermont College of Fine Arts study abroad residency in Puerto Rico was basically a huge creativity playdate with my fellow writing students.

Creativity playdates are just as important as the time you schedule for writing. In fact, your writing time can be difficult and fruitless without them. If you find you spend much of your writing time staring wordless at the screen or blank page, you’re in need of a creativity playdate. Looking for a story idea? Ride the subway a few stops or go sit in a park and pay attention. Your next character might step on at West 66th Street, or stroll past you wearing a top hat and walking a fluffy Scottish terrier sporting blue booties on its paws. I know my writing eye is awakened every time I travel the 65 miles south to New York City and take in the energy and movement of a different environment. Suddenly my senses have new sights, sounds, and smells to process. It’s exciting.

My other creative activities include watching the television show “Project Runway” because I like seeing a different kind of artist, in this case fashion designers, exercising his or her own brand of creativity. I also color in coloring books (my Harry Potter one is my favorite), visit museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City or the Bruce Museum  in Greenwich, Connecticut, and tour the homes of famous artists/designers/writers. I love Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, but I recently learned part of the chateau home of the essayist Montaigne is open to the public in Dordogne Village in France. I would love to see his office/library and view the exposed beams in the tower where Montaigne engraved some of his thoughts, including his famous question “’Que sais-je?” or “What do I know?”

On my latest playdate I explored the Architectural Digest Home Design Show in New York City. It included art installations as well as design ideas and new home appliances and products. A bed of green apples caught my eye and sparked my imagination, as did a bizarre seating bench covered in tube-like purple velvet cushions entwined again and again. Mysterious and erotic!

I encourage you to schedule a creativity playdate at least once a month. If you can’t think of something to do, consider this—you want to excite your five senses. Try to come up with ideas addressing each one. For example:

Smell: Explore perfume or incense shops; check out a store where you can sniff barrels of coffee beans, visit a florist.
Touch: Go to high-end stores or fabric shops where you can run your hands over rich materials or beautiful furniture. Take a cue from your childhood and visit a petting zoo or an aquarium that features touch tanks of specimens to hold.
Sight: Feast your eyes on works of art, or go on hikes to see spectacular views.
Sound: Attend concerts, plays, musicals, or sit in a place with lots of people where you can pick up pieces of overheard conversation.
Taste: Try a new cuisine by cooking a recipe you’ve never tried before or going to a different restaurant.

Really, you could do anything you want for your creativity playdate as long as you don’t forget to have fun! Let me know what you do or would like to do for your creative adventures. I might be in the market for a new idea this month. Thanks in advance!

VCFA Puerto Rico Residency Day 7

Posts from my Vermont College of Fine Arts winter residency.]

Here’s the thing: I can’t speak with any certainty about how the culture of Puerto Rico has influenced me. It’s just too soon. I probably won’t know until I embark on my next writing project and find myself infusing the work with the saltiness of codfish, the stickiness of thick, red rainforest mud, or the ethereal sadness of an angel’s face from the Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery. But I have made some important discoveries, and I can discuss those here.

This is Raphe. He’s a poet and we will graduate together next summer, but we never met before at our previous residencies in Montpelier. In this photo he’s sleeping near my chair on Luquillo Beach. It may sound odd, but Raphe sleeping in my presence, usually while I’m writing in the common room of our shared villa, is the foundation of our new friendship. We appreciate the peaceful nature of each other’s personalities. I’ll come back to Raphe in a bit.

Our last full day in Puerto Rico began with a simple generative workshop using as writing prompts the concerns we voiced at the beginning of the residency. We had to choose one and use it as the first line of a poem or prose piece. The one I picked wasn’t my personal concern, but I thought it was interesting: “I’m scared of the rainforest.” Many of us worked on our pieces even as we awaited the time to load the vans for our journey to Luquillo Beach. Yes, this was the glorious day I’ve been waiting for–beach day!

Five of our group went on a boating/snorkeling excursion, but I was done with adventure activities. I wanted to rent a beach chair and umbrella and sit and stare at the water, which is exactly what I did all day. Well, not quite– I went for a lovely walk on the beach with Richard McCann, Mary Ruefle, and fellow student Maggie Kast.



I spent some time soaking in the ocean. Saltwater draws out negative energies–yes, I do believe in such things! Then we walked down to the kioskos, little vendor storefronts in a long concrete structure, and found delicious food: oatmeal frappes (topped with whipped cream, 2 Oreo cookies and a vanilla wafer!), salted codfish, and plantains split down the middle and stuffed with spiced ground beef. Mary also found a kioskos that sold candy, but I had no room left in my stomach!

Our time on the beach was deeply satisfying because it was more time spent simply talking–about compassion, parenting, developing your own voice in a narrative, and where a person might be meant to live in the world. We could have stayed there well into the evening, but Luquillo Beach closed at 5pm–much too soon for me. The day melted away so fast.

When we returned we held our celebratory dinner where we thanked Pam Taylor for being an awesome coordinator, and Carmen who cooked our amazing meals at Casa Cubuy. We also went around the room and responded to two questions: What did the trip teach us that was new? What did the trip remind us of that we already knew, but had lost or forgotten?

Here are my two responses:

My “new” thing I learned was that I could write daily about a current travel experience. I’ve never been able to do that before–in fact I’ve taken blank journals on trips for the purpose of chronicling my adventure only to return home with the book empty. While I may not be able to immediately process Puerto Rico’s influence on me, I suspect what I’ve written this week will help me recognize the seeds this culture has planted within me when they begin to sprout.

And my reminder? That brings me back to Raphe. I remembered I am a peaceful person, and that peace can be a comfort to myself and others. I forget this sometimes because, though I regularly sit in prayer and meditation, I don’t always get to see the effects of my practice. If one exercises, you can see and feel the results in your increased stamina and muscle tone. It’s harder to understand the results of a contemplative practice which, I suppose, is why it’s so easy to let it go for periods of time. But Raphe’s unexpected and delightful friendship is a really nice affirmation and it helps me say this: I’ll keep praying and meditating. I’ll keep seeking. I will appreciate this aspect of myself more and not take it for granted as I return to my home and family tomorrow. Thank you, Raphe.

And thank you to our faculty, Richard McCann and Mary Ruefle. They were the best teachers, even more than I could have hoped for on this journey.

Thanks too to the rest of my fellow travelers/students: Daniel McGinn, Josephine Hughes, Partridge Boswell, Lillian Kwok, Brittany Rathbone, Shanalee Smith, Maggie Kast, Carolyn Walker, and Judith Ford.

Thank you for reading this, and journeying with me on this marvelous adventure. Take care and be well,

Sophfronia

VCFA Puerto Rico Residency Day 6

Posts from my Vermont College of Fine Arts winter residency.

Today we hiked into the rain forest in two groups-one for people with physical issues who would go on a less strenuous walk; the other for people able to make the challenging climb up to a huge waterfall. I joined the waterfall group and it was indeed challenging. We ended up scrambling over rocks and up through a kind of caged metal ladder–see the photo and you’ll know what I mean! We chewed on native plants such as tiny begonia flowers and little blueberries. We also examined the seed pods of orchids. Here are more photos. Truly a beautiful experience!

Okay, yes, that’s me. Swinging on a vine. I highly recommend the activity.

This leaf (below) belongs to the trumpet tree. On the tree this leaf is green and bigger than your whole head. But after it falls its underside turns white and it has the feel of a thick paper bag. I wonder if it glows at night like slices of moonlight on the ground.

We started the hike around 10 a.m., ate sandwiches on the trail at lunchtime, and returned around 4:30. We still had a lecture to attend! I was tired, but the talk was worth it. Mary Ruefle took us on another kind of journey, through her notebooks. It was a great demonstration of a creative mind at work–wondering, questioning, challenging the stories, pieces of information, and teaching she encounters every day, especially as she reads.

For instance, before we left Old San Juan she asked each of us to visit The Butterfly People, an art gallery featuring butterflies, dead and pinned, and arranged in thick plexiglass boxes that can be bought (small boxes for $40 and larger boxes for hundreds, even thousands of dollars) for hanging in your home. Mary described her experience of this gallery, of being stunned by the color and beauty of the butterflies while at the same time being uncomfortable, even angry, at where the gallery was getting the specimens. Were they truly grown on farms, as the owners told me when I asked, or were they obtained in a different way, possibly putting endangered species of butterflies at risk? Mary put this thought process in her notebook.

I feel Mary has the mind of a genius. I’m not sure people can appreciate her (but then when is genius ever really appreciated?) if they haven’t read her poems, essays, and lectures. (She read us a brilliant essay on shrunken heads earlier this week.) But can people appreciate the pieces if they never get to experience the whole? If you want to explore pieces of Mary, I recommend her book, Madness, Rack, and Honey, a compilation of her lectures.

I hope you enjoy the photos from our hike. Tomorrow–beach day!

Until then,

Sophfronia (in the hammock)

VCFA Puerto Rico Residency Day 5

[Posts from my Vermont College of Fine Arts winter residency]

Today seemed to be about risk, on the page and in real life.

In the morning we assembled for a generative workshop, a session where we would create new work, possibly inspired by a writing prompt. I’m not a fan of prompts, but I’ve learned to be open and patient in such workshops. I know good work can come of them– one of the essays in my creative thesis was born of a writing prompt I received at the River Pretty Writers Retreat last year. So I was prepared to be game for this workshop.

We read out loud an essay by Dorothy Allison, “Survival is the Least of My Desires,” in which she states upfront: “I believe the secret in writing is that fiction never exceeds the reach of the writer’s courage. The best fiction comes from the place where the terror hides, the edge of our worst stuff. I believe, absolutely, that if you do not break out in that sweat of fear when you write, then you have not gone far enough.”

So…I guessed we wouldn’t be generating happy essays about coqui in the rain forest.

This brought me to the moment of choice–would I be participating fully in the writing prompt to come, which Richard McCann already said would be a prompt we could write from for the rest of our lives? Or would I simply ignore the prompt and write whatever I wanted to write? Either way I would be taking a risk. If I dove into my worst stuff would I be able to really write and share what might come? If I didn’t do the prompt I would have to account for why if called on to share what I had written. I’ll give you the prompt first and tell you what I did.

The prompt came from this part of Allison’s essay in which she speaks of urging young writers “to confront their own lives in their fiction. Not that they must write autobiography, but that they must use the whole of their lives in the making of the stories they tell; they must honor their dead, their wounded and lost…”

Richard asked us each to make a list of “your dead, your wounded, your lost.” Then we had to circle the name for which we had the most energy and start writing about it. As we wrote, Mary Ruefle would call out a word and we had to incorporate that word into what we were writing. The words eventually totaled 16 and we had to use at least half of them. If you’re curious, here’s the list of words:

Sea

Artichoke

Purple

Sign

Transfix

Carpet

Words

Frond

Snap

Central

Born

Unheard of ever

Uninspected

Beverage

Divigate

I admit I didn’t get to half. I used 4, maybe 5 of the words. Reason being I was taking the first part of the assignment seriously, writing in a way to honor the person from my list. The words eventually became a distraction. I wrote them down to consider another time. As it turned out, we didn’t have to share what we wrote and I was glad. I felt the writing was risk enough. The sharing, like the word list, would only distract me from what was still taking shape on the page. For the same reason I can’t share with you what I worked on, but know this: I sought to be honest and honorable and I hope to continue to do so as I work on this piece.

Fast forward to the afternoon, post lunch. We’ve planned a hike to see petroglyphs, images carved into rocks by the native Taino people. But our guide arrives and there’s a hitch–the rain has swollen the river in the spot where we are to cross it. We have to swim across at a point where the water is about 8 feet deep. The guide described the distance across the river as short so I change into my swimsuit. I am not a strong swimmer, but I figured I could stroke well enough to get across. I thought this could be one of those life changing experiences where you do the thing you thought you couldn’t do. I wanted to try.

When we arrived, though, I found the river wider and the current strong because it was between two waterfalls. One couldn’t swim straight across because the current could take you over the rocks. You had to swim at an angle, making the effort harder and longer. When I saw these conditions I decided to pass. It was a risk I neither wanted nor needed to take. I am grateful I know my abilities and limitations. I didn’t feel bad about sitting on the rocks in the sun, which I enjoyed, as I waited for my fellow writers to return.

We held our last set of student readings tonight (I read my essay, “White Shirts”) which means we ‘re that much closer to the end of this residency. We still have three more days, though, so I won’t linger on that.

Big hike tomorrow!

Until then,

Sophfronia

 

VCFA Puerto Rico Residency Day 4

[Posts from my Vermont College of Fine Arts winter residency]

The music around us has changed. We’ve gone from the happy band sound of the Three Kings celebrations in old San Juan (think the Fiesta Trio from Dora the Explorer) to a chorus of crickets and coqui singing to us from the depths of the El Yunque rain forest. The coqui is a tiny tree frog named after its own persistent chirping sound. In the city I only heard one and he seemed to be in the same tree each evening. Here we get the harmonic effect of a multitude.



We’re staying at Casa Cubuy, a little resort lodge perched on the side of a mountain. While there are tourists here they are few in number–I admit I’m relieved after the crowds in the city. I also like the food they are feeding us here: authentic dishes of fish, rice & beans, sweet plantains, avocado salad, and a gorgeous chicken soup with yummy balls of carrot and potato so soft they melted deliciously on the tongue. Outside, plants that I’m used to seeing in nursery pots in Connecticut grow wild and large in their natural tropical habitat–coleus and poinsettia as tall as a small child. After arriving and getting settled our schedule today was simple: lunch, workshop, dinner, then readings by faculty members Richard McCann and Mary Ruefle and our coordinator/graduate assistant Pam Taylor.

By the way, it does rain in the rain forest but not in the way I thought it would. I thought we would have one or two rainy days. In fact we have 6 or 7 rainy intervals throughout the day lasting about 10 minutes each. It’s like a cloud arrives, wrings itself out over us, then moves on and the sun returns. As we held workshop on a terrace a grand rainbow arched over the forest below us. Mary took it as a good sign.

And now that we’ve come to Mary, here are today’s workshop tidbits:

“You want to find a stanzaic order that cannot be shifted without something being lost.”

“The parts of the poem don’t talk to the reader. They talk to each other. If you can get the parts to talk to each other, the poem will talk to the reader. ”

“A poem is words, punctuation, and space on the page.”

“Sometimes your worst enemy is being conscious that you’re writing a poem.”

“When you write seriously you’re committed to growing.”

That’s all for now. Tonight I’m tired and looking forward to a good long sleep. I’ll let you know if the crickets and coqui keep me awake.

Sophfronia

VCFA Puerto Rico Residency Day 3

[Posts from my Vermont College of Fine Arts winter residency.]

The author Yolanda Arroyo Pizzaro dabbed at the tears in her eyes with Kleenex as she asked the question: “Who will be the leader, the great writer who will tell these women’s stories?” Yolanda is a local writer (in 2008 she was chosen as one of the most important Latin American writers under 39) who visited with us today to talk about her work. The depth of emotion she displayed while speaking told me what it means to write with something at stake. She was talking about narratives of Puerto Rican slave women–stories that have gone unwritten and untold for centuries. On the mainland U.S. slave narratives have been part of our history–most children learn the story of Harriet Tubman in school for instance–but in Puerto Rico that hasn’t been the case. Yolanda passed around a paperback copy of a book she bought at a conference, Memorias de Lucia. Until recently it was the only book about a woman’s personal experience of slavery in Puerto Rico. “I resent that,” she said. “I resent that.”
Yolanda proceeded to go through a list of women slaves for whom some information existed. Some if them were even leaders in slave rebellions. When she finished we had counted 22 women. Yolanda pointed out she has told three of their stories in her short story collection, Negras. “Who will tell their stories?” She asked. “These women want to talk.” I wonder if I can tell one of them? I plan to connect with Yolanda when I get home, go over her list again and see what comes out for me. Such a weighty challenge–can I carry it with the same passion and grace she has? Or will it turn out to be a crusade that doesn’t capture my spirit because it is not my own?
Yolanda began our talk with two questions and a writing exercise. The first question: Do you know the meaning of your name? “If you do,” she said, “it means you want to know about the world and you’re starting with the world around you–your origins. Everything you write comes from the origin of who you are.” The second question: Do you know the names of your father, mother, grandparents, great-grandparents and what they mean? “Look at that history,” she said. “If you don’t know it, a significant part of your poetry/writing will be missing.” She then invited us each to write a four-line poem about our names.

When I came to Puerto Rico I expected to be influenced by the colors, food, and tropical feel of this island. I didn’t realize I would find such a passion for writing. And it’s not the “Oh, I love to write” I’m talking about. Authors such as Yolanda and Hector from yesterday have a deep appreciation for the gravity of writing, for how meaningful it is to produce the written word. They remind me of the Edwidge Dandicat book I read last year, Create Dangerously. How would our writing change if we chose to create with the passion of these Puerto Rican writers?

Workshop Today

Workshop means more tidbits from Mary Ruefle! Here they are:

“Any poem is a configuration of a linguistic energy cycle. Energy is created and it is released. That’s what makes the act of reading a poem satisfying.”

“There’s a huge difference between what the poem is trying to say and what the author is trying to say. The author’s job is to listen to the poem”

“Let’s look at the houses we have built out of words on the page.”

Thank you Mary!

Tomorrow we leave Old San Juan to spend the week in the El Yunque rainforest. We may not have an internet connection there but if not, no worries. I’ll keep good notes and fill you in on our return.

Cheers,

Sophfronia

VCFA Puerto Rico Residency Day 2

[Posts from my Vermont College of Fine Arts winter residency.]

Saturday morning. I sit here at a stone checkers table in the shade of this fine old tree down by the marina. You see the garbage men taking a break from their work. I stare out over the water pretending to be a lost soul from centuries past waiting for a loved one’s ship to return from sea. To my right two elderly men play checkers while a woman, her toddler son, and the pigeons look on.


This morning we walked out to El Morro Fort. Actually first we took a lovely side trip strolling around the wall that was built along with the fort to guard the northwestern tip of Puerto Rico. Beautiful vegetation but it can be hazardous to history: the National Park Service folks must constantly pull plants from the cracks of the wall so their roots won’t compromise the stone and cause it to crumble.


The park ranger while delivering a bit of a history lesson also repeatedly reminded us that we are not cannons and should not climb out through the spaces on top of the fort’s walls meant for cannons! We held our talk in this lovely chapel. The saint in the painting watches over sailors.



Once inside the fort Mary Ruefle and I discovered the best view was actually through this odd nook in the women’s bathroom! Mary and I ventured out to see the hauntingly beautiful Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery, across the lawn and just below the fort. I’ll let the art and majesty of this gorgeous place speak for it:





In the afternoon we had our first faculty lecture: Richard McCann on Grace Paley’s short short story “Mother.” We read it out loud multiple times and examined how Paley creates the emotion of the story and holds the piece together with a spine formed by very specific imagery. We also noted how the story was most likely inspired by a song Paley heard on the radio. Her mention of the song, “Oh, How I Long to See My Mother in the Doorway,” opens the piece. Mary pointed out how stories and poems come from real life inspiration–a good thing to keep in mind since we are continually being inspired here in this beautiful place.




Later we visited the home of author and journalist Hector Feliciano–he wrote The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art. His eight-year investigation brought about the recovery of over 2,000 works of art. I loved hearing about Hector’s passion for the work. Often it took him years to get key people to do interviews with him. His hands floated up as he spoke of how helpless he was in the grip of the folly he knew it was to be so obsessed. But then, he said, “Any enterprise of writing is a folly. But for us (writers) it’s necessary.” Another great thing he told us: “Writing books is a deep and important matter. It remakes me again and again and again.” I sat there thinking of how sometimes the greatest work takes the most time and patience, well beyond what you already assume it will take. You must add more on top of it.
Afterwards Hector invited us up to the roof to enjoy the ocean view.




Tonight, just now, I hear a cruise ship’s horn and in an instant I am flung into that scene in “An Affair to Remember” where they have to leave Cary Grant’s grandmother and return to their ship. I realize the quiet, graceful beauty I’ve been feeling about Puerto Rico is the same as that place in the movie. I think they were in Italy? Anyway, funny what a sound can trigger. That’s all for tonight. Until later,

Sophfronia

VCFA Puerto Rico Residency Day 1

[Posts from my Vermont College of Fine Arts winter residency.] As I write this I have been in Puerto Rico for 24 hours. I think I am still getting acclimated. Still absorbed in the wonder of the fact that I am not cold!em Because of the heat I expect the day to go on forever, just like in the summer, but it still grows dark just after 5 pm as it does this time of year. Is that how they tell the seasons in a place like this? By the progression of the sun as it rolls across the sky? By how much rain pours from some heavenly fountain?


As I walk the streets of Old San Juan I do feel a general sense of well-being. The healing bright tropical colors seep into me.


We visited La Casa del Libro, the House of the Book. We learned about the late introduction of the printing press to Puerto Rico and its effect on writers. The press didn’t come to PR until 1806, but the first literary books weren’t published until 1850. Before that it was just newspapers and history books heavily censored by Spain. Our lecturer, Wilfredo A. Geigel, is a former lawyer now pursuing his passion for finding and preserving these books and Puerto Rico’s publishing history.




The rest of the day I wondered about what it meant to write with no hope of publishing. Did the writers make books for themselves, the pages tied together with string? I’m willing to believe the words would find their way into the world.

We had our first day of workshop, where we get to have our writing read and critiqued in a group setting. Mary Ruefle, the poet, is the leader of the group I’m in. At the regular Vermont residency in Montpelier I would not necessarily have such an opportunity to work with her–I’m a prose student. So she’s a big part of my decision to come to Puerto Rico. Workshop is a deep experience. My piece is not up for discussion yet, but I will share these two wonderful tidbits from Mary:

“Nothing teaches you but reading and writing. Nothing teaches you but the practice of your art.”

“When you write you are a conduit for energy but that energy does not belong to you.”

That’s all for now. More soon,

Sophfronia

The Time It Takes to Tell a Story

This week I’ve been helping a friend with a story he wanted to submit to the editors of Chicken Soup for the Soul for an upcoming book on caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease. As he sat down to his computer I sent him a text: “If you get stuck, remember: you’re just telling me a story about your mom.” I didn’t know in that moment he really was stuck, and my note provided him with the necessary oil to get the gears moving. He eventually sent me a draft of a wonderful story that will be published this spring.

I wish I could say telling your story can always be this easy when you have the right help, but I know that’s not true. As I write this our community here in Sandy Hook, CT is observing the first anniversary of the tragedy that took place at my son’s school. I have yet to complete a piece of writing about the event. Yes, I’ve managed a few drafts over these 12 months and right now I’m probably closer to finishing something than I have been in a long time. But I don’t know if I will finish it. Sometimes writing is just hard, especially when you’re still in the middle of living what you’re writing about. I’m still processing, still making connections. I know I have to allow myself the time and space to do that.

Last summer the online literary journal Numero Cinq published my critical essay on how to connect with a reader when you’re writing about something personal. I stressed the importance of time and reflection. I recently read Sonali Deraniyagala’s memoir, Wave in which she writes of the tsunami that struck the southern coast of Sri Lanka nine years ago this month, killing her parents, her husband, and her two young sons. She survived but it took her three years before she could step foot in her London house again. At five years after the tragedy she still questioned who she was in a new world too strange and unfamiliar. While I don’t compare my grief with hers or anyone else’s, Deraniyagala has reminded me of the importance of time and reflection and why I must be patient and sit with the unknown.

The story you have to tell may come easily or with great difficulty–or perhaps both depending on the day and your disposition. But it is worth it to make the effort to write it. I spent the past year working with 21 women telling hard stories, many for the first time, about their lives. As the book, Women on Fire, Volume 2, neared publication, I know many of them felt apprehension about seeing their lives in print. This week they held the book in their hands for the first time and I have not heard one word of regret. If they can be so courageous I know I can do the same. As Debbie Phillips, who gathered these women for the book likes to say, it’s less scary when we all hold hands and jump into the pool together. Perhaps my writing this post is my way of reaching out and doing that with you. I’ll keep working. I’ll let you know what comes.

Autumn Update

First of all I’d like to welcome the wonderful friends I’ve met in my recent travels who have joined our conversation here. I hope you’ll be inspired to create your best work in the months to come! Have you been enjoying this glorious autumn? Here in Connecticut the trees have reached their peak color and I’m nearly done cooking all the apples we picked at a local orchard. Right now there’s apple crisp, apple pie, and apple upside-down coffee cake in our kitchen. Someone stop me before I bake again…

Here’s a big CONGRATULATIONS for Kim Dettmer of Berea, Ohio! Kim took my Self-Publishing 101 class last year, and next month she’s publishing her first children’s book, Moments Meant to Savor. Publishing a children’s book can be difficult–it presents many different issues because of the illustrations and sizing, so this is a huge accomplishment for Kim. You can learn more about her book and order it here.

Are you interested in self-publishing? The latest Poets & Writers magazine features a series of articles on “The Power of Self-Publishing” so even in the literary world authorities are beginning to see this process is more respected and here to stay. If you would like to know more about self-publishing, just send me an email (editor@doneforyouwriting.com) and tell me more about your project. I may offer the self-publishing class again in January if there’s enough interest.

Before I go further I must also mention that Tain has joined the Cub Scouts for the first time! He’s having fun this fall hanging out with his friends and exploring the beautiful forests and countryside here. He’s also enjoying his first experience in fundraising as he’s been selling popcorn door-to-door in our neighborhood to help fund his pack’s camping trips. If you’d like to support Tain’s troop, you can do so by going here now. They even have a great option where, if you don’t want popcorn for yourself, you can donate it to our military personnel based overseas. Several of our friends have done this and I think it’s a wonderful idea. Tain thanks you in advance!

I have good news on the publication front: I’ve had two short stories and an essay published in recent weeks. The first is my essay, “Tain in the Rain,” that appears in the Special Tribute Issue of The Newtowner. My short story, “Murder Will Not Be Tolerated,” is in Issue 9 of the Saranac Review and my short story, “Sometimes God Wears Orange Cowboy Boots,” appears in the new book, Paddle Shots: A River Pretty Anthology. All of these publications are full of excellent writing and, in the case of the Newtowner, awesome artwork, so I encourage you to use the links here and order your own copies. It’s about being a good literary citizen! More on that in another message.

My travels these past two months have taken me to the Catskills where I taught at the Hobart Book Village Festival of Women Writers (see photo here from my workshop on writing journals) and to Tecumseh, Missouri for the River Pretty Writers Retreat. The great thing about such events is getting to meet amazing writers such as Mary Johnson, who tells the story of her years spent as a nun in Mother Teresa’s order in the memoir An Unquenchable Thirst. Mary is also one of the founders of A Room Of Her Own Foundation which supports women in their quest to be creative writers. 

Two things you should know about this pair of events: 1.) They are both insanely inexpensive, yet staffed with well-published authors, and 2.) They will both take place again next year–River Pretty in April, and the Festival in September. So I encourage you to check them out, mark your calendars, and join me on the road. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much your writing will benefit.

Until then, as they say in The Writer’s Almanac, be well, do good work, and keep in touch!

Best Wishes,