Editeyes

I recently spent 3 days working with Ellen Bass at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. Dorianne Laux says that Bass creates “poetry that goes straight to the heart.” Her books, Mules of Love and The Human Line, are smart, intimate, and insightful. Ellen Bass is also a marvelous teacher. She guided 15 aspiring poets over the course of three days, goading us to take risks and make discoveries.

Here a few tidbits gleaned from the notes I took during Ellen’s workshop:

• If writing something scares you, you need to write about it anyway because unwritten poems sit in the chute and everything else you try to write has to squeeze its way around. Write the poem (or the essay or story) without thinking about who will see it. Write everything; Don’t publish everything.
• Take risks in language as well as in content. Write metaphors that are weird. Fresh metaphors keep the reader off balance. Avoid clichés and over-used metaphors. Writers need to learn to tolerate a high level of “not workingness” in the process of stretching the metaphor muscle.  Gertrude Stein said that we are living in a period of late language; every day it has been around a little longer. For this reason, writers have to reach a long way to find freshness.
• Read brave poems/essays; keep one by your computer to read when you get scared.
• Discovery means the writer takes the reader to something not already known. Endings need be both surprising and inevitable. Endings are hard to come by. Writers need to be receptive and/or they need to hunt for their ending. If the ending is a surprise to the writer, it will be a surprise to the reader. Robert Frost says, “No surprise for the writer; no surprise for the reader.”
• Stay open to associations. In early drafts, allow the story to veer off. When you feel like you are loosing control, keep writing. See how far you can get from the subject without breaking the tension. Allow things to come in from left field.
• Ask questions: Why are you writing this story now? What is your agency in the story? Your complicity? What has never been said before about this thing you are considering?
• Disturb the story as you know it. Tell it anew from another character’s viewpoint. Look for ways to shake up the story: This is what I didn’t say! This is what I meant to say!




Ellen Bass gave me much to think about. However, I believe my work will develop if I simply remember to take risks and seek discovery!

Tags: Teachers by ph
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Yesterday, I put together a registration form for the 2009 Medocino Coast Writers Conference. This morning I read an article in Poets & Writers (May/June 2009) entitled “Conferences, Festivals Taking a Hit.” The juxtaposition helped me answer a question I’d been asking myself: Why do I need to go to yet another writers conference?

Conferences tend to be an expensive venture, what with registration fees, travel and accommodation costs. Why put out all the money, especially when finances are tight, so tight that many conference organizers are canceling this year because they can’t pull together sufficient funding to offer a quality conference?

Wouldn’t my time be better spent staying at home and WRITING? Shouldn’t I simply focus on practicing my art, cultivating the craft? What more can I learn from mentors and teacher? Shouldn’t I “put writing first?”

These are the questions that come up every time I think about going to a conference. However, the thought that the economic situation might curtail the option to go to conferences put these questions in perspective.

Going to a conference puts me in touch with other writers, a connection that fertilizes my motivation to write and offers essential nutrients for growth. I’ve gone to conferences alone. I gone with a writer friend and once my entire writing group attended a conference together. I’ve been to conferences that were one day, three days, or a full week! I’ve signed up for festivals where I have worked with a single teacher in a workshop context and others where there were a variety of presentations to choose from. Sometimes presenters were big names like Natalie Goldberg or Dorothy Allison, but more often they were lesser known writers who had published one or two genre books or had been successful getting published in literary magazines. I’ve even taken my turn as a workshop presenter. Conferences usually have a bookstore venue and and most important, there are social gatherings, like a dinner, a tour, or a wine tasting.

I come home from such engagements energized and motivated. The subsequent spurt of the productivity and growth is exciting. I have made new friends, and the expansion of my writers network has more than once offered unforeseen assistance in later endeavors. My notebook is filled with new ideas, techniques, and books to read.

My registration for the Mendocino Conference is in the mail.  Yes, I’m ready for time among writers. In fact, I think the time is overdue.

Tags: Community, Going Public, Teachers, Writing First by ph
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Writing teachers  frequently tell their students, “One must read broadly to write well.” During my Mexico vacation I was reminded of how much I rely on reading to learn about writing. I read all the time, but during my vacation I read differently–more poetry as well as doing a lot of catch up on reading publications like Poets & Writers, the Writer’s Chronicle, and Lambda Book Report. The shift sparked the synapses of my brain to attention.

Reading poetry is a lesson in language, image, metaphor, and structure. It is a slow, savory kind of reading the enlivens my mind and makes me want to take more risks. Reading publications that have to do with writing is instructive, inspiring, and occasionally daunting.  I particularly enjoy reading author interviews and profiles for the window they open into the lives of other writers. I read with a pen, underlining and starring points I want to remember, books I want to locate, words I want to record in my quote journal.

Lambda Book Report, Spring 2009 had an interview with Judy Grahn by Julie Enszer (a cyber friend who is an excellent poet and extraordinary critic). Julie asked Grahn “What contemporary works do you find notable and/or inspiring?” I think Grahn’s response is worth summarizing in a post about reading to inform writing. Here’s what she said:

• I read very locally; I read my students’ work and I always learn from them;
• I listen to people’s stories;
• I study the ancient texts; I really like to go to direct sources;
• I go online and read leftist articles and the testimony of soldiers coming from Afghanistan;
• I get a lot of inspiration from song lyrics.

What kind of reading do you find notable or inspiring? How do your choices compare with Grahn’s?

In future posts, I’ll continue to report things that I learn about writing from reading.

(Judy Grahn photo from http://www.itp.edu/academics/images/staff/jGrahn.gif)

Tags: Teachers by ph
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