Around here, February

is generally known for its cold persistence.  Lasting way longer than anyone recalls from previous years, February teases our peripheral vision with thin washes of light that linger well past five o’clock – only to remind us how quick and deep the cold still falls by six.

February is what makes New Englanders ….New Englanders.  June is so easy to love, here. July and August, and well into the Fall, it’s just plain beautiful.

Then the crowds move south and only the hardened, moss-covered granite types are still kicking around. It’s not Alaska, with heroic snows up to the roof tops.  It’s New England, where dogs, work, and overflowing recycle buckets are about the only forces moving us out the door. Begrudgingly.

Still, it’s beautiful outside, once you get there. Nighttime skies so deep and dark, stars so stellar. Daytime skies all blue and open.

Sometimes – just sometimes – we get bigger than the cold. Hearty.  Happy.  Sometimes we get poetic. Sometimes the dog, reeking of something dug up in the woods and expanding, now, on the living room rug – well, sometimes even that’s OK. When you’re a New Englander.

This year, February

also brings Wednesday Afternoon Writers, an alternative to – what… cold dark muttering.  Ribboning grey skies. Cabin fever: a state not unlike itchy, damp woolen pajamas.

Wednesday afternoons. Write, listen, ponder. Explore new approaches; discover gifts you didn’t know you had.  Coffee, tea and cookies. Perspective.  The company of other writers.   ….Not a lot to lose, considering it’s February outside.

Come and give it a try – eight week series, just beyond downtown. 1:45 to 3:45, Wednesdays.  First visit’s free; can’t know if you like it till you’ve tried it.

Hey – We have a new workshop starting up: Skip that nap on Wednesdays; now you have something better to do.

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- Wednesday Afternoon Writers -

Further information:

(413) 221-4652

mainstreetwriters@gmail.com

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Wanted:

- Exploration. Reflection. Bigger questions and quieter, simpler answers.

I want to stand at the entrance of a cave carved into volcanic rock by Etruscans, 3,000 years ago.  Caves for protection; for storing grains and wine and water; for housing doves and olive presses.  I want to know how it feels to stand in that doorway.

I want to meet local people, over wine and conversation…  or in a kitchen that serves up fresh, local specialties to local patrons.

I want timeless time for a little while.  To explore. To discover. To reflect on where I’ve been, and where I might go from here.

- Options for writing around the edges.

I want to rekindle the urge to create. I want to write.  Not necessarily the formal, official kind – more the meandering, wondering kind. 

Writing – that wondering kind – is a lot like travel: it offers up surprises and new perceptions.  It’s sometimes confounding, usually better than planned … and always nourishing somewhere deep inside.

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- No pressures required:

No promptness, rushing, or otherwise quietly hollering, “go faster, quicker, better…!”

- Room for the unexpected:

Delight, discovery, company, and the occasional nap.

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Slow Travel:  Orvieto, Italy  

September 23 – 29, 2012

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Olive groves, vineyards, art (Frà Angelico, Luca Signorelli, Greco), and locals.

Cobblestone streets. Thursday open market. Perspective.  

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“A good thought, like a good donkey, is something to be nurtured.

Neither likes to be rushed.”  

–Slow Travel Europe

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More….

Orvieto, writing, and donkey-pace

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- Further temptation and information:

our hosts:  Adventures in Italy

details and registration: Pathways to Discovery

website:  www.mainstreetwriters.com

email: mainstreetwriters@gmail.com

Orvieto Doorways ... Rest, Relax and Reflect ... Pigeon Holes ... Giovanni's Vineyard

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A poem from Peter Roarke – thanks, Peter!

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Tender Heart

Take caution,

For the Wolf lies waiting in the Moon lit shadows

Anxious Heart

Be wary

The Wolf can smell thee now

Alert and Ready

Racing Heart

Go slower

The Wolf glides faster

Closing

Panicked Heart

Surrender

The Wolf’s jaws

Unite

As One

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     — Peter Roarke

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Hello – and Happy New Year!

Someone wise suggested that rituals are all about transformation. If January First marks the transition into a new year, perhaps New Years resolutions are the rituals that invite  transformation.

The Cart and the Horse

Over the years, I’ve made all kinds of resolutions.  Some stuck, some didn’t.  If I’m going to get the best out of it, though, I think I need to see resolutions as the “cart” – and understand that the “horse,” the driving force, lies in reflection.  It’s not so much about losing 10 pounds or drawing more often – it’s about the desire that underlies those ideas: having more energy, experiencing more joy.

So I’m off for the day.  Reflecting.  In the mean time, for everyone who’s considered blogging but hasn’t taken the leap, here’s the annual data for this blog.  I started it last March, as a way to reach out to a handful of new and familiar writers.  This morning, I find I’ve had readers from six continents – who knew?  This could be you….!

Happy reflections, happy New Year. May you find new opportunities to meander, dream, and create. 

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WordPress Stats

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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i-Writing

When Steve Jobs passed away last fall, Thursday Night Writer Peter Roarke wrote a tribute to him – on his iPhone.  That piece turned out to be the first in a series of pieces that can best be described as i-Poems.

Hot off the Presses

Well, we don’t have presses, or the heat therein, so much anymore… but here’s a new iPoem from Peter, fresh from last night’s workshop.  Thanks Peter, and happy holidays to all -   Kathy

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I-Christmas

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I-Young

I-Sleepless

I-Rise

I-Rush

I-Tree

I-Marvel

I-Gifts

I-Magic

I-Friends

I-Snow

I-Toboggan

I-Growup

I-Marry

I-Children

I-Santa

I-Smile

I-Marvel

I-Older

I-Memories

I-Surrender

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You can read more of Peter’s writing, as well as work by other Main Street Writers here – enjoy!

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Fellow writer Donna Van Boom sent me the following quote:

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“I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn’t have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn’t that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?”

― Ann Pratchett: Truth and Beauty

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I love the idea of writing “as a course of life.” It pretty much explains how I come to have reams and reams of writing, with only an occasional thought to publishing. I mean, seeing my work in print is tremendously gratifying. And I learn about the writing – and myself – from every stage of that process.

But separate from that, writing, for me, is a form of circulation – like blood, like air, like love.

Oh…!

Writing offers new ways of seeing and understanding the world. New images and unexpected insights often hide, like ruffed grouse in the bushes, only to explode in a startlement of feathers when I wander near.  Suddenly everything is new, and my world has expanded.

Writing Invites the Bigger Questions

What’s important? Often enough I don’t know until I sit and invite an image or a story or a question to appear.

I can make up a character: say, a young woman with tangled, brown hair. I can sit her on a weathered, wooden bench. And through her window, I can glimpse an ancient sycamore tree. All these details make her a specific – and therefore a believable – character.

Still, if there is to be a story, I must also understand, or more likely discover, who she is: who or what does she love? What does she long for?  What secrets does she hold, and where does she stumble?

In other words, I need to explore what matters to her.

What Matters?

What might matter in a life? A Bigger Question has arrived. Characters, even fictional characters, ask this of us – because our characters cannot go down paths we have not begun to explore, ourselves.

Whether I’m writing an article, a journal, a rant, or a post card, the question, what matters? presents itself.

And if I don’t know what matters to me, or what might matter deep in my bones – well …writing invites me to explore that.

Writing Transforms

Who is it that said, “To ask a question is to begin to know the answer”…? Ask what matters, and the ruffed grouse of an answer just might appear.

And in providing new answers, new possibilities … writing transforms.  The characters, the writer, the reader: all undergo a shift in perspective or understanding at some deeper level.

So…What About You -

Every person is unique, and everyone plays with writing in different ways and for different purposes.

How about you…? There’s a Comment Box below – what role does writing play in your life?

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What – Me Blog?

Fellow writer Laura Bellusci sent me this photo last week… I’ve been musing ever since about the fine art of getting hooked on blogging.

It’s funny – I mean, I do laundry to avoid writing.  I let the cat out, check email, shovel dirt onto the garden, fix the hole in the porch screen – almost anything can trump writing. And I love writing.

But blogging…I can do that all day, any day, and long into the night. Blogging’s infectious.

It took me 3 months of avoidance to get started.  Then I tricked myself into “just looking at the colors and the layouts.” WordPress made it pretty easy to set up a basic blog, and then they had a whole bunch of really good stuff on figuring out what to write about.

It’s kind of like jumping on a saucer sled and pushing yourself over the edge of a long, snowy hill.  Hard to get started, but the momentum picks up – and suddenly you want to spend the rest of the day climbing up and sliding down that hill, like a happy fool.

If you’ve ever watched a dog riding in the back of a pickup truck…it’s like that.  Ears flapping, big smile, life is just too good.  Blogging can be like that – in a slower, quieter way.

If you’ve thought about blogging, I encourage you to give it a try.  Invite a friend to help you get started; it’s good to have two sets of eyes on the setting-up process.  It’s also harder to dally with laundry when someone’s standing there waiting for you to sit down.

All blogs start with a hosting site.  WordPress hosts blogs – that’s what this one is. Blogger is another great host – somewhat easier to set up, less easy to post pictures, last I knew.  Shabbyblogs, creator of the photo posted above, is an example of a smaller host with a specific style.  Take a look at their websites, and go for the free blog option.

Web Log –> Blog

Now comes the inevitable:  the box for the first post sits there, big and blank. Don’t worry; you can set your post as “Private,” so no one can see it till you’re ready.  Take a deep breath and jump in.  Start writing – and enjoy. Your text will look really cool when you hit “Preview” and see it in blog format.

Need a starting point? Set the timer for 3 minutes, and brainstorm a list of things you could write about.  You’ll be surprised by what shows up.  Water boots.  Dreams. Jump rope songs from when you were ten.

Originally called  “web logs,” blogs are just that: a place to log your travels.  Every post is different: serious or goofy, long or short, pictures or words, fact or fiction, inner thoughts or worldly observations – it’s about what matters to you.

Like Right Now:

It’s Friday night.  By dinner time, I was really tired, and looking forward to that Friday night bed.  So I decided to just set up a blank post that I could fill in later.  It’s been way too long since my last post…and I had this cool picture about blogging to avoid ironing.

I’ll just upload that picture, see how it looks.  …And maybe write a line or two – to remind myself where I want to go with it.

And now it’s 12:01, and maybe this is enough, maybe this is the entire post.  I’ll take another look tomorrow.  And that article I’m supposed to be writing…?  Nah, I’m way too tired to do that.

That’s how the blogging thing works.

Shake Hands with a Fellow Blogger…

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Half the fun of blogging is finding other blogs that surprise, inform, or inspire.   This photo comes from a blog called 52 Photos  …check it out!

There’s a comment box below – wide open, with plenty of room…so tell me:

What’s your favorite blog?  

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Comments on the Writing Life … Part Three

-  Making life a little bit better, a little more often  -

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In the weekly workshops, I try to carve out 5 or 6 minutes for Comments on the Writing Life.  These conversations often center around the writing practice: what starts, what stops – and what helps us return to – writing. 

Over time, I’ve come to think of the Writing Life in three spheres:

(1)  the Internal Desire to write;

(2)  habits and structures that support this desire – which is to say a Writing Practice; and

(3)  a community of people – writers and others – who help us sustain this practice: a Community of Practice.

It’s kind of like Russian nesting dolls. That first sphere, the one in the middle,  is a person.  You.  The second and third spheres are the people and resources that surround and support your writing. 

You can find posts about first two spheres here:

Part One: Creativity is a Gift. Everyone Has It.

Part Two: Practicing Trust

And you can read about the third sphere …right here.   There’s a question at the end – fictional and improbable answers highly encouraged.    Enjoy!     — Kathy

Who Cares?

Who cares about your writing? That’s an important question. If life with writing in it is better than life without it, then you care, for one.

And people who like to write tend to cross paths with other people who like to write. If you’re sharing your writing with someone, it’s a good bet they care about your writing, as well.

In fact, as you build a habit of writing, you will probably discover a number of people who are happy to see you learning and growing and writing.

But Wait…

As for discouragers… well, there are plenty.  And as quick as they are to pile new doubts atop the mountain you’ve already heard – they also serve to deepen your appreciation for the kind souls who offer you encouragement and  support.

Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map…

Who encourages you to write? A friend, another writer…? Perhaps you’ve found a workshop, or a mentor. Maybe you’ve found a librarian whose love of books extends to writers. What about that neighbor who likes to carve – he understands the creative urge.  Or the cousin who asks about your writing whenever you cross paths.

Imagine a map that looks like a bulls-eye target.  Put yourself at the center.  In the expanding circles, write the names of people and situations that incline you to write.  Place the biggest influences close to the center, and, further out, those that help indirectly.

Who would be in the first circle, encouraging and helping you?  Who would be in the second circle, inspiring you or showing you new possibilities?

Who or what might be in the outer circles…? Are there programs at your library; is there a writers guild in your area? Does a local bookstore offer workshops or readings? Who is the Poet Laureate in your region or state – or country – and what are they doing to encourage writers and writing? There’s always the radio, with programs like Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac.

How about retreat centers… conferences? We are surrounded by authors and artists and films. Which ones do you like? They belong on your map.

A Community of Practice

Think of the resources in these circles as points of light.  They form the constellation of people who like to see you writing.  They are your Community of Practice.

What do you do with this Community?

1. Map it out, so you can see who’s in it.

2. Enjoy their help.

3. Thank them.

Turnabout

Turn around and help someone else. It doesn’t take much to nurture a kindred spirit.  Who could you encourage?

A child, a friend, the cashier at the grocery story who likes to write poetry.  Writer, artist, dancer, cook, teacher: anyone who is doing something they love to do, for pay or for love alone, is following that creative urge.

Encourage someone. Ask them what they love to do: listen deeply and respond generously.  When you help someone else, you become part of their Community of Practice.

Now imagine a whole network of Communities of Practice.   – That’s something to write home about…!

Question:

If you could add one person, place, or event to your Community of Practice… who or what would it be?

And, as I said at the start – fictional and improbable answers highly encouraged…!

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Comments on the Writing Life:

Part One – Creativity is a Gift. Everyone Has It.

Part Two - Practicing Trust

Comments on the Writing Life … Part Two

This is Part Two of a Three-Part posting on the Writing Life.  If you haven’t read Part One, you can find it here.  When you’re done, come on back and have a look at this one. 

There’s another question at the close of this post – I hope you’ll add your ideas and experiences to the conversation.   — Kathy

Practice Trust

Is life with writing in it …better than life without writing in it?

If so, then it follows that writing frequently will create a life that is more frequently …better.

Find ways to write on a regular basis, and you are creating a writing practice.

Writing as a practice isn’t about production – though it will likely generate writing that is deep and strong. It isn’t about success – though you may feel at times satisfied and fulfilled. And it’s not about earning money – though you may indeed use it in making a living.

Writing is simply…a practice. It’s the habit of taking time to write.

It’s trusting that if you carve out the time and move the pen,

something new will come.

Writing isn’t a problem to be solved; it’s a mystery to be explored… Likewise, a writing practice isn’t a discipline to be met, it’s a trust that something new and interesting awaits you.  Whether it’s serious or silly, fierce or confused, joyful or wailing: writing can be counted on to tap the imagination, offer new perspectives, and reveal aspects of the world – and ourselves – we hadn’t fully understood.

Carve out time for your writing practice. Creativity is a deep human calling, and commitments to your self – and your creativity – need to hold the same weight as commitments to work, family and friends.

Share

Start a journal. On the side. Don’t agonize over how or when to write, or even what use it will ever have – just do it.  Journaling is like composting: allowed to ferment, today’s random leftovers become a rich soil that supports something new and unexpected.  Jungle flowers, heart songs, dirt roads with broken bridges… you never know what will emerge.  Just trust.

Find a workshop; find a mentor; find another writer and exchange your work.  Share your writing life.

Read. Find an author you like and read their work: novels, short stories, poetry, editorials. Do a Google search and you’ll likely find them. If they’re alive, write to them, tell them how their writing moves you. If they’re not alive, write to them, tell them how their writing moves you.

Explore literary journals. Find one you like and subscribe to it. Orion, The Sun, Peregrine, Exquisite Corpse – there are thousands out there, and you can read many of them for free at your local library.  Several journals post online as well.

Keep Going

Over time, you’ll build up a number of ways to share your writing.  This is good.  Why?  Because:

(a) You’ll have company on the journey – someone who hears you!

(b) You’ll learn through their writing as well as your own.  …And

(c) You’ll be building the habit of doing something you like – something that satisfies your soul and expands your life – more often.

In the process, you’ll also help others strengthen and deepen their writing practice. Your quiet, humble practice will take root – and your writing will grow.

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When my children were young and there were precious few hours for sleeping, I spent one morning a month with a friend and mother who happened to write.  Between love and desire, we managed to make a batch of popovers, tend to our children, and talk writing while we passed the apple-buttered treats around the table.  The company, commitment, and ritual all served to support our hit-and-miss writing lives – and at least two great poems about popovers came out of that kitchen.

How about you: If life with writing in it is better than life without writing …how do you make your life better more often? What gets in the way of your writing? How have you intentionally made time to write, and when have you tricked yourself into it?

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Comments on the Writing Life:

Part One – Creativity is a Gift. Everyone Has It.

Part Three - A Community of Practice

Comments on the Writing Life … Part One

This turned out to be a very long post. I have a tendency to expand, given the slightest opportunity; and while blogging wisdom calls for posts that are short and shiny, well… this one just wouldn’t condense into bullets.

So I’ve herded my thoughts on the Writing Life into three sections.  Here is Part One, with a question at the end. I hope you’ll lend your thoughts and experiences to the conversation.    — Kathy

Creativity is a Gift.  Everyone has It.

At some very basic level, creativity is a gift that each of us carries. Some people express their creativity through music. Some dance. For some, it’s raising children, or building an organization, or cooking a nourishing meal. Creativity is a living force. It’s everywhere – and it’s ours to tap, in whatever ways most move us.

Telling Stories

Telling stories – placing words together in ways that convey an experience or idea – is an act of creativity.

Stories are everywhere. We share them on the phone, at work, over the dinner table, in brief outbursts and long, slow conversations. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking to strangers or people we know, to pets or a higher self: the stuff of our talk is …stories.

Writer and political activist Muriel Rukeyser said,

“The Universe is made of stories, not atoms.”

I have to agree: even the concept of atoms is a story.  And whether our stories are simple or complex, long or brief: when we put words together in ways that have meaning for us, we are participating in the creative process.

Telling stories onto paper or word doc is likewise a creative act. Creativity lives at the heart of writing; it draws us into a process that is challenging, inviting, confusing, surprising, and occasionally just plain fun.

So …Why Write?

Why write? I guess it boils down to a simple question:

Is life with writing in it…better than life without writing in it?

It is for me. 

And what about you? What moves you to write – what moves you to want to write when other responsibilities claim your time?  What is the ‘tipping point’ that moves you to say “I like to write…I am a writer”?

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Comments on the Writing Life:

Part Two - Practicing Trust

Part Three – A Community of Practice

Main Street Writers at High Speed.

Often, toward the end of a workshop session, we’ll have a five- or ten-minute window. A ridiculously short amount of time for writing begs an equally unworkable writing prompt – which I do my best to provide.

So below are several “snippets” that came out of a recent “last call for writing.”  The prompt itself appears afterwards… along with ideas about when and how this approach might actually be useful -

Enjoy!

The frisbee soared across the lifesize chessboard just as the tall boy knocked down the Queen with his Knight.   She fell across the square in a clean diagonal,  and one could almost hear a tear drop from her plastic eye as she abandoned her King to his fate.                                –  Dorothy Goldstein

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The moon was full and bright

As I threw my kite

Up, up into the air

But then it landed

Squarely on the Piazza

In Grandma’s pizza pie.

                                                                     — Kira Kmetz

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The ginger cat sits tall, a small furred creature in her mouth, back-lit by the moon through the stairwell window.                           — Kathy Dunn

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Trinity

oval winds

angled dreams

rectangular sadness

roundness of joy

                                                          — Laura Bellusci

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Her smile is like a diamond-bright triangle – sweet and narrow at the top, wide and welcoming at the base.  She sits behind the ticket-seller’s window in the train station, asking me for 42 euro in exchange for a one-way ticket to Dublin.  I ask her would she accept a note of undying love in its place, and her smile becomes a long, round circle of “no.”                                               — Kathy Dunn

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Mushy sloshed through the coarse, octagonal sand, cresting a triangular Cape dune. He spotted the Atlantic waves in the distance, dancing with cylindrical seals, before crashing into the square shaped beach. Out of breath, and, contemplating a meal that really struck a chord with him- breakfast, Mushy scanned the pentagonal landscape once more, and,  turned a 1/2  circle to depart. Just then, a vertex of sunlight reflected a rectangular object that caught his eye. He spun back in a parabolic fashion to focus both of his oblong globes on the perpendicular outline of an Artists Shack.  Studying it acutely, other shacks soon intersected his line of sight, as they arose out of the  camouflage of foliage and radial dunes.

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Mushy could not retreat now, as, one parallel  dream of spending a week at an Artists Shack was processing in his four-dimensional mind. Unfortunately, the solution to his geometric dreams might not be realized until 2012.  A curator, with a hexagonal shaped head,  had advised Mushy that Artist Shack renters are  selected only by trapezoidal lottery, and, the next lottery  was not until February 2012….

s/dfg;km                                             — Peter Roarke

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There are three things in this world that I cannot tolerate. Oranges, lemon squares, and pizza slices. It’s not the flavors of these things, not even their colors, but their shapes.

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How can one eat things with such perfect lines of existence?
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Why do oranges have to be circles? Why not ovals, like mangoes, or those weird shapes of pears?

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And lemon squares, well, that’s self-explanatory, and don’t even get me started on those triangles of pizza! I could go on and on for hours about those! But I won’t because what I really want to write about is: my mother, and honestly, doesn’t every writer just want to bitch about their mother? Or, in some cases, their alcoholic father? Yeah, I thought so!
akdsjf                                                 — Tanya Shersnow

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…And the exercise was: Write anything you want, just make sure there’s a circle, a square, and a triangle in it.

How do these “quick flashes” help you write?

- Somehow, a task that’s impossible from the start releases a writer from the Responsibility to Write Something Good and Right and Brilliant.  It can’t be done, so we might as well mess around and have fun.

- Although it’s counter-intuitive, this white-water kind of writing often “un-sticks” me when I get bogged down in a longer piece of writing.

- Snippets have been known to open out to longer pieces without warning.

- Read out loud in workshop, well… it’s like opening a Whitman’s Sampler and finding a dozen new flavors you never knew existed.  Good for the writer, good for the reader.

All in all…

This is a great way to keep the logical part of the mind busy tracking the rapidly shrinking window of time – while the dreaming, imaginative part of the mind slips new and startling images onto the page.

…It’s like turning over the garden and finding bulbs you don’t recall ever planting.

Try This at Home

Here are a few Impossible Starts to get the pen and the mind moving.  Make sure you give yourself a ridiculously short stretch of time. See what happens… and have fun!

- Write the 11th Commandment

- Make a short list of “Questions I wish someone could answer.”  Pick one, and write as if you absolutely know the answer.

- If you could change your middle name, what would it be – and why?

“Thanks for the timed writing.  It is amazing what it squeezes out of the old toothpaste tube…”   — Dorothy Goldstone

jg

PS – I hope you enjoy this blog. If you’d like to be notified when a new piece is posted, just go to the sidebar on the right, there (——>), and click on the Subscribe Button. You’ll get a handy-dandy email whenever a new piece is posted.  (Yup – that one, right over…there —–>)

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And you can learn more about me, the Amherst Writers & Artists method, and Main Street Writers here.

…And you

Five Fairly Easy Steps to Get Yourself Writing

1. Scalpel

Carve out time.  Not easy?  Schedule ahead – as far as you need to go.  Two weeks from Tuesday, 5 to 7 pm?  Great.  Put it on the calendar.  Commitments to your self hold the same weight as commitments to work, family and friends.

2.  Build in fun.

Where can you get something delicious? There’s that deli in town with plenty of places to sit and write.  There’s the tea house that opened six years ago…. What about the hillside (or rooftop) you never get to?  The one with the open view of clouds, sunset …stars.

Places that veer away from the everyday are like jungle gyms for the imagination.

Find places that are fun – because writing is too.

3. Diversify

No Wi-fi?  Bring paper and pen: the hand, the brain, and the writing all shift a little.  It’s very interesting.

Outdoors? No tables?  Bring a folding chair…and bug spray.

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4. OK, GO!

So you’re in this beautiful and different place.  Now what?  Sometimes the writing flows, right from the start.  Other times, it doesn’t.  For those times, here are a few ways to get the pen moving or the fingers typing:

-  Make a list.  A short list, like…15 things to do with a piece of string.  Or 15 things you’ve done already today. Or 15 reasons not to write.

- Start with: “I used to be… but now….”  Fill in the blanks, and go on from there.

-  Give voice to whatever words arrive.  “I can’t write,” is a frequent visitor in my work.  From there, it tends to expand on my other shortcomings. Eventually, more interesting topics arrive.

Here’s the key: If you keep the pen moving, something new and unexpected will emerge. Guaranteed.

5. Fare forward.

Give yourself a title.  Intrepid Writer.  Ruler of the Eastern Seas.  Wondering on a Hillside.  With a title, of course, come perks and duties:

The perks are that you now have to sit somewhere nice and play with words… ie: insights, images, dreams, fears, certainties, wanderings, outrageous plots, recipes, quiet notes to the heart.

Your duty, of course, is to continue.  Schedule a next time.  Re-read your work when you get back home.  Put it on your computer.  And share it with someone who understands you as a writer.

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If you’d like to learn more about developing your writing practice, let’s talk!  You can email me at: mainstreetwriters@gmail.com.

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