the other mother - free writing workshop for moms

Summer Reading (why we write)

 

 

On deeply green and often boring summer vacations (boring isn't a four-letter word, really) in Greensboro, Vermont, the highlight of trips to town was the tiny, well-stocked public library. It was packed with possibilities. Someone should have opened a beautiful indie bookstore in Greensboro, at least for the summer, because moms and dads sat in the car during early morning goosebump swim lessons and no one had cell phones or kindles. But I remember the smell of the place, the vanilla and dust of books, checked out and brought to the lake, checked out and left on plaid couches, checked out and read through night and into morning.

This morning I met a Manhattan police woman, coming home after a night shift. She watched me pick up my book to read and said, "that's what I want to do when I retire: read." It'll be one long summer vacation, finding friends in fiction, finding something to ponder with friends in real life. I thanked her for working all night--so we felt safe reading in bed.

So here's your topic: Write a memory of summer reading. Is reading why you love to write? What did you find and read in summer libraries, in rental homes, in your grandmother's basement?

And also: what's on your summer reading list? Here's mine so far--because I want to read, read, read as if I were waiting until after rain to check the crayfish traps and swim out to the big rock.

Jane Smiley's Private Lives,

Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller,

Keeper--a Kathi Appelt YA,

You and Juki, my new serger manual,

B is for Bad Poetry but Pamela August Russell.

That's just the stack by the desk. There are a thousand more in the bedroom, in the library, in my shopping cart.

Also, I hope you'll read THE ORPHAN SISTER, which is coming out July 5th. You can buy it at your local bookstore, or at Amazon, or Powell's online or download it to your kindle or nook. Please do honor me with your read--and let me know what you think. (I believe, this week, if you navigate your way to Goodreads, you can get an advance FREE copy! Also check out Manic Mommy's post--she's giving them away, too, and many other fabulous books!)

Oh, and if you're in northern NJ on July 13, come to Bookends in Ridgewood for a free writing workshop and signing at 7pm. Or Barnes and Noble on Route 17S in Paramus at 730 for a signing and reading--I'm bringing chocolate.

Top 10 Ways Not to Write (tongue, meet cheek)

 
Today is one of those days you beg for a do-over. Do-over! Perhaps you left your keys in the plastic bag tube in the backyard when you went to pick up dog poo yesterday and think perhaps some innocent took your keys and the carpool of middle schoolers is waiting like birds at an empty feeder while you mutter to yourself and dig through the couch cushions looking for said keys. Perhaps you are out of milk, or coffee, god forbid, and you woke up with a cough at 3am and knew better but read until 5 anyway.

So in this mood, I give you 10 ways not to write. Please do not try them. Unless you want to. If you try them and then you need a cookie, let me know.

1) Rummage through your writing books looking for the one that has the writing topic that you know will get you started. The writing books you find will be the ones with topics which, while perfectly good for other writers, simply give you a headache and arthritic fingers and you eat a short stack of Thin Mints and have to go to the bathroom.

2) Sent texts and emails and call your writing friends. Tell them you are stuck. Then, when they write back with ideas, disregard these ideas. Instead, ask them if they've ever been stuck. Tell them how it feels to be stuck, like trying to zip-up a too-tight boot. Do not write down any metaphors. Make them stuck, too, and make plans for coffee and discuss the laundry soap that makes someone in the family break out in hives.

3) Look over your old writing. Do this purely with the intention of finding something you love and returning to it, Sharpie in hand, to determine that it is crap and you should never write again. Find that you can't find anything you love anyway and your Sharpie is dried up.

4) Discover you have 248 unread messages in your email or Twitter or Facebook or whatever you do to avoid writing. Reread these, but don't answer, or tweet, or twit, or whatever it is. Decide that tweeting is twee. That no one has anything real and succinct and true to say. Especially you. You have nothing to say. You are wordless. You like the word wordless but it isn't particularly fresh. Neither is writing in a second-person point of view, but hey, you left your decaf out too long (remember? you ran out of regular coffee. You had some wretched hazelnut decaf from 1982 behind the unused canning jars, and you made it, but it smells like peatmoss) and you don't have any milk to make it taste better, anyway.

5) Go for a walk. This is an excellent way a) to exercise the dog and b) to spontaneously hatch idea after idea, word after word. You only brought your dried-up Sharpie and a reciept from the gas station, but pause to etch down some of those brilliant ideas. Forget that you have the scrap in your hand when you pick up the dog poo. Idea over, man.

6) Read blogs about writing.

7) Read blogs about things other than writing.

8) Organize your pen cup. This is a good way to find change, the earring back you've been missing for six years, a crochet hook, and the hidden harvest left by the tooth fairy. This is not a good way to write, but then, you're not actually trying to write, are you?

9) Sign up for a writing class. Since you've been writing blog posts for three years, you think maybe it's time to try something different. Go for poetry, sonnets in particular. Form first, and then the flow. Try to read some sonnets. Shakespeare was brilliant! He wrote about writing! He had meter down and he made bawdy jokes about leeks! Decide you need to make leek soup. You don't have enough vitamins in your life to write. Why did you sign up for the sonnet, anyway? You are afraid of sonnets. Sonnets have too many lines.

10) Butt, meet chair. Pen, meet paper, or fingers to keyboard. Make a list and check it twice: ten ways not to write.

And it isn't even April Fool's Day yet!

You've Got to Have Fight

 

Which is not to say that writing is about fighting--although if you ask some of my students there's a battle with the fingers and the page and the brain--but today's topic is one I used recently in workshop, and I was so thrilled to have everyone's characters gain sudden depth and speak to us right there in a snow-crusted Starbucks while cellphones buzzed with urgencies and the police politely reminded people that icebanks atop their cars could turn into deadly weapons (I kid you not, and I thank them; a school secretary's husband was killed by a truck iceberg last year).

Anyway, since digression is one of my favorite things, I will break up this topic for you so you can follow along. Don't cheat.

1) pick two characters. If you're not working on something right this minute, pick a real person and make up a character. Write (or type) their names on the top of the page.

2) Pick a conflict. Commit. I know you might think, oh, I have plenty in mind, but just pick one, and write it down.  Maybe it's a husband who wants to move to Yugoslavia and a wife who wants to stay in the Bronx. Maybe it's two sisters fighting over a shirt, some amazing boots, the only food in the house, a boy, or whose turn it is to call for an intervention.

3) Got both those things written down? Really, write them down first. I'll give you the next step next, after you write them down...

4) Write a dialogue between these characters, about this conflict. Choose first person (I said, for one character) or close third (she said; he said). Write this dialogue for 14 minutes or four pages, whichever comes first. Don't forget to just write.

5) go back to your dialogue (don't read this until you've written!) and add at least two beats (the spaces between dialogue in which the characters adjust their bra straps, or tip their chairs back, or think the opposite of what they're saying). Now add one more, making sure it gives some important sensory information, ie, She smelled like smoke, I thought, bitter and ruined.

 

Then post it all here in the comments, so we can be proud of you. Conflict and dialogue both, by nature, move a plot along. And with dialogue we hear your characters speaking, and they can think things they do not speak, and do things with their bodies (stepping backward, poking each other with pencils) that tell us even more. Can't wait to read you here!

 

Guess what? My new novel, THE ORPHAN SISTER, is coming in July 2011.

AND THE WINNER IS....

Oh, welcome back to the blog. Maybe you've been in Norway, or to a wedding in Maine, or maybe you've been sitting in the backyard eating black raspberries (in which case, where do you live? I covet black raspberries). I've been to a wedding, I've met the mayor of DC, I've watched the clouds roll in and out of the sky like show curtains. And today, at last, both kids are at school (at least for a half day) and I'm back to the desk, missing them a little, relishing the quiet.

Your entries were delicious, elegant, sad, and I thank you for them all.

Everyone who entered the contest, please send me an email at [email protected] with your snail mail address and I'll send out a teeny token of my appreciation.

The winners are two, actually, because I couldn't decide between, "June, the month of ME!" (an exuberant, brave, and wonderful sentence that matches the rest of the piece) and "June is a horse race. It's the Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont all rolled into one. A thundering, earth shaking, blinders up, mad dash to the last day of school and the sweet victory of lazing in the open pastures and grazing on the blue grass of summer vacation." Wow. Just wow.

So, Lisa R. and Adrienne Campbell, please email your addresses, you are both the first ever:

MOMS WHO WRITE  Summer Contest Winners

Meanwhile, let's have at it, everyone -- and hey, if you're in my workshop and reading this and meeting up on your own for writing practice (hooray! hooray!) -- feel free to use this topic and post what you wrote:

Write about a wedding. You are in it. You are neither bride nor groom. Something at the wedding bothers you--a leaf hopper on the bride's bouquet, a cracked nail on the great-aunt's toe.

I'm asking you to stretch here, because if you can't find it in your memory, you're going to have to reach for fiction. Write about that thing that bothers you at the wedding for a good 12 minutes. Then bother us with the details.

Can't wait to hear all about it.

You've come a long way, baby

So summer is winding down. Never mind that we haven't yet been to "our beach house" (a one-week rental, and believe me, I'm excited -- this year it's more than 400 square feet!), but back-to-school is a full-on event out there. A friend at the pool told me she spotted Thanksgiving items in the Rite-Aid. C'mon, folks, let's not skip the all-important DNA Day! Tolkien Reading Day! National Boss Day!

I ordered my daughter's school lunch for September online the other day. She has more lunch options than we ever did. Mostly, I ate pb&j, or a cheese sandwich, or the ever-weird (but delicious) pomegranate (now I know I was ahead of my time).

Once in a while we were allowed to order school lunch from the lunch ladies. It came in silver foil and smelled, inevitably, of cardboard, cabbage, and feet. Mmm. She gets to choose between yogurt bag, turkey sandwich, cheese sandwiches, and of course, hot things, every day. What I really longed for was the chocolate milk.

There's still time yet to enter the summer writing contest. If you do it by Labor Day, I promise not to put a turkey on the door until then.

Meanwhile, here's a topic for the waning days of summer:

Write about school lunch. Packing it, eating it, smelling it, wanting it, lacking it, buying it, hating it, loving it. Write for 8 minutes because it's the 8th month of the year.

Then come back in September, because it's time to get writing some more!

Sweeter than Tupelo Honey

sweet honey
image by mateusz atroszko

Some days we all need a little sweetness, a little honey, a little magic. Never mind the initial groans grownups make, this little book is lovely, full of imaginative language and dazzling drawings, and most of all, magic. My daughter is at the age of magic (not that it really ends, ever), and she gasped when she saw this.

"Oh, Mommy, it's the most beautiful book in the world!"

fairy foals

I haven't grown tired of reading it over and over (never mind that we have about a thousand other books in the rotation), and she says the fairy foals are in her dreams. It makes me think about believing, about when I was walking home from kindergarten, so, so hungry for a snack, and I believed myself when I decided I could eat imaginary chocolate pudding from my pocket. It wasn't imaginary, it was delicious. The grasshoppers spoke to me, the tree leaves had a language, I could fly. You remember it, too.

So here's your topic:

Write about magic, when you believed.

It doesn't have to be corny; it shouldn't be cynical, it should be summer cicadas and the hissing of deep green lawns. Write for seven summer minutes.

And don't forget the contest. I've set a deadline: the end of summer. Labor Day. Sure, that's loads of time, but if you hone and post your paragraphs now you can feel as though you've accomplished one summer goal already.

Happy sprinkler weather!

Contest! Brought to you by the letter P

bird of paradise (Strelitzia)

School's almost out, the cocoons have hatched into moths and butterflies, the air conditioners hum and the grass sings with insects that will live very short, lovely lives.

Time for a little contest.

It's little because you only have to write two paragraphs. I'll give you a topic, and you can write for as long as you want (or 23 minutes, if you need a limit), but then take your work off into the outside world and hone two paragraphs for me, make them your best.

The winner gets:

• a) the honor of being the first ever Moms Who Write Summer Contest winner
• b) a fabulous car magnet featuring The Other Mother book jacket, so you'll always know which minivan is yours in the parking lot and
• c) an adorable little box of chocolates.

It isn't huge, but it's good. 4 runners-up get car magnets and can call themselves runners-up in any desired social event.

Take your new status to the Hamptons! Or the Shore! Or the Cape! Or the backyard sprinkler! Fire hydrant! If there's enough interest, I'll send out five fridge magnets as well, but mostly I'm hoping to get your best paragraphs. Don't be shy. Write, hone, post. The closing date is TBA.

Enough details. Now more details:

Yesterday my daughter and I were talking about the plum tree, about how for one week we get an explosion of fragrant flowers, then the next week a plethora of pink petal precipitation, and then, which is now, some perfect purple plums. Sure, they're ornamental, but we've used them as a sort of snack since we had a Persian babysitter who ate them by the bushel, and told us, "If I don't come to work tomorrow, they weren't good to eat." She came back. If you're out there now, Nooshin, we're thinking of you!

So summer means perfect purple plums around here. When I lived in San Diego it meant Santa Anas blustering the night-blooming jasmine and the hot dry wind making your throat ache for the east. June Gloom. In San Francisco the single bird of paradise plant bloomed in the tiny little space between our earthquake shack and the apartment building next door. One square foot of dirt enclosed by walls and a bird of paradise perched there.

This week's writing topic: What is June for you? Write your June, perfect plums or terrible rains. Then post your two paragraphs. Have at it. If you have been lurking, this is the time to post!

Oh, Italia!

ravioli gnudi burro salviac parmigiano
image credit: trozbo : cc-2.0-nc-sa

I've never been to Italy, but I was recently invited to a fantastic event hosted by Kim Orlando of Traveling Mom.com, Beth Feldman of RoleMommy.com, and Andrea Sertoli at Select Italy, his Soho loft/cooking school. First, let me say it was like entering a geode; from Bowery and a nondescript entryway and elevator to an open-armed loft filled with lovely company, extraordinary good will and hospitality, a vast square table that seated about 30 of us, and exquisite food.

I learned to make a little edible cheese basket for salads (we all did; some of the women writers dancing more fervently than others to cool the cheese/polenta mixture in the pan), red snapper baked in foil, and the adorably-named gnudi, pasta sans pasta--just the filling (oh, the filling!) piped out of pastry sleeves, then boiled, then baked.

Yum! Yum! Not just the food, but the conversation. I knew one woman there when I arrived (though it turns out I knew some from cyberspace...or they knew me, and then meeting them in all three dimensions was a joy), and a whole roomful when I left.

I wish I was having a catered affair so I could hire the charming Andrea Tiberi (it was a night of several Andreas), but if you live in the Tri-state area, I highly recommend that you do. I was also very tempted by all the Select Italy tours--making frescos with your family! Driving a Ferrari on the Italian roads! (okay, maybe not that one, though it looked scenic) Hiking in the Italian Alps! Definitely on my someday to do list.

Meanwhile...

This week's writing topic: Write about a place you've never been. Write for twenty minutes. As a bonus topic, make a list of trips you've taken--disastrous, fabulous, enchanting, nauseating...choose one to write about for another twenty.

And if you feel like sharing, that is, about a nonfictional trip, go visit Traveling Mom. You might just publish an essay with her, and inspire (or warn!) the rest of us. Happy Spring, writers on and all!

Boiled peanuts

It's hilarious, actually, if you say it over and over. Maybe even if you say it once. We went to visit Mom in Florida, northern Florida, so far north it's almost Georgia and you can get boiled peanuts and honeybells at a roadside stand.

Live oaks, Spanish moss, saltmarsh and egrets. I walked on the beach too much and my ankle ached but I loved it. This was the kite trip--I got one for each kid and they took them out on the beach (my husband, too) and flew the rainbows up over the sand.

I don't know about y'all, but I've been able to work only if I make shorter deadlines for myself. Maybe it's the lack of sunlight, but I need to feel accomplishment after, say, 10 pages. After, say, three loads of laundry. After, say, six emails and a single page of writing. It works, though, the small deadlines. It keeps me going while March marches in and there's still snow on the ground. Speaking of which...

This week's writing topic: Do some small ritual of writing (invent one if you don't have one--I don't) like touching the silver elephant (Ganesh?) you wear around your neck or turning once clockwise or looking out the window for a full thirty seconds. Then write, for 11 minutes, about melting.

filling the feeders, setting the jam

Not that I'm doing the latter. And I think it's putting up the jam, which is beautiful. Anyone know the correct idioms here?

Okay, so what I'm really doing is packing up a little backpack as if I were going on an expedition (expotition, said Pooh), but in fact (dental floss, notebook, eyedrops, pens, knitting project, etc) I'm getting ready to have ankle surgery.

All this is to say I might not be posting as frequently as I might like for a little bit, though I imagine after about two days I'll be very, very weary of recovery time. Knitting seems appealing, but so does not showing up for the bone graft and ligament reattachment bit.

Hey, that's not entirely unlike knitting. So I'm going to give you three writing practice tips, spontaneous in nature and not necessarily directly related to writing practice, but yes, to the practice of writing.

Then I'll give you three topics, just in case it takes me three weeks to come back. Post, though, tell your friends; I'll come back and drink up your words.

Three writing practice tips:

1. Fall in love with revision.
   It's your chance to reinvent the universe. And if you want to publish, you'll be asked to revise; it's best to enjoy it as much as you can.
2. Don't worry about what other people will think.
   In fact, don't worry at all. If you don't suck the marrow out of your material, it'll be dry bones. Worry, editing, vetting is for later (see number 1).
3. Write as much and as often as you can.
   Don't save yourself, your ideas, for writing. I'm a firm believer in writing practice (as codified by such greats as Natalie Goldberg). I also have written at least 400 extra pages for at least of my novels. They live in purgatory files on my computer, and I'm not sorry I wrote them, or that I had to cut them. They helped me find what I really wanted to say.

And, here are the three writing practice topics:

1. Write about family photos.
   You can even use one if you like, or find someone's online, someone you don't know. Write for 8 minutes.
2. Write about being out of breath.
   Start by going into the sensory--the squeeze of empty lungs, the rasp of cold air in the throat, the slowing of blood beats in the ears, etc...Then, give us a why (in labor, running away from a bear, trying to get back into shape, fell off the tire swing, etc). Write for 12 minutes.
3. Open your purse or desk drawer.
   Take out three items, and start writing about one or more. Where did they come from? Why do you have them? What if you lost them? Bottlecaps, the travel clock your aunt gave you, an unopened letter from your last boyfriend...Write for 11 minutes.

Be well, everyone!