the other mother - free writing workshop for moms

Sister, Sister

As I write guest blog posts and visit with groups discussing my new novel, The Orphan Sister, I find I'm thinking more and more about the sister-content in the book. Clementine is the odd sister out; she is a triplet, but her sisters are twins and she's fraternal. They match, she doesn't.

As a theme for the novel, a lot of her emergency in life is finding her other, her match, and realizing at the same time she's whole herself. But those of us with sisters know it's never that simple.If you don't have the book yet, please pick up a copy. It's paperback and easy to tote (and easy to buy!). If you want a signed bookplate, send me an email at [email protected].

Meanwhile, I have a writing topic for you sister acts out there, for anyone who has a sister, or if you don't, imagine what it might be like if you did.

Write: Ten differences between you and your sister.

Ten samenesses.

How has your sister embarrassed you (and how have you embarrassed her)?

What has she done that makes your proud?

From my newly-minted editor and her farrier sister to a new friend who says she no longer even knows where her sister lives, there's closeness and distance.

Write a thank you note to your sister. Thank her for something old and something new; thank her for what you share and how you compete. Post your work here!Happy summer, all! Happy sisterhood!

Doppleganger

Sometimes you're holding three extra items that don't fit in the little basket you picked up at Trader Joe's and wondering whether you're out of dried blueberries and how hot it will be in the car and someone stops you and says, "Annika? Is that you?"

I am not Annika (nor do I look anything like an Annika, I think, but that's irrelevant.). But I look like Annika. And Annika is so nice. And isn't that great, kids, she reminds us of Annika! And I may lose my hold on the packet of organic asparagus, but somehow, I'm still honored. Because I look like Annika, and Annika is so nice. Because, as we often learn, we have dopplegangers.Maybe they're nothing like us. Maybe they live in Romania and wear leather trousers. Maybe they're even not nice, but we won't say that, not yet--you may choose to write it, though.

In honor of one core subject in my new novel, THE ORPHAN SISTER (do you have it yet? Oh, do pick one up--it's a paperback, so you can bring it to the beach/on the subway/to your mom's house/on a plane. Or you can get an e-book in format of your choice. I think you'll like it, really, I do, even if it doesn't look just like Annika.) twindom, belonging, and pairs:

write about meeting your doppleganger. Maybe you meet her in Trader Joe's, or maybe you meet her at a party where people invite people they think look like twins. Wherever you meet, start with a dialogue. I want to hear if you sound alike, too.

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.

Roots and Shoots and Seeds of Imagination

Let me start by saying that my grandmother, Ethel Herman, died this weekend, and I will really miss her. She was 92 and died with her husband (Grampy is still with us!) there, in her own apartment--Grammy and Grampy have been a big part of my life, taking care of us when my parents weren't able (or needed a break), sending cards on every birthday, anniversary, mother's day, valentine's day, etc., coming to visit when my son was born, offering sixteen kinds of food when we came with both kids to visit them, emphasizing, always, that family is the most important thing in this world.

I've been remembering times when they came to visit us in Newton, when the rules shifted from Mom and Dad's rules to grandparent rules, when the whole book of world changed syntax, ever so subtly.

I called my grandparents this weekend especially to talk with my grandmother about her uncles, who were triplets. I don't have any official links yet, but I have been working on a new novel, called The Orphan Spoon, about triplets--two identical, one not. I believe the root of my interest in triplets came from Grammy's stories about her uncles. One, she said, was the world's most wonderful. The other two, well, they were okay. I wondered just how that worked.

In our old neighborhood in Newton, in the big house, where I had my own room shaped like a keyhole and my oldest sister, Claudia, lived with eves and windows that looked out on the tops of trees on the third floor (she had a clawfoot tub in the bathroom; my mother had a darkroom upstairs), there were neighborhood triplets. They were boys. They were French. They were mysterious. They were older than we were.

There was a big rock, a glacial erratic, on an island at the intersection of three streets--The Big Rock, we called it, and it was a Big Adventure to go down there as part of our games of sardines, or to watch the geometric wanderings of ants. But the triplets lived down there, and this is just to say that they were a root and seed in my imagination--older, vaguely dangerous, something to be stored for later work.

Writing prompt: what lives under the soil of your imagination? What early places stay with you, stone and scent and light? Write that place. Then populate that place with conflict and play, with all-important family.

I'll miss you very much, Grammy. May you have all the cream-top milk you want, may you magically know how to swim, may you never worry about weight and always know you are loved.

Make Your Own Summer Camp

I know it's been a long time since I've posted, but you're still visiting, writing, and emailing. Thank you! When I'm between novels, I always return to writing practice--I hope you'll come back and try every topic I've recommended.

Meanwhile, the peonies have dropped their heavy petals and the wax begonias are sunbathing. My son just came home with a fat file full of finished work--and we're labeling, signing forms, planning for a summer of daycamps and new pursuits.

I try to think of summer not just as a time to shuttle from drop off to pickup to the much-politicized local natural pool, but also a time to try new things. Sometimes it's best to sit outside and write, even if my pen gets sap-stuck and I can't bring my laptop for glare. I'm remembering my own summers: Bread and Puppet Circus, working at a dairy farm, a stable, science camp and deep, creative boredom on summer trips to Vermont.

It's your turn to stop and taste the green shoots of the timothy grass. Here's your topic:

Write about your summer when you were ten.

Or another:

Write about the summer you wished you had.

Then give yourself the freedom to change your routine--the kids are at daycamp, so put your feet in the kiddie pool and write about something new. Or try something new: try watercolor painting, read nonfiction if you love novels, read a poem outloud to your child, your spouse, your grandmother over the phone. Make a list of things you don't get to all school year, and give yourself an hour each morning--maybe for a week, maybe all summer if you can. Major in the flexible mind.

What's Beneath the Leaves

We just went for a walk in the lovely, lovely leaves. My daughter, who for some reason is sweetest of all, got stung not once, but twice by wasps. Are some of us really sweeter than others?

All this drama reminded me that I hadn’t posted for a while...

So here’s a writing topic that worked wonderfully in class:

Write about needles. Pine, pins and, dentists (ugh), sewing, knitting, being needled—whatever comes first to mind.

Write for 11 minutes.

Don’t be afraid to go there, even if it hurts (clearly this writing exercise can vaccinate you against fall gloom).

Post your writing in the comments section below (for any newbies who don’t already know). In class, the writings had a remarkable connection to each other—it charged the class with ideas and interest, and no one got hurt.

In other news, if you’re in northern NJ and would like to come meet me in person, come to the Ramsey Public Library in Ramsey, New Jersey on Sunday, November 16th at 2pm. Here are driving directions to the library.

The event is free, and I’m hoping for some of the amazing questions I’ve had at book groups lately.

Come! Tell me you read the blog!

And, as always, I’d be happy to sign bookplates if any of you would like to get your holiday shopping wrapped up early with signed copies of The Other Mother. Just send me an email with your name, address, and what you’d like me to write. I’ve been sending them out by the dozen, and it feels great to know more people will be reading about Thea and Amanda and hopefully feeling just a little more compassionate toward other mothers everywhere.

pro-cras-tin-a-tion

The thing is, I'm not usually a procrastinator. Sure, I look at that stack of laundry-to-be-folded and walk the other way; sure, my inbox looks like the beginnings of a very big, luscious bonfire, and sure, my kids aren't the only ones who have a hard time getting going in the morning, but when it comes to writing, I'm usually right ready when I have the writing time.

I always recommend scheduling the time--I write it in my Franklin Day Planner, to which I've become addicted since my working-in-an-office days. I am willing to sit in the quiet, thinking, giving myself permission to write notes before getting to the scene at hand, but today is different. All week I've used my sudden embarrassment of time to write. The kids are back at school; I have notes and plans and small scraps of paper with phrases that will start the important truths of this newest novel, and I've been using them. Until today.

Today, I want to go for a walk. Today, I miss our dog, who died last year. Today, my knitting looks ridiculously compelling, as if I could pick it up and finish my mother's birthday present, the huge sweater I'm making in bulky gold wool, the holiday gifts I feel compelled to begin ahead of time. I envy my friends who procrastinate by cleaning out closets, and THINK about cleaning out closets, but I'm just not getting to the writing.

I believe I know where I'm stuck: I suddenly have time, and intention, and prompt. I have clues about what I want to write, and there's a part of me that just doesn't want to write it. There's some bits of plot at the core I've been trying to write for years. They're painful, even if the story is ultimately a hopeful one. I have to get through the painful bits. I have to write them. So instead, I'm writing a blog post. But hopefully, it'll help anyone else who is procrastinating today.

Here's one self-imposed assignment I dig out whenever I hit this rare mood. Maybe it'll help you if you're stuck at the beginning, like I am. Maybe it'll help you if you're stuck in the middle, stuck near the end. Maybe it'll help if you haven't even started.

So here's your topic ...
Make a list: Things I Never Want to Write About

Give it a good 15 minutes, but probably the first few are the most important. They probably have to do with loss, and with love, and with fear, the biggies.

Then make another list: Things I Need to Write About

Take only 10 on this one. Then take a look at your lists. Is there any overlap? I will use mine to give myself writing prompts for this new novel for next week and beyond.

Even if the things I never want to write about are wretched, there's probably something good in there, and maybe I'll be able to exhaust them and move on to those I need. Or those I want. For now, another cup of coffee, and the lists themselves. Any writing counts.

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!