Sunday Timed Write!

Write for twenty minutes without stopping on the prompt. When you are finished, post some or all of what you wrote here.

Prompt: spring

Making time to read what's offered unsolicited...

I know it is hard enough to make a dent in the stacks of books and periodicals in your own mental queue. Add to that the book or two you are reading for school, work, or your book club and the one you're reading more for self-improvement than pleasure. You also have at least a few periodical subscriptions piling up and you really ought to read more poetry, don't you think?

I'm with you.

Today, though, I made an exception. A colleague of mine waltzed into my classroom carrying a two foot pile of fresh copies for his students. When I realized that the reason the whole pile nearly tipped over onto my floor was that he had printed something else--something extra--for me.

I had plenty more pressing duties today, but somehow, in between this and that, I managed to read the four NY Times articles this friend had offered unsolicited. He did not say why he printed them for me. I suppose because I am an English teacher and they were all about sentences, fiction, and books.

I read them all and enjoyed them all for their thought-provoking ideas and found among them four of five lines to use in class or just to underline and write a heart next to (what I do when I really like a sentence).

Here are the articles this history teacher who totally didn't have the time to think of what I might read and enjoy but did anyway passed on to me:

"The Sentence As A Miniature Narrative" by Constance Hale

"My Life's Sentences" by Jhumpa Lahiri

"Your Brain On Fiction" by Annie Murphy Paul

"The Way We Read Now" by Dwight Garner

Sunday Timed Write!

How it works:

1. Write for 20 minutes without stopping on the prompt.
2. Post what you wrote as a comment on this post.

Prompt: An awkward situation.

Letter to Editors #5: Dear Adulthood,

Dear Adulthood,

Why did I not hold you off a while longer?

I used to skip classes to spend hours penning ideas into notebooks--black coffee, toasted bagel to fuel my inspiration. I would stare out windows, at lovers walking down the street, and at old ladies on their raincoats on the transit bus that I took home for one shiny quarter. I would write and listen to music and daydream for hours.
"What will you do?" They asked.
"I'll write," I answered.
"What if your writing isn't any good?" They replied.
"I'll write better," I stood my ground.
"Will you go to college?" They added.
"Why?" I asked.
Impassioned, impertinent, rebellious, alone against the world: Ah, that was me!
Eight years college. Twelve years high school teacher. Fourteen years wife. I learned to sacrifice writing for dollars and gold stars.
What if I let the house go? What if I stopped putting things back in their place? Started coming to work unprepared?
What if I got fired? If all I had to do was pen these lines?
I tell myself--being adult as I am--I don't deserve to write at all until I've done my duty.
What you "do" if the first thing we ask a person we've just met.
I'm a teacher.
I'm a mother.
More meekly, I'm a writer.
When I tell people that they want to know if I've been published and whether I've written any books.
Adulthood,
These responsibilities are endless.
What if I refused? Made unreasonable demands? Used my charm to get my way?
Would you tell me to be more mature?
What if I stopped cooking dinner? What if I really wrote every day? Really put in the time and let the muse take me even if it meant I wasn't pulling my weight, wasn't being my best in every way? Meant I missed appointments and forgot to pay my bills?
What if I lost track of time?
Adulthood,
You tell me I must care, I must serve. I must work hard even if the reward is merely the satisfaction of having done my best work. I should put others before myself. I should volunteer more. Exercise more. Keep my house cleaner. Be a better parent. Stay in touch with old friends and make new ones if I can. Organize all the clutter. Be generous to my lover. Have a solution for every problem.

You make it so hard to write, sometimes.

Letter to Muses #4: Dear Pen and Paper,

Dear Pen and Paper,
I bought a manual typewriter from a junk shop downtown Aberdeen and typed my first short story on it. I was eighteen. I didn't own a computer until college. My son was just learning to walk and he spoke only in the roundest sounds and brightest gestures. Before then, I composed in notebooks. I never went anywhere without a notebook in my hand or backpack. I often had several notebooks going a once.
Finding time to write then felt the most impossible it ever has, enrolled in eighteen credits as I was, tied as I was to my first responsibility--parenthood.
In ten years, I composed fifteen or so short stories on the computer and filled twice as many --more--notebooks with a disorganized collection of journal entries, quotes pulled from other writers, poems, and story ideas. On my computer now, I have hundreds of poems, more than fifty short stories, and four full-length novels in various stages of development. But, pen and paper, I always start with you. When I'm stuck, I fall back on your forgiving blank page, nothing like the cold white of the computer screen, cursor flashing.
Pen and paper, with you, I can write anywhere and recline while I write, and there is something about the hand's grip, the way ink loops and scratches across the page with my whim or intent, something about the way I can scrawl out lines or words and draw arrows to move pieces of prose around on the page.
Pen and paper, I prefer you for starting anything and when I'm stuck. You are my choice for letters and love notes. Among all the remedies prescribed for writing emergencies--the software, the apps, the social networks--you emerge as that simple solution people sometimes talk about.

Love,
Liz

Letter to Muses #4:

Dear Solitude,

You are sometimes hard to come by anymore in my beautiful, busy, love-drenched life, but without you, shadows pool in my eyes and I struggle to see or feel clear.
A young woman, I took you in excess, as I tended toward excess in things that felt good. Hours spent writing, listening to music, watching insights form on the ceiling like clouds in the sky, coming into focus, then shifting. I took you on long walks across two towns. I found a more disciplined you in yoga.
You are why I walk to runs and meetings even in the pouring rain. You are why, though I'm not a morning person, I love the quiet hours when the whole house still sleeps. You are why I run distance, trying to shed all the mind phantoms that keep me from just being you.
Though you are sometimes mistaken for loneliness, you have nothing to do with that particular sadness. You aren't sadness or joy, though you can be filled by either one.
The people I love best are good company in solitude. These people I can sit next to on a lawn chair reading a book without a word passing between us for the whole of an afternoon. I can write when they are in the room.
As for writing, without you the valve shuts, stopping the flow, creating a pressure strong enough to signal all the wrong neural networks.

Letter to Editors #3

Dear Petunia,
I call you Petunia, though you are just an aspect of me. I call you this because the name reminds me of a girl from elementary school who never once talked to me without that look on her face--eyes narrowed, nose wrinkled in disgust. She was a pretty-faced girl who could be nice, but for some reason didn't like me.
Petunia, you are just like that girl. No matter what I do, you are there ready to jab your stick pin in my balloon, push me in the lunch line. You tell me that if I think that just because I want to be a writer my writing deserves to be read by anyone else at all, I am delusional, at best a fool playing an elaborate game of pretend.
You tell me to work hard and keep my nose to the ground. You wonder why I waste my time solving problems that involve placing words in order on a page. If I like stories so much, you tell me, I should just read more. There are already more worthy stories out there than I could read in two life times, at least.
You add, in that snotty way you have, that I'm not very good at it anyway. Sure, I've struck creative gold a few times, but to a certain extent writing is like sex. If you do it often enough, you're bound to create something better than yourself.
You don't like the way I dress or laugh, and you certainly don't like the way my conflicts aren't resolved and my scenes too thinly sketched. If you can get my attention, you tell me all this in a steady stream, barely pausing for breath so that my pen stops mid-sentence and I exhale an exasperated sigh, then check my email or do the dishes because who the hell am I kidding anyway?
Petunia, I know this letter won't bring an end to our relationship. You are an inextricable part of me, and in my optimism, I like to think, a strangely necessary part that keeps me working at becoming a better writer.
Petunia, there is something I want you to know. The most alive I ever feel comes always after writing something I believe is pretty good or maybe even better. That feeling comes from a desire to create far more powerful than your desire to destroy.

I've got you where I want you,

Liz

What I Want in 2012...

While I'm in agreement with Rachael Jamison over at her fantastic blog Little Revolution Inside that in no way should a New Year inspire you to make a list of all the things you want to fix or change about yourself, then start carving away at the self-image of the beautiful person you already are, I do want to start this new year with some narrowing down of choices.
Particularly considering the never-ending news feeds we all have opened ourselves to via our Facebooks and our smart phones and our high-speed internet connections, I, for one, would like to pause here at the brink of the New Year and get some focus.
What are the things I want to do most of all? I will have to say NO to some things in 2012, which is great because saying NO is a practice I am currently cultivating.
When every day forces outside of me are pulling toward some news, activity, must-read, belief, new practice, new adventure, and so-on, I want to start this year with some non-negotiables, some things I want to do and read that everything else will just have to work around. I've created two lists: 20 Books I Want To Read In 2012 and In 2012, I'd like To. I also created and printed a visual map of these lists that I posted on my inspiration wall and will write all over by crossing out the things I've done and writing comments such as hearts, smiley faces, and exclamations. (See photo).

In 2012, I'd like to:

--Write everyday
--Run a marathon
--Write one letter a month
--Make more meals with Chris
--Try Portal because Emy says so and if I do, maybe I can get her to run with me
--Read the books on my list and more
--Keep writing Letters to Muses and Editors for this blog
--Do everything on the List of Things I Want To Do With Chris
--Send out stories
--Remember that even 10 minutes of yoga a day makes a practice

I will read other books--for teaching, for book clubs, because they find me, but these are the books I want to read no-matter-what in 2012...

Books I Want To Read in 2012:

1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
2. Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
3. Great House by Nicole Krause
4. Fire on Her Tongue (Poetry)
5. Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Essays) by Joan Didion
6. The Art of the Personal Essay by Philip Lopate
7. 13 Ways of Looking at a Novel by Jane Smiley
8. The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates
9. The Fact of A Doorframe by Adrienne Rich
10. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
11. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstein
12. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
13. The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker
14. One For the Money (Because Carrie Says!) by Janet Evanovich
15. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
16. Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
17. The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein
18. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
19. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
20. Finish Ulysses... :)

Letter to Muses #3

Dear Imagination Tree,
Half way into a ten mile run, half way up a doozy of a hill, you shifted my perspective the instant my brain received the sight of you. Trudging up that hill, by breath, by cadence, by will, I felt your influence before I understood its meaning.
You are like the sight of a rainbow caused by sunlight through a window prism, like stumbling upon a hopscotch board with time and inclination to spare, like the urge to turn a cartwheel just to make sure I still can. I saw you and longed to play under your branches, to let imagination trump sensibility, to pause mid-hill to play.
Imagination Tree, you remind me to:
skip rocks
splash in puddles
smile when I run
and, most of all,
to write what pleases me.

Letter to Editors #2

Letter to Editors #2

Dear Stack of Ungraded Papers,

When I first became a teacher, I toted you around like a newborn baby. Proud, you testified to the good work I had been called to do in the world. I tended to you before and after dinner and during family movies.
You took longer to finish than I expected and you grew like some kind of well-fed yeast. When I finished grading you, students paid little or no attention to why you had earned the grade you had, even on assignments they would revise and turn back in to be graded again.
I need you, to insure accountability, to make sure students are producing compositions, but you and I both know that the real learning happens in the classroom day to day and in the act of the student creating the paper that is now sitting in a pile for me to grade.
You take time away from curriculum creation and refinement, face –to-face in process interactions with kids, and personal creative pursuits that expand my knowledge of and love for my subject area.
You give feedback too late. You further the myth that human potential can be quantified by a number or a letter. You distract student focus from the wonder and curiosity that leads to leaning that improves us and lasts.

I’m looking for ways to shrink you and still have students writing and creating.


Liz

Letter to Muses #2

Dear Letter In The Mail,
I look for you every day, though at times you have stayed away for years. I have put bundles at a time of my own letters in the mail in hopes of your reply, a sort of message in a bottle.
I dig for stationery remnants in thrift stores and tuck them inside my iris-adorned letter box. I have some with a pink tea rose design and some with sea turtles wearing sunglasses. The best letters I have ever gotten, I save in that same box in case of emergency.
Always, it seems, I have been a sucker for a hand-written note, even when the notes were as simple as "What are you doing after school today?" written with hearts over the "i"s and passed during Mr. H's lectures on the War for Independence.
Letter in the mail, you remind me of why I write anything at all, even so called fiction.
I will never forget the day. It was March. Gray-covered. Rain fell in that weak-persistent way that salt and pepper race on a tuned-out television. Before that day, I'd never considered the term panic attack. Now, if I hear the words from across a crowded bar, they sober me.
Nothing big happened to trigger the attack. Staring out the kitchen window, a sink of dishes half done.
I had been looking forward to an evening of solitude so I could write. But my mind just went wild with imagination and I thought I would surely die.
So certain was I of my own death--probably by heart attack--that my hand shook as I wrote, "Dear Grandmother I Never Knew", then kept writing more and more words.
Nothing less than a miracle, then, that by the time I closed the letter "You Loving Granddaughter, Liz" my heart drum had returned to that steady, familiar knowing.
Letter in the mail, you remind me.

Love,
Liz

Letters to Editors #1

Dear Premature Feedback,
I knew the story wasn't finished. It stank, in fact, in at least five places. The bones were there, but not the flesh. The ending dropped like an egg onto the kitchen floor when I read it aloud.
It was cruel the way I asked for you and then picked apart how my lover gave you exactly as I asked. It must be his fault, I thought, for not saying you clear enough, for padding you with "I like" on all sides.
I ask for you because I want someone else to tell me what only I can tell myself: the work you are doing is good--press on.

Ignoring you,
Liz

Letters to Muses #1

Dear Stormy Autumn Morning,
The trees are on fire in the yard and the streets are shiny wet from the rain that drums on the roof. This new house has more windows to look out of and a rain chain. From where I sit, throw blanket and slippers on, reading on the love seat, I watch the water's path down the chain until a gust of wind sends gold leaves tumbling to the ground, pulling my attention, nudging my imagination. The sun illuminates the yard and I imagine if I ventured out I would find a rainbow. The wind, the light, the leaves, the rain: stirring ideas, possibilities, desires. Mornings like these, writing begins easy and I lay down word upon word, heart alive with belief in creation.

Love,
Liz

Tottering on the beam

Fall (September and October more specifically)is the hardest time of year to get writing done. While the change of season invites writing and reflection, the amount of things I need to do in a day widens with the start of school. Yet, the days are literally shrinking and the ungraded papers (like the leaves on my lawn) pile higher and higher. I'm not losing hope,though, not giving up. Getting up at 3 AM two days each school week is helping. Regular writing time after school on Wednesdays with my two favorite writing buddies is also a boon. Keeping my bi-weekly appointment with my critique group also urges me on. Then there is also the network of writer support I've built on Facebook. Hallelujah for these encouragements!

Because writing with consistency through our busy, overcrowded lives is at times impossible and, at best, difficult, but rewarding work.

Reflection on maintaining a writing life post-MFA, written in second person for no particularly good reason, just to see what emerges

When you published your first book, an allegory on dot matrix pages filled with colored pencil illustrations, held together with yarn and glue, you were told by the big sister-like teacher with the cinnamon hair in the Young Writer's Workshop that you were a writer. You liked the sound of that. It was the thing you had been waiting to hear, the explanation for your impulse to observe, mute, a soothing from the shame of "stare hard, retard".
Because you were young enough to believe just about anything, for a while you needed nothing more than the go-ahead of the teacher with the cinnamon hair. You wrote stories, all illustrated. You and a friend made up your own comic.
Your body too was changing when you stopped believing, no longer content with what you had been writing, afraid to write the things that sat like a heavy meal in your gut. Terrified you weren't a writer after all, afraid to have nothing to show, you took the poem about a flamingo offered by your generous, concerned friend and put your name on it so that you would have something to show.
You started to journal and your aunts, who must have sensed your need for guidance or perhaps were once there themselves, bought you books that called you writer, offered you exercises to build-a-better-body, a body that could endure the strain of story-making.
You began to write the things that mattered, though your stories then, like the teen who wrote them, mostly only pointed and balked. You wanted to keep writing then more than anything though. In fact, those stories were the only thing you trusted and you were sure without them you were nothing.
You believed this less when you became a mother,then a teacher, and it was hard to write in those years and you were so aware of that hollow, just as you were the beating of your own heart that first year of teaching. You wrote in fits, though you often felt guilty and were sure that your family must be lost without you. Selfish of you to have this page, this pen, this separate pleasure! You sometimes snuck in writing time.
It wasn't just that you loosed your grasp on what you never could control, though that helped. You persisted, sometimes you really just limped along and lied. Now you've got your MFA and you know without a doubt, like you did when you published your first book, an allegory on dot matrix pages held together with yarn and glue, that this is the thing you must do and that you must in some way do it every day. When you doubt that, you will remember the rush of relief, love, and joy you felt the first time your fifteen-year-old son spent the bulk of one day struggling to master a song on his electric blue Fender guitar.

Teacher/Writer: Struggling to Find A Writing Schedule

Summer time is prime writing time for me. My best teacher friend (who also happens to be a fiction writer) and I devise an escape plan at the end of every school year to immerse ourselves in a writing life. We do this to avoid the inevitable. School ends and the routine that we have spent all year perfecting and shaping drops away, leaving us not free and inspired, but lost and looking for our keys. This year (because of a late release date) we didn’t do this. Until now. Here we are in Packwood, WA where I have no cell service and I have to sit on the roof to steal Internet from the neighbors who own the pug named Gary (who stops by every once in a while to make sure we are all settled in).
The first day here I was like a kid with ADD during a history lecture. Read for a while. Pace the floor. Write a letter. Walk down to the river, throw myself down on the sand and pray to the River Gods for aid. At least three times, I was ready to pack it up and go home, ready to say, you know what, I finished my one book, that’s all I’ve got.
Finally, I was able to sift through some short stories and decide which ones were worth the hard work of revision and set aside three that are the seeds of future novels. At that point, I couldn’t delude myself. I had a complete draft of a novel I’ve needed to write since 2005, three future novel seeds, five stories that even the thought of revising gives me a mild endorphin rush. I will write. I have to.
This whole situation is really a false dilemma that I have been handed the solution to countless times. Build a habit. Keep a schedule. Set attainable goals.
So, what’s the problem?...
I am accustomed to my teacher schedule, wherein every year the schedule begins anew and every summer, the comfort of that routine drops away. So, here’s what I decided while I was walking around the neighborhood here in Packwood trying to get even one bar on my cell phone so I could send that one last text message. It’s high time I separated my teaching life and my writing life and came up with a writing schedule that will work for me year round. If I am able to write more in the summer (because I have more time), well nothing keeps me from writing above and beyond the schedule, right? I need to create a summer schedule that will also work during the school year and hold myself accountable to that schedule.

My schedule: Thursday through Sunday
Goal: @ least 1000 words or 6-10 pages of revision
What’s your schedule?
See my success rate here.

Writing practice

Working on a short story and researching markets. Read an article with my breakfast (coffee, grapefruit, brie and crackers) about yoga and activism that nailed how I feel about writing practice, yoga practice, running, and just trying to be a better human being: "...sometimes what feels like a setback is really preparation for a big leap forward...progress isn't a neat linear path." That's pretty much what my novel is about. :)

I finished my book. What now?

I suppose there is at least this reality: I am never short on papers to grade, lessons to plan. And that's the danger I'm facing. While writing a book (particularly when you've never published or book or much of anything at all) involves a massive amount of faith and nerve, teaching is something I have a history of success in. It is very tempting to soothe the fears uncovered by the process of writing and rewriting my book, a book that at times unearthed acute personal pain, with retreating into what I know best.
I am resisting that temptation. I will grade those papers and plan those lessons, of course. However, I am also stepping ever further in the direction of the unknown by attempting to find an agent to represent my work. Using Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents (2011) along with sites like agentquery.com and simple Google searches for criteria like "agents Pacific Northwest", I am going where this woman has not gone before. It is a time-consuming and tedious process that feels sometimes like throwing dimes into glass ashtrays, but I have sent out 50 queries so far. I will press on, exhaust all my resources, thought I want to be writing again, have a second book strong in mind.
Writing is a practice of faith. For me that sometimes means letting go of the fear that if I am not currently writing, I may forget how. I feel this same way about other practices, other passions. If I take a week off running, will I ever go back? If my life makes the regular practice of yoga near impossible (which often happens in the ebb and flow of other demands on my time) will the loss be permanent?
So now I get the center of my faith. Having faith as a writer must come from a commitment to the necessity of the moment, a letting go of worries about the past or the future.

Publishing news with flare

Booksquare.com is a fun read full of insight and news related to books and publishing. You can also get it in a newsletter or get it injected right into your Facebook or Twitter feed.

Pretty cool list...

50 books that will make you a better writer. :)

Test your grammar skills?

Fun! ;)

Revelations About Writing While Running the Capital City Half Marathon

This morning I ran the Capital City Half Marathon for the third time. I’ve run several half marathons in the past seven years, and as for overall good feeling before and after the race, this race was my best yet. Around mile 5 or 6 of the run, I put into words what it was that was making this race so good for me, so that I could stay feeling good for the rest of the run, and I kept repeating three phrases over and over to myself: stick your neck out; listen to your body; come to your own edge. It was around mile 7 that I began to see how these mantras applied to my writing life too.

Stick your neck out

This mantra has a simple, practical application to running and has to do with physical alignment. I have experienced shoulder and neck tension with frequency during runs. I’ve tried various tricks to keep my shoulders relaxed, but today something clicked for me. “Stick your neck out” reminded me to keep a long neck and to extend through the top of my head. For the first time ever, I had absolutely no tension in my neck and shoulders during the run.

I was basking in this freedom of movement and turning the corner of mile 7 or so, when I thought about how “stick your neck out” also applied to my writing life now. I just finished my first novel, have written a query and synopsis, and am attempting to find an agent. After twenty years of writing, I am finally willing to stick my neck out and try to sell my work. In the past so many things have prevented me risking rejection. I felt overwhelmed by the publishing process. I felt less-than other writers. I did not trust my own instincts. Mostly, I just didn’t believe I could do it and so I didn’t stick my neck out. I have sent out 20 queries to agents in the past two weeks and already received five rejections, and despite those rejections, I feel a freedom of movement much like I felt during the run this morning. In a different way, I am sticking my neck out.

Listen to your body

At mile 4 I was running hot and though the rain was coming down and people around me were still wearing their long sleeves, I peeled off my long-sleeve layer. I ran the rest of the run in a tank top. The relief I experienced when I peeled off that layer was ecstatic and came as a result of listening to my body. I listened to my breath. I felt the cool raindrops on my skin. I slowed and quickened my pace entirely based on my own body’s signals (breath, temperature, body sensations). I tuned out what other runner’s around me were doing with their bodies just like I would in a yoga class, a place where listening to my own body and not looking around are givens. Today I found that I could do the same in running more than I ever had before. The resulting feeling of freedom filled my heart with love. I made it a goal to say thank you to the volunteers I passed along the rest of the route and I did.

Listening to my body in my writing life has to do with accepting the natural ebb and flow of my creative energy and not judging my own writing practice by what I did the day before, what another writer does, or what I think I should do. As I mentioned, I just finished my first novel. I am eager to get back to the page. I even know what my next project is going to be. I have a roll of butcher paper that has been sitting in the corner of my bedroom for a week now in anticipation of mapping out the plot of my next project. I also have some short stories I am working on. Should I start mapping that plot while I am also researching agents and sending out queries? Should I split my daily writing time between queries and writing time? These are questions I have been struggling with. This morning, on the run, I discovered my answer. No. I will write when I am ready and when I am done sending out queries. I may take some notes here and there, but when I listen to my body and I think of having my head in a writing project and trying to sell my book, I feel my breathe catch and my muscles tense and I realize that I need to slow down my pace and do what feels right, not what I think I should do.

Come To Your Own Edge

Come to your own edge was the mantra today that reminded me to push myself the whole way. I have a tendency to be a bit easy on myself when I run and this phrase reminded me to stay in the moment and push to the best of my ability.

In my writing, coming to my own edge means to find time to write every day and to value that writing time by staying focused in the moment, setting goals and working toward them. It means being a good self-editor by being willing to delete, revise, or set aside work that isn’t my best. Coming to my own edge means that when I’m writing, I am just writing (not multitasking) and I am doing the best writing I am capable of in that moment.

Somewhere between mile 5 or 6, I had come up with the language for how I wanted this run to go: stick your neck out; listen to your body; come to your own edge. I was saying those three phrases over and over to myself and it was at about mile 7 that I began to see how each of those phrases related to my writing practice as I want it to be. I thought to myself, “The first thing I’m going to do when I finish this race is find someone with a pen I can borrow.” Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far. My pals at Guerrilla Running were the first booth I came to. As I write this, I am reading the notes I made on the back of one of their flyers.

Jane Smiley

Just started Jane Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. Here's an interview with her at Failbetter.com from last December discussing her own writing and writing practice.

Yoga and Writing: Another Perfect Pair

An article about yoga and its benefits for writers and also about the importance of solitude and stillness (which yoga provides). Included in the article is a quote from Writing Down the Bones, a book that influenced me as a very young writer and that I love and a link to a site with poses and prompts for you to try.

My personal yoga practice of more than twenty years is a part of a whole creative practice, the product of which is writing. I generate and work through ideas while I run or walk. I prepare my body and mind for the stillness and focus that writing requires through yoga. Both running and yoga have made me a better writer.

Running and Writing: Perfect Pair

Love this article on the connection between running and writing. It spoke to my own feelings about the relationship between these two practices for me. Also, here is another push for me to read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

I've never read anything John Sayles wrote, but...

I've never read anything by John Sayles, but I'm inclined to give him a try after reading this article about his unconventional book tour.

If you designed your own book tour, what would it look like? Where would you go?

Now that I think about it...that could make a great project for my ninth grade students...hmmmmmm

NY Times Writers on Writing Archive...Enjoy!

Wow! This should keep you busy for a while. :)

Ian McEwan Article

Ian McEwan on books that have shaped his writing and also some about his writing process. I particularly liked what he had to say about welcoming silent periods where you may not be writing, but ideas are developing.

Timed-write challenge

Assignment: At least four times this week, set a timer for at least one hour and sit down to write.

The rules:
1. Don't answer your phone, check your email or Facebook, or get up to make tea during that hour. Stay in your writing space.
2. Seek solitude. Go to a cafe to be alone or tell the people you live with that for that hour you are unavailable and stand your ground.
3. Make some brief notes on what you accomplished in each writing session and how you felt.
4. Post your reflections on this experience as a comment here next Sunday, May 8.


I will be writing with you!

Call for submissions: Freed by yoga

I am seeking your poems, essays, or stories about how yoga has influenced your way of thinking and being for a blog I want to launch this spring.

Mail submissions to liz@eatyourwords.org. Include your name and the words BLOG SUBMISSION in the subject line.

A New Year, 2011... :)

This musing goes out to Chris, because more than anything I want to spend this coming year achieving goals and enjoying life with him. So, baby, here is to a rare love, a new year. *mwah*

Books I Read in 2010:
Various essays and poems from collections pulled off the shelf such as Naked Poetry, Dancing With Joy, and Risking Everything...
To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
Man Walks Into A Room Nicole Krauss
The Book of Other People Zadie Smith
Ron Carlson Writes A Story Ron Carlson
Five Skies Ron Carlson
A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf
Reading Like A Writer Francine Prose
Marya Joyce Carol Oates
How To Be Good Nick Hornby
Eva Trout Elizabeth Bowen
The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen
Because It Is Bitter And Because It Is My Heart Joyce Carol Oates
Tinkers Paul Harding
I started Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon) and want to finish it in 2011
Generosity Richard Powers
March Geraldine Brooks
On the Road Jack Kerouac
Interpreter of Maladies Jumpha Lahiri


Books I Want to Read in 2011:
--At least 3 yoga books
--Several books purchased, check out from library, or pulled off my shelf on a whim
--At least 4 books all in one sitting
--Books given to me by people I love: World War Z; Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned; A Gate At The Stairs; The Map of Love
--Several books of poetry
--Finish Ulysses on schedule
--Kavalier and Clay (Chabon)
--Mrs. Dalloway
--Mansfield stories
--Poe stories
--Lolita (Nabokov)
--Catch-22 (Heller)
--Stranger In A Strange Land (Heinlein)
--Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)
--Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon)
--Under the Net (Murdoch)
At Least two of the books recommended by my Facebook friends: The Beauty Series, The Imperfectionists, The Lost Diary of Don Juan, Hunger Games, Harbor, The Help, Of Human Bondage, The Eden Express, World War Z, The Book of the New Sun, The Mulching of America, Shadow Tag, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing

I also want to read more literary journals and at least one regularly (perhaps the one I already subscribe to--that would make sense).

As far as goals or resolutions for the year, I want to keep running, writing, and taking time for love. I want to write more letters. I want to spend 10 minutes every morning in silent meditation and keep a journal of brief written recordings of those sessions. I want to live with intention, love without fear, and be the best person I can be.