1/20 Prompt — Birth Story
February 4th, 2012

For some it’s our conception, others our birth, that begins our personal narration.  Literary characters are no different–Athena, Moses, Jesus, Despereaux, just to name a few.  These are characters whose birth, or conception, laid the groundwork for the story to come, whether it was a story of meeting that potential or rising above it.

So for today, consider your character’s beginning, not your story’s.  Does it define them?  Do they use it to redefine themselves?  Is it a thing of myth?  Or just the everyday?

Sorry about the delayed post…

Hope

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Posted in Miscellaneous Thoughts, Writing Prompts |
Groundhog Day
February 2nd, 2012

 

Since that hilarious movie of the same name came out, Groundhog Day means more to many of us than the question, “will winter’s remainder be mild or severe?” We now think of Groundhog Day as a time when the same thing happens over and over, with no stop in sight.

When I get a rejection in the mail, or more often now, in my in-box, I can’t help but think, it’s Groundhog Day! The letters are almost always the same, “Sorry but your project is not right for our list,” or, “After careful consideration….”

George Clooney has some great advice for actors. He told students at the Actor’s Studio, (I paraphrase), “You actors are the house–meaning the casino. You get nervous and down on yourself and worried you’ll blow it, but what are you really risking? You don’t have the job when you walk in, and chances are you won’t have the part when you leave. You’ve lost nothing.” When he realized this, auditions got a heck of a lot easier for him. And now that he is often the one doing the casting, he sees how nervous the folks are on his side of the table, worried they won’t find the right actor for the part, panicked money is hurtling out the window.

We writers are gamblers, too. We can waltz into the publishing casino and throw those dice without a second thought. And one of these days, our long winter of rejections will surely come to an end.

 

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Posted in Inspiration, Nadine Donovan |
Barbara’s Path to Authorhood, Part 2 – Improv Storytelling
February 1st, 2012
Writing prompts are everywhere.

Writing prompts are everywhere.

The house where the improvisational storytellers meet is built into the side of a mountain, eight slow minutes from the Santa Fe plaza, down a washboard dirt road.

At 3 p.m. on my first Wednesday, eight normal-looking, mature women showed up. Snacky food was set out. We each took a seat around the coffee table in the cozy, rustic living room. I was introduced. Welcomed with reserve. The process was explained to me and we began.

Here are the Rules and Guidelines for Improvisational Storytelling:

  1. The Designated Prompter reveals what she has brought as prompts for the day. (Photos, oddball toys, stones, rocks, sticks, seashells, the contents of a junk drawer, empty candy wrappers…)
  2. Everyone has 30 seconds to choose an object with which to jump into the abyss.
  3. The group splits into partners. Two by two, move through the house to find a quiet place and sit opposite each other.
  4. Set the oven timer for three minutes. It’s loud enough to be heard in every room.
  5. The first teller begins a tale inspired by some aspect of the prompt she chose. There is no “figuring it out”. Allow the first few words to fall out of your mouth and watch as a story is born on the spot. OMG!!!
  6. When the timer sounds, the listener has one minute to praise what she liked about the newborn story: any detail, name, fragment that held her attention.
  7. Reset the timer and switch. The listener allows her story to happen out loud for three minutes, and her partner then offers her appreciations.
  8. Everyone returns to the circle and it’s time to tell the stories again. One by one each story is retold to the group. Something happens between the first and second telling. I can’t explain it. Just go with it.
  9. Sit there and listen. Be amazed, enthralled and enchanted.
  10. Come back in a week and do it all again.

On the day when I told my first story out of thin air, I was hooked and have stayed hooked. I don’t remember my first prompt or the story I told, but I do remember sitting in a straight-backed chair feeling like I was sky-diving.

That day I heard one lovely, gutsy, outrageous, untidy tale after another. Stories I didn’t want to end. And after each story, the praising comments were made. I liked that newborn creations were not hit with bats in this group; newborns were encouraged to grow.

At the end of the meeting, the leader shared a bit about how the group was started, and about how stories are upstream from everything, and about their motto: Tell Me a Story I Won’t Forget.

After several years of listening and telling in the sacred space of the group, stories in the voice of a little girl started happening for me. I liked these stories so much I did the unthinkable in an improv group: before driving back out of the canyon, I sat in my car and wrote the stories down.

Later, I had the dream where Mrs. Iptweet came to me in a bus and spelled her name.  And so those first-person stories in the voice of a nine-year-old became The Magical Mrs. Iptweet and Me and I added Author to my list of life adventures.

Ursula and I still meet regularly and do improv storytelling together.

Thank you, Ursula.

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Tags: , , , , , | Posted in Barbara Mayfield, Creative Process, Improv Storytelling, Inspiration |
Barbara’s Path to Authorhood – Part 1
January 16th, 2012
A few juicy writing prompts

A few juicy writing prompts

I moved to New Mexico from Philadelphia in September of 1991. At that time I was a working visual artist  (painter/muralist/set designer) and an amateur actress, with no plan to become a professional writer, author or literary anything. The only “writing” I was doing were loosey-goosey “scripts” on 3×5 index cards for my own sketch comedy shows. I am pretty darn funny when I concentrate and I was frustrated at the lack of good parts for over-25-females in plays, blah, blah, blah. I was occasionally performing these skits on the street – Miss Revlon, The Doll Before Barbie debuted at Montezuma and Guadalupe streets –  in my attempt to fit in to the Santa Fe lifestyle and make some friends in my new town.

Another, more successful, attempt at building a community of friends for myself was to join the Santa Fe Book Arts Group (B.A.G.).

The B.A.G. group was full of Wild Boomer Women. It was great for me because the meetings involved making tremendous messes. We ripped, snipped, wrote, glued, pasted, cut, shredded, glittered, strung, hung, tore apart, mail-arted, hammered, re-assembled, and rubberstamped upon, in archival and non-archival ways, papers, books, journals, you name it, to make luminous wonders of book and paper art.

This is where I met Ursula (Mueller), who is from Austria and who looked very well-behaved but was not and, still, is not. Ursula had a secret and I found it out. After knocking back a half-a-glass of wine at the 1994 holiday B.A.G. party, Ms. U revealed all.

Ursula was living the secret life of an Improvisational Storyteller. There was a clandestine, invitation-only,  improv storytelling group happening in Santa Fe. On Wednesday afternoons. From 3 till 5. As they say nowadays: OMG!

I had taken several improv comedy and acting classes by then and LOVED IT. There is something thrilling about jumping into the abyss and living to tell. Improv storytelling would be a blast, too, I just knew it.

It took a year’s worth of B.A.G. meetings for Ursula and I to get to know each other and for Ursula to decide I was okay enough (as in: a lively creative mind, yet well-behaved) to be invited to join the storyteller group.

The very next Wednesday, I went to the house where the secret storytellers met.

To be continued…..

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Tags: , , , , , , | Posted in Barbara Mayfield, Creative Process, Inspiration |
Notes on Procrastination
January 14th, 2012

A journalist once wrote about his experience at a procrastination workshop: most who signed up either never showed up or straggled in late.

What is it about procrastination that makes it so tenacious? I posed this question to two painter friends recently and they both had not only answers, but solutions, too.

One painter, through her therapist, learned to see her art as the portal through which she goes deep,deep into exploration, deep into knowing herself, deep into being. The interior place where creation starts is ‘one’s room of one’s own’. Going there can be the biggest gift one can give to oneself.

The other painter said she often works without lifting a brush by gently thinking, meditating and musing until ideas percolate and inspire her to render the colorful results. Her other trick is to literally write a painting appointment with herself in her date book. Even if she breaks it, she will move it forward and there it is in black and white, a constant reminder until she honors it-and herself.

One can reframe the question,’ why am I procrastinating’ to ‘why am I not gifting myself right now with my creativity?’ It works for my painter friends. Maybe it can work for us writers.

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Posted in Creative Process |
First Day at Writing Group
January 2nd, 2012
Writing desk

My desk, given to me by Kate Van Roeken, the first "Mrs. Iptweet" I'd ever met.

I wandered into the Writing Group about 13 years ago, when it  was a children’s book writing class held in the home of author Jennifer Owings Dewey. I’d brought five very short stories with me. My first five ever. Long-story-short: Jennifer and Deb and Catherine and Nadine and Janie welcomed me. They liked the stories a lot. I thought that meant the stories were perfect and complete and I was a genius. Wow, writing is easy.

I know now that the kindness was a ploy! After that first day, I was gently but thoroughly whipped into shape. I had sloppy habits from writing for the stage. As a comedienne, I needed only the barest written outline of my routines. Who needed specifics? My hands, voice, body, and especially my eyebrows, would fill in the gaps on stage. And I left myself lots of room for improvisation.

In class, I was made aware of my “habit” words and phrases. I was taught the golden rule of writing: SHOW-DON’T-TELL. It was explained that DETAILS ARE EVERYTHING. And five million other very important writing tools. What a workout.

 Those first five stories became The Magical Mrs. Iptweet and Me, my first book.

Mrs. Iptweet is a middle-grade novel, the first in a series. Azro Press published it in 2009. It has won three awards. It would not exist but for the love, encouragement, badgering and unrelenting honesty of my writing group.

I’m working on formatting the manuscript for an e-book now, as well as writing the next books in the Iptweet series. More about that another time.

MY CREATIVE PROCESS

I like to stall, procrastinate and delay my writing as long as possible. I am not sure why. Once I am in the flow, nothing feels better. Sometimes I think stalling is just part of the process and I can relax already and mark down some writing times onto my calendar and it’s okay if something comes up and I move it to the next day or week. It’s okay if I am busy over the holidays, or don’t feel like writing.

Other times I think I am tragically flawed and will never amount to anything. I work myself up into a lather. This is good because lathers drive me to look at what I’m doing and see the avoidance and fear. Oh, an entire blog could be written about the fears. For me, now, it boils down to….

  1. Maybe all my best stories are already written, and
  2. How can I top Book One?

My way of getting past this crap is to take Drastic Action. I call a writer friend and say let’s do a two-week experiment. Let’s meet everyday for two hours at a cafe and write. And we do and I get so much writing done. Stories show up on the page even on days when I feel restless, bored or uninspired. I have had to face it: I need the company. I need another person to sit with for a while – about two weeks. Then I can write at the old home desk again, on my own. I’m back in the Inspired Flow…. until I’m not again, and more Drastic Action is required. Hey, whatever it takes.

The other thing I notice is that when I show up for the Flow of Stories, every other part of my life gets better, too. The Flow of Stories somehow flips on the Flow of Life switch. It’s pretty wild.

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Tags: , , , , , , | Posted in Barbara Mayfield, Creative Process |
Writing Prompts for 12-30-11
January 2nd, 2012

This was my first time to bring prompts and it was suggested that I keep them fairly simple. So I wrote what seemed obvious to me.

On the eve of New Year’s Eve, Prompt #1 was Write something about the new year, or new beginnings. It could be your New Year’s resolutions, or a new beginning for you, or a turn in your plot — some new beginning for your character.

Because we are starting a new website and blog, Prompt #2 was Write about your experience of being in this writer’s group. Or write about anything involved in the practice of writing, such as how to access your own creativity.

We wrote for 45 minutes. We read. We gave feedback. We drank tea and ate red velvet cupcakes. We also spent a bit of time talking about this website, and our ideas for making it fun and helpful to other writers.

This was my favorite week so far. Later, I realized it was because everyone wrote nonfiction so I knew how to listen, evaluate, and comment. Everyone selected prompt #2 and wrote blogs, which will eventually show up here. It was fun for me to hear people writing in their own voices, instead of their characters’ voices. I felt like I got to know them better. Barbara even made a list of topics she wants to blog about — I think I’ll do the same.

We’ll post our prompts every week, except for the first week of the month when we work on ongoing projects, which is this following week.

Happy New Year!

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Posted in Jillian Brasch, Writing Prompts |
Writing in Santa Fe
January 1st, 2012

Every week I’m invited to an intimate party on Friday afternoon from 4 to 6 at Catherine’s house. Seven or eight of us gather in the living room of an adobe house with hardwood floors, and kiva fireplace in the corner. Catherine makes tea, and the person responsible for that week’s prompts brings food and lays it out on the antique oak table that we sit around. Homemade cookies, cheese and crackers, almonds, and chocolate (of course) sit in pretty mismatched china plates and bowls.

We check in with each other for the first few minutes while everyone is showing up, choosing a place to sit, and steeping their teabags.

“Did the runaway cat return?”

“Did your husband get back from China?”

Legs fold up underneath bodies on the couch as fingers curl around teacups, teabag tabs dangling over the edges. Everyone is settling in and getting comfortable. Then the prompts are presented–a jar of mustard, a ceramic donkey, a deck of tarot cards (select as many cards as you want), and sometimes a verbal cue, “If none of these speak to you, write about someone who is angry, but is trying not to show it.” The room goes silent as everyone sits for a minute of two, deciding on a prompt. A couple of women go to other rooms with desks, but the rest of us bow our heads in silent meditation and begin to write. For the next hour, we just write. The only sound is the heat kicking on and off in about ten minute intervals. Occasionally, someone looks up for a minute, grabs a handful of almonds, and stares into space while they’re waiting for the next words to come. Or their hand will stop moving across the page as they close their eyes in order to hear the voice of their character, or their own inner voice.  Within seconds, their hovering pen begins writing again.

I close my eyes and wait to hear a lead, and then begin to write. If I’m not satisfied with the direction my work is going, I stop. I close my eyes again, listen, and begin again. It’s intense and focused and passionate. It’s also about learning to be open and vulnerable, allowing the story to come in. If you look around the room, you can see the total physical and mental immersion. Mainly, we try to keep the pen (or computer keys) moving, mining something deep inside our souls and imaginations. Each woman has her unique process, and it’s fascinating to watch.

After an hour, everyone comes back into the circle. Some of us stretch our arms, roll our necks, or shake out our writing hands, but no time is wasted. The first person begins reading her work. The moment she stops, these caring, trusted women immediately give feedback.

“What if you started the story in the third paragraph? I like that better?”

“I want to know more about your main character’s feelings.”

“My mind wandered during this part — could you develop it more?”

I’m new to the group. I’m not used to listening so intently. I’m hoping my listening skills will develop over time. The women banter back and forth with gentle, direct feedback.

“Oh, that worked for me. I totally got where you were going with that part of the story.”

“No, I wanted more said about the orphan. It didn’t make sense to me.”

“Maybe it needs an epilogue.”

“No, I think the story ends there. It’s understood he’ll go to prison for murder. He’s been caught.”

Opinions fly around the room freely until they’re exhausted. Then the next person reads, anxious for feedback. When we’ve gone around the room and everyone has read (or chosen not to), two hours have passed. We’ve heard children’s stories, young adult fiction, magical realism, a poem, and essays. And the party is over.

“Who’s got the prompt for next week? No wait, it’s the beginning of the month — no prompt. Just bring whatever project you’re working on to read. It’s Reading Friday.”

Teacups are washed. We check in with each other again as we put on our scarves, coats, hats, and gloves. I leave with a feeling of fullness, grateful to have been in a room of such talented women. The familiar practice of writing grounds me, yet I feel the excitement of once again expressing myself, and maybe more importantly, being heard. I won’t be listened to with this intensity until next Friday when I show up again, full of hope and excitement, to gather with my sacred community of friends and begin again.

 

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Posted in Jillian Brasch |
The Santa Fe Writers Group
December 30th, 2011

The name says it all:  we’re an eclectic group of writers who meet weekly who are lucky enough to live in the arts-nurturing environment of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Members write the gamut, fiction to poetry to nonfiction, but what ties us together is the commitment to our writing and supporting each other.

Thirteen years ago, the group started as a seven week course on writing and illustrating children’s books with Jennifer Owings Dewey.  Jennifer is one of those rare authors who can also draw beautifully (and has done one or the other for about 60 books), so we had a good head start.  Two years ago Jennifer moved to California, and we now take it in turns to “run” the group each week.

Our format is simple:  someone brings a prompt each week, we discuss it, and write for anywhere from forty-five minutes to an hour or more, depending on the number of people there.  We try to leave enough time for each person to read what they’ve written, with comments by the group following.  Some writers’ groups have rules about critiquing; some even refuse to allow much discussion.  Since we began as a “class,” we not only allow but encourage comments, but there are two precepts.

First, the discussion should begin with a positive.  Second, the criticism should be constructive.

There’s a third we try to live by as well, and I use the word “try” deliberately.  We try not to interfere with the story itself too much.  Sometimes we get excited and ideas come bubbling up – and some of us enjoy that process while others don’t.   Most of us have been in the group long enough that we tend to know who is tolerant of what! And when someone new joins, we try to make a safe place where we can learn about each other.  To be as long-term as we are, and we’ve weathered some ups and downs, respect for each person is paramount.

What underlies everything is that this is not just a cut-and-dry, read-what-you-got and isn’t-that-nice sort of group.  We support each other through the thick and thin not only of the writing life, but of life itself.  We’ve had one member die; a few, sorely missed, have moved away.  We’ve been through divorce, court cases, cancer, the birth of grandchildren, and weddings.  We’ve seen each others’ children grow up.

All of the above is by way of introduction.  Soon we will get some bios up.  Some of our blogs will be sharing our weekly prompts.   Some members want to share inspiration.  Some of us want to talk about our works, published and unpublished.

We hope you enjoy.

 

 

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Posted in Deb Auten, Miscellaneous Thoughts |
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