Guest Blogger Rosalind Brenner on Finding Inspiration by Dusting Off Your Old Journals (and how an assignment can’t hurt either!)

Rosalind Brenner is a writer, frequently exhibited painter/stained glass artist, and innkeeper.  Her newest book of lyric and narrative poetry is Omega's Garden, just out from Finishing Line Press. Another, All That's Left, combines her art and poetry. She lives on Long Island, where she and her husband, photographer/artist Michael Cardacino, operate Art House Bed and Breakfast, in the historic Springs section of East Hampton.  Recently I had the pleasure to work with Rosalind on some of her wonderful nonfiction pieces, which she's experimenting with for a future book that will mix poetry and prose.

  

Please welcome Rosalind Brenner.

I’ve been rolling around on the wheels spinning my brain, trying to think of subject matter for this guest blog post. I had just finished another guest post. Easy. Something I know about: the value of sharing poems with friends who are good poets and offer great critique; and the value of prompts. These two subjects went together with no trouble, for I’ve been doing exactly that with four poet friends with whom I graduated in 2009 from the MFA Poetry Program at Sarah Lawrence. We meet once a week on Skype, write from our own sometimes serious, sometimes silly, prompts, and then happily slice and dice, slash and burn and suck in gerbil breaths of admiration in the hours we are together. We end up with well-polished poems, many of which have been published.

But now, asked to write another guest post, I find myself in a slump. Usually, I turn to tried-and-true methods for poetry writing: reading others' poems to inspire myself. A word or phrase triggers the little gem which until that moment has been hiding from me, and voila, I write.

But lately I’ve been having trouble with dry eyes. The medicine is making it hard to read and to stare at a computer screen, not to mention that I’m aggravated as hell by the constant physical irritation. Try as I may, my eyes, about which I’m thinking all the time, have not become an inspiration to write some ‘woundology’ piece for this blog post. Damn, I don’t want to be a whiner and that’s how I’m feeling. So what do we do when dry eyes or other maladies, mental and physical, turn into dry times for us as writers? 

Meanwhile, in my quandary, yesterday I sat in the sun and wondered if my life is worthwhile and what’s the point anyway of all the reams and reams of journals, notes, beginnings and actual finished poems? Why should anyone want to read what I write?

I tried to assuage my lack of motivation and my self-pity by remembering the book, Writing Down the Bones, in which Natalie Goldberg, besides offering ideas for writing and tools for awakening the dormant spirit, gives writers permission—no !—advice, to take three days off and stay in bed and to be alright with that.

OK.

I managed one day doing nothing and not feeling too guilty about it, and then today I climbed the stairs to my writing desk to write this post, blurry eyes and all, about the poet’s dilemma. How can I wake myself up? How can I surprise myself? How can I make old information new or find new ways to talk about my own experience? I’ve already written quite a lot about matters of importance to me and hope that perhaps one line or two has struck a universal chord— for those few who read poetry and find their way to my poems.

But we go on, don’t we, because poetry heals, poetry relieves, poetry is the universal language. Even people who insist they don’t understand or like poetry, sway to its truth at weddings, funerals, inaugurations, graduations, demonstrations or in quiet moments of need.

I look around my office. I see the pile of scribbled journals. I think, yes I’ve already written about things that interest me, but not everything I’ve written has become a poem. I open one of my old notebooks at random. Ah, there’s something— I was obviously at play with the idea of making a triolet on a summer day:

Beach

Here people color the world with umbrellas

umber sand is passage for a stray balloon

offshore breeze laps at blue and red and yellow

and pinks the ruffled mob of parasols (umbrellas)

here people color the world of bumbershoots (umbrellas)

being human here feels cool sherbet mellow

the way the tide pulls at the constant moon

here people color the world in parapluie (umbrella)

and umber sand is passage for a stray balloon.

Not necessarily a finished work, nor a classic triolet, but maybe something to give me the pearl I need to begin again.

Here’s another journal entry; I was obviously looking at a painting by Redon. I don’t really remember, was I looking at his “Ophelia Among the Flowers?” Hmmm. Where are the Greek keys? No matter. Maybe I can find something here.

Redon’s ghost remains inside his painting.

Rust becomes rose as he dips his large brush into lush paint

Orange flavors the bristles. He slides color into canvas, into being,

into other, in strokes that keep his ground

a mystery of application and vision. Lavender spirits

surround a blue violet vase,

Greek keys appear and disappear on the surface,

flowers push their way out of the picture plane.

Redon still holds the brush, his oils juicy

heart absolutely humming with the moment.

 I think maybe these might have something worth pursuing.

Again, on a dry day, some long forgotten journal entry can take me out of the doldrums. It has today. For not only have I found a fit subject for this post, but I can feel something stirring me to re-visit these unfinished writings.

One day very early in our relationship, I was looking at my husband’s finger, a stump, cut off in a climbing accident when he was nineteen, long before I met him. I scribbled a note about how horrified and almost repulsed I was the first time I saw his cut off finger and how that feeling disappeared.  On second look, the entry made me think how our relationship has molded both of us, aged us, but made us more content and compassionate, and how we are grateful for all we’ve found together.

Here is the first draft poetic result of my new look at those scribblings.

loss

his missing digit a sliced off stub

how would he meander over my quiver

when he couldn’t even hold it     but I was filled

with fishing lust and the river cannot reverse

its downstream flow     on the slow crawl

bus to nowhere men and women

cram on Wednesdays    come to eat

donuts and to get their feet manicured so attraction

can start below its normal course and does not include

the list of usual sights in their front yards

lust drove away and left us wrinkled

waiting for the next stop    but still in love

it’s seniors discount day at the IGA.

This method of random searching through old work could serve you too. Find your  journals. Open at random. Once inside, you will swim through memories. Copy one line. Let your thoughts ramble into a free write. Take a walk to a coffee shop or to the beach. Cradle the old notes, a pen and an empty pad. 

Take off from the memory piece into the scene around you. Maybe the bearded man that looks like Santa Claus drinking coffee in the next booth reminds you of your ex husband. Maybe seeing this stranger can trigger your muse from your re-read of that line in your old journal: “He sat all afternoon squirming and running a dental pick over his teeth in his living room piled high with bird books while I tried to talk to him about our sons. What an idiot I was…” and you find an empty page in your old book and write:

‘this closing air of  new October

reminds me that his voice, cracked

from surgery,  chords removed,

is fixed now

silence, not a bird to watch

in his fledgling nest…’               

If you don’t keep a notebook with you at all times, better start. There are pearls inside that can’t be strung together otherwise. How many times have you thought of a poem or a line, or heard a bit of dialogue and forgotten it?  So mine those journals. Discover. Uncover. The possibilities are waiting to be unearthed.

And certainly it helps to be asked to write a blog post. This one especially has led me out of the desert. 

Notes from Lisa:  We will be sending a complimentary signed copy of Omega's Garden to one blog reader who leaves a comment below (chosen at random). Might be interesting to talk in comments about how old notebooks inspire your writing. For your chance at the free book, please comment by midnight (EST) on Tuesday, Oct. 30.

You can see Rosalind's artwork combined with poetry, in "Shadows” at Ashawagh Hall in East Hampton, Oct. 25 - 28,

A January gift for writers. Nope, not late at all.

UPDATE: I'm extending the prompts project through February. See below for email link to sign up.

It may be January, but one more gift is coming your way…if you want it.

Writers in any of my classes receive a daily writing prompt via email. It's simply there for the taking (or leaving). No one is required to write anything in response to a prompt…but along the way, many writers have found the prompts to be excellent daily reminders to write.

If one is struggling or stuck or needs a break from a current work-in-progress, the writing prompt is often a welcome or fun way to write about something new for ten (or 30 or more) minutes – writing perhaps that might otherwise not get done that day (or any day). Sometimes, others find a way to incorporate what they write into current drafts.

For the month of January only, I'm opening up the daily writing prompts to any blog reader who might like to receive them. Just send me an email, putting "Prompts" in the subject line, and your name in the body of the email. You will get a prompt daily from the day you sign up until January 31.

Gold in Them Notebooks, Part 4

Welcome to the fourth in a series of posts on what I find while taking a random cruise through a pile of notebooks from my MFA program.

From a discussion during a nonfiction workshop about writing while feeling stuck:

•Try this: Keep writing this sentence, filling in the blanks anew each time: "Part of me wants _____, but part of me wants _____."
•When you feel you can't write about something, write at it. Write in pieces – individual sentences, paragraphs.
•When you have something (or even if you think you don't) make your margins very wide and print it out, with text running down the center of the page only, so you can write in longhand on the sides of the paper (especially transitions), then…get some scissors and literally cut and paste. See what happens.
•Ask yourself if there is a part of you that is hiding behind the stuff you are not writing.
•Forget about explaining a concept like "forgiveness" – do it with scene, image, moment, emotional clarity.
- Richard Hoffman, memoirist and poet; Writer in Residence, Emerson College.

You can read the first three MFA notebooks posts here.

Seven Habits of (Not Necessarily Highly) Effective Writers

So, I am preparing notes for a seminar this week on the subject of overcoming common obstacles to creating and maintaining a writing routine. As I look over my topic headings, I'm tempted to take a short-hand, back-handed approach. For example:

Finding Time to Write: If you can find time to do the laundry, watch TV, gossip, browse YouTube, and talk about how much you really do want to write, you can find time to write.

Writer's Block: Ever heard of plumber's block? Accountant's block? Knitter's block? Playoff-watching block? Golfer's block? Get over it. How? You write.

Quieting Your Self Censor: Find a fellow writer working in the same genre, someone more experienced, who will read your work and when necessary, use the word bullshit a lot. Listen. Rewrite.

Getting Support: Might not happen with those you want it from the most. Write anyway. Look elsewhere for support. Don't wait to find it.

Improving Your Writing: Write. Read. Write. Read. Write. Get instruction. Get feedback. Rewrite. Read. Rewrite. Read. Rewrite. Repeat as necessary.

Getting From Idea to the Page: Write the idea(s) down. Any time, any place, any idea. On a piece of paper. Or a screen. Voila.

Establishing a Writing Routine: Write, beginning today. Repeat tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. See a pattern here?

I don't mean to sound flippant. And of course, I won't say these things to anyone who is interested enough in writing to come to a seminar about forging a creative writing habit. It's not as if I think the answers to these real writing dilemmas are quite so simple or obvious. They're not. Each and every writer, or would-be writer, or wannabe writer, or tentative writer, has to figure much of it out solo. Writing is the ultimate in on-the-"job" training. For the new writer, of course, there is a lot of value in listening to advice from those a bit, or a lot, further down the road. So I'm planning to offer lots of ideas, options, suggestions, tips and alternatives. I want to help as many people who want to write, to get writing.

Still, I find myself thinking that what I really want to say – and maybe I can find a diplomatic, encouraging way to do so – is, don't make more of this than it is. Don't romanticize writing. Or put it in the category of some mystical communion that only happens between muse and channel, some mysterious other-wordly thing to which only select individuals have access. Of course there is some of that. But only a very little of that. And only sometimes. And mostly, not when you desperately want it to materialize. Mostly the recipe is this: Read. Write. Learn the craft. Repeat. That recipe won't necessarily make you a great writer. But if your "problem" is that you can't get started, or feel blocked, or wonder if can write anything at all, the recipe holds up.

I'll have lots of handouts and will talk for an hour about creating the time and the mental and physical space to write. About finding writing organizations and conferences and online resources. About writing prompts and writing exercises and books for writers. About the value of writing groups and attending readings and getting feedback. About some routines, habits, and tricks that work for accomplished writers when they have trouble putting words on the page. I hope it all helps.

But then I wonder if I should tell the attendees: You can go home and think about all of it and read all of the handouts for an hour. Or you can write for an hour.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Writers' Stew

• Gerry Marzorati, editor-in-chief of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, spoke last week about long form journalism at an industry conference. I found this excerpt of interest:

"Always, always, it requires a tremendous amount of reporting. Weeks and weeks of reporting. Hanging out with the subject of your piece, hoping some scene will emerge that because of where it is and what the dialogue is, will reveal that subject. Journeying to all sorts of places, hoping the trip will encounter drama, and meaning. Painstakingly re-creating a moment – like the one when the tsunami hit – through hundreds of interviews. It is arduous, all this reporting. The weeks, the months. And all this time, of course, costs money. A typical cover story in the Times Magazine, when you add up what we pay the author and what the expenses for travel are -- and this leaves out the editing and fact-checking costs, the photography, and so on -- the tally is north of $40,000, and often, if a war zone is involved, considerably more. Do we still have the time to report and read such pieces? And will we have the money? If the reader is an on-line reader, paying nothing, who is going to foot the bill?"

You can read the rest here.

• Was glad to read some good news apparently for some smaller independent book stores.

• Author Allison Winn Scotch (novelist, magazine freelancer) regularly answers readers' questions about writing and publishing over on her blog.

• This week, another media outlet asked -- for what, the thousandth time? -- if poetry is dead. Funny, the question keeps being asked, year after year, for decades. And yet, poetry thrives.

• Simple, short advice, on so-called(?) writer's block and first draft phobia, via WriterJenn blog, which also frequently posts interviews with authors of new books –
"Write. Write it well, write it poorly, write it with margin notes and incomplete sentences; just get it down. Write."

•In my writing classes I don't have to "grade" papers, but if I did and it was getting to me, and I thought I needed a proven scientific guide, I might seriously consider this stress-free grading method.

Have a great weekend!

Writers' Complaint Department: Stress and the "Support System"

I've come to believe that important relationships in the life of a writer are never really separate from our writing. Witness the following round-up of rants, venting and whining I've collected from various writers I know over the past few weeks. I thought I'd take a stab at a few; and in case you think I don't include myself in this list, or that I've got it all figured out, think again.

Complaint: My spouse / significant other / best friend / parent / other important person in my life is not interested in reading my drafts.
Suggestion: Consider this a blessing. Many writers are completely thrown off course by reactions from family members to unpublished work. Either they say I love it, just because they love you, or they say something like, Well, this is just a first draft, right? because they expect it to read like a Pulitzer and a bestseller rolled into one, or they say nothing. All or any of the above reactions will only drive you crazy.

Complaint: My spouse / significant other / best friend / parent / other important person in my life thinks this "book business" is taking an awfully long time.
Suggestion: Let me guess. Deep down, you think so too. A book is a multi-year project; if your manuscript was pitch perfect and ready to submit tomorrow, and you got an agent the day after tomorrow and the agent sold the book in a month, you are still a year or more away from a publication date. But even before you get to that stage, factor in writing and rewriting and revising and editing (in other words, somewhere along the continuum you are on now), and you're looking at probably about 5-6 years from page one, word one, to author. So the fact that you've been at it a while is completely normal and typical for every writer who's not yet published a book. Your spouse / significant other / best friend / parent / other important person in your life – or maybe YOU -- perhaps doesn't know this, so it seems like it's taking forever. It's not. It's taking the usual amount of time.

Complaint: I need more writing education / professional editing help / workshop time, but my spouse / significant other / best friend / parent / other important person in my life, is strongly against spending any more.
Suggestion: It does take money to get quality writing education and/or guidance. But… scholarships, fellowships and financial aid do exist; work-study and/or barter situations can be found (or negotiated); classes/editors/workshops can be spaced out across years; conferences or workshops could be coupled to family vacations; and budget-friendly educational opportunities are more abundant than ever now.

Complaint: My spouse / significant other / best friend / parent / other important person in my life, secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) doubts I will ever get published.
Suggestion: Both as a break from the BIG PROJECT (i.e. book), and as a way to alleviate the self-doubt in anyone's mind (including your own), think about writing some short pieces for small magazines, newspapers and/or online venues. You may or may not make money (and sometimes you will write just for the publishing credit), but you can: 1. prove to anyone who is wondering, including you, that your writing does have value in the outside world; and 2. build a little list of publishing credits; and 3. get some satisfaction from seeing something you wrote has made its way into print (or pixels) - and within weeks or months, not years.

Complaint: I have pressure from my spouse / significant other / best friend / parent / other important person in my life, to use more of my available time to earn money, rather than to write.
Suggestion: Sorry, I won't dare give suggestions in this department. What sane person would advise another on how to deal with the differing financial views and demands within a close relationship? All I can say is, welcome to the world of the in-it-for-the-long-haul writer, in which you bargain away chunks of precious time, which you want (and perhaps need) to spend writing, in order to make money, so that you can continue to write in your non-income-producing hours, and to finance further writing education. Everyone has to figure this out for themselves, based on too many variables to make it reasonable to give blanket advice. For now, dear writer, I have a few hours of paid work ahead of me, so that I can write most of the day tomorrow. And, I hope, feel okay about that.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Keep Writing, Keep Writing, Keep Writing. Did I say to keep writing?

• I hate that newspapers are folding and I detest that book coverage in print media has been on the wane for a few years already. However, I do like reading the reminiscences of former book columnists, like this one by John Douglas Marshall, long time critic at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (which went all-online this week).

• For those seeking freelance article assignments, here is a helpful interview with ultra-successful magazine writer Lisa Collier-Cool, otherwise known (at least in my own head) as Queen of the Query (Letter).

• A low-cost, low-stress approach to turning the workshop concept (or at least the terminology) on its ear.

• Literary agent Nathan Bransford writes a witty, interesting, and informative blog. I'd like to point you to two of his recent posts, the first titled Ten Commandments for the Happy Writer. Excerpts from two of his rules:

"There is time in the day (to write). You may have to sacrifice your relaxation time or sleep time or reality television habit, but there is time. You just have to do it."
and
"Didn't find an agent? Keep writing. Book didn't sell? Keep writing. Book sold? Keep writing. OMG an asteroid is going to crash into Earth and enshroud the planet in ten feet of ash? Keep writing. People will need something to read in the resulting permanent winter."

I kept coming back to these two pieces of advice because over the past two weeks I met with two private writing clients, and both were stuck in what I call the "mother-writer vise," bewildered about how to squeeze more writing time into full days, reeling from recent disappointing agent feedback. And I basically told them the same thing. Well, what I actually said was: Steal the time. Stop volunteering for everything at your kids' schools. Let the house get dirty. Make the kids do chores. Train the husband or teenager to cook (or at least defrost & microwave). And as far as rejections go - I said what I always say: I see. Carry on.

Bransford also addressed Writer's Block in this post. I myself waffle between thinking of writer's block as a bona-fide affliction (when it's bugging me) and a neat little rationalization for procrastination (when others are complaining). Bransford asked how writers deal, and got nearly 225 comments. Hmm… maybe just reading through 200+ blog comments is enough to break through…

Have a great weekend. Make some time to write. Any little bit of time. Carry on.