We're having a writing group meeting this Saturday, March 1, 2PM-4ish in NYC. We're meeting at the Tea Spot in the Village (thanks for the tip, Pam!). The address is 14 Macdougal Street, on the corner of W. 3rd St.
If you want the group to workshop a piece of your writing, email it to me by Wednesday night / Early Thursday morning - or bring 4-6 copies to the meeting. I'll send out anything for workshop and whatever published piece(s) we're going read at the meeting on Thursday.
See you soon!
Monday, February 25, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Everyone Poops
(a repetition poem dedicated to everyone who poops)
Everyone poops,
like my mom and dad,
my grandmas,
my stinky little sister and brother.
They flushed away the evidence, but
I know this because I have used the toilet after them,
and while I did my waiting dance, I heard her or him,
and it smelled like someone pooped when I finally sat on the warm porcelain.
Everyone poops,
like my friends.
You know you do, just as well as I know you do.
If I poop, and my family poops,
you and your family must poop too.
Everyone poops,
like my lover.
When he was just a crush,
he also pooped then.
There's just no denying it.
Everyone poops,
like the man on the train.
I saw him do it,
and now I can smell it.
I'm switching cars.
Everyone poops,
like my mom and dad,
my grandmas,
my stinky little sister and brother.
They flushed away the evidence, but
I know this because I have used the toilet after them,
and while I did my waiting dance, I heard her or him,
and it smelled like someone pooped when I finally sat on the warm porcelain.
Everyone poops,
like my friends.
You know you do, just as well as I know you do.
If I poop, and my family poops,
you and your family must poop too.
Everyone poops,
like my lover.
When he was just a crush,
he also pooped then.
There's just no denying it.
Everyone poops,
like the man on the train.
I saw him do it,
and now I can smell it.
I'm switching cars.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Repetition Challenge
At our last two meetings we discussed a packet of published writings - the theme of this week's packet was repetition as a technique in writing. The pieces we discussed are as follows:
"This Person" by Miranda July from No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
"The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks
"The Story of Progress" by David Ignatow from Great American Prose Poems
"The Sea Change" by Ernest Hemingway
The first two options in this week's writing challenge were stolen from assignments given in a class at Rutgers by Alicia Ostriker. If you write something from one of these prompts, you can post it on this blog, workshop it at the next WG meeting, or keep it tucked away in a journal under your pillow. Just do this: write!
Option A: Using the pieces in the packets as examples, write a poem, short story, scene, essay using repetition - choose a word or phrase and use it as a title and repeat it at least 3-4 times in your piece
Option B: Choose a line from one of the pieces in either of the packets and use it as the first line of a poem, short story, you get the idea (but make sure you use quotes or italics and dedicate your piece to the author whose line you used).
Option C: Write something (anything!) of your own choosing.
"This Person" by Miranda July from No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
"The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks
"The Story of Progress" by David Ignatow from Great American Prose Poems
"The Sea Change" by Ernest Hemingway
The first two options in this week's writing challenge were stolen from assignments given in a class at Rutgers by Alicia Ostriker. If you write something from one of these prompts, you can post it on this blog, workshop it at the next WG meeting, or keep it tucked away in a journal under your pillow. Just do this: write!
Option A: Using the pieces in the packets as examples, write a poem, short story, scene, essay using repetition - choose a word or phrase and use it as a title and repeat it at least 3-4 times in your piece
Option B: Choose a line from one of the pieces in either of the packets and use it as the first line of a poem, short story, you get the idea (but make sure you use quotes or italics and dedicate your piece to the author whose line you used).
Option C: Write something (anything!) of your own choosing.
Writing Challenges
Lakshmi posed the first writing challenge on this blog (to write a haiku) and I think it was a good idea. We’re calling them writing challenges instead of assignments because they’re completely optional. One of my creative writing teachers once said, there is no such thing as writer’s block only lazy writers. So if you want to write, but need some direction, try taking a writing challenge.
Anyone with an idea for a writing challenge can post it on this blog.
Anyone with an idea for a writing challenge can post it on this blog.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
It's repetitive, and redundant.
The latest meeting focused on repetition. A while ago, I wrote a post that would fit the theme. Please don't laugh. This was my first post - long before I became the genius wordsmith that I am today. Okay, now you can laugh.
Wish List
I don't want to compare my life to others, good or bad.
I don't want to feel that I need to stay with someone because I won't make it alone.
I want to earn and spend my own money.
I want to surround myself with people who make me laugh.
I don't want to forget what I went through and how I felt when I was young when my kids go through it.
I want to have dinner parties with games and music people can't help but dance to.
I want to be on a first-name-basis with the local baker/grocer/florist/diner owner.
I want to enjoying being at work as much as I enjoy coming home.
I want to know all my neighbors by name, not address.
I want a husband who loves me more than I love him.
I never want to outgrow Halloween.
I want to help.
I want to take vacations without weeks of planning, itineraries, maps or guidebooks.
I want friends who make me a better person.
I want an amazing view.
I want to make music.
I never want to stop saying what I feel.
I want to make beautiful things.
I want to go to sleep exhausted.
I want to wake up excited.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Feb 10th Meeting
The next writing group meeting will be on Sunday, February 10.
We haven't worked out all the details, but I wanted to make sure anyone interested had time to save the date.
The tentative plan is for anyone who wants to come early to hang out in Williamsburg, Brooklyn from around 2-4 and the meeting will start at 4PM at a yet to be determined location (any suggestions would be much appreciated as I've never been to Williamsburg).
You don't have to RSVP, but I'd appreciate knowing if you definitely can't come but really want to attend a meeting because if most people can't make it, I'd consider changing the date.
I'll email the packet of (optional) readings for the meeting in a couple of days and if you have something to workshop, please send it to me by Wednesday (Tuesday night if possible) - otherwise bring about five copies to the meeting.
See you soon and enjoy the Superbowl (if you're into that sort of thing),
kat!
We haven't worked out all the details, but I wanted to make sure anyone interested had time to save the date.
The tentative plan is for anyone who wants to come early to hang out in Williamsburg, Brooklyn from around 2-4 and the meeting will start at 4PM at a yet to be determined location (any suggestions would be much appreciated as I've never been to Williamsburg).
You don't have to RSVP, but I'd appreciate knowing if you definitely can't come but really want to attend a meeting because if most people can't make it, I'd consider changing the date.
I'll email the packet of (optional) readings for the meeting in a couple of days and if you have something to workshop, please send it to me by Wednesday (Tuesday night if possible) - otherwise bring about five copies to the meeting.
See you soon and enjoy the Superbowl (if you're into that sort of thing),
kat!
Friday, February 1, 2008
So small it fits in the palm of my hand
So, I have to post something in response to all this talk of Haiku because it was I who stuck them (all 16!) in the reading packet in the first place. I love them (Pam, you can tell your student I prefer Yosa Buson over Basho). For a while, I was obsessed with short poetry (that’s right, I didn’t stop at haiku). It didn’t matter if I was reading it or writing it – the smaller the poem the better. If I could fit it in my pocket, it was the poem for me! This may be cheating since I didn’t write this poem for the blog, but I’m pasting a small poem that was written sometime after graduation at the height of my small poem obsession. If you are equally enthralled by bite size writing, check out my personal fav form the Cinquain.
Backyard Pastoral
Catbird on clothing line
breaks morning
with its mew.
Cries over
baby teetering
on barbed branch.
UPDATE: If you think you might love Haiku and are looking for a good book, check out The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa edited by Robert Hass - it's the book I read when choosing the Haiku that went into last meeting's packet.
Backyard Pastoral
Catbird on clothing line
breaks morning
with its mew.
Cries over
baby teetering
on barbed branch.
UPDATE: If you think you might love Haiku and are looking for a good book, check out The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa edited by Robert Hass - it's the book I read when choosing the Haiku that went into last meeting's packet.
Wikipedia article about haiku awesomeness...
So maybe you guys already discussed this, but I thought this information from wikipedia.com would be interesting:
"In Japanese, hokku and haiku are traditionally printed in one vertical line (though in handwritten form they may be in any reasonable number of lines). In English, haiku are written in three lines to equate to the three parts of a haiku in Japanese that traditionally consist of five, seven, and then five on (the Japanese count sounds, not syllables; for example, the word "haiku" itself counts as three sounds in Japanese, but two syllables in English, and writing seventeen syllables in English produces a poem that is actually quite a bit longer, with more content, than a haiku in Japanese). The kireji (cutting word or pause) usually comes at the end of either the first or second line. A haiku traditionally contains a kigo (season word) representative of the season in which the poem is set, or a reference to the natural world....Senryu is a similar poetry form that emphasizes irony, satire, humor, and human foibles instead of seasons, and may or may not have kigo or kireji."
Lux, perhaps you would like to write senryu instead of haiku? (Though I loved your haiku! Naked trees stripping...really hot. I want steak. Seriously though--I like how it captured fall and the sensuality of dying/preparing for new life. It's like how new mothers-to-be chop all their hair off because they feel too fat and disgusting to deal with their hair/anticipate how busy they'll be with the new little thing.)
Here's my attempt--don't laugh. I've not written one in ten years. I was going to write about today's rain and dead drowned worms flushed out of the ground, but I just wrote this thinking about what I just wrote above.
I am a big whale.
Stripping naked, I see both
of us swimming free.
"In Japanese, hokku and haiku are traditionally printed in one vertical line (though in handwritten form they may be in any reasonable number of lines). In English, haiku are written in three lines to equate to the three parts of a haiku in Japanese that traditionally consist of five, seven, and then five on (the Japanese count sounds, not syllables; for example, the word "haiku" itself counts as three sounds in Japanese, but two syllables in English, and writing seventeen syllables in English produces a poem that is actually quite a bit longer, with more content, than a haiku in Japanese). The kireji (cutting word or pause) usually comes at the end of either the first or second line. A haiku traditionally contains a kigo (season word) representative of the season in which the poem is set, or a reference to the natural world....Senryu is a similar poetry form that emphasizes irony, satire, humor, and human foibles instead of seasons, and may or may not have kigo or kireji."
Lux, perhaps you would like to write senryu instead of haiku? (Though I loved your haiku! Naked trees stripping...really hot. I want steak. Seriously though--I like how it captured fall and the sensuality of dying/preparing for new life. It's like how new mothers-to-be chop all their hair off because they feel too fat and disgusting to deal with their hair/anticipate how busy they'll be with the new little thing.)
Here's my attempt--don't laugh. I've not written one in ten years. I was going to write about today's rain and dead drowned worms flushed out of the ground, but I just wrote this thinking about what I just wrote above.
I am a big whale.
Stripping naked, I see both
of us swimming free.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
And so it begins...
Yay! We finally had the first meeting of our writing group! I have to say, it was pretty great. An excellent turnout, met some new people, and felt a little smarter.
Since some people are far away, some may be busy, and some may just be lazy, I thought I'd make this site for writing group related things...or other stuff if you'd like.
We could use it to post info about meetings (insteading dozens of emails with updates, we could just update one blog post), stuff you've written that you'd like to share (PLEASE?), events you think others would want to attend, etc. If you think this is lame, shut up. This is awesome.
Anyway, let's get back to our first meeting. Thanks to everyone who came and to Kat for finding those readings which included some haiku.
I happen to hate haiku. I find them boring and weird. I will admit though, going over them with the group made them a bit more interesting. I still hate them though. But, for whatever reason, I decided to give myself a haiku writing assignment. Here we go:
Trees see Fall's ending.
Stripping naked, they shed leaves,
wait for snow showers.
Whaddya think? Am I going to give Basho a run for his money?
Finally, the next meeting will probably be February 10th. In the meantime, enjoy the Super Bowl!
Since some people are far away, some may be busy, and some may just be lazy, I thought I'd make this site for writing group related things...or other stuff if you'd like.
We could use it to post info about meetings (insteading dozens of emails with updates, we could just update one blog post), stuff you've written that you'd like to share (PLEASE?), events you think others would want to attend, etc. If you think this is lame, shut up. This is awesome.
Anyway, let's get back to our first meeting. Thanks to everyone who came and to Kat for finding those readings which included some haiku.
I happen to hate haiku. I find them boring and weird. I will admit though, going over them with the group made them a bit more interesting. I still hate them though. But, for whatever reason, I decided to give myself a haiku writing assignment. Here we go:
Trees see Fall's ending.
Stripping naked, they shed leaves,
wait for snow showers.
Whaddya think? Am I going to give Basho a run for his money?
Finally, the next meeting will probably be February 10th. In the meantime, enjoy the Super Bowl!
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