The Write Spot Blog by Marlene Cullen

Author: mcullen

  • How to get in the mood to write.

    Get comfortable in your chair, couch, or wherever you are sitting . Both feet flat on the floor. Wiggle, squirm, move around until you are sitting comfortably.  Take a deep breath in through your nose and release slowly through your mouth.

    Feel the floor under your feet. Your chair is firmly supporting you. Rest your hands comfortably in your lap, or on your thighs or on the table.

    Sit back and relax into your chair, feeling completely supported and totally comfortable.

    Take a deep breath in, hold and let go. Let go of your worries, Let go of your concerns.

    Take a nice deep breath in. Feel the breath go down, past your lungs, into your belly.

    Hold and really whoosh out.

    As you go through this relaxation, take deep breaths as you need to and really whoosh out as you exhale.

    Perhaps wiggle your toes and feet, rotate your feet, loosen your ankles.

    Feel your feet relax. Relax your legs, Let go of the calf muscles. Let go of any tension in your legs. Just let go.

    Relax your thighs. Let the chair take the weight of your thighs. Let go of any tension that is in your thighs.

    Deep breath in. Hold and release. Let your worries fly away.  Enjoy this sensation of feeling free. Free and relaxed.

    Relax your stomach. Release and relax.

    Take deep breaths as you need to.

    Rotate your shoulders in a circle.  And around the opposite direction.

    Roll your head and your neck.  Roll back the other way.

    Deep breath in and as you exhale, let go of any tension that might be lingering. Just let go.

    You can do this before starting to write and anytime you feel stuck. Remember to breathe!

  • Amy Zhang and your scraps of writing

    My dear friend, Arlene Mandell, asked a question the other day that I’ve been pondering. What happens to our scraps of writing?  What can we do with our journal writing and our freewrites?

    I just read “The Secret Life of a Teenage Author” by Amy Zhang in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Writers. Zhang’s honesty and confession led me to want to learn more about her.

    Her blog, “A Story of a Dreamer,” is inspiring and delightful. The October 10 post begins, “If You Give an Author Some Chocolate …to encourage her to revise, she’ll eat it. She’ll eat it slowly because there is an art to eating chocolate bars. She’ll try to revise while holding the chocolate bar in one hand, but realize that she can’t revise without proper music.

    If you let an author look for proper music, she’ll decide that her normal revising playlist simply isn’t good enough, and she will use up a good half an hour trying to develop a new one before finding the perfect one on 8track.”

    Your details might be different, but you have probably been in the same situation as Zhang. You sit down to write, but one thing leads to another. You eventually get back to writing, but it’s a circuitous route.

    Her September 15 post is called, Sh*t People Say to Writers.

    “Last Sunday, my local newspaper wrote a story about me…and my writing…and stuff. Those of you who have followed my blog for a while know that I used to be very, very secretive about writing. I never talked about it. So this week was WEIRD and awkward and generally hard for me, but on the bright side, I FINALLY get to write this post! I’ve always wanted to. ”

    Here’s where you come in, my writing friends,  . . . you know those free writes and short-shorts you have written and don’t know what to do with?  Turn them into short stories, or combine them, as Zhang did:

    “UNTITLED (we’ll just call it that for now–isn’t it easier?) actually began as two short stories–one about an abandoned imaginary friend, and one about a girl who tries to commit suicide. UNTITLED is their lovechild. I’m not sure where the ideas for the two original short stories came from, but I knew there was a connection between them and I knew I wanted to develop that connection into a full-length novel.”

    Your turn: Select excerpts of your writing, turn them into a short story. I’ll suggest where you can submit your writing in future posts

  • Twelve Steps to Successful Writing

    Are you the type of person who needs to clear your desk before getting down to the business of writing?  Me, too. I have to pay the bills, sort, organize, stack things on my desk.  Satisfied, but not ready to get to writing, I look around. Oh, I really need to do the laundry, clean the bathroom, clean the floor, check the refrigerator, look outside, get a drink of water. Sometimes it seems I’ll do everything except write.

    One year I participated in NaNoWriMo for the month of November. I loved it. This year I’m going to participate in Write Nonfiction in November (WNFIN), founded by Nina Amir. But I know I’ll only be successful if I plan ahead.

    Here are Twelve Steps to get to that writing we so want to do.

    1. For the next two weeks, get caught up. Get organized, file those pieces of paper that clutter your desk, your counter, your life.

    2. For the next two weeks, spend extra time crossing things off your actual or mental to-do list. Whatever you’ve been putting off doing. . . do it now.

    3. Plan ahead. What do you usually do in November that you can do now? Put all the Thanksgiving and holiday items in a box (tablecloth, napkins, decorations, plates, etc).

    4. Get a box ready for all the incoming stuff. . . mail and paperwork that can wait until December.

    5. Get another box for important, don’t-want-to-forget items. As things arrive, put them here. Then, once a week in November, take care of business. . . spend as little time as possible. Just get this stuff done so you can get back to writing.

    6. Plan snacks. Make a list of perishable snacks you want to have on hand, so you don’t have to think when the time comes to purchase the snacks. Just take your list to the store. Then get back to writing.

    7. Plan meals. Same as above. Keep meals really easy. Soup and sandwiches. Simple salads.

    8. Purchase whatever you can now for your food needs/wants/cravings. Yes, you will have cravings. Plan for them. Don’t agonize over this. Keep your mind deep in the Land of Writing. But you will need motivation to keep going, not a reason to sneak off for ice cream.  Fill freezer, pantry and cupboards with food stuff you know you will want.

    9. Tell your friends and family whatever you want. . . you have a contagious disease, you have laryngitis, you’re on deadline (you are) . . . but you aren’t accessible to babysit, carpool, lend an ear or a shoulder. This is Your Time to write.

    10. Have everything lined up that you will need . . . paper, pens, ink cartridges, list of writing prompts as daily warm-ups, ashtray (just kidding, unless you really do smoke), water, snacks.

    11.  Turn your phone off, do not look at Facebook until the end of the day, do not get distracted with tweeting, twittering, looking, sneaking, freaking, or any of the many things that will tempt you to distraction.

    12.  Set up your good luck charms, talismans, touchstones, candles, lucky rabbit’s foot . . . whatever it takes to remind you . . . for the month of November. . . You Are A Writer.

    Write that on a post-it note. Post it prominently. Look at it. Remember it. Believe it. You Are A Writer.

    What helps you to keep focused on your writing? What steps would you add to being a successful writer?

     

  • The Sun Magazine

    Submissions – The Sun Magazine

    We publish essays, interviews, fiction, and poetry. We tend to favor personal writing, but we’re also looking for thoughtful, well-written essays on political, cultural, and philosophical themes. Please, no journalistic features, academic works, or opinion pieces. Other than that, we’re open to just about anything. Surprise us; we often don’t know what we’ll like until we read it.

    We pay from $300 to $2,000 for essays and interviews, $300 to $1,500 for fiction, and $100 to $500 for poetry, the amount being determined by length and quality. We may pay less for very short works. We also give contributors a complimentary one-year subscription to The Sun. We purchase one-time rights. All other rights revert to the author upon publication.

    We’re willing to read previously published works, though for reprints we pay only half our usual fee. We discourage simultaneous submissions. We rarely run anything longer than seven thousand words; there’s no minimum word length. Don’t bother with a query letter, except perhaps on interviews; the subject matter isn’t as important to us as what you do with it.

    We try to respond within three to six months. With nearly a thousand submissions a month, however, our backlog of unread manuscripts is often substantial. Don’t let a longer wait surprise you.

    Submissions should be typed, double-spaced, and accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. (Poems may be single-spaced.) Your work will not be returned without sufficient postage, and we cannot respond unless a return envelope is provided. Do not send your only copy. Do not submit work or queries by e-mail or fax. Submissions received this way will not be acknowledged.

    Send submissions to:

    Editorial Department
    The Sun
    107 N. Roberson St.
    Chapel Hill, NC 27516

  • Natalie Goldberg talks about writing practice

    From an interview in The Sun with Natalie Goldberg, November 2003:

    A writing practice is simply picking up a pen — a fast-writing pen, preferably, since the mind is faster than the hand — and doing timed writing exercises. The idea is to keep your hand moving for, say, ten minutes, and don’t cross anything out, because that makes space for your inner editor to come in. You are free to write the worst junk in America. After all, when we get on the tennis courts, we don’t expect to be a champion the first day.

    Writing is an athletic activity; the more you practice, the better you get at it. The reason you keep your hand moving is because there’s often a conflict between the editor and the creator. The editor is always on our shoulder saying, “Oh, you shouldn’t write that. It’s not good.”

    When you keep the hand moving, it’s an opportunity for the creator to have a say. The goal is to allow the written word to connect with your original mind, to write down the first thought that you flash on, before the second and third thoughts come in. That’s where the energy is. That’s where the alive, fresh vision is, before society, which we’ve internalized, takes over and teaches us to be polite and censor ourselves. Another way of putting it is that you need to trust what intuitively comes through you, rather than what you think you should be writing.

    Writing practice teaches you what your obsessions are, what you keep coming back to. Your obsessions have energy, and you can use them. Writing offers you a chance to transform an obsession into a passion, which is a lot better than constantly focusing on the things that are eating you.

  • I thought I would never . . . Prompt #18

    Another prompt inspired by essayist Susan Bono. I thought I would never learn to love ____________.

  • I learned about . . . Prompt #17

    Today’s prompt inspired by Susan Bono.

    I learned about ________from ___________.

    Go. Now. Write.

  • I want to tell you how . . . .Prompt #16

    I want to tell you how ______________changed my life.  Prompt inspired by Susan Bono.  Fill in the blank. Write for 12-15 minutes about how something or someone changed your life.

  • Simple Structure for Building the Essay by Susan Bono, Guest Blogger

    Continuing with Guest Blogger, Susan Bono, here are building blocks for writing personal essay, or memoir.

    Character: you

    Problem: give yourself a problem

    Struggle: problem creates conflict

    Epiphany: after struggle, a flood of new understanding

    Resolution: what you do differently as a result

    Many essays begin with a clear, straightforward statement of intent. All essays have an implied thesis and should have a clear angle —a particular way of approaching and narrowing the subject matter.  For example, notice how the following statements could shape your narrative from the start.

    I want to tell you how ______________changed my life. (Universal statement: this is the basic scaffolding for every personal essay)

    I learned about ________from ___________.

    I thought I would never learn to love ____________.

    We’ll continue this exploration of personal essay and memoir over the next few days with intriguing writing prompts suggested by Susan Bono.

  • What is personal essay? Susan Bono, Guest Blogger

    When you’re writing personal essay or memoir, it’s helpful to keep these words by Vivian Gornick in mind: “Good writing has two characteristics. It’s alive on the page and the reader is persuaded that the writer is on a voyage of discovery.” (Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story)

    Remember, too, that readers want to feel as if they know WHY you are telling your story. It’s not enough for the incidents you’re describing to be exciting or scary or hilarious. Your readers want to know how those events changed you. At the heart of every personal essay is this basic purpose: “I want to tell you how ______ changed my life.” When you attempt to communicate that intention, you are helping your essay become a “quest for understanding and information.” (Lee Guttkind, founding editor of Creative Nonfiction)

    Once you understand that personal essay is what Tristine Rainer calls a “progression toward personal truth,” (Tristine Rainer, Your Life as Story) it’s time to ask yourself, “Who is my audience?” What is its age, educational level, knowledge of subject, ability to understand,  beliefs, habits, prejudices, etc.? How will your audience feel about your views on parenting or getting older or driving drunk? If your readers are unfamiliar with your subject or apt to disagree with your perspective, you’ll have the added challenge of opening their minds as you share your insights.

    This pause to analyze your audience might seem like a tedious extra step, because most of the time, you’re writing to an audience very much like yourself. But don’t forget that your readers don’t know who you are, who Fred is, when or where your story is taking place or any number of important facts unless you tell them! As Phillip Lopate says, “The personal essayist cannot assume that the reader will ever have read anything by him or her before, and so must reestablish a persona each time and embed it in a context by providing sufficient autobiographical background.” (Phillip Lopate, The Art of the Personal Essay.)  As you write, keep asking yourself what a complete stranger living in Topeka or Miami would need to know to get the most out of this particular story.

    Susan Bono, author of “What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home,” brings wry humor, gentle guidance, and ever-evolving wisdom to the teaching of memoir and personal essay.

    A California-born teacher, freelance editor, and short-form memoirist, Susan has facilitated writing workshops since 1993, helping hundreds of writers find and develop their voices. She often writes about domestic life set in her small town of Petaluma. She and her husband have two grown sons and are former keepers of chickens.

    You can also find Susan’s writing in The Write Spot Books: Discoveries, Connections, Memories, Writing as a Path to Healing, and Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.

    Watch for writing prompts inspired by Susan Bono over the next few days.  You can use these prompts to build your essay or memoir.