The Write Spot Blog by Marlene Cullen

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  • I went deep into storytelling mode — Becca Lawton

    Today’s quote is from Write Free – Attracting the Creative Life by Rebecca Lawton and Jordan E. Rosenfeld.

    Rebecca wrote:

    “I wrote another personal essay, in part with the column in mind but mostly with the intention of simply telling my story. There was a message I wanted to convey in the piece: one of loss and sadness, but also of triumph and survival. Because I had taken my focus off publication while writing, I went deep into storytelling mode. Much of the writing for the piece was done in subconscious writing fashion. When I finished a decent draft, I went outside to water my flower garden. I felt a certainty that hadn’t been there before. the essay was so good, so moving. I knew it would be published — if not in the target column, then certainly elsewhere.”

    WandNote from Marlene: What strikes me as being important in this passage is when Becca let go of the thought of publishing, she was able to go “deep into storytelling mode.” That’s my wish for you.

    Write whatever you want to write. Don’t worry about a thing. . . don’t think about publishing, don’t think about anyone looking over your shoulder. No judging. No criticizing. Just write.

  • Stroll down memory lane . . . Prompt # 81

    Today’s writing prompt is inspired by Rebecca Lawton’s May 26, 2014 blog post, which begins:

    “Candles of buckeye blossoms and their subtle fragrance have always confirmed the return of summer. Seeing them this week reminded me that certain sights, sounds, and smells trigger strong memories. The whisking sound of a broom on stairs recalls family vacations at the lake, where our host rose early to sweep fallen live oak leaves. The musky scent of open water reminds me of being on a raft enjoying the primal sensations of floating a muddy river. The first bars of a Beatles song bring back the excitement of junior high school dances. Sipping tequila reminds me of kayaking from Loreto to La Paz on the Sea of Cortez.”

    Click here to read the rest of the post.

    Writing Prompt: Stroll down memory lane . . . pause when a remembered event causes a visceral reaction: you might feel a sensation in your gut . . . write about that event, using sensory detail.

    You can use the Summer Prompt as a starting place. Not the “how I spent my summer vacation” September school essay. Focus on detail . . . using sensory description in your writing. Capture that musky lake smell, the charred wood campfire smell. Go with tactile detail: the sticky marshmallows on your fingers, the feel of a rough floor on your bare feet, the bright sun fighting closed eyelids. Wake up! Go deep in your writing. Reach out and capture those feelings. . . whatever they are.

    BuckeyeAfter you write, take a look at the responses to Prompt #77    (scroll down) . . . folks used wonderful detail writing about summer.

    Join us! Write your freewrite. Post your writing on The Write Spot Blog.

  • Rebecca Lawton Week

    This is “Rebecca Lawton Week” on The Write Spot Blot. Today’s inspiration for “Just Write” is from her book, Reading Water, Lessons from the River:

    The water-level fluctuations, both daily and seasonal, gave us regular lessons in how the river varied depending on flow. The thalweg, or deepest or best navigable channel, didn’t always follow a direct path. On one key day early in my training, I followed a boatman friend named John through the long, straight, placid reach of the Stanislaus below Razorback Rapids. As I rowed down the middle of the river, choosing the course where the main flow had been weeks before, I noticed John’s boat meandering from one side of the river to the other. He kept his hands on the oars but barely exerted himself, simply using the oars to adjust his boat’s position on the water surface. He moved briskly downstream through the calms with little effort. Even as I rowed steadily to keep up, he beat me by finding the strongest flow and doing the bare minimum to stay on it.

    “It’s true,” John told me later. “You’ve just got to use the current. It’ll carry you if you don’t fight it.”

    Water.BreanaNote from Marlene: Sometimes our writing meanders, like John and his boat, and that’s just fine. Find the current in your writing. Let your mind wander and let your freewrite take you on a meandering route and you might find the rhythm for your best creative writing. Just Write!

    Photo by Breana Marie.

    Click here for Rebecca Lawton’s website.

  • I Spy. . . Prompt #80

    Today’s writing prompt is inspired from the book, Write Free, Attracting the Creative Life by Rebecca Lawton and Jordan E. Rosenfeld

    This writing exercise is called: I Spy

    List a few things that happened this morning or yesterday. They don’t have to be big or memorable, just whatever falls into your mind.

    The goal is to slow down and take stock of those things you do not normally notice.

    Writing Prompt: Focus on one event and write how you felt about this encounter. Jot down your feelings and then do a freewrite.

    fish 2Did the event make you think of anything else? Did it remind you of other events, experiences, memories or feelings? What were you thinking while it happened, or just before or after?

    Write your freewrite. Type your freewrite and save it.  Log on and post your writing on The Write Spot Blog.

  • Writer Advice introduces a new project

    Writer Advice introduces a new project:

    Communicate an important message to a child, parent, spouse, lover, neighbor, fictitious character, or real literary agent.

    Write a letter that fits a category below:

    •     Letter to a parent, child, spouse, or other family member
    •     Letter to a lover
    •     Letter to a neighbor
    •     Letter to a civil servant or other service provider
    •     Letter from a character to you or to another character
    •     Letter to a potential agent or publisher

    Express yourself, hone your voice, find new subjects for your writing, share issues, share your thoughts and voice with the world.
    B. Lynn Goodwin (Writer Advice) will let you know the message she gets from your letter and the impression she receives of you as the author of the letter. You may be determined, confused, frustrated, wise, or inspiring.

    Letters only please. Keep them short. Less is more. Suggested length is 50-500 words.

    Deadline: July 18, 2014

    Submission fee = $15.   If your letter is shared on Writer Advice, you will receive a $45 prize.

    Click here for submission information.

    Journaling for CaregiversB. Lynn Goodwin is the owner of Writer Advice and the author of You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers, available on Amazon. Her stories and articles have been published in Voices of Caregivers; Hip Mama; the Oakland Tribune; the Contra Costa Times; the Danville Weekly; Staying Sane When You’re Dieting; Small Press Review; Dramatics Magazine; Thickjam.com, Friction Literary Journal, and The Sun. She’ll have a piece in Writing After Retirement: Tips by Successful Retired Writers and a different piece in Small Miracles from Beyond: Dreams, Visions and Signs that Link Us to the Other Side. She’s just signed a contract for her Young Adult novel, Talent, and offers manuscript consultations through Writer Advice.

     

  • Guest Blogger Rebecca Lawton: conflict = bringing opposing forces to light

    Rebecca Lawton writes about conflict . . . the kind writers want to have in their writing.

    Recently I read an article by a bestselling novelist who claimed she didn’t follow the well-worn advice to include conflict in story. “I hate conflict,” she wrote. “I don’t like to read it, and I don’t like to write it.” Wondering what techniques she did use to captivate her devoted followers, I turned to my bookshelf and opened one of her latest works to the first page.

    The initial paragraph set a sunny, peaceful scene in which couples and families strolled and played outdoors; the second paragraph described a situation only blocks away where a crowd was experiencing danger that had “turned their perfect Saturday into a nightmare.”

    Bingo. Conflict. The word is via the Latin conflictus, meaning contest. My good old Oxford English Dictionary describes conflict as “an incompatibility between two or more opinions, principles, or interests” (There’s a conflict between his business and home life) or “a clash of opposing wishes or needs” (My heart is in conflict with my brain).

    Our writing instructors tell us that we’ll engage our readers if we start our works with some sort of clash in our opening sentence or paragraph and keep it coming throughout our stories. We’re directed to embed it in every page to engage our readers nonstop.

    It’s good advice. In his fabulous manual, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, Donald Maass describes the many levels of conflict that can be integrated into our stories. There’s Inner Conflict (the clash of desires within a character), Bridging Conflict (temporary conflict or mini-problem), Inherent Conflict (a world of conflicting forces), and Main Conflict (main problem in the story). And those are just a few examples.

    There’s a connection between writing conflict and building story tension. The two words are inherently opposites, but they work together to hold the interest of our readers (I’ll say more about how conflict and tension are related at the June 19, 2014 Writer’s Forum hosted by Marlene Cullen.

    Even before I knew how to weave conflict into a story, culture clash inspired me to write my novel Junction, Utah. From experience I knew communities were disagreeing over resources in the oil-rich American desert, where the story is set, and I wanted to explore that clash. There was much to tell, and as I wrote and rewrote, I discovered new opportunities to bring the opposing forces to light.

    Here are ten of the many opposites I identified in my characters and settings in Junction.

    • Dry versus Wet
    • Settled versus Nomadic
    • Hawk versus Dove
    • Solo versus Communal
    • War versus Peace
    • Wild versus Tame
    • Wounded versus Healed
    • Shadow versus Light
    • Lost versus Found
    • Death versus Life

    But don’t take my word for the universality of conflict. Go to your own bookshelf and do a survey of your own beloved stories. I did, and found opposing wishes or needs woven into the fabric of these favorites:

    • North versus South in Gone with the Wind (Mitchell)
    • Free versus Enslaved in Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
    • Light versus Dark in Moby Dick (Melville)
    • New versus Old in The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
    • Truth versus Lies in To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
    • Mice versus Men in Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
    • Establishment versus Renegade in The Monkey Wrench Gang (Abbey)
    • Refined versus Rough in Angle of Repose (Stegner)
    • Masculine versus Feminine in The Green Hills of Africa (Hemingway)
    • Domestic versus Wild in The Yearling (Rawlings)

    Like it or not, conflict is a constant presence in our lives. Fortunately, it also beats the heart of truth in stories and keeps readers engaged to the last page. Don’t think you like to write and read conflict? Think again.

    Rebecca Lawton’s work has been published in Orion, THEMA, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Shenandoah, Sierra, More, and other magazines. Her essay collection about the guiding life, Reading Water: Lessons from the River, was a San Francisco Chronicle Bay Area Bestseller and ForeWord Nature Book of the Year finalist.

    With her agent, Sally van Haitsma, Rebecca published a debut novel, Junction, Utah. Her collaboration with photographer Geoff Fricker, Sacrament: Homage to a River, is just out from Heyday, and her first short story collection, Steelies and Other Endangered Species (Little Curlew), is due out in June. Her literary honors include the Ellen Meloy Fund Award for Desert Writers and three Pushcart Prize nominations—in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction—and residencies at Hedgebrook and The Island Institute. In fall 2014, she will be working on her second novel while serving as Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Humanities, Social Sciences, and Fine Arts at the University of Alberta.

    For up-to-the-century news, visit Rebecca at the below links or send her email at becca (at) beccalawton (dot) com to receive her monthly writer’s postcard.

    Lots of ways to connect with Rebecca Lawton:

    Becca

    Website

    Blog

    Twitter

    Facebook

     

     

  • Your gut may lead you astray, but . . .

    “Your gut may lead you astray, but it’s never wrong. If you don’t have the guts to act on something and the moment passes, you will always remember that you were a gutless wonder. In gut we trust.” Herb Caen

    Herb Caen (1916–1997) was a journalist whose daily column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, painful puns and offbeat anecdotes appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly  sixty years.

    Herb Caen

    “The secret of Caen’s success [was] his outstanding ability to take a wisp of fog, a chance phrase overheard in an elevator, a happy child on a cable car, a deb in a tizzy over a social reversal, a family in distress and give each circumstance the magic touch that makes a reader an understanding eyewitness of the day’s happenings.”  Wikipedia

     

  • Balance. . . Prompt #79

    Today’s writing prompt. . . balance.

    Spools.Scheibach

  • Writing is like excavating . . .

    Writing prompts on The Write Spot Blog are designed to encourage writing that takes the writer on a journey of discovery.

    Our freewrites can refresh our memories and remind us of times past. It’s like excavating — digging deep and dredging up memories.

    You can start writing very simply — with pen or pencil and paper or keyboard.

    To go deep into your writing — rest both feet on the floor, rest your hands lightly on your lap or on the table. Take in a deep, nourishing breath and slowly let it out. Another deep breath in and s-l-o-w-l-y release. Sink into your breath and relax on the out breath.

    Review the prompt and start writing. If you get stuck and don’t know what to write next:

    ~ Write the prompt . . . sometimes re-writing the prompt brings up new ideas.

    ~ Write “I remember. . . ” and go from there.

    ~ Write “I don’t remember. . . ” and see where that takes you.

    ~ Write “What I really want to say . . . ”   This is my favorite to inspire deep writing.

    Shovel Whatever methods you use . . . just write.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The next time . . . Prompt #78

    Today’s writing prompt:     The next time . . .

     

    angel.flying