The Write Spot Blog by Marlene Cullen

Blog

  • I read it on Facebook.

    Thursday is Quote Day on The Write Spot Blog. I like to post something interesting someone has said, or pithy or memorable. Adair Lara’s writing matches all three.

    Adair Lara comments, lifted from Facebook:

    “Facebook is destroying small talk. You open your mouth, and they say, ‘I know, I read it on Facebook.’” — January 24, 2014

    Adair on Passwords: “I recall, children, a time when you didn’t have to spend part of each day trying to remember passwords, looking them up in your password file cleverly called something else, like sammy’s dog, putting them in wrong, having to get the password from the site which entails remembering whether you said the name of your maternal grandfather was Tom or Thom, and then having your new password being called weak or strong, and capitalizing the “H” to please them (you’ve employed a variation of the same password since you were 36) and repeating this fricking exercise ten times a day, when who cares whether somebody can get into your toon photos account or not?” — February 6, 2014

    Want Adair humor in person? Take her class, information posted on Facebook, May 8, 2014:

    Shouldn’t you finish that book?

    You put a lot of work in on it, and then laid it aside, or got too busy at work, or lost faith in it.

    Before that, though, you put a lot of time and talent into it.

    You might enjoy a day at my house entirely devoted to writers with stalled projects. I’ll help you decide whether to take it up again, and providing you by the end of the day with a specific plan for doing just that –and perhaps a writing partner, or writing group, to boot. You might decide to at least try to carve some sellable essays out of it.

    Also I’ll give you some killer voice exercises I’ve been developing. You will certainly enjoy meeting your fellow writers. For those who have a completed draft, we’ll talk about publishing/self-publishing.

    Get ready for the workshop by: a) assembling your manuscript and reading it b) researching the competition on Amazon.

    Limited to 15. $175 Sunday June 22 9-4:30 45 minutes off for lunch

    Adair.FB.1

     

     

    Contact Adair:
    Adair.lara@gmail.com

  • Details prove it happened. Prompt #71

    In her book, Naked, Drunk and Writing, subtitle: Writing Essays and Memoirs For Love and for Money, Adair Lara talks about details.

    “The terms ‘image’ and ‘detail’ are often used interchangeably. A concrete detail, for example, is said to be one that appeals to one of the five senses.”

    “Details prove it happened. If you say you are late because you hit traffic, the boss may squint at you, but if you say some bozo in a Mini-Cooper tried to drive along the margin of the road on the Waldo Grade and hit a gravel truck, spilling rocks across the road and blocking all the lanes in both directions, you have a shot at being believed.”

    Today’s prompt, from Naked, Drunk and Writing:

    “Write a list of details from your childhood.” Being about the same age as Adair, my list contains items on her list: milk delivered in glass bottles, metal ice cube trays with levers, cap guns, hula-hoops.

    My list also includes hair dryers with hoses attached to giant shower caps, empty and clean orange juice cans used as hair curlers, manual typewriters, carbon paper, white-out for typing errors.

    “Select a memory from your childhood. What did you feel at the time of the event? Go through the senses of touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste. Describe the colors you remember and how the event made you feel. What impact has this memory had on you? Invent the details you don’t remember.” (One of the things I love about Adair . . . her free spirit . . . her go-for-it attitude.)Adair. gold star

    Prompt: Write about a memory from childhood using detail (detail = things that can be seen, felt, heard, smelled, tasted).   Use information from Prompt #70 for pacing.

  • Want to be a writer? Just write!

    In Naked, Drunk, and Writing, Adair Lara writes “I grew up in the San Geronimo Valley . . . a bookstruck little kid sitting on a stump writing stories.”

    She continues with “Writing was easy then. I used my dad’s square carpenter pencil to cover sheet after sheet with stories of dogs that rescued families from a flood or a fire.”

    Note the details: Can you see the carpenter pencil? I see a yellow pencil and I can see that little girl hunched over, earnestly scribbling.

    Adair began her writing career as copyeditor at San Francisco Focus magazine. Her friend Cynthia, the production editor, also wanted to be a writer. They started partner writing, swapping freewrites and returning them with the good stuff highlighted in yellow. “That first writing club, as we called it, changed my life. It made me a writer by giving me the confidence to be one.”

    Adair has published “some ten books or so, including several collections of columns.” Her work has appeared in many other magazines and newspapers, both in print and online.  She is currently a columnist for Grandparents.com

    Adair teaches writing workshops, which I had the good fortune to attend in the summer of 2009. What a treat!

    How about you? Do you want to write but don’t know how to get started? You can join a writing group in your community, find a partner to exchange writing with, or join an online writing community like this one, The Write Spot Blog.

    LolaJust write!

  • Find the right pace. Prompt #70

    In Adair Lara‘s book, Naked, Drunk, and Writing, she talks about pace.

    “Add more images where you want to slow us [the reader] down, fewer when you want to speed up. This is called pace.”

    In a writing workshop, Adair said, “To slow down, give more detail, give unexpected detail, detail that moves story forward.”

    Today’s writing prompt is either, or, or both.

    Either take one of the story starts below (these are from Adair’s writing class) and keep writing, using detail to slow the story down or minimize detail to speed the story up.

    As Adair writes in her book, “The more important a scene or character, the more image and detail it gets.”

    OR: Have fun writing a scene with too much detail. Tell us way more than we need to know. Write a spoof on how to write too much detail.

    Use any of these lines to get started:

    I had to try something different so I . . .

    All the time I was thinking that . . .

    The turning point came when . . .

    BOTH: Write using too much detail. Rewrite the same scene with much less detail.

    Photo of a collection of aLara.Students books smallish grouping of a partial compendium of a few of the print books using the paper method of publishing that have been produced by proud and able and hard-working students of classes of the writing kind taught by the amazing Adair Lara.

    Books published by Adair Lara’s students.

  • Quiddity is a great word. But what does it mean?

    Quiddity is a multimedia arts venue featuring an international literary journal (print and audio), a public-radio program, and a visiting writer and artist series.  Each is produced by Benedictine University in partnership with NPR member/PRI affiliate WUIS, Illinois Public Radio’s hub-station.

    The print journal, published semi-annually, features exemplary prose, poetry, and artwork from emerging and established writers and artists around the world. International submissions are encouraged.

    The public-radio program and the visiting writer and artist series feature select authors and artists. Contributors to the print journal are invited to contribute to the audio journal and may have their work featured on the public-radio program.

    The term quiddity means “the real nature or essence of a thing; that which makes it what it is.” Because those who participate in the arts—crafters, readers, viewers, listeners—are its quiddity, the venue Quiddity seeks not only work from a wide and diverse pool of individuals but also to share that work with a wide audience.

    Click here for submissions guidelines.

    Quiddity

  • What if we speak truth with compassion? The power of words.

    Guest Blogger Kshatriya Millick writes about the importance of words.

    The lyrics to “Speak Life” by Toby Mac have really been weighing on my heart and mind. Hearing this song, live in concert, touched my soul and spirit in a way hearing it on the radio never did. It has caused me to think about how I speak to others. Do I use my words to lift others up or tear them down? Do I take little jabs to their characters and their lives, to feel like I am connected to something or to feel superior? Do I use jokes that are hurtful to be funny? Do I use my words to inspire others or to discourage them? These questions have caused me to evaluate how I use words in my life, and how those in my life use their words in their lives. I no longer wish to associate with people who use their words to judge, tear down, make a joke at others’ expense, ridicule, or who just don’t care what they say. I no longer want to be the person who uses her words to hurt others.

    How hard is it really for me to spread hope and kindness with my words? How hard is it really for me to speak encouragement instead of ridicule? I don’t have to be witty or “on the mark” or funny to say a word that would lift someone up. Why shouldn’t I be proud of those in my life? Why shouldn’t I learn to look at them and say, “You are an amazing person” and mean it! How hard would it be to eliminate the witty banter of sarcasm and ridicule for truth and support? Why do I need to use sarcasm as a way to prove to the world I have a “special” connection to someone?

    Words spoken even in jest can cause pain, doubt and mistrust, so why wouldn’t I watch my words? If I focus on lifting others up and “speak life” to them, wouldn’t I be the one who benefits from that action? I find when I can “speak life” and encouragement then I feel better about my day, I feel better about my relationships and I feel better about me.

    Does this mean I won’t tell people the truth or bring light to something that I see as harmful, no of course not, truth is different from what I am saying, yet it is the way we express it.

    Think about it for a minute, how do you deliver the truth to someone? Do you do it with disdain, are you a bully with your delivery, are you judgmental, or are you mean? Now think about how you respond to this kind of delivery in your life? There is no written rule that says, “Truth must be delivered with a hammer and with stones, until the person you are speaking to is a pile of brokenness and despair.” What if we speak truth with compassion? What if instead of rocks thrown we put our hand out and offer to help them walk? What if we truly treated others the way we desire to be treated and not the way we were trained to accept treatment?

    My challenge for myself is to “speak life” into each person I come in contact with, in some way. A smile, a kind “Hello,” eye contact, truth with compassion, forgiveness, a word of encouragement for the hard work they put into a goal they are working towards. My challenge includes my family and friends; sometimes it is those close to us that we ridicule the most, when they should be the first people we lift up.

    “Speak Life” by Toby Mac is a song that expresses the power of words. Words we say, words we hear, words we write, all the words we use. It spoke to me in such a way as to change my thinking about how I use my words. It changed how I hear words and it has changed me and my relationships. All my conversations now have a positive slant; I speak words of encouragement and hope before I speak words of bitterness and pain.

    Kshatriya Millick lives in Northern California and is married “to a very loving sweet man who has taught me so much about love and acceptance.” Over the last couple of years she has transformed her life. “I have gone from existing to living a joyful life. At almost 300 pounds I started my life all over with all things new from a job to a new school to a new relationship. Now at 115.8 pounds less and with a new lease on life I see each day of my life as a blessing and I adore and welcome the challenges life has to offer.”

    Ksha

  • Maybe what I have written today is messy, clumsy, raggedy . . .

    “Say to yourself, ‘Maybe what I have written today is messy, clumsy, raggedy, but that’s my poem for today.’ Maybe there is a neater poem buried inside it that I can work on tomorrow.” — Naomi Shihab Nye, April 2014 Writer magazine, “Mystical Jolt,” by Robert Hirschfield

    Lola

  • My mother always said . . . Prompt #69

    I hope today’s prompt will inspire you to write about your mother, or your mother figure.

    Prompt:  My mother always said . . .

    Or: My grandmother always said. . .

    Or: My [mother figure] always said. . .

    Marlene and Jeanne

     

    Marlene and her Mom, 1959, San Francisco, CA

     

    After you have written your freewrite, if you are inspired. . . polish, revise, edit, review your writing and submit to Lynn Cook Henriksen for her blog and possibly for inclusion in Volume II of Telltale Souls. Click here for details.

     

  • Use sensory detail and be specific.

    I love gorgeous writing and wonder how authors produce writing so vivid you feel as if you are in their world.

    One idea is to watch what people really do when talking, use sensory detail and be specific.

    For example, author Rachael Herron creates believable fictional characters. There is so much to like about her writing. One tool she employs well is the actions her characters engage in while talking. The dialogue develops character and moves the story along. The action makes the characters believable. Here are some examples from “How to Knit a Heart Back Home.”

    Owen twisted the [plastic] spoon in his fingers. He would not rub the scar on his hip, which suddenly burned.

    Lucy took the now mangled plastic spoon out of his hand and then threaded her fingers through his.

    Dropping his eyes from hers, Owen watched Lucy’s pulse flicker rapidly in the hollow of her throat. For a moment there was no sound but the crash of the waves below.

    Back to me. . . Oh, my. I can see and hear and feel . . . the mangled plastic spoon, feel the burning scar, see the hollow of her throat and hear the crashing waves.

    Action: twisted, dropping, watched, threaded, flicker, crash

    Specific: plastic spoon, hip

    Sensory detail: burn, sound

    Your turn: give us examples of exquisite writing that use strong verbs, is specific and employs sensory detail. Share your finds with us.

    Write a scene or a vignette: a freewrite using action words (strong verbs), be specific (sycamore, not tree), sensory detail (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell). Herron. How to Knit A Heart

    Just write!

     

  • If only . . . . Prompt #68

    Writing Prompt:  If only . . .

    Set your timer for 12 minutes and write “If only”   . . . .  and keep writing.

    Tinkerbell

     

     

     

     

    Prompt #68 – If only . . .