Excerpt from “Happy to be Here,” by Elizabeth Berg.
“Last time my friend Phyllis visited me, she said, ‘Don’t you ever comb your hair?’”
“’I forget,’ I told her.”
I laughed at that moment of recognition.
Sometimes, during the day, I’ll glance at a mirror as I walk by and realize, “forgot to comb my hair.”
Writing prompt:
What have you forgotten? And then (obviously) remembered.
Or:
What might you have forgotten?
Just Write!
Next Avenue is a nonprofit journalism website.
Next Avenue is extending an invitation to share your story (for those over the age of 50).
We are seeking original essays with an insightful perspective on aging.
Every day on Next Avenue, we tell the stories of what makes us different and where we share commonalities. It is our hope that readers will glimpse themselves in someone else’s story; find a nugget of information they need; or discover a fresh perspective on an issue relative to aging.
We’re looking for insightful essays that illuminate a truth or teach us something new.
As the pandemic persists, and life continues to swirl around all of us in unexpected ways, perspective has taken center stage. You may have discovered there has been more space for quiet, like the calm in the center of the storm. Perhaps the quiet is not always welcome, but it is there. In the quiet, opportunities for reflection, for finding perspective, can emerge.
Stories are waiting to be told.
From July 24 through August 31, 2020, readers age 50+ may submit a 500-word original essay focused on a topic or experience of your choosing.
Beginning on July 24, you may submit your work here. One submission per person, please.
We’re looking for insightful essays that illuminate a truth or teach us something new.
Share a personal perspective with fellow readers about what it means to “act your age.” Tell us how you have found resilience in difficult times. How has growing older surprised you?
What is the story you want to tell?
The Next Avenue editorial team will select 12 essays, representing a diverse collective of voices, for publication on the site this fall.
The 500-word format should be strictly followed; longer essays will not be considered.
Be sure to check spelling, grammar and punctuation before submitting your essay.
Please give your piece a title.
We are looking for engaging and well-crafted personal narratives.
Next Avenue Editor’s note: The Joy of Writing by Elizabeth Berg, a New York Times bestselling author, is the first in a series of essays in conjunction with Next Avenue’s Telling Our Stories initiative, inviting readers to submit their own personal essays.
Elizabeth wrote on Facebook:
“Okay, all you would-be writers! This is your chance! Take a look at this invitation to submit essays. I would like to point out that this is exactly how I got my start as a published writer, by entering an essay contest. Good luck to all of you!”
Note from Marlene: You can’t win if you don’t enter.
Berg’s essay begins with:
“There I was, a nine-year-old girl with a bad pixie cut, sitting at my card table desk, drinking pickle juice and writing a poem meant to inspire rapture and envy in every reader’s heart. It wasn’t much of a poem, though I thought it was terrific. I mailed it to American Girl magazine and waited for my acceptance check (of about a million dollars, I figured) to arrive. Then I was going to buy my father a Cadillac.
The poem was swiftly (and rightly) rejected, and so wounded was I that it took another 25 years before I submitted anything. By then, I was a registered nurse wanting to find a job that would let me stay home with my daughters. So I entered an essay contest in Parents magazine, won it and went on to write essays for many magazines. I moved on to short stories, then books. I’ve now published over thirty books, I’m long past the usual retirement age, and still I keep on. Why?” continue reading.
Note from Marlene: Even if you don’t submit your writing, there are a lot of ideas for writing prompts at Next Avenue.
I’m spending this summer re-reading Elizabeth Berg’s books. Perhaps I’m trying to recreate the summers of my pre-teen years. After morning chores, afternoons were mine to do what I wanted. I walked to the library every Saturday and checked out an armload of books. Starting with the letter A in the children’s section, I worked my way around the room. I don’t remember what letter I was on when I abandoned the children’s section for adult fiction, upstairs in the grand and austere room, seeped with old-world charm, burnished wood stair railings, mahogany wainscoting, heavy oak chairs, and of course stacks and stacks of books. Those were the days of hushed voices and the librarian whispering shhhhh, pointer finger over pursed lips.
This summer, I’m enjoying the cool breeze from a portable fan while Berg’s characters march and dance through my head.
Here is an excerpt from Tapestry of Fortunes from pages 7 and 8:
{The main character, Cecilia Ross, is a motivational speaker. She is Atlanta in this scene, at the Oshaka Women’s Club.)
“I’m standing at the window in the speaker’s room and looking through the slanted blinds at the women gathered on the lawn, chatting amiably, laughing, leaning their heads together to share a certain confidence. They’re pretty; they look like so many butter mints, dressed in pastel greens and pinks and yellows and whites. It’s a warm spring day after a rainy night, and the women who are wearing high heels are having trouble with them sinking into the earth.
A fifty-something woman wearing a yellow apron over a print dress comes into the room holding a little gold-rimmed plate full of food: tea sandwiches, cut-up melon, cookies. ‘I have to tell you, I am really looking forward to hearing you speak. I hope you won’t mind my telling you this, but you said something in your last book that truly helped change my life: Getting lost is the only way to find what you didn’t know you were looking for.’”
Prompt: Write about something you have looked for.
Or write about getting lost in order to find what you were looking for.
Or write about a warm spring day.
Links to “Lost” writing prompts on The Write Spot Blog:
Write about a time you were lost. Prompt #60
Something lost or stolen from you or from your fictional character. Prompt #321
Something that was lost or stolen. Prompt #326
You can also write on any of the photos that accompany these writing prompts.
I bet you have heard “Show. Don’t tell.” What does that mean? And how does one do it?
Answer: Sensory detail.
As described in Imagery and Sensory Detail ala Adair Lara Prompt #277:
Not interested in making a list? You are welcome to use any of the 33 ideas listed below to start sensory writing. Or just look around, choose items within your view, and write, using sensory detail, of course. Scroll to bottom of this post for links about using sensory detail in writing.
Expand these images into full sentences, using sensory detail. Write as if you had to describe these visions to someone who has never seen or experienced these things.
What do these things look like? How do they sound, taste, feel, smell? Answer these questions and that’s using sensory detail in writing.
Write a sentence using these impressions, expand into a paragraph, a short story, a poem.
Posts on The Write Spot Blog about sensory detail:
Sensory Detail – Sound
Sensory Detail – Smell
Sensory Detail – Taste
Sensory Details – Kinesthetic, motion in writing
The “Queen of Sensory Detail” explains how to how to describe a character that gets into the essential details of the person: Elizabeth Berg Shows How To Demystify Character
For inspiration to Just Write: Click on a topic below and you will arrive at a (hopefully) inspirational post. Just like being on a magic carpet ride!
The following are from the 2013 Just Write Posts
Gorgeous Writing by Melanie Thorne
Fabulous Character Sketch, Elizabeth Berg
Natalie Goldberg talks about writing practice
Twelve Steps to Successful Writing by Marlene Cullen
Amy Zhang and Your Scraps of Writing
How to get in the mood to write by Marlene Cullen
Don’t think. Don’t Plan. Just Write. Marlene Cullen
Natalie Goldberg’s Six Rules of Writing
Get Started. How to use prompts. Marlene Cullen
Pass On The Dream And Tell Its Truth – Natalie Goldberg
Elizabeth Berg demystifies how to describe characters
Debbie Macomber had so many rejections . . .
Writing about place, August Kleinzahler
Three top Pointers About Writing Personal Essay by Kelly Caldwell
One way to learn how to write, get a book in your genre by Marlene Cullen
Play around with different ways to describe characters in stories.
Here are examples of how to make characters real and likable and how to capture readers’ interest.
What We Keep by Elizabeth Berg
“My mother was dressed in her beautiful yellow summer robe, the tie cinched evenly into a bow at the exact center of her waist, but her auburn hair was sticking up in the back, an occasional occurrence that I always hated seeing, since in my mind it suggested a kind of incompetence. It was an unruly cowlick, nearly impossible to tame — I knew this, having an identical cowlick of my own — but I did not forgive its presence on my mother. It did not go with the rest of her looks: her deep blue eyes, her thin, sculptured nose, her high cheekbones, her white, white skin — all signs, I was certain, of some distant link to royalty.”
Splinters of Light by Rachael Herron
“When my daughter kissed me at midnight that year, I missed my old life a tiny bit less than I had the previous New Year’s. Paul was becoming more and more adept at dodging phone calls from his first daughter as he busied himself with his new family, but his leaving us meant I got this little girl all to myself. A girl with his blonde eyebrows and my concern for wrongs to be righted. A little girl who liked to suck the rinds of our homegrown lemons (making faces all the while) as much as she liked to lick the honey spoon I handed her in the kitchen.”
Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a dumpster. It was just after dark . . . I was stuck in traffic two blocks from the party where I was heading.
Mom stood fifteen feet away. She had tied rags around her shoulders to keep out the spring chill and was picking through the trash while her dog, a black-and-white terrier mix, played at her feet. Mom’s gestures were all familiar—the way she tilted her head and thrust out her lower lip when studying items of potential value that she’d hoisted out of the Dumpster, the way her eyes widened with childish glee when she found something she liked. Her long hair was streaked with gray, tangled and matted, and her eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, but still she reminded me of the mom she’d been when I was a kid, swan-diving off cliffs and painting in the desert and reading Shakespeare aloud. Her cheekbones were still high and strong, but the skin was parched, and ruddy from all those winters and summers exposed to the elements. To the people walking by, she probably looked like any of the thousands of homeless people in New York City.”
Note from Marlene: It occurs to me that this might be what it’s like for an actor to get into character: inhabit another personna. . . make that character alive.
Your Turn . . . think of a real person. . . write about his or her mannerisms, quirks, habits, weave in physical description. Bring this person to life on the page. Just Write!
In Escaping into the Open, The Art of Writing True, Elizabeth Berg (one of my favorite authors) writes:
Whenever people ask me where I get my material, I am genuinely befuddled. “Well . . . from life!” is what I usually say. . . . each of us, no matter who we are or what we do, is offered potential story ideas daily. The people we know, the things that happen to them and us, the random scenes we witness and the conversations we overhear — all of these things are rich with raw material; all of them are capable of serving as a vehicle or springboard for a good story, in one way or another. We need only be aware. We need only be awake, and curious, and willing to share.
Note from Marlene: Last night in the Jumpstart writing workshop that I facilitate, this very thing happened. I took a real life experience, wrote it in the third person, changed a few facts and ta-da . . . a freewrite based on a true experience.
Your turn: Start with something that really happened and write about it. Just write.
Elizabeth Berg, Escaping Into The Open, The Art of Writing True on Persuasiveness, page 32. Excerpt:
In some ways, writing is like being a salesperson. you are in the business of convincing someone to buy something, as in, believe something. Try to develop your skills of persuasion so that your villain, say, is really felt as a villain. In doing that, think about the small things—everything really is in the details. For example, it’s not so much the description of the murderer killing someone that demonstrates his evil nature, it’s the flatness in his eyes as he does it; it’s the way he goes and gets an ice cream immediately afterward. Similarly, a man offering a diamond bracelet to a woman shows love; but that same person smiling tenderly when he wipes the smear of catsup off her face shows more.
Your turn. Write a scene showing the bad guy as a villain. Really. . . show how he or she has no remorse. Show the evil. OR, write a scene showing the love felt between two people. Just write.
How to write riveting scenery description — shown below by Elizabeth Berg, in an excerpt from her book, Escaping into the Open.
The summer when I was nine years old, we lived beside a huge gully. I used to go there nearly every day. Agates and wildflowers were plentiful and free for the taking — you were limited only by the size of your hands and pockets. Near the center of the gully was a secluded embankment covered by blades of grass the length and texture of girls’ hair. Willow trees surrounded it, and the sunlight coming through their leaves created a lacy pattern of shadow that I always wished I could pick up and lay over my head like a mantilla. Day after day, I lay on that small hill and watched the shifting patterns of clouds and listened to the birds. I could not identify the birds themselves, but I did recognize their calls. Sometimes I made my own sounds to call back; whenever I did, there would follow a moment of abrupt silence during which I assumed the birds tried to identify me, then gave up and went back to business. I found this satisfying; it made us even. — Page 1, Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg
Your turn: Write a description of a place where you find satisfaction.
I love it when writers describe characters in a way that I can really see them, beyond eye and hair color. The trick is how to describe a character that gets into the essential details of the person.
Elizabeth Berg demystifies how to describe characters, using interesting details, in “Escaping into the Open,” The Art of Writing True, page 91:
Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, you can greatly help define a character by sharing not only what he says and does, but also how he looks. Again, details matter. don’t tell the reader that someone is old; show it by describing the dime-size age spots, the sag of the cheeks, the see-through hair, the spiderlike spread of veins at the back of the knees. Are nylons falling down? Are belts too big? Are there greasy thumbprints on the lenses of bifocals? Is the posture stopped or stubbornly erect? Is there a periodic squeal from a hearing aid? What does he eat for breakfast? How does she speak on the phone? Do medication bottles rattle in his front pocket? Does she keep nitro-glycerin in a silver monogrammed case?
Your Turn: Write a character sketch. Write so that readers can hear, see, smell, feel your character.