FALLING IN LOVE WITH WORDS

Now we’re getting to know each other, let me share five of my deepest secrets with you ….

Shhhh....


Bulbous

Grace

Looming

Filch

Pettifogger


Wow. Do they make you smile without meaning to? Your stomach turn over and the butterflies to start jumping? Can you feel them in your mouth already? Aren’t you just longing to use them in your next sentence?

No. Well, probably not because they’re my words. And just as we are all different types of writers, so we have our own secret words. So what are yours? Make a list of five words you can hug to yourself next time you face the blank page. The words that are just for you. Imagine them lining up behind you, on your side with their crossed arms and snazzy sunglasses. Or maybe they’re in the bath, scenting and primping and beautifying themselves, waiting for you to finish your ten minutes writing for today.

Fall in love with words. And most of all have some fun with them. Learn that words aren’t your enemy, and that your job isn’t just to march into a certain place in the sentence before forgetting all about them. Yes, some words are useful soldiers, but the special ones? They’re just temptresses. Enjoy.

Also see:

* WHAT KIND OF WRITER ARE YOU?

* FIVE WAYS TO WRITE MORE

EVEN EVEN MORE ON TYPEWRITERS

I will get over my obsession with typewriters one day, but not just yet. Please.

Here are some old ads - I love the wording perhaps even more than the pictures.



Because I know I would write incomparably beautiful words on this one...



... dress like this when typing on this one ...



... be happy with this one ...



... hmm, not quite sure what to say about this one apart from, boy, does it have attitude...



... and the best advice of all here - READ BEFORE YOU WRITE ...



OK, OK, it's typewriter porn. But I bet you enjoyed it too.

Didn't you?


Read more typewriter posts:

Here, and here.

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM

One of the projects I'm working on next year will finish in an exhibition at The Tunbridge Wells Museum. It's a collaboration between a group of four artists and four writers, and all of us have been spending time in the storage rooms of the museum choosing one object that isn't normally seen by the public. We will then create something individually - either through words or visually, and then here comes the interesting part. For the second stage, each artist will pick a piece created by one writer, and vice versa, to create a further piece - something inspired not by the original object but by the artist or writer's interpretation of it. And so on for three rounds. It's a form of creative consequences, and the exhibition is as much about the creative process as the objects themselves. Remember the game, Chinese Whispers? I imagine the results will be something like that!

But how to pick just one thing?

I have been looking and looking at an old typewriter carefully stored away. I love how it makes writing so sensory - from the feeling of each key under your finger, the sound and the solidness of it. And just look at those almost cinematic reels of print. It really is it's own mini opera house.



I was almost convinced, but then something kept drawing me back to an old box of dolls dress patterns I spotted right at the top of one shelf. And this is what I've finally picked.



I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. I've been playing with envelopes of patterns on how to make a life, to make peace, to make a world. Or origami clothes made out of poems and stories. Or a short story on who would have dedicated themselves to making something so small and yet so complicated. Look ...



Even more poignant in my view is that some of the pattern pieces are cut out of pages from the Honolulu Independent of 1899. Here's a scrap of news that I desciphered:

… her character, and he wrote a letter to her ordering her to leave the house of his relatives, or if she did not await his return when he would kick her out bodily. The letter was produced in court and described by Judge Wilcox as being couched in the most filthy, dirty, obscene and scurrilious language that it ever had been his misfortune to see. the learned magistrate discharged the case and advised the woman never to go back to a husband who could act as the brute before him had done. The judge regretted that the defendant did not have a big brother or a father who would thrash the plaintiff within an inch of his life. It was one of the instances where the whipping post was sadly needed.

I can't help wondering if whoever it was who so carefully cut out a sleeve pattern from this read it, and perhaps got a thrill from the story? Maybe she needed a beer after? This is one of the adverts:

For That Tired Feeling
That steals over you as the days work is over, there’s nothing else so good as a refreshing glass of RAINIER BEER. It is the tonic you need, beats all the medicine you can take, brings on around refreshing and healthy sleep and makes one feel like a new person. On tap or in bottles at the Criterion Saloon.

There's something about it that reminds me of one of the most beautiful artists books I saw in an exhibition in Washington this year. The artist, Yani Pecanins, had made the 'book' out of one of her childhood dresses:



In a note by the dress, she explains that she was inspired by the diary of Anne Frank, and when her mother gave her the old baby dress, ... 'it brought me closer to Anne Frank's words of feeling fragile and strong at the same time, knowing that you are growing but have so far to grow, that you are someone but you know not who, that you are just beginning to discover yourself.'

USEFUL CHRISTMAS TIPS NO 2

Do you need a room of your own this Christmas? Here's a dandy solution for more peaceful writing....

Pop Up from abw on Vimeo.

Read more:

* Useful Christmas tips No 1

* Pop Ups!

MORE ON ADVENTURING NOWHERE

Now I'm worried - oh heck, I'm ALWAYS worried - that my post here sounded like a poor me whine. It wasn't meant to be.

I LOVE how my kids are setting out into the world, and in some ways I'm looking forward to it. Every stage has been the best yet so far, but this IS different because I'm not in charge of the organising, planning and entertaining any more.

Maybe this is why the word 'nowhere' felt wrong. As if I was saying that because I'm no longer the one at the centre of all their activities, I've nowhere else to go. I hope that's not true, because that's not how I feel at all.

It's just that I have to spend some time getting used to this new land of 'nowhere' I'm finding myself in. It's less 'going nowhere', as 'nowhere I have to go.' There's a big difference there!

And what I'm finding is that staying put is sometimes an adventure too - one I have to write my own map for. What a terrifying privilege that is. No one else to hide behind. Phew. No wonder I don't want to hurry into anything. I remember once my mother telling me 'never to wish any time away', when I was longing for the time I didn't have to be the one everyone relied on to get out of the house in the morning! All the things I could do if only I didn't have to look after everyone else first. My mum was probably experiencing some of what I am feeling now. But she wrote her new map. As I will.

Now here's a woman who really knows that 'life loves the liver' - at every stage!

READ ME!

Five ways to get your words read without a publisher

Most of us write in order to be read, but if you use your imagination, you don’t need to bookdeal in order to gain readers. I wrote these tips for an article on the Carrie and Danielle website earlier this year, from which this blog piece has been adapted.

1. In her excellent writing guide, Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg talks about how she set up a poetry booth at a fete. She sat in front of a table and wrote poems then and there for people who came to her with ideas. This is such a great idea as it lets you share your love of writing with other people. If you don’t like the idea of instant writing, you can always print out your poems in advance, tie them up with pretty ribbon and sell them under their general themes – love, gardens, nature, or whatever it is you write about. It’s a great tool for fundraising, as well as bringing people pleasure as they choose, keep and read your poems.

2. Share your writing as a gift. I’ve never forgotten going for a walk in a wood one day and finding a poem about that beautiful place pinned up on a tree. Can you believe how it made my day? You can leave poems and pieces of writing for people to come across just like that, or maybe in old books in a second-hand store or taped on benches in your local park or tucked into menus in cafes or even on the bus for the next passenger after you to find. Use your imagination, and don’t be shy. I still think of that poem I found as a gift.

3. Exchange writing with a friend. Earlier this year, I spent a great month sharing poems with another writer. It started with a comment he sent me, ‘sharing is for grown ups’ (OK, OK, I’m not very good at sharing my chocolate!). So I sent him back a poem with this title, and was thrilled a couple of days later to receive a poem from him based on one of the lines in my poem – ‘funny how expensive nothing is.’ The exchange lasted for several poems, and each time it was a treat to see what the other wrote. And of course this was how the Messages Project got started, one of the things I'm most grateful for in my writing life so far.

4. Find a writing project to join in with on the internet. One I always enjoy is the Apple House Poetry site (run by my own collaborator, Lynne!). As well as proving prompts for inspiration, by posting your responses you will quickly become part of a writing community, reading other people’s work and having them read you in return. Also don't forget the prompts on the sidebar of this blog, or the Snaps I publish. I'm always happy to see the work produced as a result.

5. Make your own books. Try a self-publishing company like Lulu, or think about an ebook. There's a wealth of information on the internet when you start looking - try this youtube video (I love this woman!) and Alison Baverstock's Marketing Your Book is well worth a read.

Do let me know of any other ideas you might have too - or any successful projects you've been involved in. I love the whole generosity involved in sharing words, whether it's reading poems out loud on buses, or in Marks and Spencers. Hell, you can even knit yourself a poem!.

Read more:

* Five Ways to Write More


*Your Messages. (Warning - this website isn't operating now, but the Your Messages up there are definitely still worth reading!)

FIVE WAYS TO WRITE MORE

1. Write different. In the same way that sportsmen try different sports for ultimate fitness, try new things on the page. Force writing muscles you haven’t used to wake up. Write in structured forms – a sonnet or an alphabetically organised story. Or freewrite – let yourself go. Write poems, or an essay, or a short story, or the first five pages of a novel. The key thing is not to let yourself get into a rut.

2. Write more. It sounds obvious but are you trying to write the one perfect piece and so stifling yourself before you start? Or are you saving up your best thoughts and images for one particular story? Be generous on the page. The more you write, the more you will have to write about, and the quality will – eventually – start to shine through. In the book, Art and Fear, there is a description of an experiment in which a sculpture class were divided into two groups. Half were going to be assessed on how many sculptures they created no matter the quality. The other half on the one perfect sculpture, just one for the whole course. Guess which group produced the better sculptures – yep, that’s right. The ones who produced the most.

3. Form a habit. Write at a particular time of day, or on a particular day. Be disciplined about it. Dorothea Brande in her classic book, Becoming a Writer is very firm about this. You make a writing date and you stick to it.

4. Remember what you like about writing. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have complained that they can’t write but that they SHOULD be getting on with their poem, or their novel, or article. As if there’s someone forcing them to write. No wonder they don’t want to then. But, whisper this, the world will not collapse if we never write another poem. So somehow we have to get back to the joy of what we do. I find one of the best ways of doing this is to make a list of what I liked about the project in the first place, what I want it to achieve, what in a perfect world could happen to it, ie be published in The New Yorker! But if that doesn’t work – and it doesn’t always – I make another list of all the things I want to do when I’ve finished it and keep that to the side of the computer as a carrot.

5. And last but not least, turn off your internet. Now. Go on. Move away from the wi-fi, the twitter, the facebook, emails, blog reading. Use longhand if you must so you won't be tempted by the computer. I dare you!

Happy writing.

Related posts:

* On Refusing to Chose

THAT/WHICH

One of the good things about my newish job at the London School of Economics is having to find stuff out. Interesting how often this will be answers to questions that have been hanging around in the back of my mind for some time.

Such as what's the difference between THAT and WHICH?

So here's my answer to the THAT/WHICH rule:

That is defining, and Which is not, so you would use That in a restrictive clause.

Er, yes. And...

I know, that helps me like a sack of potatoes too. How about if you use them in this way:

The essays that have to be in on Tuesday should be written in black ink

and

The essays, which have to be in on Tuesday, should be written in black ink.

See?

The THAT example implies that ONLY the essays that have to be in on Tuesday should be written in black ink, and the WHICH example suggests ALL the essays need to be both in on Tuesday and written in black ink.

I've looked back through my old stuff and I've - mostly - used these two words correctly so the rule must have been implanted many years ago, but I've never actually unpacked it before.

Call me anal, but I LOVE all this.

Any grammar questions/rules/tips you want to throw at me before the students put me on the spot will be gratefully received.


Related posts:

How are your sentences?

Writing Do's and Don'ts

I'm a Winnie the Pooh Fellow

BEST WRITING BOOKS

I've just opened a 'store' on Amazon so that I have somewhere to point people for all the writing and inspiration books I love and use for my own writing and teaching. It's got five parts:

THE CLASSICS

These are the books I pull down from my shelves the most often. Examples are Bonnie Friedman's Writing Past Dark which addresses many of the issues - jealousy, fear, self-belief - that writers don't often admit to, even amongst themselves, and Stephen King's On Writing - forget the autobiographical bit, his insights into the writing process are predictably brilliant!

INSPIRATION KICK-STARTS

I think this is going to end up being the biggest category. Even seeing these books together like this makes me smile. Here are the books I've scribbled over, adapted for my writing and teaching exercises, and most of all - and probably most important for me - sat back and just admired the writing and the writer. The best books let us look inside someone else's brain, and I like what I see in here!

GRIPPING DOCUMENTARIES

A relatively new passion for me, but here are the DVDs I've watched open-mouthed and open-journaled. Partly the subject matter, but also the discipline, new ways of thinking, and connections made in these films make me want to do better, write better, think better. What I Want My Words To Do To You is American format only but is an inside look at how teaching writing in a prison setting can bring people back to life again. It's moving and most of all, human. All writers should watch Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth at least once, if only to see how Star Wars was structured!

HOW TO READ AND WRITE POETRY

The shortest category so far, but these particular books are already dog eared and much much used.

WRITING MEMOIR AND ESSAYS

This is definitely in progress because it's the area I'm working in most at the moment. Watch this space!

On refusing to choose

Last month, I posted that I had just got a copy of Barbara Sher's book, Refuse to Choose, and promised I'd let all others out there who also want to do EVERYTHING know what I thought about it.



KEY POINTS

So these are the key points I took from the book.

Sher says that some people are just 'genetically wired to pursue many areas'. She calls us Scanners. We're not doing anything wrong apparently. And we're not quitters. It's just that we are looking for something different from a project than the outcome most people would expect.

Sher elaborates on this idea throughout the book. She says, 'To Scanners, the world is like a big candy store full of fascinating opportunities, and all they want is to reach out and stuff their pockets.' Sounds great, but apparently we're starving there, because we don't want to have to make the choice about which sweetie or candy to eat.

BARBARA SHER'S TOOLS

The first tool she suggests is the Scanner daybook. Everytime we think of a new idea, we spend some time writing it in our daybook. Then we go back to what we were doing, feeling safe that the idea won't go away. I've started to do this - I like the idea that it's almost an extension of my mind, and do you know what? I'm starting to feel proud of all these different ideas I have! My daybook is like some kind of weird novel in itself.

Another way of using the daybook was to go round the house and make a note on all the projects we find there. From those we've only just thought about, to those started. Make no judgments, just record. This was extraordinary - one thing I realised was that I would be a super-human if I did all those things I've been beating myself up for not doing. BUT also that I have some great ideas and I can get other people (experts) to finish some off for me. Upholsterers etc. I can still be creative that way.

And thirdly, write down a list of your achievements, big and small, even if you didn't finish what you set out to do, or it was just a plan. Write down the idea. I haven't done this, but could see it would be useful to stop all the 'but I never actually do anything' voices!

QUESTIONS

But there's something else that this list would be good for, and which I have done with other projects, and that is to ask two questions of each project:

a) What was the most exciting or interesting part of the experience?
b) Why did you stop when you did?

Sher says you may start to see a pattern - it might be you want to find out how to do something, or you are more interested in self-expression rather than commercial gain, or you like getting new information, or the learning experience.

And this is why you set out to do the project. When you get what you started it for, you stop. It's not that you've quit but that you've succeeded.

There are lots more similar type exercises - wrapping up all your unfinished projects with a label and putting them on a bookshelf to celebrate them, writing a list of 1,000 things you want to do before you die (like the books 1,000 Places To See etc), inviting friends over to show them the projects you're working on and hearing what they're working on.

BEST BITS

One thing I'm going to be taking away is her idea of splitting the day up with a school-type timetable. Instead of 40 minutes of Maths, I'm going to allocate that time to a particular project. And then when the metaphorical school bell rings, I'll swop to another project. With huge dollops of the timetable put over to the job and other paid work, I should still have time to fit in other projects. Forty minutes at a time ...

Another thing I liked was her suggestion of getting about 20 three-ring binders and project boxes to keep the information separate, moving from one to another and just concentrating on the file that is open, putting everything away at the end of the time spent on it. Also adding to each binder or box anything on each project we find or think of as we go along.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

All the ideas seemed to be at heart about looking at what we really want to get out of the projects we take on. One thing I realised is that I like to learn new things - and I like to tell other people about what I've learnt. Once I have the hang of something it's not so interesting to me so I tend to leave it to one side. Other people might like the materials involved, rather than the actual doing. Others want to create for themselves, turning a hobby into a business spoils it for them even if everyone is telling them that's what they should be doing until they believe it themselves. Sounds so simple, but it explains why I enjoyed journalism so much. A new subject to learn about every week. So now, with bigger book-size projects, I have to work out ways that allow me to keep learning and teaching. This may take the form, as Sher suggests, of new projects that I take on in the break-times of my school timetable!

And so what if I go slowly this way? At least I'll get more done than rushing round wondering what I should be doing and feeling guilty for what I might be missing.

Barbara Sher has a website here.

Not quite so freewriting

I'm a great fan of freewriting. If I don't start my day now with my morning pages then I will feel angsty until I can get to my journal. I use freewriting to find out what I might think about certain things, or to generate ideas for pieces, or to help me organise what it is I need to say in a journalism or non-fiction story.

And as any student of mine will tell you, I force them to do it too.

So it's a little embarrassing to realise that there are more than one way to freewrite. And that while it's impossible to get wrong, I could have been doing it better.

Hmm, what do I mean?

Well, I've been following the 'train of thought' method so far and that's worked for me. BUT I haven't really given the 'stream of consciousness' method much of a look in. And this is where I'm finding it exciting.

Here's some stream of consciousness writing from my journal this morning about the difference between the two methods of freewriting...

Train new places unexpected put hands in stream crocodile why danger the risk of writing the reader is crocodile or raft taking words new places the train who's driving the reader or writer ....

And here's some train of thought writing from the same session ...

The writer's always running behind the train trying to catch her thoughts, and so the hand is always going to be a the end of the sentence, so why does the stream seem like being up in the air? Is it because it's clear water. I should know this. It's interesting to think of this, and the idea of working backwards in planning. The drive of the story is at the front, pulling carriages behind, but is it also the fisherman in the stream. Are both catching thoughts?

OK, so neither exactly makes sense - this is taken directly from my journal, but the difference in the two pieces shows what is behind the process of writing both. It's much more than one is a series of random words and the other is half-formed sentences. It's more how different I feel at the end of writing both. With the train of thought, I finish the writing session (only normally about 5-10 mins) feeling grounded. As if I've got something out of my system. But with stream of consciousness, I'm aware of feeling as if I'm filled up with thoughts instead.

Neither one is better than the other, but to me it's one of those lightbulb moments in getting to know my own writing practice. I can see that using stream of consciousness* will help conjure up images, and by following my train of thought*, I can hopefully make sense of some of these. One is all about letting go, and the other is about capturing. Sums up the writing process really - we need to be aware of both.

And this post has been a little like a train of thought that is still in motion - I'd love to know how you freewrite and how it works for you.

*Ps I'm not sure if these are the correct definitions, but they're working for me!

Taste more...

First, a fact ...



According to Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of Senses, the human has 11,000 taste buds in their mouths while the cow has 25,000. Imagine what that mouthful of grass must taste like. The explosion every time the cow takes a bite. How the cow can taste whether the grass has been in the sun or the rain. How even a bee stopping to offload pollen must make all the difference.

And we call someone sluggish cow-like? I want my writing to be by the power of 25,000 today, not a measly 11,000.

And now a quote ...

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware." Henry Miller

And lastly, a song ...

Indigo Sisters, Closer to Fine.

Heck, it's only life after all. This is all very un-British of me, I know, but hurrah for that.

I'm going to write BIG today!

On Inspiration and the Giving Tree Garden

The best thing on holiday is to come across somewhere unexpected, somewhere that feels like a home. We did this in Cape Cod, when we stopped on the Route 6A at Giving Tree. We thought it was going to be just another jewelry gallery, but it turned out we had found somewhere even more special.



The owners, Rachel and Judith are a mother and daughter team, who have created a garden of sculptures leading out to a marsh. They call it their gift to anyone who wants to visit and it really was a magic place.







But it wasn't just the natural beauty around. I left The Giving Tree Gallery knowing that I wanted to have poetry round my garden at home too. And that I wanted to make things myself to decorate it, however simple.



I loved speaking with Rachel. She's funny and clever and generous and one of those people you feel you've known for ever. I left with a CD compilation that we listened to for the rest of our holiday, and her book - "My Theory on How to Avoid Being Sad (in 116 parts)" - both of which she gave me as an early birthday present. Part Number 5 in her funny and clever list seemed particularly relevant:

5. Talk to strangers who talk to you. It is the rare, special person who will begin a conversation with a strange because they find themselves together, in a line, on an elevator etc. These are usually not sad people. Especially because to talk to you means they are most likely NOT talking on a cell phone.

Oh, there's nothing I enjoy better than meeting people who inspire me. It's as if I can become a bit bigger myself somehow. I now have something new now that I didn't have before. I love the idea that my world keeps growing, and that I am seeing common themes as to what will make that elusive *click* ... passion, and commitment, and a desire to make something new rather than to take things away from others, but most of all a huge dollop of good humour and fun.

Impossible to choose any really, but here are three particular people who I've discovered online this year and who - personally or through their on-line presence - have inspired me in many different ways and so who continue to make my life a bit bigger...

* Susannah and the way she looks so closely to really see things 'with new eyes'
* Linda for her walking and joy in making maps
* The Sartorialist because looking good is part of loving life

I'd love to know whose website you go to for an injection of inspiration. All suggestions welcome (including yourselves!)

(And another joyful thing about the Giving Tree is that the jewelry is all available online. Here's one on my wishlist....)