Trying to come up with a clever title -- like that one? Well, it's a title. It's not like I'm at work and have to fit it in a two-line one-column head at 16 or 18 pt. And here I'm Queen of my Blogetary Castle, so it can be whatever I want. So there.
So, yesterday was one of the $5 workshops at the writers country club down the street. I thought long and hard about going. I wanted to do something writing associated, but I knew if I went I'd end up feeling frustrated and ridiculous at the end of the evening again. I realized you can look up who else is attending through the Meet Up app, and saw that once again I'd be twice as old as everyone else. I'd probably end up opening my mouth and sounding like a know-it-all, but you can't help it when you happen to have that many more years experience.
So am I supposed to keep my mouth shut? Isn't this supposed to be the 21st century? If I were in my 20s and keeping my mouth shut someone would be railing and ranting against how white male culture was suppressing my expression. But now, the reason I would keep my mouth shut is to keep the peace and allow these younger women to express themselves freely without feeling shot down by the "knowitall" in the corner. *sigh*
Easier not to go at all. Hell, in a few years I can probably find a writers group in a senior center.
Looked up events that are supposed to be happening at the bookstore down the street as a friend suggested. The one last night was a reading/discussion with an author of a political book (not my cup of tea) and the only event I'm even remotely interested in is a couple weeks from now and is $250. So, that's out.
But you know, one of those books I won as a door prize when I went to the poetry shindig/hootenanny at the writers country club, was a book of writing exercises. I got it for free and here it was sitting on my kitchen table waiting for me to use it. It's called Clear Out The Static In Your Attic. It feels like a clumsy title to me. I would have said, "Clear the Static Outta Your Attic" — but maybe there was already another book by that title or something. Anyway. Thought it was time to be creative and have my own little workshop as a free radical not attached to anything. I used to do that a LOT when I lived in Bellingham — get the Writers Digest out, or some other book, and set myself writing exercises to work on. If it worked then, it can work now. And it's FREE.
I did a couple of exercises out of it last night. The first one I had tried a few nights before, writing a few six word stories (you know that old story about how Hemingway was asked to write a story with six words?) and then linking them together in one story or poem. So, I worked on that again for a while. I think I might get a poem from that, and maybe something else as well from other phrases I worked up.
The second exercise is to take an epitaph quoted by a favorite author, or even something a favorite author wrote and write based on that. And I couldn't decide what to do. I got up and wandered around my apartment looking at books.
And here's where the Throwback Thursday ( #tbt !) comes in: I pulled "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg off my shelf to page through. She's coming to the West Hollywood Library at the end of the month so she's been on my mind a lot lately (so excited!). I thought I had remembered her saying "Be kind, be kind, be kind" somewhere in that book, but I couldn't find it. However, she does repeatedly say throughout her work to be kind, so maybe that's where I got it. It's what sticks in my head.
Going through that book brought back so many memories. I thought I had bought it in college, but it was actually a couple years later. I remember reading it on weekend road trips from Bham to Seattle. All sorts of bits were underlined. The cover is almost falling off. And then something I read there sent me to another old favorite book, "The Miracle of Mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hanh. Going through that reminded me of San Francisco all over again. I used to practice breathing while I was hanging on tight to a bus or BART rail on my way too and from work in Oakland.
Eventually I settled on no quotes from either book, but instead remembered something my nurse practitioner had told me last time I'd been in. I barked a laugh, wrote it down and got a pretty good flash story from it, I think. We'll see. A good scene, anyway.
The next exercise in the book used an app on the computer and I stare at the screen a lot these days with work at the paper and at home. As I wanted this to be a computer-free evening, I skipped that exercise and came up with my own, which turned out really well for me. So, I'm sharing it here.
Take a deck of cards. It can be any deck. I used a deck of tarot cards because they have good pictures, usually, and they were close at hand. But you could use SkipBo cards or Uno cards or Creative Prosperity Cards would be good, too. (Might even be better.) Shuffle and cut the deck. Draw seven cards. Write a story based on the pictures on the cards.
- Write a story or scene or poem based on random cards pulled from a deck.
By then the sun was setting and I was running out of natural light and I figured my free radical workshop could come to a close for the evening.
So, on the whole, it was a really productive writing workshop last night. In fact, it was so good, I think I'll go back again next week! :D
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