From memoir to autobiographical fiction: another writing prompt

 

 

“Memoir is the report to others from foreign territory, the territory of the writer, of the self, of an I.” - Bill Roorbach, Writing Life Stories

 

This writing prompt is adapted from our second workshop in the Monday night creative writing workshop series.

 

Writing prompt: Make a list of moments when you were faced with a choice or making a decision that would change the direction of your life. Make another list of moments in your life when you were aware of a ticking clock, or limited time frame, or looming deadline. 

 

Choose one of these moments to write about, beginning with a description of an image, a picture in your mind, that captures that moment. Imagine your writing is a report to others from the foreign country of your own life, your own body. The territory of your self is foreign to others, and so the details that you add will help the reader connect and imagine.

 

Want to write fiction? Let your imagination range beyond what happened to try writing autobiographical fiction. Allow your story to venture into the realm of imagination, fiction, other possibilities.

 

From our first session of the new Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop: a writing prompt

 

I discovered this interview guided by Padraig O Tuama with Henri Cole while listening to Poetry Unbound podcast driving to the American River last weekend. If you haven't listened yet to this podcast, give it a try asap. 

Three hours of driving disappeared while I listened in awe.

Henri Cole describing the context for this next poem: 

"So this poem is from, it’s set in Japan, in a town just north in the outskirts of Kyoto, where I lived when I was 45. I was born in Japan and this was the first time back. And in this apartment I lived in two tatami mat rooms, and it had a tiny backyard, but the backyard was just full of praying mantises, of all things. So that was really the context. My father had died and my mother was quite sick."

Pillowcase With Praying Mantis

I found a praying mantis on my pillow.
‘What are you praying for?’ I asked. ‘Can you pray
for my father’s soul, grasping after Mother?’
Swaying back and forth, mimicking the color
of my sheets, raising her head like a dragon’s,
she seemed to view me with deep feeling, as if I were
St. Sebastian bound to a Corinthian column
instead of just Henri lying around reading.
I envied her crisp linearity, as she galloped
slow motion onto my chest, but then she started
mimicking me, lifting her arms in an attitude
of a scholar thinking or romantic suffering.
‘Stop!’ I sighed, and she did, flying in a wide arc,
like a tiny god-horse hunting for her throne room.

Writing Prompt: In this prompt we can mimic one or two techniques from Cole in this last poem. 

One, he has chosen a small moment of an animal encounter to focus on and describe. He has chosen to write the encounter as a conversation. 

Two, he projects his own problems into the life of the mantis, asking it to pray for his parents. The mantis allows him to share this problem and his own situation indirectly while the encounter and the conversation are the direct subject of his writing. 

Choose an animal encounter of your own. Write about it, as a conversation if you’d like. Try to project somehow your own human situation into this encounter. Write without an agenda and without stopping or correcting for 20 minutes. This writing may become a poem, or a story, or part of a bigger writing project.

Happy writing!

 

How to build your writing community: An eclipse and two workshop opportunities for November/December

 

Last Saturday morning beginning around 9:10 or so, the day tripped over itself into a standstill. The light faded to sepia. The warmth of the October ground stopped rising with the usual progression, and the air cooled suddenly. I grabbed the colander, the extra printer paper, and the index card with a round pinhole pricked in the center and ran out into my driveway. It was a party out there. My neighbors, kids, dogs - and we each had some tools of the eclipse watching sort. Lots of colanders. I love my community. We oohed and awed at the tiny crescent moons reflected on our blank paper, and we shifted the pinholes around to see the best effect. The shadows on the street cast from the trees and leaves, viewed without any tools, were ultimately my favorite views of this annular eclipse right at the maximum of 85%.

As a writer, I need a community of writers in order to feel productive in my writing. I get validation for the art and my efforts through sharing my experience with other writers. I founded Tangled Roots Writing soon after graduating from Goddard College with my MFA because when I came back to Tahoe, I found myself asking, where are all the writers? I needed to create the community for myself. 

Two opportunities are right around the corner, coming up fast this late Fall for any writer looking to belong within a community and to build their writing skills. In the workshops offered below, you can gather the community that you need for your own art making.

1. The Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop series runs for 6 weeks and the next session starts October 30th. We'll explore craft, technique, and write new material using fun prompts for fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. We'll meet for 6 Monday nights online and also simultaneously in my living room as a hybrid format.  The workshop is flexible to offer writers the option each week. The cost is $180. 

2. From the Community of Writers, the Writers Annex offers online short courses throughout the year with a focus on studying the work of a particular founding poet of the Poetry Workshop (held each year at Palisades in Olympic Valley, CA). I've taken a short course deep dive into the poetry of Lucille Clifton taught by Kazim Ali, the poetry of W.S. Merwin taught by Victoria Chang and Matthew Zapruder, and the poetry of C.D. Wright taught by Brenda Hillman and Forrest Gander. They were each of them inspiring for my own understanding of my own writing. I'll be participating in the next course focusing on the poetry of Galway Kinnell, taught by Major Jackson. I mean, Wow, the knowledge and experience of these poets teaching these courses goes deep and wide. My favorite part of the course is learning how the teaching poet thinks about and learns from other master poets. If you want to join me in this next course, it runs November 30th - December 14th, meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4-6 pm.

New Poetry in the Garden pop up workshops 8/22 and 8/29 for everyone - register now

 

I'm reading Then the War by Carl Phillips, the Pulitzer Prize winner for 2022. From his poem Little Shields, in Starlight:

Maybe there's no need for us to go anywhere more far
than here, said the dogwood leaves, mistaking speech
for song, to the catalpa leaves, imitation silence.

At the risk of sharing lines of poetry out of context here, I am intrigued by the idea here that asks what the dogwood leaves might say to the catalpa leaves. Or, I ask myself, how would one imitate silence? How does one sing? And then, leaves would know probably about the need for travel. Contradictions such as that between remaining rooted and imagining how far to travel drive tension in Phillips's poems. In our own writing, we can study other writers we admire and bring into our own writing these new techniques and structures.

I love how Phillips' phrasing creates what he calls a muscularity of syntax (or sentence)

"As far as I can tell, anymore, all that poetry at the end of the day is, is patterned language. The relationship between pattern and the meaningful disruption of that pattern gives poetry the muscularity required to become memorable." - Muscularity and Eros: On Syntax, Carl Phillips, At Length Magazine

In Tangled Roots Writing workshops and coaching sessions, as writers we read and write through a lens of tenderness to understand ourselves and others and to apply this depth of meaning to the page.

Poetry in the Garden workshops Tuesday nights August 22nd and 29th 5:30-7 pm
$25 each Tuesday workshop
All levels of experience welcome! This is a generative poetry workshop - join us for one or both evenings.

August and September workshop series now open for registration!

 

 Tangled Roots Writing workshops in August and September are now available for sign ups!

I've added a mini-series for Tuesday nights in the garden on August 22nd and 29th from 5:30- 7pm. Many clients have asked for a short focus on poetry, so these two nights we will enjoy tea and chocolate in the garden while we learn to create new expression through poetic form. Playful for all levels of experience!

The next Monday night 6 week series will run 9/11 - 10/16 from 6:30- 8 pm. This series is online and in person in order to offer flexibility for work and family. I've been offering this workshop series for over ten years now and if you haven't yet joined us, this fall may be the time for you to write new crazy-creative material every week. Fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

Please call me or email to chat about your writing and goals. I'm available for individual editing and coaching. I offer manuscript review for novels, memoirs, and poetry. You may sign up for a workshop by email or phone call or text.

Happy writing

Kat