ADVENTURES IN CREATIVE WRITING - WEEK ONE

I have to say I think the first week of the CASI (Center for Active Seniors, Inc.) and MWC (Midwest Writing Center) creative writing classes went pretty great. There was just one tense moment when I forgot I'd had my laptop on mute so the audio from my video wasn't coming out of my speakers, but that was about it. Ten people ended up attending the session, a good crowd.

I have to admit, also, that I was nervous. My inner critic, which we talked about, was all over me. She told me I didn't know what I was talking about, that I was not qualified to teach anyone anything, and when she ran out of everything else, she jumped to her go-to critique, "You're a hack." But I followed my own advice and just told her, "Maybe so, but I'm doing it anyway." And I did. And everyone seemed to enjoy it and learn something. And my great lesson for today is: You Tube is a workshop instructor's lifesaver. Showing videos gave me a break from talking, took off some of the pressure of making sure I said everything to say about the topic, and hopefully reinforced my message by showing people saying the same things in different ways.

Today, I tried to help people say what they want to say by getting them in the habit of writing. We talked about what creative writing is and what it isn't. I assured them they all have what takes to write and even if they never do anything with it, it's still a worthwhile endeavor. We talked about carving out the time and space for writing and how to deal with the inner critic. Everyone had great comments and questions. Hopefully they left inspired to write something...anything...and to return next week. We'll be talking about idea generation, prompts, free writing, and introducing the various creative writing types.

Until then... Happy Writing!!!

The Wordsy Woman

HELPING OTHERS SAY WHAT THEY WANT TO SAY

On Tuesday, November 13th, I will embark on a project to directly practice the "helping people say what they want to say" part of my mission. I've volunteered to lead a seven session workshop series about creative writing for members of Center for Active Seniors, Inc. (CASI). It is a partnership between CASI and the Midwest Writing Center (MWC). A CASI member who I know through MWC came up with the idea after interacting with fellow-CASI members dealing with the loss of a spouse or other issues. He thought, as it had him, it might help them to write about it and perhaps seeing their words in a publication might help them as well.

I was excited to help so we met with CASI and decided to put together the program: two seven-week sessions, one this fall and one next spring, leading to anthology publication early next summer. I would teach the first three sessions about creative writing basics; invite guest speakers for fiction, poetry, and nonfiction; and then end with a summary session also focusing on revision and editing in preparation for putting together the anthology.

I am excited about the project and a little nervous, as I usually am when taking on new projects. Will I measure up? Will they believe I know what I'm talking about? Will they be bored? Will they think I'm a hack? And the list goes on and on. This is my "self confidence problem" peeking its ugly head into my sense of excitement. To combat it, I've re-studied my writing books and put together a slide presentation complete with you-tube videos to reinforce what I'm saying. At the least, I hope I can share my passion for writing by telling them what I've learned about the process over the years. At the most, I hope that by inspiring them to get into creative writing and giving them some ideas about how to do it, I will help them say what they want to say.

I also hope over the next seven weeks, I'll get some interesting material I can share here on this blog.

-The Wordsy Woman

WHAT WORDS GET YOUR VOTE?

If you are eighteen or older and a United States citizen, you will or should be headed to the polls this coming Tuesday to cast your vote for our next President, Vice-President, and a whole roster of other elected officials – unless, of course, you are like me and took advantage of early or absentee voting.

In large part, you have or will place your vote based on words. Words spoken or written by the candidates themselves, political action committees, or friends and in or on newspapers, billboards, lawn signs, television commercials, candidate appearances, on expensive glossy snail mailed cards, or one or more of the thirteen thousand twenty-six telephone calls you’ve received over the past several weeks.

It doesn’t matter who you like better – or, more accurately, who you dislike less – or with which party your beliefs generally align, you can probably agree that political candidates, as a whole, tend to do unspeakable things with words. They twist them. They make them up. The fling them like flaming sacks of you-know-what. Sometimes they’re true. Sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re recorded secretly. And sometimes they are spliced together in a masterpiece of video manipulation.

So how do you know what to believe? I don’t know the answer. But here are two things I do with all those political words:

1.            Consider the source of the words. I’m more inclined to believe those “I’m so-and-so and I approve this message” words than those where that affirmation is missing. For some candidates, it seems that they don’t even produce their own commercials – they just rely on or are victims of these other groups’ apparently astronomical marketing budgets.

2.            Listen to every single word. What are they really saying? But more important, what are they not saying? Those marketing message copywriters are very crafty – they choose each word carefully so if it seems they’ve left something out, chances are it was on purpose and not just an oversight. Ask yourself, "Why?"

Whether you are a Donkey or an Elephant and whether you are empowered by or view that label as an insult or associate yourself with a whole other “animal” altogether, happy voting.

-From the Wordsy Woman

THE WORDS OF OUR MOTHERS

“Be careful.” These are the words I’ve heard every time my mother and I have separated every since I can remember. It’s good advice. Short. To the point. Broad and easy to remember. And it works for everything. Driving a car, dating, swimming, having children, taking a bath. 

Recently, I took a shopping trip with my mom, my daughter, and my daughter’s friend. My mom and I were talking about the trip I’m planning to take with my daughter’s choir in the spring to New York City. She wisely advised me to take plenty of underwear because at that time of year, you never know when a nor-easter blizzard will pop up and you will be stuck. Also, you can wear your clothes more than once but you want to change your underwear.

Don’t get me wrong, this is very, very good advice. However, since I’m knocking on the door of that last birthday before forty, I thought it was kind of funny. 

My mom has had great advice for me on many occasions. My all time favorite has to be her advice to make sure my skirt was not stuck in my underwear (or something like that) when I was on my way to accept a financial scholarship for college during the end of my senior year of high school. To others, it may seem like odd advice, but to me who had actually had my skirt stuck in my underwear after using the restroom on a homecoming date and was lucky enough to have my mother see this and rescue me, there could not have been better words for the occasion.

So now I am the mother of a fourteen and a half year old daughter who responds with a dramatic eye roll just about every time I pass on my sage, motherly words of advice. I don’t recall if I rolled my eyes at my mom when I was a teenager – I’m sure I did, though, even if I wasn’t bold enough to do it “out loud” and just in my head. Anyway, I think my daughter would be well advised to not bother with the eye roll because when she’s knocking on forty, I’m sure I’ll still be passing my words on to her.

Thanks, mom, for all of the great words of advice.

-The Wordsy Woman

COMMA SUTRA - POSITION TWO

The comma so perplexes me that I haven't felt up to tackling position two of the comma sutra since the post about using commas in lists several weeks ago. So today I tackle the intuitive comma. The one you really can only know is missing by reading your words out loud. I know, I know - reading out loud is a pain in the backside and embarrassing, especially if your kids have their friends over, but it is mandatory to find proper comma placement.

I'll use a couple of examples from my new book, Missing Emily: Croatian Life Letters, of how something might have made no sense if I had left the comma out.

Page One:

If I hadn't used a comma:

"Always full of unwelcome surprises Dad changed these plans."

Now, when you read it silently, you might not notice anything, but read it aloud and your speaking voice triggers your brain into questioning if Dad was the unwelcome surprise or if Dad delivered the unwelcome surprise? Change it to "Always full of unwelcome surprises, Dad changed these plans," and it makes sense. It says what you (or I in this case) want it to say.

One more example from Missing Emily:

Page 87:

Without the comma:

"I peeked around the corner and saw them crouched down their mouths tucked into the tops of their pajamas giggling."

How did they crouch down into their own mouths? Were their pajamas giggling? The correct way to (and the way I did) write it is "I peeked around the corner and saw them crouched down, their mouths tucked into the tops of their pajamas, giggling."

Position two of the comma sutra is difficult because there are no hard and fast rules. The only way to decide on the appropriate location is to read the words out loud, or at the least deliberately, carefully, and slowly.

Look forward to Comma Sutra - Position Three at some point when I can muster up the energy to tackle it.

Until then, happy writing!
From the Wordsy Woman

DO YOU KNOW WHETHER THERE WILL BE STORMY WEATHER?

Drawn in Doodle Buddy for Ipad

I have a problem. A finger problem. You see, my brain knows the correct words to use in certain situations but my fingers persist in insisting to type the wrong ones. One of these situations is whether to use weather or whether. Now, I know that weather is the word for all of that stuff that comes out of or happens to be in the sky. Cloudy. Sunny. Rainy. Stormy. But for some reason, every once in awhile when I am re-reading something I've written, I come across weather when I meant to write whether (and sometimes even wheather!!!). So, essentially, this blog post is an attempt to train my fingers.

Whether is appropriate when you are writing about two things; whether you want to chose one or the other. Will the weather be stormy? Or will it be not stormy? Whether there will be stormy weather. To be more precise, according to Dictionary.com, whether is "used to introduce a single alternative, the other being implied or understood, or some clause or element not involving alternatives" as in I don't know whether to take a raincoat (or not) to deal with today's weather.

Conversely, the specific definition of weather according to Dictionary.com is "the state of the atmosphere with respect to wind, temperature, cloudiness, moisture, pressure, etc." or "a strong wind or storm or strong winds and storms collectively." 

Really, for me anyway, it is not that I get confused on whether to use weather or whether, it is the fact that my typing fingers refuse to cooperate! I hope yours - and from now on mine - will behave better.

-The Wordsy Woman

SHOOTING BULLETS - POWERPOINT TIP

My rule of thumb when creating a slide show or Power Point presentation is you can't go wrong with bullet points; lists of information set off by dots, dashes, check marks, or other small, simple graphics. If you are giving an oral presentation, your slide show should only enhance it. It should not be able to replace your presentation. If that is the case, just run the slide show as a movie. The slides should add interest to your presentation and draw attention to key points.

When putting together a slide show to accompany an oral presentation, I think of myself being in the audience. What would I want to see? What would bore me? What should I remember as the most important points? Then I design the slides around that. Including too many complete sentences (or even too many words, period) on a slide will distract the audience from the message. They will be so busy reading the slide, they won't hear what you are saying. A few to handful of bullet points with words or short phrases next to them key audience members into the most important points of your talk. They highlight your talk and provide a visual cue or reminder to help them remember what you say.

Words or phrases placed in bullet points work even better if you have pictures or other graphics to go along with them. Graphics make the presentation more interesting; audience members won't get bored looking at slide after slide of just words. If possible, run through the slides on the projector you will actually be using for your presentation to make sure your font is big enough and shows up (avoid light colors) and that any graphics you use will be clear.

Power Point presentations or slides can be great assets to any oral presentation; they can help keep the audience engaged, help them remember your key talking points, and provide them with an overall enjoyable experience. However, they must be used correctly to avoid the risk of boring the audience, overwhelming them, or detracting from your message.

Happy speaking and thanks for reading!
-The Wordsy Woman