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Newsletter for Writers - August 2012
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 Upcoming Events | |
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From the Book
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Women tend to explore meaning in a
circular pattern--meaning
that their writing and
talking begins on one level and spirals inward to what really matters.
Many factors determine whether and where the spiral begins and how deep it goes: time, mood, prompt, and safety are some of the variables.
This explains why regular writing practice in a group is particularly important.
We have the opportunity to try different things, to get comfortable with risk,
to be encouraged in our efforts even when the results sound flat and empty or even nonsensical.
We sit in the circle
and look at each woman as someone acting out a part of us, speaking our thoughts in a different voice.
We hear how tentative
this one is, how shy another, how funny and kind and guilty and hurt.
We see how hard it is
for her to claim the quality of her writing.
Peggy Tabor Millin Women, Writing, and Soul-Making: Creativity and the Sacred Feminine |
Keep the pen moving!
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Have you joined our prompt writing community yet? Sign up is quick, easy and free!
Peggy's Practice Makes Possible™ Writing prompts can be delivered automatically to your inbox five days a week, and always with an inspiring quote for the day. Since you're already a newsletter subscriber, just send an email to
clarity@clarityworksonline.com and ask to receive the prompts as well. And of course, you can choose to unsubscribe at any time. Jump in and join us! |
Peggy's Monthly Reminder
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Practice Makes Possible  Practice. Practice. Practice. Process before product.Writing requires silence, solitude, space, and the courage and awareness to search our shadow side.Write from the belly, not the brain; write from the heart, not the head.The body with its intuition and our willingness to listen to what the body says are our greatest assets as writers.Writing and publishing are not the same thing. If we write, we are writers. If we publish what we write, we are published writers. A published writer is not a better writer. A published writer is simply a writer who is published.-Peggy Tabor Millinexcerpts from Women, Writing, and Soul-Making |
| Likeable Links | 
Visit the Virtual Museum Exhibit
of the Carl Sandburg home in
Flat Rock, North Carolina.
This virtual, multi-media exhibit
celebrates Sandburg and highlights
the years he resided
in Flat Rock, NC.
Click here for the online exhibit!
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| Picture Prompt |
Ready. Set. Write!
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Wordly Wise from Peggy Tabor Millin
Life as Risk 
In Praise of Mortality
Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.
What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.
Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.
Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming
a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
Two weeks ago I led a weekend retreat at Great Tree Zen  Center in Alexander, North Carolina. Great Tree rests on a hilltop within range of bawling cattle and prowling coyotes. One afternoon a torrent of rain followed serious lightning and thunder. The next day during silent time, we listened to a neighbor engaging in target practice . Meanwhile the bees enjoyed the blossoms of the butterfly bush and spiders wove their webs in the rafters beneath the floor of the zendo. This time of silence was honey to my soul, lingering well beyond the weekend. Silence in the midst of life. I jumped in, we all jumped in. Head first. Immersed in the water of life at that moment. I'd like to share my response to the first prompt of the retreat, "risking everything." Life is a risk, everything on the line. Everything being life itself, everything meaning avoiding death at all costs. At all costs meaning avoiding life so we won't risk dying. Dying which is inevitable, not something we can avoid. Risking everything is life. We do it every day thinking we are in control, thinking we can plan, that no one will run the stop sign or step into the movie theater with a gun or that the visit to the doctor won't end with a diagnosis we don't want to hear. So why not risk everything? What do I need with things anyway? I said to my friend, "I know there is no security, but I find comfort in the illusion." Throw out the things, the illusions, and what is left? Me, my body in whatever condition, but more too. More? The essence of me beyond the body, which is the essence of you and you and you and every thing, even the stars, the moon, and planets we cannot name.
Everything is what we cannot name.
Everything can not be risked.
Everything is eternal and is now. So why am I afraid?Keep Writing!
Peggy
To read about creating a retreat for yourself, read Peggy's newest blog entry on Writing out of Bounds
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| Books to Explore - What Peggy is Reading | |
Dancing in a Distant Place
by Isla Dewar
I am only on page 118 of 343 and could not wait until the end to share this book with you. I think I've discovered a new (to me) author. Dancing in a Distant Place is her most recent book. Her first novel, Keeping Up with Magda, published in 1995, has been followed by a string of bestsellers: Giving Up on Ordinary, It Could Happen to You, Women Talking Dirty, Two Kinds of Wonderful, and The Woman Who Painted Her Dreams.
 Scottish by birth, Dewar lives in Fife, Scotland, where Dancing and, I'm guessing, all her books are set. I'll admit I wasn't engaged until page 5 and almost laid the book aside. I am so glad I didn't. Character, description, setting, Dewar does it all well, though it's her character development that propels me through the story. Her writing is fresh, witty, and moving.
Yes, read it, and let me know if you enjoy it as much as I am.
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| News You Need to Know | |  Graywolf Press is seeking submissions for the 2012 Greywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, which will be awarded to a manuscript in progress. Graywolf Press seeks innovative literary nonfiction a writer not yet established in that genre. visit the Graywolf Press website for complete details and application instructions.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Writing Fellowships, accepting applications through September 15, 2012. Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded annually to writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction who are residents of the United States or Canada. Visit www.gf.org for application instructions.
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NC News for Writers
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Friday, September 21 at 7 pm, Malaprops Bookstore has invited Peggy to share an evening with Jean Benedict Raffa. Peggy and Jean will share the floor, discussing their backgrounds and how they each came to write their books and reading short passages. The audience will be invited to participate through Q & A. After being introduced by Malaprops, Peggy and Jean discovered their books are complementary. They share an interest in honoring the feminine principle, the sacred feminine, and dream work. They will sign books after the presentation.
Peggy will speak on how her first book, Mary's Way, led to her establishing ClarityWorks writing programs and the writing of Women, Writing, and Soul-Making. Jean writes and teaches about psychological and spiritual matters from a perspective informed by Jungian psychology and personal experience. She will be speak about her most recent book, Healing the Sacred Divide: Making Peace with Ourselves, Each Other, and the World. Her previous books are The Bridge to Wholeness and Dream Theatres of the Soul. See her website at www.jeanraffa.com
On August 26th, ClarityWorks participant Tracey Schmidt celebrates the release of her latest CD featuring the poetry of Rumi, Hafiz, and Yeats with music by Guerguerian and Chris Rosser of Free Planet Radio, Armenian folk singer Mariam Matossian, and Matthew Cox. The celebration begins at 5:30 pm.
The celebration will take place at Hawk and Ivy Bed and Breakfast in Barnardsville, NC with a potluck dinner  starting at 5:30 pm and a concert at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $15. Email James Davis at info@hawkandivy.com. You may also contact Malaprop's Bookstore to reserve seats at 828-254-6734. Learn more about Tracey's art and writing at www.traceyschmidt.com.
Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe is hosting a 30th anniversary celebration on August 26th at 3pm. Malaprop's has been a welcoming home to poets and poetry since its founding in 1982. Please join us for a very special 30th Anniversary Malaprop's event and a celebration of poetry, with the book launch of Remember Me as a Time of Day. Visit www.malaprops.com for more information. An anthology of poems written by the Women on Words poetry group that has been meeting at Malaprop's for several years, Remember Me as a Time of Day was compiled by Emoke B'Racz, poet, translator, and founder of Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe.
The Great Smokies Writing Program announces its schedule of classes for fall 2012! Great Smokies offers classes in genres including fiction, poetry, and memoir. Some classes are suitable for beginning writers. Visit their website for full class schedule and registration information. The November 2012 Writer's Workout: Narrative Distance on Saturday, November 10 from 10 am to 3 pm, led by Kevin McIlvoy, recent Interim Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College. What do writers mean when they use the term "narrative distance?" This workout will concentrate on writer's style choices regarding many forms of objective and subjective narrative distance so important to the terms of engagement for the reader. The day's instruction will include two lectures, one discussion session, and one individual conference with the instructor. The cost is $200 ($150 for writers over 65) and due by October 13. Click here for details and online registration. |
ClarityWorks Participant Spotlight: Mary Jo Balistreri
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Finding Diamonds in the Dark
Under death's bare branches, I return home,
the road erased.
I step across the edge of myself
after nine weeks in the ICU.
My husband helps me slide beneath
sheets, warm in white flannel,
side rails to keep me from falling.
This is the world I can manage.
I absorb the quiet, my body insubstantial,
no past, no future that I recognize.
No purpose.
In this new life, I am content to watch,
swallows swoop and flit, clouds skirl
the gray marbled sky, trees give
sound to the wind.
In this high-ceilinged room, sun mesmerizes
for hours with cut-outs of light.
Louvered blinds, angled, give luminesence
options: it can climb from our Lady
of Guadalupe on the nightstand,
up the triangular headboard of the bed
I once slept in, create a chapel on the wall
of flickering votives.
Other days, it can choose stacks
of rectangles to shift and tumble like blocks,
or make small circles that orbit the floor
like galaxies.
Months later, as honeysuckle wafts through the screen
I will sit in the bedroom rocker, feel the tease
of spring spill over me, senses sprouting like green tips
of crocus. Like a gardener, I will assess: what can be salvaged,
what clipped to encourage growth. What transplanted.
I will learn to dream of color, beds of daffodils, blazingstar,
scarlet poppies, their fertile black seeds.
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Mary Jo Balistreri Mary Jo grew up in Minnesota and  Wisconsin. Family inspired and helped shape Mary Jo's interests, talents and her book, Joy in the Morning. Today, she resides in both Wisconsin and Florida where poetry has become a passionate life source and a way of expressing the joy of being alive. Mary Jo receives the writing prompts and is reading Mary's Way. She says "Mary's Way fills me with Woman, is all the spirituality we carry and Mary, model extraordinaire. Mary's Way fills me with life, and possibility."
Visit her website at www.maryjobalistreripoet.com
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Send it in!
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We would love to feature something you have written to a prompt. Send it in and enjoy seeing your words published in the newsletter! Just email: pmillin@clarityworksonline.com
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And the Kudos Go To...
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 ...Alice Owens Johnson, whose poem "Piggly Wiggly Goes to the Funeral Home" is a winner (out of 2600+ entries) in the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest sponsored by WinningWriters.com. Her winning poem can be read here.
Alice has been a participant in many ClarityWorks classes and retreats. Her work has appeared in the O. Henry Festival of Short Stories and she was awarded the first prize in the literary magazine The Crucible. Two of her short stories appear in the anthologies I Thought My Father Was God, edited by Paul Auster and Alice Redux: Tales of Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll and others were published in Pembroke Magazine and The Guilford Review. She lives in Black Mountain, NC.
...Susan Larmon, who is pleased to announce the publication of her latest work of   creative non-fiction, Swan Songs. Susan's book is available on Amazon.com in paperback and kindle editions. She has already begun writing the sequel, titled Spy Songs. Congratulations!
Susan has attended ClarityWorks classes and the retreat at Lake Logan. She lives in Candler, NC.
...Katherine Johnson, who has been published in a book called Heartscapes...True  Stories of Remembered Love. (Spruce Mountain Press). She received recognition and an award for a short piece, First Star, which was originally published on-line and is now included as a chapter called "Steps Along the Way." The book embodies the important philosophy that our past loves form us, and by remembering them we add richness to ours and others lives. From the editors: "Even if you never see the person again, a significant former love remains with you. That woman or man is woven into the tapestry of your life--maybe as a subtle shading here and there, maybe as a vibrant pattern smack in the middle. Without those threads, the weaving would be something else. You would be someone else."
Katherine has attended retreats at both Seabrook and Lake Logan. She lives in Easton, Maryland.
...Molly Walling announces the publication of her book Death in the Delta:Uncovering a Mississippi Family Secret. Official publication is set for October 2nd from the University of  Mississippi Press. Death in the Delta: Uncovering a Mississippi Family Secret is a non-fiction book about the shooting death of two ret urning black soldiers on the Mississippi Delta just after World War II and the suspected involvement of her own weekly newspaper editor father, a returning bomber pilot, during a time of roiling change in the deep South. To learn more about Molly and to pre-order a copy of her book, visit www.mollywalling.com. A reading is planned at Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville in October.
Molly has worked individually with Peggy and attended a ClarityWorks retreat. She lives in Asheville, NC.
ClarityWorks enjoys celebrating the accomplishments of writers who have attended our classes, retreats and workshops. We want to share your writing success with our ClarityWorks' community! Send Peggy a "kudos" note at pmillin@clarityworksonline.com.
Thank you for sharing!
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The Gift of Creativity
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Gift thyself... or someone else!
Order Peggy's award-winning book, cd workshop, or gift certificates online at
Shop ClarityWorks.
Share the inspiration. Share the community.
Special web-only package offer available. Learn more...
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Peggy Tabor Millin, MA
ClarityWorks, Inc. - PO Box 9803 - Asheville, NC 28815 - (828) 298-3863 www.clarityworksonline.com - clarity@clarityworksonline.com
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Inspire your writing. Enrich your life.
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