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NEW EVENT LISTING!
April 10--14, 2013
 A Fearless Writing Retreat For Women
Seabrook Island, South Carolina

 Oct 16--Nov 20, 2012

Meeting Weekly
 Risking Words: Fearless Writing Classes for Women
East Asheville, NC


November 10 & 11, 2012
Follow the Pen: A Two-Day Journey to Fearless Writing
Montreat, North Carolina

A scholarship is available for
this retreat. Read this
newsletter for more information.

 
Visit the website
for more details and
all things ClarityWorks

In the West , we speak
of the mind/body/spirit connection as if these were three separate modes; in actuality no separation exists among them.

Separating the body, the domain of the feminine, from mind or spirit is another way in which we disengage and denigrate the feminine by giving ascendency to the masculine domains of intellect and spirit.

The new discoveries of science will eventually enter cultural awareness and shift this long-held belief in the mind/body/spirit split.



Peggy Tabor Millin
  Women, Writing, and Soul-Making: Creativity and the Sacred Feminine

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 Millin
excerpts from

Women, Writing, and Soul-Making

Wordly Wise from Peggy Tabor Millin 
 
Tips to Hone Your Writing
Today I begin a series of at least twelve articles on Tips to Hone Your Writing.  I made the decision to limit the newsletter articles to topics related to writing craft, because I now have my Writing Out of Bounds blog in which to share about writing process. I would like the two platforms to work together, so feel free to ask questions related to these articles on my blog Writing out of Bounds  or my Women Writing at ClarityWorks Facebook page.  

Remember that honing your work is a self-editing process   done after you have written using Centered Writing Practice and have done a rough edit to organize it. These tips relate to creative nonfiction, fiction, and memoir.

Tip I: Use Concrete, Relevant,and Specific Details

Concrete details are those that depend on the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste.

Relevant details are those specific to the work at hand. Anything we describe in detail must relate to and enhance the scene. We would not need to know that Dorothy wore red slippers if they did not play an essential role in her adventures. After all, she could have walked down the yellow brick road in Buster Browns.

Specific detail works in many ways, not limited to these: 1) to establish a time period, whether an era, time of day 2) to paint a picture of the character's world thereby adding to what we learn about this person
3) to create atmosphere that builds tension 
4) to show not only what our characters look like but who they are by their dress, gestures, furniture, cars, etc.
5) to create trust between reader and writer through accuracy - if your character sees a saguaro cactus  in the California desert, those readers who know the species doesn't grow there, will doubt the other facts you give them.  Another level of trust is also created by specific sensory detail. Diane Akerman writes, ""One of the real tests of writers is how well they write about smells. If they can't describe the scent of sanctity in a church, can you trust them to describe the suburbs of the heart?"

Is God is in the details, or the Devil?
Pick up a newspaper article or the latest Pulitzer Prize winning novel and scan it for proof of the power of detail. Read a poem. Poetry evokes emotion through concrete images. Definitely, we might respond, it is God in the details.

When a writer includes too much detail, she overwhelms the reader with the job of figuring out what is important. You might have had this response to early novels such as Tom Jones or Great Expectations. To the modern reader, the Devil of detail may seem to be at work in such cases.

Suggestions
Assess the work of writers you like. Look at the details they include and what function those serve/ You can also copy a descriptive passage a favorite author's work onto your computer. Then immediately begin writing something of your own. Most who try this find they have integrated that author's style and can sustain it for a short period. The more attention you pay to where God lies in the details, the more your spontaneous writing will reflect what you are learning. Quite naturally, you will become a better writer-one whose writing zings with precise words and active verbs. In one or two brief sentences, you will be able to describe the queen and in your picture of her the reader will see her whole kingdom!

To learn more, see Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan 

Keep Writing!

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

Scholarship Available for ClarityWorks Retreat! One scholarship is available for first-time participants in a ClarityWorks event for the Follow the Pen retreat at Montreat Conference Center November 10 & 11, 2012. The scholarship covers $150 toward the retreat registration fee. Click here for retreat information and scholarship application.

October 11th, at 7 pm, ClarityWorks Participant Molly Walling will be reading from her new book Death in the Delta: Uncovering a Mississippi Family Secret at Malaprop's Bookstore. Death in the Delta is a non-fiction book about the shooting death of two returning black soldiers on the Mississippi Delta just after World War II and the suspected involvement of the author's own weekly newspaper editor father, a returning bomber pilot, during a time of roiling change in the deep South. Learn more about Molly at her website, www.mollywalling.com.

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.

The Poetry Council of North Carolina sponsors an Annual Poetry Contest. Deadline for entry November 29, 2012. Submissions accepted by adult and student poets for several contest categories. Visit the Poetry Council of North Carolina website for complete contest rules.