|
Newsletter for Writers - March 2013
|
|
 Upcoming Events | |
|
From the Workshop
|
Yes, it's brave.
And that really is
something, especially in a
group.
Writing is about risk-taking
and there was a point
in teaching my
classes, right in the
middle of one class,
I realized, "Oh, that's
what I'm doing. I'm
teaching people to take
risks."
Because it's very risky
business.
This is us, right here
on the page, and putting
it out there and not
knowing how it's going
to be received takes a lot
of courage.
It's a challenge.
Peggy Tabor Millin Family Matters: The Power of Personal StoryNow Available as an mp3digital download.Visit Peggy's artist page at CD Baby to purchase.Also Available at Amazon.com and iTunes. |
Keep the pen moving!
|
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
|
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 | 
joinFITE is a philanthropic
organization dedicated
to providing women
entrepreneurs
from around the world
small loans to
start or grow businesses.
|
| Picture Prompt |
Ready. Set. Write!
|
Announcement
|
Beginning in May, Peggy
will begin offering editing
services, particularly copy
editing (also called line
editing) of nonfiction, including memoir. She will send out
a special announcement
about services provided.
|
Give the Gift of
Creativity
|
Looking for a gift for
the writer in your life?
Visit the ClarityWorks Online
Bookstore for a selection
of books and CD's by
award-winning author
Peggy Tabor Millin
Gift Certificates are also
available and can be used
towards classes and retreats.
|
From the Book
|
When we learn the
Wisdom of Fierce Compassion,
we develop awareness
of choices and the
willingness to discover
the pattern of our inner
lives as separate from
the patterns of our
outer culture.
As women manifest
fierce compassion as part
of conscious femininity,
they integrate their
masculine side.
They also empower men
to manifest conscious
masculinity and to
integrate their feminine side.
Through fierce compassion,
Lord Mother calls us
to live our lives meaningfully
in a way that does the
least harm to
others and to the earth.
Peggy Tabor Millin's
Women, Writing, and Soul-Making: Creativity and the Sacred Feminine
|
|
|
| Wordly Wise from Peggy Tabor Millin |  The Land of Little Rain
I pictured myself on sabbatical as having time to sit in contemplation, write freely, and relax. I would, I thought, feel more creative and energetic. I discovered instead that I have entered a period of creative aridity where it's difficult to focus on a project or even to write for pleasure. Then I remembered an article I wrote a few years ago on this very topic. It begins:
Creative aridity is part of the process of experiencing creative fertility.
 | Borrego Badlands
100 miles east of San Diego coast, CA
|
The word aridity is one I use as a synonym for what others call writer's block. Aridity can mean "having insufficient rainfall to support agriculture" or "lacking in interest and life." Perhaps I use the word because I grew up on the Colorado Desert of California, a place that truly seems "godforsaken."
Given a cloudburst or the network of canals carrying water from the Colorado River, however, this barren landscape bursts forth with flowers, vegetables, and fruit. But wherever the water is lacking, the vista totally lacks interest and life, or so it seems. Underneath its jejune appearance, however, the desert actually teems with life that is well adapted to aridity. It offers much of interest to the mentally curious as well as to spiritual seekers. As a landscape, the desert challenges us with its space, demanding that we recognize our own smallness. It is a place to be still, to greet silence, and to embrace solitude. We must have courageous hearts to meet the desert's demands. It does not tolerate precipitous action. Inattention can be not only be dangerous but deadly.
Aridity in our writing is a creative desert. We feel that what we have planted and nurtured successfully for a while--the story, essay, or book--is no longer growing. Consider three women writers: Ab
 | Canal in Imperial Valley, CA
|
igail wonders why she is suddenly writing fiction instead of working on her (easily publishable) nonfiction book. Belinda asks why she is fixing up her art studio when her completed book needs only a final revision. Constance complains that she has written her memoir with ease and speed until coming suddenly to a standstill. She wonders if it is because the next part of the story is the most emotionally charged.
In the narrow view, the creative desert is indeed a barren place in which we lose our sense of direction. We chide ourselves for being unable to plow our way through to the end. We label our "fault" as procrastination. "Procrastinate" literally means to put forward until tomorrow. But we all know that "sleeping on it" is often a good idea. I tend to agree with indigenous groups who believe that each thing happens in its own time. Granted some things must be done in a timely manner if we don't want disturbing consequences--taking out the garbage, meeting a college application deadline, making the mortgage payment.
Why in writing, other than to meet a deadline, is procrastination a dirty word? Looking at the dilemmas of the three women mentioned, we might consider that Abigail unconsciously is using fiction to explore the themes underlying her nonfiction. She is incubating ideas that will make her nonfiction richer. By working on her art studio, Belinda is rejuvenating her creativity and allowing her book to rest, a recommendation of every esteemed author and writing teacher. When Belinda returns to the book, she will approach the final revision with fresh eyes. Constance's psyche may well be reluctant to revisit an unhappy part of her past, but she could accept this as a desert cave that needs exploration. By looking with fierce compassion at what she does not want to see (perhaps with the aid of a therapist), she will come to a new level of healing.
All three women, each of whom is approaching the finish line, may also be experiencing the truth of the adage, "The closer we are to the goal the stronger the pull away from it." When this mechanism is activated, we have to ask what we fear will happen when we finish: Post-partum separation? Rejection? Success? Failure? Death? Emptiness? Loneliness?
Also possible is that we would rather blame ourselves in some way than accept that creative aridity is part of the process of experiencing creative fertility. Somewhere in most writers and other artists exists a resistance to accepting our own strength and talent. We can spend a lot of time or energy validating our own self-doubt rather than moving forward.
In David Whyte's The Three Marriages he tells the story of poet Rainier Maria Rilke who suffered mightily from creative aridity. Whyte suggests that what Rilke discovered was that sometimes we need the absence of that which we love (in this case, writing) to show us the depth of our love for it. That realization then removes the barriers to our writing.
 | Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
|
Each of us is alone in figuring out our relationship with our art. Still it helps to recognize that creative aridity is as natural and fruitful as the desert itself. The more we resist its appearance and see it as verification of something intrinsically "wrong" with us, the more stubbornly it will entrench itself. So relax. Turn inward with the clear accepting eyes of your inner Observer who can show you what you do without judgment. This is all part of writing practice.
Keep writing!
Peggy
|
| Books to Explore - What Peggy is Reading | | The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer
This is a complex novel. I came to it after reading Sarah's  Key (Tatiana de Rosnay). Both books involve the occupation of European nations by Nazi forces, the internment of Jews, and the story of survivors. I did not know this when I picked the books from the library shelves. Gripping, but not light, reading.
I choose to focus on The Marriage Artist as the more literary of the two. The author weaves together two stories, one in modern day and one in Nazi-occupied Vienna) and explores the interaction of art, marriage, and history. I definitely recommend the book, both for the stories it tells and for the amazing writing.
Look at the following reviews for further understanding of this "ambitious, haunting, and stunningly written" novel.
Thumbs Up:
Thumbs Down:
|
| News You Need to Know | | Tin House Magazine is currently accepting submissions for it's Fall 2013 issue, themed WILD. They are looking for poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and  interviews about the Wild--untamed places, people, things, events, happenings, and experiences. Submission deadline is April 15, 2013. Visit the Tin House website for complete details and submission guidelines.
Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize is now accepting submissions. Deadline for submissions is May 15. The winning poet will receive $200 and publication in the Crab Creek Review. Please visit their website for complete submission guidelines.
|
NC News for Writers
|
| 
The North Carolina Writer's Network is now registering for the 2013 Spring Conference being held Sunday, April 13 at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. The NCWN Spring Conference draws writers, at all levels of skill and experience, from all across North Carolina and beyond for a full day of workshops in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and the business side of writing. Attendees will be treated to faculty readings and can share their own work at the open-mic reading. They also can sign up for "Lunch with an Author," their chance to engage in informal conversation with accomplished writers. You may register at www.ncwriters.org or call 336-293-8844. A poet and writer, Rachelle Rogers' latest work is Rare Atmosphere: A Memoir. At age fifty-nine, the author was told "in a channeled conversation about a man she didn't know, yet felt she'd been waiting for all her life, it initiated an extraordinary six year inter-dimensional affair of the heart.The rich tapestry of events, which unfolds through ongoing  conversations with angelic beings affectionately called The Dead Guys, weaves through a world of classical music, poetic inspiration, synchronistic interludes, and unexpected landscapes including Paris, Provence, and the Caribbean island of Saint Martin.In an authentic and lyrical voice, Rare Atmosphere recounts a story of passion, vision, and the courage to mine for a grander truth." Rachelle is also the author of A Love Apart, a novel, and POSSOONS, stories. Her work has appeared in several literary journals including Passager, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, and Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women. See www.rachellerogers.com for more details and to order copies. Rachelle is also a jewelry artist who will be presenting at the Fine Art & Craft Fair on April 20 from 10--4 pm in Weaverville, North Carolina. Learn more about Rachelle's jewelry here. The American Business Women's Association Sky-Hy chapter in Asheville is hosting a champagne and chocolate fundraiser to benefit their education and scholarship fund that supports women in WNC. Local businesses will be exhibiting products and services. The event is April 4 at the Crown Plaza Resort in Asheville from 6--9pm. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at www.abwaskyhy.com or call Lucretia at 828-243-1223. On Sunday, April 7, at 3:00 p.m., Cynn Chadwick, Lecturer in Creative Writing at UNC Asheville and the author of five published books including the "Cat Rising" series, will conduct a two-hour session on how to get your work to market, She will share experiences in of using both traditional and self-publishing channels. As Cynn describes what she's learned along the way and what strategies offer the best chance for success, she will encourage your participation in the discussion. This workshop is sponsored by the Great Smokies Writing Program of UNC Asheville. The workshop will take place in the Laurel Forum, 139 Karpen Hall, UNC Asheville (see: www.unca.edu/maps). The cost is $25 in the form of a tax-deductible donation to the Great Smokies Writing Program. To reserve your place in what will be a high-demand session, send your name, email address, phone number, and particular topic of interest or question for the session to Marie Hefley, Managing Editor, The Great Smokies Review, princesshef@hotmail.com.
|
ClarityWorks Participant Spotlight: Karla Thompson
| | Words searing, anger flaring, pulses racing
in the heat of it, feeling the sweat of it, or
I am feeling tears course down my face?
Eyes glaring, we walk away.
Now, I'm staring with disbelief.
Wondering
Why?
How?
Who?
When did it come to this?
What could I have done differently?
Should I have done it differently?
Now I'm sure, sure of nothing.
Yelling fades into weeping as the sun's descent sweetly colors the sky.
Then quickly the darkness of night envelops me.
I find myself cloaked in Silence.
I feel myself held tightly in Solitude.
Uncertainty nestles under my bedcovers.
Doubt stands proudly in the corner.
My sobbing subsides.
All that is left is me, myself, and
I turn toward the mirror of self-awareness
noticing fear's reflection over my shoulder.
I move and shift to escape its persistent glare
but it moves with me, dancing in syncopated rhythm.
So I close my eyes
Breathe in, breathe out
Breathe in, breathe out
Breathe in, breathe out
As I open my eyes and wipe my tears the hazy fog clears
and just beyond the distance,
deep within the pools of my own eyes,
I see a glimmer, a flicker of light and hope that I vaguely remember.
The Light grows brighter, stronger, and more familiar.
I recognize the beauty of my Soul's Light, unwavering in its Love.
It's not my fault, it's only my experience.
|
|
___________________
Karla Ray Thompson, M.Ed.,M.S is an educator, life-long  learner, technology enthusiast, wife and mother currently living in Baltimore, Maryland. As part of her recent commitment to self, Karla is dedicated to living fearlessly and exploring passions that ignite her creativity, stimulate her imagination, nurture her self-confidence, and encourage her personal growth. Karla is comfortable with astrology, holistic healing, yoga and meditation as means for self-discovery; now she is eager to explore writing as a medium for self-healing and awakening.
|
Send it in!
|
| |
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
|
ClarityWorks Participant Blogs & Retreat Anthologies
|
| |
Follow these links to visit the blogs and websites of a few members of our ClarityWorks community. Enjoy!
Cheryl Dietrich
www.cheryldietrich.net
Ginger Graziano
www.gingergraziano.com/blog
Karen Lauritzen
www.nothingvanishes.com
Kimberly Childs www.kimchilds.com Martha McMullin www.marthamcmullin.com Follow this link to read anthologies of retreat participants on the ClarityWorks' website. |
|
|
And the Kudos Go To...
|
Sue Larmon for publication of the final two books of her trilogy , Time Travel 101. The three books are: Swan Son gs, Spy Songs, and War Songs. The series follows the time  travel adventures of its protaganist, Erika. The books are available in paperback and kindle editions. Her previously published books include The Carpe Diem Kid, an autobiography; Right on Time, a children's book; and two memoirs -- The Wiesbaden Years: Through Rose-Colored Glasses and Golden-Age Reflections. You can purchase Sue's books at her Amazon.com author's page.Sue Larmon currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and teaches French at Western Carolina University. She has attended ClarityWorks classes and retreats.
Mary Ellen Brown, Asheville resident, green real estate broker, and ClarityWorks participant, for placing first in the 40k bike race in her category and the 2012 Buncombe County Senior Games. She then went on to place second in the 10k at the state games in Raleigh. Now that's something to write home about.
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!
|
|
The Gift of Creativity
| | |
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...
|
|
Peggy Tabor Millin, MA
ClarityWorks, Inc. - PO Box 9803 - Asheville, NC 28815 - (828) 298-3863 www.clarityworksonline.com - clarity@clarityworksonline.com
|
|
Inspire your writing. Enrich your life.
|
|
|
|
|
