|
Newsletter for Writers - June 2013
|
|
 Upcoming Events | |
|
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 | 
Positively Positive
At it's core, Positively Positive
is about optimism and inspiration.
Sign up for Good News delivered to your inbox, read
inspiring articles.
|
| Picture Prompt |
Ready. Set. Write!
|
|
|
The Illusive Sabbatical
Wordly Wise from Peggy Tabor Millin |  Remember that sabbatical I announced? I foresaw time to read, long walks, a trip to Maine. I am now in the sixth month, half way through. And, you may have noticed that you haven't been hearing from me regularly. To paraphrase Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice and men do oft go astray. The main event of our lives thus far, however, did occur in a timely fashion: our grandson Jeb was born on my mother's birthday in late April. Great joy!
Almost immediately thereafter I experienced a herniated disk that put me in the hospital for 5 days and on enough medication to keep me loopy. Only now am I beginning to function more like myself.
I think so far the lesson of the sabbatical is that even the plans that go astray have their blessings -- like the wrong turn down the country road that ends in a meadow of flowers even though you miss your daughter's wedding. One blessing has been the reading of John O'Donohue's Eternal Echoes. Another is allowing myself to be waited on by my loving husband (I'll admit I am grateful that he is such a good cook!).
I cannot drive or stand for more than a few minutes, but I can gaze out the window at my glorious garden which is supporting an abundant supply of green hummingbirds, and the busy parents of a houseful of blue birds who periodically announce themselves with a staccato song.
I have been blessed with stopping! A lesson I have long needed to take to heart and can no longer avoid. I invite you to join me for a minute, an hour, a day, or more. I'm finding it a difficult lesson, one I definitely must re-learn every day, and several times a day at that.
Keep writing!
Peggy
|
| Books to Explore - What Peggy is Reading | | The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
by Denise Kiernan
NOW A NEW YORK TIMES & INDIEBOUND BESTSELLER!
In the January 2013 newsletter, I reviewed Marianne Wiggins' novel, Evidence of Things Unseen, that tells the  story of a couple who worked at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the Manhattan Project's "secured cities," built in 1942 Shortly thereafter I heard of the publication of the nonfiction book, The Girls of Atomic City by Asheville writer, Denise Kiernan.
The Tennessee town of Oak Ridge, just over the Smokies from Asheville near Knoxville. At the height of World War II Oak Ridge had a population of 75,000 and used more electricity than New York City and yet did not appear on any maps. The workers, mainly women, lived within its gates under strict secrecy. They did not know the purpose of their own jobs and were forbidden to talk about what they were doing to co-workers or family members.
The Goodreads.com review says, "But against this vibrant wartime backdrop, a darker story was unfolding. The penalty for talking about their work-even the most innocuous details-was job loss and eviction. One woman was recruited to spy on her coworkers. They all knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The shocking revelation: the residents of Oak Ridge were enriching uranium for the atomic bomb.
Though the young women originally believed they would leave Oak Ridge after the war, many met husbands there, made lifelong friends, and still call the seventy-year-old town home. The reverberations from their work there-work they didn't fully understand at the time-are still being felt today.
In The Girls of Atomic City, Denise Kiernan traces the astonishing story of these unsung WWII workers through interviews with dozens of surviving women and other Oak Ridge residents. Like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this is history and science made fresh and vibrant-a beautifully told, deeply researched story that unfolds in a suspenseful and exciting way."
A "must read!" |
| News You Need to Know | | 
Off the Grid Press will publish a full-length book of poetry by a poet over the age of 60. Entry fee of $25 and award to winner $1000. Postmark deadline August 31, 2013. Complete rules and submission guidelines
Narrative Magazine is now accepting submissions for its Spring 2013 Story Contest. This contest is open to all fiction and non-fiction writers. Entries must be previously unpublished, no longer than 15,000 words, and must not have been previously chosen as a winner, finalist, or honorable mention in another contest. Contest deadline is July 31, 2013. Read complete submission rules and instructions
|
NC News for Writers
|
| 
2013 Squire Summer Writing Residency hosted by the NC Writer's Network is now accepting registrations. The Squire Summer Writing Residency will be held July 11--14 on the campus of Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC. Admission is limited to the first 50 registrants who sign up for one of the three day workshops. Three workshops are scheduled--poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. For complete information and to register online, please visit the NC Writer's Network website. You may also call 336-293-8844. The Hard Times Writing Contest, sponsored by The Writer's Workshop of Asheville, is now accepting submissions. Write about a difficult experience in your life, how you overcame this obstacle, and how you were changed by it. Winning stories will be chosen for originality and creative writing style. Stories should be previously unpublished, and should not exceed 4,000 words (double-spaced, 12 point font). Multiple entries are accepted. View complete rules and submit your work here.
|
ClarityWorks Participant Spotlight: Patricia Dunn-Fierstein
| | Feeling the Weight of It
Towards the end, as I watched my Dad care for his dying mother, I grew hateful. I thought of him as pretty old at 66 to my 24 years, and knew my frail, 90 year old Nana was ill, cantankerous, senile and quite a load to bear at his age. I wondered at the cruelty of it all.
My Dad had worked for his family from eight years old when his father folded up a man-sized apron, wrapped it around his tiny waist, and plopped him behind the family's newly rented stall in one of Baltimore's slum markets. He was left alone on the job for weeks while his dad closed down the store they had across the street, and his mom stayed home with his younger brothers. "Thirty-nine cents a dozen!" he called out timidly, to anyone who sauntered past. He never stopped selling eggs and chickens until sometime in grad school when he finally pried the grimy grip of guilt from his heart and got a job that offered more than the 50 cents an hour that his parents paid him. "I had to be on constant look-out for mom and your uncles in that crazy market," he told me one day. "Honey, that was another world like you'll never know, thank God; between the race riots, the thieves, and the God damn rats the size of cats! It was high-alert at all times!" Now, here, even at 66 he still toiled for his mother. It drained him of his own life force, which infuriated me. "Cut him a break," I screamed in my car one day as I drove away from a visit there. "Take her home," I railed at God. "Take her home, for Christ's sake!"
But Nana's fighting spirit continued into her last days at 91 when dad phoned to say I should come soon to say goodbye. I left the university town where I attended grad school and drove home. I eased the door open, aware that the house felt strange, like a limp balloon on the cold tile floor-all the air drained out. I tiptoed up the stairs to Nana's room without calling out because maybe they were napping from the sheer exhaustion of dying. I understood this all too well since we'd done this with mom just three years ago. Uterine cancer took her from us in six months.
When I came to Nana's open door I saw my dad, his thinning, gray mop of curls askew, his face stubbled with days of growth, his lapis blue eyes hiding beneath deep shadows, yet his biceps defined in a solid bulge as he lifted my Nana from her bed and carried her to the large, comfy rocker in the room. I could see she was dead by the way her limbs fell like an anchor seeking the ocean's floor. Tears quietly trickled down my Dad's face as he rocked his mom's lifeless body. I froze, a silent witness to the scene, confused by my expanding comprehension of loss and the curse and worth of carrying.
|
|
___________________
Patricia Dunn-Fierstein, LCSW, CST-T, has been a psychotherapist in private practice in Tampa for 26 years,  working with children and adults. She is a Certified Sandplay Therapist-Teacher, a certified EMDR therapist and a founding member of the Florida Sandplay Therapy Association. She has taught nationally and internationally, including training weekends with the Sandplay Therapy Institute (STI), of which she is a founding member. She has been published in Supervision of Sandplay Therapy, ed: Friedman and Mitchell; The Journal of Sandplay Therapy; and Sacred Journey: The Journal of Fellowship in Prayer.
|
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...
|
...Alice Owens Johnson, whose poem "Clothesline" was honored with an Honorable  Mention in the recent NCSU Poetry Contest. There were over 300 entrants and one of the judges is the executive editor of esteemed poetry publisher Copper Canyon Press.
Alice's poems "Before Hurricanes Had Names" and "Gras Doux" have been selected for publication in an upcoming edition of Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast published by Snake~Nation~Press. Congratulations Alice!
Alice lives in Black Mountain, NC and has participated in many Clarityworks classes and retreats.
...Nancy Rayside, whose piece "Therapy" was recently honored at the Tennessee Mountain Writer's Conference in Oak Ridge, TN. She was  awarded first place in the Inspirational category. She is grateful to her husband, John, and to Peggy's classes and retreats for making this possible.
Nancy lives in Oak Ridge, TN and has attended retreats at Lake Logan and Seabrook.
...Ginger Graziano whose sculpture "Lotus" was exhibited in a juried art show titled  "Pandora's Box" by Cone10Studios and will be on display from May 30--July 31 in Charleston, South Carolina.
 Ginger's poem "Shed" has been accepted for publication in the July issue of The Conium Review, a journal from Portland, Oregon. Her memoir excerpt "Exact Change Speeds Trips" has been accepted for publication in the journal Embodied Effigies, a publication from Ball University in Indiana.
Ginger has attended Clarityworks classes and retreats and lives in Asheville, NC.
...Rachelle Rogers, who presented her memoir Rare Atmosphere at Malaprop's Bookstore   in Asheville on June 9th. To order copies of Rare Atmosphere and learn more about Rachelle, visit her website.
Rachelle is a poet, friend, and colleague who has substituted for Peggy in teaching Clarityworks classes.
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.
|
|
|
|
|
