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Newsletter for Writers - October 2014
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 Upcoming Retreat |
Register early as space
is limited.
December 14, 2014
The Hidden Word:
Writing with Kuan Yin
Great Tree Zen Temple
Alexander, North Carolina
More information here. |
| BLOG: A Woman's Way with Words |
Read the latest from Peggy
at her blog
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Writing in Circles:
The Process of Soul-Making |
A companion anthology to
Peggy Tabor Millin's
Women, Writing and
Soul-Making.
Written by Peggy's students
using Centered Writing Practice,
Writing in Circles is the
product of the process.
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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! |
From the Book
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I thought I was looking
for an answer in a class or book that would tell me how to write, but I discovered I was looking for the faith in myself that would allow me to trust and value what I wrote.
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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 | 
Are you looking for an
eReader that is supported
by local, independent
bookstores?
Malaprop's Bookstore
in Asheville has chosen
Kobo as their eReading partner.
To learn more and to
purchase, visit
Malaprop's website.
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| Picture Prompt |
This month we feature
a short piece by Jan Donaldson
inspired by a picture prompt.
Shoes
Those look like my father's shoes, cordovan, wingtips with ties, the ones he wore before MS stole his feet and put them in sturdy work shoes with bottoms never needing resoling-last the rest of a lifetime, they do.
Ready. Set. Write!
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ClarityWorks participant blogs & retreat anthologies
| Cheryl Dietrich
Ginger Graziano
Karen Lauritzen
Martha McMullen
Follow this link to
read anthologies of retreat
participants on the
Clarityworks website.
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| Wordly Wise from Peggy Tabor Millin | |
This Good Woman Rises
I started to title this article "you can't keep a good woman
 | Hawk over Blue Ridge
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down," but realized that sounded like some "you" out there had been holding me back. What has been holding me back, even from the writing of the newsletter, has been me, the "me" that has been figuring out who she is now that she is firmly in the new stage of life past seventy. The process has been one of reflection and inner exploration, and of vacillating between bursts of energy and lethargy. Deep listening is necessitated to chart these waters. Where have I come from? Who am I now that I have assimilated the many lives I have led? What do I still have to give?
I first made one toe-in-the-water step by planning the workshop, "The Hidden Word: Writing with Kuan Yin" in December at Great Tree Zen Temple.
In August during the Zen Writers' Retreat at Great Tree, I received a powerful message: I need to keep teaching. It's who I am and what I do, my gift to give from which I receive so much meaning in my life.
Another part of the message, was that I can only teach on one condition: I must find a way to teach that does not overwhelm me as it formerly had done by being open to approaches and content while keeping writing as part of the group process. And, I must save time to write.
1) The first class, The Gift of Years, will begin Wednesday, January 14 and run for six weeks to February 18. It will be held at a home in East Asheville (not mine-that is another part of the message!). The class is restricted to 10 women (including myself0 age 68 or over - this in an effort to include only those who have felt a strong shift of consciousness that seems to occur for most women  somewhere between 68 and 72.
We will use The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully, a book by Joan Chittister , that explores the many dimensions of the aging process through short essays with titles like Meaning, Fear, Adjustment, and Letting Go, with the purpose of revealing the gift of this new stage of life. Chittister calls it "the gift of becoming more fully alive than ever."
Each class will begin with a writing prompt pulled from Chittister's book. We will write and read, then we will relate to what has been read and written by speaking from our own experience. This will not be a support group, although I foresee that we will fill supported.
If you are interested in this class, please send me an email with GIFT OF YEARS in the subject line to pmillin@clarityworksonline.com. I would like to have an indication of interest before proceeding with registration or collecting the $240 fee.
2) I will be offering two Zen Mind, Writer's Mind weekend workshops at Great Tree Zen Temple in Alexander, North Carolina, during 2015. The first is March 27-29, the second in August (dates to be announced). Registration is through greattreetemple.org.
In the meantime, please check in with my blog " A Woman's Way to Words" where I will be exploring the answers to questions like the ones I listed above and how they relate to writing.
Keep writing!
Peggy
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Books to Explore
| | All The Light We Cannot See
Review by Alice Owens Johnson
Summer has always been my reading time and this summer I hit the jackpot of novels: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
Marie-Laurie lives with her father in Paris near the Museum  of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. She goes blind when she is six and so her father builds a miniature in perfect scale of her neighborhood for her to memorize to help retain her childhood memories as well as navigate to the boulangerie, and all the other stalls that Parisians use for their marketing.
The war arrives and she and her father take flight to the home of her reclusive great uncle in a tall house by the sea. (Saint-Malo) They take only a few possessions, but with them they carry the most dangerous jewel in Paris to save it from the Nazis.
The story moves to another youngster in Germany, the orphan Werner and his younger sister. Werner is an expert at building and fixing instruments, such as radios used during the war to give the location of the enemy. This talent lands him a special place in the academy for Hitler Youth where he is compelled to use his intelligence to track down the enemy, the resistance. The story ends in Saint-Malo and this is where he and the talented heroine, Marie-Laure meet.
This book isn't just about the deft interweaving of these two intriguing characters, it is a fine and almost unbearable history of the war where under the most adverse of conditions, people still try and keep their hearts open to one another. This journey is like a delicious prose poem, the sentences are well carved and never disappoint readers who appreciate not just a suspenseful story, but stand and applaud a writer who has put his own jewels before us to admire.
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Calls for Submision
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The Missouri Review's 24th Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction is now open for submissions. First-place winners in each category receive a prize of $5,000, plus a feature in the spring issue and paid travel to the gala reading and reception in Columbia, Missouri. Contest finalists will receive cash prizes and have their work considered for publication as well. This opportunity is open to both emerging and established writers. All writers submitting to our contest receive a one-year subscription to The Missouri Review. Submissions accepted online or by mail. The postmark deadline has been extended to October 15th and winners will be announced in January of 2015. You can find more information about the contest through the Missouri Review website
The Book Industry Charitable Foundation is holding a cell-phone drive to raise funds to provide assistance to booksellers. Outdated phones can help pay a bookseller's emergency expenses when they are recycled through the Binc Foundation. Who doesn't have at least one old phone collecting dust in some drawer? You can help your staff, friends and customers de-clutter and raise money for booksellers in need at the same time. The funds raised through the cell phone recycling project are turned into assistance for medical bills, help with housing and utilities and more.
The BINC Foundation uses a respected third-party vendor for this program. All donated phones will have any personal data scrubbed from their memory. Depending on the age and condition of the phone, they are then refurbished for resale, reprogrammed for 911-only calls, or responsibly recycled. The phones don't need to be in working order, they all have valuable parts. Tablets and eReaders are also able to be recycled in the same way. Phones will be collected at the Southern Independent Bookseller's Alliance Fall Discovery show or you can collect phones at your place of business-- click here to download instructions. For more information about the program visit BINC's website.
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NC News for Writers
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The North Carolina Writers' Network announces it's Fall 2014 conference to be held November 21--23, 2014, in Charlotte, North Carolina. To view the conference schedule, register, or inquire regarding scholarships, visit the NC Writer's website.
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Readers Write: Maggie Wynne
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The Meadow
Lily holds my hand and we cross the street.
My feet touch the meadow's edge for the first time. In my pink
pinafore I roll down the grassy slopes that flatten at the creek
leaving Lily's laughter behind.
The meadow is mine.
Mother and Daddy are not at home. I set out across the meadow
to the library, eager to cross the bridges that span the creek.
Returning with my armful of books, I jump a creek with
no bridge. Still I keep my precious books dry.
The meadow is mine.
Barbara Ann, Kay and Nancy, The Forest Hills Four, meet me in the meadow.
Giggles, sleepovers, 45 records, boyfriends, a language no one else knows.
First dances in the clubhouse at the meadow's edge. Walking each
other home across the meadow.
Still knowing it is mine.
A big snow, we meet with our sleds in the meadow. We sled all day,
trudge to Nancy's to dry, sip hot chocolate, share what we will be
one day. We remember to pull our sleds home. Across the meadow, the sun is
setting the melting has begun. Snow on the meadow
is mine.
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___________________
Amazon.
Maggie is a beloved member of the ClarityWorks family. We first shared this poem in 2011. Thank you, Maggie.
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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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The Gift of Creativity
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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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Vol. 3, issue 2. The Wayfarer is published quarterly by 
America in search of her lost father after her mother and sister perish during the Great Irish Famine. Visit 
magazine