Independence Day is fast approaching. We look at freedom in very different ways. Looking at freedom at different ages is also a unique perspective.
The prompt this week is to pick an age, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, forty, sixty, and describe what freedom felt like to you (or a character) at each age. Pick at least one and make it into a story, or use all of them to describe your experience of freedom.
The prompt this week is on upcoming Father’s Day holiday.
The role of a father has changed over the years. The impact of fathers is legendary throughout history. We often talk about “father figures” in our lives. Many feel “less than” because they were raised without a father or by an absent or distant father. Others had different father experiences, ones of abuse. Have you ever thought of how an abused child responds to a traditional prayer, “Our Father.”
Fathers have had many stereotypes over the years, such as the television show, “Father Knows Best,” or struggle with the impact of the father-figure of Bill Cosby, now that he, the person and actor, is charged with crimes.
We have changed who we think we are as women. How has men’s attitudes about themselves, their perspectives on fatherhood, changed? Expectations have also changed about father behaviors.
Write about fathers, personally or conceptually.
Oregon City Library is celebrating its 175th anniversary with a free writing workshop with Cindy Williams Gutierrez and Paulann Petersen on Sunday, July 30, 2017. The workshop will help participants generate new writing of prose or poetry on their library experiences, “with treasured books, with the magic process of reading.”
The workshop is from 1-5PM, followed by a dinner (bring your own sack dinner) together, and a reading that is open to the public at 6:30PM at the newly expanded and remodeled library in Oregon City, Portland.
Please register for the workshop by calling the library at 503-657-8269 ext. 1017.
The prompt this week explores the subject of memory, eg, how differently my siblings remember incidents that we all witnessed in our family. Or how difficult it is to collate the different perceptions of witness to a crime or an accident.
How can we fully believe anyone’s story when we know what has colored his or her perception in the first place?
Will our own story ever be told? By whom? To what use?
Why telling the truth to the best of our ability is important, even knowing it is not The Truth.
As a reminder, for Memorial Day this year we are meeting at Parks and Paula Adams home in Forest Grove at the regular time on Monday at 9 a.m. Most people bring a small snack or some food or drink item to share with a group afterwards. Hope to see you there.
The fairly new Washington County Writers Forum in Hillsboro, Oregon, will be hosting a Writers Forum event on June 1, 2017, at Insomnia Coffee from 7-8pm. Insomnia Coffe is at 317 E. Main Street in downtown Hillsboro. Suggested admission is $5.
Jessica Morrell is a fabulous author, speaker, and instructor from the Portland area. She offers regular educational workshops for fiction and memoir writers around the area, and speaks at many conferences. She will be covering the writing process from “flash to finish” in this program titled “From Idea to Story.”
Writers in the Grove welcomes the Washington County Writers Forum to our writing community and look forward to some excellent workshops and programs.
The June prompt-a-month for our Writers in the Grove members is:
Forgotten Things
The deadline for submissions is 7/1/2017. Submissions will be published during the next 30 days.
Writers in the Grove members may hand in their submissions during the workshops or use our members only submission form. Check out the guidelines and instructions for submissions in the announcement.
This prompt is from the book by Amoz Oz, “A Tale of Love and Darkness.”
Already in the entrance hall I was seized by respectful awe, as though even my heart had been asked to remove its shoes and walk in stockinged feet, on tiptoe, breathing politely with mouth closed, as was fitting.
In this entrance hall, apart from a brown wooden hat tree with curling branches that stood near the front door, a small wall mirror, and a dark woven rug, there was not an inch of space that was not covered with rows of books: shelves upon shelves rose from the floor to the high ceiling, full of books in languages whose alphabets I could not identify, books standing up and other books lying down on top of them; plump, resplendent foreign books stretching themselves comfortably, and other wretched books that peered at you from cramped and crowded conditions, lying like illegal immigrants crowded on bunks aboard ship. Heavy, respectable books in gold-tooled leather bindings, and thin books bound in flimsy paper, splendid portly gentlemen and ragged, shabby beggars, and all around and among and behind them was a sweaty mass of booklets, leaflets, pamphlets, offprints, periodicals, journals, and magazines, that noisy crowd that always congregates around any public square or marketplace.
Take one or more inanimate objects and make them come alive.
This week’s workshop was led by Writers in the Grove member, Paula Parks, and she brought us the following prompt.
Examine or imagine a collection of photographs of roads, all types of roads, with bridges, train tracks, dirt roads, tree-lined paths, paved back roads, wide well-traveled interstates, all sorts of travel byways and highways. Write on wherever the road takes you.
In this excerpt from an interview in 2012 by Oprah Winfrey on her show SuperSoul Sunday, she talks to Thich Nhat Hanh, famous monk and author of over 100 books on spiritualism, meditation, and mindfulness. He spoke about the concept of deep listening or compassionate listening.
Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of the other person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose to help him or her to empty his heart. And if you remember that you are helping him or her to suffer less, even if he says things full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable to continue to listen with compassion, because you know listening that like that, with compassion, you give him or her a chance to suffer less.
If you want to help him or her to correct his perception, and then you wait for another time, but for the time being, you just listen with compassion and help him or her to suffer less. And just one hour like that can bring transformation and healing.
His words caught my heart. I suffer from the chronic human need to fix things. Fix problems, fix people, fix writing. I’m not alone. I know you feel the same.
It is hard to sit still and just be with someone, listen to them, hear their pain, and not fix it.
Recently, one of the writers in our group finally heard what we’d been saying for a while regarding their writing, and the dam broke. The writing became clearer, more emotional, and passionate. I realized that the writer wasn’t ready to hear our words until the time was right, and now was the moment.
I’m the same way. I can hear the same words over and over again, sometimes for many years, but I don’t hear them, take them into my heart, and act upon them until I’m good and ready to listen.
Part of the magic of our group is that we have some enlightened beings setting that example for all of us. We’ve learned to trust that the person will figure it out on their own, in their own time, and all we can do is listen, be there, and guide them, but they have to figure it out for themselves. They can take our advice or toss it, it is their work, their creativity, their process.
In the next part of the interview, Thich Nhat Hanh cited his four mantras for relationships, and I felt like he was talking to our writing group.
We have two guides we follow strictly in our group. First, everything we write is fiction, which creates a safe environment for people to share and not gossip about what we write. Second, we create a supportive environment for intense support and gentle criticism.
With few words, he defined the latter in a beautiful way.
The first mantra is: ‘Darling, I’m here for you.’ When you love someone, the best thing you can offer him or her is your presence. How can you love if you are not there.
…The second mantra is: ‘Darling, I know you are there, and I am so happy because you are truly there.’ You recognize the presence of your beloved one as something very precious, and you use your mindfulness to recognize that…she will bloom like a flower. To be loved is to be recognized as existing.
…The third mantra is what you practice when your beloved one suffers: ‘Darling, I know you suffer. That is why I am here for you.’ Before you do something to help her, to help him, your presence already can bring some relief.
…The fourth mantra is a little bit more difficult, and that is when you suffer, and you believe your suffering has been caused by your beloved one. So, you suffer so deeply. You prefer to go to your room and close the door and suffer alone. You get hurt, and you want to punish him or her for having made you suffer. The mantra is to overcome that.
The mantra is: ‘Darling, I suffer. I am trying my best to practice. Please help me.’ You go to him, you go to her, and practice that.
And if you bring yourself to say that mantra, you suffer less right away.
When we offer criticism, we need to keep mindfulness at the forefront of your intentions. Writing is a deeply personal experience for many people. Sometimes what they write is a little of their spirit leaking onto the page, other times their hearts are fully exposed, vulnerable.
During our writing workshops, you are invited to read the results of our writing prompts out loud to the group, and bring short samples of our work to share, for some gentle criticism and advice. By listening with the spirit of deep and compassionate listening, being there in the moment for each other, and being glad to be in their presence, we go a long way to help each other get past our fears, anxieties, and road blocks to our creative writing spirits.
How do the last two mantras impact us as a group and our writing?
I could tell you that writing can be painful, to mind, body, and spirit. But I don’t have to. You know that. You’ve been there.
The inner demons show up and taunt us, old tapes running through our mind, picking at the scars, seeking blood. “Not good enough.” “You can’t do it.” “What made you think you had anything worthwhile to say.” We all face these demons, we all suffer, so let’s acknowledge the suffering. We know we suffer. That’s why we are here for you.
When we are suffering with our writing, letting the demons win, we need to practice, too. We need to come out of our rooms and stand before each other, our wonderful, supportive writing friends, and admit that we are suffering. Admit that we need to practice. And ask for help. That is what why we are here.
That is the true essence of this group.
And the sooner you do that, the less you will suffer.
For more information and to purchase his books, see the Amazon.com Author page for Thich Nhat Hanh.
The following is the excerpt regarding the mantras.
Writers in the Grove 