The prompt this week was suggested by the recent shooting at Umpqua Community College as well as other tragic events.
Write about a tragedy, one that involves risk and fear. Put your character(s) under pressure in the middle of something where split second decisions could make things worse or resolve the issue.
Our hearts and thoughts are with the families and community of Roseburg, Oregon. Forest Grove hosts Pacific University, and we are kindred spirits sharing your pain and loss.
The following was written by Writers in the Grove member, Bev Walker.
His friend said kindly, “Why don’t you take a vacation, some place quiet.”
So he did. He went hunting. A walk in the woods would be just the place.
He was going along when all of a sudden a giant jumped out in front of him.
The hunter quickly bellowed like a mating alligator, a terrible sound.
The sound scared the giant so bad he flew up into the nearest tree.
There, sitting on a limb sat a real live dinosaur eating a kumquat.
The giant scared the dinosaur so bad he dropped his kumquat.
It hit the hunter on the head knocking him out cold.
The giant jumped down from the tree, grabbed the kumquat for his breakfast and ran away.
Just as the hunter was coming around, the dinosaur jumped down from the tree,
grabbed the hunters red hat, (his ears were cold), and took off after his kumquat.
The terrified hunter immediately called a policeman
reporting there was a giant running loose in the woods
who could turn himself into a dinosaur! He’d seen it himself!
They could spot him because this dinosaur was wearing a red hat!
Policeman kindly said, “Why don’t you take a vacation friend, some place quiet.”
In a recent issue of The Costco Connection, Andrea Downing Peck intervie3ws author Kristin Hannah, author of Nightingale, Winter Garden, and 19 other books.
Nightingale tells the story of a woman who joins the French Resistance and saves downed Allied airmen and others, including her family, via an escape route she creates to Spain during World War II.
In the interview, she describes finding not only a writing space, but the space in which the writing takes place, in that time and place that inspires. For her, it is the Pacific Northwest. She makes her home on Bainbridge Island near Seattle.
If you are a certain kind of person and can live anywhere in the world, this place speaks to you. There is a certain individual that is drawn to the landscape, lifestyle, mountains, ocean, and sound. I also think the rain makes us more productive. There are a lot of days where there is really nothing else to do. You might as well write.
Several of the writers in Writers in the Grove have shared pictures and stories of their favorite writing places. Where is yours? What is it about the space that makes it your special place to write?
WordStock, Portland’s Book Festival, is a one-day event at the Portland Art Museum on Saturday, November 7, 2015. Tickets are available now for $15 and includes admission to the Art Museum and a $5 voucher to spend at the extensive book fair.
Over 80 authors will be present offering writing tips and techniques in all genres. According to the press release (PDF), “There will be conversations between Cheryl Strayed and Diana Nyad; Jon Krakauer and Barry Lopez; Tom Spanbauer and Chuck Palahniuk. There will be interviews with Wendell Pierce, Sandra Cisneros, John Irving, and Stacy Schiff; and panel discussions on topics as wide-ranging as unconventional histories, accidental families, paranormal YA, and so much more.”
A series of writing workshops are also available during the event for an addition fee. They include storytelling, poetry, scene writing, editing, humor, and other topics.
The Bookmark Ball is the opening night celebration held the night before as a fundraiser and social gathering with music. Tickets start at $35 for this special event for the Portland literati.
The following is from Writer in the Grove member, Patti Bond.
As I was walking to a nearby Plaid Pantry to get a coffee and some other things I heard something to my left. It was a squirrel it was moving at a fast pace.
It quickly went up the utility pole, but as I came closer the squirrel came back down, and stayed there looking at me. I said hi and it just stayed there not moving, just staring at me for five minutes. I was thinking and he was thinking that I wasn’t going to be mean to it.
The squirrel finally turned around and went up the pole, and I resumed my walk. After visiting the Plaid Pantry, I cut through a park and I saw quite a few squirrels. One gray squirrel ran up the tree and a brown one quickly came running down.
The grey one said to the brown one, “You are in my territory!” and forced him to leave. I looked up the tree grinning and saying ha ha I won while he was sitting glued to the branch just watching the brown one. The brown one ran across the path. He tried to go up another tree, but the same thing happened. He ran into another grey squirrel. He was thinking how this can be what luck I’m having. I spotted another squirrel in the tree watching the others, then all of sudden they all disappeared.
I spotted the dog roaming around under the trees. What bad luck for the squirrels.
What an adventure seeing five squirrels. One of these days I will have a camera with me, so I can take a picture of the squirrels. I will sit at a picnic table quietly like a cat waiting for a mouse and click the camera when I see a squirrel. Instead of eating it, I’ll just click the camera. Then I’ll think to myself I finally accomplished my goal to be closer to nature.
Writers in the Grove long-time members, Roger and Helen Ritchey will be signing books and sharing their specialty fruit wines along with some great bluegrass music from 4-7PM on October 24, 2015, at Jennings McCall in Forest Grove, Oregon.
Roger Ritchey is the author of Mostly True Stories And Other Lies
Come join them and for some wine, music, and prose.
The re-opening of the Forest Grove Senior and Community Center Flea Market is Saturday, October 10, 2015, coinciding with the Writers in the Grove Annual Book Sale and Fundraiser, also for the Center.
From 9am – 4pm there will be a variety of booths in the Center featuring our book sale, handmade crafts, antique collectibles, jewelry, and a mini quilt show. The Gift Shop will be having a clearance sale and there will be drawings for prizes and food carts outside for some fun bites to eat.
The next scheduled dates are November 14 and December 12, 2015. If you live in Washington County, Oregon, or in the surrounding areas, this is a great event to catch up on your holiday shopping lists.
See you there!
The following is from Writers in the Grove member Ann Farley. It is inspired from the Prompt: Writing Letters You Might Never Send.
Write a letter I wouldn’t send?
Did that once, wrote a letter to a college professor, and I intended to send it, but the tone was snarky. I knew if I mailed it, I’d never hear from her. Put that letter in an envelop, but stopped short of a stamp. Stuffed it down in the couch cushions to give it time, give myself a little distance, reconsider. Perhaps rewrite it entirely.
Two days later I looked for that letter, tore the couch apart, got belly-flat on the floor looking for it.
Gone. It was gone.
Asked my husband if he’d seen an envelop in the couch, and sure enough, he had. Found it, put a stamp on it, put it in the mailbox a day or so ago.
Well, damn.
Maybe, I thought, maybe the tone wasn’t so bad. But I knew it was, and there was no pulling it back. I never heard from that professor again.
Never wrote a letter I wouldn’t send again, either.
Not worth the loss.
This week’s prompt talked about how we communicate? What do we use to communicate? Eyes, attention, body language, respect, support, and words.
You can communicate with a person and have it be a very intimate connection. You may also connect with someone and have it be a one way experience.
There are many ways to communicate with each other, as there is with your characters. How do they communicate with each other?
As a writer, how do you connect on a deeper level to your readers? Sometimes you write to a specific person, even if you are writing for many. Others say they write to and for themselves.
The prompt narrowed down to this:
Write a letter to yourself or someone else that speaks the truth, says what you really wish to tell them, no holds barred.
It could be a letter sent, or one that is written and never sent. It doesn’t matter.
If you’d like to experiment with character building, have your main character or any character in your story write that letter.
November 1, 2015, at midnight is the start of NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.
The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words (and complete a novel) in 30 days.
Sound impossible? The numbers divide down to 1,666 words a day, typically 60-90 minutes of writing.
To participate, you may do so actively or passively. This can be a solo experience or a highly social one. You can connect online and/or connect in person through the many local activities, events, and write-ins where people gather in a social space to write and get to know each other.
Here is how it works.
That’s it.
NaNoWriMo typically features over 310,000 participants on six continents. Many educators work with their students to participate during November as well as throughout the year. (more…)
Writers in the Grove 