Listening to Christmas

As we begin to embrace both the sorrow of the Newtown massacre and the joy of Christmas, it is good to return to the classic holiday stories. My class of five and I sat around our fireplace yesterday morning, rain falling outside, our meeting room festooned with a tree, two mangers and several bright red Santa Clauses carved out of walnut. The wind bustled, slap dashing against the windows as we read Nabakov, Dickens, Truman Capote, and Russell Banks. And listened to Dylan Thomas reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales. 

Our spirits came together as we heard Truman Capote in A Christmas Memory tell the story of his Christmas as a young boy in Monroeville Alabama, living with relatives in a big house. His close friend and constant companion, a sixty-year-old female relative, looked like “a bantam rooster.” At Christmas, they gathered their pennies (they are quite poor) and made thirty fruit cakes, distributing them to “people who have struck their fantasy” like President Roosevelt, the local bus driver and Haha Jones who supplied them with whiskey for the cakes. Buddy’s companion is full of wisdom. She reflects, “there’s never two of anything.” And, toward the end of the story, she says,  “I’ve always thought that a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord….But I’ll wager that at the very end a body realizes that the Lord has already shown himself. That things as they are – her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone—just what they’ve always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.” Words like this calm our spirit and heal us. Read Capote’s story aloud to your family and friends, and smile.

And then, revisit A Christmas Carol and remember the transformation of Scrooge once he was visited by the spirits. After his encounters with the ghosts,

“He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  May that be truly said of us, and all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”

If you have another moment, listen to A Child’s Christmas in Wales, read by Dylan Thomas. This tale will make you laugh and you will marvel at the music of the language. Listening together with friends and family will bring you close.

Happy Holidays and let’s keep the radiance of today in our eyes and rejoice in our loved ones.

Give yourself a gift for the holidays. Join my Method Writing class which begins January 17th in Rockport, Maine. Here's the flyer for the class:

The Writing Life

I am a writer, writing coach and teacher and I haven't been posting recently because I am pursuing my MFA in Fiction which involves rewriting my novel, writing critical essays analyzing plot, point of view, voice, structure. Having turned in 12 chapters of my novel, and learned a tremendous amount about writing from analzying writers like Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Nabokov, I am back and ready to share my new found knowledge.

For the New Year, I'll be launching a series of posts on the Writing Life, mine and yours. I'll post three times a week, one longer piece, one piece with quotes and links, and one piece with exercises. Let's start with a juicy quote and a link to my favorite writers' web site.

Steven Pressfield (www.stevenpressfield.com), author of The War of Art, writes weekly about the writing life, with emphasis on getting published, staying on track, and going the distance. If you have a moment, read The War of Art. It might change your life. It changed mine! And follow Steven weekly.

From Wendell Berry, the poet, one of my favorite quotes about working as an artist:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. 

Next post, I will give you a couple of exercises to baffle your mind! Until then, keep writing.

My Writing Class Spring Schedule.

Here is my schedule for Spring 2012 - starting April 19th
Click on image to enlarge - thanks Kathrin.

The fourth in a series of regular posts to encourage the writer in you to emerge.

“Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”

                                                        
Henry David Thoreau

The third in a series of regular posts to encourage the writer in you to emerge.

Writing is a body sport. It is not a head sport. Yes, what we call the head voice does seem to emanate from our brains. It is reasoned and analytical. But our deep and true voice is buried somewhere in our gut. And when we source it and use it, our audience will respond as well, deep in their bodies.

Writing is about rhythm and tonality.

We each possess our own rhythm and tonality.

The second in a series of regular posts to encourage the writer in you to emerge.

Check out Stephen Pressfield’s blog, “Beware the Saboteur.” Pressfield talks about how we, and those close to us, may attempt to sabotage our own work. He compares our art to that of the wooden boat builder. Built with great attention and passion, wooden boats often command the envy of those around them, just as our own artistic endeavors may cause jealousy from those near and dear to us.

“Each day you and I construct that vessel, which is unique to us and which we hope will carry us across oceans to the unfolding evolution of our lives. We must be wary of that element in our own hearts, and the hearts of others, that would destroy us before we even get in the water."

“Beware the saboteur!” –

The first in a series of regular posts to encourage the writer in you to emerge.

Did you, as part of your New Year’s Resolution, decide to pick up the pen (or the mouse) once again and rewrite that screenplay, begin the novel or write the article you have always dreamed of writing?

These dark months, from Samhain (Halloween) through the Spring equinox offer perfect moments for writing. The holidays are over. Carpe Diem. Stay up late (I know, radical for Maine) and watch the moon and big dipper move across the sky or get up early, earlier than usual, and dedicate thirty minutes to expressing yourself.

“Creative work is…a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.” Steven Pressfield in The War of Art.

Winter Writing Class Schedule.

 

Click on the image to see larger version - Thanks, Kathrin