Quotables: The Path to Success…Showing Up for Your Work

success >> cover image of Lisa Congdon's new book, Finding Your Artistic Voice: drawing of tiger with mouth open and roaring.

…showing up to work at my own drawing table was an equally valuable ingredient in the formula for artistic growth and success. If I spent most of my time looking at the work of other artists and hanging out at gallery openings, but not consistently making my own work, I might be inspired and make friends, but I’d never make progress in my own creative path. . . . Your voice develops as a result of showing up and making stuff, not once or twice, but over and over and over again.

~ Lisa Congdon in Find Your Artistic Voice


Congdon may be talking about art and drawing, but the same can be said for writing.

If commitment and camaraderie helps you show up for your own creativity, here are two fun opportunities to put #PenToPaper, learn about craft, create or find-tune your work, and build your community of writers:

Principles & Prompts:

success >> photo of red fall leaf on pile of leaves

A 6-week online course on creativity and story, a low-stakes fun course with weekly inspiration and prompts. November 2-December 14, 2019. Registration is open and seats are filling up!

Read more about the course and sign up HERE.


VERITAS Writing Retreat for Women

success >> photo of Milwaukee skyline from the south shore of Lake Michigan

Join me and Margaret Noodin for 4 days in Bay View, Wisconsin to study Place, Permission, and Productivity. Immerse yourself in the mix of other writers, enjoy a taste of the Milwaukee Literary Community, and take advantage of plenty of time to write. July 23-27, 2020. Registration is open but lodging is limited!

Read more about the retreat and sign up HERE.


Your story matters. I hope to see you online or in person!

Quotables: Safety in Numbers

Safety in numbers: photo of four meerkats standing under light source.

“So much of writing is like walking down a dark hallway with your arms out in front of you. You bump into a lot of things.” ~ Kate DiCamillo


#FindYourTribe | #SafetyInNumbers

Join a Writer’s Group (or start your own). Here are a few ideas from Writer’s Digest on tips, lessons learned, & formats to follow.

Sign up for a workshop or class. In-person critique groups for summer (near MKE), ONLINE Here, or try Sackett Street Writers’ 6-week Writing Sprints course with Amy Shearn (scroll down for the summer section that begins Jul. 8th).

Attend a book festival. Where, you ask? The American Writers Museum has a page full of locations with links to websites. This calls for a little artwork….

Safety in numbers: CHEERS! Drawing of woman jumping up and waving pom-poms.

(If you go, let me know. Maybe I can meet you there!)

Guest Post: Marjorie Pagel on Poetry & Writing

Pagel's newest collection, Where I'm From (cover image): painting of red barn

In Milwaukee writing circles, Marjorie Pagel needs no introduction. She is a powerhouse with the pen (I’ve seen her in action), diving into writing with little hesitation, bringing amazing insight to the page, and then publishing great poems and stories.

Today she guest posts, sharing about her long relationship with writing while introducing us to one of her poems, “The Corn Crop” (one of my favorites). You’ll find an immediate connection in all she writes, so enter the giveaway to win a copy of her latest publication, Where I’m From: Poems and Stories. Deadline to enter is Sunday, May 19th, at noon. Now, welcome Marjorie!


Let’s Write!

Marjorie Pagel, standing next to a tree with fall colors in background.

My first poem was inspired by the sight of a robin while swinging outside our family’s farmhouse the spring of 1950. I was nine years old. In the next two years I had composed enough original poetry for my first book.

I used my best cursive handwriting on the lined 4×7-inch tablet, decorated the cover with a construction paper design, and dedicated it to my grandmother, Mary Johnson, who lived in Minnesota. I still feel a bit guilty that I never made a similar gift to my other grandmother, Ella Ellingson, in Milwaukee. I actually loved her best.

Since I’m talking about “one” writer’s beginnings (the other, more famous one, was Eudora Welty) I may as well mention the two books of original writing that won blue ribbons at the Marquette County Fair when I was in seventh and eighth grade. They both bore the title, “Let’s Write,” in recognition of the radio program that inspired them. Everyone in our one-room country school would sit quietly at our desks to listen to this broadcast from Wisconsin School of the Air. When the radio was turned off we would write – a little essay, a story, a poem. For the county fair I neatly copied each week’s assignment from the school year into a 9×12 notebook.

Here’s what I find interesting. Some years back when I was writing a blog for Community Newspapers, I wrote about my “Let’s Write” classroom experience, which became part of a Wisconsin history project for a girl at Nicolet High School. The two of us are still Facebook friends.

Flash forward to 2016. I was 75 years old with hundreds of accumulated essays, poems, and stories – most of them sitting unpublished on my computer. Okay, I said to myself, It’s harvest time. Just as my father had harvested his crops each fall, I would harvest some of my best writing in the autumn of my life. It would be a gift to pass along to family and friends. My first book, The Romance of Anna Smith and Other Stories, was published in 2017 with the help of David Gawlik, Caritas Publishing, before my 76th birthday.

Marjorie Pagel holding copies of her first book. The Romance of Anna Smith and Other Stories

“When are you going to publish your next book?” people asked me, so early this year, at age 77, I published Where I’m From: poems and stories.

Meanwhile, I keep writing. I’m a regular participant in the roundtables at Red Oak Writing in West Allis, Wisconsin. I’ve been gaining inspiration and craftsmanship from Wisconsin’s poet laureate, Margaret Rozga, at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, and I’m learning new skills in flash nonfiction with Christi Craig. It’s an online class, which means that writers from everywhere are connected. It reminds me of those grade school days when the voice of Marie Applegate in Madison, Wisconsin, reached the listening ears of kids like me in classrooms all across the state.

The message remains the same: “Let’s Write!”


The Corn Crop

That first spring, when my father was just a weekend farmer,
he drove out into the sandbur fields to plant corn.
He rode like a conqueror on the seat of his new Farmall tractor.
It was shiny red, like the little coaster wagon I admired
in the Gambles store window.

When all the corn did not come up, my brother and I marched along
with our buckets of seed corn. We placed three yellow kernels
in each scooped-out hollow and covered them over with smooth dirt.
My father figured one out of three ought to grow
but sometimes all three did, and so we’d trudge along again
thinning out the corn.

One year, the year it hailed, we had a good crop, growing way higher
than even my father’s knees by the Fourth of July.
Someone said it was the best crop of corn in Marquette County.
My father never said that, of course, for he was not given to bragging.
Still he had a fierce proud look on his face and his eyes were happy.

When the hail came that summer
he was away in the city working his factory job.
My mother collected a cupful of the ice marbles
and put them in the freezer box of our little Frigidaire.
That Friday night when my father came home on the train
she showed him the hailstones, her offering of proof
that the hail had really happened, that the corn now lay in shreds
and there was nothing she could have done to save it.


ABOUT the AUTHOR

Marjorie Pagel grew up in rural Wisconsin where she attended a one-room country school and graduated with a high school class of just fifty students. She moved to Milwaukee for college, earning both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UWM. Meanwhile, she was married, had a family, and worked as a reporter/feature writer for a local suburban newspaper. She is the author of two books and five one-act plays, which have been produced by Village Playhouse in West Allis, Wisconsin.

She continues to participate in writing workshops and is affiliated with local and state writing groups. Writing is part of her daily routine. “It keeps me grounded,” she says. “I want to always remember where I’m from while paying close attention to who I am today – this moment – and my connections to all the people who continue to enrich my life. Although many of the people who have shaped my life are gone now, I celebrate their continuing presence through the gift of memory, and I savor the daily adventure that even an ordinary life has to offer.”

DON’T FORGET! Enter the giveaway by Sunday, May 19th, for a chance to win a copy of her newest book, Where I’m From: Poems and Stories!