Remington Roundup: #Writing, #Revising, & #Poetry

1960's photo of woman at Remington typewriter

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.                                                                          ~ Virginia Woolf

For this edition of the Remington Roundup, there are no priests (sorry), but there’s definitely poetry and places to hang with your writing and revising friends. 


#Writing

Hey Word Warriors, last call for anyone wanting to participate in the upcoming Study Hall: #AmWriting this Sunday, April 8th, 3-5pm (CST). You can join online via Zoom or show up in person at the Studio in West Allis. We’ll read from work by a few favorite authors and write on four different prompts.

Read more about the meet-up HERE, and register by Saturday the 7th!


#Revising

If you’re like me, you have several rough pieces in notebooks, stashed on your hard drive, previously printed and paper clipped for future edits. If you’re me, some of those pieces have been sitting in the queue for way too long. Revisions can be daunting.

There are plenty of books to turn to and articles to consider when diving back into a draft, but here’s one you might bookmark: “Re-envision Revision with Sandra Scofield” where novelist Sarah McCoy interviews Schofield on Writer Unboxed.

“You have to take a big step back and get perspective. What is this I’m telling? What’s it about? And then describe what you have produced. . . . I really do mean you should describe the manuscript, in detail. Know it. Then you can start evaluating it.” ~ Sandra Scofield

She’s also teaching at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival this July. Anyone up for a road trip?


#Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, and there are so many ways to celebrate:

“I then recognized…some true and awful thing about being a poet and a poet’s relationship, not to words or the beauties and meanings words offer, but to the blank space those words are written on, to the page: that one must learn to trust that its thin, near nothingness can bear the burden of a life.” ~ Dan Beachy-Quick on Poets & Writers

When the Pen Grows Quiet

Billy Collins’ poem, “Budapest” (especially this animated version) is one of my favorite go-to sources of inspiration.  In it, Collins speaks to the creative process through the life of a pen.

“I watch it sniffing the paper ceaselessly / intent as any forager….”

A writer on the hunt led by a fountain pen with an endless supply of ink. Magic moments when the pen, or the story, takes on a life of its own and makes up for all the hours and days when the prose reads rough or the plot impossible. Wouldn’t it be great if we were all “ceaselessly” creative?

via snowbear on morguefile.com
via snowbear on morgue file.com

But any writer knows there are stretches of time (maybe even weeks) when the story stalls and no amount of coffee or muffins or change in scenery kicks the creativity back into gear. While those times are frustrating, they don’t have to be debilitating or the reason to give up entirely on doing what you love. You might simply need to tap into your creative juices in a new way. So what do you do when the pen grows quiet?

Pick up a guitar.

This isn’t a metaphor. I’ve had a few days recently where the novel got pushed to the wayside, the short story fell flat, where I questioned the validity of a character I’d created. You’d think if you write fiction you can make up whatever you want, but a character’s choices still have to make some sense. So when it became difficult to stare at the page, I really did pick up a guitar. Or…a ukulele.

See, my daughter takes guitar. For a while each time we went to lessons, we walked past a row of ukuleles, all of which called to me in their four-string, strumming kind of way. First, I smiled in their direction but let the realist in me shrug off the invitation. I’ve got crow’s feet and carpal tunnel. The thought of manipulating my hand into the shape of a decent chord made my wrist hurt. Then occasionally after lessons, I would stroll past a little closer, close enough to pluck a string or two. Just for the thrill.

Later, I mentioned to my daughter that some day I might buy myself a ukulele, plink out a tune or two. We could form a band. Play on Sundays. Good fun. She thought it was a great idea, so I resigned myself to “yeah…some day,” like “probably never but it’s fun to dream.”

Then the owner of the guitar store said he was retiring and closing the store. I’d have to move to a new place for my daughter’s lessons, but more important: I’d have to make a decision to buy or not to buy. Things got serious.

IMG_0685I convinced myself that, for as many times as I sat outside the practice room listening while my daughter talked G7 chords and open strings, surely I had picked up a little technique by proxy.

Next thing you know, there I was with a ukulele, a tuner, and a Hal Leonard book.

I’m hardly any good, mind you, but I can pluck a simple song. And, I know the chords to play back up for my daughter as she plays “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” A very slooooow version.

I had no idea how strumming the ukulele would push me further down the page to the end of my novel draft or how it might reveal a stronger thread for my troublesome short story. But suddenly, there was music after dinner.

There was a smile on her face, then on mine.

Somewhere in the corner of the room, my muse was tapping her foot, not because I haven’t put pen to paper but because that song is catchy. And, when it comes to creativity–in any form, there’s always a story in play.

Good fun.

A break in the monotony of “poor me, this plot isn’t working.”

And, this slight turn off the main path to a light-hearted play on strings has been just the inspiration I need to get back to the pen.