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Piedmont Laureate

~ Promoting awareness and heightened appreciation for excellence in the literary arts throughout the Piedmont Region

Piedmont Laureate

Category Archives: creating

There’s a prompt on your bookshelf!

22 Friday May 2020

Posted by Tamara in continuing, creating, David Menconi, prompt writing, Tamara Kissane, Writing Advice

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

getting unstuck, writing tip

I’m excited to share this writing prompt from David Menconi, the wonderful 2019 Piedmont Laureate.

Near the end of March, I reached out to a handful of experts to request a quick tip or exercise for people who are writing at home.

[Speaking of writers, here’s a suggestion: Dig into the PL blog archives to read the generous and useful posts written by Piedmont Laureates in previous years. You won’t be disappointed.]

It’s taken me nearly a month to circle back around to sharing what I received, but I’m happy to say that a good writing tip rarely goes out of style.

If you are feeling the itch to write, AND you are also feeling blocked, then the tip below from David Menconi might be just the rocket booster you need.

This is an extraordinarily silly exercise, but it has actually worked for me as a sort of mental reboot.

If you’re stuck on a piece of writing, especially how to begin something, put it aside, go to the bookshelf, randomly select a book, randomly point to a sentence & type it.

I did this just now & the book is Lewis Shiner’s very fine 1993 novel “Glimpses.” From page 177:“Does this have anything to do with that Beach Boys tape you played me last night?”

Put aside the book, treat that as the first sentence of something & just keep typing/writing for a while. Don’t worry about how good/bad it is or even think too much about it. I have found that it’s a good idea to stop before writing myself into a corner.

After that, go back to your main task & you might find it possible to burp something onto the page that you can at least start working with.

David Menconi, PL ’19

Read two recent articles of David’s for Come Hear North Carolina: a celebration of our state’s music

A NEW VISION OF THE MUSIC BUSINESS IN THE ERA OF CORONAVIRUS

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC BRINGS UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGES TO THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

019 Piedmont Laureate David Menconi covered music for the (Raleigh) News & Observer for 28 years. His book “Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music, from Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk” will be published this fall by the University of North Carolina Press.

Meeting voice-to-voice about writing. Fifteen podcast episodes for you.

30 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by Tamara in creating, creativity, Process, Revision, Story, Tamara Kissane, Writing Advice

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

conversations about writing, creative process, playwrights, playwriting, podcasts about writing, writers from the triangle nc, writing during a pandemic, writing during covid-19

Friends,

Here’s an item on my list of THINGS-THAT-BRING-ME-JOY: Talking craft with playwrights, writers, theatre-makers and artists of all mediums.

Does that bring you joy too?

For the last 2.5 years, these artist-conversations have been recorded in person and then released via the Artist Soapbox podcast for everyone who likes to listen.

It’s always been an honor and a delight to spend time with my interview guests, and shake their hands, and see their faces light up when they discuss their work.

As COVID-19 in the US has ramped up significantly over the last seven weeks and all Piedmont Laureate events were cancelled, I shifted to recording my podcast interviews online.

Though we are no longer in the same physical space, I continue to feel honored and delighted to share time with my guests and to hear their voices light up when they talk about their work. Since mid-March, I have worked to bring the voices of writers in our community to your ears as quickly as possible via the podcast.

I hope these conversations might be:

  • comforting or stimulating
  • thought-provoking or soothing
  • inspiring or sheltering
  • or whatever you need at this moment in time.

Below you’ll see fifteen podcast episodes from March 30-April 28, in case you’ve missed them.

Like the previous list from March 13-27, you’ll see a roster of incredible writers from the Triangle community including: Monét Noelle Marshall, Ian Finley, Chris Vitiello, June Guralnick, Amy Sawyers-Williams, Jack Reitz, Debra Kaufman, Allan Maule, Mark Cornell, and Cheryl Chamblee.

In addition to locally based writers, I’ve included episodes featuring playwrights and writers of audio fiction from much farther away as part of my podcast series for Howlround Theatre Commons, titled Adventures in Audio Fiction.

All of these conversations have sustained me in moments when I felt very isolated and worried. I found comfort in the connection I felt after 40 minutes of conversation with another human being about creativity, life, writing, process, and meaning.

After this intense flurry of activity (31 episodes in 7 weeks!), the Artist Soapbox podcast will be on hiatus for a bit so that I can return to my own writing, gain a more comfortable handle on my life/home/parenting responsibilities, and blog more regularly here.

If you are looking for inspiration, writing tips, vulnerability and a backstage pass to the writing process, then I hope you will enjoy listening to the episodes below.

If now is not the best time for you to listen, then they will be here when you are ready. Sending you love.

Writing-related episodes from March 30-April 28:

  • 104: Autobiographical writing, providing opportunities for Black playwrights, and creative process with theatre artist, Monét Noelle Marshall
  • 105: Art and education in times of crisis with Ian Finley, playwright and educator
  • 109: What does the Poetry Fox say? Deep connections thru performance writing with Chris Vitiello
  • 110: Questions, structure, & digging deep. Diving into creative process with playwright, June Guralnick
  • 112: Writing a Scripted Audio Fiction Series with Jessica Wright Buha and Bilal Dardai of Unwell
  • 115: Tap into play with applied theatre artist Amy Sawyers-Williams of See Saw Projects
  • 116: The Power of Community with Andrea Klassen of the Procyon Podcast Network
  • 117: The goal is collaboration. Improv & sketch comedy with Jack Reitz of Mettlesome
  • 119: THE NEW COLOSSUS audio drama is available for listening!
  • 120: Mindfulness, intention, and process with poet and playwright, Debra Kaufman.
  • 121: Measuring the mass of a rom-com. Structure, process, and science with playwright Allan Maule.
  • 122: The Parsnip Ship: Revolutionizing the Way You Hear Theatre
  • 123: Inspiration, dedication, and production with playwright Mark Cornell
  • 124: It’s the little things. Small moments, vulnerability and opportunity with writer Cheryl Chamblee.
  • 125: Time to write. Podcasting during a pandemic (with kids).

[Note: The episodes listed above are related specifically to writing. There are additional episodes with other creatives at www.artistsoapbox.org. Click on these links for the complete list from April 13-28,  March 30-April 10, and March 13-27. Please reach out if you need a transcript.]

End of Year

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by nancystoryflow in Alchemy of writing, art, Attention, confidence, continuing, creating, Guidance, heart, prompt writing, Publication, sponsors, Story, teachers, Uncategorized, Working

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

advice, alchemy, art, Attention, confidence, Guidance, muse, Process, Story, teachers, work

December 31st – and my year as Piedmont Laureate comes to a close. When I accepted the honor of serving as laureate for three counties, I felt uncertain whether or not I’d be able to keep up my writing this year. I’d heard from one emeritus that I shouldn’t expect to, that it might be best if I just focused on my laureateship and let the writing rest.

I believe in letting writing rest. I believe it’s beneficial to back away from it at times, and do other things. But I also believe that there is an ebb and flow to the work of writing, and that a writer knows when she should back away and when she shouldn’t. I was in a critical place where I shouldn’t back away. I needed to keep steadily working on the novel I was writing. I’d backed away from it enough. I’d stabbed at it and stabbed at it, like an unskilled spear fisherman, until finally I knew that what I needed to catch that glimmering plot just below the surface was a net, and that the net was simply work. I needed to show up and push through.

For the past year there have been two charts pinned to the wall above my desk. One is a timeline for the novel, spanning 1876 to 1896. It’s divided into three columns, one for each of two main characters and one for national events. The other chart pinned to my wall is the schedule I kept as Piedmont Laureate, divided into months. Scribbled into each month’s space were the events I was attending, and the readings and workshops I was giving. It’s been a busy year!

I’m proud of my work as Piedmont Laureate, and especially proud of the workshops I gave: “Costume Writing Parties” in which we used vintage clothing to explore character development, “Character Emotions” in which I presented thoughts and exercises on creating character emotions that live and breathe and don’t fall flat (sad!) on the page, “Postcards from the Edge of Fiction” in which we wrote using vintage postcards as prompts to explore story possibilities. I also held conversations with writers in each county: Our Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green on the importance of historical fiction, Lee Smith on the subject of mentoring, Nora Gaskin on the subjects of traditional and indy publishing and a panel discussion on The Effects of Social Media on Creativity with Anna Jean Mayhew, Ralph Hardy, Kim Church, Michelle Berger and Charles Fiore. It was lively and wonderful and we all came away thinking we should do this again. There’s so much to say. So much to explore.

And that’s the bottom line here I think. There is so much to explore. There’s so much to explore in talking with other writers, in meeting people, in writing with people, in traveling, and in my own (or your own) writing.

I am almost finished with this novel, almost ready to hand it off to readers and get some opinions. I may have completely failed at getting the story on the page, and honestly, that’s always a possibility for any writer, accomplished or not. We meet the story as dumb scribes. We know nothing until we go on the journey, and sometimes, after the journey is complete, we still know nothing except that we know we are changed. We have gone through something and the we feel differently for it.

Even if the writing fails in terms of publishing (and I have a few books and a lot of shorter work in my closet) it changes me. It shapes me. Writing shapes me as much as I shape it. I’m proud I kept on working on this novel during my laureateship. Accolades are important, but nothing, not even success, should get in the way of writing.

I send big love to all my supporters and friends I met along the way. I thank you for attending workshops and events. I thank the sponsors of the Piedmont Laureate program: City of Raleigh Arts Commission, Durham Arts Council, Orange County Arts Commission and United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County. One thing I learned this year is how hard people employed in arts organizations work for the good of artists. I don’t envy them their jobs. Herding artists must some times feel like herding cats. We are an independent bunch. Most of us have worked outside of the norm for a very long time. Recognition from organizations like these feels important. It feels good. For me it felt like a gift to be celebrated and trusted this way.

I want to close the year by inviting you to please come to one of my free workshops held at Flyleaf Books the second Saturday of each month, 10 to 12. Even people who do not identify as writers come to these workshops. They are, in the words of one attendant, “a buzz.” I’ve been holding these free workshops for 15 years. Fifteen years! Another milestone that passed this year. I started the workshops in Borders Bookstore, and when it closed I kept it going by moving around to libraries. When Flyleaf Books opened, we found a home and I am grateful for such a strong independent bookstore.

I’ve met so many people over the years, and heard so many stories. Sometimes I feel like a story goddess. I give a prompt and people give me a story. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to know that I helped to launch a story into the world – be it my own or yours.

I said it when I accepted the honor of serving as Piedmont Laureate, and I will say it until I die. Stories are how we meet each other. Stories are where we live. Stories are what makes us human, and what gives us our humanity, compassion and empathy, three qualities I believe we all need to cultivate as much as possible.

Is Writing Revolutionary?

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by nancystoryflow in Alchemy of writing, art, Attention, comparison, competition, confidence, continuing, creating, creativity, Process, Uncategorized

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advice, art, Attention, comparison, confidence, Process, stress, work

Art is a difficult thing to believe in these days. Even though I insist on writing, I often wonder, given the state of the world and particularly the country I live in, am I just hiding behind my art? Am I, as artists have so often been accused of being, simply egotistical, self-serving, and shallow for wanting to continue what I started when I was in fourth grade?

Of course, in all that time since fourth garde there were years that I didn’t write. There were years in which I berated myself for not having “discipline.” Also years in which I stabbed at writing something, and looked at my work and thought that it wasn’t “real writing.” It is as difficult now as it was then to believe that my art, that what I create, matters.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Art always has be clawed out of some sort of life. The intensity of the world may change but the messages don’t, or they haven’t changed in my life time anyway.

A few of the messages I have received during the span of my writing life:

Don’t quit your day job.
Read Proust, Faulkner, Nabokov, etc.etc.etc.
Read The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, etc.etc.etc.
Get an MFA                                                                                                                                     Teach in a college
Travel
Have a platform
Have a brand
Have something important to say
And so on.

I have two things pinned on the wall above my desk. One is a piece of paper that says, “Rise up and figure it out for yourself.” The other is a button that says, “Writing is Revolutionary.”

The “Rise Up” quote reminds me that no matter what sort of difficulty I am tangling with in my prose, I will have to figure it out for myself. No one hands you answers when you’re an artist.

And the button, “Writing is Revolutionary,” reminds me that to carve out any sort of creative life is an act of rebellion. To insist on time to create, to insist on quiet and spaciousness, to clear psychic space for art are all acts that go against the grain. They are revolutionary, no matter what audience the art reaches or doesn’t reach.

If an artist reaches some sort of national recognition for her work, her stubborn insistence on creating time and space for herself is often labeled as brilliance. But don’t expect it while working alone in your studio. In fact, don’t expect it at all. Or even yearn for it. To do so will surely throw you off the rails of the track you must doggedly stay on. Most artists are simply dogged.

Art, in the end, publicly appreciated or not, is a gamble. Art is a crap shoot. Art is betting on the horse with the lame leg ridden by the 300 pound jockey. There’s not a chance of winning, but still, isn’t that jockey, that limping horse beautiful? Don’t they stand out? Did anything stop them from being in the race?

Measurements

30 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by nancystoryflow in Advancing the story, art, Attention, character, communication, continuing, creating, frustration, heart, Process, Publication, Reading, slowing down, Story, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

art, Attention, characters, Guidance, Process, Reading, Story, work

I live in a culture that loves measurements. Resumes, job descriptions, salaries, developments – America loves to count. When I cleaned houses for a living my work was measured not just room by room and task by task, but in bathtubs leaned over and showers leaned into. Rags dirtied and washed and folded and dirtied again. Sponges falling apart, their yellow bits washed down suburban drains. Work was measure in blown out, leaking rubber gloves, and shredding mop heads, and the nubs of feather dusters. In backaches and sore knees and Epsom Salt baths and Tylenol and hours spent on the heating pad, on the couch.

Now my work is measured in how many books I’ve published, in awards received or not, in Tweets and blog posts and movie deals (present or lacking). It’s measured by Oprah and the New York Times Bestseller List, and Youtube channels. These are big, public measurements and there’s not much a writer can do or not do to achieve them. These sorts of measurements are the work of the Gods and Goddesses, and Fate with a capital F. All I can do is show up and write.

I don’t take daily measurements of my writing. I don’t count words or even pages. The daily question I ask myself during each writing session is: Have I moved the story forward? Yes could mean a paragraph or three pages. No could mean ten or more pages, pages that do nothing for the story, pages that stall it out and go nowhere.

I work with writers and many of them study writing in a way that I do not and never have. They study trends. They know the industry standard of word count for a YA book, or a literary novel, or a sci-fi book, and they write to meet those standards.

But asking how long a novel must be is like asking how long a piece of string must be. The answer of course is that it depends on many things – mainly what is the string to be used for. A string to tie one’s shoes will be shorter than a string to tie up one’s tomatoes. A string to tie a 10″ box will be different from a string to tie a 2′ box. A string to wrap around a story will depend on the story, and if the story is dependent on the string, then that string better be cut to fit. And so it is with page count and word count.

The publishing world is a place where you can find a definitive answer to whatever question you ask, but I don’t believe it’s good to look for definitive answers. Nor do I believe the book world should be a place for industry standards. The book world, the world of story should be a place of exploration. But writers just starting out are scared of all the nebulousness. They yearn for information, anything to help get started and keep going. I’m not trying to keep information from anyone, and I understand the urge to search for answers. It’s frightening to me too when I face a story I don’t yet understand, and haven’t yet written.

In answer to my own question of measurement: Have I moved the story forward? there’s an easy answer. Has something happened that is significant? If not have I written something that contributes to the character’s development, or to setting? Am I building a believable fictional world? Does this section contribute or is it just there.

I know the answers to these questions when I ask them, which isn’t to say I know the solution. But it does mean I can recognize a problem and not write into it, not dig post holes and build a wall around it. Acknowledging that the story is stalling is the first step to moving it forward.

Readers want stories that move forward and so do editors. Editors dare not say so though, because they work in an industry, an industry that has gone awry with measurements and bean counting and shiny objects. Pay no attention. Do your work and do it well. The most important measurement of all is how you feel about it, and how your character feels about you. In the end, do you and your character respect each other? If so, you’ve done well, and you’ll be in a better place to defend your work against random suggestions having to do with fattening a book for market.

In Praise of Teachers

15 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by nancystoryflow in art, communication, confidence, creating, growing up, Observation, Process, self, teachers, Uncategorized, Working

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

alchemy, art, Attention, confidence, growing up, Process, self, Story, teachers

This is a talk I gave at a fundraising dinner for the Artists in the Schools Program sponsored by the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County. It’s about the teacher I had in fourth grade who turned my life around, and showed me that there was something to become that appealed to me. After the talk, a woman in the audience, a teacher who has had visiting artists in her classroom said that she a change in some of her children after the artists’ visits. She could see them light up, see new possibilities, and become more engaged. Art matters! It matters to children, but it matters to adults too. It matters more than ever now because we’ve all go to see new paths. Here’s my talk:

 

I was a withdrawn child. I was shy. I was awkward. I felt dumb. I couldn’t pass tests. And I am pretty sure that I tested out as having a low IQ. The reason I believe this is because when that first IQ test with the little squares to fill in arrived in my life, probably around first grade, our teacher told us we could not pass or fail, and a test one could not pass or fail did not seem very serious to me, so I filled in the squares to make patterns. And once I was committed to it, I kept it up. So, I don’t know how I tested out. I was probably brilliant one year and off the charts in the other direction the next.

I know though that I liked patterns. I noticed patterns. I noticed shadows and sunlight and tree bark and rhythm. But noticing patterns did not help me in school. It has however helped me with art. And I found this out in fourth grade when I met my new teacher. Her name was Mrs. Semonche.

On the first day, she wrote her name across the board in beautiful handwriting, in a straight line, underlined and she said, “Not Mrs. See-man-chee. Not Mrs. Comanche. Mrs. Semonche.” I was extremely impressed with her, not just because she headed off the butchering of her name right away, but because she was young and beautiful. She was slim, wore A-line skirts, stocking and heels, had fake eyelashes that I didn’t know were fake at the time, and reminded me of Jackie Kennedy, our first lady at the time. In short I could tell that Mrs. Semonche was fresh and new. She hadn’t been in the trenches long. She was not jaded and she had a lot of ideas about how to teach us, she was eager to try them out, and she was a big fan of the arts

During this one year of my life, we studied art. We studied every kind of art Mrs. Semonche could fit into our schedule. We sculpted, we drew, we collected color pictures of famous paintings, we learned about the Impressionists, the Modernists, Abstract Art, Surrealism. We’d never seen anything like Salvador Dali.

We also had a unit in theater. We put on a play: A Midsummer’s Night Dream by William Shakespeare. We were in fourth grade. We made the costumes. We created the set. We memorized the lines. Well, some kids memorized lines. I wanted nothing to do with a speaking part, so I signed up to be one of the fairies with my best friend Ellen. Our job was to drift across the stage periodically wearing some great filmy dresses. It seemed enough to me, but not to Mrs. Semonche. She needed an understudy for the main female role Titania, and there was no one left to do it but me, so Mrs. Semonche, in the way that grown ups do, coerced me into accepting the understudy role. But like the IQ test, I didn’t take it very seriously, and I never learned the lines.

One day Sally Hill, the girl whose role I was supposed to understudy was not in class on a day of performance. All morning long kids were hitting me on the arm and saying, “You’re going to have to play Titania. You’re going to have to play Titania.” And I nodded dumbly and mutely. I didn’t know any part of those lines. At what point I would have confessed this, I don’t know, because Sally Hill finally showed up, and I did not have to shame myself. I got away with it.

Mrs. Semonche was right that I needed to learn to speak up, but she was also wrong. I needed to find my own way to speak up. I needed something quieter. And I found it in the next art unit Mrs. Semonche taught called Creative Writing.

What a breath of fresh air Creative Writing was. I started receiving checkmarks on my papers. Nice detail, Mrs. Semonche wrote across my page, the part where I wrote about the smell of grass, the part where I wrote about the pattern of leaves in the sunlight on the ground, the part where I wrote about the filmy curtains in an old hotel room. Finally my penchant for noticing pattern was paying off. I started writing. I started seriously writing. Outside of school, I deconstructed movies I saw on TV and wrote them into stories, which is plagiarism, but I had no intention of publishing them, so really it was study. In the same way art students learn about composition by copying pieces hanging in museums, I was learning about plot and characterization and dialogue at a very young age.

Until Mrs. Semonche entered my life I had not known that writing and storytelling could be things, were things, adults did. I did not know I had a talent for anything. Stories were magic to me, and remain magic, but that magic was legitimized by Mrs. Semonche.

I took Creative Writing as an elective throughout public school. I wrote my first novel in 11th grade. I’ve written six books since then and published four. I’ve learned something from every single one of them. I learn something every day about writing and how to be an artist. It’s a daily education that began for me in fourth grade when I was lucky enough to have Mrs. Semonche as my teacher.

In 2012 I attended my fortieth high school reunion. I’d not really been aware of it at the time, but I went to school with the same batch of kids from first grade through 12th. When asked what teachers we might invite to our reunion, we named Mrs. Semonche. She only taught that one year. In talking to my classmates, I learned that she’d made a difference in their lives too. The arts, they said. She introduced me to sculpting. To painting. To writing. To acting. To a new way of seeing the world. To knowing I was smart. I learned I had a talent. I began exploring. I started reading. I visited museums. She expanded my world. That introduction to the arts was a lifeline. I heard this again and again.

Mrs. Semonche, that one teacher who celebrated the arts and taught her only fourth grade class everything she knew, did attend our class reunion. She had cancer at the time, although none of us knew it. We surrounded her and hugged her and told her what a huge difference she’d made in our lives. Many of us had found a niche because of her. We began to understand ourselves as important and worthy. We started expressing ourselves, and we kept it up through the sixties, through the turmoil of our own roiling hormones, through good decisions and bad ones, she gave us a tool to use for the rest of our lives.

This is what the arts do. They give a feeling of belonging, of expression, of value, of community, of humanity. The arts make us kinder, and we need that. The arts give is different points of view and we need that too. The arts give us empathy and self worth and self trust, and we need all of that. When you support the arts you support much more than that one individual who created something. Your support fingers out into places you can never know about.

I teach a free class at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill. I’ve been teaching this free class for 15 years. Sometimes someone emails me and says, “Remember that story I started in your class. Well I finished it, and it’s going to be published.” Just yesterday a student, Don Basnight, emailed to tell me he’s been accepted into The Monti in Durham and to say thank you. And I feel so blessed when this happens. My own career may or may not be going well, but art is never about one person. Art is always about relationship. It is about how we can help each other. Artists are often seen as selfish, but we’re not. We just have different sets of priorities.

Mrs. Semonche passed away a few years ago. She’s someone I will never forget, and although I never fessed up to her about not knowing my lines as the understudy to Titania, I am sure she is aware of this now, and forgives me and is probably having a good laugh too.

So I want to thank you for caring about the arts, for supporting the arts. You never know who you’re touching, and that spread of goodness, even without knowing its exact trajectory, is its own reward. I hope you put your trust in that, because it’s a solid place to stand as a human being. The most stable of all.

Thank you.

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