Anti-Resolutions: What you’ll STOP doing this year

On January 3, from 6 to 8 pm, join Cathy Pickens for a FREE session to explore how you can make space and time for your creative work in 2019. Come celebrate the start of your creative new year! Space is limited, and pre-registration is required.


‘Tis the season for resolutions, to take stock of seasons past. Most of us dust off the old list: lose weight, make it to more of the kids’ ballgames. Or we just don’t bother, resolving to plug along as near-perfect as we are. New Year’s Resolutions have become passé, predictable, reliable only in reminding us of failures past.

This year, why not try some anti-resolutions—what you’ll stop doing this year?

  1. Stop ignoring what’s around you. Take real notice of the people and things that make your life run smoothly, more pleasantly. Take a deep breath when you walk out in the crisp air. Develop a child-like curiosity about even the most mundane. Write it down, to let yourself see what you’re thinking. Scribble on a legal pad or in the back of your DayTimer—nothing fancy needed. Creativity and “flow” expert Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests noting one thing each day that surprises you, as a way to awaken your awareness and broaden your focus. Talk to yourself on paper about how to solve a problem. Ask yourself “what if …?” and “why?” You’ll be surprised how it helps you focus. Be mindful.
  2. Stop taking the easy path. Try something that scares you—or at least stretches you. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, an object at rest tends to stay there. Conversely, as Matthew Arnold observed, “Genius is mainly an affair of energy.” Accept a speaking engagement, hike up Crowder’s Mountain, take a ballroom dance or cooking or kayaking class for fun, or work on that (writing) project you’ve been promising you’ll start. Each new task requires initiative and risk-taking for the beginner but gets easier—once you’ve done it. Get moving, preferably along an uncharted path.
  3. Stop being one-sided. Learn the delicate art of balance. Aristotle urged us to seek the Golden Mean, emphasizing the importance of balance. Where are you out of balance? Develop where you feel weakest. Read something you wouldn’t ordinarily read. If your bedside books are all history or technical manuals, try some well-written fiction or a book you loved—or wished you’d read—when you were a kid. Try listening to a book on tape (the library will loan you one for free!). Visit the Mint Museums. Turn off the TV.
  4. Stop sitting in the same seat. Perception can be more powerful than reality. Practice sitting in someone else’s seat, seeing from her perspective, testing your own. Maybe you, literally, sit in someone else’s seat in a meeting, to break the routine. Look at an issue from your customer’s or co-worker’s or boss’s or sales clerk’s or child’s or spouse’s or mortal enemy’s place.
  5. Stop being inconsistent. What do you value? What’s important to you? Would someone know your values by what you say, by how you spend your time, by the decisions you make? In trying new things, make sure you’ve grounded yourself, that you know who you are. Take time to nurture your spiritual life. Philosopher William James said, “The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.” That wisdom cannot be gained in the push and pull of your busy life. Be still. Turn off the car radio. Get off the treadmill and take a walk outside. Be alone with your thoughts. Recognize who you are and what you value.
  6. Stop being so serious. When was the last time you felt inspired or motivated by a humorless drudge? Does the fate of the free world actually rest on what you’re doing? Okay, maybe it does. But you can still lighten up.

Oh, yeah. Stop promising to get in shape and just get moving. Hit the gym or the sidewalk. Getting enough exercise is more important than your pant size. You’ll need the energy for all the things you’re going to stop doing this year.


Cathy Pickens’ first mystery, Southern Fried, won the coveted St. Martin’s Press Malice Domestic Award for Best Traditional Mystery. She’s written five books in the series, as well as Charleston Mysteries (History Press), an essay on historic crime cases in 27 Views of Charlotte, a regular column for Mystery Readers Journal, and articles on writing craft and on business. She served as national president of Sisters in Crime and on the national board for Mystery Writers of America. As a long-time professor in the McColl School of Business at Queens, she won numerous teaching awards.

Reading “A Christmas Carol” as a writer

“Marley was dead, to begin with.” From first line to last—”God bless us, everyone”—last week 30 people got together at ImaginOn for a joyous public reading of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. (In case you’re wondering, it takes about three hours.) The cast included 10 Charlotte Lit members and teachers, a dozen local actors, and staff of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.

Each reader brought their own style to this timeless tale, making the text come alive. Hearing it out loud, I was able to appreciate the story anew. It’s beautifully constructed, and writers can learn by studying it. A memorable protagonist, colorful characters, plenty of humor, flashbacks that work, lots of conflict and tension—and finally, in the end, a wholly satisfying redemption.

Even in redemption, though, there is pain and regret. We see Ebenezer Scrooge’s wasted years. Writers might heed both the lessons and cautions Dickens embedded in the story: it’s never too late to make a change, even the most radical one. None of us wants to find ourselves an old Scrooge, having not done what we were called to do—to have not told the stories we wanted to tell.

Here’s an excerpt from A Christmas Carol, and a link to where you can find the whole story. Embrace both the tale and its telling, and you might give yourself no better Christmas gift.


From A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible, save one outstretched hand. But for this, it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?” said Scrooge.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” Scrooge pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.

But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror to know that, behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.

“Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But, as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

“Lead on!” said Scrooge. “Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!”


A Christmas Carol is in the public domain, so it’s easy to find and download in a number of formats. (Here’s one, from Goodreads.)

Announcing: Charlotte Lit’s Studio Two!

Charlotte Lit has grown fledgling wings and is ready to fly.

No, we’re not leaving our current nest—we’re adding another. We’re going out on a limb and opening a second studioon the first floor of the Midwood International & Cultural Center.

We’ll use Studio Two for Charlotte Lit classes and social events. The rest of the time will be a greatly expanded Open Studio for our members. Instead of two Open Studio sessions each week, members will have Open Studio hours every day.

Here’s what you can expect to experience at Charlotte Lit’s Studio Two:

  • A first-floor room that’s accessible to all.
  • A beautiful and comfortable space with sofas, tables, desks, and natural light. (And wi-fi, of course.)
  • A writing reference library.
  • Coffee, tea, soft drinks and snacks.
  • Keycode access for members whenever the room is not in use.

We created Charlotte Lit to be a center—a place to write, research, read, and connect—a vibrant community of writers and lit lovers. This is the next leap we must take—and we need you with us.

It’s a community effort—and a $5,000 challenge!

We want to make Studio Two available to all members without raising rates or limiting access to the higher membership levels. So, we’re asking you to voluntarily support this project, to help us cover Studio Two’s operating costs.

One of our members (who has asked to remain anonymous) has made a generous challenge donation of $5,000! All our members need to do is match it. 

Would you consider making a one-time year-end donation? Or better yet, please consider upgrading your membership from General or Family to Supporting, or from Supporting to McCullers Society. And if you’re not yet a member, now is a great time to join us.

We need just 40 people to join or upgrade to meet the challenge. Will you?

Even if you don’t think you’ll use the Open Studio aspect yourself, we hope you share our vision of a true center for the literary arts in Charlotte, one that provides accessible space for our growing community.

Here’s where you go to join, upgrade, or donate. Thank you!

Announcing Charlotte Lit’s Beautiful Truth Initiative

We created Charlotte Lit because we believe literature is one of the most important means for understanding ourselves, our relationships, and our world, and we wanted to find ways of sharing literary experiences of all kinds with the Charlotte community. This January, we launch the Beautiful Truth program, one of our biggest and most important initiatives.

The program is based on the simple idea that writing and sharing our stories can heal us. That may sound lofty, but what I know is that writing is the best tool any of us have for talking about the things that matter most—in life, in relationships, in community. Healing comes when we’re able to share our experiences, hearts, and truths with one another. Healing comes when we listen. And when we’re heard.

Beautiful Truth is Charlotte Lit’s response to the racial strife and income disparity that have intensified in Charlotte over the last few years. It’s a simple program that brings people from all over the city together into small groups for workshops aimed at developing skills for writing and sharing with one another short personal narratives about our personal lives and life in this community.

These public workshops, held in January, will be followed in February with a weekend of readings and community conversations with renowned poet and speaker Terrance Hayes, and in March by a community-wide open-mic reading event. We hope you’ll join us for all three phases of the program, and encourage others to come, too. Event details are outlined below, but first some background on the impetus for Beautiful Truth.

Imagining a Beautiful Truth

More than forty years ago, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system began what was considered a model for successful racial integration. That model lasted until 2001 when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Charlotte’s race-based student assignment plan. Though school desegregation hadn’t solved Charlotte’s woes––social stratification and poverty being complex issues with multiple causes––it had done something critically important: it put an entire generation of students into learning communities in which black and white students, teachers, and parents related to one another and, to some degree, developed a common narrative about their experience as Charlotteans. Fifteen years later, with our neighborhoods still and our schools again segregated, almost every week brings a new headline that begins, “Charlotte is a tale of two cities.”

Of course, like any large city, Charlotte has many more than two tales to tell. We are individuals with unique experiences and different ways of seeing our hometown. For many, Charlotte is a shining New South city, a banking town with state-of-the-art stadiums and shopping malls––a wonderful place to live, work, and raise a family. But, if we speak the truth, beauty isn’t a reality for everyone.

As national coverage of protests following the killing by police of Keith Scott made clear, too many Charlotteans experience a community in which marginalization, poverty, and criminal profiling are the norm. Too many of us experience the challenge of surviving in a place where chances of moving out of poverty hover at four percent, dead last among America’s fifty largest cities. These stories are true and need to be heard, but they need not become stories rewritten weekly with fresh examples. We can write a new future for ourselves—and for our community.

Telling Our Stories

The good news is that this kind of writing doesn’t require any expertise. All that’s necessary are some basic writing skills and the willingness to sit down with pencil and paper and listen—first to yourself and then to your neighbors.

Personally, I don’t know what I truly think or feel about any event, concept, or idea until I’ve written about it. Writing clarifies. It forces me to dig a little deeper into my topic, to be more honest with myself.  And doing so, allows me to make connections I couldn’t otherwise make. Even better, when I read my writing to others, I sense that they “hear” me better than they might in ordinary conversation. Likewise, I hear better when I’m listening to someone read their writing. Our written stories simply have more weight.

We can share so much with each other about the deepest truths of our experiences by taking a couple of minutes to reflect and string a few sentences into a paragraph. And those of us who live together in Charlotte have a lot to share. I sure hope you’ll participate in some part, or all of, Beautiful Truth. We need your story; it’s an essential part of the Charlotte story.

Beautiful Truth Events

Community Writing Workshops

Charlotte Lit faculty and volunteers will teach 12 free 2-hour workshops: “Writing & Sharing Your Personal Stories,” each held at a Charlotte Mecklenburg Library branch. Our volunteer writers will lead you through a series of activities that will help you to discover, write, and speak stories of your life in Charlotte, from curriculum created by author Patrice Gopo.

2-4 pm; Saturday, Jan. 5 — Scaleybark; Beatties Ford

2-4 pm; Sunday, Jan. 6 — University City; South County

2-4 pm; Saturday, Jan. 12 — Matthews; Plaza Midwood

2-4 pm; Sunday, Jan. 13 — Main

2-4 pm; Saturday, Jan. 19 — Davidson

2-4 pm; Sunday, Jan. 20 — Independence

2-4 pm; Saturday, Jan. 26 — Morrison; Mint Hill

2-4 pm; Sunday, Jan. 27 — Main

Seating is limited; pre-registration is requested for these events. Please register in person at the library branch, or by phone (numbers are available here: https://www.cmlibrary.org/branches).

Weekend with Poet and Speaker Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes

Charlotte Lit is thrilled to welcome Terrance Hayes to our city. Hayes is the author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins, a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry; To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight; How to Be Drawn; Lighthead, which won the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; Muscular Music, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Hip Logic, winner of the 2001 National Poetry Series, and Wind in a Box. Hayes is artist-in-residence at New York University, and is a MacArthur “Genius” Award Recipient.

7-8:30 pm, Friday, Feb. 1: Reading and talk on using personal narratives to share our stories. Midwood International and Cultural Center Auditorium. This event includes the release of the next 4X4CLT Poetry+Art Posters, featuring poetry by Terrance Hayes. Tickets available here.

10 am-Noon, Saturday, Feb. 2: Writing workshop led by Terrance Hayes for writers and educators in the Charlotte Lit studio. Limited to 24 participants. Registration is here.

2-4 pm, Saturday, Feb. 2: Community conversation about sharing stories for social change, facilitated by Terrance Hayes in The Light Factory. Free, but limited to 40 participants. To request an invitation, email us. (Due to demand, not all requests can be accommodated.)

Community Open-Mic Reading Event

7-9 pm, Friday, March 15 at Midwood International and Cultural Center.

Beautiful Truth participants from all over Charlotte will read short narratives written and shared during library workshops. Free, registration required.

Thank You…

We are so grateful for the support of our Charlotte Lit community in making these events happen: Author Patrice Gopo for writing a beautiful curriculum for use during the community writing workshops; Cathia Friou for organizing our wonderful team of volunteer workshop facilitators; 20 volunteer workshop facilitators; and our friends at the Charlotte Mecklenburg library for making space, handling registrations, and enthusiastically hosting workshops at branches throughout Charlotte.

We’re also grateful to all of our donors. Charlotte Lit’s Beautiful Truth initiative is made possible in part with generous grants from NC Arts, The Plain Language Group, and Brooke and Justin Lehmann. We’re still seeking additional donors. Can your organization help? If so, please contact kathie@charlottelit.org or paul@charlottelit.org.

A Moment Leads to an Essay: A Journey in Five Parts

1.

My daughter and I share a plate of fried ripe plantains, a sweet taste that immediately reminds me of my childhood.

“Mommy, are there bananas in plantains?” she asks.

I pause. Bananas in plantains. “A plantain is a plantain,” I say. “It’s not a banana.”

“But are there bananas in plantains?” she asks again. And I think of what she knows. The similarity in taste, the specks of black seeds. This is where the pondering begins. I ruminate about her understanding of this food that matters so much to her Jamaican-American mama. “A plantain doesn’t have any banana in it,” I tell her.

2.

The memories spill forth with a ferocious speed. Plantains. Bananas. The evening so many years ago when my babysitter peeled a plantain, thinking it was a banana, and gave it to me. Me seated on the red stool in my childhood kitchen while my mother fried plantains. A day when I lived in Cape Town and my friend gave me a plantain picked from her friend’s tree. One by one, I turn these images into fully formed scenes. As I write, I find myself wondering: “Why do I care so much about plantains?” and “When my daughter doesn’t know the difference between a plantain and a banana, what does that say about me?”

3.

What is the difference between a plantain and banana? I type those words and wait for my phone to tell me. I discover that plantains and bananas share a common ancient ancestor that boasted much larger seeds. And memories continue to pour into me. My father singing, “Come, mister tally man, tally me banana,” and my sister and me yelling back, “Daylight come and me wan’ go home.” Family. Generations. There’s something here, I think. I keep taking notes, I keep following where the memories lead. I’m still not there, though. This I know. Patience, I tell myself because patience can be what separates a glimmer of connection from a fully-realized piece. Patience is sometimes just what an essayist needs.

4.

At a writing retreat, a prompt instructs me to write words directed at another human being. For reasons only my unconscious understands, I choose to write words to my sister. “I’ve heard it said that one day you and I will be all we have left.” I write about a future day when my sister and I no longer having living parents. I write about a time when it will be just the two of us alive who experienced the memories from the early years of our lives. The free write ambles into the territory of preparation of Jamaican food and what my sister might teach me.

It’s now months since my daughter first asked me if there are bananas in plantains. It is here, though, as I sketch out this imagined scene of my sister and me, that the worlds of memory and moments, research and scenes collide in the most unexpected way. These meanderings, these questions about plantains and my daughter, this was never about what I’m teaching her. This was always about my sister, always about me. A plantain is not a banana I discovered during my research, but they are close. My sister is not me, but we share much in common. Two black American daughters of Jamaican immigrants with different stories about the formation of our identities.

5.

The pondering began with a single question from my child. The writing found life with a long-awaited connection between two sisters and plantains and research about banana trees. In the act of understanding the connections, I began to see what mattered to this story and what might fade away. Yes to a scene of my long-ago babysitter mistaking a plantain for a banana. Yes to a memory of my mother pushing my sister and me in a grocery cart in search of plantains. No to my father singing Dayo. And no—the big surprising no—to the moment my daughter asked if bananas are in plantains. That moment began the search for story, but it wasn’t part of what the story ultimately wanted to be.


Patrice Gopo is the author of All the Colors We Will See, an essay collection about race, immigration, and belonging. You can hear a recent podcast interview with her here. She will teach “Crafting the Personal Essay: The Art of Sharing our Lives and Loves” at Charlotte Lit in January.

On writing a novel: You don’t have to know everything to begin

Kim Wright teaches “So You Want to Write a Novel: How to Get Started and Keep Going” at Charlotte Lit on Thursday December 13 from 6 to 9 pm. Register


Writers use a lot of analogies for the sense of disorientation and fear that comes with starting a book. E.L Doctorow famously said “Writing is like driving a car at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” My friend and fellow novelist Kim Boykin less famously (but quite consistently) claims that her stories are dictated to her by her characters. Their voices, she says, come to her out of the ether and page by page, each plot twist is a mystery, right up to the point that the characters finally explain how their story ends.

Either way, the point is this. You don’t have to know everything to begin.

You don’t have to know much at all.

I think of each story as a room and that there are many doors into that room—many ways to enter and oriented yourself.  Some writers won’t write the first word before they figure out the plot. Others, like Kim, connect to the voice of their characters and some of the more high-minded among us are motivated by theme, choosing to write the books they think the world needs to read, based on the topical issues that most inspire their authors. For me, the door frequently opens in the form of an image. Which can be scary since image, by its very nature, gives you both everything and nothing. The whole sense of the story world reveals itself in one fell swoop but you don’t have a clue what any of it means.

A good example of this is my Last Ride to Graceland, which in many ways has been my most successful book. I was lying in bed on a rainy Sunday morning perusing the Charlotte Observer and I noticed an article on how they were restoring the car Elvis Presley drove on the last day of his life. It had been wrapped in plastic in Graceland for nearly forty years, shoved in a corner of a massive garage, just waiting to reveal its secrets. An intriguing enough notion on its own, but suddenly an image flashed into my mind—not of a 1977 Stutz Blackhawk spending decades being ignored in a garage in Graceland but of that same big black muscle car zooming down a road in rural Alabama. “Fairhope,” I thought, although I didn’t know why, but I did know that a woman was driving the car, a woman who had been born shortly after Elvis died. And I didn’t know precisely how her age fit in, although it was certainly a clue to the mystery of the book but there was trash in the car, trash left over from 1977 and the last time the car had been driven, and that seemed essential too and for some ungodly reason I looked over and saw she had a coon hound on the passenger seat beside her.

And so the book began. No matter how a writer begins or which door they choose to enter into the world of the story, it often feels a bit mysterious when they start. Uncertain and dimly lit, like the nighttime fog EL Doctorow described. But the point is that you must trust in the story’s willingness to unfold itself over time and your own ability to wait, with patience and loyalty to the process, before you even begin to see the big picture.

In that sense, the writer is the story’s first reader—the first to feel its pleasure and mystery and pain and power. You don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to know much of anything. You just have to open the first page and begin.


Kim Wright is the author of Love in Mid Air, The Unexpected Waltz, The Canterbury Sisters, and her latest novel, Last Ride to Graceland, which was the 2017 recipient of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. For the past three years she has been a developmental editor through The Story Doctor, helping writers with issues of story arcs, structure, and pacing. At Charlotte Lit, Kim teaches classes and serves as a coach in the Authors Lab program.

Folksy, Whip-Smart, and Self-Aware: Maurice Manning’s “The Common Man”

4X4CLT poet for December, Maurice Manning, joins us for two events. First, celebrate the release of this edition of the poetry and art posters on Friday November 30 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at Resident Culture Brewing. Manning’s master class, Writing By Ear,  will be held at Charlotte Lit on Saturday, December 1 from 10 am to 1 pm and is currently sold out. Email us at admin@charlottelit.org to be added to the waiting list.


In Kentucky, the muse might be an older boy who says, “Take ye a slash / o’ this — hit’ll make yore sticker peck out— “; or the muse might be the moonshine the boy hands over. Either way, Maurice Manning’s The Common Man begins with a hint of the illicit and a shot of whiskey. Such an initiation forecasts the diction, desire, and occasional delinquency that course through Manning’s fourth collection, which amasses to an oral history of the landscape and community that the poet has consistently and creatively plumbed. Manning’s earlier collections each coalesce around a specific figure: an imagined adolescent (Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions); Daniel Boone (A Companion for Owls); a breathless shepherd (Bucolics).

The eponymous speaker in The Common Man is part listener, whose poems are determined by others’ stories, and part bookish poet, whose titles — “The Old Clodhopper’s Aubade,” “A Panegyric Against the Consolation of Grief” — derive more from a library than a neighbor’s porch. Manning invokes poetic tradition to collide it with the poetry he finds in a place that’s home to pawpaw trees, philosophizing farmers, and even a talking horse. The resulting poems are a conscious mix of high and low. But more than Manning’s previous collections, this book is hellbent on narrative. Folksy, whip-smart, and self-aware, the speaker asks, “You reckon I could ever run out / of stories in my heart to tell?” The poems often unfold with the pacing and plainer syntax of prose, their lines predictably broken. Their turns occur in their turning on the reader, with metaphysically gesturing questions such as: “Were you / raised up with a beast beside you?” Or: “[M]aybe you’re thinking why / is this man so bent on darkness?” The speaker perforates the poems’ intense localness by implicating the reader in the community his poems shape, reminding her, “Part of me / resides out there, and part of you / is out there too. Let’s hope we’ve got / that much in common, a fair amount / if you think about it very long.”

The poems take on the burden of many sadnesses that transcend place: the sadness that comes from relying on a remote God, the sadness that comes from mourning an irretrievable past, the sadness that comes from longing for the love of a good woman. Though Manning dedicates this book to the memory of his grandmothers, the women in these poems are elusive, appearing only in the form of fantasy, comic relief, or some amalgam of the two. This reader wonders what stories they might tell, were they given more chances to speak.


December 2018 4X4CLT poet Maurice Manning is the author of six collections of poetry.  His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets.  His fourth book, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. A former Guggenheim fellow, Manning teaches at Transylvania University and for the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He lives with his family on a small farm in Kentucky.  His next book, Railsplitter, will be published in 2019.


September 2018 4X4CLT poet Cecily Parks is author of the poetry collections Field Folly Snow (University of Georgia, 2008) and O’Nights (Alice James, 2015). She also edited the anthology The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2016). Her poems appear in The New Republic, The New Yorker, Tin House, and elsewhere. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she teaches in the MFA Program at Texas State University.

This review originally appeared July 15, 2010 in Orion Magazine. We’ve reprinted here with their permission. Visit their website at orionmagazine.org.

Morri Creech’s Blue Rooms

The Arts at Queens proudly presents The English Department Reading Series and poet Morri Creech, Tuesday, November 13, 7 pm, Ketner Auditorium, Sykes Building, Queens University of Charlotte.


Nov 13, poet Morri Creech reads from his just-released fourth collection, Blue Rooms. The book is eagerly anticipated; his previous, The Sleep of Reason, was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. You may have seen his poem “The Choice” painted as a Wall Poem at Brevard & 9th Streets, or may have attended one of his classes at Charlotte Lit. Morri is my colleague and friend at Queens University.

The poems of Blue Rooms explore the perceiving mind and the possibilities and limitations of language. Words themselves are the question, what they can and cannot contain, and what this means at a personal level, given the emotional weight of “what slips the net of language.” The book includes ekphrastic poems, which reflect on works of art. They do so with such a depth of voice that, although knowledge of art references reveals satisfyingly complex layers, such knowledge is not required.

In the opening sequence, “Self Portrait as Magritte,” the books’ thematic concerns unfold brilliantly through the figure of this painter, a surrealist known for finding the strange in the every day and for mislabeling objects. As these poems reference art, the art provides a means to comment on language. The reverberations between the two media, poetry and painting, echo the work of Magritte. The self-portrait structure of this series is particularly engaging. Identity is rendered elusive. The self cannot recognize itself, is tangible and yet not present, seeable and yet unknowable. Others cannot be known; “The kissing lovers’ shrouded heads / Lean together in ignorance.”

The second poem in this group references Magritte’s “The Mysteries of the Horizon,” an oil painting with three men in bowler hats beneath three slivers of moon: “These three men share my look and dress./ I cannot say which one is me./ Three ways I face the emptiness,/ The central man, the mystery.” The poems feel inevitable in their form, yet there is also a haunting use of the sentence, creating perhaps a sort of identity question within the kept form itself: how, within these metered, end-rhymed lines, do the poems create such stillness? The space generated by this unhurried music holds revelations that raise more questions: “The self is still our best disguise.”

Throughout the book, the exploration continues, through pastoral paintings and the works of Cézanne. The imagery rendered through language begins to take on a different feel in this context. The apple, the camshaft bolt, the skull: each are explored as parts of a still life blurring into narrative and back again to still life. Certain poems suggest a kinship to the philosophical poetry of Wallace Stevens. There are discoveries to make in the diction, which starts to feel as characteristic as the brushstrokes of Cézanne (natter” and “daub” and “smutch”), creating a particular voice within the disruptive concerns about identity.

There is an increasing urgency, and the tone becomes more burdened. Leonardo da Vinci is featured as the dissector of the corpse. Poems explore violence. The journey of the book leads to “a trick of perception.” In the “Self-Portrait After Goya” sequence, near the book’s end, Goya paints “my nightmare,” and “I cannot speak, strapped to my fever chair.” Language has ultimately led to the cost of the questions, “the circling birds / Of sheer unreason,” the suffering and the sleeplessness, and the terrible images Goya depicts while “trapped in his head.” The final poem on a Japanese folding screen, which follows this sequence, brings relief.


Morri Creech was born in Moncks Corner, SC, and was educated at Winthrop University and McNeese State University. He is the author of four collections of poetry, including his latest, Blue Rooms (The Waywiser Press), and The Sleep of Reason, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is the Writer in Residence at Queens University of Charlotte, where he teaches courses in both the undergraduate creative writing program and in the low residency MFA program.


Julie Funderburk is author of the poetry collection The Door That Always Opens (LSU Press). She is the recipient of fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Sewanee Writers Conference. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte.

Questions to Ask Yourself When You Write Memoir

In 2006, to relieve his back pain, my husband had an epidural, a procedure so routine it’s given to women in childbirth. The minute the needle pushed into his spine, he was paralyzed from the waist down. People kept asking me if I was going to write about this. “Never!” I declared. I’d lived through it; I certainly did not want to live through it again. But then, in 2008, I was held up at gunpoint at the dry cleaner. Here’s what’s odd: That gun did not scare me. It made me sad. I cried for days

I found myself telling the story of the holdup over and over. I wanted everyone to know. At a dinner party, I made my friends join me in a re-enactment. “Okay, John, you be the owner of the dry cleaner. And you, Bobbie, be the robber. Just jump out, Bobbie. Like this. And hold the gun lower. Point it at my stomach. Both of you come closer.” I made it funny so we could all laugh – my fellow actors and our audience.

And then I went home from the dinner and cried.

I wrote an essay about the holdup. But it started growing. Suddenly, I was writing a memoir about my marriage – how our roles had switched, our identities shifted. Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap was taking shape.

When I asked myself the following questions, I began to understand the connection between what had happened to my husband and the holdup:

What did I think then? What else? What do I think now? What else?

Here’s where those questions led me:

Because someone threatened me with a gun, I could finally cry – really cry – over what had happened to my husband. It was as though I were confronting his accident for the first time. How everything can be fine one minute. And then, nothing is. That thin line. How a brushfire can erupt on a perfectly sunny, clear-skied day. How your life can be taken right out of your hands.

How, when you write memoir, you encounter new possibilities for understanding your life. How memoir truly is the narrative of revelation.


Judy Goldman is the author of six books: two memoirs, Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap (which will be published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday on February 12, 2019) and Losing My Sister; two novels, Early Leaving and The Slow Way Back; and two books of poetry, Wanting To Know the End and Holding Back Winter. Losing My Sister was a finalist for both Southeast Booksellers Alliance’s Memoir of the Year and ForeWord Review’s Memoir of the Year. Her work has appeared in The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Crazyhorse, and Real Simple magazine; her book reviews in The Washington Post and The Charlotte Observer; and her commentaries on public radio in Chapel Hill and Charlotte.


Judy’s class, “Crafting a Memoir: How to Weave Personal Experience into a Compelling Story” which begins on Thursday November 8 from 6 pm to 9 pm, has one seat remaining as of this writing. Please go here to register.

 

 

Tech Toolkit for Writers

This post is an electronic version of my presentation at the NC Writers’ Network Fall Conference in Charlotte, November 2018. It includes links for many of the apps and concepts discussed.


PROLOGUE: BEFORE WRITING

The Backstory

Before we sit down and write—on a device or on paper—there are many other things that happen, and which technology can help with, such as collecting random ideas, thinking out a problem, planning your writing, and outlining.

Note-taking

The problems this solves: How to keep from losing ideas; how to organize lots of ideas; how to gather all ideas in one place (or keep all ideas in all places)

  • Notes (Mac, iOS, iCloud): Simple, free, auto sync to all Apple devices
  • Microsoft OneNote (multi-platform): multi-level organization, free, auto sync
  • Evernote (multi-platform): complex, free (sync 2 devices and other limits) or $8/mo
  • Google Keep (online and mobile): relatively simple, sticky note-like; free, sync
  • Simplenote [by creators of WordPress] (multi-platform): free, syncs
  • Phone apps: too many to list
  • Audio notes: phone apps (iOS: Voice Memos; Evernote; Google Keep)

Tip: Select one (or two) apps of any type and use only those

Mind Mapping / Concept Mapping

The problems this solves: How to generate ideas; how to find connections between concepts; how to build characters; how to brainstorm in a structured way

Tip: Use one of these only if it’s better for you than working on paper

Planning

The problems this solves: all the problems with not planning; and how to impose structure on an unruly first draft.

  • Outline tools in Word, Google Docs, Scrivener, etc.
  • Snowflake Pro [by Randy Ingermanson] (Mac or Windows, $50 when purchasing the companion book, How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method)
  • Story Planner for Writers [by Liternauts] (Mac $15, iOS $5)
  • Story Planner [by Joanne Bartley, 21 planner types] (web-based | free – $40/year)
  • Aeon Timeline: visual timeline creator (Mac and Windows, $50; iOS, $20)

WRITING

The Backstory

Here’s an immutable truth: The words will not write themselves. Considering how hard that job can be, our tech should not make it any harder. This section considers the hardware and software decisions that can make your writing life far easier.

Hardware

The problems this solves: the eternal Mac or Windows question; the cloud question; the form factor question; the “can’t this thing just work” issue.

    • Laptop (Mac OSX or Microsoft Windows OS; local apps/data storage, cloud options)
    • Chromebook (Chrome OS; all cloud-based apps and storage)
    • Tablet (Apple iPad, Microsoft Surface, Samsung Galaxy Tab, etc.) or phone; apps are local, storage is cloud-based)

Tips

  • Laptops: pay extra for a solid-state hard drive (lighter, quieter, faster)
  • Test the keyboard; consider an external bluetooth keyboard for tablets and phones
  • If you use more than one device, synchronization is key

Writing Software

The problems this solves: Microsoft Word (and Apple Pages, and Google Docs) is not designed for writers, or for long documents, or for documents divided into chapters and parts, etc.; how to have my writing on all my devices and keep it in sync; how to find a writing environment you love; how to keep copies of the work before I edited it

  • Local
    • Word Processors
    • Writing Apps
      • Scrivener: made for writers by a writer (Mac or Windows, $45; iOS available)
      • Storyist: Scrivener-like (Mac, $59; iOS $15)
      • Ulysses: text only, distraction free, multi-markup formatting only (Mac and iOS, $5/month or $40/year cross-platform)
      • iA Writer: text only, distraction free, multi-markup formatting only ($20 Windows, $30 Mac, $5 iOS, free on Android)
      • Screenplays and stage plays: Final Draft (Mac or Windows, $250; iOS available)

Tip: Most apps have free trials so you can play before you have to pay

  • Cloud
  • Phone / Tablet Apps
    • Microsoft Word (multi-platform, free for most devices, req. Office 365 for iPad Pro)
    • Apple Pages (iOS, free)
    • Scrivener (iOS, $20; companion to desktop version)
    • Final Draft (Screenplays and stage plays; iOS, $10)
    • Many, many others

Tip: Synchronization matters

Writing Without Typing

The problems this solves: can’t get the words down fast enough; carpal tunnel pain.

  • Dictation Options
    • Dragon (Windows, $150; Mac version discontinued, available from online sellers—look for version 5; mobile versions available)
    • Apple Dictation (built into Mac and iOS)
    • Windows Dictation
    • Google Docs Dictation
  • Transcription Options
    • Rev: $1/minute (human)
    • Trint: $15/hour (machine)
    • Otter: 600 minutes/month free (machine)
    • Scribie: $0.10/minute (machine), $0.60-$2.40/minute (human) based on turn time
    • GoTranscript: $0.72/minute (human)
    • TranscribeMe: $0.10/minute (machine), $0.79/minute (human)
    • Sonix: $6/hour or $15/month

Focus

The problems this solves: shiny objects (metaphorically speaking); the barrage of incoming texts and emails; attention deficits of various shades.

  • Remove distractions
    • Freedom: app and website blocker (Windows, Mac, iOS; $7/month, $30/year)
    • Focus Mode (Word) and Composition Mode (Scrivener)
  • Timers
  • Motivation & Mindfulness
    • Tracking word counts in writing apps
      • Word: Tools > Word Count
      • Pages: View > Show Word Count
      • Scrivener: always visible in status bar
    • Meditation Apps (Headspace, Calm, Buddhify, Insight Timer, etc.)

Organizing

The problems this solves: where’s all my stuff?

  • Long Works (multi-chapter: novels, memoirs, etc.)
    • Option 1: All chapters in one document
    • Option 2: Each chapter in its own document
    • Option 3: Use app that is a container (e.g., Scrivener)

Tip: Also see the section below on version control

EDITING

The Backstory

Spell check is not all there is. There are other sophisticated tools available and useful— though not a substitute for human editing and not foolproof. We also have to consider the question of where to keep the prior versions of the work as you edit.

Checkers: Spelling, Grammar, Proofreading

The problems this solves: find the easy stuff that your eye overlooks.

  • Built-in
    • Spell check
    • Grammar check
    • Thesaurus
  • Grammerly: grammar (online, app integrations; free & premium versions, $11-30/mo.)
  • Hemingway: grammar (online, free; Mac and Windows apps, $20)

Helpers: Style, Grammar

The problems this solves: how to uncover your mistakes and quirks, including the ones you didn’t know to look for.

  • ProWriting Aid: style and grammar (multi-platform, app integrations; free and premium versions, $50/year)
  • AutoCrit: style (online, $10-80/month)
  • Master Writer: word choice ($10/month)

KEEPING YOUR WORK SAFE

The Backstory

We don’t want to lose our work. Period. For your writing or any of your device’s contents, you need a multi-tiered system to make sure that your current data is safe no matter what, and that you can go backward into prior versions of your work if needed.

Here’s some terminology you need.

  • Storage is where your data is saved, day-to-day. Primary storage (the original data) is usually—but not always—the hard drive on your computer. Some apps, such as Google Docs, and some devices, such as Chromebooks, use cloud storage (a server somewhere out on the internet) for all files created using them.
  • Backup is making a copy of what’s in storage. There are essentially two kinds of backups: selective backups (some files but not all, such as the file you just finished editing, or only your writing files), or complete backups (that is, your entire computer system). You can make a local backup (that is, in the same place as the primary storage), such as when Word saves a backup copy on your hard drive when you exit, or an external backup (that is, to another device). The external backup can be a physical device such as a USB flash drive (for selective backups) or an external desktop hard drive (for selective or complete backups), or it can be a cloud backup (that is, uploaded to an internet backup service, such as Backblaze). Backup is similar to, but not the same as…
  • Sync is a service (such as Dropbox) that copies your files from one device to others via the internet (or “cloud”) and keeps them all the same, so that changes to one are reflected in another. All syncs are technically backups, since you’re making copies of files, but they often don’t keep legacy copies—older versions of the files, like a backup does.

Backups

The problem this solves: losing your work in a systems crash or loss.

  • Automatic Selective Backups: If your application supports it, enable automatic saving and automatic backup copies
  • Use an External Drive
    • USB Flash Drive: least good option; manual, critical files only, small capacity, easy to forget to do
    • Desktop Drive: best local option, can backup entire systems, easy to hide and remove from the house when needed. Software needed for automatic backups (Mac: Time Machine; Windows: requires third-party, such as Duplicati or CrashPlan). If primary device is a laptop, will have to remember to connect the drive at certain intervals.
  • Cloud Backup: best option; automatic, set it and forget it
    • Backblaze: $5/month unlimited
    • Carbonite: starts at $6/month

Sync Across Computers and Platforms

The problem this solves: having the same work on multiple devices.

Tip: Create a multi-tiered system, including at least one cloud option

Version Control

The problems this solves: what happens to the prior versions as you edit? What if I want to go back? What if I want just some of what I wrote back?

  • Option 1: Overwrite and don’t worry about old versions.
  • Option 2: Make a copy of the work before beginning edits (e.g., using Save As or backup software
  • Option 3: Print hard copies at intervals
  • Option 4: Use software that makes backups for you
    • Automatic in Google Docs (document level)
    • Automatic (customizable) in Scrivener (document level)
    • Manual in Scrivener (Snapshots)

Tips:

  • Set up automatic backup systems available in the software
  • Create a copy before major rewrites or revisions

OTHER THINGS WE COULD TALK ABOUT…

Sharing (working with others, separately)

  • Methods for sharing: Email, flash drives, Dropbox, cloud document sharing
  • Editing/Incorporating Edits with Track Changes

Collaborating (working simultaneously)

  • Cloud platforms that allow multiple editors at once

Formatting Submissions

  • Scrivener to Word
  • Scrivener or Word to Final Draft
  • Any format to email
  • Any format to PDF

Submissions & Queries

Self-publishing Tools

  • The process: From x to y (sometimes via z)
  • For example:

Online Sharing

EPILOGUE: YOUR TASK LIST

1. Select your writing software

    • Scrivener strongly recommended. Try before you buy, and save 20% with the code CHARLOTTELIT.

2. Try out some new apps

    • Grammar & Style apps
    • Focus apps (save 40% on Freedom yearly or forever plans with the code CHARLIT)

3. Clean up your old versions and create a sensible storage system

4. Set up a multi-level backup system