A Poem About Writing Group by Wendy Bartlett

2004
Alone at Roma

I sit and wait and wonder why
The writers' group ain't comin' by
I scribble here to pass the hour
And wonder why they missed their power.

I know I'm here for myself first
The tea I bought will calm my thirst
For words that get stuck in my pen
I ask myself, do I need them?

I glance up to the door in hopes
That I may feel I'm not a dope
To think they might come here and write
And do their writing like a right.

If they and I remember well
For years all women couldn't tell
The truth that lurks in every vein
That must be written to make a change.

Again I glance up to the wall
A painter friend has come to call
Not me, but him, to show her art.
She's put the horse before the cart.

I nod and say, 'are these by you?'
She smiles and I can say with truth
The paintings here light up the place
And put a wide smile on our face.

For she's a woman who held her brush
Through all her life, in spite of the rush,
And saw her work as but life's cheer,
Her paintings, flawed, but shown and here.

But where is my dear writers' group?
Some are traveling, some out of the loop,
I hope they're scribbling in a coffee bar
In another part of the world, no matter how far.

San Francisco Writing for Change Conference

I spent the week-end as a volunteer at the Hilton in a wonderful atmosphere of writers, editors, agents, and entrepreneurs. The only problem I found was that I wanted to be everywhere at the same time. There is so much information coming out of the mouths of the speakers that you, as a writer, want and need to know. The frustration is now abated by your ability to go to the San Francisco Writers University, a new online University where you can download free and also pay for audios and videos of the lectures. http://www.sfwritersu.com/

NaNoWriMo Who me write a novel in a month?

After a long while, I am back to say that somehow I am starting to write my next book. It is social pressure. Writers I know keep asking me if I am doing the write-a-novel-in-the-month-of-November thing. No, I say. I couldn't possibly. I only got 30,000 words done last year. But my daughter, Elizabeth Stark, (www.elizbaethstark.com), even though she has two three year olds, is doing it and also helping others to do it at the same time! I said to her, heck, what can I do to help? So I am babysitting soon to give her more time. Meanwhile, something clicked and here I am again, writing up a storm. I missed one day already, but, again, what the heck, just like my credit card, I will pay it down a little every day. This is such a discipline, but the results are amazing. No criticism: just write, write, write. In thirty days, presto, 50,000 words. (You do the daily math, please!)

Elizabeth Stark interviews Author Michelle Richmond

http://bookwritingworld.com/2010/08/23/michelle-richmond/

Michelle Richmond’s Secrets: Our Video Interview on the Writing Life23rd August 2010 by Elizabeth Stark under Featured Michelle Richmond is a wonderful writer, and you can tell just hanging out with her that she, like Charlotte, is also a good friend. In any case, she was so much fun to talk with we didn’t want to leave. Plus her books are the kind you can’t put down.

Manuscripts in Progress: Marvin Spector finishing Stay High

Marvin is in his final six months of over twelve years with his long novel called Stay High. I mentioned it earlier in my blog. Here is one of his poems included in the book. If anybody knows of an agent who would be interested, this is extremely beautiful writing on the subject of the Hippie Trail.

Leaving

Did someone shout freeedom?
Or was it just an icy dream on a fiery day?
From blood congealed by aching desire,
To the rich, red explosion of a juicy beet,
Past the tingling taste of the tiny
Purple and blush bubbles of a blood orange,
Freedom is scarlet, carmine, crimson, vermilion,
The penultimate shriek. Without it, nothing changes.
An opaque layer of burnt sienna blankets his mind,
Intensifies when he tightens closed eyes,
Only a mood, yet it seems more real than any relic of
Civilization built from bone, wood, or stone.
Suddenly the sonic vibrations from the shouted word,
“Freeedom,” shatter a crystalline chrysalis
Buried deep in his unconscious,
Crumbling the wall of color, freeing his mind of mauve.
92
In a dream within a dream,
He watches the sound of breaking glass
Awaken a tiny threadlike scorpion
Sleeping on a peach-scented bed of pellucid opal
In a golden bassinet lined with raw silk and fine linen.
The bed belongs to Babylove,
Who blindly reaches for a swollen breast,
While the deadly insect scurries away.
Did no one see? Just me, just me?
* * * *
He’s leaving today, but deep down it barely registers.
See, for him, everything’s middles,
No beginnings, no ends except birth and death.
Always, solving one problem automatically creates
another.
Like a pendulum overshooting its resting place,
His responses are always too much or too little.
In a nightmare,
Wounded, exhausted, he stumbles, and falls.
Blood dots the moonlit snow.
Gaining ground, the savage pack howls in triumph,
Encircling him in the bruised purple dawn,
Sitting on their thighs, slit-like topaz eyes
Gleam with suppressed excitement.
93
Stomachs growl, tongues loll as they wait without patience
For darker skies to hide dark deeds.
In every life he was the victim, preferred it.
How else maintain his humanity?
Since power corrupts, and fame attracts the infamous.
Good and bad meant little to him.
Most times he didn’t know the difference,
And arrogantly thought no one else does either.
Besides, one always becomes the other,
Like every opposite in this hell of the emotions.
Even though the ferocity
Of our over-the-top world stuns him,
Life is still sacred, isn’t it?
Despite the ravages of time, pain, and death,
We’re all undying spirits, right? God’s thoughts?
Again, that booming sound, freeedom.
Like blood coursing through plaque in an artery,
The word smashes through a spider’s web of dark and
Tangled thoughts, sweeping everything before it.
Now, he finally hears it, and for the first time in months,
He’s happy, deliriously happy, falling down happy!
Happy! Happy! Happy!
Nobody knows freedom like a convict released.

Write poems, write songs: while you wait for the muse

I go to my writers' group and I can't think of what I should be writing for my novel. Surely it is done, I say to myself. But this death in my family is taking its toll, and it seems easier just to write a song or two. And that is what I have done the past two Fridays at my writers' group. Now I have to think up the music. I would like to do that with my electric piano, with its dust collecting as it also waits.

Death as inspiration to a writer

I have not blogged lately because I have been dealing with a death in my family. It has only been five days now since he died, but how difficult to put into words what this means to me. It is a process of what was, what is not, and what will now be. It is those moments when a shock of recognition of the finality of it flow into my vision. It is the fodder of future writing.

It was night. I circled his bald head with my hand. Earlier when I did that he purred and turned his head towards his shoulder, eyes shut. Now there is nothing. Yet my other hand holds his hand and suddenly this dying person squeezes my hand twice. It was the last contact with another human being before he died. In the morning, it felt like those two squeezes were saying the most powerful words in a dying person's vocabulary: "good-bye."