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."

Camping, Singing and garage sale freebies

On my way to the folk singing campout in Boulder Creek, I saw some free books. I got three hard cover brand new books of Harry Potter. I will hold them until my grandsons are ready. They are three now: that should be about a year at the rate they are reading.

I am trying to write a song to a friend's music. It is very complicated music, and I feel like I am writing an opera: many parts at once. Quite a challenge, and not at all like folksongs or novels. I listen to a recording of it as I drive and little-by-little the words find themselves.

I sang at the campfire, and I sang at the mike. Two heart songs: Plaisir d'Amour and The Sisters of Mercy. Quite a few members of the audience were younger and many had never heard these songs. I was delighted to re-introduce them and keep them alive.

A little more about Elizabeth Stark's Interview with Lucy Jane

This was an absolutely spellbinding intervew for me, as an author almost through with my third novel. I learned so much I thought I already knew. There is nothing like hearing about another writer’s process: a list of linking scenes, for example. By the end I was drooling to hear more about this actual novel, and when she said penguins, and the father-daughter, science-musical hints, and the effect the scenery can have on people’s characters, I was hooked. I look forward to reading this amazing book, The Big-Bang Symphony.

I liked the interplay of the interviewer, Elizabeth Stark, with the interviewee, Lucy Jane Bledsoe. Great interview!

Elizabeth Stark's Interview at BWW of Lucy Jane Bledsoe

I just checked out this spell-binding interview by Elizabeth Stark of author, Lucy Jane Bledsoe. It is long, but I was glued to the screen from beginning to end. What a treasure!


http://bookwritingworld.com/blog/2010/06/24/interview-with-author-lucy-jane-bledsoe/comment-page-1/#comment-264

That Song: like pulling teeth

You must have heard the story of a famous writer who is at a party and is talking with a dentist who is about to retire. He says, "You're a novelist? I am going to write a novel when I retire."

"Oh," says our famous novelist, "I am going to pull teeth when I retire."

Surely novelists put in millions more hours in their work than any dentist ever did. Novelists sweat hard behind the scenes to make a novel seem easy. Like dancers and musicians. Again and again and again. Back to the keyboard. Delete, delete, delete. Read back, listen. Read aloud. Bug your friends. Pay for readers, editors. Re-write.

Naw, I think I will go out and pull some teeth!

Guilt! I didn't make it to the CA writers club today!

You know, I guess the sunshine prompted me to stay away and play the guitar and learn new chords so I can make up a great song one day. That's my excuse and I am sticking to it. Also, I was really bad: I didn't type in my writing today. I usually write on Friday and type it in on Sunday. It's the weather: what else can it be? But, hey, at least I did the writing. Pulling that novel together now. Like teeth.

Denmark, 1963 a poem by me, Wendy Bartlett

Denmark 1963

A quite simple matter
At twenty or so
A train ride to Denmark
Just backpack and go
From there on the ferry
To Tom’s Oslo town
I wasn’t afraid
Of the people around
The train in the station
Breathed one last sigh
The giant clock signaled
It was midnight, goodnight
The morning train slumbered
While I stood alone
The giant train station
Would now be my home
My eyelids they fluttered
My mouth made a yawn
The men in there shuddered
Nobody was warm
My knees wobbled slightly
The quietness came
Six hours to kill
Outside there was rain
My backpack was heavy
Put it down on the floor
Then lowered my body
Could not stand anymore
Sleep entered my body
Could not hold it back
I dreamed of my train
Asleep on its track
Six hours I huddled
And kept out the cold
Not one person touched me
Or talked to me, bold
So in Denmark a woman
Is left on her own
It isn’t an invite
If she crashes alone
It was freedom to be there
A new taste to me
A glorious feeling
Of how one can be free

San Francisco Free Folk Festival

Inspiration, folks! There stood Faith Petric, 94, singing and playing her guitar, and standing so very straight! I liked all her songs about sitting around singing together (and not checking email, etc.). She sang Malvina Reynolds, too. Hold it tight, and you won't have any. (a penny) I thought about writing my one last great song. I know so much more about story now that I have written a number of books. You would think I could get a song down well by now. But for some reason just setting myself up for a "great" song gives me writer's block on the subject. I know a woman who writes a song a day! I could do that! What an exercise to not have to write a great song! Just like this blog: it isn't great. It just is. And so it gets written, somehow. I think about songs: political songs, love songs, poetic songs, sad songs, funny songs. Perhaps one per day? No, all that is scary. I like the way we do it in writers' group: dig up four words and go on writing from there. Now, let me see, la, la, la.....

Manuscripts in Progress: born in a hollar

Well, this man calls his wife and himself, Bonnie and Clyde. He is a neighbor in Dutch Flat and he told me he just finished his memoirs. He was born in hmmm was it West Virginia? Where, he said, the Carter family lived. I supposed he meant the banjo types, not the nut types. He was orphaned, he said, at eight. He just doesn't know where to put the commas, as he only had a fifth grade education. So, of course, I said I would edit it for him. Only two hundred pages including photos. It intrigued me. We shall see. So many manuscripts in progress around this world!

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada

A friend emailed me about this novel, written just after WWII. It is now translated into English and has made a huge come-back. I will start it tonight. It is based on a true story about a working class couple in Berlin who decided to take a stand against the Nazis. It is a deeply moving story of two people who stand up for what's right, and for each other. I know I will love this book. I ordered it from Mrs. Dalloway's, and not Amazon. What is more exciting than bringing a book home that you know you will really want to settle down with and read until it is very late and you ought to be in bed!

Kate Moses at Mrs. Dalloway's: June 3, 7:30 p.m./Elizabeth Starks Interview

I just saw Elizabeth Stark's interview with Kate Moses see Video Interview of Kate at http://bookwritingworld.com/blog/2010/05/21/interview-with-kate-moses-2/
and was thrilled to see that she will be reading locally on:
Thursday, June 3, 7:30 p.m.

At Mrs. Dalloway's: Kate Moses reads from Cakewalk: A Memoir (Doubleday, $26).

Growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, Kate Moses was surrounded by sugar: Twinkies in the basement freezer, honey on the fried chicken, Baby Ruth bars in her father’s sock drawer. But sweetness of the more intangible variety was harder to come by. Her parents were disastrously mismatched, far too preoccupied with their mutual misery to notice its effects on their kids.

Check out Elizabeth Stark's wonderful, spellbinding interview. I am hoping to go and see Kate Moses in person this Thursday!
http://www.katemoses.com/site/

California Writers Club speaker: Kristen Caven on My Glamorous Cartooning Career

The other author I heard speak in Oakland at the California Writers Club was Kristen Caven, author of Perfectly Revolting: My Glamorous Cartooning Career
In 1990 Kristen Caven witnessed a revolt as students at Mills, one of the last remaining women’s colleges, shut down the campus to keep boys out of their classrooms. Her new memoir, Perfectly Revolting: My Glamorous Cartooning Career, includes a reprint of Inside the Mills Revolution —which won the Bay Guardian Cartoon Contest but was banned on the Mills campus—plus over 100 more of her hilarious cartoons, and a story about following her muses to womanhood.

Kristen was a wonderful speaker, full of genuine smiles and a nice sense of humor about life. I like to draw, so was fascinated to see how she made this book up with her cartoons. http://www.kristencaven.com/

The God Patent (www.TheGodPatent.com) Ransom W. Stephens

I went to the California Writers' Club a week ago which is now held at the Main Oakland Library. I had not been for awhile, and it was such a pleasure. There were two speakers, one of whom was Ransom W. Stephens, author of The God Patent. I found him to be an engaging speaker and one who I would want to hear again if the opportunity arose. It turns out he was a student of Stephanie Moore, as I was briefly. For more information on him, here is the connection: www.facebook.com/ransom.stephens. Here is a quote he puts out: Author of The God Patent, (now in print from Numina Press) www.TheGodPatent.com

“…the first debut novel to emerge from the new paradigm of online publishing… sings of the heart and the scientific method as two parts of the same song.” –SF Chronicle

I will write about the other speaker in another blog. Also engaging!

Two poems by Luis Lázaro Tijerina

AN INDIAN SUMMER
FOR ANITA O’DAY


Your alluring cat eyes beckon from the dark…
A voice teasing, quick to laugh,
your sensual face still in my heart,
I see your full, red-painted lips
singing to the trees, to the gentle wind
of the romances you lived through
in promising springtime,
only to have your heart broken
in an Indian summer.

Sweeet Georggia Brown,
with your luscious flare,
Sweeet Geroggia Brown with jazzy airs!
You, beautiful jazz lady
casting your spell with your black dress
and wide brimmed hat,
my Stella by Starlight…


A Birch Tree Stands in a Field

A birch tree stands in a field,
its white bark as loose as a girl’s chemise.
All is quiet this day, as it has always been...
Nothing stirs across the river; only the sounds
of distant birds can be heard, as it has always been.
Here, rumors of war or of the laughter of a girl playing,
or someone’s dying in quicksand, is taken
as a matter of course, just like
the river flowing past the birch tree.

A birch tree stands in a field, alone and slightly proud,
like my own life...but what I once valued I have thrown
into the raging waters of the St. Lawrence River.
I think rather of the river that flows here
near the birch in the field..
Sometimes I hear again the great songs
about the 22nd Krasnodar Division who fought
with heroism in the Far-East before I was born,
before the birch tree with its exquisite white bark
singled me out as its friend
I think quietly on this day
about those who will yet die, alone,
near the birch tree.