The Real Writer

The Book of Hopes and Dreams

Today I received this email and am passing it on to you:

I'm writing to let you know about The Book Of Hopes And Dreams. It's a charity, poetry anthology, published to raise money for the Medical Aid (Afghanistan) appeal of the Glasgow-based charity Spirit Aid, (an entirely volunteer run organisation, headed by Scottish actor and director, David Hayman).

As a volunteer organisation, Spirit Aid are able to ensure that 90% of all the funds they raise go straight to the projects they are involved in (unlike most of the bigger charities whose admin and advertising budgets swallow huge percentages of all donations).

The Book Of Hopes And Dreams, which is a celebration of the human spirit (even in times of great adversity) has captured the imagination and hearts of some of the greatest living poets of our times; all of whom have freely contributed work to this anthology.

There are contributions from Margaret Atwood, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, John Heath-Stubbs, Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Tony Harrison, Alasdair Gray, Edwin Morgan, Penelope Shuttle, Anne Stevenson, Jon Stallworthy, Alan Brownjohn, Ruth Fainlight, David Constantine, Moniza Alvi, Cyril Dabydeen, Elaine Feinstein, Vicki Feaver, Michael Horovitz, Tom Leonard, Robert Mezey, Lawrence Sail, Jay Ramsay, Charles Ades Fishman, Geoffrey Godbert and Ian Duhig, amongst others.

The book costs £9.99 ($20 US) and can be ordered in all high street bookstores in the UK. It can also be bought outside the UK via the publisher, Bluechrome or from UK Amazon.

We truly believe it is one of the best anthologies to have been published this century. Not only is it brimming over with the work of award winning poets, it's message is resoundingly positive and optimistic in outlook, which many will find refreshing, given the zeitgeist for poet-modern irony, ennui and despair.

More importantly, royalties from every copy sold will go towards providing mobile clinics, doctors, nurses and medicines for the people of the far flung, mountainous region of Baglan in North East Afghanistan, where the population hadn't received any medical care whatsoever for 25 years, until Spirit Aid raised funds for their first mobile clinic.

In reality, at least six mobile clinics are needed to provide even basic medical care for the people of Baglan. With your help Spirit Aid will get closer to making that a reality.

I hope you will consider buying this book, because it really will help to save lives. It will also help to improve the quality of peoples' lives. And who knows, with its uplifting tone, it may even improve the quality of your life or inspire your own writing endeavours. Mike Matthews, one of the contributors wrote me recently and said: "The anthology is fantastic, and it has served as a major inspiration for me to continue to write every single day, for the poetry in it is genuinely high quality and uplifting. I have not been able to stop writing since it came out, and I carry it around with me everywhere, opening it before every writing session."

I also hope that you will help spread the word about the book. If you are inspired to do so I have several suggestions of ways you might do so, all of them simple, and none too time consuming:

Give the book a mention or a review in your blog

BUY THE BOOK and add a hotlink to http://www.rimbaud.org.uk/bookofhope.html on your website and/or blog.

Thanks very much for all your support.

All the best,

Dee Rimbaud

ps: You can find out more about Spirit Aid by checking out their website at http://www.spiritaid.org.uk

You can read David Hayman's account of his involvement in distributing medical aid to villages in Baglan province by clicking on The Book Of Hopes And Dreams section of my website, which is at http://www.thunderburst.co.uk

Kairos vs Chronos

The Greeks recognized that there are two entirely different aspects of time: chronos and kairos. Sarah Ban Breathnach, in her book Simple Abundance, gives us insight into the differences:

"Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners, schedules, beepers. Chronos is time at her worst. Chronos keeps track. Chronos is the world's time. Kairos is transcendence, infinity, reverence, joy, passion, love, the Sacred. Kairos is intimacy with the Real. Kairos is time at her best. Kairos is Spirit's time. We exist in chronos. We long for kairos. That's our duality. Chronos requires speed so that it won't be wasted. Kairos requires space so that it might be savored. We do in chronos. In kairos we're allowed to be. It
takes only a moment to cross over from chronos into kairos, but it does take a moment. All that kairos asks is our willingness to stop running long enough to hear the music of the spheres."

The best life is one in which there is a balance between Chronos and Kairos. Writing takes place in Kairos. If too much of your time is Chronos (which includes always doing for others and being the 'go to' person for everything - both at work and at home), your creative energy begins to dissipate - dry up - and it takes a lot more effort to find it, coax it into being, and get it going again. Schedule more Kairos time into your day and your week. Pick a few hours on the weekend (at least) when family and friends fend for themselves. You're first responsibility is to yourself. Only when you meet your own needs - both basic and creative - will you be able to fully give to others.

YOU DESERVE TIME TO WRITE. It is your right to have time for the things that make you happy. If writing is one of them, then tell whoever needs to be told when you are off limits so you can enjoy some Kairos. Note I said 'tell,' not 'ask.' Be gentle, but be firm. This goes for telling yourself too. At first it will be hard to ignore the kids fighting and the laundry, or the report that's due, or the phone, but be strong! Even if nothing comes and you don't write a word, sit still with a notebook and don't move until the time is up. You will at least be thinking, and your writing mind will be taking note of your efforts. Eventually it will come around and offer you something. You can't bully it! It has to believe you will make time for it on a regular basis.

Your writing, your voice, your ideas, your imagination - all precious and deserving of your attention. It's worth it. You're worth it. Make time. Kairos.

FanFic: Write an Episode for Your Favorite TV Show

When I was an early teen, a girlfriend and I used to write episodes for our favorite TV show, Battlestar Galactica. You remember: Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, Lorne Greene. We loved it. And we wrote 200 page 'scripts' for the show for about a year. They probably weighed more on the side of romance than science fiction (I had a crush on Benedict; she had a crush on Hatch), but they were great practice at character development and sustaining a storyline.

I haven't done this in years, but have come across others doing it, which has been a nice surprise. Not many people know this, but I'm a mad Doctor Who fan from way back. I've been watching the show on public television for over 20 years and loving every minute! (I'm not a big sci fi TV/movie watcher, but there are a few that I can't resist and Doctor Who is one of them.) I am thrilled that it's back with new Doctors and episodes (I'm more partial to Eccleston than Tennant as the Doctor, I have to say), and have come across many blogs where fans are taking matters into their own hands and writing scenes and episodes of their own to develop the relationship between the Doctor and his companions, as well as his backstory, and producing funny, technical, dramatic stories to boot. It reminded me how much fun it was to write like this way back when.

It's called FANFIC (fan fiction), and it's a fabulous exercise that I encourage you to try. The characters and structure are already in place for you, all you have to do is think up a story and start writing. There's no pressure, only fun. What's especially good about it is writing outside your genre. If you normally write romance, maybe try a cop show. If you write humorous pieces, try a hospital drama. Sci fi is fun because there are so many possibilities - anything is possible: romance, science, drama, history, humor, politics.

So c'mon you literary fiction writers or poets, show me some Spock!

Imperfection, Spontaneity, and Risk - Top 3 Tips

TOP THREE THINGS: (these won’t be a surprise!)

1) The first and best thing you can do to bring more spontaneity, imperfection, and risk into your work is to MAKE TIME TO WRITE – REGULARLY. If you don’t do this, every time you do manage to squeeze out time, you will be overwhelmed with all your ideas, guilt because you haven’t written, and the feeling like you really have to make it count, so what you write needs to be great, and you will end up squeezing the life out of your writing. When you only have little bits and pieces of time, it’s hard to keep in the mental and emotional swing of the piece you’re working on. You spend a lot of time just settling down and organizing your thoughts.

If you have a really busy schedule, see where you can cut back. A creative mind needs time and space to open, to daydream, to gather, to play around. It doesn’t do well with fifteen minutes here and there (though take those if they're all you have). So you need to make time to write – at least 3 times a week – regular days and times, like an appt with yourself. Give yourself a minimum of two hours if you can. No less than one. (As you get regular times under your belt, you can be more flexible and reschedule as needed. Create the habit first.)

2) You also should have a writer’s journal that you carry with you at all times. One with you and one in the car. Jot down impressions, ideas for stories, bits of dialogue you heard, something you saw, something you felt, a question you want to answer.

3) Writing exercises. Get some books of these and work your way through them – pick random exercises or start at the beginning (or start at the end). Whatever feels right to you. These will allow you to experiment with a range of ideas, images, feelings, experiences. It’s like an exercise or health plan for the writer. Sometimes you will produce something amazing and sometimes you won’t. That’s not how doing exercises should be judged – on what you produce. It’s the act itself – of writing, of exploring and experimenting – that's where the real gold is.

Stay tuned for more detailed tips...

Get a New Toy

How can you breathe new life into your writing? How can you get more spontaneity, imperfection, and risk into your work? I'm going to be doing a series of posts about this, but I'd like to start with a story first.

My westie, Keegan, is fourteen. He's a fabulous dog (anyone who knows me knows I'm crazy about him and with good reason, in my opinion!). I like to keep him as active as possible - long walks, playing, etc. Well, for the last two weeks, I have not been able to get him interested in any of his toys. I went through all sorts of ridiculous gyrations trying to get his attention - I threw them around, kicked them around, snuck up on him with them, walked them slowly under his nose and - nothing. I dumped out the big basket of toys I have and spread them out on the floor, which usually gets his interest, to the point where he'll come by and take several of them one by one, as if he's making a pile of his favorites, and then he'll play with these for a few weeks. This time he completely ignored me.

Being the fanatical dog mother I am, I told a friend about this, and that I was worried he was starting to really slow down, that this was the beginning of the end, and I didn't know what to do - worked myself up about it - and my friend simply said, "Chris, get him a new toy. He just needs a new toy."

Duh.

Worked like a charm.

So my first word of advice to you is - do something new. Either in your writing (try a new technique - for a quick one, write in the voice of someone else (a persona piece) or in your life or both. Go to a new restaurant, or a movie you wouldn't normally see. Rent some foreign films. Visit a new neighborhood in your city. If you're religious - go to a different church. Go to a festival. Buy an article of clothing you wouldn't normally wear, wear it somewhere, and see how you feel. Try a new food. Listen to new music.

You can't keep moving in the same circle every day and expect your writing to zing. Get some new input - especially sensory. Gather new experiences, images, sounds, tastes, smells. All of this will come in handy at some point. Take your notebook and describe everything. Use fragments if that will help. You're not trying to write beautiful prose in that moment - you're just trying to absorb your environment as vividly and specifically as you can. Include how you feel.

Get a new toy.

Leave Room for Wonder

I'm working with a group of writers who are all polishing books, and so I've had beginnings and endings of books on the brain. I wanted to share this tip with you:

Don't answer every single question in your book. All writing is done to explore some kind of question - but there doesn't necessarily have to be a complete answer. Leave some room for the reader to wonder what could happen, what might. Let them obsess; let them try to solve the issues in their own mind.

A great teacher of mine, in talking about poetry, said that a good poem doesn't come to a full stop, it pauses; it rests. A good poem could go on from the ending if you wanted it to. This is also true for fiction.

IN SHORT: leave room for the reader's imagination to enter the story - not just in what you do and don't tell, or your characters do and don't say, but the ending itself.

Journal Opportunity #2

Opportunity sounds much better than 'assignment' doesn't it? Here's another one, as sent to my class, inspired by Writing for Your Life (Deena Metzger):

At the heart of whatever we write is a question, or series of questions. We write to answer those questions. Usually it ends up being an exploration. Truly, a story shouldn't necessarily solve a problem so much as illuminate. Human questions/issues/problems are usually too intricate and paradoxical to answer/solve.

Asking a question leads to the mystery of a story. The deeper you go, the more you learn, the more that is revealed. For writing to be 'deep,' the writer must be aware of the question(s) at the core of it. We are each asking a particular set of questions, and our lives are uniquely designed to answer them (via values, experiences, desires, fears, etc.). If we're not aware of this, we're in danger of reducing and trivializing experiences through explanation. As a result, the story/poem/essay doesn't feel as satisfying.

So keeping that in mind, what are the themes that you find recurring in your work? What are you trying to understand? What obsesses you? What are you afraid of? What's missing in your world? What images, symbols, metaphors, and dynamics repeat themselves in your work? We're going to go backwards here - take the answers to these and formulate your set of questions. Have as many as you like, but at least 4, based on the questions above.

Now ask these questions of a character that you are currently working with, or who has been hovering in your mind, or one you wrote about a while ago who is still haunting you. For this character, change the word 'work' to 'life' so it makes sense for them. See if anything interesting, new, inspiring comes up.

Time to interview the man behind the curtain - YOU.