Author Archives: Stefanie Lipsey

The Great Gatsby: Write Now, Write this Summer on the Gold Coast. Writing Prompt #71

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Oklahoma farm, NYC tenement, Gulf Coast fishermen, where were your ancestors in the 1920′s when Gatsby held his parties on the Gold Coast? Would you have been invited? Would you have been serving drinks? Was your family in another part of the world?

Glen Cove Mansion – home of this summer’s writing retreat

I imagine I would have been serving Martinis on a little black tray that matched my apron back then. Or maybe, by some miracle, I would have made the guest list.

Here on Long Island’s “Gold Coast,” the North Shore, Gatsby is very much alive and on camera. We refer to towns as East Egg, hike the rocky beaches, and visit Teddy Roosevelt’s taxidermy specimens at Sagamore Hill.

And at night, parties happen. They still happen. There are places to make it happen.

One of my favorite places for parties and writing is on the grounds of the Glen Cove Mansion. I pretend I live there.

This summer, I will live there with a small group of writers. Will you be one of them?

I don’t like to promote my own projects, but I’m really excited to share this amazing opportunity! My friend and Literary Agent, Linda Epstein, and I will be hosting the  “2013 Writing and Yoga Retreat.” Here’s the deal: Our retreat will be filled with guided inspiration to explore your work in progress, workshops to delve deeper into your writing, delicious food, and the company of other writers who are serious about their writing. There will also be dinner and conversation with some of the publishing industry’s top experts, and the opportunity to participate in twice daily yoga instruction.

Come, write with us – Gatsby style. But hurry, we have a limited number of spots so apply now!

Now, back to our prompts. You may want to have a copy of Gatsby on your desk. Enjoy & keep writing!

WRITING PROMPT # 71:

  • Assuming you were not alive in the 1920′s, imagine where you would be. Look to your ancestors or imagine an American persona. Write a poem or essay that recalls something from the time before the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. Pluck from the Harlem Renaissance, Woman’s Suffrage Movement or “Golden Age”. 
  • Let one of your characters read “The Great Gatsby” (or any other novel) and then write down his or her thoughts about the characters and themes that weave through the book. Get into the head of your character by seeing how they read the world. How would he or she feel about Gatsby?  Outraged at the excess? In love with the excess? A little bit of both? Do you and your character react the same? Write the conversation down. What did you learn about your character?

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

Thank you for visiting. I consider each click an honor.

The Desk Shrine: Still Life with Writing Prompt

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desk shrineCalendar, the flowerpot my daughter made in elementary school, post-it pad with library logo, yellow calcite paperweight, Langston Hughes PSA postcard, files beside my desk. Each item is carefully arranged. Each reminds me of the work I have done and the work yet to be done. They remind me who I support and who supports me. They remind me that I’m not alone.

Yesterday, before my students arrived, I flipped to Monday and read from my Louise Hay calendar, “I truly believe that we are here to bless and prosper each other. I reflect this belief in my daily interactions.” Who cheered you on to get you where you are? Who prospers from your help?

WRITING PROMPT #69

  • Make a still-life with words.Describe a desk, table, dresser or coffee table that belongs to a character in a story you are writing. Do the objects want to feed each other in a poem instead? How does a photo of Langston Hughes connect with a flower pot painted by a child?
  • Journal Questions: What have you done to nurture yourself lately? What does your writer-self need to create? Where can you be of service?

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

  • Share your still life. Post your writing here!

Thank you for visiting. I consider each click an honor.

Celebrating Earth Day with a Cicada Shell: Writing Prompt # 68

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It rained most days that week two summers ago, but since we were poets, the weather was perfect. On the first morning of a five-day workshop at Omega with Marie Howe, we were asked to go outside and really notice. Our job was to slow down, stop, zoom our lenses then write. (I’m paraphrasing)

I walked toward the lake. Ran toward the lake. Lakes, I reasoned, are good for poets too.

I don’t know if I was really aware of my pace, but when I tripped and fell, I flew pretty far.  It was the top root of an oak that at first glance resembled an old man’s knobby knee.

I heard someone say, “What’s the rush?”

No rush. I’m going to dust off and head on back toward the footbridge. See you later, lake.

That’s when I saw him stuck to tree bark: a bug with eyes as large as its head, mouth open wide. His arms and legs clawed the tree in mid-action, like a rock-climber but there was no action, he was a shell – the most animated exoskeleton I had ever seen.

What was he trying to tell me?

© Troy Bartlett – http://naturecloseups.com/usage

WRITING PROMPT #68

  • Welcome spring, the season of  Earth Day. Get outside and have a conversation. Don’t make a mess and don’t let the city speak for you – talk to bugs and shelled exoskeletons. Where are they going next?  How does it feel to be left behind?  Listen carefully for an answer. Then write from the voice of an animal, bug or HUMAN who has shed his or her skin, left it to rot, and walked away. Use National Geographic for more behavioral insight and visual inspiration: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/cicada
  • Journal Question: What are you shedding right now? What do you want to leave behind?

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

-       Come see Marie Howe read at Queens College tomorrow night! PSA New Salon in Queens, Queens College Library at 6:30 pm.  Click here for more info.

-       Check out Troy Bartlett’s nature photos. I just discovered his site while search for cicadas. Thank you, Troy, for the picture.

-     If you enjoy these free prompts, apply to my Writing and Yoga Retreat running this summer July 25-28th!  Follow me on Facebook, visit www.stefanielipsey.com or Writing Yoga®  to find events and share ideas.

Thank you for visiting. I consider each click an honor.

 

Finding Ease, Again: A Writing Prompt

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“They hit you where you feel at ease so you won’t feel at ease, ever.” - Chris Matthews

Another national tragedy and our hearts go out to victims and their families. Ripples of people: the Sandy Hook families for whom the marathon was dedicated to, the ones on the sidelines, runners stopped by bombs and runners stopped by the sound of bombs. London announcer on the BBC explains the sequence on 1010 Wins, our NY news station, and for a minute we flash to the Tube, the underground, the tube of television sets long buried in landfills.

Where are we? What is this world? I’m taking my notebook and dog for a walk, visiting the sea.

morgan park glen cove

Morgan Park, Glen Cove, NY, April 15, 2013

WRITING PROMPT: When something awful happens, our mind connects the dots. Memory sinks from a choked up throat to tightened chest, to swirl in the stomach and aches through ground. Describe how a time of sadness feels in words without ever writing what happened or why. Write from a place of ease.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

Sending thoughts of ease and healing to Boston –

True Story: me, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Brad Pitt and a Parking Lot (a Writing Prompt)

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Which is the true sign? Which is the “True Story”?

Are you walking Palisades Park, a movie set, or a beach with a sideways view of the Bronx?

palasades park sign A week after crying goodbye to palm trees and raw foods in Santa Monica, I find that James Franco and Jonah Hill have followed me home. Brad Pitt too.

No, they didn’t actually follow me, but funny that two days after returning home from LA, a film crew takes over the town on Long Island where I work.

What were the signs? Four big white trucks with cameras strapped to the roof?  A crew turning into the beach parking lot? Security guards not letting me eat my lunch on the beach?

No, this was it: someone actually changed the sign to read, “City of Newport Beach.”  At least three signs in town were swapped in the middle of the night. Your mind is tricked for a moment. But here’s the big secret: we’re not in Newport Beach.

bayville sign: newport

I don’t think Brad Pitt will care that I tell you this. There are no secrets in movies.  Four huge trucks meant it wasn’t indie or documentary, but a trail from last week’s trip to LA. Like the stars you don’t see walking on a street in Hollywood or Beverly Hills, you ignore shiny rental cars parked in front of the local amusement park and deli.

The film, “True Story”, tells the story of an Oregon man who murdered his family (based upon a book by Michael Finkel). It’s a case of stolen identity. What were the signs for that?

WRITING PROMPTS:

  • What happens when one part of your life crashes into another? You think you are seeing things. You think you are going slightly insane. Write a poem, story or essay where signs point to everything but what is physically written right in front of you or your speaker’s eyes.
  • If you live in NYC or LA movie filmings are a fact of life. Don’t think you’re safe if you live anywhere in between the coasts. No part of the country is exempt, because quaint little towns and smaller cities get invaded by big white trucks too. What would you do if you ran into Brad Pitt at the local deli? Write a scene with your favorite movie star. Ignore him (or her) or not.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

Thank you so much for stopping by, writers, poets and star stalkers. I consider each click an honor. See you on the beach!

The Storyteller and the Poet: a St. Patrick’s Day Writing Prompt (revisited 2013)

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Ireland on busImagine you’re traveling by bus along a beautiful road, just a short distance from Dublin, Ireland. The driver stops, let’s small creatures pass by. He gets off the bus as if to see which realm they are from. You decide to get off the bus too.

You walk for miles. You aren’t tired. You’re not thirsty, hungry, wet, or cold. A river’s walk takes you to places greener than all places you have even been to before and finally, you reach the home of the storyteller.

Is the storyteller there?

Yes, he has just finished outsmarting a giant and is now having a cup of tea to relax. Please sit, he says. So you do. The storyteller works in an office in the city now,  but he used to travel from house to house where he would be fed and put up for the night. Luckily, his investment in stories has paid off nicely.

How did he do it? Well, it was just one story that changed his life because it is always just one story. You lean in closer. He sips on his tea. You sip on yours.

The story was told one way when he was young, but then, like the river, it changed over time. Even the master storyteller never tells it the same way twice.

But, still, you must hear how that story sounded on the day it was born, if he could just tell it right now, you would leave and never ask another question! Luck is with you today, the storyteller says….

WRITING PROMPTS:

  • I tell my students that on March 17th, they all get to be Irish. This week, you get to be Irish too, but since you are a storyteller, please take the whole week to enjoy your temporary identity (should you choose to accept the challenge). Read myths and poems old and new. Let your imagination go until, just like a true weaver of tales from any culture or tradition, you are fully convinced every single word is true.
  • Listen to some Irish folk music while you write. It’s easy to find on Youtube, but support the musicians by purchasing a song that you really like. It’s okay if you get up and dance with the a few of the leprechauns outside the door – just as long as you make it back to your desk.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Were you one of the 11,000 writers by my side at AWP in Boston a few days ago? Did you hear the keynote speaker, Nobel Prize winning poet, Seamus Heaney?  In his conversation with Rosanna Warren and poet Derek Walcott the narrative turned to traditions, family, and politics in Irish writing. He spoke of his admiration for the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. Read Heaney’s work for pleasure, mastery, and story.
  • Spend some more time with the stories, myths, music, poems and artwork of Ireland or any culture outside your own. Get immersed. And if like me, you do have some Irish blood, read and write on this theme beyond the 17th. Who are your favorite Irish poets?  I have had the pleasure of seeing Eavan Boland and Paul Muldoon  live. Of course, there’s W.B. Yeats  and James Joyce living in the Irish poets’ collective unconscious.

Thank you so much for stopping by, storytellers. I consider each click an honor.

If You’re in a Bad Mood, Please Don’t Share Your Crap: a Writing Prompt

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Is it ego that makes people cranky? Life changes? Bad Marriages? I want to believe that the crankiest of us all have good reason to lash out at others on a regular basis. In fiction they always do, but in life – what gives?

I had the misfortune of being used as a verbal punching bag today.  I know it was nothing I did wrong. It was a reaction to a conversation about a project that the “lasher” and I are working on together. Before approaching her, I ran through my mind several options of how to say what needed to be said.  I thought of three possible ways to begin the conversation and opted for the most benign. It didn’t matter; I got yelled at anyway.

I wonder when she decided it is acceptable to say whatever is on mind in an aggressive and obnoxious manner? Sadly, she wasn’t always like this but now her reputation precedes her.

After taking a deep cleansing breath and handling the confrontation with as much love and light as possible, I got angry too. I walked away, but couldn’t shake the negative cloud.

Anger is a writer’s gift, I decided. It’s fire. It’s fuel. It moves forward. It makes the pen do crazy things. It’s hard to go around spreading love & light and then write something that doesn’t sound like a fat marshmallow.

Are you ready to purge a little anger and frustration? Good. This one’s for you. Please drink a lot of water. This stuff’s toxic.

WRITING PROMPT # 64

  • What makes someone become so bitter?  Write a persona poem or short story from the point of view of someone who really hates life, but has every reason not to. How do you create sympathy for such a character?
  • Take a page from Louise Hay’s playbook. Hay is a writer and healer in her 80’s who looks incredible and has more energy than most quarter centenarians have. She preaches the practice of daily affirmations that many people find corny to say aloud, but man, do they  work. “Life loves me,” is my favorite. Write a list of the reasons why “life loves you.”  Go ahead, brag about your greatness because no one is looking.  Choose one quality from your list and write a dialogue with someone who is trying to knock you down. You are now not you, but a character and for the sake of poetry, and ONLY for the sake of art, the hater wins.
Louise Hay signing books with lightbeams, Feb. 2013

Louise Hay signing books with lightbeams, NYC, Feb. 2013

 

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

Thank you for reading and keep writing!

Lucille Clifton, In Memory, Celebration, Wonder

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Two of her daughters sat in the audience. Twelve of the world’s most accomplished poets sat around tiny tables on stage. One at a time, the poets read with the grace of those who are able to simultaneously channel greatness and embody it. They were themselves. They were Lucille. They were both.

poets first taking stage

poets first taking stage

On Thursday night, several major poetry organizations presented a moving tribute to Lucille Clifton. When each poet stepped to the podium and began the recitation,

Sherman Alexie
Tina Chang
Toi Derricotte
Michael Dickman
Timothy Donnelly
Cornelius Eady
Thomas Sayers Ellis
Nick Flynn
Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Marie Howe
Sharon Olds
Tracy K. Smith

and Mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran chilled our spines with delicious poems in song,

the packed auditorium was silent.

STOP and click here if you’ve never heard Lucille Clifton’s voice.

When you catch your breath, continue reading.

On Thursday night, there was no separation between audience, poem, poet and spirit. If Clifton wanted to bring us into the moonlight, dialysis unit, history book, bathroom, we went and laughed or cried or both. Sometimes we got angry, but she cooled us off with her humor, reassured us in a motherly way, that although the world is not fair, we are under obligation to make life a celebration.

It feels trivial to ask you for a poem inspired from a Clifton poem as a “prompt” but I could not walk away from such a transformational event without sharing what I saw, felt, learned.

I ask you to celebrate the seen and unseen forces that sit beside you when you write. I ask you to honor the poets you love and if you don’t know all the poets on the above list, I can reassure you that they were not chosen to honor Lucille by accident. Seek them out too. You will be blown away. Promise.

WRITING PROMPT # 63

  • Lucille Clifton inspired generations of poets by speaking the truth. What is your truth? Don’t embellish. Don’t hide. Write what you believe without apology.
  • Challenge your habits. How long have you been writing like “you.” Are your stories, essays, and poems long? Make them short. Do you have hundreds of pages filled with your personal habitual themes? (I do!) Time to shake it up. Read a poet, perhaps one of the great teachers on the above list, and notice what you admire. Pay attention to techniques that you have never considered. What can you learn? How can you break the habit of self-imposed structure?
  • Memorize a Lucille Clifton poem. Why? Accept the challenge and please tell me why my fingers typed this final request all on their own.

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

Thank you for reading and writing

What’s Askew? A Winter Writing Prompt.

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beach askewIn a single day, snow melts. Winter coat, noontime sun and absent winds warm you too. But something’s askew.

By next turn of the seasonal wheel, you will dip your toes in the water and they won’t feel numb. You will take off your coat and clothes and swim to the other side. Fresh tracks in sand will be more human than webbed. Not now. Not yet. Somethings askew.

On the beach, the lifeguard chair leans a leg into sand as if still deciding whether it’s really worth the effort to rise. He’s kicked down to his knee right where Sandy left him. There were more pressing structures like homes, schools, roads, and bridge to fix.

Beaches feel optimistic on warm days. You might too. But yes, something’s askew.

WRITING PROMPT # 62

  • What’s askew? What looks perfect in the background, but up close is injured and neglected? Use a chair (beach or otherwise) as your metaphor. Can you sit in it? Will you be able to get up if you do?
  • Write about the tease of warm weather sandwiched between below freezing days. What does warmth make you want to do? What unfinished changes will be buried by next change of the thermostat?
  • Close your eyes. Sit. Breathe. When you are ready, open your journal and write about what warms you.

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

Thank you for reading and keep on writing!

Isn’t That Arrow a Bit Large for a Cherub? A Valentine’s Day Writing Prompt

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Technically, he’s not a cherub, but just try to find a picture of Cupid before he became the tiny, chubby, winged creature gracing drugstore Hallmark cards. You may find Pre-Renaissance statues of this transformed Roman god standing naked and tall, but it won’t be at your local CVS.

Cupid wins as Valentine mascot, but what are your associations with this pink, red, and white doilied holiday? Chocolates tossed out a tenth floor window, flowers flung to the curb that missed the metal can? Valentine’s Day can be wonderfully awful in the world of story.  It’s a sad sight, those perfect dozen reds lying dead in dirty snow or a  half-eaten sugary cake sitting uncovered in the fridge.

Valentine cake

Does your story need conflict? Happy Valentine’s Day!

WRITING PROMPT # 61

  • Write a love or anti-love poem. Is it about joy, ecstasy, anger, loss, exhalation, fear, or expectation? All of the above? If your poem longs for sugary love, make it spicy love. Let it gush – then squeeze out the moisture right on the paper plate.
  • Notes from the Renaissance. Write about the  unexpected fall off Raphael’s brush. There’s Cupid with elbows propped, taunting the crowds with his Cherub friends. Cupid might be ready to shoot his arrow, but maybe your main character believes otherwise. Give the girl (or guy) a reason to make a mess out of all those chocolate hearts and teddy bears.
  • What was your worst Valentine’s Day? Your best? Write in your journal what this day represents: feelings of love, hate, disappointment, ambivalence. Who is there? Angels or Demons?

paper valentine cake

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

Thank you for reading and keep on writing!

Spot Below the Skin Where Poems Itch. Writing Prompt #58

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I’ve been putting cream on the wound instead of letting it tell the story. It lives inside the poem and the poem speaks to the part of the self that isn’t pretty, perfect, corrected, refined, domesticated and non-toxic.

The unwritten doesn’t sit in a neat file on my computer. It refuses to be cataloged like a library book.

Suzzalo Library in Washington (2)

As much as I revise poem 145 or poem 25, they fight me. The poems ask for permission to leave. I fuss with their hair.  My library is too quiet. I have too many rules on the wall. I tell my poems to go if they don’t like the service. After all, they are not here to be healed.

An occupational hazard of being a librarian is the desire to be helpful and neat. Being helpful keeps me away from the burning, and neatness makes me want to toss all the scraps before they have a chance to fall to the floor.

Where do your poems come from and where do they live? Do they take vacations? Do they interrupt sleep in the middle of the night crying for milk? Do they find you on walks or wake you up with a start? In other words, how do they haunt and what are you going to do about it?

WRITING PROMPT # 58:

  • Have you been writing or cataloging? Peel back the band-aid and make some noise in the library. Don’t let librarians like me shush your poem. Forget neatness. It doesn’t count today. Just write.
  • Throw away something on your desk that binds you. Do you have one too many postcards, talismans, or superstitions? Write about letting something go.
  • For your journal, answer this: What can you write at this very moment that would honor your shadow?? What can’t you admit to? Who do you need to forgive? Is it youself?

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

Thank you very much for visiting and writing each week. I consider each click an honor. – Stef

New Year, Old You. And is that Such a bad thing? Writing Prompt #57

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After dodging the end of the world last month, it seems anticlimactic to make a bunch of resolutions that won’t last through February. Maybe this is the year to update “you” instead of trading it in?

There’s work in renovation. It involves figuring out what you do well, what works in your life, and what you can gladly throw out to the curb.

2013 is the year of innovation and renovation rather than total overhaul. Garbage is a carefully curated mess that strangely resembles my writing life. Old ideas, manuscripts, poem germs and fiction outlines have finally decided to speak up. Renovation is renewal and alchemy.  The question is who stays and who makes it to the Saturday ride to the dump?

garbage 2013

WRITING PROMPT # 57:

  • What’s in your garbage? Dump out the trash bin onto your desk. (Use newspaper or scrap if you’re worried about what will be dumped.) List what you find. What does your garbage know that you don’t? Write it down.
  • Give yourself a “writing renovation.”  What writing habit of yours could use a make-over?
  • Write your 2013 “anti-resolution” rant. What will you NOT change? What will you refine? What will you keep? Sing your own praises. 2012 was a rough one. Congratulate yourself on making it to the finish line.

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

Thank you very much for visiting and writing each week. I consider each click an honor. – Stef

Because We Have Wings…and Things to Recycle. Writing Prompt #56

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Wings. A tattoo, eagle arm, butterfly, dragon relative. When I tell you about wings, what do you see?

Lipsey winged journal

I picture the artist Christina Bjenning spinning recycled metals into a necklace I now wear called, “Wings of Desire.”  I had just met her at her cliff-side studio, a converted garage with sweeping views of the Sound. She wore thick boots and a scarf and had child-like enthusiasm for making beauty out of what others toss in the pail.

Three years ago, the necklace told me become an alchemist myself spin it into Chapter 3 of my novel. And so I did. It too was called, “Wings of Desire.”

Many years plus a few days later, Christina and I will be surrounded by wings at the Arts Studio in Sea Cliff. This is a group art show and you are invited. Bring your wings. Broken wings okay too.

Wings Dec 15 2012

WRITING PROMPT # 56:

  • What are your “wings of desire?.” Did you watch the Wim Wenders movie where an angel falls in love with a trapeze artist in Berlin. Homer writes epics for peace. The library scene is awesome. What is the point of angels on Earth?
  • Write about winged things: birds, butterflies, beetles, planes. Don’t romanticize. Include recycled garbage, rubber tires and chemicals.
  • For your journal, answer this: What gives YOU wings to soar???

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

  • Post YOUR story, essay, thoughts, or poem here. Don’t be shy.
  • If you enjoy these free prompts, please “like” my new Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/StefanieLipsey.Writer. Visit www.stefanielipsey.com or Writing Yoga®.
  • See you at the Creative Arts Studio this Saturday, December 15th!  I promise there is incredible art on the walls from many talented local artists including Tracy Warzer herself. Event goes from 2-5 pm. Reading at 3:00 and Music at 4:00.  256 Sea Cliff Ave, Sea Cliff. Email me at info@stefanielipsey.com if you have any questions.

Thank you very much for visiting and writing each week. I consider each click an honor. – Stef

Making a Writer’s Space Under the Boardwalk (Writing Prompt #55)

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I finally did it! Every Monday, I go to an office and write after work for three hours. It’s not easy. Mondays can be painful, long and exhausting, but it’s a good way to honor the start of the week. Particularly when you are recovering from natural disasters.

Boardwalk at Long Beach

Just like getting up on the “right side of the bed” sets the tone for the day, making Monday evenings a time to write no matter what sets the tone for each day that follows through Sunday.

If you’ve been reading these prompts, you know that my writing happens at the coffee shop, bar, restaurant, park, beach, backyard. But now, it’s almost winter and this November I got myself an office.

Do you need to be more creative this winter with your own writing space?

WRITING PROMPTS # 55:

  • Find a new space to write. See if you can make it a regular time and place. Before you get there, have a specific project in mind. A real, creative, artistic project. No list-making, emailing, blogging, texting. Just sit and make your art.
  • Integrate the season into your writing project. Notice how the air feels. It’s rainy and depressing in your novel. It’s raining in the 1800′s where your historical fiction piece is set. It’s sunny on the boardwalk in the summer of 2012. Transfer the temperature into words.
  • Hurricane Sandy is gone, but are you back to normal? Some of you didn’t feel a thing and others are changed forever. A baby left its first home, a mother lost her husband and moved to another state, and this is not fiction. Has Sandy entered your pages? How did she retreat? What did she leave behind?

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

  • Post YOUR story, essay, thoughts, or poem here so we can learn from each other.
  • If you enjoy these free prompts, please “like” my new Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/StefanieLipsey.Writer. Visit www.stefanielipsey.com or Writing Yoga®.
  • See you at the Creative Arts Studio this Saturday, December 1st! Open house preview of “Wing” inspired artwork. I promise there is incredible art on the walls from many talented local artists. I will be there with books and poems. Stop by! 1-5 pm on the path of the Sea Cliff Holiday House Tour. 256 Sea Cliff Ave, Sea Cliff. Email me at info@stefanielipsey.com if you have any questions.
Thank you very much for visiting and writing each week. I consider each click an honor. – Stef

Sound Cliff, SoundSpoke, and Oh! Bernice (Writing Prompt #54)

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Sound Cliff was born out of a storm. It was born off a tumultuous coastal cliff one day when trees slid into the Long Island Sound and eroded the shore. Not a hurricane, where subways flooded and dreams toppled into the Atlantic, just regular beach erosion rains.

On that day, a tree was lifted up by its roots, tossed into the sea, and buried words disappeared. I dove under rocks like a mermaid, but the paper had already sailed, floated past the toxic superfund sites, held its breath. Did it make it past oil spills, garbage dump, sewage runoff?

I don’t know, but I did. Happy Anniversary, blog & thank you, writers for showing up for more than 52 weeks.

Saturday night, I got out of the house and listened to some amazing poetry & original music. It cleared my head. What’s been getting your mind off the storm?

How about some synchronicity?  The audience seemed to know each other through random connections, beyond the triad of poetry, music and art. Clarity, Russ Green, George Wallace, Esther Marie Chagaris, Lesley Stoller performed collectively for the first time, but I promise, you’d think you were watching old friends.

And in less than one week,

on Saturday, November 17th, I’ll be reading with my beloved Queens College MFA-based group in Sunnyside, NY with one of my favorite poets in the world, Kimiko Hahn, plus Harold Schechter, Rajiv Mohabir, Tyler Rivenbark, and Peter Vanderberg. Deborah Fried-Rubin hosts.

Cafe Marlene looks like a throwback to another era. You almost expect Dietrich herself to be seated at the round table next to you. Poetry, art on the walls, crepes, red curtains.  Good friends and great poets. Can you make it? You won’t be disappointed.

WRITING PROMPTS # 54:

  • What gets you out of the toxic dump? What lights your fire? What makes you feel alive? Journal on THAT.
  • Have you ever experienced a wild series of synchronistic events? When? Was the universe trying to tell you something? Add a scene of plausible synchronicity to your work.
  • What part of the art, music, poetry triad do you embrace the most? Now, kick yourself out and visit the other two. Then write about how it feels to be lost. Unless…you didn’t feel lost. Which was it?

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

Thank you very much for visiting and writing each week. Again, stay safe!!!

Thirty Roads Still Blocked, no Gas, but the Vote is On (# 53)

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In New York, the gas lines loop around side streets and I’m holding on to my last half tank for dear life. Yes, we shouldn’t have to wait all night for gas and we shouldn’t have to wait all day to vote, but please vote. Then write.

That picture was taken four days ago and I don’t think that Hess has had gas since.

Gas is a short story – the novel is the Hurricane. I hope you and your families are safe.

Here on Long Island, we have stories to tell. Some lost homes, nearly all of us lost power, and others lost lives. It’s no joke. We listen, read body language and pallor before words are spoken. When I listen, my heart alternates between anxious palpitations, sympathy, and easeful warmth.

I didn’t even realize that Long Island was this bad, that Nassau County had more power outages than anywhere else in the country and that the school district where I work has more trees blocking roads than in the entire state of New Jersey. How could I know? We were just trying to keep warm.

I don’t know how to write about Hurricanes either, but maybe you do.

WRITING PROMPTS # 53:

  • Stories create empathy. Humans need to share experiences and story is the vehicle. Listen. Document. List. Save.
  • What happened on the gas line? What happens if the car in front of you doesn’t get gas? What will happen to you if you can’t get to work? Is this your personal narrative or imagination?
  • The suburban experiment unhinged. Is it Sci-fi? Orwellian? What happens when there really is no more gas?

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

Thank you very much for visiting and writing each week. Again, stay safe!!!

© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

Did I See You at Dodge? Politics and Poetry. Writing Prompt #52

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“Write a list of what you believe in.” – Nikky Finney

Think about it. Think about it tonight when you watch the debates. Think about it at home with people you care about. Look at the world around you and ask yourself, “What do I care about?”

Those are your values.  The wonderful poet and speaker Nikky Finney suggested to write this list at the last conference of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Sunday. She advised this exercise to a young man who wondered how to deal with people at school who did not share his political beliefs. She said in a very gentle voice (I’m paraphrasing here) not to worry about “liberal” or “conservative,” but write about what YOU care about.

What are the politics of your characters? Can you write in the voice of someone who holds a different perspective than you do?

Cover page of book by Juan Felipe Herrera

Om Sunday, the last event I attended was this: “Conversation: When Politics Becomes Personal with Nikky Finney, Juan Felipe Herrera, Fanny Howe, and Raúl Zurita.”

Please look up these poets! As they read from their work, I felt moved, inspired, enraged, and loved.

Love, you ask? Yes, because underneath poems of injustices and loss, in a room filled with poets, it was clear that this single emotion permeated the room.

Even before the reading, I was glowing. Here’s what happened: I asked Juan Felipe Herrera to sign my book as he was just being called up to the stage. He was so kind, and though I made him late, he still took the time to draw me the sun and the moon.

WRITING PROMPT # 52:
  • Journal question: ” How do your politics influence what you write?” What are the politics of your characters in a story you are working on? Are you afraid to write in an opposing voice?
  • Get a piece of paper and write, “I care about ______________.”   Don’t stop.
  • Write a persona poem. Write in the voice of someone who holds an exact opposite perception of what you believe.  Go point by point. Notice how it feels.
WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:
  • Get some feedback! Post your process, poem or a small excerpt of what you wrote using these prompts by “leaving a comment.” Or just talk about the process. Encourage us!
  • Just for the locals: visit the calendar that poet Barbara Meyers curates for Long Island. She also has an extensive emailing where you can find out readings and contests from all over Long Island.  She is a gem! Email her at reiherbpoet@optonline.net to get the updates. Weekly events are posted here: http://poetz.com/longisland/

The Princess and Poseidon Enter a Contest. Writing Prompt #51

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Hey, What are you doing here Apollo?

It’s not hard for my students to love the sea. They live in it. Their summer playground is a one big sandbox called “beach” and a body of water called Long Island Sound. That is why when a contest called for poems based upon, “My Favorite Sea Creature,” I jumped at the chance to make it an assignment in the library.
Some wrote about fish swirling at the level of toes: sea stars, jellyfish, and crabs. Others wrote about whales and dolphins traveling far away from our tiny suburban town.
Several of my students won and I was thrilled for them! One winning poem reinvented Poseidon. Our wise second grade poet imagined an underwater world where a sea bass is “really a God called Poseidon.”
My students are little and love to learn. They love libraries, research, literature and poetry. Kids are poetic by nature. They walk in analogy. “This is like…” or “This reminds me…” are thought processes that encourage connection, imagery, and metaphor. When you mix it with a landscape, or in our case, a seascape that they know and love, it’s a recipe for poetry. If we could just stay in second grade for a little while, everyone would be a poet.
CONGRATULATIONS, GRADE 2 POETS!!!
WRITING PROMPT # 51:
  • What mythological creature would you invite to your landscape?
  • Enter a contest. Just be sure it’s for real. How does it feel to prepare your work with a contest in mind?
  • Begin your poem by drawing a picture. Imagine you are in second grade and images come before words. Then write.
WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:
  • Get some feedback! Post your story, poem or a small excerpt of what you wrote using these prompts by “leaving a comment.” Or just talk about the process. Encourage us!
  • Visit the calendar that poet Barbara Meyers curates for Long Island. She also has an extensive emailing where you can find out readings and contests from all over Long Island.  She is a gem! Email her at reiherbpoet@optonline.net to get the updates. Weekly events are posted here: http://poetz.com/longisland/
  • Support your local contests. My students entered the 6th annual Princess Ronkonkoma Productions which is “a nonprofit, independent production company managed by physically handicapped artists.” Look for it next year in the spring.
**Stone Carving of Poseidon & Apollo in the Greek Parthenon Temple. PowerMediaPlus.com. http://www.powermediaplus.com. Photograph/illustration.
© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

Get Out While You Still Can!!! An Autumn Writing Prompt (# 50)

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Can you imagine having an office five minutes away from this?

I couldn’t, but when I leave my building, this is where my feet go. To me, it’s a miracle, but it’s also a choice. It takes effort to change into sneakers and GET OUTSIDE!

On this day, I take 20 minutes. My legs move quickly. I have 45 minutes for lunch, but can accomplish so much in that time (when I don’t work right through at my desk!) If I don’t pull myself away, I miss my day. I miss life.

On my walk, I revise my manuscript in my head. Then I revise my life in my head.  It begins in a small coal mining town and ends in Gatsby country. No, it begins in Gatsby country and ends in Seattle. All I have to do is color in the blank spaces.

Walking helps me write. I’ve read that lots of writers write this way. How about you?  I use a voice recording app to tape my thoughts. I love the fact that I can talk to myself and not appear to be insane.

WRITING PROMPTS # 50:

  • Where can you go for 20 minutes to walk and write? What do you need to “pull yourself away from” to get there? Try using a voice recorder or take a notebook with you. Walk and write. Write on the walk.
  • Imagine a beginning.  Write it down. First thought. Imagine an end. First thought. Write a glorious setting. Make it better. No, make it worse. Become curious about your timeline but don’t write it.  What do you have in your notebook? 1) a moment in time 2) the end of a moment in time 3) place.  Can you incorporate these three story elements into something you are working on? Can they inspire you to start something new?
  • Last chance! (warm climate readers can ignore this one) It may be fall on the calendar, but as long as it’s above 70 on Long Island, you can find me at the beach. Okay, I know this is not a writing prompt, but you have all winter to write, so get outside and play.

Last night’s sunset pictured above. Clinging to the last bit of summer right until the end.

Have a wonderful week, my dear writers.

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

  • Come on back and post your story, poem or a small excerpt of what you wrote using these prompts. Or just talk about the process. Or walking or sunsets. Encourage us!
  • Follow! Like! Share! Post! If you enjoy these free prompts, please “like” my new Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/StefanieLipsey.Writer. Stay in touch by email at www.stefanielipsey.com or through Writing Yoga®. I look forward to hearing from you and thank you very much for visiting!

© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

Glen Cove Library Workshop Magic – Writing Prompt # 49

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There were hurricane warnings, but they came. The sky broke, but they came. We flattened the world to sand.

Glen Cove sand

Glen Cove Sand

Each time I teach a writing workshop, it is like visiting a new little world. Even if most of the participants are the same, I leave changed.

Last week’s workshop was dedicated to “telling our story.”  From a comfortable community room, such lives and histories enlightened.  I wish I could share with you, because it’s thrilling, but we work in confidence. The writers will have to wait until they are ready to share. Please share, writers!

What’s your story? Your mother’s story? Your ancestor’s story? Do you think it’s boring? Don’t make that mistake. Only you have your past. What are you waiting for?

WRITING PROMPT # 49:

  • If you have any elders left in your family, ask if you can write a short story about their life. It doesn’t have to be all true. What direction should the story go? Ask it and then move your pen.
  • Write from your future. It’s an imagined future. Let it be extravagant or simple. Write what you crave, then work your way back. How did you get there?
  • Share. Read it to a sibling or close friend. What are you too close to see? What did you miss? What can’t you face? Write THAT story.

WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED WRITING:

© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

Can You Write on a Stand Up Paddle Board in the Middle of the Sea? Writing Prompt # 48

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If I didn’t do it, if I didn’t witness, if others didn’t witness me, I would have never believed I was capable of such a miraculous thing. Some of us were sitting, some standing on feet and others on their heads, but all of us were out in the middle of the LI Sound on stand up paddle boards, “SUPs.”

photo by Karen Chrappa

At first I thought people were saying, “s’up?” as in  “what’s up?” in the way us New Yorkers leave off beginnings and endings of words, but no, there really is such thing as a “SUP.” Because of Michelle (thanks, Michelle!), of Shore Thing Rentals and other brave beach lovers of my town, I tried something new. I told myself that I would just stay seated. Michelle said that when you feel steady, slowly stand up. I did. I could. It was remarkable. That was day one.

On day two, yoga. I completed four sun salutations, both A and B, on a tiny paddle board in the middle of the sea!  Crazy, right?

The best part was that I did all this after work, just in time to catch the sunset. I felt like I had a bonus day, a weekend inside a weekday. It was like being given a second childhood.

Next time I go out, I’m bringing my journal. I will write while standing on my head in the middle of the sea on a paddle board while keeping the pages dry.

WRITING PROMPT # 48:

  • If I were a character in the story of my life, I would never written in an SUP experience. It would be too unlikely. What would be unlikely for your character? How can you make it plausible?
  • Get two days for the price of one. Get a childhood in adulthood. When have you thought something was over, but really, you were just getting started? Write about “Part II” of your day or life.
  • Challenge yourself. Step outside the comfort zone. Do something you don’t believe you can do. Bring your friends. Who are those people who cheer you on in life? Who picks you up when you fall? Get on the metaphorical SUP. Even if you fall. Even if you “fail.” Then write. Either way, it’s good material.

WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WRITING:

© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

BUT YOU MUST WRITE – EVEN IF THE SKY IS BLUE – Writing Prompt #47

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To read, “Tuesday September 11th” on my phone this morning shocked me out of bed. I know the date, but Tuesday?

My mind always returns to the Sunday before, that perfect blue sky, pushing my children in a stroller at the Queens Zoo with the World’s Fair Globe reflecting bright sun. It was a dream-like day, countering the nightmares I had been having at night. Later, I would discover that a disproportionate number of us experienced evening worries for weeks. Still, who would have believed such a thing could happen under a beautiful blue sky, on a Tuesday morning, just like today?

Since the world was ending, part of me didn’t see any point in writing anymore. Another part of me felt like I could stop the bleeding with my pen.

I wasn’t alone. We grieved together. Everyone close to me made it, but people close to me lost people close to them. That is how it went. No one was spared. You were afraid to ask in those early hours if husbands, cousins, friends, nieces and nephews were found. The towers smoldered for days, weeks, what felt like years before clearing and the word “missing” really meant missed.

I know that some of my readers will hurt today more than others. This post is dedicated to them.

WRITING PROMPT # 47:
  • Take a moment to count your blessings, write in your journal wild praise for what is.
  • Write a dedication to someone you have loved and lost. Don’t think about publication.
  • Where were you when it happened? What do you remember? Go back and read those eleven year old journals. Who were you? Who are you now?
WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

Once in a Blue Moon, There is a Blue Moon. Writing Prompt #46

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It’s also a beer that goes nicely with a slice of orange. So I’m told.

There are two moons this month and that makes the second one on August 31,”blue.” Here is what the first August moon looked like from outer space. (thanks NASA.gov for the photo)

I see silly putty. What has the lens done to its shape?

This will not be a prompt about the moon.  I’m reminded of a poem that I love by Brenda Shaughnessy called, “I’m Over the Moon,” which was so influential that from the moment I heard it read aloud at a bar in Greenwich Village my relationship to the moon has never been the same. Yes, I would be asking you to write about the moon right now were it not for that poem.

Right now, I’m most curious about the lens that sees the moon. Expression vs. condition. Have you ever looked at something, and despite the image that appears in your rational mind, you see the unexpected or unrecognizable?

Maybe you turned your head quickly and saw your dead father or a childhood friend.         Maybe you were in a new city and experienced severe deja vu.
And maybe you asked yourself, “What is that beautiful house?…Where does that highway go to?…Am I right, am I wrong?.. My God! What have I done?” (Eno, Byrne, et al)

Let’s go ask the moon.

WRITING PROMPT # 46:

  • You or your main character is in a strange city. Pick one. You (let’s just say it’s you for now) enter a store, any kind of store. Imagine it now. Go with your first impression. Close your eyes. Is it a dark and dingy antique shop, a rare bookstore (sadly, all bookstores are becoming rare), or a fruit and vegetable market? Spend some time there. Who is with you? You learn something important there. Why? What happened that changed your life forever?
  • Once in a blue moon you…..
  • Write about your “lens.” What do you see from the place where your own telescope is parked? If you don’t like what you see, pick the whole thing up and move it.

WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WRITING:

© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

Construction Materials from Earth to Story, Writing Prompt #44

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Volcanic, obsidian, granite,
beech, birch, prickly pear, walnut, sand.
What grows in your soil?
What rises from land?
What’s below the surface?

Colosseum RomeLong Island, where my story is set is split. Rocky north, sandy south, and post-war housing down its spine. It’s interesting to think about landscape and its connection with a character’s internal terrain.

Soon, I will write to you from a cliff in Italy, sit on volcanic boulders, inside Baroque buildings, but the life inside my notebook will be chilling out on Jones Beach. What a gift to carry a world with you in the suitcase.

WRITING PROMPT # 44:

  • Mary, Mary, how does your garden grow? Circles, boxes, in fields, window boxes or planters on the patio. Do you grow geraniums, basil, aloe, or nothing at all? Write a scene or poem where the setting of plants illustrates personality traits.
  • Incorporate plants into your story, poem or essay. Name them. What grows where you live? Apple trees or grape vines? Set a scene at the orchard or any landscape that is unusual for you and/ or your character. Make this experience a discovery.
  • What would it feel like to see ripe red apples in New York on a fall day if your life was spent in a desert or tundra? Or the Colosseum in Rome if you’ve spent your whole life in a suburb?  It doesn’t have to be a place you have actually visited. Observe and imagine with the speaker of your poem or protagonist of your story.

WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WRITING:

  • Come on back and post your story, poem or a small excerpt of what you wrote using these prompts. Or just talk about the process. Encourage us!
  • Visit your local LIBRARY and check out a book about a new location to add more realistic details to landscape.
  • If you enjoy these free prompts, please “like” my new Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/StefanieLipsey.Writer. Stay in touch: www.stefanielipsey.com or through Writing Yoga®. I look forward to hearing from you and thank you very much for visiting.

Ah, coffee, but Not Just for Writers. Writing Prompt #43

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Something wasn’t right. My laptop was fully charged, a huge mug of steaming dark roast sat beside it, and the lighting was perfect. Then I realized I was sitting in Laurie’s chair. I had some time before she’d return from her morning run ready to write, but still, I felt like a thief.

Do you have assigned seating at your local coffee shop too? Such “bars” as they’re called in Italy are not quiet and can be way too social, but for me, I’m often very productive in the company of cappuccino. In New York, we call such places office, home, community center, nourishment, muse.

There is this handy new book called, The New York Coffee guide 2012, by Jeffery Young and Emma Meltzer that can help you find your own perfect brew and muse.

Virtual field trip to Brooklyn

If you’re not in New York, have some fun with the pictures and maps. The images and text are so good that you can actually smell the coffee on its pages. Enjoy!

WRITING PROMPT # 43:

  • It took you all morning to get out of the house, but you did it. When you arrived at the coffee shop every seat was taken. Did you go home and eat a box of Oreos? Did you wait? Where did you go? Write a poem or essay about this scenario.
  • Insert a coffee shop scene into a piece of writing in an unexpected place. Like, “I ran out of gas in the Arizona desert but found a Starbucks up the road.”
  • Find a new coffee shop to visit. Write three pages using snippets of conversation. Write freely and catch lines as you listen.

WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WRITING:

© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

Awkward Vacation Photos, Writing Prompt # 42

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Remember when summer seemed to last for decades? The school bell let out and maybe you went to camp, or played with your friends in the street, or took weekly outings to some nearby body of water. Whatever, summer lasted a really freakin long time.

Every summer I plan to organize my life because I still believe that summers last forever. I will never have my family photos organized even if summer did indeed last for decades, but look what I found while procrastinating?

I love this book because it not only shows the most awkward family poses imaginable, but narrates them as well.  It’s hilarious. I think my mom gave this book to me.  Or maybe I gave it to her because she loves coordinated outfit photos. One year it was snoopy overalls. Three kids, three years apart in matching snoopy overalls. I’m not making this up. Even my brother had to wear them. Today I love her for it, and we do all look cute and happy,  but when you’re eight years old, the last thing you want to do is dress up in the same digs as your five year-old sister.

WRITING PROMPT # 42

  • Dig out the awkward family photos. Did you take a picture of yourself behind one of those fake bodies with a cut-out for your face. They are much more fun in retrospect. Write the backstory.
  • Talk to people in your pictures. How is time treating them? Have a  conversation with a dead relative. Write them a poem, essay or letter.
  • Look at photos of people you don’t know. Cut them out from magazines. Give these people names and stories. Write them down.

WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WRITING:

© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

You’re Not Taking that on the Plane, John Cage. Writing Prompt #41

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Musicians are storytellers. I don’t mean that in the abstract; musicians have some great stories. Just ask one about their strangest gig, worst hotel room, longest airport layover, or a particularly rough ordeal through customs and security.

They have props for their stories too. My husband is a percussionist which means that kitchen items like mixing bowls, wooden spoons, can openers, and wine glasses often find themselves integrated with studio drums. Sometimes holes are drilled at the bottom of metal bowls to be hung by strings and hit with mallets. It also happens in reverse. Drums often end up seated like dinner guests on our dining room chairs.

Travel can be a challenge when you’re married to a percussionist. Why would anyone transport such a thing in carry-on? A thing like what? Like this, for example:

It’s a bell for a John Cage piece. It sounds like an old fashioned phone. I have no idea what piece of music it comes from. All I know is that I went to eat breakfast one morning and it was on the kitchen table next to the fruit bowl.

I do know that I have seen performances and scores that are written in a whole other language. Not music, not Italian, but something else in the dialect of improvisation. I’m always fascinated by composers who leave instrumentation up to the performer. Is there such a thing in poetry? I’d say yes. Some poets keep editing and editing long after the book is in print. Each time they read their signature poem it’s different. And then there are the musical poets, abstract, experimental poets. Wait — wasn’t John Cage a poet too?

Happy 100th year of your birth, Mr. Cage.

WRITING PROMPT # 41:

  • Borrow from the musician’s playbook. Write about your strangest gig (or work experience), worst hotel room, longest airport layover, or ordeals through customs and security. If you’re not big on air travel, tell about the worst bus ride, subway experience or traffic jam.
  • Use props. Grab items from your kitchen at random and lay them out on the table. Spend a few minutes studying the bowls, plates, coffee filters, dishtowels, can openers and bongos. (If your not married to a drummer you probably will leave the last item out.) Close your eyes. What story did these items want you to write?
  • Listen to some John Cage when you write this week. The guy was born a hundred years ago, but the music is super fresh.

WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WRITING:

© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

Three Spectacular Poets in the Park — Four, if You Count William Cullen Bryant

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I think it’s okay to count ancestors, don’t you? Especially if it happens to be an American poet with a park named after him.

The live poets will be the ones to make your head spin though:

Tina Chang
Kimiko Hahn
Patrick Rosal

Under a blanket of humidity in Bryant Park tonight, they read from their gorgeous books, iPads and off freshly printed pieces of white paper. The unbound are gifts for the audience, windows into the process of genus.

When Patrick Rosal read a poem about living near a military storage site as a child, I wondered how many of us live near the uninhabitable. He has this fabulous sense of humor that makes us feel safe no matter what.

When Kimiko Hahn read from her book, Toxic Flora, all creatures miniscule and dangerous became human, reversing laws of nature. Her newer poems, poems inspired by neuroscience, made me wish I could transfer some of that wild intelligence into my own brain.

Tina Chang embodied the Empress Dowager, a prominent character from her book, Of Gods and Strangers, until the stage became lit with ancient mirrors reflecting family, history, and passion. Her motherhood poems made me want to cry.

The collective mixture of themes that encompass loss, fear, rage, nature, history (individual and collective) with a dash of humor makes for some pretty powerful poetry.

What makes you angry, afraid? What makes you cry? What story plays through your head? You don’t want to go there, I know. But you must.

Inside our blanket of humidity, family weaves a knotty pattern. It takes courage to write about the ones we live/ lived with as children or adults. When roles flip, maybe we’re a little smarter.

WRITING PROMPT # 40

  • In the spirit of ancestors and teachers this week, revisit a lesson. What lesson have you neglected to learn? How have you been the defiant student? Go through an old notebook from a workshop, class, conference and follow through on an assignment you never finished. Oh, right, you always finished all of your homework. Do it again.
  • Pluck a moment from childhood to write about. If you’ve written about it already, change the perspective. You are now the aunt, father, teacher, mother, friend. What do you look like from this ladder? Don’t preach to yourself, don’t beat yourself up, just write.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Buy a book by Kimiko Hahn, Tina Chang, and Patrick Rosal. I can promise you they are all divine and well worth the small investment. Borrow one from the library. Ask the librarian to buy it for your local library. Support poetry.
  • Honor your teachers by writing something good. Post it here if you’re brave for feedback.

Another Roadside Attraction, Time to Re-read Robbins

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Cover of "Jitterbug Perfume"

Cover of Jitterbug Perfume

This week is dedicated to anyone who has ever packed a car, truck, camper, trailer, bicycle, motorcycle or backpack and hit the road.

How much do you plan when you leave? On a scale of 0 – 10, 0 meaning you had breakfast and decided to drive across country or 10 meaning you plan a trip to a neighboring state two years in advance, where are you?

Have you been both kinds of traveler?

Do you find that the books you read on each trip shape your travels in some way?  In college, I read through all the Tom Robbins books. I read them on a trip down south with my soon to be husband. We had no air conditioning and a tiny old car. He mostly drove and I read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Another Roadside Attraction, and Still Life with Woodpecker. We landing in New Orleans just as I was wrapping up Jitterbug Perfume.

I also read Jack Karoac’s On the Road. I did this because we were “on the road.”

These memories of place and story reaffirm my need to not plan anything other than what books to take on summer trips. May this be the summer of legal pads filled with handwritten words inspired by the print of present and past.

What books do you associate with different places, people, times in your life?

Writing Prompt #39

  • Got a favorite “roadside attraction”? What was the strangest thing you ever saw on the road? Orange dinosaurs, a building that looks like a duck? Maybe it was the people you met along the way?  Deonne Kahler runs my favorite travel blog that will surely inspire you to hit the road with your notebook: http://www.gonescamping.com/
  • Find one of your old travel journals. Re-write the experience of the place through your current lens. Maybe the old car now has air conditioning. The Bates Motel is now a Hampton Inn. Burned your journals after a bad break-up? Re-write the travel log from imagination.
  • Get a hold of a Tom Robbins novel. When you locate a phrase that makes you think differently or laugh out loud, stop. It might be after the first paragraph. What was the trigger? Channel the style of Tom Robbins for a day and see what happens to your words. See what happens to your brain.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Barbara Southard is Reading TONIGHT at 7 pm on Long Island in Amityville (yes, of Amityville Horror fame) at Cornucopia’s Noshery – 194 a Park Ave, Amityville, NY 11701, (631) 608-4580.  She’s a terrific poet and teacher so it will be worth the trip. (an hour & 15 from NYC)

Thank you very much for visiting each week. I consider each click an honor.

© Stefanie Lipsey 2012

Using Symbols In Writing or “I’m Pretty Sure it’s Not About Horses.”

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It’s one of my favorite poems, “She Had Some Horses” by Joy Harjo. We used it as a model in one of the staff workshops that I am teaching at Omega this week. After we heard it read out loud in the room, one of the students said, “I’m pretty sure it’s not about horses.”

Yeah, me too. In the preface to the latest edition of the award winning book by the same title, Harjo writes, “‘What do the horses mean?’ is the question I’ve been asked most since the first publication of the book She Had Some Horses in 1984. I usually say, “it’s not the poet’s work to reduce the poem from poetry to logic sense.” Or “it’s not about what the poem means, it’s “how” the poem means.” Then I ask: “So what do the horses mean to you?”

Great question. What do the horses mean to you?

Apart from “meaning” it’s filled with music, movement, repetition, symbolism, ritual, history, women, and spirit. It feels empowering to read. Don’t we all love poetry that feels good in our bodies and not just our minds? Even if the words scare us, sadden us, anger us, make us think outside the comfort zone, music in a great poem always triggers a shift in the way we physically feel. It’s the sound of the soul, right?

Writing Prompt #38

  • Long ago, there were horses. Long ago, there were frogs in the puddles of my childhood yard. Long ago, there were ________________ and then ________________________________________.
  • Go through your journal and circle objects, animals, places, things that are interesting to you. Don’t think about it too much. Just do it. Write a new poem using that object as a symbol. It is your object, your symbol. Don’t be concerned with what the symbol means.
  • Take a story that you wrote and change the tense. Write the forward, epilogue, or re-write it completely in the present tense. How does the symbolism change? Does it change at all?

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Click this link to hear “She Had Some Horses” read by the poet. Get Joy Harjo’s new book. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m looking forward to it. By the way, it’s a great idea to visit the website of publishers of authors you love to sign up for an email alert to inform you of their new publications. That way, you can be one of the first to know when their new books are out!

Summer Writing Projects and the Deadline from Hell

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Two long months and the pressure is on. What masterpiece will you write this summer? Do you feel the race to create if you’re on an academic schedule? Or do you take the time to chill, reintegrate and reconnect with your muse?

photo by Jessica Lipsey

Maybe it’s time to STOP the routine and let the long days flow.

What are your associations with summer? Naps in hammocks? Swimming in lakes, sunning on rooftops, and striped towels at the beach with your transistor radio. Transistor radio??? Ha, ha. What movie did that come from? Anyway, when August arrives quicker than ever, where will you be?

Take a minute to imagine August. The air is slightly chilled and fall is peeking through the curtain. The stores are lined with new spiral notebooks, loose-leaf binders, number 2 pencils and Bic ball point pens. They offer new blank pages for you to fill once again.

Now, join me back in time. To today. Or yesterday. Set an intention for this summer. Write it down, write without thinking or stopping.  When you’ve said all you’ve had to say, head to the beach.

WRITING PROMPT 37:

  • What’s Your Summer?  Set your story or poem in summer. Is it hot, sticky and uncomfortable or do you (or your character) embrace the rays. Begin with the way summer feels. Then write.
  • Write about a summer artifact. Read a great summer poem such as “A Green Crab’s Shell” by Mark Doty for inspiration. When you write, be generous with the vibrant colors of the season.
  • STOP. Break out of your writing routine and get out in the world to live the inspiration.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

Thank you very much for visiting each week. I consider each click an honor.

What Will Times Square Be Like 20 Years from Now?

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From: http://www.timessquarenyc.org/events/solstice-in-times-square/index.aspx

In my wildest dreams, Times Square never looked this clean, colorful, healthy and serene. Am I right, New Yorkers?

That’s one reason I’ve been practicing yoga in Times Square each year for the summer solstice. Because there is almost nothing this surreal in life. Read about last year here: http://writingyoga.blogspot.com/2011/07/yoga-in-times-square.html

What about you? What’s your Times Square? Okay, so maybe you aren’t from New York and by now you’re pissed off that I wrote about the now extinct subway tokens last week, and the equally extinct “Taxi Driver” NYC, but you probably have some image of New York in mind. I bet it’s not as a yoga studio.

What about your own city? What happens when you visit it with your mind in one place and your physical body in another version of present time?

Tell me, I really want to know –

Writing Prompt # 36:

  • What will Times Square be like 20 years from now? More yoga or back to porn theaters?
  • Take your subway poem, story or essay from last week’s prompt and rewrite it in Times Square. Then travel back to your childhood version or leap forward into the future. Rewrite again.
  • What’s the strangest thing you ever saw in Times Square? Can you put it in writing? What was the strangest thing you ever did? Make a persona poem.

    WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING
  • Hit that REPLY button to post your writing! Share your words of wisdom and wit by posting a comment. Tell us your Times Square story or poem.
  • Did you see the subway anthology yet? http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/token-entry-gerry-lafemina/1109245760?ean=9780980191691
  • Visit me on Facebook to “like” my writer page: http://www.facebook.com/StefanieLipsey.Writer, check out my website: www.stefanielipsey.com and blog: writingyoga.com.

Thank you very much for visiting each week! I consider each click an honor.

Where Do Old Subway Tokens Go to Die?

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I have one left and it might as well be from Ancient Egypt, that brass token with an inverted peace sign, an object that can’t be “swiped.” I keep it in a box. How about you?

Did you ever wonder where all those old tokens live today? Or are they buried somewhere under tracks? I imagine there is one dresser someplace hoarding all the tokens of the world. It belongs to an old woman with lots of cats.

What are your associations with this little round metal object? For me, a token is a dent in my teenage back pocket. I don’t ride subways nearly as much as I used to, but at one time, it was a daily trek from Queens to Manhattan on the 7, a transfer at Grand Central to Times Square and a walk above ground to my retail job.

My grandmother, who lived in Brooklyn, always called subways, “the train.” It was graffiti-filled back then, like you see in the movies, but I always felt safe. Why?

On Sunday, I got to hear many of the talented (and far more famous than I am) contributors read from Token Entry: Poems of the New York City Subway. The poems tell the story of New York, the story of who we are. For a taste of what this is about click to this interview with the editor, Gerry LaFemina.

I am thrilled to be a part of this anthology. Thanks, again, Gerry for including my poem & Lee Kostrinsky too, publisher of Smalls Press.

However you get around these days: car, bicycle, boat, train, plane or underground – safe travels.

Writing Prompt # 35:

  • Imagine that it’s 1977 (or 67 or 87, pick a year, any year) and you are a kid riding the NYC subway from Brooklyn to Radio City Music Hall. You are going to see the Rockettes. All is fine until ________________________ and then _____________________________.You wish you were old enough because then you would have __________________________________________________.
  • Do a little research on NYC subways. What gems of information stick out or call to you? Re-write the story with three new pieces of false information.
  • What’s the strangest thing you ever saw on the subway? What’s your subway poem? What are your underground transportation associations? Go and write.

Thank you very much for visiting each week! I consider each click an honor.

Martin Espada Workshop and Whitman’s Lawn, again

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Sunday’s workshop at Whitman’s LI birthplace = green cloth tablecloths, Martin Espada, a booklet of poetry, two dozen local poets, and an hour and a half to write on Whitman’s front lawn. I don’t want to give away any workshop secrets, but for me at least, getting an hour and a half of sunshine and silence was just what I needed. My poem drew upon memories of a job I once had and a waitress I knew. More details and the secret will vanish.

A Striped Lawn

So here’s what I took away:

  • A workshop doesn’t need to be complex to rock.
  • My instinct to write on legal pads is a good one.
  • Writing outdoors, although beautiful, can transport you to scary, ugly places where poetry often resides.
  • Martin Espada is as awesome as ever. I have heard him read many times over the years, at festivals, conferences, and twice at Cornelia St. Cafe in NYC. The most memorable time for me was after his book Alabanza came out. His reading of the piece brought me to tears. (that’s hard to do) The title poem, “Alabanza” (click to read on poets.org)  remains one of my favorite poems ever for it’s song-like spirit, rhythm, repetition, meditative yet fierce quality, and most importantly, because of its dedication to “the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 100, working at the Windows on the World restaurant, who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center.” Alabanza!

WRITING PROMPT #34 – What Works for You?

  • Got a favorite poet? Or are you a “book slut” as my friend Barbara called me when I bought the only two books by Espada I didn’t own? Take one of your favorite poems and read it loudly to yourself or to some friends who would be willing to indulge you. Don’t have a favorite? Click here for some of my favorite writers and poets  (NOT an exhaustive list – and once school gets out I’ll be updating!!!) Okay, now let it digest. What images come to mind? Don’t borrow a single word, phrase or idea. Go wander in your imagination to the place in time you need to visit. Write freely for 20 minutes at least.
  • Write a “lawn” poem or story. For me, that word is loaded. It is perfection or imperfection. It’s modern pavement. Lawns don’t reside in nature. What are your associations with that word?
  • Get to a literary landmark. Ghosts of writers are everywhere. If you live near a city, it’s easier to find. If you don’t – make a trip. See if you can remember what it felt like, after you left, to inhabit their imprint. Then write. 

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Hit that REPLY button to post your writing! Share your words of wisdom and wit by posting a comment. Where did you write this weekend? Tell us.

Thank you very much for visiting each week! I consider each click an honor.

Shore Thing Rents me a Hammock and a Story

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I’ll be honest – the hammock wasn’t a rental. It was free all afternoon.

So was the waterfront view, roaming puppy, sunscreen and summer ambiance but for a small fee, you can get off the land and float away for a few hours. Like Hemingway.

My friend Michelle opened a boating rental shop this past weekend, Memorial Day Weekend, in the Glen Cove rain. It was very poetic. Luckily I had my laptop in the car so before she completed a sentence that began, “you should come here and write sometime…”  I was pecking away at the keyboard.

I was sitting on Venice beach, roller blades and dogs flashing before my eyes, selling my jewelry and writing in a beaded journal. I was sitting around a fire on Long Beach singing R.E.M. tunes in high school. I was sitting in a hammock on Key West watching kids splash.

Do you ever feel like a time-traveler when you write?  What makes one place a portal to old and imagined worlds and another a pad lock on the door of your creativity? 

What places easily transport you to juicy times in your writing life?

WRITING PROMPT #33

  • The rocking hammock. I don’t own one, but maybe I should. Close your eyes as you rest on the ground, face up, preferably on a blanket under a tree. If this is not possible, the floor will do. It can even be the floor of your office, just make sure you lock the door. Imagine your body is rocking from side to side. Are you on a boat? Hammock? Earthquake? How did you get there? Where are you? Let this be the setting of your next story. Begin your writing by FEELING where you are, not thinking about it.
  • Journal on “juicy times in your writing life.”  When have you been the most inspired? Why? You can read a million books about getting “unstuck” but the best way is to figure out on your own what works best for you. Just you. Ask yourself that question and see what your pen has to say.
  • Find the waterfront. Get to a place familiar place where water meets land. It can be a lake, river, pond, or the West Side Highway walkway. I am so connected to water that I can’t imagine life without it. Write a farewell poem to a body of water that you love.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING (or maybe before you start):

  • Come on back and hit “Reply” to post your story, poem or excerpt from this prompt. Visit my website: www.stefanielipsey.com for event info and blog, writingyoga.com for all things writing & yoga. Say hello on Facebook.

Thank you, my friends, for returning each week. I consider every click an honor. (Sorry for the inconvenience of not meeting on Monday this week – holiday schedule and truck knocking out the cable that gives us Internet to blame. But that’s next week’s story.)

Writing on a Piece of Plywood or How to Write Anywhere

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A great thing happened to me this weekend. My car broke down.

While I waited for AAA to come and tow the car, an hour passed by. Another hour passed by. Did I sit in my car and curse out AAA? Curse out my car? Curse out Honda and all car manufacturers in general? No, but I could have and years ago, would have.

Instead, I took my laptop to the bar across the street, sat in the outdoor “garden” and wrote under the oak trees with a piece of plywood for a desk and a bar stool for a chair. My husband came and played games on his phone while I wrote.

We used to go to this place in college, a real dive that has since been renovated and is actually pretty nice now. They didn’t get to the back yet. Like I said, there is only a piece of plywood there, but it worked perfectly for me.

I’m working on a revision of Sound Cliff, my book on creativity. When I woke up on Saturday, it became clear to me that I needed to finally get this book from “Out of Print” status back in play. I had it taken down with the intention of putting it right back up, but too much time has passed! Looks like it took a broken down car and a backlogged AAA mechanic to get my ass back in the chair.

What do you need to get back to work on a project you have been putting off? Do you need a quiet place? Do you need unlimited free time for a day or a good writing buddy to slash your tires and make sure that AAA is busy when you call?

Sometimes life has other ideas. The plywood desk became one of the best places I have written all year.  Gino, a patron who kept feeding me story ideas once he found out I was a writer, took this picture of me on my phone. He said he would have never thought to sit outside and write. Maybe he would have eventually, and I hope he does now that someone put the idea in his head.

Writing Prompt # 32:

  • Imagine that your car brakes down. AAA tells you it will be a 30 minute wait. You say________________________. Then they call you back and say they are running late, but will be there within the hour so you make a phone call to ________________________________ and they say ________________________! You feel _____________________________ and finally, AAA arrives. What happened from the first phone call until the tow truck pulled up?
  • Make lemonade out of lemons. Do you have a story like mine?  Write about your attitude.
  • Grab your journal and free-write on the closest thing you can find to a piece of plywood in the back of a bar.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Hit that REPLY button to post your writing! Share your words of wisdom and wit by posting a comment. Tell us about a time you made lemonade out of lemons.
  • Find a writing buddy and help each other out. One of the first things I did after calling AAA was contact one of my MFA writing buddies. Find some community on Facebook when you click “like”: http://www.facebook.com/StefanieLipsey.Writer.

Thank you very much for visiting each week! I consider each click an honor.

Flood in the Laundry Room, Mess on the Desk: Spring Cleaning for Writers

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I kidnapped my friend by accident. She was just tagging along on a quick carpooling run, but non-road detours (namely kids and a flood in my laundry room) kept us from our destination to hear some musician friends play at a restaurant.

laundry room

As she helped me soak up water with used towels, I blurted out,  “I just want to go to my beach house.”

I don’t really have a beach house but she humored me so I kept going, “I’m going to my beach house, alone. It’s got new wood floors and large white windows and I’m gonna sit on the only piece of furniture inside it, a couch, a plain sand color couch. The view is amazing too.  Picture windows and no plumbing issues. I’m really going, okay?”

“Okay, she said.” And we got back in the car.

We made it to music, but I didn’t feel like dancing. I sat uninterrupted for the first time that whole entire day and went to the beach house in my head.  Unlike my real house which had been uncharacteristically clutter-filled and flooded on Friday, the beach house was pristine.

Clutter is not just physical and external. Often our inner state, reflects our outer and vice versa. When my house and desk are clean and clear, everything flows better, including my writing.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. Turns out that some of my favorite  gurus have been saying this for decades. Cleaning and clearing space makes magical things happen. Deepak Chopra, Oprah, Cheryl Richardson, and Denise Linn have each said in different ways that getting rid of things you don’t love, need or use can change your life.

Denise Linn calls it “modern day alchemy” and I highly recommend her books on the topic where she details how to “clear your space.” Cheryl Richardson’s books will incorporate this process as a life skill necessary for making room for greater things to come. She’ll get your butt in gear and help you learn to take good care of yourself too. (This is the librarian in me talking, so listen up!)

When my Dad died in 2006, I went to the beach with papers and burned them at the fire pit. I tossed the ashes in the sea. I had no idea what I was doing then, but now I know. I was testing the wings of the Phoenix.

Leo Tolstoy at his deskWRITING PROMPT #31 – Spring Cleaning for Writers

  • Get your notebook ready, but don’t write a word. We’re going to de-clutter your desk first. Set aside some time to go through every single drawer, surface, crevice of your desk. Have a big hefty bag ready and purge. Spray some lemon oil mixed with water in the air before you begin. You will immediately feel refreshed. Once the desk is clean, have a seat. Write a thank you note to yourself in the voice of your desk.
  • Go through your files, paper and electronic. Condense. Delete, delete, delete. I have been working on that for two weeks and it feels amazing. Pull out one old draft that you had given up on long ago and revisit it. Read and edit as the writer you are today. Did you notice a different in voice and style? Hope so, it’s 2012!
  • This is a tricky. Edit a friend’s work. Set a page limit and make a trade. I have had my share of editing through the writing course. It’s time consuming, but well worth the effort.  Did you find it easier to make changes in another’s work? Could you see “mistakes” and patterns that you do as well but were too close to the material to recognize your own flaws?

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING (and cleaning):

  • Hit that REPLY button to post your writing! Share your words of wisdom and wit by posting a comment. What did it feel like to clean your space? Any tips for the rest of us? Was it easier to create in your lemon-scented clean room?

Thank you very much for visiting each week! I consider each click an honor.

Dancing to the Victrola, Julia Cameron, and Lots of List-Making

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It wasn’t supposed to rain, but I threw my black and white umbrella in my bag anyway at the last minute. Good thing. It gave me something to write about in the gratitude list I generated in Julia’s workshop where I spent my Saturday list-making.

Julia generated lists: love notes to myself, honest assessment lists of false ways and beliefs, thoughts on divine light and intervention, childhood issue lists, family lists, lots of self praise and acceptance.

It had taken me months to open the Artists Way back in 1999. A mom I had met in my daughter’s toddler class had given to me. She was a California transplant living in New York and would soon move from a bungalow here to a Las Vegas McMansion all for the same price tag.

During our brief but powerful friendship, we did things generally atypical of suburban playdates:  Danced to the Victrola (yes! she had a Victrola!), strolled the kids around the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and talked about the Artists Way.

She: Did you do the exercises yet?

Me: Not yet. Too much laundry.

S: You have to do these morning pages everyday.

Me: What are morning pages?

S: You didn’t open the book, did you?

Me: Not yet. But soon.

On that “soon day,” months later, I didn’t wait for the laundry to be done, because it is never done, and wrote my first three morning pages. I continued to write them years after my cool mommy friend moved to Vegas.

On Saturday from 10 am to 5:30 pm, I filled a small journal with exercises from Julia Cameron‘s workshop at the Open Center in Midtown Manhattan. I saw some wonderful familiar writer faces and over the course of the day poured my innermost thoughts out to total strangers. And I made lots of list.

What did I learn? 1) Clearing a day for yourself to make lists of things like “if I didn’t have to do it perfectly, I would…” and “I am so proud that I…” can feel wonderfully self-indulgent and nurturing. 2) Reading such lists out loud to strangers is liberating, and listening to others celebrate their own accomplishments feels better than singing my own. 3) Writing three pages a day before you do anything else is not a waste of time. It creates time.

WRITING PROMPT #30:

  • Pick up a copy of the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Open it. Read it. Write three pages freely in your journal, without stopping, every single day this week. Maybe next week too. If you pick up the habit, you can thank Julia.
  • Make a List of praise. No one tells you how great you are as you sit alone in the writing chair. But see what happens if you make a list of all the ways you are smart, talented and wonderful. Write a piece of fiction or a poem about this “you.”
  • Highlight one interesting sentence in your journal at random. Write it out on a blank piece of paper. Circle it and draw lines around the circle like spokes. Free associate new and wild words with that single word on each spoke. Don’t censor. I do this with kids all the time, but this simple exercise is a great way to activate creative thought without the thinking mind. When you are done, write your next chapter, essay, poem or blog post using three of those words.
  •  Dance! Creativity loves play. We didn’t dance in Julia’s workshop, but we did stand up at least two times to shake out our hands and make strange sounds. Personally, I love to burst out in dance, song or yoga poses at random points during my workday to shift the energy in my body which, in turn, resets the stuck thoughts in my mind.  It’s a good thing I work with kids.  You don’t have to work with children to be silly and playful. Find some time today to dance. And THEN get back to the desk and let the words dance too. 

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Do you write “morning pages”? What keeps you motivated to write in your journal each day?
  • How did it feel to write a love list to yourself? Awkward, right? Now go and read it to a friend!
  • Come on back and hit “Reply” to post your ideas about journal writing and/ or your story, poem or excerpt that this week’s prompt helped to generate.

Thank you for visiting each week. I consider each click an honor.

May Day and Your Imagination is wild! Dance with Me Around the May Pole Because it’s Fertile Ground for Book Growing. Writing Prompt # 29

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Wouldn’t it be great if you could plant manuscripts in the garden and grow them like wild mint?

What if your old work could be used as compost and seed to create fertile ground?

Did you ever try? I have been known to toss old writings into the fire. The next day, there are always new seedlings at my desk.

Sometimes I grow tiny dandelions out of my pen but you can learn a lot from those beautiful and hardy weeds too.

As I write to you, tomorrow is May Day, 2012. It’s the point in time where the first day of summer meets the first day of spring in the middle of the calendar. The ground has thawed and it’s time to plant once again.

Before visiting the garden nursery, imagine your perfect garden.

Imagine your perfect writer’s life.

Imagine your published books on library & bookstore shelves, effortless words flowing all the time, deadlines easily met, publishers beating down your door.

Why not? It happens only when you allow the vision (weeds and all) to take over your mind. Just add some discipline, and a little dance around a may pole and you’ll be skipping in no time.

WRITING PROMPT 29: Imagining the may pole

  • Happy May Day, 1900. Long ago, before television, blogging and Facebook, entertainment had way fewer options. I mean, the best people could come up with was to take a big pole, some string and dance around it. It was a celebration of fertility and lots of symbolism stemming all the way back to Beltane. Give your book, story, poem a May Day scene. The weather felt ____________________. The women danced ________________ and then the sky ________________________________________.
  • Go outside and pick a blade of grass. Ask: How did it feel being cooped up below ground all winter? Did it enjoy this year’s freakishly mild temp or did it miss the expected bite of snow and frozen ground? Use personification to the point of absurdity.
  • Imagining the Vessel. You know that everything you do, create, and are begins with imagination.  The image you see is a clay vessel, blue and gold with a hint of the sun beginning to rise. I pass its message to you from my art guru. Notice that there is a piece of paper inside of it. There is a very important message for you. It is the answer to your next writing project. What does it say? What is your next project? Free-write on the process from start to finish. Congratulate yourself on a job well done.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Hit that REPLY button to post your writing! Share your words of wisdom and wit by posting a comment. What was the message for YOU inside the vessel? What did you IMAGINE?

Thank you very much for visiting each week. I consider each click an honor.

You Can’t Send Mel Brooks a Duck (Writing Prompt #28)

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…but they did it anyway.

Quick, name your three favorite Mel Brooks movies. Here’s mine: The Producers, High Anxiety, and Young Frankenstein. High Anxiety gets partial credit for my fear of towers with spiral staircases, obsession with the state of California, and a Hitchcock addiction in high school.

Liz and Mel

I never thanked Mel Brooks for these quirky childhood memories. I also never had the chance to send him a drink or a duck, but I know someone who did (send a duck, not drink) and texted me pictures from her phone as proof. Mel Brooks looks like a really good sport in this photo, doesn’t he?

Well, he must be after what one normally sophisticated group of New York restaurant goers did to him! The details are in YOUR writing this week. The reality is that Mel Brooks was treated to rounds, measures, and verse from each of his movies by my fabulous friend Dee and her friend Liz (the duck senders) and a bunch of other people who are supposed to be immune to celebrity sightings.

Was it the spell of Mel? Was it the full case of BYO wine they drank at restaurant-known-for-a-particular-duck-specialty that if mentioned would quickly reveal the location of said encounter? Was it the echo of ill-fated duck quacking?

To make up for this behavior — the behavior you are going to write about — they sent a duck. It was a great idea; just look at those smiles.

Oh, and hey, Liz, where’s your other leg???

WRITING PROMPT 28: Sending a Duck

  • Compliments of YOU. You’re at a restaurant and in walks ____________. It’s your favorite actor, singer, celb (maybe even Mel Brooks). You are very cool and calm until ________________________. And then you said ____________________ and did this crazy thing _________________. So embarrassing.
  • A Mel Brooks Tribute. The movie High Anxiety is almost entirely derived from scenes from Hitchcock movies. Take your top three favorite movies and use the setting, plot, and some character reaction from each to create a string of random events. Rewrite your concoction into a story or poem you’re currently working on.
  • The Poetry of Mel. I really can’t make this up: On the day this story was shared with me, I sat around a coffee table listening to some friends recite political Haiku just for fun. Mine sounded like a limerick. What would Mel have written? What would you have written? Write a poem in form. Keep it short. Make it political, humorous, or vile.  Don’t let poetry month pass you by!

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

Thank you very much for visiting each week. I consider each click an honor.

Egg-cellent. A Holiday Feast and Writing Prompt (#27)

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Can you hunt for Easter eggs in the parking lot? Have you read through the Passover Seder at a restaurant while a waiter asks if you would like more bread, in which case you would have to remind him that he meant, “matza”? More matza, please.

Do you have lovely sentimental images of family holidays where weather is a perfect 80 degrees, sky blue, food neither undercooked nor overcooked, and all of the relatives get along? I hear that such families exist.

Take that storybook family and tell them you are meeting at a restaurant this April for the holidays. Your aunt, the traditionalist, hates the idea. Your cousin who just gambled away his last dime thinks it’s great since Grandma’s buying. And your protagonist? What’s she thinking? (or he?)

Coincidentally, I happen to be reading the book, The Gold Coast, by Nelson DeMille, while on spring break. The story takes place on the North Shore of Long Island near where I live, but I’m reading it far from home. On Easter, the main character stumbles into his wealthy and proper aunt’s house hung-over and disheveled. He’s even more wealthy and proper than the aunt so it’s a shock for all. The kids are running around the steps, relatives are worried, and he conjures up a bit his own childhood memories. When authors write about children, it connects us with that part of our lives too, which might be why they do it in the first place. Use that tap for today’s prompt.

WRITING PROMPT 27: Eggs

  • The Egg Hunt. Functional families are wonderful in life, but not in stories. Write in a scene with the spring holiday gone bad.
  • Scrambled or fried. Write about an egg. Someone eating an egg, dipping in the running thing and grossing you out.  Or does your character dip to intentionally to gross someone else out, annoy the mother, wife, husband, etc.?  Maybe you wan to tell the story of a perfect egg, symbol of spring, life, rejuvenation and potential that’s juxtaposed with an imperfect life.  Your call.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

Thank you very much for visiting each week. I consider each click an honor.

Adrienne Rich, Memory and Poetry

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The poet Adrienne Rich passed away last week at the age of 82.  For those of you who have not read her work, please go to the Poetry Foundation or The Acedemy of American Poets where you can read some of her poems and see for yourself why this loss is so great.

I first read her work in college and I instantly recognized who she spoke for. You see, my mother’s idea of entertaining her three pre-school aged children was to play “I am woman hear me roar…” from her 1970’s songbook on our Wurlitzer organ. It was an organ she had won on the game show, “Sale of the Century” before we were born. She also won some household appliances, but I think the organ got more use.

I got the message early on that women have a voice and they should make a point of roaring like tigers at injustices.

I remember the first time I read, “Diving into the Wreck” and “Planetarium” in some anthology along with “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers.” Life would never be the same. Adrienne Rich made me want to be a poet. I went on to buy more books, finding them each to be different from each other as snapshots of time.

In her essay, “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying,” she says that “The truth of our [women's] bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have a primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other.” I ripped this quote from one of my college papers. I love the idea of woman having a “primary obligation” to support each other. Isn’t that the way it should be? Is it the way it is?

It feels strange to write a prompt this week because I don’t feel like writing. I’m resisting the urge to say, forget writing poetry today. Rich already did it. The teacher of my teachers, the ironic essayist who inspired the first feminists is not writing anymore.

Take today to be silent if you want, but tomorrow, make sure you get back to the desk.

WRITING PROMPT

“Deliberately, long ago/ the carcasses/ of old bugs crumbled/ into the rut of the window/ and we started sleeping here…….the snout of the vacuum cleaner/ sucks the past away.”

  • What you have just read are lines from the poem,  “An Old House in America,” by Adrienne Rich. What is this old house? Where is it? Who lives there? What remains?
  • Read one of the numerous books of poetry or essays by Adrienne Rich. The next morning, get up and free-write in your journal. What stuck in your mind? What do you need to say?
  • April is poetry month. Bring your journal and go to a LIVE reading. Support your local poets. Write on the train ride home or if you’re driving, record the thoughts and feelings those spoken sounds have left in your mind once you get home. What spoke to YOU?

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING (or maybe before you start):

  • Come on back and hit “Reply” to post your story, poem or excerpt from this prompt. Visit my website: www.stefanielipsey.com for event info and blog, writingyoga.com for all things writing & yoga. Say hello on Facebook.

Thank you mom for letting me share that wonderful childhood memory.  Thank you, my friends for returning on Mondays. I consider each click an honor.

Thank you, Adrienne for your life and work. You will be missed.

Well, hello there, Jennifer. (Writing Prompt # 25).

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Who’s Jennifer? That’s what I’d like to know.

When I worked in NYC as an accessories manager, merchandising handbags on the main floor of Macy’s Herald Square, there was one executive who insisted upon calling me Jennifer.

When I worked my first gig as a librarian, the event director insisted upon calling me Jennifer, even after I corrected her many times.

In my yoga training, two women, separately from each other called me Jennifer. One of them even called my house saying, “I thought her name was Jennifer?” Oops.

I looked up the name Jennifer. It’s derived from Guinevere and uh oh, do I want to be Jennifer??

According to the Academic Dictionary of Mythology by Ramesh Chopra,  Gwynhwfar “was a [Celtic] cloud-goddess who often, for mischief, took mortal form and entered the world of the humans to cause havoc.” If you know the Arthurian legends, well, then you might know that she caused so much “havoc” in the court as Queen that she eventually is blamed for the fall of Camelot. That sucks.

I’m sticking with “cloud-goddess.”

WRITING PROMPTS:

  • Re-frame an Arthurian legend. Write Guinevere’s story in your hometown. Write about the kingdom of ——–.
  • Be the cloud-goddess or god in a new myth. What would the modern cloud giants come to earth to do?
  • Open up a dictionary of mythology and free-write. Growing up, we had our red, thick, copy of Bullfinch’s on the shelf. It was from one of my Dad’s college classes back in ancient times. It was always one of my favorites. I would open it up and read random stories. Go ahead, read a story and FREE-WRITE what the story churns up in your own subconscious mind. 

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

Thank you for visiting each week. I consider each click an honor.

Can you see? Women’s History in Photos (writing prompt #24)

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California photographer Ana Elisa Fuentes sat across the table from me at the Metropolitan Bistro in Sea Cliff, NY. It was the night before the opening of her photography exhibit, “Women’s Activism and Empowerment: A Global Perspective.”

I almost missed it.

Fresh off the yoga mat, quickly dressed in jeans and a fluffy white sweater, I greeted my table of friends, one of whom happened to be hosting the exhibit, others who sat in anticipation and admiration, and my new friend, the artist herself.

I almost missed it.

Why do we sometimes miss important things? What do you miss when you run from mat to car to table? Is your lens blurred or can you stop and focus?

Copyright Ana Elisa Fuentes

Don’t miss it:

“Twenty-five images, Nobel Peace Prize Winners, 1960′s civil rights rights activists and founders of a peanut cooperative in Haiti.” Fuentes uses her camera as “a tool for social change, human rights and social justice.”

It made my pen want to do the same.

As an American woman who grew up benefiting from the fruits of 1970′s activists, it’s easy to miss the violence, abuse, and inequality that women and girls around the globe still face. This is 2012 America and last month, a congressional committee of all men actually had the audacity to debate the reasons why women should not be entitled to basic health and reproduction rights.  It would be funny if it were not so pathetic.

Outside my sunglasses, I know what dims the light. Yet, in this exhibit, women look you in the eye, out a window, smile, work, as if to feed some triumphant undercurrent running though each moment of time and place.

Copyright Ana Elisa Fuentes

What did you almost miss? What story do you need to tell?

WRITING PROMPTS:

  • View Ana Elisa’s Photographs, a book of photographs, or your local library’s Woman’s History Month exhibit. Write about a woman from the past or present whose name you never heard before. Stick to the facts. Emotions are up to the reader.
  • Too many girls around the world are treated to the same mistreatment as their adult counterparts. This is the hardest. What does that little girl need you to know? Be her voice.
  • Celebration song. Write a song of praise. Make it a poem, story, essay. Who can you celebrate? Is it celebration in spite of….

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Visit her photography exhibit in a former mansion that now houses the Holocaust Museum and Tolerance Center of Nassau County in Glen Cove, NY. APRIL 11, 2012 is the last day so get there fast.

Thank you, Ana Elisa for the inspiration and use of your photograph. Thank you readers, visionaries, artists and activists for stopping by. I consider each click an honor.

You Are a Storyteller: a St. Patrick’s Day Prompt

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Ireland on busImagine you’re traveling by bus along a beautiful road, just a short distance from Dublin, Ireland. The driver stops to let a few faeries pass by. You decide to get off the bus too because all of the stories seem to live down by the river below.

You walk for miles. You aren’t tired. You’re not thirsty, hungry, wet, or cold. The river takes you to places greener than all places you have even been before and finally, you reach the home of the storyteller.

Is the storyteller there?

Yes, he has just finished outsmarting a giant and is now having a cup of tea to relax. Please sit, he says. So you do. The storyteller works in an office in the city now,  but he used to travel from house to house where he would be fed and put up for the night. Luckily, his investment in stories has paid off nicely.

How did he do it? Well, it was just one story that changed his life because it is always just one story. You lean in closer. He sips on his tea. You sip on yours.

The story was told one way when he was young, but then, like the river, it changed over time. Even the master storyteller never tells it the same way twice.

But, still, you must hear how that story sounded on the day it was born, if he could just tell it right now, you would leave and never ask another question! Luck is with you today, the storyteller says….

WRITING PROMPTS:

  • I tell my students that on March 17th, they all get to be Irish. This week, you get to be Irish too, but since you are a storyteller, please take the whole week to enjoy your temporary identity (should you choose to accept the challenge). Read myths and poems old and new. Let your imagination go until, just like a true weaver of tales from any culture or tradition, you are fully convinced every single word is true.
  • Listen to some Irish folk music while you write. It’s easy to find on Youtube, but support the musicians by purchasing a song that you really like. It’s okay if you get up and dance with the a few of the leprechauns outside the door – just as long as you make it back to your desk.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Are you one of the 11,000 writers by my side at AWP in Boston a few days ago? Did you hear the keynote speaker, Nobel Prize winning poet, Seamus Heaney?  In his conversation with Rosanna Warren and poet Derek Walcott the conversation turned to traditions, family, and politics in Irish writing. He spoke of his admiration for the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. Read Heaney’s work for pleasure, mastery, and story.
  • Spend some more time with the stories, myths, music, poems and artwork of Ireland or any culture outside your own. Get immersed. And if like me, you do have some Irish blood, read and write on this theme beyond the 17th. Who are your favorite Irish writers?

Thank you so much for stopping by, storytellers. I consider each click an honor.

Rocking in Walt’s Cradle: Poetry in Performance

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From the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Website

Louisa gave birth here, rocked the cradle while her husband stacked cedar shingles in layers and rows.  Today, on the grounds of the house where it all began, you can see poetry readings and take workshops. Quincy Troupe, Daniela Gioseffi, Brendan Constantine and musician, Kelvyn Bell, graced the interpretive center on the WWBA grounds yesterday.

Constantine comes from L.A. and I think you still can catch him read in NY at the KGB bar before he flies back. Loved this poem, “Before the Flood” from his new book, Calamity Joe. Listen to this, “My father remembers nothing. Or rather/ he remembers where it used to be-See/ that building? When I was a kid there was/ nothing there. And next door, where/ that school is,      nothing.”

Did you hear your dad too? I did.

And then Daniela Gioseffi read, “Unfinished Autobiography for My Daughter,” from Blood Autumn, “Now, I take you, Daughter,/ to the woods to meet the scarlet maples,/ feed the wild deer, crush the leaves/ and acorns with your steps, dance/ in the moonlight, your mother is no orphan, / like hers was….”

Her voice quivers passionately when she reads and professes her religion called poetry, Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, transcendental all.

I’m listening now to Quincy Troupe’s “My Poems have Holes Sewn into Them.” and “they run searching for light and the end of tunnels they become trains….”

My husband the musician listens in, our worlds meet.

George Wallace, the host, is not only a talented writer, but he knows how to curate readings. The series is called Walking with Whitman: Poetry in Performance and it runs all year. (check the website for schedule & the list of famous poets you won’t want to miss, www.waltwhitman.org)

WRITING PROMPTS:

  • Gioseffi spoke about American poets, transcendental writers. Where do you find the divine outside of your religion? Is poetry your religion too? In a certain slant of light, what do you see?
  • Whenever I’m at Walt’s birthplace, I always think of his mother. Must be the word “birth” in the landmark’s title. Or maybe I just pick up on her vibe. Imagine you are Walt Whitman’s mother or simply imagine you’re someone else and write a persona poem.
  • Listen to some Miles Davis as you free write. (Quincy wrote his biography in case you’re wondering where this prompt fits in.)

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Go visit your local dead author’s house. Walt’s on Long Island and Camden, NJ. Emily’s in Amherst, MA. I remember walking in London in the rain just to stand outside Virginia Woolf’s house & again in Dublin for Joyce a few years later. The sun is out. Plan a road trip.

Thank you so much for visiting. I consider each click an honor.

Flying in the V – Writing Prompt #21

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I’m the last person in the world to talk about sports, but when I read a poem to my students by Eloise Greenfield called, For the Love of the Game, I wish I had paid better attention to basketball. It’s about someone who had observed Michael Jordan play as a kid.  Michael Jordan who

stands right there
on a little piece of air

But Mrs, Lipsey, can he stand on air?!  I think of the writer and storyteller, Joseph Bruchac, when students ask me such questions. (I have seen him at speak at conferences and hear his wisdom sometimes when I read. It is the occupational hazard of being a librarian – you tend to hear voices!) In many of the folktales that he retells, the listener has to suspend belief, but he doesn’t say that something is not true.

I like to let the kids live in metaphor – even if it is just for a few moments each week. What can you do on a little piece of air? Dance, sing, write, balance?

before he lands, smooth
as a gliding plane,then
turns and smiles
at the memory of flying.What memory of flying?

Do you remember flying? Go and ask a bird to fill you in.

PROMPT:

  • Write about an encounter with a bird, about being a bird or a mythological hybrid.
  • What game do you love? What would you do for the love of the game?
  • Create a character that is named after a bird. There are tons of them already. Raven, Allard, Jay. It’s hard to do this without being goofy or obvious, but give it a try anyway.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

  • Go bird watching.

Thank you so much for visiting. I consider each click an honor.

The Bib, Writing Prompt #20

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Last night as I drove past the Bayside Diner on Northern Boulevard, I had a flash of memory. Grandma and I had our last meal together there years ago when I was six months pregnant. I had questioned her eating choices (hamburger and fries) and then beat myself up for it afterwards. Had I known the future, I would have said, “Go ahead Grandma, load up on the salt .”

But we don’t know the future. That is why when we are done crying, questioning, and in the process of missing, we take small comfort in words.

THE BIB

Aren’t you supposed to be watching your cholesterol?
I lectured my Grandmother under Bayside Diner’s neon lights.
What? I should never have a little piece of meat and a couple of fries?

She pulled out a lobster bib to the sound of forks scraping plates.
It was saved, like her plastic bags in the closet, Sweet and Lows,
balls of foil and I wanted to crawl under the table

but smiled instead while she ate her French fries.
I wondered why anyone needed all that jewelry, her lovely costume jewelry,
just to have lunch at the Bayside Diner.

Two days later it filled a plastic bag at St. Francis hospital where in fleeting moments of consciousness she said, What’s wrong, Steffie?

Nothing.  Must be that they have you on too much medication.
I reassured her,
Septic shock. The nurse said later when her body started to bubble,   turned purple where drips stuck into the back of her hand like needles
from the pin cushion at home beside her sewing chair.

I was afraid to touch her hand but did, held up the baby’s
blue bib across my pregnant belly, the one she’d been working on since my sonogram showed “boy,”
a bib she carried to the hospital in a portable sewing bag as if there would be plenty of time to sew.

WRITING PROMPT 20:

  • The Symbol.   Take notice of how everyday objects act as triggers. Allow one symbol (diner) to lead into another (bib.)This week, think of memory triggers that are bitter-sweet. I smiled when I passed the Bayside Diner last night, remembering how Grandma thought nothing of pulling out a plastic lobster bib to protect her suit. She was always dressed up and every strand of her dyed blond hair perfect thanks to weekly visits to the “beauty parlor” and tons of hair spray. No wonder, she had the protection of a lobster bib even when she ate hamburgers.
  • Not Another Grandma (or Great-Grandma) Poem.  You are not writing this poem for publication, but you write to stir up the memory of someone you loved  who shaped your life. This post’s for you, Grandma Rose.
  • Hit the Journal. Are you writing everyday? Keep your hand going and free. Pick a line or two from your own words. Let that be the prompt for your next piece.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

Thank you very much for visiting each week. I consider each click an honor.

Is it Safe to Swim with Crocodiles? Writing prompt #19

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Komodo Dragon

Komodo Dragon, Indonesia, by Jessica Lipsey

Crocodiles are not a reality where I live. No komodo dragons either. In the US, we get Alligators, but only in the Southeast and I’m in NY, home to smaller reptiles, like garter snakes.  I once hit an gator in the mouth with a paddle. My daughter and I were canoeing in Florida and I thought he was a log until his jaw opened and snapped into air.

Did you know that alligators can grow as many new teeth as they want so their mouths are always filled with sharpness?

The other night I had a dream I was camping with my family near a lake filled with alligators. I asked the ranger if it was safe to swim and he said, “It could be.”

I wanted a yes or no answer. “No, you can’t swim in the lake!”  or “Go ahead, the water is fine,” but everyone said the same thing, “It could be.” In my dream, I desperately wanted someone to tell me it was safe, but none could guarantee. Meanwhile, my family swam side by side with hundreds of gators. I watched. They swam and splashed until the lake dried up and turned into a fossil bed. I never went in.

Why am I sharing this? a) because perhaps there is a dream analyst out there who can make sense of this, b) because I know you love to write about scary animals, c) the alligators are trying to tell me something.

I looked up alligators in Denise Linn’s book, The Hidden Power of Dreams. She writes that they are a symbol of “hidden, formidable strength and power.” or “Trouble below the surface.”

What do you think? Is there strength and power ahead or trouble below the surface? There could be.

WRITING PROMPT 19:

  • What’s Your Interpretation?  Set your story or poem in a swamp. Are the gators friendly? a symbol of fear? strength? trouble?
  • Get a dream book and flip open to a random page.  Characters dream. Poets dream. Use someone else’s dream in your writing by flipping open a dream dictionary and writing down the interpretation. This gets you off the hook from simply writing about a dream.  In a poetry workshop I took with Kimiko Hahn, she advised us that when using a dream as a resource for a poem, it’s a good idea to not make the opening line, “In my dream….” It’s already been done.
  • Consult the Mythology. In Ted Andrew’s book, Animal Speak, he wrote about the symbolism of alligators as follows, “Primal Energies of Birth, Motherhood, and Initiation.” Animal images live within the collective. “In medieval Europe and earlier…alligator and crocodile were associated with the dragon…the guardian of treasures, often symbolic of hidden wisdom.”  Varuna, god of waters in the Hindu tradition, rides on a crocodile’s back. Go riff on the myth.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

Thank you very much for visiting each week. I consider each click an honor.

Giants Win the Super Bowl and I Cried When Madonna Danced For World Peace. Writing Prompt #18

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Madonna played at Escapes in Merrick when I was a kid. I had the black and white postcard of the event taped to my wall with her picture. An armful of rubber black bangles framed Madonna’s face. It was the 80′s.

I wore those rubber bangles too, shopped at Unique on Broadway, and got my head partially shaved at the Astor Place Hairstylists soon after that. Oh, I thought I was so cool.

For a minute during half-time, I was that teenage version of myself.  Only I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have cried when the words “world peace” filled the stadium floor. If I did cry, I never would have admitted it online. Wait, there was no “online.”

WRITING PROMPT 18:

  • Get Emotional.  Have you ever cried at a totally inappropriate moment? Or laughed when the “normal” reaction is to cry? Or is the only thing you can manage to talk about after the Giants win the super bowl your own personal reaction to a half-time performance? Let a character (or theme) you are working with be filled with a surprising emotional response.
  • Time Travel.  Tonight, the image of me walking around the East Village in the 1980′s as a teenager wearing combat books was juxtaposed in my mind with the glitzy super bowl of 2012. Take two images such as these and write a poem.
  • Journal Exercise. In your journal, write freely about you, past (pick one time from the past) and present. Alternate lines so that in one sentence you’re shopping for used neon pants and in the next you’re driving the carpool. Go line by line without thinking or stopping. I would LOVE to read these so I hope some of you are brave enough to share.

WHEN YOU FINISH WRITING:

Thank you very much for visiting each week. I consider each click an honor.