Renee is Writing

The webinar last night was very informative. It looked at the structure of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir "Eat, Pray, Love" and offered advice and suggestions on how we can structure our own memoirs to make them more cohesive and marketable. The webinar was offered through Write Your Memoir in Six Months and was presented by Linda Joy Myers and Brooke Warner--two awesome and accessible teachers. I've put off writing this memoir for a long time despite knowing it's something I need to do. Putting my emotional truth and my past in writing for the world is a scary thing to do but I have to do it. I've written some short essays about events during that time frame and even written a very fictionalized version of my story. After viewing the webinar last night I became motivated to sit down and get this done. Here's what I'm doing in order to reach that goal. 1-- I signed up for Write Nonfiction in November. It's a group like NaNoWriMo but for nonfiction....

With daylight savings time coming to an end this weekend winter cannot be far away. As the browned leaves float and dance to the ground they remind me of the rhythm and swirl of poetry. My poetry collection is coming along. Just typed up the complete first draft and will go home tonight to proofread and then send off to Lorraine Mejia who is my gentle guide along this journey. May add a few more new poems before it's completely done but very close now. I'm homing in on some writing focus, finding that poetry is my heart and soul so I need to do more of that and keeping distractions that lead me toward novel writing to a minimum. The lessons in this course --Your Life in Poems-- keeps me focused on this writing that feeds my soul. I've already written a poetry collection as memoir and will shop it around, hopefully to be published as a chapbook. That said, it may be time to finally write my memoir of divorce and the alcoholism that lead up to it. (his, not mine) Toward t...

Today is a bit cloudy but still a beautiful fall day. There is a chill in the air, but when the sun sneaks out from behind the clouds the warmth is like a kiss. I'm looking forward to taking off for a weekend in Pennsylvania to see family and have a little calm serenity in natural surroundings. Maybe some poems will emerge over the next few days. Still working on the poetry collection I'm leaning toward making all the poems rather short and with echoes of tanka and tanka prose. Just sent this week's batch off too my instructor and the rest of the group. I have the afternoon free and will make some art pieces for the book. Not sure how much art to include but for sure a title page and then lead pages for each of four sections. I haven't painted in a long time so let's see how this goes. I'm a bit rusty but curious to get back to a visual art. Hope you all have a nice fall. Go pick some apples and bake a pie.

Okay, so I've been remiss in posting on my blog. Busy with work and writing, and life in general. Now it's September (well it's almost over) and I always find fall, the start of a new school year, and the end of summer heat to be a chance for a new beginning. So here comes mine. Presently I am still in the middle of that poetry course, working toward a final book manuscript of 40 poems divided into four sections, one for each season of the year to correspond with seasons of my life. I've decided I really want some of my art in the book but so as not to overwhelm myself I will include 4 art pieces as the intro sheets to each section of the book. This month I also begin 2 short story online classes and hope to work toward creating fiction chapbooks to submit to contests and/or for publication. I'm considering CreateSpace for one of them and taking the plunge into self-online-publishing. Wouldn't do it for a novel but perhaps it's okay for poetry and short ...

Today I begin a new writing adventure. I am taking a 5 month long online course with Lorraine Mejia Green called "Your Life in Poems." Each week for 20 weeks we get a new lesson with model poems and exercises to write from. We are writing poems that tell our own stories so our families and future generations will know what we are all about. Along the way we will post our poems and get feedback from Lorraine as well as other class members. I have been in online poetry classes with many of these poets before so I am guaranteed a wonderful and enlightening experience. At the end of the course we work with a book designer to create our own poetry collection that is the story of our life. I'm still deciding whether or not I want to include art work in the book. I'm thinking I might as it's a chance to incorporate my art and poetry and have it in solid form to share with friends and family. I will post my progress along the way to document this adventure. So l...

word group: voices--ancestors--wind chimes--stone ancestors voices-- wind chimes in the stones

word group: THE STRANGER A stranger in this world the child does not understand love is a gift. He believes it is a birthright all children possess. So, in the only language he knows, he sends out a cry that beckons warmth and sustenance. All of us must answer the calls of all children so the light of nurture can lead us through these black tunnels of violence.