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WWP Workshop

December 23, 2009
By Michael Jackman
WWP Workshop

Next Meeting: Tues., Feb 9, 2010, 6 – 9:30 pm
Quills Coffee
930 Baxter Avenue
Louisville, KY 40204
Meeting Room (upstairs)
(502) 742-6129
Cost: $35
Topic: Q&A: It’s about time we had one of these. Bring your writing questions. I’ll bring my reference books. Together, we’ll learn many new things.
For our next meeting, we try a “fresh brewed” location – Quills Coffee. We’ll be back at the Clifton Center in March.

Director: Michael Jackman, Writer, Lecturer in Writing, Indiana Univ. Southeast

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First Time? Take 10% Off for trying the WWP

WWP Advantages:

Receive special presentations on writing craft
Meet and network with other writers
Participate in a professional fiction, poetry & essay writers workshop
All writing levels welcome!
Low workshop fee covers room rental, handouts, snacks.
Contact me for more info

CANCELLATION POLICY: If you must cancel, please give 24 hours’ notice to receive a refund (minus a $10 reservation fee). (If I have to cancel for any reason, your total fee is always refunded.)
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draft from tonight’s creativity workshop

January 19, 2010
By Michael Jackman

Thought I’d share a draft from one of the creativity exercises for tonight. This one was “Associative Poetry” – after reading Charles Simic “In the Library” to the group, I joined them in writing a poem that began with an ordinary occurrence and ended with something surprising. I guess I had the idea of angels in mind from Simic:

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

Mine is only a rough draft – slightly revised – be kind. I love Simic’s style of declarative sentences juxtaposed without transitions or fancy compound/complex sentences, so forgive me if I really try to channel it – these exercises can really help writers move in new directions.

The 27 bus huffs to a stop.
The door flies open. The steps tilt
toward the pavement with a long hydrolic sigh.
As if from a chrysalis, out emerges a woman balanced
on a cane. She blinks at the amber sun, dirty gray
clouds, clods of snow, like peppered cottage cheese,
that litter the pavement. Her feet make long shadows.

As I watch these shadows, two black triangles seem to emerge
from her legs. They are the shadows of glittering
butterfly wings, green, black and gold. She taps
her cane, propelling herself forward
in a series of short hops. Her clothes part,
ripping and shedding like an old skin. She
takes off, fluttering over my head toward the westering
sun. The bus continues north, filled
with dour night-nurses, tired maids
heading home to mac and cheese, stunned college students,
and overworked administrative assistants.

At the next stop, the bus lets out a young man in tight black jeans,
carrying an overstuffed backpack, and a woman in a white nurse’s
coat and blue scrubs. They spread their wings, trot
toward the sun, shed their loads, and flutter away.

exercise: tapping your creativity

January 19, 2010
By Michael Jackman
exercise: tapping your creativity

It was a terrific workshop tonight! Everything worked beautifully – from the discussion and question session to the craft lesson, to the workshop session – four drafts we reviewed (2 novel excerpts, 1 short story, and 1 set of 2 poems). Deep, insightful comments to the drafts that I know helped the four writers with revision. Thought I’d share with you all the exercise I created for tonight, as a preview of what we do here.  Maybe you’ll find it useful.

Association – think of the free association word game in psychology – one word leads to another. In my copy of The Princeton Guide to Poetry and Poetics, under ASSOCIATION you find, “see imagination,” and the description: “connoting free play, mental creativity, and license” (566). Whatever the definition – we writers need it. We need our intellects to take a vacation and let our imaginations run free for one thing to lead to another so we can make creative, intuitive leaps. Leaps that go beyond intellect. Here are some exercises to do that.

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the WWP gets its first logo

December 23, 2009
By Michael Jackman
the WWP gets its first logo

If you look at the masthead of the-wwp.com, you’ll now find a logo, thanks to Heather Jacobs, a WWP regular. I couldn’t have done it alone. I’m no graphic designer. That was clear when I passed out a sheet of draft logos to workshop attendees one month and asked them what they thought, honestly. And they acted like the honest reviewers I had encouraged them to become. Read more »

“mountain-lovin’” show pics

December 21, 2009
By Michael Jackman
“mountain-lovin’” show pics

Here are some pics from the “Mountain-lovin’, Tree-huggin’ Coffee Hour (and-a-half) Dec 13, cosponsored by the WWP and New Southerner Magazine. I hope to have podcasts up in a few weeks.

buy downloads

November 16, 2009
By Michael Jackman

I now have digital merchandise. An e-book of my essays, an mp3, a writer’s guide. More to come. Try http://digiorders.the-wwp.com to get started.

Mountain-lovers performance to benefit Kentuckians for the Commonwealth

November 15, 2009
By Michael Jackman

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

More Info

Louisville, KY – True stories, live music and great coffee will be served up at a special event to benefit Kentuckians For The Commonwealth.

The Mountain-Lovin,’ Tree-Huggin’ Coffee Hour (and-a-Half) will take place Sunday, Dec. 13, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at the Glassworks 815 West Market Street, Louisville, KY.

“The event is free, but we are suggesting a minimum $5 donation,” said Michael Jackman, who heads the Writers Workshop Project. The event is being co-sponsored by the Writers Workshop Project and New Southerner Magazine. Read more »

is it all about “I,” after all?

October 18, 2009
By Michael Jackman
is it all about “I,” after all?

Our “capital-I” is one of those bizarre inconsistencies of English orthography so taken for granted it’s all but unnoticed until someone points it out.

I made the discovery thanks to Maxine Hong Kingston’s essay, “The Language of Silence.” In a quick aside Kingston notes, ” ‘I’ is capital and ‘you’ is lower-case.” And suddenly I, too, recognized the fact that had been staring me in the face all these years: “I” is capital, and “you” is lower-case. And “we” is lower-case, and “he,” and “she” and “they” and “them” and “it,” and…every pronoun except “I.”

I’ve stated my belief elsewhere that American culture places too much emphasis on the Self in comparison to other cultures. The obvious reasons are America’s much-touted “pioneer spirit,” “immigrant motivation,” and “cowboy culture.” But maybe the real cause and effect of our culture’s narcissism is its capitalized first person pronoun. (Tell me, Aussies are rugged individualists, but aren’t Brits conformists by stereotype? Well, as you’ll see, they had the lower case for a long period and we never had it.)

Our English “I” stands alone among the languages for getting such capital treatment. In French, it’s “je,” in Spanish, “yo,” in Portuguese, “eu,” in German, “ich,” in Italian, “io“. (Though Italians capitalize the formal you, “Loro” – but that’s simply to avoid confusion with “loro” for “they”).
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linguistics and les sommambiches

October 2, 2009
By Michael Jackman

I don’t know if I’d ever go so far as to recommend writers study linguistics, but it sure can’t hurt, and learning about the strange history and structure of English could help one become a better writer. So it’s worth a shot.

Here’s a loose collection of thoughts on linguistics, ending with why writers should be interested in it, and why the French referred to Americans as “les sommambiches” for thirty years after World War One.

English has secrets. For instance, the word bonfire comes from “bone fire.” If you didn’t study etymology, you wouldn’t ever know that buried in that happy term conjuring burning driftwood, surf, teenage yearning, and Beach Boys songs is a way the Celts warded off evil spirits. Read more »

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