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Howdy, Campers!
Note the four exciting announcements at the bottom of this post (including this: today's the last day to enter our current book giveaway.)
Thank you, Elizabeth Steinglass, for hosting Poetry Friday today!
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I had a wonderful poetry teacher, Tony Lee, who taught us about voice.
Describing something, as a journalist does, Tony said, is the reporting voice. That voice comes from the lips, the mouth, the throat.
Writing about feelings comes from the gut, a lower, truer, sometimes scarier place, he said.
Describing something, as a journalist does, Tony said, is the reporting voice. That voice comes from the lips, the mouth, the throat.
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| from morguefile.com |
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| from morguefile.com |
This is the deep voice. The deep voice attracts readers. It connects them to your story. Be brave, he told us. Find the feelings. Go there.
So why do some blog and FaceBook posts get nine kazillion comments (not mine!) and some get zip?
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| from FaceBook |
12,341,889 likes ~ 58,962 talking about this
Putting aside JoAnn's terrific post about social media and the perfect lengths for poems, posts, headings, etc. in various online media...
it seems to me that getting your work read (or, more to the point, getting your work read and passed on) is about superficial vs. deep.
Just like a book in which the author rips off her shirt and shows us her scars (as Anne Lamott does), FaceBook and blog posts that come from the gut are the ones that resonate.
I was at a meeting the other day; each of us had three minutes to talk about anything we wanted. The first two minutes and 30 seconds I talked about some success I had had. In the last 30 seconds, my mouth opened and an embarrassing truth popped out. I said that Robyn Hood Black had very kindly gifted me homemade granola. It was especially touching because Robyn knows I can't eat sugar, so she made it with sugar-free maple syrup. I could actually have it. Delighted, I sat down for lunch, thinking I'd taste just a spoonful, just to see what it was like.
Good granola is dense, so you don't need much. And you and I know that you're supposed to eat two cups of granola over a period of several days--with fresh blueberries and your pinky finger raised, right?
Not me... immediately my mouth opened, a vacuum turned on, my brain turned off, and nearly two cups of absolutely delicious granola were gone. Gone!
Good granola is dense, so you don't need much. And you and I know that you're supposed to eat two cups of granola over a period of several days--with fresh blueberries and your pinky finger raised, right?
Not me... immediately my mouth opened, a vacuum turned on, my brain turned off, and nearly two cups of absolutely delicious granola were gone. Gone!
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| This isn't Robyn's granola. Hers had yummy bits of coconut in it. But...um...I didn't have time to take a picture of hers. So this is from morguefile.com |
As we went around the room sharing, do you think others in the group commented on the nicely packaged pithy wisdom in my first two minutes and thirty seconds? Nope. Nearly ALL of them talked about my granola adventure. It hit a familiar nerve. We've all been there.
It was no longer mine...it was all of ours.
It was no longer mine...it was all of ours.
During Poetry Month this year, I had what I called a metaphoraffair--I practiced finding metaphors, posting one each day, both on my website (where, it turned out, the comment mechanism was broken) and on FaceBook and Twitter.
The metaphor which drew the most interest was my final post for Poetry Month 2014, written with and about my mother, who is 91 and not doing great. It was hard for me to post; it was true. It was from my gut.
I drew this in November, 2010, after Mom and I walked around a park in Malibu…suddenly I was the parent
The point is, be brave, cut deep beneath the skin, share from the gut, share your humaness. That's all we have.
* * * *
LAST CALL! If you haven't entered our current giveaway, it ends today! To enter, go to Jill Esbaum's post to win your very own autographed copy of Jill's Angry Birds Playground: Rain Forest (National Geographic Books)!
* * * *
LAST CALL! If you haven't entered our current giveaway, it ends today! To enter, go to Jill Esbaum's post to win your very own autographed copy of Jill's Angry Birds Playground: Rain Forest (National Geographic Books)!
Will you be in New York on May 18th? I'll be speaking on the Children's Books Panel of the Seminar on Jewish Story in New York City on Sunday, May 18th. Here's my interview the seminar organizer, Barbara Krasner published on her blog.
For an example of a beautifully written post which hits a nerve, read Jama Rattigan's gorgeous and heartfelt Mother's Day post.
And, last but not least, happy Children's Book Week! Be brave. Go forth and share the very thing that hard to share.
posted with love by April Halprin Wayland...but you knew that, right?
0 Comments on Be Honest: Do You Like This Post? Gut Level Truth In Poetry...and in Life as of 5/16/2014 5:48:00 AM
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[...] The Beat – Doctor Who Omnibus, Volume 1 [...]
You’re being suspiciously circumspect about the miniseries ‘Agent Provocateur’ and ‘The Forgotten’, which comprise the bulk of this collection. I’m sure the new reader would find gems among the shorter items, but the fact remains that the first thing to confront them will be an incoherent made-up-as-it-goes-along epic by a writer whose only discernible talents seem to be a) getting well-connected enough in Doctor Who fandom that he’s always invited to write these gigs despite his entire fictional output being barely publishable and b) squeezing more expositional text into word balloons than you’d find in entire chapters of most technical manuals. ‘The Forgotten’ is marginally better but does rather resemble an elephant farting pointless Doctor Who references into a wind tunnel for 6 issues.
Though I don’t have quite as negative a view of the longer story arcs, I do find them less exciting.
I particularly like the range of diverse art styles that one shots bring in.