Transformative Blogging

Just a note to say I still have room for participants in my Transformative Blogging class, open to those hesitant bloggers-to-be wishing for a roadmap to help them proceed, or for those already blogging, this course promises to help set intentions and recalibrate blogging focus.
The course is offered through Story Circle Network. Outline and full details can be read here: Transformative Blogging.

Come out, come out and play...we have a beautiful group assembling already.

AROHO Speaks, Writer to Writer: Interview with Maura MacNeil



Maura McNeil

 I'm proud to cross-post this interview with Summer 2011 AROHO Retreat writer Maura MacNeil (conducted by Barbara Ann Yoder). I decided to jump in and give you a quick glance mid-interview. I continue to be moved by the tremendous strength and resilience of the women gathered for the retreat; it seems many of us crossed intense barriers (emotional, spiritual, physical) in order to perservere and attend the conference.

Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?


During the retreat I recognized that the fear I carried with me as a woman writer in the context of tackling difficult subject matter, or fearing judgment from others—all that baggage that we tend to carry around as writers that keeps us from writing what we are meant to write—is part of what Marilynne Robinson spoke of as a categorical way we are taught to think. While I listened to her words I suddenly understood that I had the power to break that spell. The “deeper experience hidden from the categorical ways we are taught to think” that Marilynne spoke to was a space I suddenly felt the courage to enter because I was surrounded by women who understood those words just as I did.

I arrived at the retreat having just lost my husband who died quite suddenly in June, so I was raw with grief. But at the same time I was in an emotional space where I was completely open to the authentic creative energy of AROHO women and to the possibility that I might be able to frame a new perspective on my writing life in this foreign land of widowhood where all that was “familiar” was suddenly erased.

Over the past decade or so, even though I was writing and publishing and editing, I felt as though my life had become increasingly compartmentalized into my “life as writer” and my “other life” that was filled with obligations that constantly tugged me away from being present in my creative life. I was increasingly distracted. When Marilynne told us that we should make ourselves into someone we might enjoy being with, that we should give ourselves a creative life that as writers we want to live, her words were like an alarm going off, and I knew that something very important was happening to my sense of myself as a woman writer.
More here.

Towards Mapping Female Geographies

Photo by Robyn Beattie

 I am pleased to announce a short-short up on-line at In Her Place, titled, "Reverie for The Girl at Gabe’s Bar, downtown Iowa City , where the accordian player belts out, in Anglo-Spanish, his love song," http://inherplace.org/stories/tania-pryputniewicz/reverie-for-the-girl-at-gabes-bar/

This fictive rumination of mine sought to answer the following question posed by In Her Place editor-in-chief Marci Daniels and co-conspirator Jessica Erica Hahn in their call for submissions:

In what ways does being female affect one’s sense of place, placement, and/or (dis)location?

A rich, viable question, worth I think, a life-time's scrutiny.

Robyn's images can be viewed on her site: http://www.robynbeattie.com/

Deciphering the Siren: Premature Gifts, Luminaries, and Transformative Blogging

Detail from Mermaid, Howard Pyle

Jung’s wife, Emma, wrote that as a symbol, the mermaid wants to "entangle" us in "real relationships." She drags the man underwater not always to drown him, but sometimes to bathe him in the waters of life. Mermaids: Nymphs of the Sea, Aurum Press,  Text by Theodore Gachot, Photography by Leah Demchick

I crept away early on Sunday, needing time away.

Startling, the pain of leaving my youngest child behind, his sweet, sweat-tufted hair, as he lay in his comforter. Last night as we fell asleep, he said he wanted to make me an early birthday present (months away), could I guess what letter it started with…You don’t have to tell me, I said, but stopped, overcome by his absolute need to cinch the giving in case something were to eclipse it…He blurts, it starts with f…no…I mean r…Roses!

I kiss his cheek as I’d promised, whisper, I’m going, but not loud enough to wake him, I know better. I climb the ladder to my daughter’s loft bed, her kitten batting at my ankles in a plea for wet food since I’m the feeder of all creatures under our roof. This kiss elicits a sleepy, bye mom. Last, the big bed, where husband, middle child, and the Husky snore, paws and shins churned in the electric blanket. I linger with a fraction of regret, listening to the familiar sheen of breathing I so love, a shield for my childhood’s fear of the dark.

I’m only driving an hour away to meet a friend to talk poetry over coffee—yet I hesitate again...wish to burrow down, drift back to sleep, rise late in the morning and walk the dog, leashed, so she doesn’t trigger the ferals up the trunks of the redwoods as will be their fate when my husband leaves the door ajar for the dog to come and go. To stay, grind the coffee beans, compose slow emails between scrambling eggs…But if I don’t get away, the other half of me suffers.

Under the supernaturally gorgeous 7 am skies full of gunmetal clouds, the black pavement of the road sparkles, slick, split by the yellow divider line mimicking the tangerine gold of the leaves as the muted grey of a mottled pair of white horses in the mist and the dark tributaries of the oaks fringed with velvet moss hurtle past. A slight rain descends; I’m near tears, confused by an ancient fear of losing children mingled with the urge to stop, get out, and ride one of the horses into the hills.

Likely the grief’s more triggered by this brilliance of nature and the fact that I’m a two-step away from summer’s cornucopia of nested stress. Events in my thirteen year-old marriage took most of my attention, though, the degree to which I’ve been devastated by implied actions on my husband’s part--the responsibility for my reaction--rests solely with me. A state of truce graces me for now, thanks to the net of helpers mirroring back to me ways I might better appreciate what I have, strive to place things in context, become a better person.

The need for privacy, though, extinguished any desire to write here with my usual candor. In the meantime, I’ve taken a fiendish delight in deciphering the siren: reading about mermaids, mermen, Emma Jung, in my attempts to explore the volatile/vulnerable conditions the bound circle marriage attempts to make of our desires and attractions. How we transform when we run out of air and storm the sea’s surface, claim our stake in the living, forced by circumstance to choose to be here. Through such trials comes the gift of incarnating more deeply, or at least that’s what I decided.

But let me also acknowledge the luminaries…like the dear couple, both Taiko drummers, inviting my family to a gathering the very day after my husband and I had it out (unbeknownst to them, of course). We left our house, the air heavy with the prior nights’ accusations and revelations, to drive out into the country to a home high on a hill overlooking Mt. Tamalpais. Legs planted in the vibrant green grass, our friends, married as long as my husband and I, took their position on either side of an oblong drum.

She with her long black red tinged hair, arms windmilling in gentle but powerful circles, knees turning in tandem as she poised to strike the drum. Her husband, with legs in warrior stance, connecting in slow, fierce strikes on the opposite side, the deep amber of his voice matching her softer but equally firm arc of song. In the background, our sons circled the lawn, hunting geckos in the stones rimming the hill, my daughter sprawled between my husband and I on the damp grass.

Though unable to set aside its sense of broken trust, the other half of my heart blossomed with possibility. Here, I translated, pure, from our friends, is what a couple in love is capable of creating. In the wake of their secure and fearless drumming, I took refuge from my worst fears about our marriage.

As we drove home, my thoughts ranged over the events of the last couple of years, coming to rest on the time, when, like my younger son, I couldn’t wait to give a gift. Late November, still concerned about my husband’s ability to recover from heart surgery, I’d painted him a mug: purple trident on one side, a crown and a heart in its middle, the first initial of his name along the handle, waves curling the cup’s rim, a second, secret heart at the bottom of the cup on the inside. Three weeks before Christmas, I gave it to him, here, I said, I just wanted you to have this now…and he took it…I didn’t say in case you die before Christmas….but I thought it, in fear.

In the rearview mirror, I see my youngest son drifting to sleep, his head resting on my daughter's shoulder. I wonder aloud to my husband, how many a wife, entering marriage, hasn’t felt a bit like the little mermaid, trading her voice for legs? He’s adjusting his sunglasses, the other hand resting on my thigh. I say it more to myself than him, and don’t expect him to answer.

The rest goes on in my head. Mermaid turned land girl or not, as women we continue to plumb the watery, emotional, psychic depth of human possibility. I think backing away from that gift and not voicing its truths would be a great loss in any marriage. Maybe it takes nearly half a century to find one’s voice (my plight anyway, but better late than never). And though the little Mermaid evaporates in the morning to join her sisters in the air, I don’t think the prince has it any easier. Every man, like every woman, has his dark hours to survive.



Detail of Book Cover, Author Theodore Gachot
Image: C.E. Boutibonne, Sirenes, EDIMEDIA

  Which leads me to close on this final meditation, also from the book my husband got for me in our first year of marriage, Mermaids, Nymphs of the Sea: “In tales of human-mermaid romance, the need to return to the water became an emblem of the distance between the sexes that could be bridged only through the cultivation of empathy—the relationship of two disparate parts working as a whole (Theodore Gachot)." May we mutually, male and female, “bathe one another in the waters of life” and fulfill our truer nature as luminaries, all.

One last note:

I’ll be teaching a 4 week course for Story Circle Network in January. I'm indebted to both Barbara Yoder and Marlene Samuels, members of the AROHO Speaks Interview Team, for inspiring me to apply to give on-line teaching a try, and Marlene again, for recommending Story Circle Network. (Here's a slice of their mission statement: "The Story Circle Network is dedicated to helping women share the stories of their lives and to raising public awareness of the importance of women's personal histories").

This marks a much anticipated next step in my plan to create for myself the teaching life I so desire. I would love it if you joined me, or passed this link on to friends, those cautious but curious about blogging as well as those veteran bloggers who want to pause, take stock, recalibrate. Read a detailed course description for Transformative Blogging.

Autumnal Update and AROHO Speaks, Writer to Writer: An Interview with Marcia Meier

This hibernal season I feel a bit like a spider with multiple webs underway at once. I love my work as poetry editor at The Fertile Source, I love my work as part of AROHO's 2011 Summer Retreat Interview Team, I love cross-posting and chatting over at She Writes, and I also love blogging here as Feral Mom, Feral Writer. I have some new projects in the wings for the New Year, including preparing to provide content and moderate discussion at The Collaboration Hub as well as teaching a few on-line writing courses.


I'm busy at work on a Word Press website where I hope to centralize the various content from other sites where I spend a good deal of my writing life. And that will also allow me to slip Feral Mom back to its original seed intent: to bare the landscape of the beautiful challenge and gift of raising children while writing (in the company of other mother writers and artists). I'm also pleased to announce that a prose piece, "Reverie for the Girl at Gabe's, downtown Iowa City" was accepted for on-line publication by In Her place and should be posted before Christmas.

In the meantime, please enjoy this interview I conducted with Marcia Meier. I plan to write my next AROHO reading diary on Marcia's book, Navigating the Rough Waters of Today's Publishing World: Critical Advice for Writers from Industry Insiders (Quill Driver Books, 2010) and will post a link here for you shortly.

Marcia—you are in inspiration—visiting your home site, one sees that you are not only a Member of The Redroom , but you are also currently in a low-residency master of fine arts in creative writing program through Antioch University in Los Angeles. You also have time to give writing workshops while keeping a very active blog at your Willow Rock Writers website. How do you balance it all and what advice would you have for writers trying to build web presence?

Well, when everything is listed like that, I do wonder how I get it all done! I was a print journalist for 17 years before I turned to teaching and books, and I learned how to be very disciplined and organized during those years, so that helps a lot. I try to give myself time to write every day, and I also try to set aside certain days for specific tasks. I usually meet with clients on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. That leaves Mondays and Fridays (and Saturdays and Sundays) for writing, reading and master’s work. Read more....

"Poet Teacher Seeks World" Blog Launch and An Interview with Feral Mom, Feral Writer

While still celebrating last summer’s A Room of Her Own Foundations retreat, I realize I failed to provide a link here to the interview my poet friend Lisa Rizzo graciously conducted with me—I hope you’ll check out the interview as a way to support her brand new blog, Poet Teacher Seeks World. Not only did I enjoy seeking out her out at breakfast, and sharing a flashlight up the darkened trail back to our rooms on the mesa, but I also managed to solicit a poem of hers for The Fertile Source that we soon realized I'd first heard her read some years ago at a Women on Writing Conference (and promptly solicited from her back then). And Lisa, the offer stands....

We (the four of us on the interview team: yours truly, Lisa Rizzo, Marlene Samuels, and Barbara Yoder) have since also cross-posted our interviews on the AROHO Speaks, Writer to Writer website, where over the course of the next year we plan to present interviews with as many of this summer’s 2011 retreatants as possible (in the spirit of harvesting insights and passing on a little practical wisdom and inspiration).

And I've missed the practice of the regular flow of postings at Feral Mom--I've been shocked quiet for the moment, but more on that later...life continues to catapault me past the comfort of my furthest growth ring (ready or not). I'm sure I won't be able to resist writing about it for long. Under which circumstances have you been shocked quiet? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

AROHO, Synchronicity, and an Interview with Marlene B. Samuels

Photo by Lisa Rizzo

When I applied to attend a Room of Her Own Foundation’s Summer 2011 Retreat for women writers, I did so because of the conference’s promise of bringing together a group of writers for an uncommon experience: every writer would present as a teacher, every writer would participate as a student. Drawn to this non-hierarchical setting, in which beginning as well as more established writers would mix without pretension, I took a deep breath, and applied.

I set myself the goal of reading work by as many of the attending writers as possible. On my initial working list of 49 authors, I located seven titles at our library. The first one I randomly grabbed to read was The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival, by Sara Tuvel Bernstein with an afterward by her daughter, Marlene B. Samuels.

My relationship to the Holocaust started as a child when I felt empathically drawn, like many young girls, to Anne Frank, The Diary required reading for the“Girl’s Club” I joined with 3 other 10 year olds in Illinois. But the connection felt eerily deep and immediate.

At that time, I began to write poems fixated on the image of butterflies drawn by survivor children on camp walls (the images continued to haunt poems years later in graduate school and beyond). I have had vivid recurring dreams about the Holocaust over the course of my lifetime. Wether those dreams were simply a byproduct of dipping into the field of collective memory or wether they were past life experiences, I have had a connection I can’t explain (and I’m not sure that connection needs a frame).

My night time dream experiences merged with waking life the night I finished The Seamstress. I found the memoir simply and beautifully written, explicit and revelatory (I posted a mini-review here at She Writes). While drifting off to sleep that night, I had the physical sensation of opening in layers like a cocoon; the places on my shoulder blades where wings would be tingled, like wingbuds. A weight lifted out of my body at that moment, and I accepted the cellular metaphor as a gift.

I was not surprised, then, when I arrived at the airport to take a shuttle to Ghost Ranch for the AROHO retreat, and just before the doors closed, in stepped a vibrant, lively, black-haired woman, smartly dressed, who asked if she could sit next to me, did I mind, she was actually booked for the later shuttle, but she thought, what the heck, she’d made it in time and might as well get on this shuttle since there was room.

“I’m Tania,” I said, and “you are?”

“Marlene Samuels,” she replied with a familiar accent...back East? Chicago?, charming, settling in beside me. I was in awe—and our journey as friends began, ignited by a rich conversation about her mother’s book, The Seamstress, her role editing and reshaping it, the twenty plus years bringing it to the publishing table. That set the bar for the remainder of the retreat, and the synchronicities and connections burgeoned over the next ten days of the retreat. I am very honored to repost Marlene’s interview here. Marlene’s interview was conducted by Lisa Rizzo and originally appeared on both Lisa’s blog, Poet Teacher Seeks World and will appear shortly on the AROHO Speaks, Writer to Writer website.

AROHO Speaks, Writer to Writer: Interview with Marlene B. Samuels

Marlene B. Samuels

Thinking back to the 2011 AROHO retreat, can you tell us about an idea, exercise or conversation that had either an identifiable impact upon your writing habits or became a finished piece of writing or one in process?

There were so many incredible moments and conversations it’s really tough for me to isolate a single one but what did make a huge impact on me is the passion with which each woman approached her writing. I was moved by the observation that even the most accomplished participants still expressed some self-doubt. To me that was very refreshing!

It’s noteworthy that we all struggle with the importance of being perceived as serious writers. We each struggle to find that space and consistency for our writing but there’s no precise formula. Kate Gale’s comment – that we schedule the various responsibilities in our lives and meet our commitments yet fail to follow suit with our writing - that was especially poignant. All too often, women put others’ needs ahead of their own writing schedules as though somehow writing isn’t a legitimate use of their time.

Bhanu Kapil’s direct questioning of total strangers really influenced my own work. Her method of querying them as the means by which she could pursue her writing project encouraged me to begin a project I’d been stuck on for about two years. Until hearing Bhanu, I’d been unable to muster the nerve to approach strangers. She was a true inspiration as well!

Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?

Yes, the evening readings altered my self-perception. Reading my work helped me perceive myself more seriously and hence, as a professional writer instead of someone who’s reluctant to say, “I’m a writer,” in response to the question, “What do you do?” Before the retreat I felt like an imposter if I claimed to be a writer. Somehow, it seems that as women, we have a misperception that unless our writing appears on the New York Times bestseller list or in The New Yorker or is reviewed by Oprah, we can’t claim to be writers. It seems most of us struggle with that but - my gut feeling: it’s a much bigger issue for women.

Is there a specific woman writer who inspires/d you? If so, can you tell us something about why?

Tania Pryputniewicz was amazingly inspirational – the mere fact that she committed to attend in the face of her own doubts, that she demonstrated such a unique approach to her poetry, and that she gave such a unique and creative presentation to the entire group inspired me. She discussed the collaborative process, an approach to writing I’ve never really considered. It’s given me a new view into the creative process, almost like a child being given encouragement to draw outside of the lines.

Bridget Birdsall’s one-on-one spiritual consultation with me – something I was really suspicious of but also curious about – was great fun, not to mention that her insights were exceedingly encouraging. Her strength of character and her intuition are also reflected so honestly in her own writing. There are so many others but I’m guessing the space of this interview wouldn’t accommodate my rave reviews.

How would you describe your typical writing day?

I spend a lot of time in approach-avoidance activities, that time wasting stuff, as I try to get organized. When I was in graduate school we used to refer to that as “pencil sharpening”! I have a terrible time actually getting started on the writing process each day because I tend to take care of all my other responsibilities - phone calls, bills, whatever else distracts me. But if I don’t do that first thing then it’s very tough for me to stay focused.

Afternoon seems the best time for me, when I can spend two to four hours writing. I’ve noticed that just in the few weeks since I got home from the retreat, I’m much more committed to my writing time. It feels really good and that in itself is very reinforcing of my writing commitment. I’m certain it’s the result of embracing the concept that I really am a writer and it’s my legitimate real career.

Can you describe for us what you’re currently working on?

I’m actually working on three things, each in a different genre. I’m completing a short story collection that I’ve been working on for years entitled, The Mental Health Poster Child. It began as my memoir but has evolved as a sequel to my mother’s memoir, The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival. After her death I rewrote and edited when Penguin Berkley agreed to publish it. In addition, I’m co-host of a culinary website and its blog, www.expendableedibles.com . Both are progressing toward an “ethnographic” sort of cookbook. My third project is a sociology book based upon interviews with baby-boom generation women. That project really draws upon my training as a serious research sociologist but incorporates my more recently honed passion for writing creative nonfiction.

Is there a specific question you’d have liked us to ask and if so, could you answer it?

Actually, yes! The question I’m surprised no one asked – one I personally asked many of women during the retreat, “What influenced you to attend the retreat?”

I’ve never been to a writers’ retreat before, only to writing workshops and conferences -courses at University of Iowa Summer Festival or University of Chicago Writers’ Studio, that sort of thing. I’d followed AROHO for many years; read about the retreats, and vacillated between wanting to apply yet worrying I’d be out of my league. After reading the bios of women who attended – a huge diversity, it was obvious that I needed to attend. I decided that, unlike workshops, what I needed most was emotional and spiritual support for my goals. That’s an often neglected component to being a productive and confident writer. At some point, writers need that kind of support and connectedness with other writers more than they need instruction in the writing process.

Marlene B. Samuels: I’m an independent research sociologist, writer, and instructor and teach research methodology and sociology. I earned a Ph.D. and M.A. from University of Chicago. My research focuses upon changing American demographics, adoption issues, and currently, decision-making during life transitions. My writing encompasses three genres: sociology, nonfiction, and food.

I co-authored The Seamstress, my mother’s Holocaust memoir, wrote an academic book about career success plus short stories, essays, and food articles. My writing has been published in Lilith Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, University of Iowa Summer Anthology, Story Circle Journal, Long Story Short and others.

Links:

Website: http://www.marlenesamuels.com/

Blog: http://marlenesamuels.blogspot.com/

Website: http://www.expendableedibles.com/

Blog: www.expendableedibles.com/blog