Don't Ask, Don't Tell

How much do you share as an author? How much should you share?

Personally, I mine my experiences for some of my poetry. I assume personnas for others. I steal subject matter from family, friends, from newspaper articles, NPR broadcasts like Fresh Air. You name it, I've probably appropriated it in some way, shape or form.

The problem is that can step on toes. I have people in my life who are uncomfortable, if not downright disapproving, of the subject matter of my poetry. Especially knowing I share them in venues such as the local open mic events in the various towns I have lived in, online with RLB's poetic asides blog or online journals & in print.

This is why I have a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy about my writing. I'm not sure it's the healthiest way to deal with this dichotomy, but it's my way.

In May of 2011, I attended the Poetry Society of Virginia's Annual Poetry Festival. One of the events at the festival really spoke to and about this issue. Remica L. Bingham-Risher's The History of Us All: Peronally Politcal Poems forced us all to intertwine our personal narrative poem with a historical account/event. She and I bonded a bit over our propencity to write about personal and family events and throw them out to the world. Her family has started editing themselves around her for fear of ending up in a poem. At least, that's how she told it. Mine hasn't learned this yet.

One of my in-laws was very upset about the subject matter of the chapbook I wrote poems toward in November of 2010. A tragic event and its aftermath of a family we knew, plus other family events, commingled in my brain. I brooded over them for almost 10 years. Eventually, these poems started wanting out of my head. I couldn't not write them. These two events became a jumping off point into a chapbook about a quadriplegic girl dealing with the sudden changes in her life.

You can't play it safe when you feel like you have to write about something which won't leave you alone.

Does your writing get you in trouble with the people in your life?

Still Catching up

Ah, when you bother to look at what is on the toolbar, you will learn something.

Shameless Self-Promotion advice from Blue Light Press


http://www.bluelightpress.com/promo.php

Catching up

I'm finally getting to day 6 of the Platform Challege RLB has cast out on his My Name is Not Bob blog.   And maybe Day 7, 11, 12 & 13 too.

 http://www.kateyschultz.com/2012/04/prairie-center-going-inside_12.html

I know Katey Schultz through Eve's Night Out, and later, through training in the Blue Ridge Martial Arts Academy in WNC.  She's a writer, blogger and has been traveling from residency to residency for over 2 years now.  She has posted to her blog regularly over the years, not quite daily but darn close.  She's announced that she is cutting back to 2 posts a week, to "refill the well" before she embarks on her next project. 


As a newbie at this whole blogging thing, and with everything else in my life, besides writing, the dogs, work, self-care, etc, I do not foresee a daily blog. habit forming.  I can't even get up at the same time every day.


My point is, does getting sucked into an internet presence necessarily mean that it will drain my creative energy? 


What do you think?

Between the Tackles

Is both the name of a blog two friends of mine host? post to? (newbie here) and the title of the play they are writing together.

I've had numerous, mainly phone, conversations about the play during the writing process with Britt Kaufmann but none with Stephanie Stark Poling.  This is because, like me, Steph is a self-employed procrastinator (and her email account hates me and eats my emails).

I volunteered to read through the play for them before the first table read.  Mainly because Britt was freaking out a little and to make sure it made sense to someone who hadn't poured months of time and coffee and planning into it.  I pointed out a major plot point that needed a bit more development so it didn't flow right over an audience's help. Hey, I'm a close reader. Like them details, as long as I don't have to provide them.

I've kept myself from feeling jealous over Britt's writing success over the last year.  For the most part.  She's had a chapbook Belonging published through Finishing Line Press, & been solicited by the director of the Parkway Playhouse to write not one but two plays in the last year and a half. She deserves her success. She works damn hard for it.  Much harder than I do.  Or much smarter than I do.  I think it's mainly the latter.

When I lived in WNC, we were acquaintances who met through her husband (my doctor) and a local open mic event, Eve's Night Out, which she hosts on a monthly basis.  We didn't get to be close friends until I moved to Va, when we decided to work through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way together.  It was the second run-through for both of us.

We laugh about this now.  We didn't bother to get to know each other & hang out while we lived 20 minutes from one another but we sure can talk on the phone for an a hour and a half now that we inhabit different states. Go figure.

I think I lost the point of this post due to ADHD.  I blame The Muppets.  & Short Attention Span Theater.

More later.

Link to Britt & Steph's blog:  http://betweenthetacklesplay.blogspot.com/