Writing Tip #59 - Create a Word List

Okay, let me say up front that this tip came from a book that I am rereading. A Manual of Writer's Tricks: Essential Advice for Fiction and Nonfiction Writers by David L. Carroll is full of little tidbits that can get your through almost any writer's block or creative downturn.

I am currently digging on Chapter 1 - Finding the Right Word. Carroll is of the opinion that a thesaurus, or word finder, is more valuable to a writer than a dictionary. He cautions us to get away from the myth that great writers don't use any of these tools to produce their work. Sure Toni Morrison has a big vocabulary but I bet she also owns a thesaurus.

So before you start your next writing project consult your thesaurus to compile a list of words that you will expect to use during the writing. For example, if you are writing a piece on cars, you should be looking for synonyms for that word such as "sedan," "clunker," and "automobile." This trick will save you lots of time, maintain your flow of writing because the list is right there on hand, and bring a richness to your writing.

Let me know if this tip works for you.

Until Later
Michelle

Full Scholarship Available for Writing Workshop!

GirlChild Press has always been blessed with generous and enthusiastic supporters so I wasn't totally surprised when I opened my email inbox to find an offer to provide a full scholarship to a woman writer for the DC writing workshop on October 4, 2009.

If you or someone you know is interested in securing the scholarship all you have to do is complete a one page, double space essay on why you want to attend the workshop and what you would like to accomplish as a result of your attendance. All essays should be submitted by August 28, 2009 to girlchildpress@aol.com. We'll make a final determination by September 7, 2009.

If anyone else is interested in providing a scholarship for a woman writer please feel free to contact us at girlchildpress@aol.com

Michelle
www.girlchildpress.com

New Writing Workshops (L.A. and DC)!

I can't believe the summer is almost over, but I am looking forward to some amazing things for the fall. One of those things is the return of the Woman's Work Writing Workshop! I'm excited to announce that we will be hosting the workshop on both the west and east coast. See information below.

GirlChild Press
presents
Woman’s Work Writing Workshop
Los Angeles - Sunday, September 20, 2009 1:00pm-4:00pm
Facilitator: Michelle Sewell

D.C. - Sunday, October 4, 2009 – 12:00pm – 3:00pm
Facilitators: Yael Flusberg and Michelle Sewell

This interactive 3-hour workshop is designed to strengthen your ability to access your original voice, take creative risks, and move your writing to a deeper level. Writing exercises and feedback from your instructors and fellow writers will allow you to expand your powers of observation, imagination, and language. The workshop is perfect for writers at all stages of development.

THE WORKSHOP WILL FOCUS ON
Writing Exercises to Produce Draft Work

Discussion on:
Writing Habits and Tools
Craft Elements
Revision Techniques

EACH WRITER WILL RECEIVE:
A Workbook
A copy of Just Like A Girl: A Manifesta!
After workshop opportunity to submit up to 2 excerpts/pieces to GirlChild Press for a written critique

The final hour of the workshop will allow for discussion and review of existing projects. Writing should take no more than 10 minutes to read aloud.
Class size is limited to allow for maximum feedback and review. Registration will close when the class is full. Register Now!


The $50.00 workshop fee is due no later than the day before the class. Early registration is encouraged due to limited class size. For more information: girlchildpress@aol.com

Sonya Renee Taylor: Making Poetry Smart, Sexy and Funny

(originally posted on Velvet Park)


I caught up with Sonya Renee Taylor at L.A.’s famous Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffle restaurant this week to get the low down on what has been happening in her poet's life. We have recently switched coasts (She back to east and me, newly here, on the west.) and I wanted to compare notes about living the artist's life – fulltime. Sonya is an HBO Def Poet and National Poetry SLAM winner and over the last couple of years has taken the leap to make her living as a fulltime artist on the road. Her verbal acrobatics have taken her from Texas to New Zealand and back again.

I first saw Sonya do her thing at a venue in Washington, D.C. about five years ago. D.C. is one of those places where you can literally go to a venue every night and hear some amazing work being delivered. From the moment Sonya hits the stage, you can’t take your eyes off her. She is this voluptuous, confident sister armed with take-no-prisoner poetry. That particular night she came with an over-the-top, part erotic, part public service announcement piece on using condoms. By the time it was all said and done, the audience was left begging for more. I didn’t know Sonya at the time, so count me shocked when a few months later, while attending the March for Women’s Lives on the National Mall, I heard her distinct and booming voice coming from the main stage. Her call to arms piece “What Women Deserve” energized the 1.6 million people in attendance in a way few of the other headliners were able to.

About a year later we ended up sharing the same stage at MotherTongue, a women’s open mic, and after the show we formally met. I was not surprised to discover that Sonya has a master's degree in non-profit management and has devoted a good chunk of her adult life to issues impacting a great many marginalized populations. She has lent her expertise to educating and protecting sex workers, getting the word out on HIV prevention, and protecting women’s right to choose. No wonder her poetry comes off so real. She is at ground zero on many of these important issues and knows the ramifications if we remain silent and do nothing.

But Sonya knows how to keep it fun and sexy on stage as well. She wants people to enjoy themselves and for those who come to her performance with a certain set of expectations she wants to shake them of those. “People who are new to slam/performance poetry sometimes believe it’s not as good as 'page poetry' or worse, that it is just plain bad,” she shares. Five minutes into any of her sets and they quickly abandon those notions. She says she loves to watch the looks on her audiences’ faces when she goes to some taboo place through her work. “First, they are always shocked, then self-conscious and eventually they loosen up and go along for the ride,” she says. During her performances she brings as much of herself to the stage as she can. She references her blackness, her womanness, her thickness and strength. “People know when you are faking it. They know when you are just pushing the words out and don’t care whether or how they land.”

So how does she keep her work and herself fresh when she is performing at such a constant pace? She says she has over 800 poems in her catalog to pick from (about 200 of them memorized) and tries to read her audience at the very beginning to get a sense of what they need to hear. She admits there are times that she gets bored with doing her “top 10” – she gets a lot of requests for her signature pieces – but figures there are worse ways a girl could make a living than telling her truth through her poetry.

Sonya’s recent move back to the east coast is also inspiring her to take some new risks with her work. She wants to adopt a new tone for her poetry and address subjects that she might have neglected in the past. She is also putting together a poetry book, A Little Truth on Your Shirt, that will debut in early 2010. (Her latest CD, Thick Girl, can be purchased at www.PoetCD.com.) Any trepidation she has about switching things up on her fans she keeps in check by recognizing that, as she grows, her work grows, and that’s good for everyone involved.

I recently discovered a video performance of one of her poems that I’ve never heard. I don’t know if “Slices” is in her top 10, but it should be. Enjoy!

Let's Talk About Love (Languages)

(originally posted on Velvet Park Magazine on July 14, 2009)

Half way through Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, I thought to myself, “where the hell was this book three relationships ago!?” When I checked the copyright page, I discovered that this book has been in print for at least 17 years. So this review is for the other nine people in the country that have never heard of Chapman or his insightful book.

If you are lucky, you have been in love at least once in your life. That butterfly feeling in your stomach when the object of your affection walks into a room and you can’t wipe that big ass grin off your face. But at some point those butterflies turn to moths and suddenly, when your ball and chain shows up, you can’t help but roll your eyes. What happened? For many of us, we never figure it out. We just call it quits and move on to the next relationship. Well Dr. Chapman has an answer for all those interested. All the news is useful, but not always easy to hear.

Case in point: The “in love” feeling that is present in the beginning of most relationships lasts for about two years for the average couple. That’s why you hear folks saying, “The first couple of years were great, but then he/she just started to change.” According to Chapman, the euphoric “in love” feeling is a necessary function, but the way we act during that period can be confusing to our intended and set up a series of expectations that we will not be able or willing to fulfill later in the relationship. This is the time when we tend to throw caution to the wind and do things we normally wouldn’t. We eat foods we hate. We watch movies we think are stupid. We tolerate their obnoxious best friend. We are so enamored by this new love that we convince ourselves that what they like we like. And they are doing the same thing for us.

I have a friend that is married to a firefighter. When they first started to date, she would go to the firehouse and sit with him on the nights he was in charge of the “watch.” She would make him his favorite dinner, bring it and a big thermos of coffee to the station and they would sit from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. talking and getting to know each other – and keeping the inhabitants of the firehouse safe. At 7 a.m. she would go home, take a shower and go to work. She did this for a year, never missing a Thursday that he was on watch. During the second year of their relationship, she cut back to doing the watch with him maybe twice a month. By the time they moved in together during the third year of their relationship, he had to practically beg her to come down to the fire station.

According to Chapman, my friend and her husband experienced a normal shifting in their relationship. He says that after the “in love” period starts to cool, the couple starts to feel like they need to return to their individual habits and idiosyncrasies and here is where the poop hits the fan. Suddenly your partner starts to wonder who is the evil, cold, messy, inattentive, always late doppelganger that has taken your place. You are no longer on the same wavelength with your honey bunny. But if you take the time to learn your partner’s love language you have a better than average chance of moving your relationship to the more solid foundation of “mature love” and avoiding the pitfalls that plague so many relationships.

Chapman defines the five emotional love languages as Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. During the average falling in love period, we tend to do all these things consistently and frequently. But, in reality, only one or two of these languages actually speak to the person you are with – everything else is just gravy. When the cooling off period begins and the relationship begins to settle, there is a high probability that your honey might stop doing the one thing you value the most.

Back to my friend and her firefighter husband. My friend’s primary love language is Acts of Service (so is mine). So when she was showing up to the firehouse with dinner and coffee and taking care of him, that is how she was showing him she loved him. In reality, my friend is a huge fan of sleep and it was a big sacrifice for her to spend all those Thursdays (after a full day of work) with him. On the other hand, her husband’s primary love language is Quality Time. He relished having this special alone time with her every week and missed it terribly when she stopped coming to hang out with him. The food and coffee were nice, but he wanted her time.

It is not unusual for a couple to speak completely different love languages. How we express our love is informed by our family of origin, where we grew up and cultural determinations. Because you and your one true love most likely grew up in very separate ways and places, you will express your love differently. It is like a New Yorker and a Southerner getting together. Sure, they both live in America, but they see and experience the world very differently.

Besides the assessment profile in the back of the book that is designed to help you determine your love language (Warning to my same-sex loving brothers and sisters - the profile uses the traditional terminology of husband and wife, but don’t let that distract you from answering honestly.), the other most interesting chapter in the book is entitled “Love Is a Choice.” For most of us, we think that love is something that just happens to us. We either love the person we are with or we don’t. But I think Dr. Chapman is rather radical in asserting that we have more ownership over our love lives than we act like we do. That ownership is even more necessary when betrayal or hurt comes into the relationship. So, if your love boat is heading toward the jagged rocks of break up, Chapman says you can take control of the helm and steer yourself into smoother and calmer waters.

Some romantics among us will push back against the notion of having to work at being in a loving relationship. They believe it should just happen. But these are the same people who find themselves blindsided when the natural ebb that happens in any relationship shows up and they’re left wondering where all the love went.

Is this book going to be the magic fairy dust that resurrects your relationship? Maybe. Maybe not. But it will give you some new tools to talk with your love puddin’ and get a better understanding of what they are trying to say to you.

Michelle
www.girlchildpress.com

GirlChild Press on the Road (The Wrap Up)

Amanda got on a 1:55pm Southwest flight to Baltimore Washington International Airport today. That means our week of laughs and adventures has come to a close.

We had a blast! We had more of a blast the more of L.A. we got to see. I almost thought the child wasn't going to get on the plane the way she was raving about wanting to live here. Between pedicures and Pinkberry I continued to learn tons about my "little sister." She is truly wise beyond her years and a very sweet and kind spirit (I already knew that part).

My mother called as I was dropping her off and inquired how I was going to feel now that my last tie to home was getting on a plane. I told her I would let her know tomorrow. For now - yall can check out the Michelle and Amanda Show wrap up video. Lots of food, giggling and some sweating...lol



Michelle
www.girlchildpress.com

Michael Jackson: My Sister's First Love

(originally posted at Velvet Park Magazine)

When I got the news last week that Michael Jackson had passed away at age 50, the first person that came to mind was my sister Lisa “Pebbles” James.

I immediately knew that had she lived to hear about this moment she would be devastated. Her love affair with Michael Jackson lasted well into her 20s — after he was morphing into some other version of himself, after he no longer looked like the Michael Jackson from her prized Off the Wall record.

I can’t in good conscience climb on the Michael Jackson bandwagon and call myself a true fan. Sure, he was talented and clearly had an amazing work ethic, but I liked him better when he was still a Jackson 5. However, when we were kids, my sister Lisa was a fan to beat all fans. At 10 years old she knew everything there was to know about Michael Joseph Jackson - without the aid of the Internet. A relatively “obedient” kid, she would risk a butt-whipping so that she could hang out at the local mall, past curfew, in the People’s Drug (later to be CVS) magazine aisle reading every publication that had his face on it. On other days she would torture our younger sisters for hours by making them watch her deconstruct his latest dance moves and replicate the entire routine in her tiny bedroom.

Although she was clear that I thought her crush was stupid, she still engaged me every morning as we got ready for school with a dozen Michael Jackson questions before we ran off to catch our bus. Do you think Michael Jackson has to wear deodorant? Do you think Michael Jackson gets lonely? Do you think Michael Jackson has to clean his own room? Do you think Michael Jackson goes to the bathroom? To that last question, I told her, "No. I think he pays someone else to do it for him." Even now I can’t help laughing to myself thinking about the look on her face when she actually contemplated that possibility.

There is only 16 months between me and Pebbles, but those months seemed like years as it related to our personalities. At 12, and as the oldest, I was already building sarcasm and cynicism into my personality. Not her. She was the “feeler” in the family. The quiet one who thought deeply and could cry at a moment’s notice. I think there were days that she felt like an outcast in the family, this dark-skinned girl that didn’t feel attractive, as she entered her teens, and lamented that she didn’t have anything that made her "special" in our loud and demonstrative Jamaican clan.

As the second born, she had the misfortune to have an older sister who stayed in trouble. If I wasn’t breaking curfew or stealing something, I had the bigger personality that easily dwarfed her more mild-mannered and contemplative energy. I think that’s why she was so attracted to Michael Jackson. She recognized a loneliness in him that she thought was a part of her life as well. She saw a kindred spirit in her beloved moonwalker.

Pebbles gave a lot of thought about who she thought this young man was and how this sensitive soul was making it through the world. Sometimes she would construct these elaborate stories of how she knew that his older brothers were jealous of him and that they were probably mean to him after the curtain came down on their performances. She was convinced that she would one day meet him and they would be best friends. Even at age 10 she sensed that Michael Jackson was short on those.

One distinct memory stands out as it relates to my sister’s love affair with Michael Jackson: When she was about 12 years old, she started to develop a strong relationship with God. We had been raised in an ultra-religious home and she was the first one to seriously take on the charge of “accepting Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.” One of the first things she did was to purge her record collection. This was a sign that she was relinquishing all ties with her worldly obsessions. In the dumpster went the latest Stacy Lattisaw, Prince, Anita Baker and some New Edition. From my heathen perch on the living room couch, I noticed that the only records to survive this Christian rebirth was the soundtrack from Jesus Christ Superstar and every Michael Jackson record that she owned. I questioned why he was spared. She informed me, without a hint of irony, that she thought God would not mind if she loved Michael Jackson, too.