10 Tips for New Years Resolution #7 "To Write Better:

Here it is New Years, time for Resolutions.  For those of you who have made a New Years Resolution to write, and for me it is my Resolution Number 7 “to write better”  Since the advent of Email and all the rest I can't tell you how many times I wished I had listened to David Ogilvy 's advise.  David Ogilvy was one of the most influential advertising executives during the hey day of modern advertising.  His ad agency Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide was one of the largest in the world.  In 1982 Ogilvy sent an internal memo to all his ad agency employees, titled “How To Write”.  The memo is published in the 1986 book “The Unpublished David Ogilvy” which is out of print and hard to find.  The University Of Oregon Knight Library does have a copy. 

Here is the 1982 memo which is relevant in today’s world of emails, tweets, Facebook updates, Comments, and Blog posts.

The better you write, the higher you go ……..   People who think well, write well.

Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.

David Ogilvy

Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson  Writing That Works  Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

David

I hope for my Resolution #7 "to write better" I can take Ogilvy's advice to heart, today and every day.  For a little more detailed advice look at 20 Secrets of Good Writing that expands on Ogilvy.   Although I try to adhere to Tip #5; Never write more than two pages on any subject, luckily, Blog pages can be very flexible.  I love #10. If you want action don't write...talk in person.  

Credits:   Brain Pickers  and the ever wonderful  Wikipedia

Stephanie Lenox, Exploring strangeness in the voice of the other

In November 2012 Stephanie Lenox was one of the featured poets at Linfield College Nicholson Library's “Readings at the Nick” events.  She talked about and read from her book “Congress Of Strange People” recently published by Airlie Press.

Lenox co-edits Blood Orange Review and teaches poetry at Willamette University.  She is a member of the nonprofit publishing collective Airlie Press which is dedicated to cultivating excellent contemporary poetry

Lenox says her book “Congress Of Strange People” is about her ascination with strangeness of all types.  One of the methods of her exploration of strangeness is to write in the persona of the stranger. This poetic exercise in empathy provides an extraordinary gift.  Lenox seeks to push her empathetic powers to the extreme by choosing to engage the personas of Guinness World Record holders.   

Lenox projects her poetic voice to the perspective of some familiar and some very strange people. Empathy is an essential human quality.  Lenox’s poetry moves into the center of another human experience.  She brings us along with her.  We connect to that strangeness, we feel empathy and we recognize our common humanity, all of which are the real gifts of the poems in “Congress of Strange People”.

After talking about her book, Lenox reads “The Heart That Lies Outside the Body”.  Watching and listening to her read this poem brings you the full gift of her poetic empathy.

Increasing the Literary Density of Yamhill County

Barbara Drake was excited about the Terroir Creative Writing Festiva   coming up next Saturday. April 14th at the McMinnville Community Center.  I talked with her this morning at McMinnville Public Market.  She was staffing the Arts Alliance of Yamhill County booth. 

Barbara Drake is the guiding spirit of the Terroir. Writing Festival  It was November of 2008 or 2009, when she, then President of  Arts Alliance, stood before a large Arts Alliance membership gathering and asked for help in realizing her dream of a creative writing festival. 

“What we want to do.”  she said. “We want to increase the literary density in Yamhill County.”   

Barbara has done just that.  The first Terroir Creative Writing Festival in 2010 was a huge success.   The well known Portland writer Ursula LeGuin was a speaker and there were writing workshops by well known Northwest writers.   Terroir 2011 was also successful.  Author of the Earth’s Children’s series Jean Auel  was a speaker and again there were excellent writing workshops by Northwest writers.

This year’s Creative Writing Festival is shaping up to be as good or better than previous years.  The line up of Northwest writers speaking,  writing workshops and readings is impressive.

The musician and writer who opened the recent Oregon Book Awards presentation, Willy Vlautin will talk about finding inspiration in Oregon.  Portland suspense writer, author of “Kill you Twice”, Chelsea Cain will give a work shop on writing a best selling thriller.  There is a Poetry workshop by gardner and poet Charles Goodrich whose new book is ‘Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden” and who is the judge for the Arts Alliance’s annual  Paper Gardens Writing Contest .

One of my favorite Northwest writers Matt Love will be doing a work shop on writing creative non-fiction.  Leanne Grabel will have a work shop on writing and producing your own play.   Those who are thinking about a memoir, Evelyn Hess  will give a work shop on writing memoirs. 

There will be readings by novelists and poets.   The poetry journal of place Windfall Journal  editors and authors Bill Siverly and Michael McDowell will read and many other local poets.   There will be an opportunity for writers take a risk and to stand up at an “open mic” and read their work to an appreciative audience.

For those who love the feel and touch of the old fashioned book, you are not forgotten, the founder of Book Arts Center of McMinnville Marilyn Worrix will have a work shop on the handmade book.

If you are a writer the  Terroir Creative Writing Festivalwill give you access to some very good Northwest writers from varied disciplines.  In the workshops you pick up tips to help you improve your craft.  The entire event will introduce you to other local writers.   The registration form is on the website and you can register Saturday morning, April 14th at the Community Center.

As Barbara said. “What we want to do is increase the literary density of Yamhill County.”

Terroir Creative Writing Festival April 14, 2012

Three weeks until the Terrior Creative Writing Festival opens Saturday April 14 at the McMinnville Community Center.  Registration is at 8 am, talks, workshops and readings begin at 9 am and go until 4:30.

Barbara Drake, poet, teacher and co-founder of the Terroir Creative Writing Festival  and indicated she was coordinating the program for the Festival.  There is an impressive program of authors, Chelsea Cain , LEANNE GRABEL , WILLY VLAUTIN ,  MATT LOVE , CHARLES GOODRICH , and EVELYN HESS and many others.

Willy Vlautin will talk about finding inspiration in Oregon.  Matt Love will discuss creative non-fiction and Leanne Grabel will have a workshop on writing and producing your own play.

A chance to meet writers, talk writing and books and listen to writers reading their work.

Jim Gullo: "Trading Manny" Father Son Baseball journey

I had forgotten about Dizzy Trout.

Last week Jim Gullo and his son Joe came to the McMinnville Community Media studio to do an Arts Alive interview with Lynda Phillippi.   Jim wanted to talk about his forth coming book "Trading Manny" , the story of a Father teaching his son Joe to love Baseball during the steroid scandals which made respecting baseball very difficult.

I was never a big baseball fan.  Although I remember the summer of 1953 or 54 I searched the neighborhood, the school, the city for a card on mostly Detroit Tigers and then Boston Red Sox pitcher Dizzy Trout.  He wasn’t that great pitcher and he was a bit long in the tooth, but  I loved his name and he wore glasses, so I could relate.  I had rookies Jim Gilliam, Harvey Haddix and Ray Jablonski to trade,  I was even willing to throw in 10 rare red cat’s-eye marbles.  I never found Dizzy’s card.  I read that year “Disappointment  is necessary to develop character”, I wasn’t convinced.  In 1955, the World Series went to the Brooklyn Dodgers over the New York Yankees, and my interest in baseball fanned out. 

By 2006 when Lance Williams and Mar Fainaru-Wada book  "Game of Shadows" came out, followed in 2007 by the "Mitchell Report", it was not a shock or even a surprise that baseball players were abusing steroid drugs to get a competitive edge.   Only 89 players?

It turns out I was not the only one who thought 89 might be a low ball number.   In 2007 Jim Gullo/s his seven year old son Joe, whose baseball hero was Manny Ramirez, was asking,      Page 20 of "Trading Manny"   “Look Dad,” he said, waving a card of a player who had not been named by Mitchell or associated with drug use.  “This guy hit forty-eight homers in 2001 and hasn’t hit more than twenty-one since.  He was probably using drugs, wasn’t he?”

To redeem his own love of baseball and to be true and honest to Joe in a time when baseball was down, Jim Gullo and his son went on a quest to find the truth about steroid use and to seek the soul of baseball.  “Trading Manny” is the story of their journey.

On the same day as the Arts Alive interview Jim posted on his BLOG an instructive chronology of “Trading Manny” from the inception of the idea to the publishing of the book.  If you have a book idea and are getting ready to get to the writing, check out the blog post.

On Febrary 28th, Jim and Joe Gullo talk with Arts Alive host Lynda Phillippi about their journey and the writing of the book.    You Tube has a 15 minute limit.  The 30 minute show is the above is Part One and go to Part Two to see the last half of the show.


Jim Gullo lives in McMinnville.  In addition to the forthcoming "Trading Manny" he has a recent novel  "Fountain of Youth".  He is the editor and publisher of a web magazine http://www.oregonwine.com covering Oregon wine industry.

Oregon writers coming together, Terroir Creative Writing Festival

In Arts Alive Part Two Emily Chadwick, one of the founders of Terroir Creative Writing Festival and guest Debra Voorhees and Craig Bodmer talk with Arts Alive host Lynda Phillippi.  The Festival will be all day Saturday April 14th at the McMinnville Community Center.

Emily Chadwick

An early registration discount is available until March 23.

The Terroir Creative Writing Festival brings Oregon writers together for a day of celebrating this special place, as well as the joys of writing and books.  Some of the benefits of attending the are meet nationally acclaimed Oregon writers, share your passion for words and books, attend workshops, talks, readings and book signings, and earn more about your craft.

Some of the Festival workshop leaders and speakers include: Chelsea Cain, Willy Vlautin, Matt Love, Charles Goodrich, Leanne Grabel, Molly Johnson, Bill Siverly, Michael McDowell, Lex Runciman, Mary Slocum, Linda Kuhlmann, Marilyn Worrix, Barbara Drake, Phoebe Newman

This is third year of the Terroir Creative Writing Festival sponsored by Arts Alliance of Yamhill County with funding from the Yamhill County Cultural Coalition.

The full Arts Alive TV show of the Terroir Creative Writing Festival interview will air on McMinnville Community Media

Paper Gardens Literary Contest Deadline February 15th

Paper Gardens Literary Contest DEADLINE is postmark February 15th.  Applications are now being accepted for the 2012 Paper Gardens Literary contest. Click here for the application form.

The Arts Alliance of Yamhill County invites submissions to the 2012 Paper Gardens Literary Contest.  Open to all residents of Yamhill County ages 6 and up, Paper Gardens is a wonderful creative-writing outlet for the community. 

Charles Goodrich

Corvallis poet and essayist Charles Goodrich will be the judge this year. Goodrich is the director of the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature and the Written Word at Oregon State University.  He is the author of "The Practice of Home" and "Insects of South Corvallis" His newest collection of work may be found in his book "Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden" (Silverfish Review Press, 2010).

Paper Gardens features two main categories for submission, poetry and prose, and encompasses three age groups: children (ages six to 12), youths (ages 13 to 18) and adults (19 and above). The prose category includes subcategories of short story and memoir, and is limited to one submission per person. Poetry has four subcategories: traditional, free verse and haiku, and returning for a second year, poetry-of-place.

The poetry-of-place subcategory is specifically intended for poems written about or inspired by places in Yamhill County. As Paper Gardens is a literary contest for residents of Yamhill County, work inspired by our local surroundings is a natural fit for the competition.

Writers may submit up to three poems total. More than one submission per subcategory is allowed. The entry fee for adults is five dollars. Children and youth submissions are free of charge.

The judge will select three winners in each category, and the winning poems will be published in the 2012 Paper Gardens chapbook. The winning authors will receive a free chapbook and certificate of recognition, and will be invited to read their work at an awards ceremony Friday April 13th at the McMinnville Community Center.

                                       Kelli Grinich, Paper Gardens Part One

Recently Kelli Grinich, the Chair of the Paper Gardens Literary Contest talked with Lynda Phillippi on the Arts Alive program. Arts Alive: Paper Gardens Part One  and Arts Alive: Paper Gardens: Part Two the 30 minute show is in Part One and Two because of Youtube limit of 15 minutes.  The full show will air on McMinnville Community Media begin Saturday, February 11th and run four or five times during the week. 

Must reads for thinking, writing and blogging

    Jane Friedman's blog article 12 must read Articles from 2011 are true must reads.  The first article on her list is Accessibility vs. access  by Maria Popova in Nieman's Journalism Lab.  Blogger or as Popova calls them "information curator" can be seen as information cross pollinator who reaches to collect information then carries it back out to the hive.
    She says it beautifully "Knowledge is not a lean-back process; it’s a lean-forward activity. Just because public domain content is online and indexed, doesn’t mean that those outside the small self-selected group of scholars already interested in it will ever discover it and engage in it." and  "Information curators are that necessary cross-pollinator between accessibility and access, between availability and actionability, guiding people to smart, interesting, culturally relevant content that “rots away” in some digital archive, just like its analog versions used to in basement of some library or museum or university"  
    The difference today is there are a lot of folks out scrounging around in those dark corners and dusty boxes full of odds and ends.   But I have agree with Popova that with all the information available there may be a barrier of motivation.
     She puts in nicely, "The relationship between ease of access and motivation seems to be inversely proportional because, as the sheer volume of information that becomes available and accessible to us increases, we become increasingly paralyzed to actually access all but the most prominent of it — prominent by way of media coverage, prominent by way of peer recommendation, prominent by way of alignment with our existing interests. This is why information that isn’t rare in technical terms, in terms of being free and open to anyone willing to and knowledgeable about how to access it, may still remain rare in practical terms, accessed by only a handful of motivated scholars." 
    I had not thought of blogger as "editor" before.  Popova's interview in Brain Pickings with Eli Pariser about his book "The Filter Bubble", he makes a interesting point.  "The primary purpose of an editor [is] to extend the horizon of what people are interested in and what people know. Giving people what they think they want is easy, but it’s also not very satisfying: the same stuff, over and over again. Great editors are like great matchmakers: they introduce people to whole new ways of thinking, and they fall in love.” 
    Pariser conclusion as a way to overcome the herding of what we learn by the filters of search sites like Google is to behave randomly, follow whims and tangents, "roads less traveled".   The filter algorithms are forced to expand.  It is the roll of us and the roll of editors to help.

Reading and writing

Setting in front of a warm fire, big oak logs rumbling with a lazy rhythm.  Reading Boarderliners by Peter Hoag.  It is dim from rain clouds moving in.  Maybe snow tomorrow.   A good time to write.
Surfing I ran across a free e-book list at www.freelancewriting.com.  Some good titles.  The HP Lovecraft book on writing weird fiction from 1933.

Creativity and the individual

I completely agree with Susan Cain "The Rise Of The New Groupthink" in the New York Times Sunday Review.  A group does not think.  A group gravitates to the power of the person who leads or who will not adjust to any other view but their own.  They wear a group down.  And as Cain indicates.  Groups are easy to hide in.  The best creative work is done by a person working, doing the heavy lifting, on their own.
Pep talks and encouragement is always great.  It helps.  A good group can give that to a person.  The work itself takes persistence, dedication and devotion to what they are doing.  That comes from the person's ethic.

Poetry Reading, Writing, Blood Orange Review

The filming of the Stafford poetry reading went well.  New folks reading and new poems read. Fewer students.  Mostly us grey headed folks.  Finished reading Red to Black.  Lots of narrative, that seemed to struggle to close in and get to near the story.

The Blood Orange Review is bright with colorful home page, it hurts the eyes.  But the creative writing, the fiction and the poems are much calmer.  CI Bledsoe's poem "starting a garden" is wonderful.

Frog eating bats and forgiveness

Smithsonian Tropical Research video article on Frog eating Bats  by Rachel Page shows nature with its conflicts and terrors.  The frogs must produce a mating call to get a mate and propagate.  The mating call is also what leads the frog eating bats to them.  And the bats can tell from the call if the frog is good eating or is poisonous.
And then reading Olin Morales in his blog C2C talking about all of the emotions that need to be felt before there can be "forgiveness"  Given the complexity of our world and our nature I wonder what the emotion of forgiveness feels like.

Writing and the Delete Key

Rachel Kadish in a Ploughshare's blog says we live in an age of instantaneous deletion.  The delete key is our friend.  That is for sure.  But I'm of an age when paper got crumpled into a waste basket overflowing on the floor, then used to start the fire in the fireplace.  She is sweetly nostalgic, but I truly love spell check.

Because we write to be heard or read, Rachel says all writing is essentially an unrequited love letter.  Were it so simple.

Internet Writing as Promotion

Reading Leslie Jaminson's article My Internet Relations in Rain Taxi.  She talks about the tension of creating and marketing her book "The Gin Closet" (free press).  She talks with a self depreciating voice as she describes how she has to promote herself but does not want to seem self promotional.
She presents a very good case for using the internet to do promotion.  She is forced to write articles and essay she would not think to write about subjects she would not have considered. And she discovers the self promotion is about the book and not her.  Although the internet seems to make the distinction somewhat hard to make.

Technology, creativity

reading "What defines a Meme?"  by James Gleick writing in the May issue of the Smithsonian Magazine.   He refers to Richard Dawkin contention the center of life, the center of the cell, is information, instructional code.  Evolution is the exchange between a self (organism) and the environment.  Gleick says we are surrounded by technology.  It does seem to be absorbing us.  Technology increases our interactions and exchanges.  The hard part is being creative and not becoming passive, thus consumed. Writing sure is easier than in the day of clay tablets and sharp sticks.

Writing apps

Found an app that can help find errors and reformat.  Clear Text at the Apple store.  It can capitalize, find those tiny extra spaces, repair a missing quotation mark and such.  Nice little app.  So with Grammar App (also at the Apple store) and spell check I'm ready.