Just a reminder that there will be another fabulous Monsoon Voices at Unlimited Coffee on August 14th. Lucky you and any other listener: I'll just be enjoying the readers, not blathering at the mike.
Coincidentally, Bard's Books is also holding An Evening of Poetry that same night! Jack Evans and Judy Green-Davis will be offering their harmonious poetry for your instruction and edification.
Aarrgghh! Can't be in two places at once!
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Falling into more classes
I'm registered for two classes this fall at Phoenix College. Yet another on-line essay class -- you'd think they'd cut me off, I've done so many -- and Tuesday Night Poetry with Jed Allen. I'm very excited to be in another Poetry class, even if it is listed as "Introduction to Poetry." That's about as far along as this college gets, introducing people to things. Anything beyond that you have to really want to do. I've taken this same class from Jed before and even still have my textbooks, but just being in class and having an excuse (motivation? imperative?) to write once a week is enough.
The essay class is with Susan Meyn (I think I've got her name right. If not, a million apologies.) Sue runs a business called Journal Magic, in which she seeks to help everyone be better through Journaling. I'm hoping I can put aside my native skepticism and deal honestly with the class.
Usually (big confession, this) I go into these classes with some yet unseen work set aside in case the muse is taking a long bath while I'm supposed to be creating. This time, not so much. We'll see how it goes!
The essay class is with Susan Meyn (I think I've got her name right. If not, a million apologies.) Sue runs a business called Journal Magic, in which she seeks to help everyone be better through Journaling. I'm hoping I can put aside my native skepticism and deal honestly with the class.
Usually (big confession, this) I go into these classes with some yet unseen work set aside in case the muse is taking a long bath while I'm supposed to be creating. This time, not so much. We'll see how it goes!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
'The Writer' for August
I'm a lucky writer. My job provides me plenty of opportunity to wander around the Web and find out how to use the wealth of goodies waiting there. In the August issue of The Writer, a special section examines wonderful Web tools and ways that writers can thrive with them. There's a step-by-step on how to incorporate technology into your fictional characters' lives. You can see how to use YouTube for research, how to make use of social-networking sites, and ways to help your writing surf (the Web, that is.) My favorite section featured '8 Great iPhone apps for writers,' which is amazing because I don't own an iPhone and don't really want one, but the gadgets they describe might change my mind someday!
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Another Cool Monsoon Voices
The evening of June 12th fell in the middle of a cold snap—a Phoenix cold snap, with the temperature not topping 100 degrees for two weeks running. So a little group of us gathered at Unlimited Coffee to share some warmth, heart to heart, and make the best of the chilly evening. On June 12th Monsoon Voices happened.
It’s a fine Friday for some voices just before the monsoon. I drive over early to put my head in the right frame with a few tunes from the Brazen Heads. After I join the group asking Annie ‘Who’s yer Paddy?’ a few hundred times, I can’t resist singing ‘His Dream’ – never can – but then I need to ramp it up with ‘One-Eyed Reilly.” Blood properly pumping, I spot new sawhorse-signs showing the way to Monsoon Voices! We grow and grow.
For once I get to the room early, get a spot at the great table, and watch the room fill in around me. Plenty early to plop down a few notes. Seven laptops are flipped open and three ‘analog’ writers scrawl around the room. The setting sun slants across the whatever writing surface gets in its way. Luckily, a big headed laptop-user is shading me from the rays.
I spot Traci & Patrick ducking out the east door as I come in the west. They’d set up the table with the sign-in-for news list and the love donation vase. They’re so soft-sell.
So far the mood is totally mellow. Will it build? We’ve had a mellow night or two, but we’ve had plenty where the crowd and the ice-cruncher battled for dominance. Jenny won’t bring Rowan because she’s afraid is little baby ears will be harmed. There’s a family across the way with a baby younger than Rowan – if that little one doesn’t like our work she’ll let us know!
During my noting, the room has filled in. MaryAnn has come in and greeted me, and introduced me to Betsy. With my usual grace I tell her how great it is to finally meet her, and tell her how much I enjoyed taking her online course last year. The look on her face is one I’ve seen so often: once again, I have enthusiastically made a fool of myself. This is not the Betsy (Andrews) I knew from the digital world; this is an analog Betsy (McPhee) who terms herself a new writer but later shows herself to be an old soul. But she’s gracious and the awkward moment passes quickly.
MaryAnn gives Betsy some advice on reading to a group and shortly another first-time reader, Catania, joins them and MaryAnn takes them on tour, up to the front where the microphone will be. I take a moment to order an iced mocha, and while it’s being thrown together, a man comes in and stands near me at the counter. “Wow, what’s going on in here?” he breathes out, stunned by the fullness of the room. He’s young and sandy haired, disheveled and windblown, and he might even be half my age. I smile at him.
“We’re going to read some crazy poetry and short essay, fun stuff. It’s a cheery group.”
“Cool. I can get into that.” He smiles too, and I notice his pierced lower lip. My coffee’s ready and I take it, and think it’s just as well that he probably doesn’t go for the overweight 50ish mocha-drinking writer type, ‘cause I’m married and hate those piercings.
When I settle back at the great table, carefully losing track of the pierced child, Patrick and Traci are making their way to the microphone. Good, good, hooray, we’re getting started.
The Moores welcome everyone and call on Catania Larson, our first reader. Catania is the mom of the cute little infant and her two older sisters. Three little ones and still writing! She offers up five poems (about four more than I managed the year James was born) and they are lovely, well-formed, diverse observations of life. The first, ‘Voice’ (how appropriate to the reading) discusses the sound of life running through life. ‘Merry’ (a Christmas poem) visits with past holiday Catanias. ‘The Spider’, which Catania shyly announced as a sonnet, certainly is a good one, in which a busy spider gets a meal she almost couldn’t handle, but does. ‘Happiness is…’ exults in the moments of pleasure, day to day. ‘The Moroccan Box’ holds a precious mundane treasure, because the extraordinary treasures can’t be fit in boxes. Catania celebrates the treasures of her life in every words she writes.
After the listeners show Catania their appreciation, Patrick introduces me. I read an essay called ‘Mosquitoes,’ which is in its seventh incarnation since last fall. That poor essay! It’s been long and short and funny and bitter and sweet. This group gets the short version, which they seem to like. They laugh at the right places. As a humor writer, you come to love the laughs that come in the right places. The ones that come in the wrong places, you learn to work with.
Candice Aragon sings two songs as I resume breathing at my seat.
Candice is 23 and lovely and so talented. Her first song, ‘Pitter patter,’ is a sad song to wrap around your shoulders, rain against the window. She helps us move on with ‘Your old Heart,’ a cheery love song full of wild rhymes and exultant repeated “I love you”s that sweep us into the break.
During the break, I go and visit with the restroom. It’s more than just going to the restroom or visiting the restroom, because at Ultimate Coffee, the restroom is very personable. It’s an old friend. In fact, once you go in and sit down, you get a message: “I am sensitive. Please hold down my handle for at least 5 seconds, and be sparing in your use of paper. Thank you.” It’s signed “The Ultimate Toilets” and has a self-portrait off to one side. It always makes me feel like family.
There’s a chance that reflects badly on my concept of family. If it does, blame it on my brothers.
I get back to the table just in time to hear Gary Bowers tell the crowd about the upcoming Bard’s Books event. Then came an invitation to a reading at Glendale Public Library. I miss the name of the young woman who invited us to GPL, but recognize her as the writer of the blog Heart-Shaped Hole. I even go to her when she sits down, and tell her how much I love her blog, but am simply not smart enough to get her name. I’m really bad at this social-skill stuff.
We start again with MaryAnn McCullough at the mic. MaryAnn is a veteran writer and the essay she reads is recently published in A Cup of Comfort for Dog Lovers II. I am steeled up, determined not to cry in front of all these folks, but MaryAnn saves me: the essay is funny and she delivers it wonderfully, and pulls out after saying that she and her companion are aging gracefully. As she does everything.
Susan Vespoli, who claims to have ‘moved to a shack in the forest to attend poetry school,’ makes me wish I could go find that shack. It must have poetry magic in it. Susan tells us that this is only ‘my second time reading in public, and my first without tequilia.’ She belied her words with the ease of her reading. Where are all these graceful women from, anyway? She reads ‘Another nice thing about Dogs’ and ‘Daylilies.’ You can read Another Nice Thing at the Monsoon Voices blog, but if you do, be sure to imagine a beautiful woman with easy humor reading it. ‘Daylilies’ is about the aftermath of an argument, and after she reads it she gets a big hug from the other argument participant, which makes us all clap even harder.
Candice finishes up the evening with three more songs. On the last of them she instructs us all to clap, because it’s a clapping song. We clap, and we are enthusiastic clappers, but we are not good at it. A roomful of writers! Bright cheery, good writers. Bad clappers.
Seriously, if you’ve read this far but never treated yourself to Monsoon Voices, talk to your therapist. You deserve this kind of easy happiness. We all do. Real life is more fun than blogs.
It’s a fine Friday for some voices just before the monsoon. I drive over early to put my head in the right frame with a few tunes from the Brazen Heads. After I join the group asking Annie ‘Who’s yer Paddy?’ a few hundred times, I can’t resist singing ‘His Dream’ – never can – but then I need to ramp it up with ‘One-Eyed Reilly.” Blood properly pumping, I spot new sawhorse-signs showing the way to Monsoon Voices! We grow and grow.
For once I get to the room early, get a spot at the great table, and watch the room fill in around me. Plenty early to plop down a few notes. Seven laptops are flipped open and three ‘analog’ writers scrawl around the room. The setting sun slants across the whatever writing surface gets in its way. Luckily, a big headed laptop-user is shading me from the rays.
I spot Traci & Patrick ducking out the east door as I come in the west. They’d set up the table with the sign-in-for news list and the love donation vase. They’re so soft-sell.
So far the mood is totally mellow. Will it build? We’ve had a mellow night or two, but we’ve had plenty where the crowd and the ice-cruncher battled for dominance. Jenny won’t bring Rowan because she’s afraid is little baby ears will be harmed. There’s a family across the way with a baby younger than Rowan – if that little one doesn’t like our work she’ll let us know!
During my noting, the room has filled in. MaryAnn has come in and greeted me, and introduced me to Betsy. With my usual grace I tell her how great it is to finally meet her, and tell her how much I enjoyed taking her online course last year. The look on her face is one I’ve seen so often: once again, I have enthusiastically made a fool of myself. This is not the Betsy (Andrews) I knew from the digital world; this is an analog Betsy (McPhee) who terms herself a new writer but later shows herself to be an old soul. But she’s gracious and the awkward moment passes quickly.
MaryAnn gives Betsy some advice on reading to a group and shortly another first-time reader, Catania, joins them and MaryAnn takes them on tour, up to the front where the microphone will be. I take a moment to order an iced mocha, and while it’s being thrown together, a man comes in and stands near me at the counter. “Wow, what’s going on in here?” he breathes out, stunned by the fullness of the room. He’s young and sandy haired, disheveled and windblown, and he might even be half my age. I smile at him.
“We’re going to read some crazy poetry and short essay, fun stuff. It’s a cheery group.”
“Cool. I can get into that.” He smiles too, and I notice his pierced lower lip. My coffee’s ready and I take it, and think it’s just as well that he probably doesn’t go for the overweight 50ish mocha-drinking writer type, ‘cause I’m married and hate those piercings.
When I settle back at the great table, carefully losing track of the pierced child, Patrick and Traci are making their way to the microphone. Good, good, hooray, we’re getting started.
The Moores welcome everyone and call on Catania Larson, our first reader. Catania is the mom of the cute little infant and her two older sisters. Three little ones and still writing! She offers up five poems (about four more than I managed the year James was born) and they are lovely, well-formed, diverse observations of life. The first, ‘Voice’ (how appropriate to the reading) discusses the sound of life running through life. ‘Merry’ (a Christmas poem) visits with past holiday Catanias. ‘The Spider’, which Catania shyly announced as a sonnet, certainly is a good one, in which a busy spider gets a meal she almost couldn’t handle, but does. ‘Happiness is…’ exults in the moments of pleasure, day to day. ‘The Moroccan Box’ holds a precious mundane treasure, because the extraordinary treasures can’t be fit in boxes. Catania celebrates the treasures of her life in every words she writes.
After the listeners show Catania their appreciation, Patrick introduces me. I read an essay called ‘Mosquitoes,’ which is in its seventh incarnation since last fall. That poor essay! It’s been long and short and funny and bitter and sweet. This group gets the short version, which they seem to like. They laugh at the right places. As a humor writer, you come to love the laughs that come in the right places. The ones that come in the wrong places, you learn to work with.
Candice Aragon sings two songs as I resume breathing at my seat.
Candice is 23 and lovely and so talented. Her first song, ‘Pitter patter,’ is a sad song to wrap around your shoulders, rain against the window. She helps us move on with ‘Your old Heart,’ a cheery love song full of wild rhymes and exultant repeated “I love you”s that sweep us into the break.
During the break, I go and visit with the restroom. It’s more than just going to the restroom or visiting the restroom, because at Ultimate Coffee, the restroom is very personable. It’s an old friend. In fact, once you go in and sit down, you get a message: “I am sensitive. Please hold down my handle for at least 5 seconds, and be sparing in your use of paper. Thank you.” It’s signed “The Ultimate Toilets” and has a self-portrait off to one side. It always makes me feel like family.
There’s a chance that reflects badly on my concept of family. If it does, blame it on my brothers.
I get back to the table just in time to hear Gary Bowers tell the crowd about the upcoming Bard’s Books event. Then came an invitation to a reading at Glendale Public Library. I miss the name of the young woman who invited us to GPL, but recognize her as the writer of the blog Heart-Shaped Hole. I even go to her when she sits down, and tell her how much I love her blog, but am simply not smart enough to get her name. I’m really bad at this social-skill stuff.
We start again with MaryAnn McCullough at the mic. MaryAnn is a veteran writer and the essay she reads is recently published in A Cup of Comfort for Dog Lovers II. I am steeled up, determined not to cry in front of all these folks, but MaryAnn saves me: the essay is funny and she delivers it wonderfully, and pulls out after saying that she and her companion are aging gracefully. As she does everything.
Susan Vespoli, who claims to have ‘moved to a shack in the forest to attend poetry school,’ makes me wish I could go find that shack. It must have poetry magic in it. Susan tells us that this is only ‘my second time reading in public, and my first without tequilia.’ She belied her words with the ease of her reading. Where are all these graceful women from, anyway? She reads ‘Another nice thing about Dogs’ and ‘Daylilies.’ You can read Another Nice Thing at the Monsoon Voices blog, but if you do, be sure to imagine a beautiful woman with easy humor reading it. ‘Daylilies’ is about the aftermath of an argument, and after she reads it she gets a big hug from the other argument participant, which makes us all clap even harder.
Candice finishes up the evening with three more songs. On the last of them she instructs us all to clap, because it’s a clapping song. We clap, and we are enthusiastic clappers, but we are not good at it. A roomful of writers! Bright cheery, good writers. Bad clappers.
Seriously, if you’ve read this far but never treated yourself to Monsoon Voices, talk to your therapist. You deserve this kind of easy happiness. We all do. Real life is more fun than blogs.
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