Ed Pacht on How Nothing is Something

I recently received this message from Ed Pacht, a regular reader, and I am posting it with his permission.

Alice,

 

In the course of writing a response to that good article on workshops, it occurred to me that you might find some value in this piece. I've been trying to write every day (today was day #434) and some days have been without much inspiration. Some have a kind of writer's block, and that is what I make myself write about. I call the results, "Nothing Poems." This is one of those, which will be gathered together into a chapbook entiled, "Nothing: Poems about Not Writing Poems."

Why do I write?

I have to write.
When words within my head
jostle one another for a place
upon the paper or the screen
that blankly sits before me,
I have to write.
I have to set them down,
to let them speak,
to say the things they wish to say:
profound thoughts of highest wisdom,
incoherent babblings of an empty mind,
something worthwhile to be said,
or not.
I have to write.
I want to write.
It is in writing that I find myself,
whether what I find is what I’d like to find,
or whether what I find will make me cringe,
and wish that I were not the one I find.
I want to write.
I want to put my thoughts in print.
I want to share them as I read aloud,
and, I guess, to share with others what I am,
but why?
Am I really of much interest to those others?
Am I really worth my own attention?
Often do I ask myself these questions;
seldom do I find a worthy answer.
Do I think my writing to be worth the sharing?
Is it honest to be saying that I do?
Probably not,
but …
I have to write.

--ed pacht

Interview with Orhan Pamuk

The Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk, was a winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. He passionately embraces his Turkish identity and sees himself as a bridge between the East and West.  Pamuk's work is rooted in his beloved Istanbul, but he explores themes of universal human experience and yearning. An outspoken critic of those who limit free speech, he faced imprisonment in 2005 in Turkey and now lives in Mumbai. His eight novels include several international best sellers such as My Name is Red, Snow, and now The Museum of Innocence.  

Reporting on the recent resignation of Turkey's highest ranking military officers, Christopher Hitchens explains, "cooperation between ostensibly secular and newly pious may have had something to do with a growing sense of shame among the educated secular citizenry of big cities like Istanbul, who always knew they could count on the army to uphold their rights but who didn't enjoy exerting the privilege. The fiction of Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's complex Nobelist and generally liberal author, has explored this paradox very well. His novel Snow is perhaps the best dress rehearsal for the argument.

Because of course Pamuk is also the most edgy spokesman for the rights of the Kurds and the Armenians, and of those whose very nationality has put them in collision with the state. He has been threatened with imprisonment under archaic laws forbidding the discussion of certain topics, and he must have noticed the high rate of death that has overcome dissidents, like Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink, who have exercised insufficient caution."

Nirmala Lakshman recently interviewed Pamuk in Mumbai on his life and work. Read excerpts from the interview here.

Paul Greenberg on Writers' Conferences

I went to the Arkansas Writers Conference the other day to talk about writing.

Talk about writing? Rather defeats the purpose, doesn't it? Like driving somewhere to walk. Or attending a conference to learn how to pray in solitude.

But I accepted the invitation anyway. I had a few things I wanted to say about the tendency to teach writing as a process. Much like churning out pre-cast concrete, no doubt. Or producing a political speech that, you can tell, has been written by asking all the politician's advisers for their, to use another unfortunate term: input. Because that's the accepted process. As in processed cheese.

There's a reason Mr. Lincoln wrote his Gettysburg Address, and the ineffable Second Inaugural, alone. Writing should concentrate thought, not diffuse it.

But we live in the age of writing coaches. You find them everywhere:

•At corporate headquarters.

•At conventions of writers, which is an interesting concept in itself, considering what a solitary business writing is, or ought to be.

•Or, you can consult a writing coach on your own. ("Have a seat, Count Tolstoy, and let a real pro show you how it's done. First off, you'll want to foreshadow Anna Karenina's character rather than just throwing her into some messy Russian household, don't you think? And this Vronsky character, he's still a bit of a blank. Your reader's got to wonder what Anna ever saw in him. If you could just bring him out, give him some strong convictions, maybe make him a political activist seeking social justice. ... But on the whole your plot has great potential. There are real possibilities here. You work this thing just right, and you could have a ... screenplay!")

As with any other craft - such as restoring furniture or auto body work or shoe repair - there ought to be a way to teach writing. I used to think so - before I tried to do it once a week at the Little Rock branch of the University of Arkansas. I soon found out there's no teaching it, no way to turn out a writer who wasn't essentially one before he fell into my clutches.

No talent, no writer. Yes, given enough time and inexhaustible patience, we might be able to produce a wordsmith that way - but not a writer.

Some of the well-trained even might be able to pass for writers among the undiscerning. Often enough, I feel as if I'm passing for one. A fellow could dine out on that kind of adulation. I know.

I've found that those impressed by the wannabe writer, the writer manque, aren't worth impressing. Unless maybe they have a nice big grant to hand out.

The surest sign of a writer worth reading is that he's not much interested in talking about writing at conferences or workshops. Or anyplace else.

Talking is one thing, writing quite another.

Now and then, somebody will want to talk to me about this great idea he has for an article or a book, usually only vaguely. I make it a rule to do him a great favor. I tell him to just write it up instead. Write, don't talk about writing. Show, don't tell. That way, there'll be something on paper, or at least on the computer screen, to work with: actual, written words.

For a year to the day, I attended an hourlong editorial conference every weekday morning at the old Chicago Daily News, and watched good ideas talked away daily.

The Daily News was a great newspaper when it still had a fine corps of foreign correspondents and a local columnist named Mike Royko. He was so local, so Chicago, he was a national treasure. That's what having a sense of place will do for a columnist. Or for a real writer, a Faulkner, a Barry Hannah, a Walker Percy, an Ellen Gilchrist.

But how do you teach anybody a sense of place?

Short answer: You don't. You just stand aside and get out of the way when a Buddy Portis comes roaring by, or rather comes trotting by in the perfect 19th-century prose of his soul-daughter Mattie Ross out of Yell County, she of, and with, "True Grit."

Teach somebody to write like that? At a conference? In a classroom? At a writers' workshop?

Please.

Kingsley Amis, who should never go unmentioned when writers are discussed, once said that everything wrong about his post-war era could be summed up in one word: Workshop.

Maybe that's because so much talking is done in workshops, while writing - good writing, at least - is done alone.

Writers, like other dangerous criminals, should come to know solitary confinement. It does 'em a world of good. No wonder prisons have incubated the best political writing, certainly in Russia, whether under tsar or commissar. (No matter how much Russia changes, it remains Russia.)

There are certain words that let you know at once that the kind of writing they describe will be certifiably, professionally bad. Words that sound as if they came out of an industrial manual.

For excruciating example:

Process.
Input.
Product.

Raymond Carver said that once a writer starts talking about technique, you know he's out of ideas.

Writing is simple enough. All you need do is walk into a room, sit down - alone - and look at that blank page staring you in the face like a cobra.

Then it is time to face the most terrifying of audiences, the one that can see through your every trick: yourself.

This column is based on a talk to the Arkansas Writers Conference by Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Bachelors Degree in Creative Writing

Earn a Bachelor's degree in Creative Writing online through Full Sail University.

Good stories are the foundation of all entertainment. Those tearjerking moments, hair-raising plot twists, and love-to-hate characters are found across all entertainment media – from games, to animation, to movies and TV.

If you've got the imagination and the drive to develop original narratives, Full Sail University's Creative Writing for Entertainment bachelor's degree program can teach you the essential tools, from storyboarding and scriptwriting, to genres and literary devices, to transmedia storytelling. You'll complete the program with a digital portfolio and the industry knowledge to market your work.

Poem for my Godchild with Leukemia

Leah, Age 7

 Leah's Burden



Hard things come upon us.
When we are unready they assault us.
When our hopes are high and we have dared to breathe again,
Hope is dashed and darkness floods into our souls.

When the body of a pretty child
turns upon itself in bitter ugliness,
How it wrenches loving watching hearts!
How it tears them from their trusted moorings!
How the grief pervades their very being!
And what questions tear apart their minds!
Earthly reason cannot comprehend such a thing as this is,
And a solid faith is by it strained,

For we do not know,
Cannot know,
The whys and hows and reasons of such a thing as this,
And in our anguish only scream in useless hurt,
In doubt, perhaps, that God is truly good,
and we are brought so near to deep despair.

God knows.
He knows what this child must be enduring.
He knows the hurt that fills a parent's soul.
He knows the questions that the younger ones must face,
And He knows the meaning borne in this sad and tragic tale.

God knows.
God loves,
And in His plan all things are brought to work for good,
All things,
Even this,
Though we cannot see the good that He is working,
Though we surely cannot now give thanks,
And though we want to raise our fists in our frustration,
God is good,
Cold comfort when we hear it in the midst of pain,
Yet it is true,
And, in our grieving, if we only let Him hold us,
He will bring us through.

--ed pacht


This is Leah's second battle with leukemia.  She was in remission for about 10 months.  Leah continues her fight with Leukemia (ALL) and is embarking on a several months journey of chemotherapy leading up to another long journey of a bone marrow transplant. This challenges all in the family,  including her mother Sarah, her father Robert, and her precious siblings: Mae- age 6, Issac- age 4, and Aaron- age 2. Through this LotsaHelpingHands website, we hope to rally your support. You can help with housecleaning, meals, prayers, and financial assistance.

If you can help Leah and her family, please do by going to Lots a Helping Hands. You will need to register to sign up to help.  It is easy.  If you have any trouble, email the case worker, Nanette Efird at lnashky@gmail.com. Nanette can sign you up over the phone or by email.

If you are a member at St. Andrew Church, coordinate taking the Nash family meals with Alison Morris 859 263-7732.

Thanks for praying!

Alice C. Linsley

Sarah Cline's Writing Journey

Sarah Cline (Grade 7)

June 20, 2011

The Small Steps that Make a Writer

      I know that they are there somewhere; those little white books, made of nothing but stapled together office paper, my messy illustrations and my mom’s neat handwriting. They are probably in one of the white boxes labeled “memorabilia”, under a pile of photos and an untidy stack of imaginative, though not particularly decipherable, childhood drawings. I won’t know exactly where, however, until I take the time to search for them, time I have not had recently. Even so, I still like to think about them.

      From around the age of five, I would narrate stories I had thought of to my mom. She would write them down, and then staple the pages of the story together into a small, flat little book. These little books were some of the first pieces of writing I ever worked on. They were my first Book attempts. Some of them were my version of popular fairytales like “Cinderella,” while others were whole new stories I came up with myself. Though I don’t remember all of these inventive stories, there are a few that stick out in my mind. The one I wrote about a child dinosaur not wanting to take a bath, for example, or the one about the Princess slumber party. Those books, as silly and whimsical as they were, played an important part in my growth as a writer. They laid the foundation for my writing journey, a foundation I am still building on.

      Although the stories I wrote as a young child acted as a foundation for my understanding of writing, by the age of eight, I had somewhat outgrown the resourceful little stories. Still, I had not stopped writing. I began to transition into a new kind of writing that I had discovered: poetry. I may or may not have written poems before the age of eight, but I do recall writing my first poems at eight years old. I was in my grandparents’ small vacation home in Florida, and it was late, approximately ten at night. I had carefully worked on several poems in my makeshift bedroom, writing them into a journal. My favorite of the night and the one I most clearly remember was “Dragon Nest.” I quickly committed it to memory, and got it published in a small competition at my local library called “Kids in Print” a few years later. The poem was simple, the rhymes unexceptional, but I was extremely proud of my work.

      A year later, in fourth grade, something little happened that, nevertheless, had a big impact on me as a writer. I was one, maybe two weeks into the school year. I had for the first time in my life been enrolled in a home school group with a curriculum and deadlines and teachers, as well as many other new things. I don’t remember much, but one class stands out clearly in my mind. It was a writing class. I also remember the teacher. She stood out to me for her honest love of teaching, her vivacious personality, and the fact that she always added something into the class to make it interesting. Class was nearly at an end, and the teacher was announcing the winner for the bio poem project we had been assigned. I was leaning on the table in a bored way, only half listening, when my eyes widened and her voice came into sharp focus. Was it true? It was! She had said that the winner of the bio poem assignment was me! The prize she handed me was nothing special, a sticker I believe, or maybe a pretty pencil or two, but it meant the world in my eyes. Not the small prizes, simply the fact that out of all my classmates, there was something about my poem that Ms. Hope had deemed unique and good. To me it seemed like a validation of something I had suspected, but not yet confirmed; that I was a good writer, and maybe, just maybe, other people would think I was too.

      As small as that was, it felt and still feels like that day was a mile stone. It was the first time I really started believing in myself as a writer. I think from there my interest in writing really took off, developing into less of an interest and more of a love. I’m now so grateful I took those classes in writing. Even the basic things I learned there, like how to dress up sentences and how to “show not tell” when I wrote helped me develop my writing skills so much. I think what I appreciate most about those classes now is the fact that they really put me outside my comfort zone as a writer. Though that is what I once disliked most about these classes, now I am grateful that I was pushed as a writer. I would, for example, never have written “Mary’s Adventure” in fifth grade, a story about a girl traveling on the Mayflower, had I not taken those classes. I simply wouldn’t have looked into writing about a topic like that. And therefore, I would have never gotten it published in a blog called “Student’s Publish Here!” I would have missed a great writing opportunity! That’s another thing that taking writing classes gave me: opportunities; opportunities to get my work out into the world, even in small ways, and opportunities to build my confidence as a writer. I believe taking writing classes have played a crucial roll in evolving my writing skills, and just generally giving me so much more knowledge about writing then I had before I took the classes. I plan to get much more out of writing classes in the future!

      Now I am in seventh grade, and my love for writing is continuing to grow. I am still writing poetry, and my knowledge of poetry specifically has diversified. As much as I love writing poems with simple rhythms and rhymes, I now also enjoy writing poems with more complicated rhythms, and more complicated subjects. I’ve also recently begun writing a book. I believe I may have plunged into a plot line too complicated for a first-time novel writer, but I am comforted by the fact that, whether my luck holds or not, this book attempt will be better than those little white books, made of nothing but stapled together office paper, my messy illustrations and my mom’s neat handwriting. In fact, over the years, I’ve seen my writing improve a lot. That’s what I’m most proud of. I know my writing will never be perfect, but the constant improvement I’ve seen in my writing gives me motivation to make it even better, and the confidence that I can

      Why I was ever interested in writing at a very young age, I don’t well remember. I suppose at such a young age I saw it mostly as a pass time, a way to fill up the hours not spent doing other vital things, like dress up and make believe games with my sisters. Since my love for writing has grown, however, I’ve come to see writing not as a pastime but as a form of art. Through writing, you can express yourself, paint a beautiful picture of anything you want, if only you have the right words, and know how to use them. I am still learning all the words I can, as well as learning how to use them. Yet, I can’t help but see I have a bright future ahead in writing, whether it affects my life in little or big ways. Even so, I know that throughout my life I will always have more to learn about writing. But that’s just one of the many things I look forward to when it comes to writing; there’s always a new challenge to face, always something else to improve, and always something new to learn.

Poet to Poet: Reflections on Screaming Fire

The following poem is a reflection on Screaming Fire, a Fourth of July poem written by Chandler Hamby.


Fire Screaming in the Sky

There are times when one observes what is around one,
and one sees much more than eyes have seen,
when in the midst of seeming joyous celebration,
one’s heart begins to flag, one’s joy to fade,
when the beauty of exploding fiery patterns,
the music fit for bravely marching armies,
and the words of proud and patriotic exultation
fail to fill the blackness of the darkness of the soul,
and only serve as highlights in the looming blackness.
In times like that a poet may be moved to write,
may attempt description of the beauty of the show,
may want to speak of the brightness then attempted,
but one’s heart is drawn to pierce beyond that veil,
to see the blackness and the bleakness of the shadow,
to sense the falseness of the wild display,
to cringe without full knowledge in its presence,
and to speak what one does not know that one is speaking.
In times like these the poet’s muse is active,
speaking through the cracks between one’s words,
and truth, even when one has not quite heard it,
flows from undetected depths within one’s person,
speaking with a still small voice within another heart,
and I have heard those quiet words that have been spoken,
and as the colors fade away to darkness,
those words are resonating in my soul.


--ed pacht