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geraldfierst · 7 years

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HERE’s TO YOU

December 2016 Dear Friends,

I am sitting in an apartment overlooking the Acropolis. My friend Judy Trotter and I hopped over to Athens on our way to Birmingham and the Limmud conference. As my friend Wallace Norman often exclaims, “Not shabby!”

This past summer, Wallace, who founded and directs the Woodstock Fringe Festival, directed Happy Days by Samuel Beckett. The production was one of the most extraordinary pieces of theatre I have ever experienced, proving that great directing and acting can fill a simple space with transformative emotion and poetry. Not shabby.

As I sit here, I am thinking of all the connections that take us on our life’s journey, and how so many of them have affected me this past year and will continue into 2017- new paths opening thanks to old ties.

Judy and I first met about twenty years ago in Oxford when Andrew Gilbert, (whom I had previously met at CAJE, a conference I would regularly attend with my great friend and mentor Peninnah Schram) invited me to Limmud which at that time was less than 500 people meeting in Oxford. This year Limmud will be at the National Exhibition Center with about three thousand attendees. I describe Limmud as the TED conference for Jews. Since that first time attending, I have been blessed to have been invited to present at Limmud every few years, and I have watched the conferences grow and have experienced the extraordinary people who come from all over the world to share their expertise on everything from politics to religion to art to cooking.

Last summer, my childhood friends Shelley and Ken Gliedman introduced me to the Pine Tree Foundation whose funding made possible a wonderful project this school year at Today’s Learning Center, a school with parallel programs for general and special needs children from pre-K through high school. Last spring, my friend Terry Burnett with whom I exercise at our local Y, had introduced me to Pushcart Theatre, a local children’s theater company, and I had begun talking about developing educational programming for them; meanwhle, my wonderful dog Bianca had introduced me to two dog walking neighbors, Jessica Lederman and Tara McAlister (humans to Harley and Atticus) who teach at TLC and had talked to me about their work. So, I put all the pieces together to create a year long pilot project that we hope will be adopted in other school settings, using Terry’s puppetry, my storytelling, and Pushcart’s performances, to offer new ways to create educational communities and enhance literacy in ESL, special needs, and general populations. I have often been frustrated by the dismissal of a teaching artist residency as no more than enrichment programming, instead of the recognition of how essential the arts are to developing higher level thinking especially in elementary and middle school classrooms. Working at TLC, especially with special needs children, I again and again see how great teaching comes from teachers who use body, mind, and imagination, to reveal and amplify their curriculum- finding multiple ways to excite students, no matter their learning styles.

I often think of how years back, when Remi Barclay Bosseau Messenger and I worked at the Whole Theatre Company, Bob Alexander of the Living Stage taught us “We are all geniuses. The teacher’s job is to bring out the genius in all of us.” Genius, like a genie (or djin) is the energy of the imagination that enables great thinkers to understand what is there that everyone else overlooks. And teachers who inspire bring out that spirit in all of us. My friend Margaret Read MacDonald as an author, storyteller and children’s librarian has been such a teacher. Margaret has invited me over many years to accompany her to many wonderful places in the world. I have always been delighted to be her entourage. Eight years ago, while driving up a mountainous road in Malaysia, I suggested that we distract ourselves from the frightening twists and turns and make up a story about Big and Little to tell. Many years passed, and this year, Margaret, who never gives up, offered that story to Liz Smith Russel, our old friend from August House. Liz is starting publishing again with the founding of Plum Street Press and was delighted with our story which will be published next fall as Bye, Bye, Big! with illustrations by Kitty Harvill. As Liz and I talked, I also sent her Imagine the Moon, a lyric poem listing the folkloric names of each month’s full moon. Liz, who is a brilliant editor, suggested that I create a second tier of information to parallel each month’s verse, so I wrote accompanying text for the educational market based on the core curriculum philosophy of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) Imagine the Moon with wonderful illustrations by Leslie Stall Widener will be released late spring, 2017.

Meantime, my friend Karen Shafer, who I first hired to manage the Whole Theatre Company forty years ago, has asked me to help on an advisory board to develop Aunt Karen’s Farm, her visionary dream. Over decades, Karen has bought and renovated four houses along a road in Mt Vision, NY, near Cooperstown. With space for twenty-two guests, Karen sees Aunt Karen’s Farm as a developmental artist retreat. Dance, theatre and film companies have already used the facilities to work on projects. Last spring, I invited a company of a dozen storytellers, many of whom I first met three decades ago when Marie Winger and I organized the MidAtlantic Storytellers Conference, to join me for a long weekend. This community of storytellers, including me, had recently been working as an ensemble with Ray Gray in a series of collaborative performances at the Mercer Museum. Inspired by the weekend at Aunt Karen’s Farm, Phil Orr, Luray Gross, Bill Wood, and I, have continued to collaborate, creating On the Road With Orpheus, a musical storytelling performance piece which riffs on the Orpheus myth by layering folktales, personal stories, and current events into a two act play. We will be performing the show June 14, 2017, at the Grapevine in Washington DC.

My friend Steve Zeitlin published a wonderful book this year The Poetry of Everyday Life. In it he writes, “In the babble of mothers and their babies, in the inscriptions of teens in their yearbooks, and in the jump rope rhymes and expressions shared among family members lies a world of unselfconscious artistry and poetic expression that is always available to lift our spirits and inspire our creative expression.” This sense of life’s poetry immediately made me think of my own Anjel, now eleven, who began middle school this year. Watching her flourish in sixth grade reminds me of the great teachers I had at that age, particularly Marjorie Bull and Colin Reed. Each of them invested me with a sense of my ability to create and own the world, and, now, I see Anjel discovering those strengths in herself. Both practical and empathetic as well as filled with imagination, she is a wonderful writer, a delicious companion. I have often asked her opinions as I edited my own books. I have no greater joy than to sit side by side with her ( actually, Bianca, my beloved dog, usually likes to snuggle between us) as we read and work and chat. Her presence is my greatest pleasure, my fullest, most beautiful moments. Sheer poetry.

At home in Montclair, we continue inviting artists to present their work in our living room. In recent years, my friend Gladys Grossman has pulled me along to hear Monique Owens at the Village Gate. Monique was a student at Demarest Middle School where I did playwriting residencies year after year thanks to Gladys. I am friends with Monique’s whole family, so I was overjoyed to host Monique Owens and Friends at a house concert in the fall. Then, on December 1, Jean Rohe and Liam Robinson continued their tradition of bringing their holiday show to our home with a wonderful performance of traditional and original music to bring a finale to 2016. I always fondly recall that first afternoon when Jim Rohe (who had become my friend as part of a storytelling class I was teaching at the Montclair Adult School) invited me over to the little house in Nutley. There, I first met Jean and her brother Dan sitting in their high chairs singing Baby Beluga. Ah, how the years go by!

2017 looms before me- and let me be frank- brings with it lots of personal and political trepidation, and I am wondering if the answer lies in trying to tend my own garden or in trying to change the world, but I am thinking of the opening second act image from Wallace’s production of Happy Days. There is Winnie (superbly played by Bette Carlson ) buried up to her neck, but as the lights come up, she opens her eyes, smiles and exclaims, “O Happy Day.” It would be so easy to list the failures and disappointments that seem about to bury us, but in writing this end of the year letter, I want to acknowledge how good it is to awake in a world that always brings opportunity for something new to be born. I send this letter out to you because you are important to me, a part of my life, and even if much time passes before we are together again, you are here, not just in memory, but in the now.

I heard this story on a TED talk. Alexander the Great coming over the Himalayas meets a naked yogi sitting on a rock “Where are you going?” the yogi asks . Alexander replies, “I’m going to conquer the world!” The yogi silently thinks Alexander is completely nuts. " What are you doing?” Alexander then asks. “I am trying to find nothing,” the yogi replies, and Alexander thinks the yogi is completely nuts. No one can foresee the future, nor restore the past; only in the constantly disappearing now is the song at the center of our story.

Marge and I send our love to all of you.

With hopes for health and happiness AND, as my mother used to say, Money isn’t everything, but it doesn’t hurt.

Gerry

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bern33chaser · 5 years

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11 Writing Exercises to Inspire You and Strengthen Your Writing

Whether you’re writing just for fun, for school, or with professional goals in mind, these exercises can all help you to improve your writing. Some will give you inspiration, others will help you avoid editing as you write, and many of them will help you pay closer attention to your word choices.

I hope you’ll enjoy giving them a go!

#1: Cover Your Screen While You Write

If you find yourself doing more editing than actual writing, then try covering up (or, on a laptop, turning down) your screen while you draft.

If, like me, you can touch-type – try closing your eyes instead. I find it surprisingly relaxing! (Though I tend to stop every sentence or two to make sure I’ve hit the keys I thought I was hitting…)

At first, it might seem odd not to be able to see the words that you’re typing – but you might well find that you write faster and express your thoughts more freely this way.

#2: Set a Daily Writing Goal and Track Your Progress

Writing, as most other crafts, only gets better with practice. If you want to improve, therefore, you will need to write pretty much every single day.

The best strategy to achieve this objective is to set a goal of how many words you want to write per day, and then to track your progress over time. A simple notebook or spreadsheet should be enough for you to record your daily statistics.

The Prolifiko blog has a great piece with more tips to set writing goals and resolutions and to make sure you achieve them.

#3: Use a Writing Prompt to Get You Going

If you want to write, but you don’t know what you want to write, try using a writing prompt. This could be anything from a story scenario (“write about someone who gets caught in a lie”) to a blog post title (“Ten Things I Wish I Could Tell My 15-Year-Old Self”).

Here are a couple of sources of prompts to keep you busy for a while:

25 creative writing prompts, a list of prompts you can use to start writing a simple story or even a novel.

365 Creative Writing Prompts, from Think Written – a mixed bag of prompts, with some for stories and some for poems; many would also work for blogging.

Even if you’re working on a longer piece, like a novel, prompts can be helpful. A line of dialogue, for instance, might give you just the inspiration you need for your next scene.

#4: Don’t Start at the Beginning … Start at the End

There’s no writing rule that says you need to begin at the beginning. In fact, many writers find it more effective to start at the end.

You can do this in a couple of different ways:

Start your story (or blog post, etc) close to the chronological end – e.g. you might begin with “As I stared down the mountain, I couldn’t believe I was actually here…” You can then jump back in time and narrate the events that led up to that point.

Write the end of your blog post (or story, etc) first. Once you’ve written your concluding paragraphs or final scenes, you’ll know what you’re leading up to. If you prefer not to write it out in full, you could make notes.

#5: Rewrite a Masterpiece or a Famous Story

Choose a famous masterpiece or classic novel (like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet) and write your own version.

This is a great exercise because you can do it at almost any level: you could write a short story for children, or you could write a whole novel or screenplay. (Bridget Jones’s Diary, for instance, borrowed heavily from Pride and Prejudice; the children’s movie Gnomeo and Juliet is based, as you might guess, on Romeo and Juliet.)

You can do this with fairytales, too, like the story of Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood. You might decide to bring the stories into the modern world – or you might switch to a completely different genre, like a Western version of Little Red Riding Hood or a sci-fi version of Cinderella.

Hopefully, you’ll think of some interesting ways to present an old story in a new way – great practice for avoiding clichés and stereotypes in your own writing.

#6: Create a Found Poem from Your Spam Folder

A “found poem” is one created from text that already exists – and some writers enjoy repurposing spam emails for this!

Check your spam folder. I’m sure that, like mine, it’s full of emails with some strange wording and dubious promises like:

I did not need to find a winning product. he gave it to me…

Just drinking 1 cup of this delicious hot beverage in the morning sets you up to burn more fat than 45 exhausting minutes on the treadmill.

Hello %E-mail_address%, I know your very love Engineer Jobs and want have T-Shirt for Engineer Jobs.

It is vital to have a telephone system that has all the specific functions

(All of these are taken verbatim from my own spam folder…)

Could you pick out a few lines (they don’t have to be consecutive ones) to create your own found poem? Feel free to add some words if needed. There are some wonderfully odd examples here.

#7: Write Something Inspired By a Piece of Writing, Music or Art

Inspiration can come in all sorts of ways – but if you’re struggling to find an idea, try turning to other people’s creative works. In my blogging, I’ve often been inspired by other people’s post structures, by an idea of theirs that I want to take further – or even by something they’ve written that I disagree with.

You can use music and art in a similar way: they can be particularly potent sources of ideas for stories. If you have a favourite song or artist, what in their work speaks to you? How could you craft a story using some of those themes or thoughts? Alternatively, look through some photos of artworks, and choose one or more to use as the basis for a story.

#8: Interview Your Novel’s Characters

This is a fun exercise that a lot of writers use to dig into who their characters are: the character interview. You can work through a pre-set list of questions, or you can come up with your own in advance, or you can just start typing and go with the flow!

You might do this essentially like a character questionnaire or checklist, or you might want to write it more like a mini-story, with you as the author inviting your character to sit down and talk.

Depending on the sort of fiction you write, the setting for your interview could be almost anything – perhaps you’re enjoying a casual chat over coffee and cake with your character, or maybe you’re interviewing them as a journalist, or even in court. Or, if you’re into rather darker fiction, you might be conducting an interrogation…

However you do this, it’s a great exercise to have fun with, and you might discover a whole backstory to your character that you’d never thought about before.

#9: Use the Alphabet

This is a fun exercise that can work for almost any type of writing: craft a piece where each sentence starts with the next letter of the alphabet. Here’s the start of one to show you what I mean:

At six o’clock, Josie woke up. Before she’d even opened her eyes, she knew what had woken her: she could hear it, just like she’d heard it every Friday morning for months. Cliff, her neighbour, was out in his garden. Despite all the times she’d gone round and asked him, through gritted teeth, to please wait until at least seven, he was mowing the blasted lawn again.

“Excuse me!” she called, over the fence. For a moment, she thought he hadn’t heard her over the sound of the mower.

(Yes, it’s tricky once you get to X! You might find this list helpful, or you might choose to use a sentence-starting word that merely contains an X.)

#10: Write with a Sentence Length Limit in Place

Can you limit every sentence you write to ten words? (Or fewer!) This might be tricky. It’s a great exercise for bloggers and online marketers, though. Short snappy sentences and paragraphs work well online.

You might want to draft as normal, then edit ruthlessly. Or you could count the words as you type. Whatever works for you!

(Yes, the sentences in this section are ten words max…)

#11: Write Without Using Any Adverbs

This is a common exercise advised for fiction writers: write a whole scene without using a single adverb.

Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives and adverbs. They often (though not always) end with –ly.

Here are a few sentences with the adverbs indicated in bold:

The girl walked quickly to school. (“Quickly” is modifying the verb “walked”.)

Slowly, the fairly tall man stood. (“Slowly” is modifying the verb “stood”, and “fairly” is modifying the adjective “tall”)

On the bus, the baby cried dismayingly loudly. (“Dismayingly” is modifying the adverb “loudly”, and “loudly” is modifying the verb “cried”.)

Writing without adverbs forces you to write crisper, clearer (and shorter!) sentences, which often have more impact. In particular, you’ll find yourself choosing stronger verbs.

All of these sentences could replace “The girl walked quickly to school” – and each has a slightly different nuance:

The girl strode to school.

The girl hurried to school.

The girl power-walked to school.

Of course, adverbs aren’t bad in themselves – so I don’t recommend avoiding them in all your writing! This exercise can help you, though, to be more aware of when you’re using adverbs unnecessarily.

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Pick one of the above exercises to try out during your writing time this week. (If you’re feeling up for it, pick two and combine them – how about rewriting a classic without using any adverbs?) Have fun!

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Original post: 11 Writing Exercises to Inspire You and Strengthen Your Writing from Daily Writing Tips https://www.dailywritingtips.com/11-writing-exercises/

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