A Taste For Bones

Murder One: A Writer's Guide to Homicide
Mauro V. Corvasce and Joseph R. Paglino

I realize I have a morbid taste for bones--a guilty pleasure, to be sure. I find myself fascinated with the way evidence forms a code to be deciphered in order to understand the horrible, the devastating. In trying to develop believable scenarios of homicide for a possible novel, I needed texts that describe complicated forensic material in accessible language, suitable for the writer/criminalist wannabe. Murder One is a great resource in that regard.

Written by two investigators for the Monmouth County, New Jersey Prosecutor's Office, this text gives a clear cut overview of different kinds of homicide, appropriate investigation techniques and evidence collection. Both Corvasce and Paglino have been in law enforcement since 1978, and have an excellent handle on presenting information to the general public. The chapters of the book are organized into the following sections:

• familial murders, usually triggered by simmering feuds
• gang murders, from contract hits to drive-by shootings
• organized crime hits, and the psychology and code of behavior within crime families
• business and financial murders, directed to silence whistle-blowers
• the rising trend in vehicular murder • crimes of passion, their triggers and underlying motivation • cult murders, serial murders and the details of real-life investigations

The authors also delve into legal definitions, forensic terms and definitions and the basic structure of initial homicide investigation; allowing reader/writers to explore opportunity, motive, use of weapons, and details at the scene of the crime. Interspersed throughout is the authors' commentary, reflecting their own case files experiences. Since I plan on describing more than one unholy execution, I was excited to get the corporeal goods necessary to get the right take down on paper.

Body Trauma: A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries
David W. Page

Dr. David Page has extensive trauma surgery experience, and is currently an associate clinical professor of surgery at Tufts' Baystate Medical Center. In Body Trauma, what happens to organs and bones maimed by accident or injury is the subject matter of this detailed, yet easy to read book. This text reveals in simple, but descriptive language the following:

• The four steps in trauma care
• Details of skull and brain injuries
• What the Glasgow Trauma Scale is, and why it's important
• Specifics of both penetrating and blunt injuries, especially as it relates to head and neck trauma. • The "dirty dozen' dreadful, but survivable, chest injuries
• The effect of blunt trauma, puncture and bullet wounds on abdominal organs

While at some level, this kind of immersion seems like overkill, (no pun intended) I feel like I have to capture a large amount of information to best make the story hold together and seem believable. Mind you, I'll have to edit and delete passages because there's too much information, that's how much I was able to glean from these resources.

I'm fascinated by my own ongoing interest in this kind of take on mortality and the reductionist perspective that certainly is bound to it. It's a seeming contradiction for me, whose own poetry tries to focus on spirit and its power to animate and heal.

I think it has something to do with embracing the concrete aspects of mortality--the frailty of the body, the effects of violence. As I write fiction with these themes, I make a certain sense of them that may be a crime novelist's conceit--to make sense of the irrational, the terrifying, the unspeakable.

Lisa Alvarado

One Continuous Mistake

Gail Sher

In One Continuous Mistake, Gail Sher describes the four noble truths for writers, they being:

Writers write.
Writing is a process. You don’t know what your writing will be until the end of the process. If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is not to write.

She approaches writing as Zen practice by expressing the idea that having the “right” intention is the key to being a writer. By that she means having a regular practice of writing everyday and making a “single minded effort” to keep up the practice of writing. This single minded effort consists also of “plodding onward,” writing even when you don’t feel like it , are in a bad mood or outside distractions call you away from the practice.

Another reward of this effort is the deep satisfaction that comes from the regularity of the practice and the deep dissatisfaction that comes with abandoning it.

“I know a doctor who wishes he could teach literature. I know a lawyer who secretly writes children stories. I don’t know any writer, however, who hankers after an alternative profession. If you are a writer and you are writing, there may be problems but never doubt.”

Sher advocates that in order to be fully present during writing practice the peripheral aspects of the writer’s life must be managed properly so that there aren’t any distractions during the writing session. She explains that “right “ livelihood isn’t so much concerned with what a writer does for a living but what her “state of mind is able to cultivate while she does it.” A writer needs to find a job that supports her intention to write .

“While most writers understandably dream of making their living practicing their craft, there are advantages to making your living in other ways.” such as not be isolated and not being motivated by the money to get things completed but letting it find its own pace."

The bottom line to writing as practice is the ability to “be there, but out of the way”, to show up at the allotted time and allow the subconscious to flourish. The title of the book refers to the idea that writing, like life, is about learning from the inevitable mistakes and not allowing these mistakes to cause you to stop the practice. It's from these “mistakes” that the most exciting aspects and the richness of life emerge.

POST SCRIPT TO MAY'S PALABRA PURA

Once again, Palabra Pura brought Chicago audiences a vivid, sinuous, muscular night of compelling poetry in the forms of Adrian Castro and Febronio Zatarain. Starting with a lively pre-performance dinner at a local Cuban restaurant, the conversation ranged from Yoruba spiritual practice to Portuguese poets and literary cannon. Zatarain's opening set was a moving pastiche of musica romantica sung in a whiskey voice, bracketing a look back at love and loss.

The night's featured poet shared work that radiated a strong connection, to the divine, to a living and breathing Afro-Cuban sensibility. Adrian Castro was a consummate reader, commanding, yet conversational and compelling. His work, infused with imagery of the natural world and its healing properties reminds us of the gods in us and around us. Both readers brilliantly illustrated the poetry in music and the musicality of poetry.

Bravo, bravo!

Lisa Alvarado

Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics

Various Voices is a collection of letters, essays, interviews, short prose fiction and poetry. Pinter wrote to directors and newspaper editors and critics in response to questions and reviews of his plays. He states his plays speak for themselves and that the characters in them don’t have any concrete histories, either before or after what has happened on the stage.

Pinter states he can't legitimately comment on the meanings of his work, because once written, it has an independent life of its own. Even during the writing process his control over the work is limited, because the characters themselves dictate how they act and speak; Pinter states is simply there to keep the shape and structure of the play. He believes that his writing is instinctual and intuitive: "There’s no aim. I do not have an ideology in my plays. I just write; I’m a very instinctive writer. I don’t have a calculated aim or ambition; I simply find myself writing something which then follows its own path."

Starting with a concrete visual image or verbal impulse, Pinter creates the characters that fit. He describes the writing process as painful, but that's how he knows he is on the right path. In a typical Pinteresque spin, he writes that he's being unfaithful to the characters if they emerge too easily. He speaks of language as ‘highly ambiguous business’ because we're all inundated with a barrage of words in our everyday lives, a barrage that many times carries little or no real meaning.

It's this ambiguity every writer must break through, "such a weight of words... the bulk of it a stale dead terminology; ideas...platitudinous, trite, meaningless." But he advocates confronting this, looking underneath what the words are saying, looking at what isn’t being given, what isn't said. Pinter believes there are two kinds of silences, when nothing is being said and when there is a ‘torrent of language.’ In both these cases there is a hidden language and it is here that the writer confronts the truths of his characters, it is here that they ‘possess a momentum of their own.’

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Palabra Pura This Month

Palabra Pura, Chicago's home for cutting edge, innovative Latino poetry is evolving in exciting ways, with its 2008 calendar of stellar talent solidly in place. While still basing itself at the California Clipper, Palabra Pura has begun to also hold events at Latino venues throughout the city. This month, join the fabulous writers profiled below. The skinny:

Wednesday,
March 19th. 8:30 pm California Clipper
1002 N. California. Chicago, IL

Aracelis Girmay writes poetry, fiction, & essays. Teeth, her collection of poems, was published by Curbstone Press in June 2007. Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Bellevue Literary Review, Indiana Review, Callaloo, & MiPoesias, among other journals. Her collage-based picture book, changing, changing, was published by George Braziller in 2005. Girmay is a Cave Canem Fellow & former Watson Fellow. She teaches writing workshops in New York & California.

olga m ulloa
Born in Matanzas, Cuba, 1958. Grew up in Madrid, Spain. Family came to Chicago in mid 1970’s. After college and grad school, worked as a Spanish language teacher for the City Colleges of Chicago for a year, long enough to realize that teaching was not in the stars. Since then has worked as a free-lance editor, translator, and writer. During the 80s and 90s lived in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Miami for brief periods, always returning to Chicago as home base. Moved to Costa Rica in the mid nineties and after three years once again returned to Chicago. Writing has always been the constant objective, while art, literature, photography, and music create the background chorus.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From Rich Villar and Acentos

Lord,
on 8th Street
between 6th Avenue and Broadway
there are enough shoe stores
with enough shoes
to make me wonder
why there are shoeless people
on the earth.

Lord,
You have to fire the Angel
in charge of distribution.

--"Psalm For Distribution"
by Jack Agüeros
(from LORD, IS THIS A PSALM?, Hanging Loose Press 2002)

Dear friends and colleagues:

I'm writing to you about a friend of ours: Jack Agüeros.

I say "friend," not because I have known Jack for decades (I haven't), but because of what Jack's work has meant to the writers, artists, and activists here in New York City's Puerto Rican communities. In these decades, through his work as a poet, translator, fiction writer, and community organizer, Jack Agüeros has spoken to us with clarity, humility, intensity, and dignity about our shared experiences as Puerto Ricans.

As a community activist, he worked with the Henry Street Settlement, the Puerto Rican Community Development Project, and various city agencies. As a journalist and essayist, he has written about the alliances between Chicano and Puerto Rican activists, and about his own life as a Puerto Rican in New York. As an invaluable historian, he has translated and researched the work of Jose Martí and Julia de Burgos. Through his ingenious use of the sonnet and psalm forms, he has perfected the very human art of advocacy, conveying our struggles with unflinching imagery and a smart comedic sensibility. As a cultural worker, Agüeros brought art, music and a Three Kings' Day parade (with real camels) to East Harlem through his stewardship of El Museo del Barrio.

Jack Agüeros has committed his life to the educational and social wellbeing of his people. Now is our chance to contribute to his wellbeing.

For quite a while now, Jack and his family have been dealing with the onset of his Alzheimer's Disease. It's been a difficult time, but the family has always been able to count on the support of friends and loved ones. That support will be made palpable on Tuesday, March 18th, when Jack's friends and family will come together for a benefit reading at Taller Boricua, in the Julia de Burgos Center, in the heart of Jack's birthplace, East Harlem. The location—1680 Lexington Avenue at the corner of 106th Street--is particularly appropriate, since the Center is named for the famous Puerto Rican poet whose work Jack translated, and is also the former home of P.S. 107, where Jack attended grammar school.

Scheduled to appear that night will be fellow poets, fiction writers, and kindred spirits who know and love Jack, many of whom are longtime friends of his: Martín Espada, Sandra Maria Esteves, Naomi Ayala, Aracelis Girmay, Lidia Torres, Robert Hershon, Donna Brook, Hettie Jones, Lynne Procope, Rich Villar, Tara Betts, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Julio Marzán, and Edgardo Vega Yunqué. His children, Kadi, Natalia, and Marcel Agüeros, will also be on hand.

The event starts at 7pm with a special performance by the young students of Taller Boricua's Tuesday dance class, who were gracious enough to move their gathering in order to accomodate this event.

The authors will have books for sale, the proceeds for which will go toward Jack's care. Signed copies of Jack's books, including DOMINOES, SONNETS FOR THE PUERTO RICAN, and LORD, IS THIS A PSALM? will also be available, courtesy of Hanging Loose Press and Curbstone Press. In addition, Sandra Maria Esteves has graciously donated one of her prints, which will be bid upon in a silent auction that night.

A $10 suggested donation will be collected at the door. No one will be turned away.

If you cannot make it to the fundraiser, but would still like to make a contribution toward Jack's care, you can send along a check payable to Marcel Agüeros at the following address:

Marcel Agüeros
Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory
Mail Code 5247
550 W. 120th Street
New York, NY 10027

This is our chance to pay tribute to a true giant of Puerto Rican, Latino, and U.S. literature. Please distribute this letter far and wide, to as many as possible. We hope to see you all in East Harlem on March 18th, 7pm sharp.

Pa'lante,
Rich Villar.

Lisa Alvarado

The Play's the Thing

In The Playwright's Workbook, Jean-Claude van Itallie explores playwriting through exercises based on the plays of Chekhov, Beckett, Pinter and others. He deals with the fundamentals of writing: who, where, when, and what. He describes the "What" as being ‘the writer’s dominant emotional image’ that ‘functions as its (the play's) heart’.

This "What" never gets talked about in the play. It is the image or feeling that the playwright holds in the back of her mind as she is writing. van Itallie gives the example of the "What" in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as having to do with waiting but it goes deeper than that.

'When all that once mattered - social identity, work, home, health, family, and hope of happiness and longevity- has been ripped away, what’s left to call human? Breathing. ‘Breathing’ or ‘pushing on’ may be Beckett’s ‘What’.

This "What" begins the playwright on a quest that starts deep within and creates a map that encourages others to take the journey. It pushes them to formulate their own questions to look at playwriting critically and deeply. His exercises are field guides for the journey, exposing paths that will help to establish an understanding of the fundamental rules of playwriting.

'You don't have to know exactly where you're going, but you need to know where the path starts and in what general direction it seems to lead.'

The workbook doesn't advocate any one style of writing. It can easily be used to create the well- made play or an avant garde performance text. The important thing reiterated is that before the boundaries of theater can be pushed the playwright has to know where the boundaries lie and this is done by examining the work of others. A play, according to van Itallie, should be thought of as:

'...a dramatic question, not an answer. Think of yourself as skillfully including the audience in the questions of the play. As you plan the play's journey maintain a confident yet questioning attitude.'

This questioning, this journey needs to begin within the playwright. While concentrating on a ‘What’ or an emotional image, the playwright (in their best moments) acts almost as a Buddhist monk, focusing his mind on ‘specific images that ask questions.

'In this sense, strong theater is like dreaming, creating a safe context within which to experience cruel (a la Artaud) dramatic events and the wobbling of our usual straight line thinking.’

I found support for my writing, for themes of conflict and regeneration. Also, within this context, van Itallie makes the case that the function of theater is not to be a source of answers for the world's ills, but rather the place where necessary questions get unearthed, offering change in how we see and experience ourselves, each other and the world.

• ISBN-10: 1557833028
• ISBN-13: 978-1557833020

Lisa Alvarado

Writing Without Teachers, What a Concept!

The basic philosophy of the book is that there is no ‘bad writing’ and that we have to give ourselves permission to write everything that is in our thoughts in order to get to the writing that has more focus and energy to it.

The first three sections of this book are set up to help anyone interested in writing to do just that. Section one is an explanation of how the freewriting exercises work. It's a simple method for generating writing by simply timing yourself for ten or twenty minutes, then writing as fast as you can without stopping. The key is to not think about what you're writing but to simply write. There are no rules to worry about. Grammar, spelling, syntax, logic are put on the back burner. You simply write what ever is on your mind as fast as you can until the time is up.

The reasoning behind this, according to Elbow, is that when we worry about whether we are doing it right we're in the process of editing and we don’t just edit out grammatical errors but also thoughts and feelings that could potentially enrich our writing. The writing time should be exclusively set aside for the the process of producing, an editing as a discrete function should only come later. Elbow suggests keeping a freewriting journal that consists of daily ten minute entries that he calls ‘mind samples. These ‘mind samples’ can then be combed over for ideas of what to further write about.

Here's more from Elbow himself:

"...look to see what words or passages seemed important -attracted energy or strength. Here is your cue what to write. Or think of a person, place, feeling, object, incident, or transaction that is important to you. Do one or two freewriting exercises while trying to hold it in mind. This procedure will suggest a subject and a direction."


In Chapter Two, Elbow describes the method he refers to as ‘Growing’. Using this model, I'd do a freewriting exercise on everything I know about a particular piece I'm working on for forty five minutes, writing everything that is in my head, without stopping. At the end of the forty five minutes I would then, for fifteen minutes re-read and extract the core of the writing: words, phrases, feelings, moods anything that ‘stuck its head out’ at me.

Then I'd jot down a summary of what all these essential things were telling me. Then, I'd do another forty five minute freewriting on this assertion, exploring whether I believed what came up or or not, but with the main focus being the same as in the first exercise, to write as fast as I could, and not edit myself.

When I was done, I would again sum up what I had just written and once again make an assertion about its main idea. For a third, and final forty five minutes, I would freewrite around this last assertion to explore any thing that might still be lurking in my mind. In the final hour I would again extract the essential elements and then do the task of editing what I had into a more coherent piece.

This has freed me up at some level from part of the anxiety I feel in initiating writing. Beginnings are always the hardest part, and like a lot of people, the panic at having to come up with words has left many a page and screen blank and left me feeling frustrated. The process of distilling and summarizing the underlying assumptions behind the writing has also strengthened my ownership of my own approach, my own aesthetic, and has helped me build a deeper gut-level confidence.

I’ve done a lot of freewriting in the past, but never explored it so deeply before. Most of my ‘finished’ writing has come from ‘internal cooking’, letting ideas percolate inside until some burst of inspiration caused me to sit and write them down and, many times, it’s a process of fits and starts. Elbow advocates the balance between external and internal 'cooking,' letting ideas and words intermingle to find new, richer ideas.

Poetic Medicine

Beyond poetry’s elegant use of language, it has the power to heal. Deeply.

John Fox explores this capacity in Poetic Medicine. Through the use of poetry, writers/readers can gain access to the restorative power of creativity. This a different tack than the general premise of art therapy, in which psychology is used to interpret and shape work. Fox believes in the inherent power contained in the actual process of writing, in naming and describing one's own reality.

In the chapter When God Sighs, healing from loss, illness and death are explored, with the idea that writing can be a vehicle to confront and transform our feelings about these difficult subjects. Through this process of naming and claiming, I've written about childhood abuse, and through poetry and scripting performance, tried create something hopefully, universal in its scope.

In Poems of Witness in a Conflicted World, Fox uses the chapter to call on writers/readers to look at social issues, take a stand and publicly comment on them. The idea of bearing witness is taken to a new level, as Fox insists that the writer can be a be a challenge to the status quo, and should take on that role as challenger as an explicit responsibility. Again, in asking an audience to take a hard look at the culture-wide ambivalence toward violence, I try to echo Fox's sentiments in personally bearing witness and asking others to share in that. The cultural issue of violence and our ambivalent, voyeuristic relationship to it continues to be a theme for me, and I hope to create dialogs with the audience on these issues.

Throughout the book, Fox uses works by famous and unknown writers to illustrate how poetry sheds light on dark places and shapes hearts and minds. While the book also contains writing exercises, its strength is its call to writers and readers to root themselves in the beauty, the struggles, and the daily life that surrounds them. I found the general perspective, his direct writing style, and excerpts of a vast range of poetry an incredible resource. It reinforced why I write, the reason I choose the subject matter I choose, and my understanding of who is my audience.

Poetic Medicine Bag: (From the Poetic Medicine website)
Exercise 3: Prayer Poems

Prayer is a way to communicate with the Divine.

Prayer is a way to love the spirit of whatever is dear to you. Prayer is a way to let your heart cry out. Prayer is a way to come exactly as you are to the Unknown, the mystery of it all. Bring to your prayer what is raw, what is sublime. Prayer is a way to welcome a wider vision of life for you. Are you aware of the silence that your prayer words join with? Prayer is words strung like beads on the thread of your silence.

What fertile silence do you long to enter? How does this kind of silence effect your world?

How does divine guidance respond to your plea for help? What oppressive silence do you want to break? And by saying what? Who reaches your heart in those times when no one else can?

What are you in awe of? What do you want to praise? What awakens your heart to great joy?

Try writing a prayer of your own. Here is an example:

The Dreamer

Pour my eternity
into the chalice of today
Let me drink, drink, drink
my journeys down
and travel the night on three white horses
I with a rose
dangling from my mouth
a star in each eye
a sun in my heart
and the moon to give my crossroads light.

--Sherry Reiter from Finding What You Didn't Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity Through Poem-Making

Lisa Alvarado

Let the Words Reign

This month is National Poetry Month. What I'll be doing to celebrate is featuring two of my favorite poetry how-to books. I'll also be interviewing and reviewing Margo Tamez, on her life as an indigenous woman in the Southwest, what it means to be a poet, and give you a look at her books, Naked Wanting and Raven Eye.

Mind you, as a poet myself I'm biased, but I agree with Neruda's assessment that when dictators take over, one of the first groups they come after is the poets. Why? Better writers than I have put to paper their thoughts. Let me share them with you.

“...Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” Robert Frost, American poet, 1874-1963

“Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.” Pablo Neruda, Nobel Prize Winner for literature, 1904-1973

“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” Plato, 428 BC-348 BC

“Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.” Thomas Gray, English Poet, 1716-1771

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” Robert Frost, 1874-1963

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” Rita Dove, Former U. S. Poet Laureate, born 1958


Words to think about, I hope. Now, take a look at the first book I've chosen, and I think you'll see where the rest of the month is headed.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Poetry Everywhere
Jack Collum and Sheryl Noethe

In 1972, Jack Collum left factory work to become a poet, his co-author , Sheryl Noethe, taught poetry to the deaf. Both of them are NEA Poetry Fellowships recipients and together they've written a book on their favorite subject -- the teaching of poetry writing to young people. The following excerpt is a summary of their philosophy:

..writing is the better world, a refuge and solace where imagination is king. We can offer this sustenance, this self-creation to children, making their lives richer and happier, giving them more alternatives. Writing is a grip on existence and empowerment, and a way to listen to the inner truth of the self. The poet enters a previous dialogue with all previous poets, singers and writers. You keep great company.

This illustrates the ways in which the poet becomes a kind of modern shaman, a bridge to the past, linking this world and its inhabitants with that of our ancestors. I've personally experienced the power and transformation in the process of writing, of naming, of coaxing out out one's own truth from those places in yourself that are used to silence, to secrecy. I know the synergy that happens in writing. You open yourself, and whatever story is in the universe and in your own body gets catalyzed and the process of writing then catalyzes you further.

I was fortunate enough to work with About Face Theater, (an LGBT youth theater group) here in Chicago, where I held a day-long workshop using many of the exercises in the book. I wanted that kind of experience for them -- a means for them to uncover their own story, connect with the collective story, with all of it shaped by culture, class, race and sexuality. Poetry Everywhere was a superb, accessible tool in working with a diverse group of young writers and performers, giving them flex and structure.

To put a finer point on it, logistically, this is an extremely detailed text, with sixty exercises that involve students in such far-ranging forms as haikus, villanelles, acrostics, lunes, sestinas; as well a variety of approaches to free verse. In addition, these more traditional forms are interspersed with word games and icebreakers to help keep the teaching and the sessions fresh and lively.

But ultimately, it is the approach that is most compelling aspect of this book. Once again, I'd like to quote Collum and Noethe's own words.

Your job as teacher is to tell every student what is right with his or her work. This calls for wit, compassion, and a huge frame of reference....When you point out to your students where they are best in their work -- the funniest, or most imaginative, or truest to their vision -- you give them success and in return, they give you their trust. They write in the only way beautiful things are created -- from the heart, without censorship or fear. That's when you get the poetry.

On a final note, it delighted me to no end that one of the authors is a solid working-class man, a brother from the ranks of the factory. That's my story, too. You just never know where people like us will end up next.

ISBN 0-915924-69-2

Lisa Alvarado

Wild Mind, Disciplined Life

Wild Mind, Living the Writer’s Life
Natalie Goldberg, Bantam


"Natalie Goldberg, author of the bestselling Writing Down The Bones, teaches a method of writing that can take you beyond craft to the true source of creative power: The mind that is "raw, full of energy, alive and hungry." ~~ from the publisher

Here is compassionate, practical, and often humorous advice about how to find time to write, how to discover your personal style, how to make sentences come alive, and how to overcome procrastination and writer's block -- including more than thirty provocative "Try this" exercises to get your pen moving.

And here also is a larger vision of the writer's task: balancing daily responsibilities with a commitment to writing; knowing when to take risks as a writer and a human being; coming to terms with success and failure and loss; and learning self-acceptance -- both in life and art.

Wild Mind will change your way of writing. It may also change your life.

Goldberg is an advocate of timed writing exercises. She compares it to Zen practice and believes that the practice of writing can free your mind of clutter by getting past the stuck points of our thinking. The best way to get past these stuck points is to just write until the predetermined time is up, in this case I’ve set a timer for ten minutes and am now writing my annotation by using her exercise.

The effect that it's had on me is exhilarating. I write as fast as I can and try not to wait for the next word. I just write, and then the words string themselves along. The key is to keep doing it, eventually the thoughts come together, but at first, don't expect to write anything too deep. The truly deep stuff comes with years of practice, just like in Zen meditation. (Damn!)

Beginning Zen students don’t find enlightenment just because they sit for a few minutes and then are hit on the head with it. It takes a whole lifetime of trying to be present with every single breath, accepting that everything is impermanent. We all die, the seasons, the birds, the clouds, the earth; all pass from this existence into the next without anxiety. The stream flows past without ever containing the same water and doesn’t stop to worry that it will never be as full as it was yesterday. Doubts move quickly and only linger and double in size if we let them. Goldberg’s book has many inspiring stories to tell about committing oneself to the writer’s life. She talks about "failure" as part of the process of living, with the only true failure happening when we stop ourselves from reaching for the life that we long for.

Writing is many times a solitary practice that leaves little room for the comforts of regular support. Consistent comfort comes from the continual practice of writing and moving pass the stuck points and getting to it.

I know I could not have developed the work of the last few years without a willingness to let go and let it fly. What I continually remember and forget, and remember and forget, is that those feelings of isolation or loneliness, as intense as they may seem, are impermanent. It's something inescapable in the creative life, and are part of just being human. Remembering that frees me to tap into deeper knowledge, and when I'm lucky, it's that knowledge that emerges in the best work. I try to stay conscious, holding onto that thread, that hint of what's really real that gets drowned out by the buzz and blur of living.

Having said that, I’d like to spend the rest of this review enjoying the simple bright beauty of these exercises. One of my favorites asks that I sit and simply describe the place that I’m sitting in-- so I’ll do just that to give you a flavor of how this works. This resulted from a fifteen minute attempt...

It's a second floor apartment with hardwood floors and walls that slant as they reach the ceiling to accommodate the roof of the house. The plaster job on the walls is splotchy, a lot of patch up jobs perhaps from past leaks in the roof. There are four small rooms; a tiny bathroom that just fits an old bathtub, the kind with the claw feet and sides that curl up to form a lip. The shower curtain hangs from pipe rods fastened to the ceiling and the shower head rises from the water fixture like an afterthought.

The bathroom is tiny. When the door is closed, my knees just fit if I lean them to the left and avoid the paper roll. At the back door (which is the entrance way because the front door leads down steps that take you to and old porch that doesn’t have any steps to access them) there is the dining table with three of the four chairs around it because the kitchen is too small to sit comfortably in a foursome.

Next to the table is a small wooden door, about three tall, that closes off a crawl space for storing things. As of now, it is storing the boxes from the computer accessories. The actual computer box wouldn't fit passed the door because a sheet of pink insulation has been stapled to the inside of the little door making the entryway smaller. The computer box sits outside of the front door at the head of the stairs that leads to the old porch. Next to the three foot door are a set of shelves that I purchased from Target.

On the one with four shelves, there are coffee mugs, three sets of four: one large round blue set, one regular size cream color with a blue stripe around the lips and matching plates, plus a complete set of dinner plates, salad plates and bowls. The three shelf unit has a set of four wine glasses and a silverware tray on the top shelf and cookbooks on the bottom two shelves. There is a cream and sugar set made of ceramic pottery sitting on top of the books on the second shelf--they were a gift from friends who live in Madison, WI.

The kitchen sink sits along side the smaller shelf unit and metal cabinets perch over the sink. In front of the sink is a counter with a coffee maker and toaster and papier mache calaveras of La Catrina y El Catrín. Several of the figures are brides and grooms, skeletal, in wedding cake poses, in coffins. I tell each new visitor that they’re a wedding album.

And so it goes...if you haven't tried free writing, I strongly recommend this book.

# ISBN-10: 0712602917
# ISBN-13: 978-0712602914

Lisa Alvarado