Members of our workshop have been so busy with our separate lives that we found a new way to stay connected until we can meet in person again. We take turns assigning writing prompts and then send our work via email. After, members respond with comments or critique by email back. Here’s an example of a prompt I sent out this week from Poets and Writers Online.

“Poetry Prompt
Choose a word or phrase you find yourself saying often (e.g. like, totally, hate, really, kind of) and write a poem using it as much as possible, turning it over and over, repositioning it, extending it, playing with its uses and the parts of speech into which it can be shaped.”

DO YOU KNOW?

First time I realized

I had a problem with ya know

I was in a college speech class

We were assigned an oral speech, ya know

using a visual aid and index cards, ya know

I delivered my speech

which was based on a lecture

from my sociology class, ya know

About the style of neighborhoods

contributing to the behavior of neighbors, ya know

fascinating stuff, ya know

A friend drew my visual aid

because I’m not an artist, ya know

I never told anyone that, ya know

or about my awful grade, a “D”

after all that work, ya know

my teacher said I overused ya know

Now you know my secret

and you know my grade

So, ya know, what do you think?

Click on this link if you’d like to find more writing prompts at Poets and Writers Online.

Leave a comment or try a poem if you like.

Napa Valley Writers Conference Features Acclaimed Author

Applications accepted starting March 1 for July conference, whose faculty roster includes internationally-renowned poets and fiction writers.

Rolling admissions open March 1 for writers to work side-by-side with a MacArthur “genius” grant winner, a fellow of the Academy of American Poets and other renowned authors at the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, slated for July 28 – August 2, 2013. The conference is hosted and sponsored by Napa Valley College.

The faculty for this year’s conference features fiction writer Yiyun Li, a 2010 MacArthur fellow, and Jane Hirshfield, who was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by the Academy of American Poets in 2004.

During the conference week, faculty members will lead intimate workshops with conference attendees, discuss the craft of fiction and poetry in daytime lectures and read from their works in a series of evening events. Lectures and evening readings will be open to the public.

The conference fee – including workshops, lectures, evening events and meals – is $900. One in five conference attendees receive financial assistance, which is awarded according to merit and need. Rolling admissions open March 1, and applications for financial assistance are due March 15. For application materials and guidelines, visit napawritersconference.org.

Serving on the poetry faculty:

• Linda Gregerson, whose books of poetry include The Selvage; Waterborne, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep, a finalist for both The Poet’s Prize and the Lenore Marshall Award. Her awards and honors include the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine, the Consuelo Ford Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize. Gregerson teaches literature and directs the creative writing program at the University of Michigan.
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• Hirshfield, the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Come, Thief. Her other collections include After, which was shortlisted for England’s T.S. Eliot Prize, and Given Sugar, Given Salt, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. Other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets; Columbia University’s Translation Center Award; and the Commonwealth Club of California’s Poetry Medal.
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• Major Jackson, author of three collections of poetry: Holding Company, Hoops and Leaving Saturn, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Holding Company and Hoops were finalists for NAACP Image Awards in the category of Outstanding Literature: Poetry. Jackson is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at University of Vermont and a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars. He serves as the Poetry Editor of the Harvard Review.

• David St. John, author of 10 books of poetry, most recently The Auroras. Other collections include The Face: A Novella in Verse and Study for the World’s Body: New and Selected Poems, a finalist for the National Book Award. He co-edited American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rome Fellowship in Literature and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is teaches at the University of Southern California.

On the fiction faculty:

• Lan Samantha Chang, whose second novel, All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, was published in 2010. Chang is also the author of Inheritance and Hunger: A Novella and Stories. Chang is the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, and the recipient of fellowships from Princeton University, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation.

• Peter Ho Davies, author of the novel The Welsh Girl and the story collections The Ugliest House in the World and Equal Love. In 2003 Granta magazine named him among its 20 “Best of Young British Novelists.” Davies is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The Welsh Girl was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007. Davies is on the faculty of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan.

• Li, author of the collections Gold Boy, Emerald Girl and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, which won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, among other honors. Her novel, The Vagrants (2010), won the gold medal of the California Book Award for fiction. She has received fellowships and awards from both the Lannan Foundation and the Whiting Foundation, and was named one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35 by Granta, and one of the top 20 writers under 40 by The New Yorker. She teaches at University of California, Davis.

• Christopher Tilghman, whose most recent novel, The Right-Hand Shore, was named a Notable Book of 2012 by The New York Times, which hailed it as “the dark, magisterial creation of a writer with an uncanny feel for the intersections of place and character in American history.” He is also the author of Roads of the Heart and Mason’s Retreat and two story collections: The Way People Run and In A Father’s Place. His stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, and other magazines. He teaches at the University of Virginia.

About the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference:

For 33 years, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference has given emerging and established writers the opportunity to convene for fellowship and serious work with a focus on craft. The conference is hosted and sponsored by Napa Valley College. Faculty members have included Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners and U.S. Poets Laureate. Rolling admissions for the conference begin March 1, with applications for financial assistance due March 15. For application guidelines and materials, further faculty information and a schedule of readings and events, visit napawritersconference.org and follow the conference on Facebook and Twitter @napawriters.

Since Copperfield’s Books moved their store to a smaller location Napa Writers Network needs to find a new place to share our prose and poetry on Sunday afternoons. We are working on the situation and as soon as we find a place we will announce the new location here.

Luckily, our current Poet Laureate Leonore Wilson, shot me a quick email about another venue for poetry lovers. On Friday, March 15, from 4 to 5:30, Patsy Taylor and I participated in a Poetry Read Around. There were seven attendees and we sat in a circle, taking turns reading poems we had written or favorites we had brought along. I read a few of my own poems but next time I plan to bring along a book or two. Robyn Orsini, events coordinator for St. Helena Library, plans to hold these events every couple months. The next Poetry Read Around she says will be scheduled in May. Check with the library for the date or we will list it here on our calendar.

Thursday evening, April 25th, in honor of National Poetry Month, the St. Helena Library plans to have a poetry reading with guest speakers presenting from their own published works and an open mic after. Books will be for sale during the event. Check the library website when the date gets closer for all the information. We will also list that event on our calendar. Here is the link to St. Helena Library. http://shpl.org/

Barbara and Patsy with broadsides.

Our Napa County Poet Laureate, Leonore Wilson, is working on a great project with Arts Council of Napa Valley to create broadsides (framed poetry). Patsy Ann Taylor and I are honored to have our poems (read below) included in the show! According to Leonore, the broadsides will be touring businesses around Napa. Hope you have a chance to see the poems displayed and can read them along with others now appearing at Alexis Bakery and Cafe, 1517 Third St., Napa, CA.

He Took Her West

Away from that community of Women

Who knew secrets of childbirth,

bread rising, quiet laughter,

                           consolation of tears.

Away from mother, sisters, women

friends whose land touched

each border like seams

                                    in a patchwork quilt

Away from women’s hands,

sweet smelling kitchens,

curtains on bedroom windows,

                 silk rustling down candlelit stairs

Away from everything womanly

into wild, scorched browns,

yellows of desert crossings

                            to the flat lands ofTexas.

Only the company of little girls

she bore alone in the wagon

bumping along virgin trails,

            or lay down by the side of the road

Little girls whose only knowledge

of womenfolk came

                                    from her.

                              by Patsy Ann Taylor

 When We Go to Lunch

We shall all wear hats

And long floral skirts in the garden

We’ll sip lavender tea and sparkling wine

And agree to surrender our burdens 

When we go to lunch we shall trust that our hats

Hold most of our secrets within

We’ll eat all our words from silver spoons

And tighten silk bows at our chins

All of our hats shall have a wide brim

To protect the aging of skin

All of our hats shall shadow raised brows   

From the gossip we revel in

When we go to lunch we shall try other hats

Stylish or garish or sweet

When we go to lunch we shall dare all our hats

To flee when we sit down to eat

                                                by Barbara Toboni

What a deal at the discount store, a package of 10 pens for 99 cents. Back at home I divvied them up all over the house. There would be no more rooting through desk drawers, flipping pillows on the couch, scrounging from friends, and that search of my son’s room was scary—dirty laundry, dishes, and miscellaneous sports equipment, but no pens. All that would change now. I was pen rich.

My first attempt at writing with my new purchase was disappointing. I couldn’t keep a grip on the skinny thing. My thumb slid into my fist. Perspiration? Keep trying. I wanted to make my bargain work, but things only got worse. The pen didn’t perform. Ink came and went at will leaving scripted code. Am I pressing hard enough?

Tilting my hand higher, I made a second attempt. Remember position. That proved uncomfortable. I shook the pen like crazy, salt shaker fashion, trying to get ink to the tip. Still the point produced only traces of my name. Angrily, I threw the pen out and tried another with the same results. Writing shouldn’t have to be like this: no joy, no sense of accomplishment, no shopping list.

At first, I was proud of my thriftiness. I saved some really big money, $2.00, such budget wizardry. And these pens were similar to Bics, those sleek black and white models with their own caps. Simple is good, right?  Is it really important to have a fashionable pen, a trendy one?

I do admit someone said to me once, “Hey, that’s a slick pen you’ve got there.”

“Well, thank you.” Unintentionally, I had lifted it from someone else, but could I afford a pen like that?

I threw the cheapies out—scooped them up from all over the house—but that didn’t erase the problem. My house was penless. Grabbing my purse, I went to Office Depot. I know what you’re thinking. You’ve got to need lots of stuff to go there, but I wanted lots of choices.

There I stood in the pen isle, think small scale car dealership. Instead of Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota, there were Paper Mate, Bic, and Stabilo. And the model names: G-force, Dynagrip, and—hey, doesn’t this sound racy?—a Pilot Z4 series with “a roller ball .5mm point and a visible ink supply to put a precise zing into your writing.”  The packaging described extra features, “razzle-dazzle colors” and “barrels designed for comfort and balance.”

Wow!  I grabbed a few shiny packages and headed to the front of the store for help. At the cash-out counter I ogled the Jaguars, Corvettes, and Ferraris of the pen world, Sheaffer, Cross, and Mont Blanc spinning like jewels in their display case. What would I look like holding one of those? Maybe I should try my selections on for size, but they are sealed in their plastic packages. What if I don’t like them?

“Do you have a dressing room where I might try one of these on?”  I asked.

The sales clerk laughed.

What the heck.  “Never mind. I’m taking these.”

Back in my car, I ripped open the package wondering if they’d live up to their descriptions, “Sleek aerodynamic styling features a stainless steel barrel and comfort grip. Convenient compact size for use anywhere.”  Being my writerly self, I always carry a notebook and, with new pen in hand, I happily squiggled and doodled, looped and curlicued. Impressed, I slipped the pen in my purse and headed home.

That evening I had an opportunity to show off my new implement. Our neighbors, Jim and Pat, were going bowling, and they invited us to join them.

“Does anyone have a pen so we can keep track of our scores?” Pat asked.

“You bet.” I handed over my new jewel.

She held it eye level. “Nice pen.”

My new accessory was a hit.

Back home, I searched through my purse for my gem of a pen and found it missing. Did I leave it at the lanes? Did Pat and Jim have it? I raced next door hoping they would have retrieved my darling scribbler.

Pat’s sardonic humor didn’t help, “Your pen? I don’t remember your pen. Maybe we should have a funeral. Would that make you feel better?”

I laughed but my heart was broken. It saddened me to think that my pen might now be gleaming in the pocket of another. That’s when it dawned on me, a flash of insight; I realized why I chose cheap pens to begin with, so I could afford to lose them.

Since writing this article I have given up on finding the perfect pen. Currently, I use a Silver Dyna Grip variety given to me by an auto detail shop. A great bargain.

What kind of pen are you packing?

It’s that time again! This month’s open mic reading has a special emphasis on children’s and young adult literature and poetry. Read your work (5 min. max) and/or bring your children for an enjoyable time with local authors.

A writer always wonders: Who will want to read what I’m writing? Not knowing can be torturous. You start on an amazing adrenaline high, and later that nasty voice comes in saying, Nobody’s gonna want to read this drivel.

And then the doubt creeps in. We start thinking about the audience and the people we know and wonder, Why am I writing this, who will ever read it, and what will they think? Before you know it, you’re crippled, and you can’t write anything.

While writing a memoir over the last ten years, I’ve gone through this several times. At first I didn’t think my stories were interesting enough. So I thought I’d do a novel instead, and change it into a sort of suspense/love story, with the main character similar to me, but with a different name. I started writing, but it didn’t feel authentic—for this writer that just didn’t work.

Another time, a wonderful old friend of mine playfully suggested I write about my sexual conquests. This was during the big “Sex and the City” phase where nothing seemed more alluring, fashionable, or powerful than a strong woman who got around. I couldn’t do much on that one because, frankly, I didn’t have enough material. Besides, I didn’t think people would find it interesting, and the thought of my dad reading something like that was enough to make me want to crawl under a rock in shame. But most of all, there was no heart in it.

So I just kept writing about my experiences. I didn’t know that it would come together or turn into a memoir. But I had to write—my stories about traveling, getting sick, growing up in Texas, and stumbling across Sufism and Islam. Slowly it became clear that I was writing a memoir. I wasn’t sure if I was “doing it right,” or how in the world I should shape it, or what I should include. But I just kept writing.

After a while I talked to an acquaintance who had written a book, and I thought he’d have some good advice. He asked me what I went back to or picture in my head when I’m trying to find peace inside. At that time for me, it was a beach. He said to go back to the beach in the book—always go back to the beach. I thought it was an interesting idea, although I’d never written about that. So I tried, but it  felt completely wrong, because there were only a couple of times where a beach was even mentioned in my stories. It just didn’t feel natural–wasn’t what was coming out from me.

I kept writing. Eventually, a trusted friend and seasoned writer gave me the best advice of all. She loved my ideas, she loved my stories, and she felt it was important that I write the memoir. She said, “Write with total abandon. Write like you’re journaling. Don’t think about who’s going to read it, just write everything. Write, and write, and say whatever it is you truly feel and want to say, and don’t worry that it will be horrible, because everybody’s first draft is horrible – that’s what editing is for. Write with absolute abandon.” I knew she was right. It was what I had been doing all along.

Since that moment, things have started to click into place. I do occasionally think about the audience, I do sometimes daydream about my memoir finally getting finished and published and becoming a bestseller, and I do fantasize about old friends, boyfriends, and people back home reading it. But mostly I sit and I write, and I rant, and I curse, and I babble. And it goes something like this:

Blah blah blah, wordy but decent scene description, blah blah, somewhat interesting story development. Blahdy blah, some really stupid crap, blahdy blahdy blah, horrible unnecessary stuff. Blah blah crap crap mundane mundane where in the world is this going, brilliant, flowing, hilarious story. Blah.

Then I go back and I sort out the crap, the mundane, the unnecessary stuff, and I piece together the decent and the interesting and the funny and the occasional, in my mind, brilliant. And I hope that, someday, there will be an audience who will get as much out of reading my long story as I got from writing it.

________________________

Photo by Sharon Drummand
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Imagine you’re going to a job interview. You care about the impression you’ll make, so you dress thoughtfully, according to the needs of the job. If you’re a man and the job is professional in nature, you probably wear a suit, shirt, and tie. You may pay special attention to your shoes, cleaning and shining them beforehand. If you’re a woman, you make sure your accessories coordinate with your outfit, your hair is styled, and makeup just right. You may leave the house early—better safe than sorry. You arrive on time, and with confidence, having practiced how you’ll present yourself.

Imagine, instead, that you pull some clothes from the dryer. They’re wrinkled, but you haven’t got time to worry about that. Anyway, any good interviewer will be able to see past the wrinkles to your great personality. You’re running late, so you quickly pull on your shirt and pants (or skirt), grab your wallet or purse, and run your fingers through your hair. You arrive for your interview breathless, and barely in time. But you made it.

Now, imagine that you are the interviewer. Which of the two characters above will make a good impression and be more apt to get the job? This is not a trick question. It will always be the first one.

As an editor and writing teacher, one of the first things I notice when I receive a piece of writing is how it’s formatted. I know immediately whether or not the writer knows how to use her word processing program and whether she views herself as a professional or an amateur. When her submissions arrive on time and “well dressed,” I know she’s taken the time and effort to make the best impression she can—not to mention saving my precious time in the bargain.

Yet, many writers seem to believe, as in scenario number two, that it’s not their job to make their piece perfect. That’s the editor’s job. Besides, any good editor will see past their poor formatting, grammar, spelling and punctuation to the great story behind it. Right?

Wrong! Most editors will, like any job interviewer, prefer the person who comes prepared to the interview. And just like the fact that there are conventions of attire, there are guidelines for what’s acceptable to most editors.

General Purpose Formatting Tips for Prose:
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•  Use a 1″ margin on all sides of your document.
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•  Use a common 12-point, serif font, such as Times New Roman.
  -
•  On the first page, include your name and contact information in the top, left corner, and approximate word count in the top, right corner.
  -
•  Don’t number the first page.
  -
•  Put the title in all caps or boldface about 1/3 down from the top.
  -
•  In the header of subsequent pages (page 2 on), include your name, the title of the piece, and the page number.
  -
•  Double space the entire text of the story using paragraph formatting options in your word processor. (Don’t press the return key to create the double line space! And don’t put extra space between paragraphs.)
  -
•  Indent the first line of every paragraph except the very first one. Do this by specifying a first-line indent in the Paragraph Format dialogue box of your word processor, instead of pressing the tab key.
  -
• Use one space between sentences (two spaces haven’t been standard since the advent of the word processor in the early 80s).
  -
• Never, ever, ever use spaces or tabs to format text or pictures on the page.

That about sums it up. If you don’t know how to specify paragraph formatting, make it your business to learn. After all, if you want someone to read your work, you want to make it easy for them. And even if you’re only sending your work to a teacher or writing coach, he or she will appreciate you for sending it in standard format and saving precious time.

For more detailed formatting specifications, I highly recommend Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript by Chuck Sambuchino and the editors of Writer’s Digest Books. They publish an updated version almost every year.

_______________________

Photo by Alex France via Compfight

I started out writing poetry, and although I feel it is my strongest genre there are times my poems don’t say enough. Poems are like the sharpened tips of pencils, a focus point of an idea. Some hint at stories I want to tell, but long poems don’t suit me.

If I tell a story out loud I am eager to get to the point. My writing is not much different. I enjoy blogging for this reason, mostly in the form of memoir vignettes, little bits of life’s adventures with a sprinkle of humor thrown in to amuse. Entertaining my reader is important, and my tales are a way for me to stretch my ideas.

I write short, because I enjoy reading short, works like Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Alice Hoffman’s Illumination Night, and Hugh Prather’s Notes to Myself. The latter, a yellowed copy written in 1970, has been on my bookshelf for years. Poems like Mary Oliver’s “Spring,” and “Quiet Girl” by Langston Hughes are proof that the less said can be powerful.

On occasion I will pick up a thick book; just recently, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, a National Bestseller. Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner, one of my favorites, is a dog-eared copy given to me by my aunt. Authors who can sustain the power of a story in a long work have my respect. How do they do it?

For now, I feel a sense of pride for the short stories I have published. They force me to slow down and develop my ideas through one scene after another. My journals are filled with beginnings, writing prompts, first lines, character notes and dialogue trials, but it’s up to me to reveal the rest.

Poems help to expand thoughts too. In the anthology Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memory of Mother my short story, “Moon Song,” was adapted from my poem, “Singing Star.” I wanted to tell more.

Now I’m working on lengthening a flash fiction piece. The idea came from a recent blog post at my website, “Free.” Patience is the hardest part in developing scenes for a long work, but worthwhile. “Cut the fluff,” my inner poet says.

“No,” says the patient editor, “leave the padding in, and while you’re at it, add a few more pillows, and plump them for a comfortable story.” I am apprehensive about what comes next in my writing, but excited too.

_________________________

Image Credit: Nico Cavallotto via Compfight

Congratulations to the winners of this year’s Jessamyn West Creative Writing Contest.

Jessamyn West 1902-1984

Harry McPherson, the first president of Napa Valley College, established the writing contest in honor of his wife, Jessamyn West to encourage beginning writers. Born in 1902, Jessamyn West is best known for her short stories depicting “rural American life without sentiment or over-simplicity.” Her best-known novel, Friendly Persuasion, was made into a movie for which she received an Oscar nomination.

A reading and reception for the winners was held May 9, 2012 in the Glade at Napa Valley College. The prizes were awarded in two parts, the college entries and the high school entries.

Napa Valley College Winners

Fiction

1^st Prize “Granite” by Pamela Jackson
2^nd Prize “Sarge’s Secret” by Peggy Prescott
3^rd Prize “Pay Back” by Rudy Mancini
Judge: Lakin Kahn, Fiction Director, Napa Valley Writers Conference

Poetry

1^st Prize “Tarnished” by Peggy Prescott
2^nd Prize “Nobody’s Hero” by Rudy Mancini
3^rd Prize “My House” by Pamela Jackson
Judge: Giovanni Singleton, Poet
The Francesca Aragon Azevedo Poetry Scholarship went to: Jennifer Thornton

Nonfiction

1^st Prize “Smokey” by Lynn Clary
2^nd Prize “Coal Mine Canary: by Rudy Mancini
3^rd Prize “A Petticoat Cruise” by Trudy Martin
Hon. Mention “A Birthday Gift” by Peggy Prescott
Judge: Dani Burlison Pacific Sun staff writer and columnist at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Art Contest (Cover and interior art for the anthology)

1^st Prize “Rhythm and Repetition” by Michelle Alano
Hon. Mentions Jaycee Bell, Brianna Fritz, Mimi Ghauri, Derek Loring, Jessica Whitmire
Judge: Fain Hancock, NVC Professor of art, Amanda Badgett, NVC Instructor of Art History.

High School Prize Winners

Fiction

1^st Prize “The Fragile Frame” by Jordan Deemer, Vintage High
2^nd Prize “How to Cook a Carpet Pilot” by Esther Hessong, Vintage High
3^rd Prize “A New Title” by Diego Aguirre, Napa High
Judge: Karen Larsen, NVC Instructor of English

Poetry

1^st Prize “The Clocks Tick Talk” by Esther Hessong, Vintage High
2^nd Prize “Circles” by Nate Myren, Napa High
3^rd Prize “Black, White, Grey?” by Miranda Smith, Justin-Siena High
Hon. Mention “In the Night” by Eliza Jane Pessereau, Napa High

Nonfiction

1^st Prize “Justine Renee” by Kelsey Vanderschoot, Napa High
2^nd Prize “Look!” by Sally Mink, Napa High
3^rd Prize “The Experiment” by Gianna Carducci-Hutchingson, Napa High
Hon. Mention “I Live” by Ali Aaron, Napa High
Judge: Aaron DiFranco, NVC Professor of English

OUR CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WHO ENTERED THIS CONTEST