2013 Recap

We’re now on winter hiatus until February 6, 2014 so here’s a chance to take stock of what we did in our 13th session.

photo by Thursdays Writing Collective participant Tom Quirk
photo by Thursdays Writing Collective participant Tom Quirk

We spent about half our class time this fall writing on invented or short word prompts: “letterhead”, for example, and “I mailed it in my sleep,” and “open letter.”  Over the years we have fallen into a rhythm of spending 10-15 minutes on an opening prompt. People come in, sit down, grab a pen and start writing until the energy wanes. Usually this is evident and collective; the group tends to finish around the same time. This fall what we noticed is that we sometimes spent 30-40 minutes on the opening prompts, no matter how simple they are. Is this the result of working on a persistent theme (letters)? Have we learned from our year’s investigation into architecture with The Stanza Project?

 

The other half of our two hours together was spent reading outside texts. Here’s a list of most of them:

 

Daniel Simko’s Mythology/ from the Fragments

 

Elizabeth Bachinsky’s When I have the Body of a Man

 

Publisher’s rejection letter to Gertrude Stein

 

Found letter at the New Orleans Ritz

 

Found letter inside a book in Germany

 

Anne Sexton’s Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound

 

W.S. Merwin’s To Luck

 

Lewis Carroll’s Letter to Annie

 

Gillian Anderson’s Dear Me letter

 

Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad letters

 

Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

 

Czeslaw Milosz’s Dedication

 

Tess Gallagher’s Love Poem to an Illiterate Friend

 

Charles Bukowski’s 8 Count

 

Irit Shimrat’s letter to Thursdays Writing Collective from Beirut

 

Wikipedia definition of mailbox

 

Nick Flynn’s Haiku (failed)

 

This last one we looked at under special circumstances: Nick Flynn, who had popped by to write with us before, visited as a guest author. He read his poem out loud to us and answered questions about form, method, content, intention. He also led us through a writing exercise on description that turned our thinking on its side. His ideas about the subconscious and symbolism provoked a lot of after class discussion. Thanks, Nick!

 

Our winter break can seem long to those of us accustomed to a writing practice based on collectivity. We’re looking forward to resuming in February when we sink into more writing on the theme of letters and begin editing our work towards a 7th publication.

 

Happy New Year, all!