Listening to Christmas

As we begin to embrace both the sorrow of the Newtown massacre and the joy of Christmas, it is good to return to the classic holiday stories. My class of five and I sat around our fireplace yesterday morning, rain falling outside, our meeting room festooned with a tree, two mangers and several bright red Santa Clauses carved out of walnut. The wind bustled, slap dashing against the windows as we read Nabakov, Dickens, Truman Capote, and Russell Banks. And listened to Dylan Thomas reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales. 

Our spirits came together as we heard Truman Capote in A Christmas Memory tell the story of his Christmas as a young boy in Monroeville Alabama, living with relatives in a big house. His close friend and constant companion, a sixty-year-old female relative, looked like “a bantam rooster.” At Christmas, they gathered their pennies (they are quite poor) and made thirty fruit cakes, distributing them to “people who have struck their fantasy” like President Roosevelt, the local bus driver and Haha Jones who supplied them with whiskey for the cakes. Buddy’s companion is full of wisdom. She reflects, “there’s never two of anything.” And, toward the end of the story, she says,  “I’ve always thought that a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord….But I’ll wager that at the very end a body realizes that the Lord has already shown himself. That things as they are – her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone—just what they’ve always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.” Words like this calm our spirit and heal us. Read Capote’s story aloud to your family and friends, and smile.

And then, revisit A Christmas Carol and remember the transformation of Scrooge once he was visited by the spirits. After his encounters with the ghosts,

“He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  May that be truly said of us, and all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”

If you have another moment, listen to A Child’s Christmas in Wales, read by Dylan Thomas. This tale will make you laugh and you will marvel at the music of the language. Listening together with friends and family will bring you close.

Happy Holidays and let’s keep the radiance of today in our eyes and rejoice in our loved ones.

Give yourself a gift for the holidays. Join my Method Writing class which begins January 17th in Rockport, Maine. Here's the flyer for the class:

The Writing Life

I am a writer, writing coach and teacher and I haven't been posting recently because I am pursuing my MFA in Fiction which involves rewriting my novel, writing critical essays analyzing plot, point of view, voice, structure. Having turned in 12 chapters of my novel, and learned a tremendous amount about writing from analzying writers like Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Nabokov, I am back and ready to share my new found knowledge.

For the New Year, I'll be launching a series of posts on the Writing Life, mine and yours. I'll post three times a week, one longer piece, one piece with quotes and links, and one piece with exercises. Let's start with a juicy quote and a link to my favorite writers' web site.

Steven Pressfield (www.stevenpressfield.com), author of The War of Art, writes weekly about the writing life, with emphasis on getting published, staying on track, and going the distance. If you have a moment, read The War of Art. It might change your life. It changed mine! And follow Steven weekly.

From Wendell Berry, the poet, one of my favorite quotes about working as an artist:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. 

Next post, I will give you a couple of exercises to baffle your mind! Until then, keep wrting.

Pass I on.

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

Dawna Markova


In her book, I Will Not Die An Unlived Life, Dawna Markova talks about reclaiming our passion. For me, this is a direct message to the writer in us. We get discouraged; we become self-critical; and, often, we give up writing. Throw down the pen, close the computer. Why did I ever think I could be a writer? Yet as Martha Graham says to Agnes de Mille, “There is a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action.” And, she goes on to say “This expression is unique. And if you block it…the world will not have it.”

Agnes de Mille

Think about that. Your point of view the world, your “optique” as the French would say, is yours alone. Artists offer their vision to the world humbly and without question. As Graham says, “It is not your business to determine how good it is. Nor how valuable it is. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

Dawna Markova has another way of saying this. She breaks down the word passion into three syllables: Pass I On. I read this to mean that we, as writers, as artists, must Pass I On – that is pass on what is ours alone, our own unique expression. Humbly. As a gift. Without question. Yes, we must keep working at our craft and getting better and better at what we do. Study, learn, work, repeat, rewrite, work. And, then without ego concerns of “will they like it, am I good enough” we put the work out into the world. The rest, as friends of mine would say, is up to God.

The adage in Hollywood, where I worked for years, is “nobody knows anything.” That is none of us knows what will be a hit; what will cause people to line and pay money for a movie or a book or a work of art.

So, put it altogether and you get a commitment to do your best work, offer it to the world, Pass I On, celebrate the completion, and, since there is no reason to worry about its reception, move on to find your next expression.

Writing Exercise:

Let’s explore the dark side. Set the clock for ten minutes and answer the following

question: Why do I not deserve to be a recognized as an artist? You will see that

eventually you will run out of bad things to say about yourself. At that moment, set

your clock for ten minutes and write out your fantasies – make them as grand and

specific as possible – regarding the success of your work. Sit back with a cup of tea/

coffee/vodka (depending on the time of day) and review your work.

The King's Speech

Sunrise in Camden Harbor, -10 degrees!

“Objectivity and again, objectivity, and expression: no hind-side-beforeness, no straddled adjectives, no Tennysonianess of speech; nothing – nothing that you couldn’t, in the stress of some circumstance, in the stress of some emotion, actually say. (Emphasis mine), Every literaryism, every book word, fritters away a scrap of the reader’s patience, a scrap of his sense of your sincerity.” Ezra Pound

The Kings’ Speech tells the story of the man who becomes King George VI, after his brother abdicates the throne to marry Wallace Simpson.  Bertie, as the future king is called, suffers from a speech impediment and a deep and irrational fear of speaking publicly.  After years of trying to overcome his challenge, Bertie works with an unorthodox and remarkable teacher who takes Bertie back to the origin of his fears and helps him to find his voice.  In the last dramatic minutes of the film, King George VI delivers a faultless speech by radio heard around the world declaring Great Britain’s war on Nazi Germany in 1939. This moment in the film is the moment of triumph. The hero has found his voice.

In watching the movie, I was struck by the parallels between Bertie finding his voice and my students and clients finding their voices.  When my students come into class, they often write with a voice they consider to be “real” writing.  We might call it writerly, because it is not true to the natural rhythms of the writers’ speech. It is not believable. When Bertie is able to stand before the microphone and deliver his famous speech, he is believable.  Any good actor knows that when they deliver lines, it has to sound as if they are delivering them for the first time. The same is true of writing, the lines must sound alive.  In order to get writers to discover the natural rhythm of the voice, the first exercise in Method Writing is “Write Like You Talk”  We ask the writer to start with an empty mind – think the Buddhist concept of Beginner’s Mind – and then write just like they talk.  The way anyone talks. Jack Grapes, my mentor and the creator of Method Writing, says this: “Our brain is hard-wired as it applies to speech and the syntax of language.”  He goes on to say that if we are writing a shopping list, or dashing off a quick note to someone, we tend to write in  “the syntax of speech.”  We don’t add a lot of adverbs, a ton of adjectives or compound sentences. Straightforward and to the point. Just as Ezra Pound says above. This is what we look for in the development of the Deep Voice.  First discovery of the natural rhythm or your voice, then, through a series of exercises, we begin to find your Deep Voice.

Writing Exercise:  Open your journal; empty your mind, no thinking about what you are about to write.  Pick up your pen and begin to write.  Imagine you are talking to a friend, recounting your day.  Write like you talk.  Write for two pages. When you finish, read it aloud.  Does it sound believable?  Does it sound like you?  Repeat the exercise until you begin to identify your voice. And, as a further exercise, listen to yourself as you talk in ordinary conversation throughout your day.

Sea smoke over Camden Harbor -10 degrees

My Talk At the Monday Club in Camden

Sunrise over Curtis Island

Quote: "Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stilled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Everyone, when they get quiet, when they become desperately honest with themselves, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there." Henry Miller

The Monday Club, Camden, Maine: I was invited to speak at The Monday Club, an organization founded in 1885 to study and discuss “literature, art, science, and the vital interests of the day” Throughout the years and through all the changes in the world around them, ladies of the club have met in each other’s homes on Monday afternoons from November to April to present papers on the topic chosen for the year, followed by a tea complete with cucumber sandwiches and cookies.

The chosen topic for Monday Club for this year is letters. I read seven letters, from authors as diverse as Abigail Adams, Sigmund Freud, Henry Gates and George W Bush Sr. What I emphasized was writing from your authentic voice, whether it be light-hearted, such as Groucho Marx’ letter in the voice of his dog writing to his son, or more serious, as Rilke writing in a deep voice about what it is to be a writer. As I read, I asked the attendees to listen to the rhythm of the words – the music of the letter. The energy in the room changed according to what I read. When I quoted from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, the room became quiet, people became thoughtful and went into themselves. Rilke spoke the truth and in doing so broke through each listener’s heart. I ended with Henry Miller’s quote (above) and invited all the members and their husbands to sit down and write to someone who was on their hearts.

Talking at Monday Club

Members of The Monday Club listen with Graciousness

Writing exercise: Write a letter to someone you know who has passed away. It could be a grandparent; it could be relative several generations back, or a close friend you lost as a teenager. . Imagine them and talk to them. Use your deep voice and speak from your heart and gut.  Talk about your present life and ask for their advice.  They are part of you and will speak to you. 

Moon over Camden Harbor

Please feel free to contact me with your questions and exercises.

Hanukkah/ Xmas in Mid-Coast

Photo by Stephen Betts

The holidays come in all forms to coastal Maine.  Look at Santa coming into Camden Harbor to see the kiddies.  In Portland, the Menorah stands near City Hall. Click here to see it.

And here are two other links to fun seasonal pieces.

Click here to enjoy Xmas music by the Northpoint iBand -- Songs performed on    

iPad and iPhones.  Pretty cool

Click here to see Matisyahu, a Hasidic Jewish Reggae performer, sing his Channukah song, The Miracle, on YouTube.

And watch the turkeys performing their own miracle-- one of them is in a tree!

(Video shot by Hugo Heriz-Smith)

Enjoy your holiday and check out my writing prompt below:

Here's the writing prompt for today, quoting from Matisyahu, 
 "Your lonely heart yearns to be free.  Do you believe in Miracles?"
So, do you believe in miracles? Write about this.  Talk about the latest miracle in your life, whether it be a parking spot miracle, a recovery from disease miracle, or a birthday miracle.  Come on, you can find one. They are all around us. Please feel free to contact me with your miracle.