Author Archives: lizshine74

About lizshine74

Liz Shine wrote and read her way out of small-minded, small-town doom. We’re not talking about riches here. We’re talking about how a practice like writing can save a person. How it can give hope, shape identity, and ignite purpose. She hopes to write stories and poems that move readers the way certain works have made all the difference to her. She lives in Olympia, WA in the USA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She has published in Shark Reef, Dual Coast, and Blue Crow Magazine. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.

Homework

So, my mentor has given me this 78 question autobiographical questionnaire to complete as a writing exercise. The idea is to write quickly and not spend too much time on it. The hope is to gather material from the responses. Here’s a sample–the first question and my response.

1. Describe subject physically. Face, hair, hands, feet, body, gestures, way of walking, voice, clothes, etc. What are subject’s most pleasing physical characteristics? Most displeasing?

Her long face, olive-complexioned, suits the way she seems to brood even if she’s just daydreaming rainbows. In a day, she wears her hair long, pins it back, lets it down again, never settling. Her eyes probe and her gaze does not drop, except when her heart sometimes commands. She covers her hands, sandwiching them between crossed legs, draping them one over the other, putting them in pockets. Some years back her fingers were often cracked or cracking with eczema and now she’s grown accustomed to hiding them, as she’s grown accustomed to covering her mouth when watching a film that blows her mind or to a story that offends or enthralls. She prefers to keep moving, walking with long, determined strides or even run as fast as she can. Even in yoga class her voice is deep and loud enough to be heard by her students in all corners of the high-ceilinged monster of a room with no microphone. She never had the Monday—Tuesday—Wednesday underwear, but prefers to dress according to feeling. Oh, this fabric! Grown up slacks. Little girl cotton skirts. Blue-brown love knot. Red determination. Joyous mandala tye-dye. As she buys according to compulsion, she also dresses that way sometimes stylish, sometimes drab. Baby sis is designing a tattoo to cover the one on the left side of her upper abdomen of which she is ashamed. She counts the artist among the men who’ve maimed her. She can do ten push ups now and her arms show this strength. She’s never been fat, except for that one rough year, but she’s thinner now than ever and fitter because she runs, bikes, stretches, whatever she can do to keep propelling her body through time. She has trouble smiling for cameras, but not smiling in general. Her forehead is long, as are her legs compared to her torso, as are her fingers, as is her neck. She talks with her hands, preferring to move words from her mind through the tapping of fingers on the keyboard, the brushing of the pen on the page, the movement of legs over the ground, the chopping of arms through the air.

77 more to go! Woo–hoo!

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Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals?
Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

Turning

Think of one person in your life that you dread seeing, let alone even thinking about. Maybe out of fear of their manipulation (you always fall for it), their obvious ignorance, their passive aggressive attacks–whatever. Describe what it is about that person that made you pick them in one sentence. Now, change everything superficial about that person–eye color, hair color, place of residence, gender, etc. Write a story in which you bring out what it is about that person that made you choose them.

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Writing in times of upheaval

How do you keep writing at times when your life is in upheaval? When your emotions are raw and exposed? Death of a loved one. Illness. Loss of employment. Break-up. There are many situations where it seems that just putting one foot on the floor each morning, then the other, and walking to take a pee is more creative energy than you thought you had.
Yet, for me, writing during these times is more important than any other time, because writing is how I process my thoughts and emotions. And walking.
So, I advise you to keep writing during these times. Even if it’s just a line here and there. Even if the line is banal. Write during these times first and foremost for you. Write honestly. Lock up your notebook if you’re worried someone might find out what you’ve really got in there. Don’t worry about the “project” you’re working on. Go wherever your heart compels you.
And read lots and lots of poetry. Let poems settle in your lap and nap there. Take poems into the shower with you. Copy poems in your own hand (or with your own keyboard) and read what you’ve copied over again. Send poems to friends.

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Red Bicycle Prompt

I finished reading Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson for my first critical response paper (part of MFA program). I finished the last twenty pages sitting here at Batdorf and Bronson and wrote for a long while trying to get at how to respond to this book.
Needing a break from this type of analytical work, my gaze shifting first to the yellow dog waiting patiently at the front doors, watching intently for its owners to return, then to the rain that is coming down in force now–it began this morning with muted sprinkling–then to a red cruiser bicycle, a rain-soaked paper for-sale sign fluttering in the wind.
I began a story about that cruiser bike, the beginning of which I’ll post here.

Here’s the prompt: Find a window! Let your gaze wander and settle on something. Write about that thing.

Mine:
A stranger—a man—was on his way to take the red cruiser bicycle she’d loved so much off her hands. She’d been riding it every day for three years, since the day Joseph had strolled with her through the narrow aisles of the bicycle shop. She recalled the pressure of his hand on the small of her back as they walked, the gravity of his eyes, always pulling her toward him. This one, he’d said, after interrogating the salesman with a swagger she blissfully ignored.
She’d tried camouflaging the bike, draping it with jewels—a bumper to protect her from splashes, rainbow-colored spoke covers, and on one particularly whimsical day—a shiny brass bicycle bell. These efforts proved vain. She couldn’t look on the bike without thinking of him…

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Daily Life

I’m out of practice in this thing called life. While at the RWW residency, I lost track of place and time. When my sister picked me up (I was only a thirty minute drive from home), she said she hadn’t realized I was so close, that it’d felt like I was clear across the continent. I’d felt that way too. At times this was inspiring and uplifting, at times I felt too vulnerable and exposed. I’m home now, slowly shuffling around the house, placing things where I had expected them to be when I returned, taking the things from my suitcase and placing them where I think they belong. I’m settling in to write, though I’m a bit wary of where to begin. I guess I began this morning, shuffling about the house musing over the various reasons why it is I persist in writing.
Here’s the first paragraph of James Salton’s essay “Some for the Glory, Some for the Praise”:
“To write! What a marvelous thing! When he was old and forgotten, living in a rundown house in the dreary suburbs of Paris, Léautaud wrote these lines. He was unmarried, childless, alone. The world of the theater in which he had worked as a critic for years was now dark for him, but from the ruins of his life these words rose. To write!”
Why do you write?

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Day 10: Up again.

As karma would have it, the facilitator that I griped about in my last post, will be my mentor for the coming academic year. ☺ Oddly enough, I take this as a blessing. Though I may not have left that workshop feeling very good, I am able to recognize good advice and expertise when I see it. Aside from that news, it was a mellower day that left me time to walk and reflect. I did attend a class on storyboarding taught by Brent Spencer that left me with some practical tips for writing.
I also found out that though I go home Wednesday AM, I’m going home to an empty house. The good I can find in this ultimately sad fact (I miss my people) is that I plan to take advantage of this time to write and revise. This whole experience has been mind-blowing. I can’t really describe it, but you’ll see what I mean as I continue to post about this experience which will be ongoing until summer 2011. One more day here. Then I’ll be back to posting from daily life.

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Day 9: Low point

Stan Rubin and Elea Carey read in the morning. 🙂

I was up for workshop, and it’s hard for me to write about this without bitching and moaning and trying to explain or justify my work. In part, I blame the piece I chose to submit. My first piece of fiction that I’ve never been satisfied with, but just can’t give up on. It’s been kicking around for sixteen years. Ugh.
That wasn’t everything though. I knew the piece needed work–that’s why I submitted it. And, I can take criticism. In gulps, in fact. Our facilitator had the piece read round-robin one paragraph at at time, which makes for an awkward read–breaks up dialogue, etc. I don’t have anything against reading aloud, but in this situation where there is a limited amount of time for each piece, this method wastes a lot of time. In my writer’s group we read our work aloud, but we are close and there’s a page limit and no time limit–and the author reads the whole thing. So, right away, I felt defensive. Then, once the story had been exposed to all, the remainder of the workshop was focused entirely on what was wrong with the piece. I can take criticism, but I’m no robot. This unnerved me.
Then, at the end, the facilitator didn’t want to take “thanks, I have no questions”. He wanted me to talk about the piece, which in my experience usually ends up as the author justifying why this was or what they intended. Sometimes there are good questions to ask. I didn’t have anything. Frankly, as I told the workshop, I’d already gotten more feedback than I could probably handle. Also, at that point, I didn’t really trust that the group was there to support me, so why spill my guts to them at the end? To me, it felt like a morbid request. All of this is entirely the responsibility of the facilitator.
I held all this in through lunch and a panel of people explaining about their outside experience, a requirement of the program that though I don’t have to do yet, I should begin thinking about it. Then, when my buddies Natalie and Kristina dropped me at my room (we were all taking a break to decompress before meeting up for dinner), it hit me. I put on my headphones, went for a walk, and just started balling. This combination of Sunday jazz on KPLU and catharsis was just what I needed to begin to see what good I could find in my experience.
Workshops that don’t begin by looking at what is working in a piece are inhumane. Tell me to toughen up if you want, but that’s what I believe to be true. That is what sets a tone of constructiveness in a group. This translates over to written comments on work as well.
I did finally manage to sort through all this and think about how to better get across what it was I was trying to get at in my story and how that’d work best. I’m skipping the morning lecture this morning to work on some revision.
We ate Mexican for dinner. A margarita. A good cry. I’m ready to move on.
The River and Sound Review was the event of the evening. I don’t know much about this program, but they’re a radio show…soon to be a literary magazine…follow the link to check them out. I’ll follow you.

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Days 7 and 8: Two by two, they boarded the narrative arc…

Days 7 and 8:

Friday started slow, as the break didn’t end until 3:00 PM. I slept in an extra hour, then woke to laze about my room checking email, getting myself organized, and in general ruminating over what’s to come. I worked out a writing schedule/goals for the coming school year and came up with a list of some books I’d like to read. Over the year, we are to read 24 books and respond in writing (2-3 pages) to each. Though this is a heavy work load, I’m excited about this, and it’s very close to what I’ve been doing on my own over at What I’m Reading Now.
The 3:00 class was on just this topic, focused on what is expected in the paper. I’ve been trying to ignore the fact that I’m a teacher while I’m here—to fully inhabit the role of writer—and not get pulled into the excitement—it is exciting!—of planning and pedagogy. However, I just couldn’t help but think about how all this reading will not only make me a better writer, but also a better reader, and probably a better teacher. I’m also hoping that I can choose at least a few of novels I’ll be teaching this year as part of my 24, otherwise…I see me with my nose in a book while walking, while showering, while mowing the lawn. I will definitely keep up Winston and my summer routine of sitting for hours every Sunday reading at Borders. And, yes, if by some off chance you happen to be reading this Winston, you’re going too!
There was another impressive graduate reading, and evening reading, then an open mic student reading at the Northern Pacific Coffee Company on Garfield Street.
The readers for the evening were Greg Glazner, Dinah Lenney, and Jim Heynen.
I’ve met some beautiful people here and went with two ladies—first year students like me—to the open mic. We shared a picture of beer, but somehow I ended up with more than my share. I slept well, but since I didn’t hit the sack until 1 AM, I woke tired and a bit woozy.

Dinah Lenney gave the Saturday morning talk on memoir. She played just a little piece of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You”, which of course, being a Joni Mitchell fan, endeared her to me even more. That song in particular is just sooooo good. Lenney was poised, well-spoken, and funny.
Today was the first day of our mixed-genre workshops. A whole new group—a new set of mixed genre pieces to workshop.
There was a long break between noon and three during which I went for a long walk and sat at the book store reading You Suck by Christopher Moore.
The 3:00 class was the second half of the critical paper class with Ann Pancake. I left feeling like I had a good idea of what they’re looking for in those papers and some ideas about what I’d like to read.
After that there was another graduate reading and a dinner. I made the difficult choice to skip the evening reading so that I could get to sleep early. I was SO beat, and it paid off. I slept right through seven hours and am feeling like a new woman this morning.

Two by two, they boarded the narrative arc. I swear to Dog, I can’t use that phrase anymore with a straight face. I bow down to the sentiment, but discard the phrase.

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Days 5 and 6–then, breathe.

Deep breath. No classes or obligations until 3 PM tomorrow. What will I do with that time? Organize my notes….and write! I’m feeling so inspired and eager to do something with that.
In the spirit of getting to that, I’ll offer a summary of what’s gone down the past couple of days for your interest and for me to look back on, some reflections on this experience so far, and then get to the business of what this blog is all about.

Day 5 (Wednesday, August 6):

Lola Haskins gave a marvelous presentation in the AM. I was pleasantly surprised by her authenticity and wowed by some of the poetry she shared. The topic of her presentation was writing as a response to art. She shared work that was as a response to art as well as art that was a response to her work. I’d like to buy her new book, but I know if I did I’d have to gift it to my sister-in-law, so I’ll wait for now. I did buy her book Not Feathers Yet: A Beginner’s Guide to the Poetic Life for my niece, Gloria.
I was prompted by her presentation to think about how my sister (graphic artist), my sister-in-law (poet), and I might collaborate on something. But, for now, I’ll let that be a simmering inspiration. There are other, more pressing, compulsions.

I attended a class titled “What A Novel Needs” taught by Brent Spencer. This was a very practical laundry list/ discussion of both what a novelist needs to include in her work and other considerations that a writer of books should be aware of in regard to publishing. During this class I was able to get down on paper some of the inspiration regarding my own novel that was bubbling to the surface.

He recommended the book A Few Good Voices In My Head.

Then, I attended a class on considering space as a way into writing and revision taught by Lia Purpura and Kent Meyers. This first day was a little hard, perhaps a bit too elusive to grasp–and HOT– but I left thinking that day two (this was a two session class) might illuminate some things for me. We were given an assignment to take something of our own and revise it taking what was happening in the literal and figurative space of the piece in our revision.

The readers for the evening included Linda Bierds, Brenda Miller, and Kent Meyers. Again, they were all fine examples of what can come of dedication to the craft. Kent Meyers excerpt from his upcoming novel Twisted Tree was creepy in the best way—artfully.

Day 6 (Thursday, August 7):
Woke up tired. Drank three cups of coffee. Three is supposed to be the magic number. I was still tired.
Judith Kitchen and Adrienne Harun gave a presentation titled “Prompted By Art”. These talented, funny women captured my attention, despite my drooping eyelids.
Day two of “What A Novel Needs”involved a continuation of the “laundry list” of considerations for the novelist and ended with some tongue-in-cheek “novel extenders. They included such tips as “include a character who needs everything repeated”, which I of course wrote down with a jolt of glee thinking on NaNoWriMo this November.
The next class was a continuation of Lia Purpura and Kent Meyers class on using space as a way to enter the creation and revision of a piece of writing. I will simplify the discussion by saying that the idea is to step back and consider your own writing in terms of how you are using the literal and figurative space in the piece and experiment with how in considering space, you might create more room for you reader to enter the piece of writing. The revisions that people brought in to share were ALL dramatic improvements on the original.
The reading tonight were all by students graduating this year. I was struck not only by the quality of the readings, but also by something that has been apparent to me all along—an unprecedented atmosphere of support and camaraderie.

A couple of writing schemes and such-like that I’ve jotted down over these last several days:
• I’ve gotten away lately from keeping a little notebook for jotting down whatever little images or pieces of conversation strike me. I’ve done this for years, but somehow ended up switching to a fancy larger notebook that is a bit of a pain to pull out. Why not have both?
• One question posed in a class, “how do you pace your writing every day?” alerted me to the fact that another school year is about to begin. If I want writing to happen, I’ve got to plan for it to happen. I will write every day. I will choose a word count for these days and try my best to stick to it. Two days will be dedicated to submission and/or revision. I won’t share with you here the gory details, just that they exist. ☺

Okay, now to the writing….

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Day 4: Fish is fish.

Usually I don’t mean to lie. I just am not very good at judging just how much life stuff one can fit on one metaphorical plate, and apparently I have a big fat ego, because I have been known to stand there with stuff literally falling off onto the floor, and I’ll bend over, pick it up, put it back on the plate, and then assure, “No problem. Piece of cake. I got it.” This was pretty much what happened when I promised a long blog entry for today and then got all cocky and promised to post some actual writing too. Aint happening folks. What you’ll get instead is a summary of some important events.
Just know that I’m a Pisces. If you’re not familiar with us-types, what this means is, it will happen, just not quite as promised. 🙂
The talk this morning by Stephen Corey was thought-provoking and powerfully delivered. His talk centered around the question: “Why and in what ways do you question your right to write about something?”
Then, workshops. I was up. I wasn’t worried, though several people from my group did ask me if I was beforehand, which did induce my mind to chase after some nasty little self-doubts. Come to think of it, I kind of got consoled by a couple people after too…Get back here. Right now!
I was tired and my mind of course was spinning after the workshop. So, I skipped the next session and took a long walk to let some things run their course in my head.
I returned from the walk with about thirty minutes to sit reading, back propped against the trunk of a tree, before the 3:00 class.
The 3:00 class was on story endings and was taught by Adrienne Harun. I appreciated her wit, her insight, and her use of concrete examples to illustrate her ideas. She recommended the book Reading for the Plot by Peter Brooks.
I then had some free time to read up for tomorrow’s workshop and do some laundry before dinner.
The readers after dinner included David Biespiel, Robin Hemley, and Ann Pancake. All were wonderful. Ann Pancake knocked the wind out of me. I bought her book Strange as this Weather Has Been today, and after hearing her read, Im moving it to the top of my what I’m reading next pile.

That’s it. Just a summary. At the moment I am wading around in the point-of-view ditch looking for pollywogs and thinking of that children’s book Fish is Fish.

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Make Time.

Liz Shine: Author, Editor.

Author Archives: lizshine74

About lizshine74

Homework

Turning

Writing in times of upheaval

Red Bicycle Prompt

Daily Life

Day 10: Up again.

Day 9: Low point

Days 7 and 8: Two by two, they boarded the narrative arc…

Days 5 and 6–then, breathe.

Day 4: Fish is fish.