Creative Writing

Pasted below is an essay from the manuscript I'm pitching to agents. The title of this essay: "Learning the Layers of Grief."

When I first arrived in the United States, I decided on a makeover. I’d leave behind grief and conflict and show the world a cheerful face. Before heading for California to marry the man I met two years earlier, I visited my brother in upstate New York and a friend and her parents in Detroit, trying out my new persona. It worked.

Darold and I married the year hippies flocked to San Franciso, where they turned flower children, staged love-ins, and burned brassieres. In adjoining Oakland, the Black Panthers tested their mettle. Students jumped on buses for Freedom Rides into the South, some paying with their lives for signing up African Americans to vote. For the past ten years, beginning with Brown vs. Board of Education, the Warren Supreme Court had handed down a series of remarkable decisions enshrining civil rights even as Black writers decried the hatred and unfairness that burdened people of color. Bewildered parishioners sought social change in church-sponsored encounter groups.

 . . . . .   .

Writing weekly columns: can it amount to creative writing? Here are two recent examples. 

Guitarist from France, read here.

On primatologist Frans de Waal, read here.

It is April 2023. I'm trying to recover from a series of adversities, which has pretty much stopped my creative output. The exception: I have picked up again on my column writing for the online Cheyenne Post, see the page with its corresponding header. My hope is to use the "Patriarchy" column as a jumping-off point for a creative-nonfiction piece that touches on the heartaches of the last few weeks.

I am writing this on Sunday, October 2, 2022, at a time of leave taking. Saying goodbye is a huge event, one that has cost me much anxiety--see my column in the Cheyenne Post on "Downsizing." The process itself has been full of exasperating twists and turns. My house finally sold on Sept. 30, and the purchase of my Saratoga house will be happening within the next few days. After that, the movers will arrive to take my stuff to Saratoga. I've been packing boxes and cleaning closets and rooms as they get empty. My Saratoga house will be half the size of this one, with no acreage as I have here. 

Isent the following notice to my google group in April 2022:

A few days ago I had shoulder surgery and now I'm in recovery. So far it's going as anticipated. I have had some essays published online in thecheyennepost.com The latest is on the brutal and unjust drone warfare waged by the Pentagon, in which countless innocent bystanders lose their lives and become "collateral damage." If interested in reading the piece, please use this link: 

Of my recent publications, I narrate both the "Oxygen" and "Black Stones" on their respective publication sites.

My personal essay, “Oxygen, ah Oxygen!” appeared in the Spring 2022 Issue of Tint Literary Journal. This journal publishes writers whose first language is not English. To read it, click here. 

"Chaos and Consolation" appeared in Syncopation Literary Journal on January 1, 2022. This journal publishes essays and stories tha relate to music. To read it, click here.

“The Black Stones of Regret” appeared in December 2020 in Inklette Literary Journal. The story is an autobiographical essay covering a slice of life of yours truly as a young immigrant and mother, circa 1966. In Inklette the printed version is preceded by a recorded reading of the story by me. To read it, click here.

“Virus in America” appeared in the Special Election Issue of The Courtships of Winds on November 1, 2020. The essay's focus is on the differences between German and American responses to the pandemic. To read it, click here.

“My Late-in-Life Romance” appeared in November 2020 under “Writing" in OyeDrum. The editors of this journal were very complimentary. To read it, click here.  

A reminiscence about a service watch that's someone else's story appeared in The Cheyenne Post on October 26, 2021. To read it, click here

I regret to say, Ageless Authors seems to have gone permanently offline after its creator, Larry Upshaw, suffered a stroke. Apparently he is no longer able to continue to project. I sent an email to his wife, wanting to help but got no response, and no one else has stepped in to pick up the pieces. 

Due to Covid-19, the Wyoming Writers' Conference broadcast my session on Risky Writing as webinar on Saturday, June 20, 2020. Scooter Smith of Texas was my guest author, whose memoir cum short story, "Come the Revolution" was published in the most recent anthology of Ageless Authors, Dang, I Wish I Hadn’t Done That (see cover image in the Book Gallery page). We also discussed a Wyoming Writer’s poem, Carrie Naughton's "Moose Bell." Regrettably, the author was unable to join us but asked me to read it in her stead. Her poem appeared in Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers (see cover image on Book Gallery page).  "Moose Bell" contains a dynamite section on a conversation that lays bare religious intolerance.

Larry Upshaw, Director of Ageless Authors, joined us. He was impressed with the subject matter and later requested I undertake similar webinar events for his constituency. 

Ageless Authors Has Something for You!

You’ve looked forward to retiring and now that it’s happened, you are faced with a lot of hours. Why not fall back on the ingenuity that once helped you find your way in the world, raise children, develop a career? Ageless Authors can help. In a community of experimenters from all walks of life and every corner of the country you’ll learn to share stories about yourself, create essays, dip into fiction, try poetry writing. 

The goal of Ageless Authors is to give people 55 and up a venue for their creativity. It continues to flourish under Chief Cook and Bottle Washer Larry Upshaw. On agelessauthors.com readers find blogs on how to get started, how to gather and develop ideas, how to organize ideas into essay or story—last not least, how to stick with a project when you’re discouraged. The blogs have been created by yours truly and will continue to appear off and on. Then there are contests to enter and anthologies to purchase that can help the novice get started on—or polish—a piece of writing. One interesting feature of an Ageless Authors: Its anthology doesn’t just feature prize winners but publishes three or more “Honorable Mentions” and three or more “Recognizeds.” I was a judge in last year’s “Memoir” category. 

My third career (1991 to 2004) comprised teaching literature and writing—expository, business, creative writing—at a number of colleges and universities, first as teaching assistant (TA) at University of California at Davis, then as faculty, including at two Tennessee HBCUs (Historically Black College or University). [Below] you will find my CV and Addendum.

After my story "Windy Acres" appeared in an anthology of Wyoming Writers, Inc., I recognized (too late) that it contains serious flaws. Since then I polish my personal essays and fictional stories before submitting to literary magazines. My column writing at The Wyoming Tribune Eagle has come to an end; thus, I have gainedthe time for creative writing and revising. 

In January 2020, I submitted the proposal below to the summer conference of Wyoming Writers. It was accepted by its committee a month later. I look forward to giving the presentation at the conference in June. I have offered similar workshops for smaller venues: at Platte County Library in Wheatland, WY, and at Unitarian Universalist Church of Cheyenne. 

Writing personal essays is a self-disclosing conversation that sets the reader at ease and hopes to invite a response. In my years as columnist, the emailed responses I received ranged from criticism to commentary to self-disclosing input. Even the imagined conversation between a writer and reader is an active one, based as it is on actual dialogue—with an adult child, a guitar partner, a writers’ group member, a reader. It brings new and exhilarating possibilities.

Self-disclosure does not mean self-involved as found in the “I, me, and myself” of much of today’s social media; rather, it is akin to the conversation between two guitars that begins with stutters, stops, and starts but eventually evolves in a dialogue that’s balanced and pleasurable. Musical dialogue is often continued in imaginative memory; in fact, such recollections, gathered in tranquility, are a part of daily practice. Self-disclosure requires patience rather than a focus on results. It establishes trust, thereby eliminating the need to be in control. It helps us live, at least some of the time, in equanimity with our surroundings.

A sample of a musical dialogue is the "Schwarzwaldmühle" duet between my cousin and myself in Music Gallery. This cousin, by the way,  is my aunt’s daughter, see Tante Anna below. 

An example of self-disclosure is the Tante Anna segment you will find under My Writing. It came into being as a snippet of history conveyed to a family member; later, I shared it during a UU worship service that invited members to disclose a detail from their lives. By the time Tante Anna told of her mother’s death when she was eight, my my father, her only surviving sibling, had died. Since then the Tante Anna segment to the right has become part of a longer essay.