October Updates
Friends,
I hope you’ll join me for our October Writing Workshop, scheduled for Thursday, October 23. We’re going to continue discussing how to implement the advice of “show, don’t tell” using sensory details and layering in lived experiences.
While you’re waiting for that event, I have plenty of recommended reading for you!
In last month’s session we discussed this Amy Hempel short story, “A Full-Service Shelter”, which takes place in an animal shelter. This piece is an excellent of example of using our lived experiences to fuel our creative practice, without necessarily writing memoir or non-fiction. Amy Hempel is an animal lover and has spent much of her time volunteering in animal shelters. This piece uses the specific sensory details of those experiences to elicit strong emotional responses in the reader.
Work takes up so much (too much) of our lives and it’s an area with a lot of opportunity for exploration. What are ways your work experiences can become material for your creative practice? Consider writing a scene or story based in a workplace similar to somewhere you’ve worked before. What sort of specifics can you use to create a sense of the world quickly?
From Rebecca Gayle Howell’s wonderful Substack, there’s this piece on what it means to practice, especially when there are so many “easier” options. Rebecca Gayle Howell is a Kentucky poet, artist, translator, and editor whose work reflects the sublime in the ordinary and I cannot recommend her work highly enough. If you enjoy The Practice, be sure to follow her Substack.
And for your earbuds, here’s this series from the Paris Review podcast, that features writers reading their own first-person essays. This one on visiting strip clubs in Paris and America is delightful and much less provocative than the title and contents might indicate. And while the two strip clubs become a unique lens for the writer to explore the different cultural experiences of her time in Paris and from her midwestern roots, I’m recommending it primarily because she says “boobies” with the infectious gleefulness of a middle-schooler.
Looking closely at this series, what do these small moments of personal exploration tell us about what is possible in non-fiction? Powerful moments can be found in our lives at the heights of activity, those peaks and valleys of the human experience, but also in more everyday ones, like eating at Dunkin’ Donuts, or visiting old haunts with fresh eyes. Proof that all our experiences, with careful attention and craft, can become part of the creative process.
For my local readers, please be sure to put the upcoming Hot Springs Poetry Festival on your calendar!
Though we’ve flipped the calendar to October, it still very much feels like summer in Arkansas and no number of porch pumpkins seems to be able to change that. I’m wishing you all cooler weather and slower seasons and hoping for them myself.
If you feel inclined, I invite you to respond to this post and let me know what you’re working on, what you’re reading, or what you’re thinking about at my email address.
I look forward to seeing you all again soon!
Best,
SJ Poulton
