{"id":162,"date":"2010-02-23T16:01:41","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T20:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/?p=162"},"modified":"2010-05-16T23:38:58","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T03:38:58","slug":"after-the-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/?p=162","title":{"rendered":"AFTER THE WRITING"},"content":{"rendered":"

AFTER THE WRITING<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why do we write?\u00a0 Or, if you\u2019re thinking about writing, what blessings may blossom from your words? (I like to think of flowers this time of year.\u00a0 I received a gift of rose s on Valentine\u2019s Day.\u00a0 They are now wilted and need to be discarded.\u00a0 My colleague, though, has pastel tulips in her office where I can occasionally see them, and utter, ahhhhhhhhh.\u00a0 This is Minnesota and the prospect of spring is certainly on my mind.)<\/p>\n

How can we conjure the prospect of mysterious and perhaps magical happenstance (sometimes I use words I don\u2019t know out of spite for the time someone shamed me for using a particular word wrong, in hopes I might be right this time) because we are writers?\u00a0 For me, writing has brought me family, and friends, and a whole lot of lovin\u2019\u2014okay, I\u2019m still \u201cImagining Love\u201d\u2014the lover and the lovin\u2019 not yet a combo, but love is in the air (funny how many clich\u00e9s are associated with spring).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m struggling here to get started.\u00a0 Sometimes a writer has to write a whole lot of pages before clarity rears its beautiful face.\u00a0 As I ramble along before I get to the aha! you will understand what I mean by this.\u00a0 There\u2019s so much I want to say right now.\u00a0 I want to talk about the recent workshop I taught with Lori, but I also want to talk about a relative I didn\u2019t know I had, who found me by Googling me, having gotten my name from her mother, who happened to have my first chap book, A LITTLE MIXED UP, published by Guild Press in the early 80\u2019s.\u00a0 (Another aside, did you know many of those little chap books published just a couple of decades ago, can be found online for big bucks! ? \u00a0Amazing!\u00a0 And wonderful.\u00a0 All those out of print works of art, rediscovered and sold online by speculators. )<\/p>\n

I want to talk about beyond writing, if that makes any sense.\u00a0 I earned an MFA in Creative Writing just to prove I was smart enough to get an education.\u00a0 I was, though it was hard work because I didn\u2019t really have the education I needed to continue to advance my education.\u00a0 In other words, I was brought up in a family of five, on welfare and silence (more than I want to get into here).\u00a0 I didn\u2019t understand about class or race or gender when I was growing up, but looking back I know how much all of that stuff played a part in who I am today.\u00a0 Not only did I not know how to eat steak, so the first time a date took me out for a steak dinner, part of the steak went flying as I tried to manipulate it with my knife and fork, but I didn\u2019t know words, or the few I did know I didn\u2019t know how to manipulate them to show I was from a different \u201cclass\u201d than I was, but even if I had, can you really upgrade from the class you were born in (another discussion entirely).<\/p>\n

I believe everyone should write and can.\u00a0 And I believe writing should be shared.\u00a0 Sharing is easy today in today\u2019s world of the internet:\u00a0 social networks, Google, Web sites, instant messaging, etc. (I say etc. because truly I am not Web savvy and it may be another lifetime before I have any desire to be a computer geek). \u00a0But first, before the internet, I started sharing my work in small group writing workshops.\u00a0 This built small communities of writers.\u00a0 Each of us writers belonged to other communities.\u00a0 Friendships and networking happened.\u00a0 Eventually I taught my own workshops.\u00a0 Friendships and networking happened.\u00a0 My first workshop was taught in my neighborhood coffee shop.\u00a0 No students had enrolled, so I became super salesperson before I became teacher.\u00a0 The class eventually consisted of a husband, close friends, and others I had never met.\u00a0 Of those participants, I am still in contact with several of them, even the husband who became an ex-husband (not \u00a0an ex because of the workshop).\u00a0 I became mentor to a couple of the participants.\u00a0 Lori was one of the participants who I reconnected with a few years after the workshop . We now collaborate, performing our work and teaching.\u00a0 What I\u2019m trying to say here is that writing is more than (okay can be more than) writing.<\/p>\n

Because I have been writing since the early 80\u2019s and have had some poems published here and there, I have a Web site and I have this blog site and I\u2019m on other sites and sometimes there may be an announcement or a book review here or there that lands on the internet.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m saying, you can Google me (I certainly have) and if you want to connect with me in cyber space, you probably can.\u00a0 In fact, because of the internet a cousin found me, and recently a second cousin who lives in Texas found me because of my first little chapbook, and Googling my name on the internet.\u00a0 This is what I\u2019m trying to say.\u00a0 I don\u2019t confess to being the best writer in the world, my last royalty check was in the negative (that will change as soon as I retire and have time to market my books, really Victor, I promise). But, \u00a0I write about identity because there is no one in the world like me, just as there is no one in the world like you.\u00a0 We have our own identity, our own stories.\u00a0 And guess what, if we take the process of writing beyond the process of writing and enter the process of after the writing someone might notice.\u00a0 Someone might notice (don\u2019t hold your breath for million dollar book deal or a world book tour), but someone might notice you , who may be a long lost relative, or just someone interested in your writing, \u00a0or interested in writing in general–and that someone may become part of your life for awhile or for a lifetime.\u00a0 That\u2019s the aha! (Or they may want to hire you to be a writing mentor, or may want to subscribe to your blog, or they may want to register for one of your workshops.)<\/p>\n

I write on my lunch hour, sometimes, like now.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have time to re-vision or revise (I do take time for a quick run through for typos, though I still might not catch them all, no apologies).\u00a0 But, that\u2019s okay.\u00a0 You get a chance to witness a rough draft, lol (laugh out loud, I thought this meant lots of love and couldn\u2019t figure out why a particular person sent me lol) and I get to send another something into the cyber world and hope that somehow somewhere my writing makes connections for me or for you.<\/p>\n

Lori and I recently taught a writing workshop for women about women.\u00a0 We hope to teach it in Mankato, MN this spring.\u00a0 This workshop was for writers and nonwriters alike.\u00a0 We honored the women or a particular woman in our lives.\u00a0 We honored grandmothers, mothers, sisters, and friends.\u00a0 We viewed maps, and photographs, and journals and other things to help conjure the women we wanted to write about, even those we didn\u2019t\u2019 know we wanted to write about. Connections were made.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about the writing, but it\u2019s also about beyond the writing\u2014after the writing.<\/p>\n

Feel free to leave comments about your experiences with \u201cafter the writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sherry<\/p>\n

2\/23\/2010lunchtime<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFTER THE WRITING \u00a0 Why do we write?\u00a0 Or, if you\u2019re thinking about writing, what blessings may blossom from your words? (I like to think of flowers this time of year.\u00a0 I received a gift of rose s on Valentine\u2019s Day.\u00a0 They are now wilted and need to be discarded.\u00a0 …<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imagining-love","category-the-art-of-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}