It is time to Register for Scott Owens' poetry class, The Stuff of Poetry, September 12, 2015

Scott Owens, Award winning poet, editor and teacher

September 12, 2015 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.     Fee: $35.00

Class description:
The Stuff of Poetry: This workshop will focus on creativity, originality, and imagery, answering the questions, "Where do we find the stuff for poetry?" "How do we know what to include?" and "How do we make it good?"

Participants should bring an object of "value" (something kept for years) with them, expect to generate several new ideas for writing, and expect to have their comfort zones challenged.

Scott Owens will read his poetry on Friday, 7:00 p.m. September 11, for Writers Night Out in Blairsville, GA.


Scott is originally from Greenwood, SC. He holds degrees from Ohio University, UNC Charlotte, and UNC Greensboro. He currently lives in Hickory, NC, where he teaches at Catawba Valley Community College, edits Wild Goose Poetry Review, owns and operates Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse and Gallery and serves as vice-president of the NC Poetry Society.
He is a Regional Representative of North Carolina Writers' Network, and Coordinator of Poetry Hickory. His 12th book of poetry, To, was released by Main Street Rag last year.

His work has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Next Generation/Indie Lit Awards, the NC Writers Network, the NC Poetry Society, and the Poetry Society of SC, and his articles about poetry have been featured in Poet’s Market twice.


Scott Owens
www.scottowenspoet.com                     www.ncpoetrysociety.org

To register, send check made to Glenda Beall. Mail to 581 Chatuge Lane, Hayesville, NC 28904

Copy registration form at top of page and include with your fee.

How to Write the Best Bio for your Guest Posts

We had the opportunity to learn from Tara Lynne Groth on Saturday so much about getting our names out there to the public, promoting our work online, and building the platform that will last. She talked about guest posting on blogs and how that enlarges your readership and builds your platform.

Today I read this blog post on How to Write a Bio that will Turbocharge Your Guest Posts.

I have been writing bios for years, but this article tells us what is important to include. We need to put links, use humor when we can and find a way in a few words to get readers of your guest blog to go to your home page to see who you are and what you do.

This is a post I will copy and keep for my own records. Let me know if you read it and what you think.

Thanks for reading this blog and I appreciate your responses either in the comments section or by email: glendabeall@msn.com 

Let Me Help You Tell Your Story

We had a terrific course of writing at Tri-County Community College, Murphy, NC back in the spring. We will begin another series of four classes on Tuesday, September 1, 6:00 p.m.  This is a two hour class in the Community Enrichment Program once each week and everyone can be home before it is dark.

These are some of the dedicated writers from my spring class, 2015 at Tri-County Community College

I can tell we will be writing interesting and informative true life stories as we always do in these classes. My students get excited about sharing their work and hearing answers to their questions. 

We write to learn about ourselves as well as tell about our loved ones.  We find the writing of others will trigger a memory we had long forgotten, and I see students grabbing pens to jot down those memories before they slip away like a wisp of smoke. That is what can happen to memories if you don't write them down.

I hope, if you have thought about taking a class on writing true life stories (non-fiction) about yourself, your family, your experiences, your war stories, your college stories, your stories that you want to tell someone, maybe your family and friends, or just to write because it is fun,  this is the class to take.

Email: glendabeall@msn.com with any questions 

or call Tri-County Community College in Murphy, NC (828) 835-4241 and ask for Lisa in the Community Enrichment Program.
Email her at: lthompson@tricountycc.edu 
She will explain registration procedure.

The Editors Blog has a cheat sheet for you.

I saw this article on The Editors Blog and I want to share it with everyone. Visit the link below or just google The Editors Blog. What are compound words and how do we use compound words? How do we write them? This blog offers a Cheat Sheet for those of us who struggle with "when to hyphenate" those words and when we do not.

http://theeditorsblog.net/2015/08/15/compound-words-using-this-cheat-sheet-is-not-cheating/

Don't Double Space at the End of a Sentence - here's why.

If you are a writer who still double spaces after a period, please read this post by Alice Osborn. 

In my classes I always find writers who learned in typing class to double space at the end of every sentence, but today in the computer world, we use only one space. I am asked why the change.

Alice, in a light-hearted, humorous way explains why. Check out her blog for many good tips on writing. 

What do I need to know to change from writing nonfiction to fiction?

I am a fan of Bobbie Christmas, editor of Zebra Communications, and author of excellent books on the writing craft. In one of Bobbie's newsletters she answered a question by a reader. She has given me permission to post that exchange here on Writers Circle around the Table. Thank you, Bobbie.

From newsletter by Bobbie Christmas

Q: I've been a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers for many
years, but I have a novel in my head, begging me to write it. I'm not
sure I can successfully switch from writing nonfiction to writing
fiction. What are some of the things I need to know?

A: Quick answer: everything.

Let me explain. I worked with newspapers and magazines for the first
twenty years of my writing and editing career, so I thought I knew
enough to write a novel. Boy, was I wrong! The best thing I did was
join a critique circle for novelists, and I quickly saw that I knew
almost nothing about how to write fiction. I knew a great deal about
how to form a strong sentence; I knew grammar, and I thought I knew
punctuation. Quickly I learned, however, that I had been using
punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviations standard in AP style,
whereas novels and nonfiction books call for Chicago style.
As a gift, my son gave me a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style, and I
went into overwhelm, because of the volume of the book. I didn't think
I could learn it all. I soon realized that I did not have to learn
everything, but I did need to look up specific things, when I wasn't
sure.

Members of my critique circle had been writing fiction much longer than
I had. I could help them when it came to grammar and strong sentence
structure, but they helped me tremendously with details of Chicago
style as well as the many elements of fiction. They made me aware of
point of view, setting scenes, scene changes, character development,
plot development, exposition, backstory, flashbacks, and much more that
I had never encountered as a writer and editor of newspaper and
magazine articles.

Go ahead and begin writing your novel, but find a good critique group
that concentrates on novels and get feedback and information from
members more knowledgeable in writing fiction.

In addition, pay attention while you read your favorite novelists and
see how they handle openings, chapters, flashbacks, backstory,
exposition, dialogue, scenes, character development, plot evolution,
climax, and denouement.

I also offer a lengthy free report on some of the differences between
AP style and Chicago style. It has good information for anybody not yet
fully familiar with Chicago style. Ask for Report #118 by e-mail
(Bobbie@zebraeditor.com), and I'll send it right away.

The switch from nonfiction to fiction isn't simple, but if your heart
is in writing a novel, you will enjoy entering a whole new world of
writing.    

(Bold fonts in post are mine. Glenda Beall)

Bobbie Christmas

Author of Write In Style: How to Use Your Computer to Improve Your Writing 

(To learn more, click here: http://tinyurl.com/o4trud2 )

Owner, Zebra Communications 

Excellent editing for maximum marketability

Coordinator, FWA Editors Helping Writers

230 Deerchase Drive, Woodstock, GA 30188

(1)770-924-0528 

www.zebraeditor.com 

Sign up for The Writers Network News, my free newsletter for writers, at www.zebraeditor.com.

                                 

Chat with a Poet on July 24

A few places are left in the class on Saturday, July 25, with Michael Diebert. 

Our space is limited to ten people in a class at Writers Circle around the Table, so contact me and send your fee for this most interesting class. See registration form at top of page. 

When Michael Diebert taught at Writers Circle a couple of years ago, his student evaluation sheets told me he was greatly appreciated for his work.

This class is especially interesting as it uses bits and pieces of old poems, parts that you have cut out of a poem or a line you really like, but didn't find a good way to use it.

I have many of those bits and pieces in my files and I am looking forward to seeing how I can bring them back to life, salvage them from the junk yard of used words. 

I am also looking forward to Michael's Chat with a Poet  at Joe's Coffee House, 82 Main Street, Hayesville, NC on Friday afternoon, July 24, 4:30 p.m.

We get to hear some of Michael's own poetry and talk with him about poetry, about how he selects poems for the Chattahoochee Review which he edits. Beginning poets will find his talk interesting and will be able to ask those questions you have been wondering about.

We will have some snacks furnished by Writers Circle and Joe's has great coffee and tea as well as a wine bar. There is no cost for the event, but Joe would like for you to pay for the coffee, tea or wine.

Guest Post by Michael Diebert, Poetry Editor at Chattahoochee Review

Today we are honored to have Michael Diebert as our guest on Writers Circle around the Table. He has written a most interesting post for us. Be sure to read this if you are a poet. Thanks, Michael, for taking time to guest on our blog.

Salvage and Reconstruction: Thoughts on a Poem in Progress

By Michael Diebert

Two years ago, when poet Andrew Hudgins led a workshop at the college where I teach, he showed us work he'd been doing on a poem.  He had written it in blank verse, unrhymed and rhymed iambic tetrameter, and with two- and three-beat accentual lines.  He'd even cast it as a prose poem.  As the forms dictated, he’d added words, took them out, moved them to other lines, and indeed redefined the line for each occasion.  The impulse was largely metrical and musical, but if form dictates content, he was also tinkering with meaning.  His patience astounded me.  After all that work, he concluded it was probably a failed poem, a good subject for a lecture such as the one he was giving.

Recently, I have been working on a poem modeled after Bob Hicok's poem "A primer."   Hicok's poem is a relatively succinct 44 lines.  Mine currently stands at about three single-spaced handwritten pages.  It is a shambolic stab at Tennessee facts and history, a chagrined interrogation of my hometown.  I am trying to be funny, and I'm falling flat.  I am trying to be probing and exact and fair.  I am trying to, as usual, account for the unusual and the otherwise overlooked.  In its current form, the poem is untenable; only recently have I realized this. I still like it, and I still think I'm onto something.  After my usual practice of putting the poem away for a while to let it marinate and age, what do I do now?  I have rewritten and expanded it at least twice, to little avail.  The same flailing, the same chest-beating is there. 

Within the last two weeks, though, I've started to go the other way, toward not just cutting but concision.  This is, I admit, not my usual strategy--I pride myself (and chide myself) on my masochistic desire to write through a problem, to add volume first and worry about depth later.  But fueled by a couple of other recent poems where I've striven for economy and precision, I am now trying to capture in fewer than 20 lines what I've been shooting for in 100-plus lines.  One benefit in trying to write this poem long is that I now see whole lines I want to keep!  This means the poem has probably been there all along, just not in the form I envisioned and, indeed, have labored so mightily to realize.  There are usable parts; it's just taken me a while to discover them.

If we poets are priests, marrying form to content, beauty to truth, then surely we are also scavengers, hovering raven-like over the broken bones of our failed drafts, using what's usable.  Or we are salvage artists in a junkyard, looking for an intact carburetor, a front bucket seat with fabric that hasn't faded, all for the purpose of reconstituting, of making them new and workable again.  To salvage is to save. 

Our workshop at Writers Circle on July 25 will be devoted to the art of poetic salvage.  We will work with your own failed or stuck poems, poems with usable parts or recoverable bones; we will work to identify these pieces and construct new organisms.  Please email me either 1) a whole poem or 2) a document of poem parts no later than Tuesday, July 21 and I will make copies for the group.

Great Class with a Fine Writer and Teacher today

Steven Harvey's Mnemonics of Memoir class today at Writers Circle could not have been better!

Eleven men and women gathered around a table and Steven led us through a number of steps to writing memoir that helped all of us in some way. Although I teach memoir writing to mature adults through the Community Enrichment Program at Tri-County Community College and use many of these elements in teaching and my own writing, Steve gave us new ideas and we had discussion from the students in today's class. The youngest student present today will be a freshman at Young Harris College in Young Harris Georgia in the fall. Although he didn't think he would be interested in writing non-fiction, he says this class changed his mind.

Several of those in class today were former students of Steven Harvey either at YHC or they were in the MFA program at Ashland University where he teaches. Their comments about him did not surprise me. They were all very complimentary and appreciative of his teaching. 

One of his grateful students drove over from South Carolina. Her name is Laurie and I was delighted she and I could have lunch together after class. She has a great and unique story that she will publish one day. 

Almost every student said the only thing they would change was to make the class longer. Steve said he hoped we'd ask him back next year. It is for sure, we will ask him back next year. 

I think we bought all the copies of The Book of Knowledge and Wonder, his new memoir, that Steve had with him. 

Now I'm going to get busy writing some of the stories Steven inspired in me today. 

########################################################################

If you live in Clay, Graham, or Cherokee counties in NC or Towns, Union or Fannin Counties in Georgia, and you want to write true stories, memoir and creative non-fiction, sign up for my writing class at Tri-County College in Murphy, NC  beginning September 1.

Writing Your Life Stories for Your Family or for Publication:

Glenda Beall has taught adults to write stories about their lives for a number of years. The stories are often written for grandchildren or other family because the writer wants to leave a legacy of what life was like before cell phones, before computers and video games, before families were too busy, and before they were scattered all over the country and around the world.

Each of us has a unique story, and in this class you learn: where to begin, how to begin, how to organize your work, what to write and what not to write, and how to write so that your audience will want to read your stories. Each student will have several stories completed and written by the end of the course in an entertaining and interesting form. Each student will carry home a number of tools he/ she can use in the future.  12 hrs. of instruction.

Instructor: Glenda Beall
September 1 – October 6    Tuesdays
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. $35 

Contact Lisa Thompson for registration information.

Here Is what is coming

Classes at  Writers  Circle are filling for the  summer. I have had many interested in Dr. Steven Harvey's class for Saturday, but our class is full with a waiting list.

Tara Lynne Groth's marketing and publishing class for August 22 has two places open now. This is an important class for serious writers who want to publish and sell their books. The deadline for registering for Groth's class is July 1. 

Michael Diebert, Poetry Editor for the Chattahoochee Review, a  literary journal, is teaching once again at Writers Circle studio. His subject is salvaging your poetry, using those bits and pieces of poems you have in your files to create new poems. Those who attend will go home with new poems they will be happy to submit for publication. 

Registration is now open

In September we will host Scott Owens, a favorite poet and instructor in our region. 

In October, Karen Holmes, poet and author of the  popular poetry collection, Untying the Knot will teach a class at Writers Circle.