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Writers on the Net
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Vol. 8, No. 2
February 2005
IN THIS ISSUE:
ESSAY: Behind the Scenes by Sheila Bender
CLASS SCHEDULE
USAGE: "Why should we use...?"
ROOTS: "love"
TIPS: Love Clichés
NEWSLINKS
QUOTATION

BEHIND THE SCENES
By Sheila Bender

The first week of my first graduate poetry-writing workshop at the University of Washington, our teacher William Matthews came to class in paint-stained clothes. A new arrival at the University, he was just moving into his house on Seattle's Capitol Hill near the University District. Although he was dressed very casually and seemed as if he'd hurried off to class at the last minute, when he talked to us about poetry, his words were the most elegant I'd heard on the subject.

I had only recently learned not to throw away my first attempts at poems. Now I kept them and worked from them. As I wrote for Matthews' class, I kept hardbound notebooks with pages of lines and stanzas and arrows pointing to how I thought I should rearrange things; then there were neatly copied-over versions of poems with the changes incorporated. I didn't consider this notebook a journal. I was just being conscientious about doing my work the way one of my classmates, who had been published, did hers.

One day in class, Matthews told us that he continued to show his early drafts to "trusted readers." He often mailed his work to them even if they were living in the same city. He said the formality of receiving the work and the resulting suggestions by mail helped him revise his poems. Accomplished poets asking others to read their drafts? Accomplished poets having drafts rather than fully developed poems right at the get-go? Didn't the greats' poems flow directly from the muse to the page, with no changes necessary? It had not really dawned on me that our famous workshop leaders were able to help us through the development of our poems because they themselves had worked their way through version after version!

I listened to this great writer who let me know that the people I called "important" writers had something like the hardbound workbook I was creating for class. I guess all this time I had been applying some rule out of elementary school--that teachers inhabit a different world than their students, that although students learn by doing drafts and revisions, real writers (and therefore our teachers) didn't do this.

Several years after I had graduated with a master's degree in creative writing, published poetry, and written instructional books on writing, my agent hooked me up with an editor who wanted a book on journaling that was "something different" than the books already out there. As I began dreaming up a proposal, I remembered that day in class when Matthews told us about having trusted first readers and getting their response. I realized that doing this book on journaling could help me learn more about what Matthews (and other well known writers) did behind the scenes in developing their writing. I would ask Matthews and others to contribute sample journal entries if they had them and words of wisdom on journaling. Novelist Lisa Shea's entries were word meditations; author Ilan Stavans' were rants about the political side of getting recognized. Denise Levertov meditated on exhibits she'd seen and books she'd read, and Janice Eidus, Pam Houston, and Fenton Johnson wrote letters as a journal. Ron Carlson kept numbered lists of witty descriptions. Robert Hellenga wrote about his travels in Italy, the country in which he would set a novel. Robin Hemley and Steven Winn recounted dreams. Stanley Plumly, Brenda Hillman, and Linda Bierds kept notebooks of poem revisions. The purposes of their journals and the writing in them helped make my book, The Writer's Journal: 40 Contemporary Writers and Their Journals, a success. Readers learned many strategies and reasons to write and keep what they had written -- even if they did not know what they would do with it or how long it might take to figure that out.

I realized my notebooks of revision attempts and, by this time, my box of poems, started on scraps of paper. l learned that when maintaining an email correspondence, writing letters I'd never send or letters I did send, going off on some tangent out of strong feeling, doing a writing exercise, or trying to get down the exact quality of light at sunrise, I was keeping a journal if I kept the writing. I had many writer's ways and habits at my fingertips.

I began to assemble what I wrote when I "wasn't really writing." I knew that the words and strategies had value to me because they kept me writing and might be useful for future "mining." To keep these scribblings, I eventually settled on a box as well as computer files. Now, like the writers I admired, I put all kinds of things down on the page to keep myself writing. I look to my writer's journals to imitate strategies that wil l help me access surprising parts of myself and put them on the page.

Reading the journal entries of the greats always reminds me that inspiration is not always clothed in elegance; it often arrives informally attired.

(Parts of this essay first appeared in The Diarist's Journal, Volume II, Issue #2 and Writing It Real, 6/5/03)
Writers on the Net instructor SHEILA BENDER will be teaching KEEP A WRITER'S JOURNAL LIKE THE PROS in March. She is a poet, essayist, author and publisher of Writing It Real (www.writingitreal.com). Right now, Sheila is offering a *special two-for-one subscription rate for Writers.com subscribers*! Email her at info@writingitreal.com for more information on how to subscribe and get the free extra subscription for another writer you know. Her personal Web site is http://www.sheilabender.com.

USAGE: Why should we use "If I were you..." rather than "If I was you..."?

"If I were you" is an example of the present subjunctive. English verbs have "moods"* and the subjunctive mood expresses a condition which is doubtful, not factual, impossible, hypothetical, etc. To express this implausibility, it uses the past tense "were." * The other moods, in case you are wondering are the indicative mood (the most common, used to make statements) and the imperative mood (used to give direct commands.)

ROOTS
"love"

"Love" is a very old word in the English language. It is found in the earliest English writings (8th century) and comes from the Old English "lufu" which is related to Old Frisian "luve," Old High German "luba," Gothic "lubo," and similar words in early Scandinavian. The Old English term for "dear" -- "leof" -- is closely related. Both come from Latin's "lubere, libere" -- " to please." In New Latin the related word "lubido" means "desire, lust")

The origin of using "love" to mean "zero or "nil in tennis scoring probably comes from the phrase "to play for love (of the game)" --to play for nothing.

TIPS:
Love Clichés

Clichés start out as creative, original idioms. They are so good, in fact, that they get used over and over. The phrases become so familiar that, eventually, they become almost invisible when we come across them in our reading. What was once a truly meaningful phrase becomes meaningless. Writers can use clichés occasionally in a humorous way or even to make a succinct point, but, for the most part, your writing will be enriched by originality and fresh phrases. (We provide no advice as to their use in your personal relationships.)

Here are some clichés about love that are probably best avoided (at least in your writing):

QUOTATION:

"Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for."
-- Ray Bradbury

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