LEARNING TO WRITE

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM at Windward Community College in Kaneohe, Hawaii has the distinction of being my first writing teacher. The very first Writing Retreat I attended (http://windward.hawaii.edu/Writing_Retreat) I came up with a simple poem. Lillian encouraged me to enter it in Rain Bird, WCC's literary journal. Much to my surprise that poem, and others as well, were accepted. I was off and running. Needless to say, I became a Writing Retreat junkie. I also thought I was really hot stuff, the latest e. e. cummings. At least.

While still harboring the delusion of being hot I met PAUL SPENCER SOCHACZEWSKI , author of the books Soul of the Tiger, Redheads, and his latest, The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen. http://www.sochaczewski.com It was a time when I was writing obsessively about a certain female body part down there. (Will I get reported for using the V word?) One of my fellow students (a guy) became exasperated with me. "V.. V... V... Is that all you can talk about?"

Paul not only took it all in stride, he was very encouraging. He called my work "red-blooded," something like that. Or maybe I made that up because I wanted him to say that.

Last month after reading my blog Paul wrote:

Thanks for this. Sounds like you’re on a terrific journey.

Re earthquakes. There’s a chapter in my book Soul of the Tiger on volcanoes, cycles of life, Shiva and rebirth, regeneration, pissing off the gods, etc.

And marrying below your caste. I recall a royal wedding in Bali many years ago in which the boy, the prince, was Syatria and his bride was Brahmin, which obviously is higher. So before the wedding she had to undergo a ceremonial death and then be re-born as Syatria. She was still ravishingly beautiful, so obviously the warrior/royal caste worked for her.

Phil and I signed up for Paul's all-day workshop on "Exploring Your Personal Odyssey" at the upcoming Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (www.ubudwritersfestival.com). In case you didn't know, Phil actually has a real book to his credit, The Paranoid, a psychiatry textbook, now out of print. Phil is way more of a writer than I am; he journals extensively every day. But I am a BETTER writer (Ha ha! she gloats) because Phil writes like an academician, in bullet form, which is good for writing analyses, synopses and scientific articles for conveying information. I, on the other hand, am a POET. And that says it all. This should not be cause for marital tension as long as he can't see me looking down my nose. Where did I read that making yourself out to be "better than" is a serious symptom of self-hatred?

Oh, I forgot, Phil can write really, really corny love poems. I adore them.

During my last four years in Hawaii I was fortunate to attend the annual Solo Workshops with acclaimed film director MARK TRAVIS (http://www.markwtravis.com/solo_workshop.html). The Solo Workshops are autobiographical writing and storytelling workshops that always got to me at a deep cathartic level. I used to joke that I came to them to cry.

The three questions I learned from Mark are:

1. What is the story about? (What's really behind the events of my story?)
2. Where am I in the story? (Reciting a list of events is boring. What is my take on the events?)
3. And the hardest of all questions: What would I write about if I had no fear? (By extension: How will I live if I had no fear?)

The Solo Workshop is designed for writing autobiographical stories for performance, but if you're not interested in performing, it still is a glorious way to write. The contact person in Hawaii is Alice Anne Parker: AAParkerHH@aol.com

I've had many wonderful writing teachers. Did I tell you that I'm a writing workshop junkie? I'm grateful to all. Here are two that specialize in the spoken word:

JAMES NAVE of The Writing Salon
http://www.thewritingsalon.net/assets/faculty_nave.html

KEALOHA, founder of Hawaii Slam
http://www.kealohapoetry.com/