What I'm Learning Now

This is a short exercise that I wrote in response to a prompt from our Thursday group. The idea came from an essay by a kindergarten teacher about the enthusiasm with which young children learn. Her essay led me to wonder about how we handle the lessons we confront later in life, so on Thursday I grabbed my mother-in-law's 1985 diary* and gave myself 10 minutes to write something.

How do you write about a place--a building, a city, a forest, a house--without putting your reader to sleep? It helps me to remember that stories are about people. People doing things. Stories happen in a place, yes, but they don't happen in an empty landscape, devoid of people. If you are writing about a house, or a church, or a school, remember that these are places with life happens. The building is only a building, a set or a stage on which the action occurs. So as you are thinking about the house, or the church, or the school (hospital, nursing home, store, Main Street), don't forget to populate it with living, breathing human beings. Don't forget the people.

The writing prompt I used for the following exercise was this: "Write two pages in which an empty building comes to life." I started by imagining myself entering my childhood…

Photo: Pam Corcoran, Toward the Glimmer: Stories and Essays from the Korongo Writers Group

Note: This is a longer version of the piece I posted a few days ago. I wrote it to share with Pam's writing group, but it is too long to read aloud in its entirety during our regular Thursday session, so I'm posting it here.

Pamela Corcoran was the first person to sign up for a writing workshop when we opened the Korongo Gallery on Merchants Row in 2010. She continued writing with me for the rest of her life. Pam was a sweetheart. We in her writing group all loved her, and we were devastated when we learned a few days after our last meeting that she had died, suddenly, after being injured in a fall. At the time, I was working on a piece inspired by Pam and her love of cats, and I was looking forward to reading it to her. The exercise began as an experiment in point-of-view. In the story, Pam was the star of a podcast, Calling All Cats, which had a worldwide following. Many of her listeners were cats, and they were able to communicate with Pam through telepathic messages. The following message is from Koko, a Japanese…

The prompt: Sit down for 10 minutes, with a timer, and say good-bye to the old year and hello to the new one.

I do this exercise every year. This morning, on the eve of the winter solstice, I sat down and wrote the following. It was a little past 7:30 am and the sky was still dark. A few minutes into the exercise, I was interrupted by the doorbell--it was Patrick's driver; Miguel; Patrick was already in the ambulance that takes him to dialysis three times a week. He had forgotten his earphones. I found the earphones and handed them to Miguel. "He was in tears this morning," I said. "Somebody stole his wedding ring from a locker at the clinic." Miguel left, and I returned to my writing. The timer went off, and I wrote for another few minutes, justifying the extra time because of the interruption.

Good-bye,…

I'm posting this 200-word essay for Patrick, who wrote it in response to a prompt that was published a few days ago on the Korongo Blog. The prompt: Write about an object that holds meaning for you. Writers were told to keep it short (200 words or so), to keep their fingers moving, and to let the words flow and jot down whatever came to mind. —Sara

A BRONZE STATUE

About 1 foot high, the bronze, featuring a Mossi shepherd, triggers the memory of a night train trip between Abidjan in Ivory Coast to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso in 1989.

A forum where members of the Korongo Writers Studio can discuss topics of mutual interest. The KWS is a community of writers and artists who support each other through workshops, writing groups, artist and author talks, and individual mentoring. To join us, email sara@korongobooks.com.