Tag: oldscratchpress

Unlocking Your Writing Through Movement

Published on by Ellis Elliott2 Comments

In high school I watched the clock in last period, because I knew as soon as the bell rang I was heading straight to dance class, and all the teen angst and hormonal folderal of the day would be disappear once I got there.

I’ve taught dance for over forty years now, and that was the beginning of a lifetime of learning how the mind/body connection affects my creativity and well-being.

We’re taught early on that writing is supposed to come from the neck up—brain first, fingers second. We believe the words live in our head. But I’ve come to understand this: the stories I care about—the ones that ache and sing—live in my body. And if I want to write them honestly, I have to move.

Movement Makes Space for Story

When I’m stuck on a line in a poem or in a scene, walking often is my default means to address it. It might just be a walk around the block that allows my shoulders to drop and my breath to even out.

There’s something about the gentle rhythm of walking—or swaying, or stretching—that stirs the sediment at the bottom of the creative well. It shakes loose a phrase, a memory, an emotion I hadn’t thought to name.

We say “I’m working it out,” and often we mean emotionally—but there’s a physical truth there, too.

“ But I do believe very strongly that the best poetry is rooted in bodily experience. We experience reality through our bodies and senses, and truth, to the extent that it is apprehensible.”      -Poet Rebecca Foust

The Dance Between Emotion and Motion

As someone who grew up dancing, I know I carry emotion in my body, and in order to gain access I have to move. In order for the reader to feel what I am writing about, I must first feel it myself, and that is not going to happen if I stay entirely in my head.

Movement helps me feel it. And when it’s a big feeling—grief, rage, shame, heartbreak—moving my body helps metabolize it. When we experience trauma or hold strong emotions, our bodies remember. They contract around those memories. Notice how we hold our breath or the body tenses up. If we don’t move them, we risk writing around the truth instead of into it. And I don’t have to run a marathon or take up kickboxing. I can simply take a deep breath, raise and lower my arms a few times, twist gently side to side–all in my deskchair.

Moving lets the emotion pass through me so it can move onto the page.
Otherwise, it stays stuck in the pipes.

Stillness Is Its Own Kind of Movement

Sometimes, the writing calls for the opposite.
Stillness. Not scrolling or skimming or daydreaming—but deliberate, open stillness.
The kind that invites something deeper in. The kind that looks like staring out the window.

This is the space where I can hear the quieter parts of my story—the voice of a child I’d forgotten to listen to, or the image I saw in a dream but brushed off. Lying still and staring at the ceiling can be just as powerful as dancing. For me, it is my meditation practice. It’s all part of the same body-based practice.

Final Thought: You Are the Instrument
Your body is not a machine that carries your brain to your desk.
I tell my students of both writing and dance that the body is an instrument that vibrates with memory, story, longing, and truth.
When you write from your whole body, your work carries a different kind of resonance.
So move.
Let the story or poem move with you.
And then write like your body remembers something your mind forgot.

Click this link for a quick 5-minute seated stretch to get the body moving and the words flowing: https://youtu.be/n0VlNd3nLFw


Ellis Elliott
Bewilderness Writing
https://bewildernesswriting.com/
Old Scratch Press Founding Member
https://oldscratchpress.com/
Author: Break in the Field poetry collection
and A Fire Circle Mystery: A Witch Awakens coming this May

Introverts Guide to Writing in Community

Published on by Ellis ElliottLeave a comment

As we often hear, and know is true, writing is a solitary endeavor. Since I find long stretches of alone-time nourishing, I love that about it. But that doesn’t mean I want to go full-on-hermit. I need human interaction, even if it’s just Tina at the grocery store telling me about her cats.       

Specifically, since my need for human interaction is limited, I’ve sought to find ways to find or create a writing community that is a balance of the two. Here are a few things I’ve come up with that might seen outwardly mundane, but with an added introverted twist:

·      Online Writing Group: I created Bewilderness Writing, knowing that my role would be as guide, not teacher. Each week I read a poem, offer jump-off lines that folks can choose to use, or not, and then we free write for 10 minutes. Afterwards, each person reads what they’ve written and the group does not offer comment or critique. Sounds ridiculously simple, huh? It is. And what can’t be known beforehand is just how intimate and rich the writing can be within this container. Setting aside all the “writerly benefits”, it fills my need to see and hear others figuring out life using words on the page. There is great comfort there. And the tapestry of styles and voices enriches my own writing life.

https://bewildernesswriting.com/

Want Something Similar?

https://27powers.org/wild-writing-virtual/   Wild Writing, by my mentor Laurie Wagner, is wonderful!

There are many “writing alone, together” online opportunities without prompted writing, as well.

·      In-Person Writing Group: I created “Writers in Coffee Shops” a few years ago using the social networking website Meetup. I set it up with straightforward parameters from the get-go of “writing alone, together”. We would meet at a local coffee shop, spend a few minutes sharing what we were working on, then get to it. At the end of the hour, we could share about how or what we did for the hour. After that time, folks were welcome to share their work and invite comment or critique.

For awhile, especially in the beginning, I had people who did not get the memo and wanted to chat. With gentle reinforcement those folks either got used to our system or didn’t come back. Eventually, I found a small, committed group, and we came to know our coffee shop time as not only a standing-date commitment to our writing, but a place to commiserate on the writing life. We became friends.

Want something similar?

Shut Up and Write: https://www.shutupwrite.com/  While I might prefer my more “demure” group name, this is basically the same format and you can find them, with over 400 chapters all over the place

·      Collaborative Writing: Recently, I had a friend and former Bewilderness group member contact me after taking a poetry class that included “renku,” which is a Japanese collective poetry composition of collaborative linked verse. My friend asked if I wanted to give it a try together. She would send me a few lines and I would send a few back. Since we’re just starting this adventure, I can’t tell you the outcome, but I’m hopeful. It is just the right mix of connection and effort for me. It intrigues me to see what might come out of it. Think of your favorite writing form, enlist your favorite writing friend, combine the two, and see what you might come up with!

These writing groups are for messy, first-draft writing where the intention is to get “your butt in the chair” and ideas on the page. While these groups all lack the comment/critique component, I am a big believer in getting other eyes and trusted opinions on your work, and there are plenty of in-person and online opportunities for that. Whichever one is your preference, there is great benefit to having others along for the ride alongside you, and what that looks like is for you to choose.

Ellis Elliott, Writer and Writing Guide: https://bewildernesswriting.com/

Break in the Field poetry collection: https://www.amazon.com/Break-Field-Ellis-Elliott/dp/1957224126

My first mystery novel, A Fire Circle Mystery: A Witch Awakens, about an amateur sleuth discovering her lineage as an Appalachian Granny Witch, comes out in Spring 2025.

Google Doodle Celebrates Dorothy Miles

Published on by dianneP1 Comment
Click on photo to visit the Google Doodle page

Wonderful that Google has dedicated today’s Google Doodle (August 19, 2024) to Dorothy Miles.

Miles, as it says, was a pioneer of poetry in sign language. This is significant because poetry is often still widely considered to be an oral form of creative writing, written down, yes, but meant to be read aloud, or memorized and recited, performed. But can it be performed and not be spoken?

Here are a few performances by Ms. Miles, courtesy of YouTube:

There is no sound. Can you understand the poem?

And here is a third poem:

Do Miles’ poems speak to you, without use of the voice? In a medium that began as fully performative, how does it feel to have to attend to her movements with your eyes, more than her words, the sound of them, with your ears? Are the poems lost on you? Or do they move you? 

Approximately eleven million Americans are deaf, and many more have some form of hearing loss. When I watch Ms. Miles perform her poetry, one thing that struck me immediately was the feeling of being disconnected, because I could not hear her, though she looked to be speaking. Once I settled in I found the works engaging, and they really tapped into my emotions much more quickly than poetry usually does.

What makes a poem a poem? What does it mean to be a poet? Poetry has been one of the oldest and most consistently practiced form of creative writing, and it has also been some of the most exclusionary. Ms. Miles opened that door for people who could not use their ears to enjoy poetry, or their mouths to speak their poems aloud.

Ms. Miles’ career in poetry ended when her life did, after a fall from a window that was concluded to be self-inflicted due to mental health challenges she was experiencing. If you know someone experiencing a crisis please consider using the 988 helpline.

This, my friends, is why diversity is so important. Without an open system that welcomes diversity, without open hearts to give something different from the “norm,” “average,” what we’re used to, what’s traditional, or simply what we’ve come to expect, we close the door on beautiful experiences like poetry written and performed by Ms. Miles. When we celebrate poetry in all its forms, we invite more people to have the chance to share with us their creations. Not every creation is the right one for every person, but when you find the one that touches you, you will find yourself forever changed.

Thank you, Dorothy Miles, for your poetry.

WELCOME TO OLD SCRATCH PRESS

Published on by diannePLeave a comment

Hi~
Dianne from Devil’s Party Press (DPP) here.
Did you know I studied the writing of poetry when I was in college?
I love poetry, and there is a growing interest in it, but still not enough places to share it.
I reached out to some of the poets we’ve published at DPP, and asked them if they would like to do some volunteering to get a poetry imprint going, and, luckily, many of them said, “Yes!”
Poets are, by nature, generous people.
Together, I hope that we can publish good poetry. I hope that, over time, the poets will run the kitchen, cooking up new books, anthologies, opportunities, awards, who knows what all for poets!
My goal for this year is to put out a single author collection of poetry for three of the poets who are volunteering to create and run the press.
Our “poets” decided, to begin with, that poetry is as unique as the poets who create it. So they decided to make poetry include what we might consider to be a traditional poem, as well as more short-form works, mini memoirs, bits of story, and to include art, as it please the members to do so.
I think it’s going to be creative and exciting, and I cannot wait to see what they dream up.
Look for posts from the members here as we get underway on this project. I’m starting us off, but I hope they’ll soon eclipse me as they create something wonderful to which DPP becomes the helping hand.
The members of the group are:
Alan Bern
Anthony Doyle
Ellis Elliot
Gabby Gilliam
Janet Holmes Uchendu
Morgan Golladay
Nadja Maril
R. David Fulcher
Robert Fleming
Virginia Watts

And the first book from the group, A Break in the Field, by Ellis Elliot, is forthcoming from Old Scratch Press (OSP) this summer!

I wish all these wonderful authors a lot of luck with the OSP project!

And thanks to you for loving poetry, following this group, and maybe even buying a book!