October RRVWP Events

Greetings, RRVWP TCs and friends of the RRVWP!

Fall has definitely arrived and with it a variety of RRVWP reading, writing, and reconnecting activities. Please mark these events on your calendars and join us for any and all of them!

First off, we'd like to invite all TCs to our annual Visitors Day, a celebration and showcase of the work of our 2014 RRVWP Summer Institute participants. Visitors Day will take place on Saturday, October 25, from 10am to 12:15pm, at Minard Hall, Room 310, followed by lunch from 12:30-1:30pm in the Hidatsa Room in the Memorial Union on the NDSU campus. Please join us to meet the newest RRVWP TCs and reconnect with our Writing Project work. If you are able to attend, RSVP to Kelly Sassi at kelly[dot]sassi[at]ndsu[dot]edu.

The Grand Forks Writing Group will meet on Friday, Oct. 10, at 5:30 at the home of Nancy Devine. All RRVWP members are welcome to attend. You need not have attended meetings in the past nor commit to attending all meetings to be a part of the GF Writing Group. For our October meeting we will workshop pieces of any genre. For more information or to RSVP, contact Pam Fisher <pam[dot]fisher[at]gfschools[dot]org>.

The Fargo Writing Group is meeting on Sunday, October 26 with the theme of "Finding our Characters." Please join them from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. at West Acres Mall on 13^th Ave. S. For more information about this group, contact Kim Rensch <renschk[at]fargo[dot]k12[dot]nd[dot]us>.

The Grand Forks Book Club will be meeting on Oct. 22 to discuss Burial Rites by Hannah Kent https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333319-burial-rites?from_search=true. Please contact Andrea Scherer <andrealscherer[at]gmail[dot]com> if you're interested in attending the GF Book Club and not already on the email list.

The Fargo-Moorhead Book Club is reading The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer Holm https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19085562-the-fourteenth-goldfish?from_search=true and meeting to discuss it on Monday, October 27. Contact Dan Dooher  <DTDOOHER2006[at]alum[dot]csbsju[dot]edu> for more information on the FM Book Club.

SAVE THE DATE!  Winter Writing Retreat at Maplelag Resort, Feb. 27-March 1, 2015. More information will be sent out in a later post.

Lots of publication possibilities

Welcome to Duotrope, an award-winning, free writers' resource listing over 4100 current Fiction and Poetry publications. Use this page to search for markets that may make a fine home for the piece you just polished. Use the menus at the top and right to explore the rest of the free services we offer writers and editors, including a free online submissions tracker for registered users. We usually make several updates per day, and we check each of the current listings regularly (at least once a month) to ensure the most up-to-date database humanly possible.

Duotrope is a great resource for possible publication venues. To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Looking for a home for your writing

As writers and instructors of writing, we have all found ourselves with work that came from workshops, random exercises, and desperate attempts to find our voices. Some of this is pretty darned good, too. Unfortunately, anything that looks too much like it came from an exercise, prompt, or other such “mechanical” source gets relegated by editors to that pile with a stihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcky note on top that says “too workshoppy.”

And that is why we created the prompt. The prompt is the place for all levels of writers to have an opportunity to publish, as well as for a community of writers to find new ways to expand creative writing horizons. (from the prompt)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Today is the day

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000 word, (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. This approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

A little practice time...

Welcome to Practicing Writing! Here you’ll find updates on writing and publishing opportunities (especially handy between issues of our popular monthly newsletter). You’ll discover ONLY opportunities that charge no fees, and ONLY publications/contests that will pay for your writing. The blog also shares writing-related news, resources, and quotations; book reviews; and occasional updates regarding this practicing writer’s own work. (from Practicing Writing)

To read more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Writing and sentences

The Paris Review is well known for its interviews with well known writers. Much of the text from these interviews is available online. Below is such text from Joan Didion.

When I’m working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm. Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won’t go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting. At the end of the day, I mark up the pages I’ve done—pages or page—all the way back to page one. I mark them up so that I can retype them in the morning. It gets me past that blank terror.

Freeman Dyson on writing

I write because it is one of my two skills. My other skill is doing mathematical calculations.

Exercising a skill at a high level is one of the greatest joys. At my modest level of skill, I can feel the same joy as somebody at the top level, for example the singer Jacky Evancho. Jacky is thirteen years old and sings divinely. Recently I heard her sing on television. After she finished, the producer asked her how she feels when she is singing. She said, "Something great overwhelms me, and I feel comfortable and happy." (Freeman Dyson at the National Writing Project website on why he writes)

Oxymoronic today?

Oxymoron, a Greek term combining the words for “sharp” and “foolish,” has been adopted in English to refer to inadvertently contradictory or incongruous mash-ups of terms such as “military intelligence” and “jumbo shrimp” — a class known as subjective oxymora (that latter word is the pedantic-looking plural) because they are not literally at odds with each other.

However, the original connotation is of an evocative paradox deliberately framed by a writer — an objective oxymoron. One of the most well-known examples is William Shakespeare’s line “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” from Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet exults in the bittersweet anguish generated by the lovers’ separation. (Mark Nichol at Daily Writing Tips)

Not knowing and writing

Any writer’s relationship to the state of “not-knowing” is complicated. One response is to rush in quickly and fill up the scary silence and space. And while intense, white-water sensibilities can astound (the brilliant, torrential David Foster Wallace, for example), in many other cases, writing born of this response, this impulse to fill all gaps, feels instead eager to get the job done. Such a drive, the precise opposite of Negative Capability, is often marked by an insular, fussy density, reliance on a Big Story (to the exclusion of say, lyrical lingering and curious reflection), and, very often, a forcing of pattern instead of an authentically discovered series of alignments. (Lia Purpura at Brevity)

To read more of Purpura's piece, click the above hyperlinked text.

You could be a reviewer

We believe that out there in the vastness of the North American continent (and beyond!) there are bright, imaginative readers who would like to see their opinions of current books and/or magazines broadcast to a larger crowd than immediate family, friends and workmates. You may be one of these readers, and New Pages may be your forum. Here’s how to use us to tell the world what you think. (from New Pages)

New Pages brings together almost all thing literary: lists of magazines, places to submit writing, a blog....etc. To learn more about writing reviews for NewPages, click the above hyperlinked text.

How to get style

First, note that a house style guide is not a comprehensive compendium; it is a resource that details rules and guidelines for consistency that contradict or are not covered in other resources. That said, a house style guide can range from a couple of pages to more than a thousand. (The Chicago Manual of Style, which exceeds that latter number, is simply a house style guide that escaped from the University of Chicago Press, for which it was created more than a hundred years ago, and went viral.) The size depends on how often, and how significantly, your publication veers from default resources and how complex its subject matter is. (from Daily Writing Tips)

The above from Daily Writing Tips is about creating your own style guide. To read more, click the hyperlinked text above.

Getting Published

If you're thinking about sending some work off for publication, New Pages' Calls for Submissions page is a great resource for finding publications that are looking for work.

Calls for Submissions updated - lots of quality publications, anthologies, and inaugural issues looking for fresh, new, writers and established voices.

Remember to diligently follow submission guidelines. And send something out....

Those pesky words

As English evolves, word meanings shift and turn, sometimes reversing themselves altogether. These ten words have shifted their senses over the years. In some cases, we are wise to likewise be flexible; in others, we relax our vocabulary at the expense of useful distinctions:

1. Decimate

The literal meaning of this word, as all you lovers of Latin (not to be confused with Latin lovers) know all too well, is “to reduce by one-tenth,” supposedly from the punitive custom of selecting one out of ten captives by lot and killing those so selected. But the senses for this rhadamanthine Roman policy have proliferated, so that now it means “tithed,” “drastically reduced,” or “destroyed” as well. (from Daily Writing Tips)

Writing better

Do you want to drastically improve your writing? Are you looking for new ways to boost your writing career, retain more clients, stick to your writing schedule, or get more readers addicted to your blog’s content?

We asked the winners of our Top 10 Blogs for Writers Contest for their best advice on how to achieve excellence in the business and art of writing. (from writetodone)

To learn more, click the hyperlinked text above.

You might win

Share your love of libraries with the world by composing a library themed twaiku for National Library Week! You might win a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.

What’s a twaiku, you ask? Simply put, a twaiku is haiku sent via Twitter. Twaiku use the same basic structure of 3 lines with 5-7-5 syllables respectively. Unlike a true haiku, a twaiku can only be 140 characters, or 130 with our #nlwtwaiku tag.

The National Library Week twaiku contest kicks off at the beginning of School Library Month (April), and continues through Wednesday of National Library Week (April 13). All submissions must be tagged #nlwtwaiku. (from the Campaign for America's Libraries)

National Library Week runs from April 10-16, 2011.

Prepare your pockets

One of the best ideas that has taken root in April as part of National Poetry Month is Poem in Your Pocket Day—celebrated this year on Thursday, April 14. It began nine years ago in New York City, and the Academy of American Poets has made Poem in Your Pocket Day a truly national celebration. “The idea is simple: select a poem you love... then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends.” (Bob Holmen and Margery Snyder at about.com)

The Academy of American Poets has a bit on the Poem in Your Pocket project.


In this age of mechanical and digital reproduction, it's easy to carry a poem, share a poem, or start your own PIYP day event. Here are some ideas of how you might get involved:

Start a "poems for pockets" give-a-way in your school or workplace Urge local businesses to offer discounts for those carrying poems Post pocket-sized verses in public places Handwrite some lines on the back of your business cards Start a street team to pass out poems in your community Distribute bookmarks with your favorite immortal lines Add a poem to your email footer Post a poem on your blog or social networking page Project a poem on a wall, inside or out Text a poem to friends

New site working hard

This in-depth story about the work of the Writing Project shows how a group of teachers and professors dedicated to improving student writing pulled together the resources needed to form the new Greater Madison Writing Project. (from NWP's website)

To read the whole story, excerpted below, click the following hyperlinked text.

The two most common remarks made by those seeking help at UW-Madison's Writing Center are "I'm a bad writer" and "I hate to write."

"And sometimes they say both," says Melissa Tedrowe, the center's associate director.

RRVWP's dinner with writer Carl Phillips

Poet, translator, and essayist Carl Phillips will be the RRVWP dinner-with-the-writer guest at this years UND Writers Conference in March. Check your e-mail for the listserv message from Kim on signing up for this dinner if you'd like to participate.

Phillips is heavily influenced by ancient Greek and Roman writers, and experiments with their poetic forms in his work. He also taught high school Latin for eight years. He has an interesting essay on reading (and writing) available at the poets.org website, in addition to other essays and some of his many poems.

Tweet and learn

To play, just use today’s word in context in one of your tweets. That’s it. Your tweet will appear here where people can tell you if they like it. You’ll get points if they like it or retweet it.

Points mean kudos. Oh, and if you follow @artwiculate, we’ll tweet you with today’s word and store your profile here so you can see your vocabulary improve over time.

Twitter needn't be only random updates about toenail polish and tater tot hotdish run amok. Twitter can be a learning tool, and that's where Artwiculate comes in. It's way to learn new words and have some fun doing so---all while tweeting. Check out the above hyperlinked text above to learn more.

Getting started

Even if you are not a professional writer you probably already heard about writing prompts. They represent a very effective tool for any writing project, so it’s a good idea to know how to use them. (from Daily Writing Tips)

The Red River Valley Writing Project is no stranger to writing prompts; in fact, each morning of the invitational summer institute begins with a prompt.

Certainly you can make up your own prompt, in effect, give yourself a kind of writing assignment.
You can also check out the linked piece above to read more about prompts. And the piece includes online resources for prompts.