Writers' Circle Newsletter #181

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Weekly Editor's Letter

On Imagination

On the almost-eve of the release of the new Harry Potter book by J.K. Rowling, I find myself fantasizing about successful writing and what’s required to get there. I’ve read all her books and every time I finish, I’m floored by the level of imagination she employs to create her stories. I feel the same when I pick up a book by Stephen King or John Irving. Where…how...do they get to that magical place called, imagination?

Recently as I took a walk through our neighborhood, I realized I knew hardly anything at all about my neighbors, people I live near, people I wave to in the mornings and afternoons, people whose children come over to my house to play with my kids. As I took this tour of my neighborhood (a wonderful, closed community except we have no gate – what keeps the place “closed” is that there’s no outlet, no through traffic), I began to wonder what Mrs. Johnson was really planting as she worked in her garden, digging feverishly, glancing around every so often. Maybe she was burying something, a ruby-ringed mirror perhaps, a mirror that gives the owner a vision of the future – a tool that would lead inevitably to worldwide destruction. Or perhaps she was burying the skull of her last victim…yet another alien from Earth II who’d been stalking her for the secrets she knew of Earth III, information learned during her 1974 abduction by Kleroopa, an Earth III operative.

Maybe she was just planting next year’s irises.

When I saw Joe, the fifty-odd year electrician who lives alone, I wondered what tragedy befell him, why he was alone even though he was handsome, solidly built. Had his wife left him for a newspaper mogul, taking their beautiful daughter to India, resulting in his ex’s death on the funeral pyre of her new beloved? How sad when he learned the daughter was now the mother of twelve, living in a shack in Bangladesh, knowing not a stitch of English.

Or maybe Joe just appreciates solitude, preferring books to people.

Then there was the George family with all nine children, four dogs, two chickens, and one Bentley. Why a Bentley when the house they live in is so modest? How did they get it…what does the Bentley do when nobody’s looking? Drive the neighborhood, fly across sweeping California skies?

Or maybe they bought it for a good deal on Ebay.

Imagination. Readers, your job this week is to take your simplest story and embellish it. Use last week’s hints from The Critic about character to create a vivid person, change the setting, have the character meet someone from beyond the grave, from another planet, or twist their mind until the character is quite unlike anyone you’ve ever written about, making them live in a place you created, doing the…unthinkable.

Next week’s editor is a surprise for everyone!

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Featured works from our members who stepped out the norm and created some excellent stories:

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ID: 436523   (Rated: 13+) Shrill Note of Hope  When the delicate thread snapped, the end was cruelly, mercifully short. Or was it? by Jessiebelle™

ID: 881689   (Rated: 13+) Deserted Hideaway  Mystery can be found anywhere by Vivian Zabel - author

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ID: 845244   (Rated: 18+) Dearly Beloved  True love at long last reunited. by Nikola

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ID: 169348   (Rated: 13+) Vertigo  When he woke up, he had no idea why people were screaming. by Reannon

ID: 714873   (Rated: 18+) Waiting  Dean is a disabled slacker with a devoted girlfriend - we all long for such...love. by AdrianaCB

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Additional Writing Prompt:

Find a piece of autographical writing in your journal or blog that you feel like playing with. Wherever you have written your name or “I” put in the name of a fictional character, or “he” or “she”. Then add an imagined detail: a hammer on the kitchen counter, a toothbrush still damp in the medicine cabinet, a coffee mug on the table.

“When you commit that simple act of imagination, you open the door to the unconscious, and if you watch closely and write what you see, your unconscious mind will continue to give you metaphoric images, gold far richer than the copper and silver of remembrance.”

Pat Schneider, “Writing Alone and With Others” (pg. 142)

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Quote:

"When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing... A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of magic."

-Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

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What now?

My next newsletter will focus on “description” in August. Have you written a piece that describes a place or emotion to the point where your readers are transported? I’d also love to get suggestions from you of writing that takes brilliant leaps in imagination. Please send your links to me AdrianaCB , or at the following forum:

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You might see your story in my next newsletter. And don’t forget, all comments about this and any WC newsletter are welcome!

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Issue #181
07/11/05
Edited by: AdrianaCB