What Change Looks Like

By Ellen Blum Barish
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It has been an unusually busy fall, enough to keep me from my twice-monthly posting. But I suspect your inbox has been as full of political email these past months as mine, which has made logging in even more overwhelming than usual.

May this message offer you a brief respite from all of that, bringing you literary news and perhaps a twinkle of inspiration.

Since we were last in touch, I’m delighted to share that Thread has:

More important to me than the numbers is what I’m seeing in the variety of submissions. I was determined to publish a diversity of voices across gender, age, perspective and geography. Contributors to Thread, Stitch and the live readings write from as nearby as Chicago to as far away as Switzerland and Spain and their experiences were formed in the United States, Great Britain, South Africa and Hawaii.

I’ve been teaching “Writing for Personal Discovery” workshops in my home since January and thrilled that the work of six students – John Hahm, Ellen Hainen, Marie Davidson, Nina Kavin, Brad Rosen, Michael Rabiger – made it into Thread, Stitch or a live lit reading this year. While it isn’t everyone’s goal to write for publication, I am committed to publishing emerging writers who are seeking just that.

Next winter and spring, I’ll be trying something different by offering shorter-length workshops  – one day and four-week sessions – for busy people who would like to give this personal narrative thing a try. I’m also teaching a morning workshop on Friday, December 16th titled “So That Your Values Live On: Writing Your Ethical Will” at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue. Check the Workshops page of my website for more about my winter and spring workshop schedule.

Finally, I promised to keep you updated on my inhale year. I’ll provide you with a complete report in my next post, but until then, let me say that the experiment in not writing has had some very surprising writerly results.

I leave you with a quote I found in a wonderful book I’m reading called The Artist’s Torah by David Ebenbach. He reminds us that creation is the result of destruction. Change is hard. Scary. Our tendency is to keep what we know, because even our current scary is a known one. But he reminds us that,

As artists we are asked to the truth we see, without and within. It asks us to be willing to grow – to destroy what we’ve been so that we can be something new.

What better example of this than in autumn’s own natural art exhibit?

Could next year be your year to start – or return to, writing?  Private coaching can make this happen. Gift certificates make a very thoughtful – and unique – holiday gift.

 

Making Room

By Ellen Blum Barish
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One evening in April of 2013, alone in my house for the first time in a long time, I gathered up all of my journals, placed them in a pile by my fireplace, and, accompanied by a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, read my way through each of them, one by one.

I read every page, then tore each from its binding and threw them into the raging fire.

And then I drank.

It was a dramatic and very drinky evening. Imagine choosing to douse yourself in every feeling you ever put down on paper. What kind of person does that sort of thing?

An emotional epicurean, that’s who.

I wanted to make it a ritual, so I savored each diary and took a video of the burning fire. You can read about that night and see the video here.

In the days that followed, I received a vast array of responses ranging from hallelujahs to horror which prompted this response. 

For the covers that remained, I had an art project in mind. I would find a way to attach them with thread, metal rings or glue and hang them over my office desk as a patchwork quilt representing decades of diary entries. To acknowledge the writing that led me to becoming a writer.

Just this week, while cleaning out my office closet, I came across the bulging plastic container with the shells of my former journals. It’s been more than three years since I stowed them there and I’ve talked about the wall hanging,  consulted artists about how do it and dreamed of how it would look on the wall. But up until now, it was just an idea taking up space in my mind and my closet.

Today, a new idea popped into my head, one that must have grown from the desire to pare down and also speaks to our digital times: I could lay them out on my dining room table, highlighting their color and texture, and photograph them.

Cue the angels!

The photo above is one version. The photo below, another.

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After thanking the covers for their service, I threw them unceremoniously into the garbage can.

How did it feel?

It felt good. Really good. Like the proper completion to the journal burning, which I now see as a three-part process.

First we let go. Then we make art. Then, we make room to do it all over again.

Photos by Ellen Blum Barish. Copyright 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Hundred Words

By Ellen Blum Barish
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It might sound odd for a writer to say this, but I frequently wonder what it would be like to live in a world where people used fewer words when they communicate in writing. We’re flooded with words every day and I often feel as if I’m drowning in their abundance.

Of course, we need words. They make things happen; they move people physically, emotionally and spiritually. Words are like tiny engines that keep us putt-putting.

What I am really suggesting is that we choose them more wisely. Find the ones that say what we mean. Become friends with our dictionaries and thesauruses. Use them more efficiently.  As an editor, I’m probably extra sensitive to this. I’m not only interested in the art of word craft, I’m always thinking about the reader. I don’t want to squander her time. There are too many pieces to read.

To writers, and readers who don’t identify themselves as a writer, I offer a proposal:

Take something that you have written – an email to a colleague, a summary of a meeting, a page from an essay you are writing – and delete half of the words. It may sound extreme, but it can be very illuminating. It compels you to weed whack; get at your core idea and say what you want to more directly and more swiftly. You’ll see how long you wind up before you throw the ball.

Perhaps this is why I’m so attracted to the art of short form writing. My new flash nonfiction section, Stitch, features personal narrative pieces at 100 words or less. They tell a story, reflect on a memory, evoke a feeling or sensation in a way that feels … just right. Not as sparsely as poetry, which can leave a lot to the imagination, but enough to move us in some way.

I just published Stitch’s third flash nonfiction essay today – take a look – and you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about. Consider submitting a piece. I’m secretly hoping that in addition to moving readers, Stitch prompts us to write more concisely, to zero in on what matters most.

Photo by Ellen Blum Barish. Copyright 2016.

 

 

On Not Writing. Part Three.

By Ellen Blum Barish
Posted on

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 So I’m eight months into my year of not writing (see My Inhale Year and On Not Writing for the back story) and no surprise really: I’m reading more.

But what I didn’t expect is how much more deeply I’m taking writer’s words in. Without my own ongoing churning, there’s more space for concentration, as if I’ve put sound reduction headphones on and the voices, including my own, have been dialed down. There’s simply less noise.

Rather than freaking me out, I’m finding it rather liberating. I’m drinking the words in, swirling them around, allowing them to activate my tastebuds. Swallowing what tastes good and letting the rest go. I did, after all, designate this as my inhale year.

All of this ingesting has, however, made me more selective. It’s allowed me to take note of the writing I like best: work that stimulates my intellect, touches my heart or makes me laugh. I am identifying how my voice is similiar and different and what ingredients I might add or take away to access more of my own.

All in the hope that when I release them, my words will offer readers the tastiest version.

Photo by Ellen Blum Barish. Copyright 2016.

Chaos Wants to Be Art

By Ellen Blum Barish
Posted on

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It may be inconsistent with most childhood experiences and unintentionally un-American, but I’ve never liked fireworks. Especially the elongated, grandiose versions set off on July 4th.  Sound, sight and sensation reign supreme and the whole spectacle jangles my nerves. Even with children of my own who loved the pageantry, I was grateful for a husband who shared their enthusiasm and would, every year, leave me to a quiet house.

So it was extremely atypical for me to be anywhere near fireworks on the fourth of July when I found myself in the midst of them at a music festival in Milwaukee earlier this month. My husband and I had driven up from Chicago to hear The Indigo Girls with college friends. When the show was over, we were heading back to the car and suddenly there was a BOOM! And then a THWACK! And then, BOOM BOOM! And, THWACK THWACK! And then the OOOOHS and AAAHHHHS, not only from the crowd, but from my husband and my friends.

I was surrounded by explosive-loving loved ones. I was going to have to surrender to this experience.

We found seats at a nearby picnic table and I kept my head down to concentrate on acclimating. I was giving it the old college try.

When I looked up, the showers of colored light made the gondolas pop into view. That’s when I slipped my iphone out of my pocket and starting taking pictures.

I must have taken at least 50 shots. The click of my telephone camera couldn’t compete against the booms and the thwacks but standing behind it, I felt just the slightest bit protected, even though I was cursing the fact that I left my new SLR camera at home.

The next day as I was looking at the images on my large desktop screen, you could hear the SWOOSH SWOOSH of deleted photo after deleted photo as I sent them to the trash.

Then I came across this dark, unsuccessful shot:

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My finger was just about to hit delete when I noted that there were three decently shaped firework bursts in this picture. I had recently learned in a photography workshop that compositionally speaking, three was a sort of magic number (one is its own thing, two can be a coincidence and three is an actual pattern).

So I put it aside, deleted 40-plus more, and concluded that fireworks and I would never live in harmony together. I couldn’t even turn them into art.

But I was wrong. Something made me click onto the photograph again, as if it was calling out, yearning for another chance. I placed it into editing mode and heightened the exposure and saturation, just a bit.

And it transformed into this:

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A perfect picture it isn’t. My Canon could have done far better and I’m not even sure what that yellow light in the far left corner is. (I didn’t want to crop it too tight.)

But it’s cool, right? A little bit magical, even. I think it’s my favorite shot … ever. So of course I posted it on my Facebook page.

One friend, a painter, commented that it looked like vintage Asian art.

Another friend, also an artist, wrote that it made her heart thump.

My youngest daughter wrote, “You actually watched fireworks??”

Rescuing the photograph from the trash, enabling it to reveal its beauty has me thinking, once again, that often, what we think of as chaos simply wants to be art.

Photos by Ellen Blum Barish. Copyright 2016.