BIG HEADLINES AND SMALL FATES

If you tweet or text, you are used to writing small.  


As writers, we are often encouraged to expand what we have written, to add more details. 

We are taught to elaborate and extend individual moments in narratives to enable readers to see what we see. 

But sometimes we want to do just  the opposite, condensing our writing to its bare minimum.  We want to write small--distilling our thoughts until we have just the gist--just the crucial, sometimes cryptic kernel. 

Small writing is everywhere--advertisements on the television, billboards, corporate slogans, titles of books (with important information after the colon), and, of course, newspaper headlines.

Newspapers are gold mines for writers, a treasure trove of ideas that can lead to a variety of forms of writing.

In a previous post, we considered newspaper blackout, a creative poetry  form developed by Austin Kleon, using newspapers to create new writing. 

We can also find poetry in newspaper headlines. 

 I "found" three small poems below.--they are each composed entirely of unaltered headlines appearing in the Columbus Dispatch the past three days

1
Wounds deep,
healing slow
Dementia costs prove
staggering
Widow's gift to help veterans,
and herself...
Celebrating life
The way we were


2
70 mph speed limit gets closer
Lying speedometers
Some drive long 
and winding roads to jobs
In Ohio,
auto rates
a bargain

3

Apple 
not as dominant
in mobile market now
Samsung's latest 
takes a new shot 
at iPhone
Macs aren't immune 
to malware
                                                      Monitoring your vitals
                                                      with a webcam?
                                                      Lawsuits underscore 
                                                      issues of privacy

No changes were made in the wording.  I simply juxtaposed them. (However, anytime you write you want to reserve for yourself, the  writer's right of flexibility--it may be necessary to make small changes to get the result that you want.)


In the Columbus Dispatch Random Thoughts Column (January 9,2012), Carol Ann Lease writes about  the difficulty of constructing original and accurate headlines, due to the loss of shared experiences, knowledge of Greek mythology,as well as other literary allusions, that drove headlines of yore, and resulted in poetry for past readers.

What would make a good headline for your life today?

Nigerian author Teju Cole searched newspapers to create his  fait divers  or what he calls small fates. These condensed, stripped bare reportings are short incidents, items or bits of news, usually bad or grim, that may also have an ironic twist.  The kind of news that is buried in the back pages of the newspaper and can be expressed in a brief sentences. 

For a two year period, I followed his Small Fates Project on Twitter. Below are two examples from near the end of the project:

Teju Cole ‏@tejucole10 JanAdegbegha will not wed in March after all. A police corporal in Ibadan found him stubborn and shot him dead.

Teju Cole ‏@tejucole3 JanIn Katsina, both of Mallam Isa's wives are in hot water, Binta for having scalded Hadiza.

For a more complete explanation of The Small Fate Project  and more samples, visit Teju Cole's website  or read/listen to the NPR story Simple Tweets of Fate: Teju Cole's Condensed News.

One additional way to "find" writing in the newspaper is to select one headline that puzzles, intrigues, amuses, or in some other way touches you--- then explore, explode, analyze  or deconstruct that headline in an essay or poem or narrative.

Warren Wolfson digs deeper into  the following headline in his poem, Misplaced Blame, included in Rattle (#23, 2005):

A power failure blamed on a cat shut down the Cook County Criminal Courts Building Monday.                                               --Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, 9/26/03

Start searching your local newspaper.  What headlines do you notice?   

What do those headlines mean? 

What small fates lurk on the back pages?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibility

Search your daily newspaper for headlines that intrigue, puzzle, amuse, or in some other way touch you.

Try combining several seemingly related (or unrelated ) headlines to create a small poem.

You may want to analyze one particular headline, either writing a small fate or series of small fates. 

Try exploring one headline through writing a poem or essay.

Finally, you  may want to try your hand at writing your own headlines.  

Can you write headlines connected to either one or more events in your own life or current events. 

 You may want to return to the above suggestions, this time using your own headlines.

WRITERS ON THE BLOCK

Writers block.

Writers block 

the truth they know.                                 

Writers block
the truth they know
in their first mind.

Writers block
the truth they know
in their first mind
(instead of) giving full rein.

Writers block
the truth they know
in their first mind
giving full rein
to their second and third minds.

Writers block
the truth they know 
in their first mind
giving full rein
to their second and third minds
ignoring the words.


Writers block
the truth they know 
in their first mind
giving full rein
to their second and third minds
ignoring the words
eager to be born.



Writers block

That's what we call it when we can't get started, when we don't have any ideas, when we just don't have anything to write about--nothing to say.

Nothing has happened.

Or everything has happened --and it is just too much to sort out and organize-- and you don't know how you feel.

Reading  stories of other writers may help.

Reading about the ways they gather ideas,  notice the ordinary, remember the extraordinary, pay homage to their musings, and  noodle around with words may be just enough to nudge us off the block that we writers sit on when our second minds tell us that what we thought in the first place is no good.

Reading about how Langston Hughes,  while riding a train, was struck by the many rivers that have run through his ancestors veins, flowed through his people may help----  the result was his poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers.  Robert Burleigh tells this story in Langston's Train Ride.


William Carlos Williams may get us down off the block-- he writes about everyday ordinary things around him in a loose conversational style, that we may find easy to imitate, and then make our own.  

He is able to look at life and see beyond the present object to deeper insights and truths. He tells  his stories through small short musings. Two of his  well known poems include, The Red Wheelbarrow and This is Just to Say.  His story is told by Jen Bryant in  A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams.


In Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street, Eve sits on her stoop, (or rather on the writer's block) unable to think of ideas for a school writing assignment in which her teacher had simply said Write what you know. From the various characters that live  in her neighborhood, she receives advice that will draw us all down from our writer's block. 

The actor: The whole world is a stage-watch the stage, observe the players, and don't neglect the details. 

The cook: There's always a new way with words- find the poetry in your pudding

The dancer:  Stretch your imagination-stretch the truth. Ask What If?

Another neighbor:  It's like making soup- add a little action, a little spice

When I read this book one year to my fifth graders,  we made a chart of writing suggestions we found in this book .  The chart remained on our wall all year.   They referred to it often when they were stuck.

So sometimes getting unstuck or coming down from the  writer's block is as simple as looking at the writing, the objects around you, your ideas, or the assignments from a different angle, turning them over to see the underside, the hidden part, or noticing the obvious parts that you may have deemed unimportant.

One of the ways I meander around ideas is using the nested meditation form that opened this post. I love the structure of this short form  created by Kevin Anderson.    

The rules are few and simple (and flexible):

Begin with a single line that forms a complete sentence. 
Each stanza must be a complete sentence.  
Each stanza must include the lines from the previous stanza (punctuation and capitalization may be adjusted as necessary for each stanza to make sense) and each stanza be able to must stand alone.

For a more extensive explanation and for samples of nested meditations see Anderson's book,Divinity in Disguise: Nested Meditations to Delight the Mind and Awaken the Soul and his website.

 While on a CAWP retreat at Kenyon College, a couple of years ago,
I wrote another poem about being stuck.  Click here to read the poem, Staring at the Blank Page.

What do you do when you are stuck in your writing?

How do you climb down off the writer's block?

 Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Consider a piece of writing on which you have been stuck, or an idea you have been unsuccessful in writing.

Select or create one line with which to begin a nested meditation. Where did that writing lead you ?  What did you discover?

Try one of the ideas suggested by Eva' s neighbors to work on a piece on which you are stuck.

WOMEN: POWER UNSPOKEN

Hilary Clinton was the Secretary of State in the United States of America.

Sonia Sotomayor sits on bench in the highest court in the land.

Oprah Winfrey ruled daytime television for 25 years and remains a powerful entrepreneur.

Dilma Rousseff is president of Brazil.

Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberian democracy campaigner Leyman Gbowee, and Yemeni's women's rights activist Tawakkul Karman were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011,  for their exemplary  nonviolent struggle  for women's  rights and the safety of women.

Yahoo, Facebook and Xerox all boast women in powerful positions at the helm

Women have power in 2013.

Yet...      

A inebriated 16- year-old woman in Steubenville, Ohio was carried from party to party and raped repeatedly by athletes.  No bystanders came to her aid.  Images and mocking videos quickly appeared on social media. (See/hear related NPR story.)   

Her voice was silenced.

In New Delhi, India a 23-year woman riding a bus on the way to the movies was gang-raped by 6 men and subsequently died.

Her voice was silenced.

A similar rape of a 29 year -old woman occurred as she road the bus to her northern Punjab village just a month later.

Another silenced voice.

We hear numerous stories of university and high  school women being drugged and raped.  They are not always encouraged by friends and family to speak out, not often urged  to confront, report and prosecute.

                                                     You will face embarrassment. 

                                                    You will embarrass the family. 

No one will believe you. 

It is his word against yours

What did you have on?

Well, you had sex with him before.

He isn't that kind of person.

You were not a virgin.

                                                     We don't believe you. 

These were the responses faced by women I knew personally when I was younger.   

These responses have changed little in 2014. 

The responses are not always meant to be malicious--more often they stem from ignorance and belief in long standing myths about rape and rape victims.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, is the story of a young woman silenced by rape. She finds her voice through art and ultimately, in confronting her rapist and speaking out.

On the tenth anniversary of Speak, Laure Halse Anderson wrote a powerful poem composed completely (except for the first and last stanza)  of words from the many letters she received from women whose stories echoed... and mirrored the responses and feelings of Speak's protagonist.  
Click  to listen to Anderson read her poem.

Click to read her poem.

Telling her story, raising her voice, using her unspoken power is what ultimately saves a rape or abuse victim.  

Ellen Johnson -Sirleaf's reconciliation and peace-building efforts in Liberia, in addition to providing jobs for poor and other social reforms, are also creating a space for women to tell  their stories of rape and abuse.

Do you know someone who had been raped, sexually assaulted, or abused?

There are a multitude of resources available online that may be helpful to her, and to you as you encourage her.  Along with the local resources in your own community, the two websites below may be good places to start:

RAINN: Rape Abuse& Incest National Network
 http://www.rainn.org/

After Silence
 http://www.aftersilence.org/sexual-assault.php

How can we provide spaces for telling our stories and the stories of other women?

How can we raise our own voices? 

How can we use our unspoken power?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Think about time you or someone you know was silenced.

Write a personal narrative recounting the story.

Now think about a way to raise your voice in this situation.  How can you make a change? Who can help?  You  may want  to write a speech to address the issue or a letter to someone involved.

You may want to create a dialogue or scene rewriting the events or circumstances so that this time you do speak up.