Oops--you missed Children's Authors and Illustrators Week...but you didn't miss my DECLUTTERING poem for Poetry Friday!

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Howdy, Campers!

My poem about clutter and the link to Poetry Friday is below.

But first...have you scampered to Carmela's post and entered to win Barb Rosenstock's The Camping Trip That Changed America in our latest book giveaway contest?  No?!?!  Then for heaven's sake, click here or scroll down now.  I'll wait right.

As Carmela noted in her post, I'm a card-carrying member of the Children's Authors Network (CAN!)

 photo credit: jessamyn via photopin cc
This isn't April. 

I lied.  I AM a member, but there are no cards.

In 2000, eleven members of CAN! created Children's Authors and Illustrators Week (CAIW).  CAIW was invented to encourage communities to discover and to connect with local authors and illustrators. It's celebrated the first week of February, but never fear! The CAIW webpage (which includes a wonderful poem about books by CAN! member and poet Joan Bransfield Graham --scroll to the bottom) includes Tips for Children's Authors and Illustrators Week which teachers, parents, librarians and even Martians can use all year long.

Plan on connecting with local authors and illustrators 

to celebrate CAIW next year!

(In fact, I'll bet one is lurking next door to you right now.)
photo credit: Fr Antunes via photopin cc

Okay, on to Poetry Friday!  I'm deep into the topic of clutter this week.  Which got me thinking about my three Clutterbusting Heroes:

1) My husband's client who moves his office and all his staff every two years.  "It keeps them from cluttering," he says.  

2) My friend, author Bruce Balan, who, you may remember, lives on a trimaran with his wife and sails around the world.   When Bruce goes to a conference and someone hands him a business card or a brochure or, well, anything, Bruce gives it his full attention, then gently hands it back. Even the business card.  "I don't have room for this on the boat," he explains.  

3) My friend, Brooks Palmer, professional declutter guy, who I interviewed last year about his first book. His quiet question, when working with clients, is "Do you need that?" or sometimes, "Can you let that go?"

All three of these guys (do you think there's a reason they're all guys?) are my heroes.

photo credit: morguefile.com

Heroes deserve a medal.

I have a new declutter plan for the New Year and I know you're dying to hear it.  Every month I'm going to hire my down-the-street neighborly handyman, Greg, to paint one of our closets or cupboards.  You know what that means I'll be doing the night before, right?  

This week he painted my home office closet.  Oh. My. Gosh.  I'd saved so many file folders, art paper, and recycled mailing envelopes, I could open an office supply store.  It was very embarrassing to look at all that stuff out of the closet, spread across our college kid's bedroom.

Greg prepped and painted my closet while I went off to a coffee house to procrastinate and finally to write.  When I returned, VOILA!  An clean closet! A blank page!  

Eli inspects the freshly painted shelves.

My rule is that I can only put back the things I actually need. Wish me luck.

TOO MANY WORDS

by April Halprin Wayland

It started with one manila folder

holding just nine words:

ethereal, mellifluous, clink, crisp, apple, baby, shoulder, drool, listen.

Then five colored folders 

in a beautifully braided basket.  

Before long, 

my file cabinet was jammed so tightly 

with recycled file folders filled with words,

it was hard to pull out puddle, excellent, toasted, 

or even a single shard.

I hired a handyman to build special shelves in my closet

for oversized ones like warmheartedness,

tall ones (tate, titter, colossal), 

words without spines like pithless,

that need to be stacked

or stood up against dividers.

One day the words came tumbling down.

My room was filled with overconfident, noodle,

kleptomaniac, global.

The carpets were ruined.

I cried as I threw out onomatopoeia.

The walls were scratched by 

aquamarine and nincompoop.

Today, my shelves breathe.

One shelf has only the word, now.

Another, air.

The top shelf had bird

but this morning it flew out

past open and window.

poem (c) 2012 April Halprin Wayland, all rights reserved

Eli approves of the shelves (and waits for the OK to retrieve his red toy)

WRITING WORKOUT 
~ Magical Realism--the Game!

In the poem above, I substituted the idea of individual words for file folders, papers and notebooks.  

It feels a bit like Magical Realism to me.  According to Wikipedia, 

"Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world." 

1) Write a simple poem about an ordinary chore...maybe walking the dog or making your bed. 

2) Now, go back and substitute a more general concept for the noun.  Instead of "I made the bed," perhaps, "I made the friendship."  Instead of "I walked the dog," perhaps "I walked the war."  Sort of like a game of Mad Libs (play a version of Mad Libs online for free here).  

3) Roll around in the odd wonderfulness of not having to make sense.

Thanks to
Laura Purdie Salas at Writing The World For Kids
for hosting Poetry Friday today!

Remember to write with joy!  
(And remember to enter our book giveaway!)

Let's get Organized! Or not.

Hi there--and happy Poetry Friday!

Before we get started, run over and read the dynamite interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith by TeachingAuthor Carmela Martino and enter our latest book give-away!  Note that the deadline for entry is 11 pm (CST) Wednesday, February 2, 2011.  Make sure you follow the rules by posting a comment at the bottom of that blog post and include your contact information.  And you must have a USA mailing address.

TeachingAuthor Esther Hershenhorn kicked off our current topic with a great intro to 6 + 1 Trait Writing: Organization. TeachingAuthor JoAnn Early Macken followed with Getting Your Ducks in a Row.  TeachingAuthor Mary Ann Rodman's It Just Looks Disorganized came next.  All include practical and inspiring Writing Workouts, so check them out.

Well...I can certainly relate to our topic of Organization as it relates to both writing and life.  For example, in my writing, Girl Coming in for a Landing, was essentially a shoebox full of poems all written in a teen voice when my editor at Knopf accepted it.  She literally spread the poems out on the floor of her office in New York while I spread them out on my floor in California and we talked about how best to tell this teen's story.  

Finally, we organized it around a school year divided into Autumn, Winter, Spring, with (roughly) an equal number of poems in each section.

I could analyze the organization of each of my books in this post.  But for me (unlike Mary Ann Rodman, who deliciously describes what she needs to research her books) it also comes down to decluttering my house and my office (especially the floor around my desk!) so that my mind is free to let each poem or the story tiptoe out.

I don't have much trouble getting rid of unused kitchen utensils and coffee mugs.  I'm happy to give old dresses to the Goodwill.  But paper paralyzes me.  

Or paper DID paralyze me, until I read Clutter Busting--Letting Go of What's Holding You Back.  

Actually, I'm lying. I hired the author and Clutter Buster extraordinaire Brooks Palmer to help me get out from under the paper clutter of my office first.  Then I discovered his book--which is gentle.  And gentle is what I need to be with myself, whether it's about the pile near my desk or the book I'm afraid to keep writing.x

I decided to ask Brooks how he organized his Clutter Busting book.

"I didn't know how to write a non-fiction book. But I felt the need to write my clutter busting book.  So I wrote it stream of consciousness.  I enjoyed the process.  But when people read what I wrote, it made very little sense to them.


So I used my clutter busting process on my book. I went through page by page and cut out anything that wasn't an encouragement for the reader to let go of their clutter.  At one point I printed up all the pages and spread them out on my living room floor.  I read the book thinking, "Is this serving the book or not?"  When I found clutter, I cut it out with scissors.

As I got rid of things that weren't serving the book, the book started to make sense.  I could have tried to organize what I originally wrote to make this happen.  But that would have kept in the things that weren't making it a strong book and it would have been bogged down with chaos.

As I got the book down to its bare essentials, I was able to start moving pieces around in a way that continued to serve the book.  By the time it got to a publisher, it had a strong impact because it just had the things that mattered.  Luckily the publisher assigned the book to an editor who continued the letting go process.  And then I got to do one last clutter busting of the book.

Essentially it was the chopping away of the clutter in the book that gave me the clarity to make it a powerful book."

Thank you, Brooks (his comic above reminds me not to stuff too many things into my life...or my books).  Now I see how I need to clutter bust my current novel.  Yikes--lots of decluttering ahead!  But at least I understand what my book needs...it needs LESS to be stronger.

And my office?  Now I hire Brooks once a year to keep me on track.

before...

                      after!

 WRITING WORKOUT
Are you stuck on a picture book, a short story or a poem?

Try this: cut out half the words.

Really.  Then tell us about it!

And finally, here's today's poem:

CLEANING OUT

by April Halprin Wayland

this big shirt  

used to fit

but today I swim around in it—

out go all my give-away clothes

now my closet opens wide

it's easy to find the clothes inside

hangers dangle

unoccupied

this old idea

used to fit

but today I reconsider it—

out goes what I used to know 

now my life is opened wide

it's clean-swept, wind-blown...simplified—

it's easy to find the me inside

poem and drawings (c) 2011 April Halprin Wayland (except the comic by Brooks Palmer)