Weekly Wide-Awake #38

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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Words. New Years. Rainbows.

Living the Comma #10

Words. Letters. Resolutions.

Dear Writer Friends,

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language/ And next year’s words await another voice.” ― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

I have chosen words of the year for many years. Each year, I look within and think about my I am, my why, my not yet, my joy, my light, my fire. My words do not necessarily represent another voice, but rather the voice I am excavating, finding, and learning. The trembling voice that speaks truth. The expansive voice that holds it all. The still small voice that knows.

Selecting a Word of the Year is related to making a resolution. Let me explain. Last year’s language folds into this year’s language as wisdom and understanding. Last year’s language — words taken together — becomes today’s vision. Last year’s language becomes today’s words rooted in love. As this year that often felt like an ocean wave crashing, I listen for another voice that continues to emerge.

Having talked about my love of Holiday Letters — knowing many of my past Words of the Year have come from past Holiday Letters, and the reflection that takes place as part of the writing process — I want to share our 2025 Holiday Letter.

Our next face-to-face writing session will be this Sunday, January 4th. To virtually connect with the group, use this link — https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85095318186.

This week’s prompt, 11 Days of Questions from Jane Ratcliffe’s newsletter Beyond — a joyous approach to reflection and resolution. Naomi Shahib-Nye’s Burning the Old Year— a beautiful look at what makes up our years. Zadie Smith explains, in her essay, “That Crafty Feeling,”

Reading about craft is like listening to yourself breathe. Writing about craft prompts a self–consciousness so acute one forgets how to exhale altogether.

The more I write, the more I relate to the breath of it all.

Surrounding the New Year in everything calm and bright.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

Read the entire post here.

MONDAYS ARE FREE EXERCISES 146—150

Facts. Dedications. Acknowledgements. Browsing. Corrections.

EXERCISE 148: WRITE AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PAGE

who people thank, and how people thank

It’s not uncommon when first opening a book of poems or essays to flip first to the acknowledgments page, for reasons about which we could all speculate, but I suspect at least one of those reasons (or maybe this is two of those reasons) is that we love to know who people thank, and how people thank. Today, we’re going to write an acknowledgments page, which you might think of as for a book of poems or essays or stories, though you also might write an acknowledgements page that is general, roving, speculative, etc. Check out Danez Smith’s poem “acknowledgments.”

On Winning the MacArthur

Say I won the MacArthur. I am standing on the stage at an event where each MacArthur winner for that year gives a speech. I would start by thanking the Foundation for the award. I would thank the other award winners — past, present, and future — for their work and for their commitment to sharing their genius with the world. Because genius — what makes us each flesh and bone miracles — must be shared. Our lights must shine so all lights can shine.

I would then break it down to my personal genius journey (which will hopefully further make the point that genius must be lived and shared). I would thank my parents for teaching me to love words and people and service. I would thank my husband for the space to imagine and write and explore. I would thank every experience, even and especially the failures of which there have been many. Success and failure, the chewing and digesting of it all, is part of what it means to share our genius, to build meaning, to find our words, and do the work.

I have been fascinated for a long time with desire paths. I would acknowledge desire paths and the way life falls apart and back together. Many roads develop from desire paths that are worn one step at a time. In that way, desire paths are genius, like tides and constellations and seasons.

I would then speak the names of those on whose shoulders I stand — the artists, writers, musicians, philosophers, theologians, teachers, students, and mentors who have shaped my capacity to look at the world and know in my bones the work that I must do. I would speak the names as a prayer for the as if and the not yet.

I would end with an invitation. I would invite everyone present to take a moment, shut their eyes, and softly speak the words “I am a genius” three times. As those words flash across the mind’s eye, as we briefly walk through our genius journeys in the time it takes to blink, the spirit and promise of the award lives a little more concretely. We begin to share our genius.

Read entire post here.