“Let me think clearly and brightly,” Sylvia Plath once wrote in her journal. “Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.” Turning grief into art has made me a much better and more recognized writer. In just the last three years I've had four poetry chapbooks published and I continue to write a poem and a journal entry every day. Here is why it is so important to me. Turning Grief into Art I was 59 years old when my son, suffering with bipolar disorder, took his own life. Following an aftermath filled with guilt and grief, I made the decision to come out of that experience alive, whole, and productive. Instead of doing the expected: getting a divorce, having a breakdown or an affair with a beautiful younger man, becoming an alcoholic, or going into years of therapy, I chose to live and take care of myself as a woman, writer, wife, and mother. The Essential Truth I Discovered The truth is I was able to survive this tragedy. Even though the effects of my son’s … [Read more...]
A little reminder
I think it's time to remind my readers that I have written a few books besides all this blog stuff. Here's some information about a couple of them: Papa's Shoes: A Polish shoemaker and his family settle in small-town America - an award winning historical novel published in April 2019. Here's a few comments about this five-star rated book. "From an insightful storyteller, Papa's Shoes, is a heartwarming story of courage and love. Author Madeline Sharples has created an epic journey with intriguing twists and surprises along the way. From days of old in Poland to cultural and economic realities in America, this is an awe-inspiring novel about families, generational history, and the incredible power of change. You truly won't want to put it down!" --D.A. Hickman, author of Ancients of the Earth: Poems of Time "Author Madeline Sharples tells the intimate story of an American family, of immigration, tragedy, renewal, and love with grace and the delicate touch of a poet. There's a raw … [Read more...]
Introducing “Moving On”
My new poetry chapbook, called Moving On, published on January 30, 2021, arrived in my mail box this week. Here it is: It's kind of cool how this book came about. I wasn't looking for a publisher. In fact that was the last thing on my mind while my husband was so ill and since his death. Instead the publisher - Cyberwit.net - from India - sought me out. He had read one of my poems in a Story Circle Network journal in the True Words section and offered to publish sixty to seventy of my poems in a chapbook. How could I turn that down? Because of what was happening in my life I took longer that he wanted to get the poems together, edit them, and send them off, but finally I did it. I love this description of Moving On: "The poems are full of lyrical force and show freshness of style. No doubt, this is a significant work. The poems have great power of observation and originality of imagination." Here's a little sneak peek: Buddha “The dead we can imagine to be … [Read more...]
Three new published poems!
I'm very proud to let you know I have three poems in this new anthology that just came out from the Story Circle Network. Living on COVID Time: Sharing Stories, Sharing Lives in Prose and Poetry from Story Circle Network (Real Women Write) Paperback - January 3, 2021 by Story Circle Network(Author), Susan F. Schoch(Editor), Brooke Warner(Foreword) As its Amazon page says: Real Women Write: Living on COVID Time is Volume 19 of this annual anthology of prose and poetry by members of Story Circle Network, an organization supporting women writers and asserting the importance of women’s stories. But it is a volume unlike any other. The 52 authors of the 80 pieces in this collection were writing in response to an unprecedented global pandemic. The virus spread through a year filled with many other profound challenges and changes, while these women were writing about their lives, engaging with experiences and emotions that were uniquely their own. These selections capture … [Read more...]
A terrific voting poem
I took writing classes from Jack Grapes for many years. I wrote much of my memoir Leaving the Hall Light On there. And still I go to an occasional workshop or poetry refresher. Jack has always been my favorite writing instructor. And he is a wonderful writer and actor as well. I received the following poem in an email the other day and feel it's very much worth sharing with my readers here. It validates the importance of voting and now that we finally know the results, it confirms how voting is a power we must not throw away. I voted. I hope all of you did too. Hopefully you feel as happy with the presidential election results as I do. Here's Jack. Lori and I voted yesterday. We got to our local polling place at 9am, an hour before they opened. That great art-deco building, the Saban Theater, on Wilshire Blvd. Got a parking spot directly in FRONT of the place. Sacre Bleau! We expected long lines. Except for the guy taping up voting directions and an American flag, … [Read more...]
I love romantic poetry. Don’t you?
Choices is so pleased to host the poet, Valerie Nifora. Her book of romantic poetry, I Asked the Wind, is her first published book, and it comes highly recommended as you can see below. Thank you WOW! Women On Writing for arranging for Valerie Nifora to visit Choices while on her virtual book tour - you must have known we love to read and write poetry as well. Love, the major theme in Valerie's poetry, is also a major theme in her life. Her guest post today shares her thoughts about what her children taught her about love. Yes, it's a miracle indeed. What My Children Taught Me About Love by Valerie Nifora When my first son was born, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Motherhood was not something that I ever thought I would tackle. What I learned in the sleepless nights, skinned knees, fevers and hospital visits, was that I love my sons in a way that I never thought possible. What my children have taught me about love, is it is limitless. It’s amazing how being … [Read more...]
Where did I go?
I apologize for my long absence from here. I spent from December 8 to January 9 working on five proposals over at the aerospace company I retired from in 2010. I've done a few gigs there before, but this one was especially grueling such that it gave me little time for myself, let alone to pursue any of my usual writing and reading projects. My new memoir sat dormant, my reading was almost nil - though I finally finished Toni Morrison's Sula in the first week of January. It literally took me over four weeks to read about one hundred and fifty pages. Also, I didn't write any poetry or my favorite small stones (little two-three line observations). And, needless to say, my review of my friend's six hundred page book stopped cold in its tracks. Even my daily gym workouts had to be curtailed. Though I thought I'd start right up again this past Friday - my first day off - I could barely keep my eyes open to do anything. All I wanted to do all day was sleep, and so I did. I also slept … [Read more...]
Poem a day samples
I've been starting my writing day off by writing to the Writer's Digest November Poem A Day Chapbook Challenge daily prompt. I've found it's a great way to jump-start the rest of my writing for the day. As usual I don't find writing the response very hard. But I've always written my poems rather quickly. That doesn't mean I don't go back to reread and edit them. I just put down the draft quickly. I also like trying to figure out how to respond to some very quirky prompts. Another thing I do before I begin my own writing is read the Writer's Digest poetry editor, Robert Lee Brewer's, poem to his own prompt. They are definitely worth taking a look at - some of his poems are a little quirky too. With him, almost anything goes. And since you haven't joined me in the challenge , I'll bring a few prompts to you. Although I won't publish my entire poem results from these prompts, I've share a few lines. That's in case I want to submit them elsewhere that won't consider a poem … [Read more...]
Why I Write and What I Write
I wrote the article below for the Southern Writer’s Magazine’s Blog a few months ago. It is still very relevant now. Why I Write and What I Write At this point in my life by all rights I should be retired. I’ve just turned seventy-nine, and no where does it say I need to keep sitting at my computer every day and write. But I do sit there – usually from ten in the morning until about two in the afternoon. Sometimes I’ll even go back for more later in the day. I got into this habit in the early 2000s when I started writing my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On (Dream of Things). That expanded to writing poetry, essays for my blog and other people’s websites, and journaling. By the time my memoir was published in 2011, I was already working on my historical novel, Papa’s Shoes, which has just been released by Aberdeen Bay publishers. And that’s not the end of it. I still write poetry – I write at least one poem a week except in November and April when I write a poem a day to … [Read more...]
My reinvention story
How I reinvented myself from a technical writer and editor to a creative writer – and at my age I fell in love with poetry and creative writing in grade school. I studied journalism in high school and college and wrote for the high school newspaper. I graduated from UCLA with a degree in English and had no idea what I would do professionally with it. I had wanted to work as a journalist and actually completed all the course work for a degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin. But family illness caused me to transfer to UCLA for my senior year, and UCLA didn’t offer a BA degree in journalism. So I was stuck in a city I didn’t know and where I hardly knew anyone, trying valiantly and unsuccessfully early on to get a writing job. Then I gave up. It was 1962. There were not a lot of jobs for women writers in those days, especially in Los Angeles. Then someone suggested I try the growing aerospace business in southern California. With that, I called Douglas … [Read more...]
What are you reading?
I've learned over the years how important reading is to writers. I feel I can always learn something from another author - even if I don't particularly like his or her book. So I try to keep reading and competing in the Goodreads yearly book challenge helps. Last year I committed to reading twenty-five books - yes, I know that's not a very big number, but it was plenty big for me. Even so, I overshot my goal and read twenty-eight last year. This year I've committed to reading another twenty-five books, and I've already finished my first and I'm well into my second. I'll be reviewing my first book of 2019 here on January twenty-fourth when I host the author while she's on her WOW! Women On Writing virtual book tour. As you will see from that list of books I read in 2018, I'm a very eclectic reader. I even mixed in a few politically themed books and included some poetry volumes. By far my favorite book of the whole year is Michelle Obama's Becoming. It is so … [Read more...]
Poems for the new year 2019
I have Michael Schaub of the Los Angeles Times to thank for this New Year's Day post. He's picked some wonderful words to greet the new year from five favorite poets. I'm especially taken by his choosing the words of Naomi Shihab Nye and Dorianne Laux. I've worked with both of them in poetry workshops and consider them my mentors. Five hopeful poems to usher in the new year By MICHAEL SCHAUB DEC 31, 2018 | 11:50 AM Filipino revelers watch as fireworks light up the sky to welcome the new year at the seaside Mall of Asia in suburban Pasay city south of Manila in 2017. (Bullit Marquez / Associated Press) Even if you're one of the nine or so people in the world who actually understand what "Auld Lang Syne" means, you have to admit that Robert Burns' traditional New Year's poem is getting a little old. Luckily, there are other poems you can use to pay tribute to the year that's gone by and celebrate the potential of the one to … [Read more...]
Writing memoir helped me deal with grief
As I am inching toward December 31, which would be my son Paul’s forty-seventh birthday, I think it makes sense to revisit some of the tools I used in dealing with the grief I felt after his death and still feel now. Memoir writing and writing in general were/are a huge help. Maybe that’s why I’ve turned to memoir again. I’m almost twenty thousand words along on a new one; however it’s not about Paul, as my memoir, published in 2011, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide, is. Here’s a piece I wrote early on about how writing memoir, journal entries, and poetry all worked for me. In fact, everything I wrote in the piece below still applies today. How Memoir Writing Helped Me Deal with Grief I signed up for a writing class three months after my son Paul’s death. We sat in the instructor’s living room on couches and big easy chairs in a comfortable and forgiving atmosphere. Each week the instructor told us … [Read more...]
Poetry writing in Santa Cruz
I just spent five days in Santa Cruz, CA at a poetry workshop held at 1440 Multiversity. The instructors were one of favorite poets, Sharon Olds, and a poet I wasn't familiar with before, Naomi Shihab Nye. The entire experience was great. Last year four of us - Linda, Stacy, Maria and myself - worked together at a poetry workshop led by Ellen Bass at Esalen in Big Sur, CA. So we decided to meet up last week at 1440. Although twenty-six other poets were with us lapping up the wisdom of Sharon and Naomi, we four spent some wonderful time together. Here are some pictures. And no, I won't be sharing any of the seven poems I wrote while I was there yet. I want to see if I can get any of them published first. … [Read more...]
Welcome! Mary Maurice, author of the Suicide Letters of Jack Monroe
Choices is very pleased to have Mary Maurice visit while she's on her WOW! Women on Writing virtual book tour of The Suicide Letters of Jack Monroe. She has also given us her thoughts about the failing use of the word, Please - a word that has always been well-used in my family - along with its companions, Thank You. At least Ms. Maurice has a sense of humor about it. Here are her thoughts! PLEASE, WHERE ARE YOU? by Mary Maurice Has anyone seen, Please? You know, to please or not to please, that is the question. Whether it is pleasurable to please, or polite to say please, is becoming a mystery to people, at least that what it seems to me as I pace through this unconscious society. Just another word that’s lost its meaning and status in our vocabulary. I can still hear Mom saying. “What’s the magic word?” Or maybe it’s what the techno world is turning humans into. Rude, insensitive, self-indulged individuals, who think because they have the world at their fingertips, as they … [Read more...]
My thoughts about the film The Wife (spoiler alert!)
The new film, The Wife, with Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce, brought up a lot of memories of my writing career. Early on in her studies, Joan Castleman, the character Glenn Close plays in the film, was told she could get nowhere as a female author. It was the year 1958 – the same year I started college as a journalism major. Castleman, already recognized for her writing skills, says she couldn’t live without writing. I too was hell-bent on having a career in writing though I was discouraged as well. My father made it clear I should study to be a teacher – after all that’s what girls in my generation did – or skip college altogether and become a secretary. Of course, the Castleman character in the movie and I were on totally different paths in our writing. My forte was journalism; hers was fiction. I persisted and got a job right after graduating from college at a fashion trade magazine, which I quit after three weeks because my male boss verbally abused and harassed me. A … [Read more...]
What’s next to write?
Now that my novel is going through a final professional edit and hopefully getting ready to shop around. I’ve been thinking about what’s next for my writing life. For a long time, I’ve thought that there isn’t another book in me, but now I’m not so sure. Could I write another memoir? I’m at that stage in my life when I have almost all of it to look back on, so I could write a memoir from an old wise woman’s approach to turning eighty. I could write about the secrets of staying married to the same man for over forty-eight years and living in the same house for thirty-nine years. Really where have all those years gone? And really that brings up another big question – how much time do my husband and I have left anyway, and what are we doing to prepare for our last years? Or better yet, how we’re handling our lives right now as we age – at different paces. Yes, another memoir or even two are a real possibility. The options are endless: how we're still working at surviving the loss of … [Read more...]
Got poem?
It's been a while since I've shared some of my poetry with you. The following pieces have been published in the Story Circle Network's True Words section of their quarterly journal. I've had a wonderful response to my poems from Story Circle, certainly motivating me to keep submitting. And, as I've said before, I'll only post poems here that have been already published so as not to lose an opportunity to get any unpublished ones accepted. So many contests and journals won't accept poems if they have been published elsewhere - even on a personal blog like this. I hope you enjoy these four: Nadia We sat across the table covered with a crisp white cloth. Her face glowed in the light, her radiant smile punctuated by deep, long dimples in each cheek. Simply dressed in black slacks and a white sweater she looked comfortable in her own skin. She spoke confidently in English. And, when speaking her native Italian, she spoke slowly so we could understand her words. At … [Read more...]
What’s next in my writing life
Since I’ve finished – at least in my estimation– revision ten of my novel, it’s on hold. I want to hire a professional editor it go through it, but I haven’t made that happen yet. I’ve asked a young woman who worked with me on my memoir, but her life is so busy with children, she hasn’t given me a yes or no yet. I’ll wait another week or two and then go on to Plan B. In the meantime, I’ve gone back to writing small stones – I’ll post a couple that I’ve written this month below And I’m working on my poetry. I completed the April poem a day challenge put out by Robert Lee Brewer over at Writer’s Digest. I also write to his weekly Wednesday prompts. And this not usual for me – I’m editing some of my existing poems, getting them ready for submittal. (I’ve heard somewhere that if we haven’t received at least 100 rejections in a year, we haven’t submitted enough. That I’m editing poems is the unusual part for me. I usually write them, and then only with quick word or two changes … [Read more...]
Can grief be contagious?
I met Martha Clark Scala at one of the first Esalen Institute workshops I took after our son died by suicide. And it was in that workshop where I found my voice in poetry. "Aftermath," the simple poem I wrote resonated such with Martha, that she wrote the following piece about her brother's death. The poem and the article both appeared first in the Summer 2001 issue of "We Need Not Walk Alone," published by The Compassionate Friends, an organization that provides friendship, understanding, and hope to those going through the natural grieving process. Martha and I have been friends ever since. I’m Not Contagious By Martha Clark Scala In the two or three weeks immediately following my brother Nick’s death, I received numerous calls, cards, plants, flowers, and offers of help. My loss sat on the front burner of many wonderful people’s stoves for about 21 days. I was in their thoughts, prayers, and blessings. Unfortunately, many issues and events vie for front-burner … [Read more...]
