The Sole of the Writer: From Dani Greer

Dani Greer is a Story Circle member, co-mom of SCN's Lifewriters Group, and a founding member of the Blood-Red Pencil. When she isn’t
knitting, drawing, reading, or writing, she finds time to edit a couple of mystery
or history novels each month. She and her husband made a stunning (and much fought-over!) contribution to the Silent Auction at SCN's recent conference, Stories From the Heart V. In this post, "The Sole of the Writer," she tells us about it.

Recently, my husband and I collaborated on a silent auction contribution for the
Story Circle Network Conference held in Austin, Texas. We called it the Sole of
the Writer Sock Box and here’s a picture of it.

He carved the conference logo on a wooden box styled to look like an old library
card catalog, and lined the three compartments with aromatic cedar. Tabs on the
three divider cards had Dewey Decimal System numbers related to the three stages
of creating a book. What are the three stages, you might ask? Let me tell you my
thoughts as I knit the three pairs of socks that went into the box.

The
first stage in any writing project is getting the words down on paper, without
regard to form, grammar, punctuation, or anything your inner critic might find
to pick apart. This is where the writer dreams with reckless abandon – or in the
case of a memoir – remembers without reservation. The sock yarn I chose was a
bright multi-colored self-striping yarn, and though we don’t necessarily write
only happy, playful stories, the process itself should feel unfettered – like
child’s play, never knowing where exactly the story will lead. I call the socks
Beautiful Dreamers with a mantra knit into each stitch that said, “wake unto
me.”

The second major step in writing involves revising and editing. This
is where we examine the holes in our stories, and as editors, poke in a few more
before the author hunkers down to the business of repairing the flaws. I chose a
lace pattern for the socks, because it’s not my favorite sock to knit. In fact,
it can be downright frustrating, much as editing one’s own work can be
maddening. But even with a few mistakes when finished, the end result is usually
quite beautiful. The socks, of course, had to be red. What else for a queen of
editing?

Finally, and particularly in today’s publishing environment,
comes the third major component of the writing life – marketing. One cannot get
around it. If you’ve ever attended a writers conference, you’ll know what most
suitcases contain – dark mix-and-match basics that are wrinkle-free and can be
dressed up or down with ease. I thought about knitting socks in black or navy
wool, but then found a lovely dark money-green yarn with a few specks of color.
The color of money was just too hard to resist, and truly there is nothing wrong
with working a healthy payback into your writing equation. The mantra as I knit
these? Sell, Mel, Sell. Okay, maybe that could be more poetic. How about “I am a
money magnet”? No. Perhaps the words from Fiddler on the Roof: "If money is a
curse, may God smite me with it, and may I never recover!" Yes, now that has a
nice ring to it.

May whoever wears these socks enjoy all the joys
of the entire writing process including fame and fortune. What about you? Are
there any special talismans you wear in your writing life to give you that
little extra edge at every step?

Dani, thanks so much for allowing us to republish your post. It's a delight to read, and definitely too true. Joyce Spurgin won the socks, and has warm and beautiful feet! Generously, she gave the box to Peggy Moody.
 

A Circle: A Powerful, Magical Thing

Lisa Shirah-Hiers is the president of the Story Circle Network's board of directors. We loved her welcoming speech at Stories From the Heart V and asked her permission to share it with you. If you were at the conference, you will remember her talk with pleasure. If not, you're in for a treat. Lisa's comments reach into the heart of Story Circle. She's telling our story, the story of our unique and remarkable organization, and she understands exactly why it is so powerful. It's all about circles and stories, isn't it? Thank you, Lisa!

Ladies, look around you. Isn’t SCN is something special? If you have been to a
conference, or Writing from Life, or you’re in a circle, you already know that.
But if this is your first time, if you’ve been getting the journal but never
been to our events before, or if this conference is the first time you’ve had
any connection with SCN, I predict that you will simply be blown away by what we
are, by what we do. Because what we are—all of us in this room—is a circle. What
is a circle? Well, for one thing, it’s round. And round, it turns out, is very,
very strong.

In Tai Chi we round our arms because that way we can better
withstand an attack. If you lock your arm or your wrist when an opponent comes
at you, the bone will break. But a round arm absorbs the shock. I tell my little
piano students to keep their knuckles rounded when they strike the key, because
round is strong. A rounded finger can take the stress of pounding away for hours
a day on some of the smallest joints in the body.

The Romans understood
the strength of the circle when they discovered the arch. The curve of the arch
distributes the stress in a way that makes it better able to withstand the force
of gravity. So we see that roundness, the circle, is inherently strong.
A circle is also egalitarian. We circle around a campfire, because in
this way, we are all equidistant from the heat. If we “squared” around the fire,
the folks in the corners would be cold. King Arthur’s table was round so that
all the knights would have the same status, sharing the power and prestige
equally.

Circles are protective. The pioneers circled the wagons when
they were under attack, so they could keep the most vulnerable safe in the
middle, just as the womb encircles the unborn baby and keeps it safe and
protected.

The circle is feminine. Women understand it on a very deep
level. We gather, we encircle the one who is crying, the one who is ill, or
giving birth, or dying. We understand the power of the circle, of coming
together, the wisdom of sharing, the necessity of connection, the strength in
softness, in curves, in arches, in roundness. That deep, unconscious archetype
is part of our feminine heritage, our collective memory. It is the source of our
unique strength.

Perhaps for these reasons, the very idea of the story
circle resonates so deeply with every woman I’ve ever spoken to. For not only
circles but stories are our domain too. In the old wive’s tales, the fairy
stories collected by the brothers Grimm and others, the favorite family stories
about great uncle David and Oma’s oma’s oma, we hold the precious memory of the
ancestors, we hold the myths, both universal and particular, the truths that
make us who we are, that give each of our families it’s own history, its own
culture, and which, at the same time, unite us in a common bond of
understanding.

Drop a stone in the water, and the rings it gives birth
too will ripple outward far beyond your ability to see them. The Story Circle
Network is like that with every member like the stone that sets the water
quivering. We are a circle, we in this room, we members of SCN, and every woman
who has ever participated in anything we’ve ever done. We are a circle, where
stories are the arch that spans the distance between us. We are a circle which
gives equal honor to all, shares power and prestige and resources, allows each
member to reach the warm source of heat and life in the center. We are round and
we are strong. We are just what we say we are, a network, an interconnecting web
of relationship and memory. Every conference has been a circle of women, a
circle containing smaller, interconnecting circles. And every WFL, every
Lifelines retreat, every gathering of the SCN in every time, in every place. We
are each like the stone dropped in the pond, which sets the circles spinning,
rippling far beyond us, changing us, changing the world we live in. In the
safety of the circle we give birth to new words, new worlds, we give birth to
ourselves. For we are a circle, a Story Circle. And that is a powerful, magical
thing.

Lisa Shirah-Hiers (Austin, TX) has published numerous profile pieces for
austinwoman magazine, Austin Monthly, and the Story Circle Journal. Her essay
"Spinning Water into Gold" appeared in What Wildness is This: Women Write about
the Southwest and was reprinted in Desert Call Magazine. She is SCN's board president,
a circle facilitator, and frequent workshop presenter.