WRITE ON THE RIVER

by holly thorpe

Write on the River and NCW Libraries are partnering to host NaNoWriMo writing events and create a virtual support group this fall to celebrate NaNoWriMo and connect regional writers.

What is NaNoWriMo?

From nanowrimo.org, “National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand new novel. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.

NaNoWriMo officially became a nonprofit organization in 2006, and our programs support writing fluency and education. Our website hosts more than a million writers, serving as a social network with author profiles, personal project libraries, and writing buddies.”

NCW Writers Group is taking a flexible approach to NaNoWriMo this month. We encourage writers to set their own word goals outside of the traditional 50,000. Some examples include: • Shorten the word goal (10,000 or 25,000) • Write 1-3 short stories • Write 1-5 poems • Create a daily writing habit - focus on the act of writing every day rather than the words written • Use November to plot and plan a larger projects: develop characters, timelines, maps or do research • or whatever else helps you practice your craft!

This month, we will focus on the act of writing, not on the product. This means writers of all genres, forms and skill levels can participate. an inclusive Writers Group for writers of all ages, skill levels, genres and interests. The NCW Writers Group is a virtual writing community created by local writers, for local writers. This group is designed to connect people and artists, discuss the craft, ask for advice and share resources.

The meetings are hosted by Wenatchee librarian Nik Penny and Write on the River board member Holly Thorpe on Zoom. All NCW Libraries virtual events are free and open to the public. Find the Zoom link at ncwlibraries.org

This month, NCW writers are meeting an additional Wednesday on Nov. 17 to do a NaNoWriMo check in and word sprints.

Virtual chat room and check-ins

NCW Writers Group is excited to announce the creation of a Discord channel for local writers to keep tabs on their NaNoWriMo progress and stay in touch this November and beyond. Discord combines voice calls, video calls and private chats. It’s free to create an account and the channel will be managed by Nik and Holly. Join the channel using this link: https://discord.gg/9c2tyEgK2K

“Write with me” live streams

In addition to the Zoom meetings and Discord channels, NCW Writers Group will be hosting “Write with me” livestreams on the Discord channel and the Write on the River Facebook page. Here, Nik and Holly will stream their writing process and exercises, inviting questions, project updates and external motivation for others to write along with them. Stay tuned on the Write on the River Facebook page for more details.

Have questions about NCW Writers Group or other NaNoWriMo events? Contact Nik Penny at npenny@ncwlibraries.org.

To learn more about Write on the River, become a member, or register for events, visit writeontheriver.org. Membership is $35 per year, and offers free or discounted access to all WOTR events. Questions? Contact info@writeontheriver.org. C

croce plays croce: coming to moses lake

Jim Croce’s son A.J. Croce is keeping his late father’s music alive on the stages of the world with his “Croce Plays Croce” show which will be making a stop in Moses Lake this November, courtesy of Columbia Basin Allied Arts. The show will feature a mixture of Jim’s classics along with his son’s own original tunes.

A.J. Croce has always traveled on his own musical road. For more than twenty years, the creative pop iconoclast has tapped a variety of Americana sounds in crafting his music. Many of Croce’s albums have appeared on Top 40, AAA, Americana, College, and Blues charts and when his breakout sophomore CD That’s Me in the Bar was reissued, it wound up charting in two separate decades.

“Croce Plays Croce,” finds A.J. Croce performing his songs, his father’s tunes and music that influenced both of them.

A.J. was only two years old when Jim Croce died in a tragic airplane crash in 1973, so he didn’t know his father’s music firsthand. Instead, “I came to love it in the same way everyone else did,” he explained, “by listening to the albums.” While he describes his father’s music as “part of me, part of my life,” A.J. never really performed those songs live. As a piano player, his interests tended to favor the blues and jazz-rooted music of musicians like Ray Charles and Allen Toussaint.

A few years ago, however,’ A.J. was digitalizing some of his father’s old tapes and came across a cassette filled with covers of old blues and folk tunes by the likes of Fats Waller, Bessie Smith and Pink Anderson. It was a revelation to him. “He was playing stuff I played myself,” A.J. revealed, adding that “stuff made sense” discovering that his father and he had “all the music common.”

“If Elton John and Leon Russell had a spiritual younger brother, it would be A.J. Croce.” —American Songwriter

As he started to learn his father’s tunes, A.J. had to do it “the old fashion way, by listening to the recordings” because there were no chord books of Jim Croce music. A.J., who was developing his own guitar playing prowess, was particularly impressed with the complexities of his father’s compositions, especially in interplay between Croce and his longtime collaborator, lead guitarist Maury Muehleisen, who died with Croce in that fatal plane crash.

Jim Croce found long-overdue success in 1972 following years of struggling to make a name in the music business. That year he released two albums, You Don’t Mess Around With Jim and Life and Times, that spawned the hit singles “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim,” “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels),” “Time in a Bottle” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” (the latter two tunes both reached Number #1). His final studio effort, I’ve Got a Name, was released in December of 1973, less than three months after his death. Three more hits (“Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues,” “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song” and the title song) came from that album, which reached #2 in the album charts. A.J. pointed out that these three classic albums amazingly were recorded in just a oneand-a-half-year time period. Jim Croce, who was just thirty when he died, has had his folk-rock music remain popular over the years. His record sales have surpassed the 45 million mark, and his songs have appeared on over 375 compilations.

A.J.’s most recent release is an eclectic new covers album called By Request through Compass Records. Propelled by his spirited, loose-and-easy piano mastery and emotive vocals, Croce revisits these musical memories covering songs by artists including Allen Toussaint, Billy Preston, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Faces, Randy Newman and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

Croce Plays Croce

Friday, November 19 at 7pm Moses Lake High School Theater TIX: cba-arts.org

FIVE POEMS about WRITING

Book, Books, Books!

by Amos Russel Wells

Books, books, books, books! Stuff that is nothing but binding and looks, Guessing and gossiping books of the times, Volumes of poetry (better named rhymes), Volumes of humor terribly strained, “Practical” books from which nothing is gained, Essays regilding the gold of the past, Books of philosophy vacantly vast, Volumes of science revamping the old, Children’s books, anything that can be sold, Novels of incident, stagey, unreal, Novels of sentiment vaguely ideal, Novels historical, clumsy and crude, Novels of passion, the devil’s own food, Counters heaped high, enough books for a town. “Shop-worn,” “Remainders,” and “Volumes Marked Down.” “Fifty Cent Table,” and “Twenty-five,” “Ten,” “Bankrupt Stock” offered again and again, Books by the carload and books by the ton, Books that are “Having a Marvellous Run.” Books that are “Standard” and books “By the Set.” Volumes just published and books hard to get, “Five feet of books” and books by the mile, Volumes forbidding and books that beguile, Stuff that is nothing but binding and looks,— Books, books, books, books!

Merchantmen

by Ruby Archer

Come in my ships, my letters,— Kind the sky above,— On your full sails faring From the harbor—love. Ye bring me wine for cargo;— Bear it safe, I pray,— Words,—a common vintage, Finer with delay.

To A Blank Sheet of Paper

by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Wan-visaged thing! thy virgin leaf To me looks more than deadly pale, Unknowing what may stain thee yet,— A poem or a tale. Who can thy unborn meaning scan? Can Seer or Sibyl read thee now? No,— seek to trace the fate of man Writ on his infant brow. Love may light on thy snowy cheek, And shake his Eden-breathing plumes; Then shalt thou tell how Lelia smiles, Or Angelina blooms. Satire may lift his bearded lance, Forestalling Time’s slow-moving scythe, And, scattered on thy little field, Disjointed bards may writhe. Perchance a vision of the night, Some grizzled spectre, gaunt and thin, Or sheeted corpse, may stalk along, Or skeleton may grin! If it should be in pensive hour Some sorrow-moving theme I try, Ah, maiden, how thy tears will fall, For all I doom to die! But if in merry mood I touch Thy leaves, then shall the sight of thee Sow smiles as thick on rosy lips As ripples on the sea. The Weekly press shall gladly stoop To bind thee up among its sheaves; The Daily steal thy shining ore, To gild its leaden leaves. Thou hast no tongue, yet thou canst speak, Till distant shores shall hear the sound; Thou hast no life, yet thou canst breathe Fresh life on all around.

A Curl

by Kate Slaughter McKinney

To-night, as I turned back the pages Of a book Time had fingered before, And whose leaves held the odor of ages, And the imprints of much usage wore, A little brown curl I discovered, That fell from the book to the floor. Had I sinned? Heaven grant me its pardon. Did a lover’s sad tear the page spot? Who pressed there that gem of the garden— The sweet flower, “forget-me-not?” It lay as if carved on a grave-stone, And all of its sweetness forgot. I held the curl up to the lamplight, And watching the gleam of its gold, There I heard with the rush of the midnight, A sad little story it told; But I promised the sacred old volume Its secret I would not unfold. But I would that the world knew its sorrow, The story I must not reveal; But go to your book case to-morrow. And each to your own heart appeal; And you’ll know why the tattered old volume The little curl tries to conceal.

Seed Thoughts

by Kate Louise Wheeler

The celebrated Author pens His thorough thoughts from depths of mind, And they are not in proper place Until the depths of our’s they find. The wisest reader may perceive, In writings that shall ever live, A reflex of his own wise thoughts That to the world he did not give; But to the mind of him who learns, They are as seeds of knowledge brought That soon take root and rarefy Into a whole great field of thought.