Weekly News from Nerissa – Inspiration and Invitation

posted March 11, 2022

Hi Writers,

It’s a gorgeous 53° in Western MA, and the town just lifted its mask mandate. Lila and I are going to celebrate by taking Hudson for a walk, and then we’re going to join Tom and Johnny for Friday take-out and movie night. Any recommendations for movies/Netflix/must-see TV welcome! Below are this week’s prompts and wonderful things I came across recently. Enjoy!

Revision Retreat

In preparation for my upcoming One-Day Virtual Revision retreat, I wrote an essay on how Greta Gerwig handled the topic of revision in her brilliant adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. You can read it here.

Oh, wait, did you just say, “What Revision Retreat?” So glad you brought that up! On April 2, I’ll be holding a day-long Zoom Immersion focused on revising your writing. Participants will have a full day to focus on their projects, pausing for optional craft discussions and exercises.

Here are the details:

9am-6pm EST

Writing is Revision–this is gospel for all writers. We write a first draft to tell ourselves the story. We make it into art through thoughtful revision. But how? Join Nerissa for a day full of strategies, exercises, feedback and––best of all––time to write. We’ll ask ourselves the all-important questions central to every creative act: what is the story about? What am I trying to say? How can I say it more effectively?

You will:

-learn how to keep backstory from bogging down your plot.

– learn a barrelful of tricks to painlessly cut words. (What’s the single most reason “unknown” writers don’t get their work published? Word count.)

-turn clunky cringe scenes into your favorite passages yet.

Once you’ve signed up, you will receive the Zoom link. I will also send you the Immersion Questionnaire to get you thinking about your project, even if you’re just at the beginning stages. This tool will be for your own use, though you can certainly share it with me. What is your premise? What is motivating you to write? Who are you writing to? Which aspects need further developing, and which are just fine as they are, thank you very much? As you think about these questions, you’ll begin to get a sense of where to focus your attention for our day together.

The retreat will include brief craft talks and exercises, sharing of work and swaths of time to just write. We will gather several times in the day for discussion and fellowship. More Details here.

This Week’s Prompt and Finds:

Last week at church, before the moment of silence, Susan Riley opened the service with this poem [so i’ll write about it] by Ukrainian rock-star poet Serhiy Zhadan. It has stayed with me all week, as has the heaviness in my heart and the unbidden tears for Ukraine.

Other things I loved this week:

This great YouTube interview with Anthony Doerr about his masterpiece Cloud Cuckoo Land. Great stuff about structure and inspiration here.

This article from LitHub “12 Contemporary Writers on How They Revise,” since I have revision on the brain.

Weekly Groups

Start up the week of March 28. All groups will be (potentially) hybrid. That said, Zoom is here to stay, too. There are only two spots left:
Tuesdays for Songwriters only 7-9pm (one spot left)
Wednesdays 12:30-2:30 (one spot left)

Spring groups are scheduled to end the week of June 6. Soon after, we’ll have a group gathering and reading, either in person or on Zoom.

Tuition is $360, and you can go here to register. Please indicate which group you would like to join.

Substack App


You can now read Symbols & Cymbals: Nerissa’s Newsletter in the new Substack app for iPhone. Yippee, skippee!

Read Symbols & Cymbals: Nerissa’s Newsletter in the Substack app

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The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.

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