Been a while, hasn’t it?

This spring I got to live a writer’s dream - 2 months in Paris. With a little luck and a lot of Craigslisting, I found my dream pad, a fully furnished apartment in the heart of the Left Bank student district. Even though I was working full-time while I was there, there was plenty of time to indulge in the city’s art and food scene, and of course write.

One of the huge highlights of my trip was being invited to guest teach at Anna Pook’s writing workshop at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, the heart of the city’s English-language lit scene. Even though the current store isn’t at the same location as Sylvia’s shop where Hemingway, Joyce, and the rest of the jazz-era writing crowd hung out, it retains the analogue feel of another time, and as ever there are writers and working living there.

We put on the workshop in one of the upstairs rooms, which is about the size of a large suburban bathroom. In the European tradition of limited personally space, there were fifteen of us that night. The writers came from all over - England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and America. From serious students of the craft to travelers who wanted to try something new. It reminded me of a Creative Cusp workshop, just a little more intimate. The workshop was a blast, and I think most of the attendees had a good time and learned a little about writing dialogue.

Speaking of Write on the Cusp: Abbie and I are putting on the next installment of our Write on the Cusp workshops this weekend, July 11 and 12. If you’re a writer in San Diego looking for help with your writing, new ideas on how to approach the craft, or just a space to be inspired and share your triumphs and struggles with your fellow writers, I hope you’ll join us at the beach for two days of learning, sharing, writing and fun.

Abbie tells me that Jenny will be joining us on Sunday. Jenny was a Guest Writer at several of our workshops in the last year. She’s got a big personality that I adore, and she’s smart as hell too. And she will get you writing poetry. If you’re a poet, or better yet if you’re a fiction writer who gets a little nervous over writing poetry, you’re going to get a lot out of The Jenny Show.

You can email me for more details on the workshop, or visit our website. Hope to see you Saturday!

- Jon O

Jon Oropeza had been a Guest Writer at Creative Cusp Workshops since summer 2008. He’s a San Diego writer and entrepreneur, and enjoys siren songs, winter recess, and cooking in the nude - sometimes all at the same time.

Are you contemplating writing something new?

Have you been strengthening your writing muscle and you’re ready to show off your talent?

Are you trying to write, but you’re not sure where to start?

Do you wish you knew other writers you could collaborate and share ideas with?

Well, we have the perfect weekend for you.

Our next Creative Cusp workshop will take place July 11 & 12. We have two entertaining, inspiring, prompt-filled days planned for you. Jon Oropeza and Jenny Minnitti-Shippey will be joining me in leading the weekend’s exercises. Our exercises will be aimed at getting started and providing inspiration, making them appropriate for writers of any level.

The workshop will be held outside in the Ocean Beach summer sunshine. Additional information can be found here, or you can email me at creativecusp@gmail.com.

Scholarships are available.

I’m excited to write with Jenny and Jon and to meet all of you!

We’re back! Hope everyone had a good holiday season. I sure did - lots of relaxation, a few presents, some time hiding under the covers from our six-week winter, and more than my share of eggnog cocktails.

Now it’s back to work. Our first Write On The Cusp workshop of 2009 is on the second weekend in February - that’s less than two weeks away!

The lineup

In keeping with the spirit of the new year, the units I’ll be teaching will center around new beginnings. In one exercise, we’ll study the opening moves of various authors and how they succeed in hooking their readers from word-one. Another exercise will involve a new technique I’ve developed to start writing no matter what.

Abbie always surprises me with something that gets me thinking about fiction in a new way. She hasn’t told me what she’s going to teach yet, but I’m sure I’ll learn more than a few things. She has a serious knack for getting right to the heart of an idea or sentiment, and showing others how to do the same in their work.

Making a return to Write on the Cusp this time around will be Jenny Minniti-Shippey. If you’re poet, you don’t want to miss her fun, insightful exercises. If poetry scares you, you really don’t want to miss Jenny - what better way to start the new year than by charging your fears head-on? When Jenny taught with us last summer, I left with a number of new ideas that led me in directions I’d never been. She’ll be teaching with us on Sunday the 8th - I have it circled on my calendar as “Jenny teaches me to be a better poet.”

I hope you’ll join us in February. And because you’re a friend, we have a 25% discount for ya. How’s that for a New Year’s present?

See you soon,

- Jon O

Jon Oropeza is a co-founder of The Creative Cusp. When he’s not hiding under the covers or tapping code, he can be found scribbling poems in our city’s libraries and cafes.

Our Write on the Cusp weekend workshops are all about exercises, ideas and inspiration. We focus on building confidence and getting you writing through new approaches to telling stories and describing the world.

FC2’s Writer’s Edge takes another approach to writing workshops. Their seminar-style programs feature workshops and panels on innovative fiction, a faculty reading, open mics for participants, and myriad conversations about experimental prose.

This year, the FC2 Writer’s Edge will be held in conjunction with the American Book Review (ABR) Writer’s Conference, held March 16-18, 2009.  The deadline for applications for the fourth annual Fiction Collective 2 (FC2) Writer’s Edge Workshops, held March 19-21, 2009, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, at the Universidad International, is January 21, 2009.

Official FC2 site

I attended this seminar in 2006 and 2007 in Portland, OR and I highly recommend the experience.

Write on!

Abbie

Abbie loves San Diego as much as she loves Peanut Butter.  Do you?

I’ve anticipated each Write on the Cusp more than the last one. It’s not just the opportunity to teach, as big a joy as that is. It’s the opportunity to learn. It amazes me how I’ve been able to evolve my own prose and verse styles using the lessons I’ve learned from some of San Diego’s most exciting writers.

This next workshop coming up on November 15-16 has me giddy already. Saturday we’re doing our very first Rock on the Cusp, a songwriting workshop taught by Bobby Shaddox of the San Diego bands Bobby Fantasy and Billy Midnight.

I saw Bobby Fantasy for the first time a few months back at The Stage downtown. They rock. People show up, they dance, they drink , they shout at the band. It’s like a throw-back to dance hall days, only the sound is modern, and the lyrics are insightful - Let’s change things. Move in a new direction. Question the old ways, because we should, because it’s our duty as thinking people.

The other night I had a chance to spend some time with Bobby for the first time over coffee at Rebecca’s in South Park. He’s a total character. One of those guys you want to follow around, just to see what he’ll do next. He’s also put together a great lesson plan for Rock on the Cusp: A little background and history of rock to start us off, then a flurry of fast-moving exercises that are going to be a blast.

Me, I’ve never written a song before. I’m a total newb. But I’m ready. I want to write a Pulp song, something witty and scathing and romantic as hell, a Pink Glove or an Underwear. I want to write something Frank Black would be proud of, irreverent lines that sum up to something totally apart from their parts. I want to write my own Judy is a Punk. My own Tango Til They’re Sore. My own Stacy’s Mom.

I’m looking forward to Sunday as well. Sunday will be a fiction and poetry oriented Write on the Cusp day. As I’ve written before, I didn’t believe in writing workshops for a long time. But I’ve seen the effect that collaborating with others has on my own words. And I can’t wait for this one.

I hope you’ll be there too. Sign up here. Quick, before we fill up…

Jon Oropeza is a San Diego writer, a co-founder of the Creative Cusp, and man enough to cop to weeping like a wee lad during Barack’s acceptance speech.

Cusp Writers:

Here’s a writing exercise for you. Collaborate with another writer. Write a paragraph about anything and email it to the other person. He/She adds a paragraph and they may edit your work any way they wish as well. Then its your turn again. Go back and forth a minimum of three times. If you don’t have a writer to collaborate with, write to us and we’ll pair you up with someone.

Here’s what happened when Jon and I tried this exercise:

Last night I dreamt about the faceless girl again. The cold bench on the perimeter of the park. I imagined the blue speck in her left brown eye. She was mute but I could hear every word she was trying to tell me. I said her name out loud but it sounded off somehow, so I said it again.

Where you been?

She wanted to know.

She meant it as more of a challenge than a question, but I chose to pretend.

“Everywhere,” I answered. “Everywhere I always told you I was going. Thailand. Paris. San Francisco. That café–”

You and your head again.

She wanted to tell me.

“Alright, little girl,” I said, figuring I’d had this dream enough times, might as well take a new tack tonight. “Why don’t you tell me? Where have you been?”

I knew that she had been absolutely nowhere at all but I had to ask. This was my chance to hear her answer. Ready or not and then the vomiting of a list:

To Singapore. The coffee shop down the street from Mom’s house and that small beat-up car he used to park in the same spot every second Tuesday of the month. Don’t forget the shower. Your shower and the one at the YMCA. I told you already that I went to see where the men sit in the rain where they watch for the birds, the airplanes and for God to suddenly appear. I’ve been there too of course but you knew that. The bus. The train station. The golf course and to the abandoned building on Third.

That was the point at which she paused.

“And?”

No, the building wasn’t abandoned. Not anymore.

This was something new. Novel. She was a liar but she was a consistent one, and she never went back on anything or corrected herself or moved in any direction but forward.

The building on Third Avenue. The one with the interesting facade. Gothic. She knew I knew the one. I nodded. Not abandoned anymore.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “That dump’s been empty for years. Who would live there? Who could live there?”

She smiled that smile that was a smile only in my mind, because as always she was faceless, but what a smile, shining like a spotlight on our corner of the park.

- Abbie

Abbie Berry writes fiction, as well as teaching and coaching other writers. She currently enjoys broadening her perspective, watching others live and love and writes it all down in Golden Hill.

What an experience!

The September Creative Cusp Workshop was everything we hoped it would be. I was going to type up a recap of the weekend, but Crystal, one of our participating writers, sent me this email that so wonderfully described the weekend, I just had to ask her if we could post it. She said yes, and here it is, in Crystal’s words, last weekend’s workshop:

Before attending Creative Cusp in September, I had never been to a writing workshop or taken a creative writing course. I was late to the first workshop considering the fear had of being asked to read my words in front of others. Relief came when I realized that not only were the Creative Cusp co-founders, Abbie and Jon, working on the exercises with us, they were generous enough to share their writing during each exercise. And while it was evident that they are experienced writers and secure in their respective written voices, they were both very supportive as I and other aspiring writers in my group stumbled through some of the exercises.

It was both a challenge and a pleasant surprise to see how each writer could take the same exercise and give it their own unique twist in such a short amount of time.The background of the Creative Cusp participants were broad and reflective of San Diego proper:

1. an energetic linguistics major who told a story from the point of view of a computer
2. an engineer who engineered to support his wanderlust and long term, long distance relationship in East Central Europe
3. a mother of two hoping for three who was in the latter stages of a romantic novel
4. to a man that shed pounds alongside a twenty year career in the business of food to pursue acting and explore the written word and
5. myself, a former social worker now working on a short film that is essentially a dark love story about clowns.

In Ocean Beach, we sat on the outskirts of a lively soccer game and questionable canine training but one thing was clear by the end of the workshop. There are many angles to code a piece of writing. We explored a number of angles but standout moments were when Abbie lead our tour through voice, the possibilities of writing in first, second and third person and gave us the opportunity to use words and lists to navigate our fears. Jon used introspective and extraspective tactics along with poetic devices to investigate a muse of our choosing. On the last day, I had the chance to weave a piece of flash fiction from guest writer Joe’s prompt: impotent man on 50th wedding anniversary and puppy.

As an aspiring filmmaker, I originally wanted to participate in the Creative Cusp workshop so that I could write stronger storylines for my films. After the workshop, I’ve realized that I want to write stories that also stand alone. The generous support of Abbie and Jon and the other writers at the workshop encouraged me to feel more confident about doing so. I asked Abbie what it was that prompted her and Jon to start Creative Cusp and she said it was her dream. One thing about living your dream is that it inspires others to do the same.

Thank you Crystal for the wonderful words, and thank you to all of the writers who joined us. We hope you’ll join us November 15 & 16 for our next workshop weekend.

Abbie

Abbie Berry is the founder of The Creative Cusp. She writes short fiction as well as teaching and coaching other writers. She lives on, loves on and loves Golden Hill.

That’s what I used to think anyway. Bull-shit. Or, to put it another way, oysters don’t learn to make pearls by attending workshops. I read that somewhere, and it became my off-the-cuff rejection to anyone offering a conference, a workshop, a meetup, a readup, a writeup, or any other event where writers got together to, well, get together.

If you’ve followed our fledgling adventures here, you’ve doubtlessly noticed that there’s two halves to the Creative Cusp: La Chingadera, which is our forthcoming publication featuring literature and art directed to a San Diego audience, and Write on the Cusp, our weekend writing workshops. Abbie and I work together on both halves, but the publication is my baby, and the workshop is hers.

“You’re teaching at our workshops, did I tell you that?” she asked/told me in one of our first meetings.

“Of course…” I said, in my usual cocky way, actually thinking something closer to, “Oh sh!t!”

Teaching! Not that I didn’t have experience teaching - I’ve been mentoring and teaching in the IT industry for close to ten years now. It’s a good part of my day job. But I’d never even been to a writing workshop, and I didn’t even know if I believed in them, and now I was being asked by my new business partner to teach at one.

When our inaugural weekend workshop came in June. I was both excited and nervous. Excited about bringing to other writers some of the hard lessons I’ve learned in 10+ years as a self-taught writer, but nervous too.  Would any of the attendees get anything out of it? Or, would it be one of those things where everyone has fun, but in the end we all shrug our shoulders and go, oh well, whatever?

I can’t speak for the other attendees, but I left that first workshop quite humbled. What I’d thought might be a waste of time turned out to be two of the most valuable days in my writing career. What I’d assumed would be soft, pointless exercises turned out to be loaded with insights and little ah-ha moments. What I’d scoffed at before - being part of a community of writers - suddenly made sense.

Maybe best of all, when I went back to work on Monday editing A Story About San Diego, I found I had new ways of looking at and attacking my prose. Anyone who’s tried to edit a novel knows the value of a new point of view - you get so far into the bush that you start to lose sight of the trees, let alone the forest, right? Suddenly I could see the whole thing again, from a new perspective. Was it one of the lessons I learned? Was it the sum of them? It was hard to say.

But the big lesson was this: Writing workshops, contrary to everything I said about them for years, aren’t bullshit after all, or at least not necessarily. Actually they can be pretty damn useful. I know I’m pimping my own show here, but I believe in it, and I hope you’ll come see for yourself what a writing workshop can do for your work.

Our next Write on the Cusp is September 13-14. Joe Kane is coming back as a guest writer - he’s a local  teacher and fiction writer with a Cleveland attitude. Abbie will be bringing us her insights and I’ll be sharing some more of those hard lessons. You can signup here.

- Jon Oropeza is a local writer, an enthusiast of San Diego fiction and a Co-Founder of The Creative Cusp.

Here’s an idea we want to run by you, our growing community of San Diego writers (thank you for joining us!) -

Have you ever wanted to write a song with an experienced songwriter? This might be your chance.

Rock On The Cusp will be a one day Creative Cusp workshop focused on lyric writing. We’ll have a local songwriter/musician/rock star lead us in song writing exercises. You’ll leave with lyrics and the inspiration to write more.

We’re in the middle of dreaming this one up. Please let us know what you think!

- Abbie & Jon

I love San Diego for the weather.  Don’t you? 

But this city is so much more…

I love San Diego because of the people who live here:  The women who work at La Jolla Dry Cleaners, my favorite English teacher at Mesa College, my mailman, the Firefighters, your mom, the regulars at the restaurant I worked at for too many years, Sarah, Will, Bobby, Stacey, Tony…so many of you. 

I love San Diego for the local artists.  The bands that play any night of the week.  At the Ould Sod, Beauty Bar, Twiggs.  CityFest, Street Scene, Pride, The Little Italy Art Walk.  The Hillcrest Book Fair.  The artists who inspire and are inspired by our city.  Art.  Books.  San Diegans.

I love San Diego for our restaurants and bars:  Turf Club, Mamma Mia, Ono Sushi, The Linkery, Pizza Port, Neighborhood, The Casbah, Belly Up, House of Blues, Canes, Whistlestop, Hamiltons.

I love San Diego for the neighborhoods:

The darkness in Golden Hill in the evening is loud.  Noises talking screaming a car door slams sirens music “frank over here” and occasional helicopters.  The buildings tell stories from the outside in, of families lost and ideas born and ghosts.  Always ghosts.

The toilet runs.  The landlord needs to fix it.  The fan is set on medium as the sounds of the street grumble and spew outside the windows and walls.  In Golden Hill there are no diamonds or Bloomingdales or mansions with loud expensive parties.  Instead, dive bars with eclectic folks who exchange ideas and consume one another for entertainment.  Instead, men pee behind the 7-11 and the firemen close the garage door at night to avoid visitors. 

Women do not walk the street alone at night.  Those El Cajon Boulevard street walkers stick to their part of town.  Mostly. 

In the apartments that were once nice houses now split in threes or fours or seventeens, wood paneling, wood floors, fireplaces that work or don’t, a mess, a love, a desire to build. 

At sunset, the glance towards The Gaslamp, described, as layered in thick buildings, tinker toys, legos built up, smashed and rebuilt again.  Old men and layers.  The needy and abused.  The debt.  The credit.  The park.  Frisbee.  Volleyball.  The lovers of central San Diego.  Art fairs.  Notions of offering what one can give to help.  “Screw yous,”  “Ok thens,”  tourists and you.  In my bed.  Again.  I sleep in.  The darkness of Golden Hill.

Abbie

Abbie Berry is inspired by our city every day.  She wants to know what you think and feel about San Diego.  Email her at creativecusp@gmail.com.