Wonderful Writing
Yeah, writing, what makes writing wonderful?
Well, writing wonderful, can it be as simple as that, to just write wonderful? To write of wonder, or to wonder of writing?
A writing prompt for writing wonderful
This page of our website sort of funnily was the hardest one to write. Hard, because it’s so easy to write about writing and make it sound preachy. A lot of us do write, yet many would say they just scribble. Yes, when you scribble a note or a reminder for yourself or others isn’t considered a literary exercise. Yet, writing is as the other subjects we touch upon on our website, writing can become a means to express yourself with. Writing can give insight, insight into your motives, to what moves you, it’s another way to formulate your dreams. Where our dreams are the stories that linger inside us, writing is one of the creative processes by which you can actualize the dreams you have.
Wonder into writing
Without becoming too poetic, to just write down the word wonder, isn’t what makes our message wondrous. The wonderful of writing comes into literal play when the writer forms his or her thoughts into the words that become a stream steered by the heart and/or soul. Some, might consider that just one aspect of writing, where method writing might be seen as a more structured way of putting words on paper. Nevertheless, even when you structuralize the words you write, what makes your words distinctly yours comes from this source inside you. Your source, where your dream forms into a story, into a scene, into a dialogue, into actions depicted by words, almost like you would have a conservation. A conversation with your inner voice.
Write your wonder of wonderful writing
Where or when you will start to write in such a way is almost an intricate part of the process of writing. For a lot of people the urge to write starts when they experienced something life changing. To write your very own story about that experience is often considered to be insightful for the writer self, where the incentive of the writer is to share the narrative to maybe help others.
The literary cliche that a bad childhood leads to good books, here as a reference. Not to state that writers of literature all have a underlying goal to write their books as self help books. The way they address their subjects might just mean they have this irresistible urge to convey the story inside them, without any high-end goal. Nevertheless, their stories might just as well help their readers to put things in perspective. After all, it’s not for nothing that many taboo and ceiling breaking changes have started within literature.
Don’t forget your core story
However, for most of you, wonderful writing may start on the purposeful side. Like writing for a website, or for an email-campaign often is. When you follow all the guidelines of how to write for those purposes, you might write more towards your audience than you originally planned. And of course there’s absolutely nothing wrong about that. It may even be a way that helps your story evolve from the very personal story towards the readable one. The main goal of web texts is indeed to reach others. Please note; we do say that that’s a good thing, we merely state that the main purpose of such writing may differ from the initial core of the story you want to tell.
Evolve your words into magic
Maybe, that’s exactly where the magic takes place, where we evolve from just telling the personal anecdote of and for ourselves and step into the unknown of telling the story for others.
Knead your words into wonderful writing
How we started writing
Where we both come from differs too. Camille started writing at a young age. Already in elementary school she started to write poetry.
Camille
It’s hard to say, when I actually started writing… I mean, when I first set-pen-to-paper and wrote for myself.
Exposure to Literature
I imagine that my initial exposure to literature and authors of novels, essays, prose and poetry through elementary school English classes was the initial influence. I enjoyed this subject and did decently (A-B) in the course.
Teacher Ms. Betty Neals
I give a lot of credit to a teacher/mentor/friend; Ms. Betty Neals who taught at (then) Franklin Elementary School. (Later to be named ‘Whitney Houston Elementary’.)
Teacher Mr. Douglas Allen
She was not a direct teacher of mine, but she participated in a school program headed by my Gospel Choir Group teacher; Mr. Douglass Allen. It was a presentation of music and poetry recitation. Ms. Neals recited her poems there.
A Beautiful Poem
I was overwhelmed with the beauty of her poetry. One poem in particular – I don’t recall its title, but I remember this one single word she had employed in it: ‘Mellifluously’…
A word and a voice
“Mellifluously spreads…” – Something like that was how the phrase began.- Anyhow, that word and her soft deliberately paced recitation voice brought tears to my eyes. This moment marked the start of our friendship with her regular interest in my own burgeoning writing talent.
Mum and Dad and Blank Books
My parents -Donald and Meredith Wilkinson- supported this new found hobby by buying ‘blank books’ and diaries that had dual purposes in use not just for writing in but also for my early drawings and sketches. Often the two habits were worked together on these pages.
Poet Nikki Giovani
In 7th or 8th grade I heard poet Nikki Giovani read her poetry at the then; Upsala College in the student center. Which was open to anyone not attending the school. This space was like a student relaxation lounge and it had a snack booth that carried a wide range of sweets… the initial draw for me and my co-sixth grader best friend Tracey Gillespie. As a result of going with some regularity there, is how I stumbled across Ms. Giovani.
National poetry Contest
I subsequently entered The National Poetry contests – I think my mom -Meredith Wilkinson- had discovered a notice in the newspaper for these opportunities. My mom would typewrite my entries, while becoming familiar with my work, simultaneously proof reading and correcting any spelling errors. My mom over time was an Opera singer, Drama teacher and English teacher for elementary through to college students.
Published
I successfully was accepted to participate and entered into their compendium/anthology an annual book published crammed with many bright eyed participants like myself.
Opening up in my diary
I remember that my 6th grade mind was at once ‘opened up’ – Wide open. And I began to write in a diary/journal. Some things were observations, questionings, and yearnings of a twelve year old girl, finding her way in a world that was both very familiar, yet often very strange and at worse, very conflicting. What I wrote gradually became poetically prose work and eventually, with full intent; poems. I experimented in longer writings, such as essays and short stories with an idea to maybe try my hand at novel writing.
My archive
I have numerous notebooks in various states of full to partially filled that are like time capsules. Most are annotated with day and dates and sometimes times as reminder or clue of the period of my life I was writing from. Of course not all are ‘good’, even to my eye, but some I could consider as my ‘opus’ then; my very best writing as far as my self-expression and my verbal style in that piece.
Relationships, Interaction and Communication
My subjects centered often on relationships; how persons in general, or specific to me interacted and communicated. What made us all tick. In fact I wrote about ‘what made me tick’. I had started around the same age to explore spiritual subjects and sources and writers, as well as psychology. I later took psychology courses at my art college; Moore College of Art (And Design). In fact I carried on with poetry writing there too, all four years. I think it anchored me, keeping me in touch with inner self along with art techniques I explored. For practicality of livelihood -I was convinced to think- I majored and graduated with a bachelors in Fashion Design!
Fashion Design
A field I professionally participated in from 1983 to 2018. The last few years, I worked more in freelance capacity. The overall experience was love-hate. Loved what I did, but not necessarily always the industry.
Write my art
So now, I am living more in my personal creative source space; making art interspersed with my writing ‘art’ functioning according to my personal criteria.
Hubby
In 2017 I met my co-creator Vincent A Huying. We met through a writing site called Medium.com.
Medium
This site then was a great place to write in all genres, interact with other writer/authors, generally a safe-space for giving and receiving feedback, critique, and hearts and or applause.
Writing Cooperation
Well, as if it were a match-making site, Vincent and I gradually took our mutual-appreciations offline, through other social media… waxing and texting poetically to one another. Suddenly we saw promise in co-creating, co-writing, coordinating and conjoining our endeavours as what has become The WONDERHOUSE.
Grateful
I thank our lucky stars and our respective wellspring of wonder(s) for zapping into our lives the special things in word and art that we fervently want to share.
Best Regards;
Camille Wilkinson-Huying
Vincent
I started writing at a later age. While healing from injury I followed two writing courses with Eva and Renée Kelder. Writing sisters who have been published in Dutch. One of the most important things they taught was to write a story in such a way the reader can identify her- or himself with the personages inside the story. An important and recurring exercise they emphasized on, was to find the stream of consciousness*. This to me is an inspiring way of writing, in which the cognitive is present, but the stream of words seem to come from a source deeper within. Exercises which very much helped me to find my inner voice. I consider it also the fountain from which my poetic voice arose.
Best Regards;
Vincent Huying
*Stream of consciousness is a narrative device that attempts to give the written equivalent of the character’s thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue (see below), or in connection to his or her actions. Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in thought and lack some or all punctuation.[6] Stream of consciousness and interior monologue are distinguished from dramatic monologue and soliloquy, where the speaker is addressing an audience or a third person, which are chiefly used in poetry or drama. In stream of consciousness, the speaker’s thought processes are more often depicted as overheard in the mind (or addressed to oneself); it is primarily a fictional device.
Tell your unique story
So, please consider you too have a unique story to tell. As we do, you too have a story to tell. With our writing we hope to inspire you to start to write your words on whatever subject you might want to write about.
Also, we very much welcome everyone who wants to just read.
Check out our books:
Our first book “How to Build a Cheap Rainwater Cistern for Your Garden“.
Or, scan the QR-code with your phone to become directed to our page on Apple Books.
