Writing can be a very solitary endeavor. In the collective imagination, writers work in isolation and seldom have occasion to talk about what they do. The Loft community defies this stereotype!

I love how the Loft nurtures the literary community: avid readers come to readings to ask authors they admire about their writing process. Writers working intensely on a project get expert advice through online mentorships. Kids who are bursting with ideas take classes on craft are heartened by the fact that peers and teachers take their work seriously. Students who appreciate feedback in classes form their own writing groups and meet in the Book Club Room for ongoing critiques. The connections that writers form at the Loft inspire and motivate during the solitary act of sitting down with the blank page.

The Loft welcomes everyone who writes or is interested in writing. One example of this is the Open Book building that is accessible and welcoming to people with disabilities. Classrooms and the performance hall are navigable by wheelchair, and seating can be arranged to accommodate individual needs such as guide dogs, personal care attendants, and interpreters. An assistive listening system is installed in the performance hall and will be installed in classrooms later this year. Staff at the Loft and Open Book are committed to enhancing the building’s other accessibility features so that writers with disabilities can fully engage with the writing community here.

One way that all of us at the Loft can increase accessibility is by helping reduce the use of fragrance. Scented products can be harmful to the health of some people. I know a few writers in the neighborhood who I greatly wish could be more involved at the Loft, but it is not a safe space for them because of chemical sensitivities. We can make progress to include all writers in the Loft community by making sure that when we are at the Loft, our clothes have not been exposed to scented detergents or perfumes, and the personal care products we use are fragrance free. Author Peggy Munson’s website is a good place to start learning how to be fragrance free and why it matters.

Ari Edes is office manager at the Loft, and he’s convinced that the literary community in the Twin Cities is cooler than anywhere else he’s lived.

Editor’s Note: A version of this post appeared last year. We republish it in honor of the Loft’s Literary Love Fest taking place this Monday (February 13, 2012, 6 p.m. at Kieran’s Irish Pub).

Although Valentine’s Day follows a familiar trajectory as a counterfeit pagan tradition re-formed by early Christian popes, it’s a holiday with a unique literary flair that’s been developing in the social and commercial world for more than 1500 years. The feast of Saint Valentine was first dedicated by Pope Gelasius in 469AD when he commemorated a number of saints whose deeds were mysteriously known only to God. Pope Paul VI removed Valentine’s name from the calendar of saints in 1969 due to a lack of evidence connecting the saint’s martyrdom to his associations with romantic love.

The unsubstantiated deeds of one or more men attributed with the name Saint Valentine have an undeniably literary appeal. Embellished or fictionalized, stories of Saint Valentine’s deeds are widely disseminated including defying Roman law by performing secret marriages and even curing the blindness of his jailer’s daughter before his own execution.

A significant amount of literature also attempts to connect February as a time that has always been associated with love. The Athenians celebrated Gamelion, their month of marriage, from mid-January to mid-February while the Romans had Lupercalia, a highly ritualistic shepherd’s holiday of cleansing and fertility. But we see such celebrations through our place in history and the lens of romanticism.

Valentine’s Day is as much a deck of metaphors in translation as it is a day of poetry, intimacy, and romance. The word romance owes its root to the Latin adverb romanice, in a sense “vernacular.” Much academic and scholarly writing in medieval times was in Latin, while popular stories and myths were recorded in the vernacular, eventually referred to as “romances.”

The earliest example of the practice of exchanging amorous letters with one’s beloved as a holiday ritual developed as a fictional tradition penned into the social landscape by Chaucer and his peers. They must’ve been inspired by the lyrics of Provençal poets and French troubadours that had been handing down grammars of Occitan, the language they used to record and tell romantic lyrics, for more than two hundred years. Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules, a Roman-inspired dream account written to honor the wedding anniversary of Richard II of England, first establishes Valentine’s Day as a day of romantic love. The writings of Chaucer, Thomas Mallory, and Dante all helped popularize a new tradition of courtly love and romantic literature.  The Middle Ages into the Renaissance saw a proliferation of a literature of leisure. Arthurian legend became popular and it was the first time in Europe’s history that literature was directed towards women. Romantic, imaginative adventures and lyric narratives centered on longing and faithfulness in adversity were frequently set in poetic vistas idealizing nature:

“She bath’d with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.”

-The Fairie Queen (1569)

A publisher in Britain came out with The Young Man’s Valentine Writer in 1797 to be of obvious assistance to young men with little experience in literary sentiment. The Victorian age exploded with valentines and greeting cards due to the modern ease of printing. Within a century, valentines were being made in many countries commercially and the drop in postal rates helped to make the day one of the most important mailing days of the year. By the middle of the 20th century it was common practice for all ages to exchange valentines for amusement and, although the commercial and material side of the holiday has taken precedence, there is still an underlying sense of the poetic that has existed for hundreds of years.

Valentine’s Day is really a fiction, a fantasy, and an insistent literary romantic tradition permeating the world with commercial success. It’s a surrealist experiment of letters declaring a day of love. It’s a bewitching mystery and a good story.

Lucas Schulze is the Loft’s Events and Volunteer Coordinator. Join him and others the evening before Valentine’s Day at Kieran’s Irish Pub (600 First Avenue North) for the Loft’s Annual Literary Love Fest. Enjoy local literati and their stories of love, lust, libations, and romantic lunacy. Make friends and make love with the written word out loud. There will be improv poetry, music, a reading by local authors, and some “Hot Buttery Love” (a Kieran’s specialty also known as warm gingers and whiskey).

by Linda Anderson

Are there certain books or stories that made you feel you had to continue reading them? That’s the effect you want to have with your writing. Even if you are not writing for publication but only for yourself or family, it’s joyful to create the sensation of readers clamoring to know what happens next.

Experienced writers use specific techniques to transform their books, articles, and stories into page-turners. Most people don’t accomplish the task on their first draft. It’s in the rewriting and structuring phases that writers sculpt their pieces into engaging works of art.

In working with writers who take my Loft classes, I find that they often think they must build up to the most compelling section of their narrative. Consequently they begin with the least exciting part. But seasoned writers carefully select the starting point of their book, story, or article with suspense and drama in mind.

I used to make the mistake of beginning stories as if I were building a court case and had to lead up to the closing argument. Then I took a screenwriting class and learned about a writing technique we experience in movies all the time. With the inciting incident the hero makes a decision and is thrust into a situation that propels the entire rest of the movie.

An inciting incident usually takes place within the first or second scene during the initial ten to twelve minutes of the movie.

For example, in the film Limitless, the main character is a down-and-out author with severe writer’s block. He happens to run into his drug-dealing ex-brother-in-law who offers him an opportunity to pull out of the slump. The brother-in-law entices the main character to take a safe, proven new pill that offers the capacity for using 100 percent of his brainpower. After some hesitation, the severely depressed writer gives in to temptation and pops the pill. Everything changes. This one action propels the entire story forward.

Inciting incidents in inspirational writing could be moments such as:

• the moment your life changed
• the death of someone significant
• the time you tried a new way of dealing with challenges in your life or attaining your goals and had amazing or disastrous results
• the first time you understood what someone important had been trying to tell you
• when your living situation changed and you became determined to keep the status quo or adapt to new circumstances
• after someone new or unusual came into your life and evolved into a central figure who affected you or your loved ones.

After you have written a first draft of your piece, look for the pivot point that changed everything. You may have buried the inciting incident. If you move the everything-changed moment to or near the beginning, you’ll feel a burst of energy that brings new life to your story or article.

You now have permission to incite. Enjoy elevating your writing to “must-read” status.

Linda Anderson is an award-winning, best-selling author of fourteen published books. She has taught at the Loft since 1998. Her “Inspirational Writing and Publishing Today” Loft Around Town class begins March 14 (6:30–8:30 p.m.) at Hopkins Center for the Arts.

D.C. poets and those willing to travel, don’t miss the Split This Rock Poetry Festival (Mar 22-25, 2012). Split This Rock calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation & witness from our home in the nation’s capital, we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination.

In honor of England’s National Libraries Day, Julian Barnes wrote a great piece defending the book in the Guardian.

Finally, Huffington Post asks some teachers of creative writing some tough questions. Some interesting answers return.

I get really excited about the Oscars. I don’t know why. Most often, my favorite movies of any given year usually aren’t even nominated for Best Picture, much less win the big prize. I realize the whole production is mostly a political/commercial fight behind the scenes, as opposed to a noble evaluation of cinematic merits. Nonetheless, every year, I attempt to see as many nominees as possible. This can get difficult for categories that don’t enjoy a wide release or even a limited release to our local independent theaters.

But (cue trumpet fanfare), here comes the internet to save the day. Increasingly, producers are making the nominated short films available online to reach new audiences and generate buzz for their work.

This year, one of those films is The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, a 15-minute film about a man who loves books and dedicates his life to them. It’s a delightful narrative that calls back to the silent films of Buster Keaton and celebrates the power of a good story.

For your consideration….

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

Tanner Curl is the deputy director of development at the Loft, and he enjoys a good story no matter how its told.