A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Categories
Dear Writers and Readers and Everyone Else,
May the year Two Thousand and Fourteen bring you Many Stories
Wherever You May Find Them
Warmly,
Hi Writers,
May your holidays bring you creative projects that shine bright and steady,
Inspiration for your stories that spring from your heart
And big surges of mastery of our craft
Writers read, read, and read some more. Right? We read anywhere. Books and all those words feed our thirsty creative sensibilities.
My holiday gift to you all is a gentle suggestion. You might want to read or re-read Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Not just for the deliciousness of it. But read it as a writer.
What details did Dickens choose to evoke Scrooge’s extreme miserliness? His scoffing at the ghosts and then his terror? His newly discovered love-filled heart?
How did Dickens put his words together? Bring us into Victorian England?
HOW DID HE CREATE HIS MAGIC?
Many sparkles for 2014 to all of you,
A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Categories
Writing Leap #33
Hi Writers and Readers,
Listen to this!
“I’m Prince Hamlet, got a problem with that?
I’m Prince Hamlet, got a problem with that?
I’m Prince Hamlet, got a problem with that?
I’m Prince Hamlet, over here.”
A Shakespeare rap? Yes! From the unique and wonderful imagination of my contributing writer, playwright, documentary film maker, rhymer since childhood and teacher Bob Zaslow, known to his students as Mr. Z.
Mr. Z has reinterpreted five of Shakespeare’s plays set to the beats of rap music in his book, Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits. Lucky students, who may otherwise be allergic to Elizabethan English, can relate to these Shakespearean tales and see themselves as a conflicted Hamlet or a star-crossed Romeo or Juliet.
RAPPIN’ ROMEO AND JULIET by Bob Zaslow
CHORUS
Two star-crossed lovers, remember that, now
The stars said they’re not gonna make it no how
Two star-crossed lovers, Juliet and Romeo
Break their families’ feud? Not on their life, oh no!
NURSE
Two households, in the one percent and above
In Verona they fought and fought and never loved
They’d been feuding for ages, for what, none remembers
But their grudge smoked two lovers into burning embers.
A plague on both your houses, a pox on all the men
Who’d rather be right and fight and fight
Than shake hands and shout “Never again!”
A plague on both your houses, Capulet and Montague
Two lovers paid the highest price
Because of the two of you.
Who am I? you ask, I’m the comic relief
I’m the nurse, no one’s worse at being relatively brief.
I’ll never say one word when three will do
I’m the nurse, and I curse, so watch out for that too.
CHORUS
Two star-crossed lovers, Juliet and Romeo
Break their families’ feud? Not on their life, oh no!
NURSE
It all started when Romeo said, “Please me mine!”
To a Capulet girl named Rosaline.
But she said, I’m sorry, you’re just not my type
But give me your number maybe we’ll Skype.
Then Romeo sighed and cried and whined
And his friend Mercutio whacked his behind
“Come to the Capulet ball tonight
Maybe you’ll find someone else who’s just right.”
ROMEO
There’s no one for me, but Rosaline.
NURSE
Then he saw Juliet and the guy lost his mind.
CHORUS
Two star-crossed lovers, Juliet and Romeo
Break their families’ feud? Not on their life, oh no!
Don’t miss the rest of Romeo and Juliet and the very funny last line. Click below for the full version.
http://writinglikeadancer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Rap-Notes-lyrics-Romeo-Juliet.doc
A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Categories
Writing Leap #32
WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION
Hi Writers,
Historical Fiction is a blend of historical facts and your imagination. It takes place in a definite period of time and place in history. Your characters are involved in a conflict or situation that is real for that time period.
The serious challenge for us writers is to eschew historical cliché. We have to do our research and then plunge ourselves back there. You don’t have to spell out the historical facts but they should be hovering underneath your fiction.
So writers. Do you have a time or moment or place in history that feels curiously familiar? Or that you are curious about? Take yourself back there and write.
Background on my fiction piece: The First Thanksgiving
Juicy, fragrant turkey with the stuffing you’ve loved since a child. Tart cranberry sauce and candied sweet potatoes. Yuuum. Creamy pumpkin pie with the flavors of autumn. Cinnamon, nutmeg, a pinch of ginger and maybe allspice. Thanksgiving.
But not anything like the food served at the harvest gathering in the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1621. Based on two slim accounts, 32 colonists and 90 Wampanaug feasted together on duck, geese, venison, maybe pumpkin and squash. Nobody knows if the Wampanaug were even invited or just showed up. With five deer. But they were welcomed. Chief Massasoit had signed a peace treaty with the Pilgrims.
Over the last 392 years since that gathering in Plymouth the romance of Thanksgiving has blossomed in our country’s fanciful mind. It is a uniquely American way of saying grace. Here’s my imagining of the first gathering.
The First Thanksgiving
He would eat standing up. To sit next to an ash-skinned man at a crowded table, maybe have to touch arms, would kill him.
He was fourteen.
He was a ferocious warrior.
And he would stand.
As far away from those moon-colored faces showing all their teeth as he could.
Which wasn’t far. He felt his father’s eyes flashing fire at him,
But even if his father suspected his thoughts he would never see them on his son’s face. The muscles around the young warrior’s eyes and mouth were as still as stone.
His weapon hung loosely at his side begging him to grab it.
Lots of gunfire this morning from this white settlement. Surely an attempt for a full out attack on his whole tribe. His blood raged. He would devour them. Chop them up like whale meat. He was well aware of how easy that would be for him.
She brought him a platter of paleface overcooked venison and stupid-looking cranberries. She was his age, he thought, but mush. Not hard and magnificent like his mother and his sisters.
“Seconds?” she asked. Washed out blue eyes. Worst of all she had yellow straw for hair. A freak.
He just stared.
He pinched her breast through her starched apron. Hard.
Her mouth flew open and her eyes rolled back and she collapsed to the ground. In a dead faint.
He didn’t have to look at his father to see the gesture of fury directed at him. It said, “Leave. NOW.”
Happy Writing Everyone and Happy Thanksgiving!
LINKING THE ARTS
An Evocative Engraving
The Pilgrims Receiving Massasoit
Charles Henry Granger, 19th century
Maybe my fuming young warrior is in this crowd?
A Word I Like: Grace. In the sense of generosity of spirit. Like the young warrior’s father who surely must have harbored some fury against the pilgrims who stole their corn and worse, yet rose above it.
I Like this Book.
Thanksgiving by Sam Sifton, National Editor and former restaurant critic for The New York Times. He is very funny. His book is full of tips and comments both culinary and amusing.
A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Categories
Writing Leap #30
Writing About Spirituality
Hi Writers and Readers,
Any definition of spirituality is exquisitely personal. The feeling of opening up to something beyond the known.
Writers express the search, the contemplation and the feeling of the infinite through stories. Sometimes commonplace stories about love, the natural world, (do you know Mary Oliver’s poetry?) connection, religious beliefs, the creative spirit. Stories about every aspect of being. Cooking, playing football, singing, dancing, resting.
Some might say that laughter, for example, is sacred.
“At the height of laughter the world is thrown into a kaleidoscope of possibilities,” writer and mystic Jean Houston said.
So pick a topic writers! You have the whole universe to choose from. And beyond.
The Story Line again is
Heaven
Maybe your Heaven is riding on a shooting star. Or savoring a warm piece of apple crisp. With vanilla ice-cream.
Here’s mine.
Everything is Magical after Midnight
Maggie and her mom walked along the moonlit beach towards the crackling flames of a small bonfire. Night shadows on the sand dunes cuddled them in together.
Out and about at MIDNIGHT! Maggie felt thrills rippling inside her. She was nine. And old enough, she thought, to be out so late. Gusts of wind that carried salty seaweed smells kept her wide awake. She zipped up her hoodie.
Her mother slipped her arm around Maggie’s shoulder.
“This moon. It dazzles me,” her mother said.
“And the waves crashing. They have a forever sound,” Maggie said.
“Maybe we’ll catch a glimpse of enchanted sea creatures dancing around in the waves,” her mother whispered.
Maggie didn’t know what to expect. Lately she thought her mom was angry with her. Or sad.
“I’m so glad we’re here Mommy,” Maggie said.
“Me too, darling,” her mother said.
It was a Grandmother/Mother/Daughter Full Moon Ritual. Maggie’s first.
Women and children gathered by the bonfire with baskets of food and blankets. Maggie’s mother pulled a golden lovebird necklace out of her beach bag. She handled it gently and laid it on a stone by the fire.
“Grammy Apple’s necklace,” Maggie said. “She’s here, isn’t she Mommy? I mean not really because she’s in Heaven.”
Her mother brushed Maggie’s hair back. “Yes, she’s here.”
A plump woman Maggie knew as Ariana stood up. Her skirt flowed to her ankles. She held a candle and the light flickered on her rosy cheeks.
“Welcome. Welcome.” Ariana smiled at the women and girls seated around the fire in a circle.
“You are all very beautiful in the moonlight.” Small candles in the sand flickered light on everyone’s face.
“This is the Harvest Moon and the closest of all the full moons to the earth,” Ariana said. “We are especially connected to our maternal ancestors this night.”
She stretched her arms up high and looked at the huge butter moon.
“May the strong energy from the Harvest Moon help us to feel very close to our grandmothers, mothers, daughters and granddaughters tonight,” she said.
Maggie snuggled closer to her mother.
“Would the grown-ups please each take a lighted candle and then be seated?” Ariana said. “We all have a wish or a dream to give to our daughters. As we go around the circle each mother will give her daughter her thought and then pass the candle on to her. Grandmothers get two candles. Sarah, as a great-grandmother, you get three.”
Maggie barely heard the others while she was waiting for her mother’s turn.
Here it was. Everyone was quiet. A log flared up high and hot. Maggie pulled the hood on her sweatshirt off her head and looked into her mother’s eyes–brown with amber glints. Just like hers.
“With this candle my sweet Maggie, I want to give you two gifts.” Maggie heard her mother’s voice catch.
“I want to give you the gift of yourself. You are deeply loved for who you are and for the artist inside you. You are beautiful.”
Maggie felt her heart burst and tears come to her eyes. Her mother had never said that to her before. Not quite like that.
“And here’s my second gift. Not until this moment and because of you I now see that my own mother, your Grammy Apple, was trying for so long to give me the gift I have just given you. To be proud and happy with myself. Thank you my very special girl.”
She handed Maggie the candle and Maggie put her head on her mother’s shoulder. She felt as if everyone in the circle and beyond were hugging her.
Happy Writing Everyone,
LINKING THE ARTS
A Good Word
Wonder. As in the jostling of our awareness. It’s one of my favorite words and one of my favorite places to be. In a state of wonder.
A Favorite Book
by L. Frank Baum
Dorothy’s spiritual adventure
A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Different Literary Categories
Writing Leap #29
Writing Haiku
Hi Writers,
Haiku is magic. An ancient form of Japanese poetry it lasers into the heart of an experience in seventeen syllables arranged in three lines in a 5-7-5 order. Some Haiku poets in English take liberties with this structure. Not Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate. “I want the indifference and the inflexibiliy of a seventeen-syllable limit to balance my self-expressive yearnings.” Here is Billy Collins.
The dog stops to sniff
the poems of others
before she recites her own
Dag Hammarskjold ignores tradition.
In the castle’s shadow
the flowers closed
long before evening
Either way writing the haiku is the ultimate practice in taking a huge, multilayered feeling or observation and finding the simple, deep heartbeat.
So go ahead writers! Poets, fiction writers, non-fiction writers. Practicing Haiku is a magic little secret to writing what you mean. It will spill over and clarify your writing voice in all genres. I promise. Try it over and over until your poem gives you the innermost seed that evokes so much more. The form itself edits the writing.
Haiku often has references to the natural world juxtaposed with other thoughts. The story line is: Observing Nature
Here is my attempt. Very non-traditional.
Rosy wedding sunset
illuminating the love in his song
for his son and new bride.
I heard the music of his soul.
(The additional fourth line may eliminate my poem as Haiku. Not sure.)
Happy Haiku everyone,
LINKING THE ARTS
A Wonderful Book
Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years. Edited by J. Kacian, P. Rowland, A. Burns, 2013.
With his delightful touch Billy Collins’ introduction opens up the world of Haiku.
A Lovely Word
Essence
as in the very marrow of things.
Paintings by Georges Rouault, French Expressionist 1871-1958
Maxim Bugzester, Polish/Viennese Expressionist 1908-1978, said of Rouault, “He was able to paint the picture of a rose with three brush strokes.”
A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Different Literary Categories
Writing Leap # 28
Hi Writers, Readers and Movie-Goers,
Writing What You Mean
As all of you writers know this is not easy. No, no, not easy at all. We may think that the reader experiences our words just like we did when we wrote them. Not always the case.
A writing friend, Bob Zaslow, implored me to read Several short sentences about writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg. It has brought some diamond clarity into my writing life and I bow down deeply to both of them.
We have to close our eyes and let our thoughts focus on one sentence at a time, Mr. Klinkenborg said.
Letting new thoughts happen.
Writing the words down and changing them until we get that delicious deep down feeling. Yes, these words evoke just what I mean to say.
So writers. Let yourself ponder your descriptions, your opinions, your character’s voice until you get that feeling that says, “I’ve got it.”
Don’t stop thinking and changing until the moment you can say, ‘This is why I write.’ It can feel like the ringing of a beautiful clear bell.
Try the same story line as the last post: Heaven
Here’s mine.
“42” is a movie about the beginnings of Jackie Robinson’s career in major league baseball. In 1946 Branch Rickey, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed up Jackie Robinson, a first for a black baseball player. There were never-ending humiliations, lots of hate and boycotts. A Cardinals player spiked him in the calf with his shoe. On purpose. Robinson played incredible baseball throughout.
Rickey stuck with him and never wavered under the negative pressure from the baseball world.
Here’s a slightly paraphrased scene from the movie where the words evoke just what the screenwriter intended. Granted Harrison Ford who plays Rickey breathed life into them. But he had the words.
Robinson asked, “Why you, Mr. Rickey?”
“We had a victory over fascism in Germany and now it’s high time we have a victory over racism,” said Rickey.
“Naw. C’mon. Why you? Tell me.”
“I love this game. I love baseball. Given my whole life to it. Forty odd years ago I was a university coach in Ohio. My catcher was a Negro. Best on the team. Great guy.
I didn’t do enough to help him. Told myself I did. But I didn’t. There was something unfair at the heart of this game I loved and I ignored it.
Then you came along.
You let me love baseball again.
Thank you.”
Happy Writing Everyone,
LINKING THE ARTS
A Painting of Jackie Robinson by Stephen Holland.
The writer says what he means with words, technique and heart. The visual artist says what he means with color, light, shadow, technique and heart.
A Good Phrase: Settle in. As in settling in to the truth.
A book to carry around with you to help you find that “I’ve got it” feeling.
A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Different Literary Categories
Writing Leap #27
Hi Writers,
The Prose Poem
It’s written as prose but reads like poetry.
You can sit down and dismiss traditional poetry rules. Like metered rhyme and specific groupings of words.
There’s an emphasis on the narrative but the prose poem helps itself to the techniques of poetry like vivid images, heightened emotions and fragments. I often find writing in fragments frees up my writing. In the editing process I may change them to sentences or not.
I remember grade school when we were not allowed to use sentence fragments in prose. We ignore that teacher.
What’s the difference between prose poems and free verse, I wondered? Typography it seems. Free verse tends to look more like a poem on the page with shorter lines. Prose poems often, not always, go from one side of the page to another—like prose!
So Writers. Have fun with fragments and write a prose poem.
You can try this story line
Heaven
Here’s Mine.
The Twelfth of August Every Year
Happy Birthday my beloved Auntie
Up there in Heaven for a long time. One hundred plus plus plus years old.
In the way of angels are you aware how your ever-flowing love was the sunshine to my blossoming? Still is.
When I’ve floundered about who I am
I remember and feel your loving hand holding my child’s hand
Giving me grown-up manicures. Talking to me with tenderness about my Cynthia-ness.
I become happy with myself.
There were a never-ending collection of little moments, some faded in detail
That became huge with the love that created them.
You found me beautiful early editions of War and Peace.
All leathery, book-musty and tissue-papery. We both loved books.
You knew my passion for this Russian story.
How excited you were to find the grown-up me the entire collection of My Book House. Fairy Tales you had read to me over and over long ago.
I was Dolly in the Grass or Snow White.
You insisted.
My adored Auntie Ceil.
I feel who I am, Auntie, because you felt who I was.
And most of all, you told me.
Happy Writing Everyone,
LINKING THE ARTS
A Prose Poem by Walt Whitman (first two stanzas)
From A Family of Poems, compiled by Caroline Kennedy, 2005
Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
A Word
Many of us might say the best word in the dictionary is LOVE, here thought of as ever flowing generosity of spirit.
A Painting
Perhaps all paintings can be considered prose poems. Vivid imagery, carefully chosen details, flexible techniques.
Here’s a watercolor my Auntie Ceil brought me back from Paris when I was sixteen. She had asked the artist to paint in a young girl—me.
A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Different Literary Categories
Writing Leap #26
Hi Writers,
Specific details open up larger worlds.
Generalizations do not. And they are no fun to write or to read. They leave no room for free floating associations. Readers glide over them and forget them a second later.
Generic descriptions kill deeper responses to our writing.
A writing teacher once told me, “Don’t write, ‘She wore jeans.’ Write ‘She wore old cut-off jeans that were tight across her tush.” Now that’s a comment that has stayed with me for twenty years.
Specificity. Could this be the golden key that unlocks our imaginations and the imaginations of our readers?
Go ahead, writers. Have a good time with specificity in your fiction, your essays, your descriptions. What details in your world have struck you lately? From a book? A conversation? A film?
The Story Line is:
I Notice, Therefore I Am!
(Please pardon the ridiculous pun.)
Here’s mine.
Did you hear President Obama’s recent speech on racism? Politics aside, he used specifics that for me pierced like a laser.
He was crossing the street one night and passed a parked car with people inside. He heard the click of the locks as he walked by. He was a United States Senator at the time.
I imagine how that must feel and I am sick. I realize this would never happen to me.
He was followed in a store by some stranger, “keeping an eye on him.”
I imagine what this must feel like and I am sick.
He was in an elevator and saw the lady next to him hug her purse in tighter and look away.
I realize this will never happen to me. For several moments I “become” that man in the elevator and I feel sick.
Specificity. It’s the writer’s magic wand.
Happy Writing Everyone,
LINKING THE ARTS
A Poem
Have you ever noticed how poets use specificity instinctively?
William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
You’re there, right?
A Painting
Appraisal, 1931 by Grant Wood
To me this painting is wonderful to look at not only for its artistic merits but for the clarity of the narrative. It’s so evocative of the American farm because of the artist’s attention to specifics. The furs, the hat pin, the jeweled bag, a city lady perhaps. In contrast to the wool cap and rough jacket of the farm boy holding his speckled hen. A few visual details and the whole story is there. The viewer is there too.
A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Different Literary Categories
Writing Leap #25 The Sometime Writer
Hi Sometime Writers,
There is something deeply satisfying about writing JUST TO WRITE. Finding words for your thoughts and memories can touch a different and perhaps new part of your creative self. To all of you who think you can’t write, merely trying to put a memory, experience, or feeling down on paper can bring a creative thrill. And there are no rules! So let yourself be seduced by that pen and that notebook. Don’t pick a beautifully designed notebook. You may feel the need to write perfect sentences. A yellow legal pad is more relaxing. Try it! I bet you’ll want to read it to a friend.
The Story Line is Finding Comfort
Lisl Steiner is my guest blogger. She is a photojournalist and documentarian (lislsteiner.com) who is beginning to fall in love with writing. She was born in Vienna, raised in Argentina and at eighty-six years old lives in the U.S.A., her home for many years. What is wonderful about Lisl’s writing adventures is that English is her third language.
Here is a shortened version of her longer piece about Rojito, her “alter-ego.”
People always write about their dogs, cats canaries, iguanas, pumas, pandas and penguins. Well, it’s time to write about my cat Rojito, my “alter ego.” We are both redheads. I am fading. Rojito did not.
Rojito was left in a vent in a fancy Fifth Avenue apartment building in New York. A friend gave him to me the week my husband died.
A very vocal cat, Rojito was small and had just lost his male parts. He did not object a bit to tender loving care. He approved of his new country environment and was a good hunter, always bringing me presents to the door. Every night for thirteen years he scratched at my window at two AM sharp. He knew he could count on me to wake up and let him in.
This is really a very short story. Rojito was thirteen years old, was getting thinner, ate less, went out more and more…
He disappeared twice and I thought that this was it. But no. Just as in Italian operas where the tenor sings goodbye forever “adio, adio, adio,” he came back for one more encore.
He liked the idea that I was right there with him. When death came he made a tiny sound and was gone.
By chance three Guatemalan gardeners were working at the house. I shanghaied them into digging a grave for him. Rojito went into it and I put many heart shaped rocks I had collected over the years on top. With myself and the three Guatemalan men Rojito enjoyed a Mayan, Aztec, Inca and Viennese funeral.
LINKING THE ARTS
For ROJITO
Happy Writing Everyone,