Category Archives: Writing the Vignette

Writing Practice and Meeting up with your Muse

Writing Leap #68

Hi Writers,

Delve into how your character relates to the natural world and see how you can evoke deeper aspects of his personality. Maybe he’s an obsessive recycler, a passion that comes from his relationship with his mother who refused to recycle anything. Or maybe your character scoffs at the idea of global warming because she’s a very conservative thinker. As with other grand issues like religion, love relationships, power struggles, your character’s take on the environment can reveal much about how he maneuvers through your story.

Here’s mine.

Gilly was happy to be an assistant counselor at Junior Environmentalists Camp for a hundred reasons. She loved that the campers and staff picked their way through the woods like she did, breathing in the oxygen offered by the trees, breathing out carbon dioxide to send back to them. She loved using electric lights and computers sparingly. She loved teaching her little campers not to pick the wildflowers. “Enjoy them where they grow! Aren’t they beautiful?” She was part of a huge commitment to revere the environment and the feeling of belonging to this little community assured her that she measured up, that she was on the right side of things and that consequently she was an appealing person.

Gilly also loved Jake, a fellow counselor. They shared the same birthday, July 29, when they both turned fifteen. They gave each other “Surviving in the Wilderness” manuals for presents. They had both read The Legacy of Luna, The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods.

But Gilly had a shameful secret that burned in her stomach and chest. She was terrified of bugs. She couldn’t help it and she was in constant fear that some one would find out. One day in the woods with Jake and their campers she felt something crawling up her leg. Ugh! Involuntarily she slapped off a large, green, pokey thing, Ugh, and then squished it with her sneaker. She looked down. It squirmed. Then it didn’t. Dead.

“Oh,” she said. She felt her mortification pop out all over her. “I don’t know why I did that, I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“That was bad, Gilly,” Jake said backing away from her. “What did that bug ever do to you?”

He turned his back and walked away. The campers followed him. First they looked at Gilly in disbelief, then, Gilly could sense it, with disdain.

She was a fraud. For sure Jake thought so now. She had no business being in this camp. She was shallow compared to every other person here. Gilly flushed red and wished she could melt right into the leafy path and disappear.

End

Note: I could never just leave this story here. I would have Gilly find her gumption and most of all her sense of self-worth some other way and she would triumph inside herself!

Happy summer writing everyone. A perfect time to find your muse outdoors somewhere.

LINKING THE ARTS

Julia Butterfly Hill lived on a platform in a redwood tree for 738 days to protest the clearcutting of a grove of giant redwood trees in California. And then she wrote about it.

Writing Practice and the Muse who is ALWAYS THERE

Writing Leap #51

Hi Writers Out There,

We were recently in Paris for three weeks and near where we were staying there is a papeterie, a tiny store that sells newspapers, pens and glorious notebooks of many kinds. You can find all sizes stacked on shelves, some lined, some plain and my favorite, notebooks with graph paper.

I carried three in my bag and tried my dear husband’s patience when I pulled one out at most street corners to capture a moment or a glimpse of something. “You wouldn’t see this, or hear this, or feel quite this way back home!” I would say.

With your writer’s sensibility to “stories” all around you, notebooks for grabbing the freshness of a moment while traveling are essential. Later when you are back home you can fill out your stories from your authentic first impressions and not just from your memory or photo shot.

So Traveling Writers. Lots of pens and lots of notebooks.

Here’s one of my moments, expanded from a few scribbled lines.

I stared at the Louvre across the Seine. It stretched the length of three quais.  Hundreds of  beautiful tall French windows. Poor Louis XVI and the thousands in attendance to him whose home this was. Beheaded with his wife Marie Antoinette because of all his high-ceilinged rooms gilded pure gold, his  walls covered in silk brocade, his powdered wigs, his delicate lace cuffs–all given to him and him alone by God himself.

A woman draped in a dreary shawl picked something up from the sidewalk and approached me.

“Madame, excuse me, but look at this ring,” she said. “It looks like real gold.” She showed me some markings on the inside of the ring. “Sadly, I can’t wear it.” She began to try it on her fingers to show me. Her accent in French was foreign and she mumbled. I wasn’t sure if she said it was too small for her or that it was against her religion to wear it.

“I want you to have it,” she said and held the ring out to me. “You should have it,” she said. I saw kindliness in her face. I looked at her and smiled back. I had an impulse to accept it and actually took it in my hand.

My friend coughed in her glove and threw me a stern look. “No, no,” she said. “Just put it here on this closed up book stall. Come on. Right on top.” I gave the ring back to the woman and she walked away.

Then she turned back and said, “Please, just a few coins. My children are very hungry.”

My friend and I hustled on. “Do you suppose that was a set-up?” I asked. “Rather,” she said.

But I was wondering what the woman’s name might be. Maybe we should have given her something. 

A few days later on a boulevard in another Paris neighborhood, a man leaned down and picked up a gold ring off the sidewalk. He offered it to my husband and me.

LINKING THE ARTS

A Good Word for Writers: Wallop, as in “Writer’s Wallop.” Feeling a moment in your gut and getting it down fast before it loosens its hold.

A WRITING BLOG About Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Different Literary Categories

Writing Leap #34

Hi Writers,

Are you ever walking or talking or sitting on a train and your mind alights on a writing idea?  It hovers there, a sparrow touching down on a telephone line, apt to fly off at any moment.  Grab it! (Apologies and gratitude to the wonderful former U.S Poet Laureate Billy Collins whose metaphor this is.  I’m so sorry I can’t find the poem for an exact quote.)

But the essence of the poem is a part of my writing self.  Write down your impressions and reactions as they are happening.  Otherwise as Billy Collins implies the sparrow will probably fly away forever.  Gone, swoosh.

Later the spontaneity of the thought will have vanished.  Or you will be growling because you can’t remember any of it.  Just that it was great.

I carry a small journal and my cell phone to jot down ideas.  Later these small jottings can turn into vignettes.  Writing vignettes is great writing practice.  Just for the sake of writing them.  Writers write and edit.  As much as possible.

From The Book of Literary Terms by Lewis Turco.  “The vignette is a finely written literary sketch emphasizing character, situation or scene.”

So writers, tackle the vignette!  

The story line is:  What does chocolate evoke in you?  Fiction or Non-fiction.

Here’s mine.  A vignette inspired by the painting below and something I jotted down.  While eating a chocolate truffle as pictured above.   Let’s watch Becca.

     Oh, how Becca loved chocolate bars.  The extra dark velvet kind.  Thick and smooth in her mouth.  Just sweet enough. 

     “Afternoon Becca,”

     Becca nodded at the old lady, bundled up in three threadbare coats.  Her legs were wrapped in scarves and she was settled on a broken chair outside the door of Mr. Palkowski’s newspaper shop.     

     Becca pushed open the door to the shop.  The loud bell on the door made a jangly, jarring noise .  She jerked back.  She always did.

     “Hi there Becca.  What can I do for you today?” Mr. Palkowski said.

     “Um, not sure.  Just want to look, thank you,” she said.

     “Right,” he said, and turned his back to fuss with something behind the counter.

     Becca grabbed a small chocolate bar from a box on the shelf opposite the counter and slipped it in her pocket.

     “Bye Mr. Palkowski.  Nothing today.”

     There was no avoiding nodding again at the old lady outside. 

     “You take care now, Becca,” she said.

     Becca started to hurry home.

     “Wait,” the old lady called.  “Think about this.  What are you really hungry for?  It’s not chocolate dearie.”

     Becca kept walking.  That lady was crazy.

     Mr. Palkowski stepped outside his store.  He watched Becca turn the corner.

     “Well Minna.  That’s about the tenth time now.  I haven’t got the heart to say something to her, poor child.”

     “You want my opinion?” Minna said.  “You are doing her no favors letting her get away with stealing.  No favors at all.”

     “Hmmmmm,” he said and went back inside.

     When Becca reached her stoop she peeled the paper off the chocolate bar and ate the whole thing.  She made sure to put the wrappings in the trashcan in front of her building.  She wasn’t going to add to the garbage on the sidewalk.

     Becca really did know what she was hungry for.  She was hungry for her mama’s chocolate cookies.  Her mama used to make them for her a lot.  Mama didn’t make them now.  If she did, Becca thought, the cookie dough would be full of Mama’s tears. 

     Next afternoon after school Becca pushed open the  door to the news shop.  Jangle, jangle.  Her heart began to flutter in her chest.

     “Afternoon Becca,” Mr. Palkowski said.  “Ummmm, now look here.  I’ve been thinking.  I could use a little help around here, straightening up the stock and such.  Would your mother let you do that for about an hour after school?  I could pay you a little or you could take it out in merchandise.  Like chocolate bars.”

     Becca stared.  He knew.  He knew and he was still being nice to her.  She fought back tears and let herself hug him.

Here’s to vignettes and your jottings!  

LINKING THE ARTS

A Painting

Homeless

My inspiration for Minna

A Poem

  “Lines Lost Among Trees,” in Billy Collins collection, Picnic, Lightning

A Good Word

Jot     As in to write quickly in the moment