Category Archives: Writing What You See

Writing Practice and Meeting Up with your MUSE

Writing Leap #58

Hi Writers,

Isn’t it extraordinary how so much in our world can nurture our creative souls? A hill of sun bright orange pumpkins piled up next to haystacks on a farm. A small sculpture of a whimsical horse by Picasso. A warm table setting with crystal sparkling in candlelight next to soft blue napkins.

As writers we can be open to any experience that expands our creative sensibilities and helps us write with a ripe imagination.

For those who are inclined, viewing a work of art is one way to continue developing our instincts as an observer, to own our experience and reinforce our repertoire of emotions. Simply for the feeling of being moved.

Philippe Delaunay, a French art collector and connoisseur, cajoles us to do just that. Enter the world of the artist, he says, and just feel. Without any preconceived notions about style, technique or an artist’s repertoire. He writes:

Is it useless to try and explain a work of art?

Or is a work of art sufficient unto itself? More than ever we are subjected to a flood of literature by art critics and art historians attempting to show us the where and the whys, seeking to interpret what an artist has felt or to reveal what the work “means.”

This makes no sense…..

Let’s let a current work of art live for itself, without filling up the air with artistic explanations that are so often superficial. A work of art must be allowed to breathe freely and defend its own existence just by being. True artists are visionaries. They unconsciously approach that which is invisible and try to make it visible. It is difficult, if not impossible, for anyone other than the artist to affix his own words or sentences to someone else’s vision, without often becoming guilty of misguided or biased interpretations.

Through his own writings the artist himself may explain his creative vision and offer his thoughts in words. Here words and images do become a cohesive whole.

What is important for the observer of a work of art is to approach the work with his whole self without asking questions, without having read or listened to commentaries—and simply let himself be pulled into the world of the artist, bringing about moments of communion, moments of silence.

A work of art speaks for itself and if words are necessary to explain it then it is no longer a work of art. 

Translated by Cynthia Magriel Wetzler

***

So writers. Don’t look at the plaques next to the painting for titles and dates. Jump in and find your own experience. Maybe the feeling will inspire a story totally unconnected to the facts of the painting itself.

What do you think? Agree wholeheartedly? Disagree violently? Let me know!

LINKING THE ARTS

Jackson Pollack

I looked at this painting for a long time. Got inside of it. It frightened me. Then I wrote a story about a lost child.

Good word: Uncluttered. As in a pure state of mind open to authentic experience.

No books on artists or art criticism. So you can have your own time with the work of art. Not someone else’s.

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

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

Writing Leap #31

Writing the Embarrassing Confession

Hi Writers and Readers,

Embarrassment.  It can flush you red.  It can sit inside, an uncomfortable secret.  It can make you feel foolish or ashamed.

Getting it out onto the page can be great writing practice for saying what you mean.  So edit and edit your journal outpourings or your memory sketches of  shameful moments until your words evoke your embarrassment in your readers themselves.  Even if you are the only reader.

What has made you cringe at yourself?  Or secretive about your thoughts?  Personal embarrassment is a rich garden for writers to dig around in.  You can try it as a sentence, a personal essay, a prose poem.

My embarrassing wish deepens around Halloween when we are surrounded by a lot of toothless witches and ink black cats.  Wiccan witches call this holiday Samhain, a time when the veil between the living and the dead is lacy thin.

My Embarrassing Halloween Wish

Wiccan High Priestesses, sometimes referred to as Witches, have evolved into their role through study, levels of training, much time and much heart.  They have absorbed the soul of Wicca, a pagan, nature-centered religion, legally recognized in our country since the early 1970’s.

While I too look to nature as one source of my spiritual life and while I revere the Wiccan moral code, “An ye harm none, do what ye will,” it’s pretty certain I will never become a Wiccan High Priestess.

No, my wish is much more ethereal.  And unrealistic.

I want to create magic, the kind that happens in dreams.

I would like to be able to close my eyes and alter certain moments as they occur.  Assure that someone I love knocks that interview out of the park, another closes a well-deserved business deal, another has a thumbs-up result after a doctor’s appointment.

On Halloween night I would love to hear a beloved relative who has passed away whisper in my ear from the red leaf clusters of my big maple tree.

My magical self and I would open a Witchy Café.  The menu?

Banshee Mulled Wine with Brandy and Witchy Spices

Honey Pumpkin Mead for kindness

Barmbrack Bread with secret star-charged herbs

Witches Brew Coffee with my other-worldly nutmeg and robust vanilla bean

Each bite would heal, or sooth, or inspire my guests in some small way.

Go ahead readers.  Laugh.  Raise your eyebrows at me and say, “Right.  Nutsy.  Come back to earth.”  I say, “OK, but not all the time.”

Happy Samhain/Halloween Everybody and Happy Writing.

LINKING THE ARTS

A Great Word for October:  BOO!  As in startle yourself with your writing.

Recipe for Barmbrack Bread or Soul Cake.  A traditional Celtic bread served during Samhain with tea.  Or whiskey.  It is Halloween after all.

A Delicious Quote:

“The fire was nice and bright and on one side of the side-tables were four very big barmbracks.  These barmbracks seemed uncut; but if you went closer you would see that they had been cut into long thick even slices and were ready to be handed round at tea.” James Joyce, Dubliners

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 #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 Characters

Writing Leap #24    Describing What You See

Hi there Writers,

You are the experiencer who gives your reader details of what you are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling physically and feeling emotionally.  Description creates a mood, a tone, so your reader drinks in what you do and gets lost there.  That’s your gift as a writer to your reader.

Pick anything!  How does it strike you?  Write that.  It’s the best practice for your fiction and non-fiction as well.

The Story Line is:   CONTENTMENT

Here’s mine.

The Linden Tree

Remember what it felt like when you were a child and you  found your own hiding place?  A place where everything around it disappeared?

There is a very old linden tree that looms high among the maples and beech at our local nature center.  The other day I leaned against its huge brown trunk and left the nature center for linden tree land.

It was droopy hot outside with a blinding sun.  But under the thick branches that sprawled forty feet across and eighty feet high it was dark-green shady and as refreshing as a glen after the rain.  Many of the branches hung down to within a few feet of the ground.  This linden has been growing for over one hundred years and may even keep on going to one thousand.   It was secluded under the tree.  Private.  It was magical. 

Clusters of heart shaped, slightly lopsided leaves dangled off graceful stems.  I took my sketchpad and drew the tiny sawtoothed edges and the little point at the tip.  It’s the end of June and just past the time when the star-shaped flowers bloom and perfume the air with a mighty fragrance of honey and lemon peel.  I missed that, darn it.

But hanging from the stems along with the round love leaves were long, very narrow yellow-green leaves, like wings, in clusters of two.  Growing out of the center of the leaves were threadlike stems that split into a V, where two pea-sized white nutlets were thinking about dropping to the ground and starting new linden trees.  Unless they decide to let the chipmunks and squirrels enjoy the seeds inside the nutlet for tea.

It was hard to leave.

LINKING THE ARTS

Painting:  In the Shade of Linden Trees by Apollinaris M. Vasnetsov, 1907

Book: Charles Dickens is known for glorious descriptions that create images in your mind where you can go and hang out. One of my favorites: