Writing Archives - Page 2 of 7 - Writing Like a Dancer

WRITING ABOUT CHILDHOOD HURTS

Posted on February 1, 2016 by writ7707 Posted in Character Description, The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Writing, Writing about Childhood Hurts, Writing about Young Children, Writing Emotional Moments, Writing Muse Leave a comment

Writing Practice and Meeting up with your MUSE

Writing Leap #63

Hi Writers,

When young children are diminished, passed by or pushed into the background by adults or other children the result is often a deep feeling of, “Something is wrong with me.” If your young characters experience such hurts it colors all aspects of who they are. Evoke the hurt and your young person will come alive on the page.

Hemingway said, (something like) “Find where the pain is and write about that.” He also said, “Write hard and clear about what hurts.” Here’s my story about Mae, a six-year-old who carries around isolating feelings of not measuring up.

The Plaid Dress

A lady with a soft round face and gray curls sat down near the front of the bus on a seat facing the aisle. Settling in, she smiled at a little girl in a plaid dress across from her who was sitting next to her mother. The little girl didn’t smile back. Instead she lowered her eyes. The lady with the soft round face saw right away that the little girl’s misty eyes were blinking back a veiled sadness. The lady sensed that this was not a sudden sadness, but one that lived deep inside this little girl.

“Did you have a nice time in school today, Mae? The mother leaned over and put her arm around her daughter.”

“Yes.”

“It was a very soft ‘Yes.’ Mae jiggled her foot in a nervous repetitive motion.

The lady with the soft round face and gray curls sniffed twice. It was a magical sniff. She was a magical person. She looked at Mae across from her and here’s what she saw.

It was Mae’s classroom. Her teacher, Mrs. Perkins, was saying, “Sophie, Lisa and Bethany, please come up front by my desk.” Three little girls in plaid dresses got up from their desks and stood beside Mrs.Perkins. “Now you, Peggy, and let’s see, you, Alison. Come up to the front with the others.”

The five girls giggled and whispered to each other. Mrs. Perkins arranged them side by side in a line and asked them to hold hands.

“Now there you are, all in plaid dresses,” Mrs. Perkins said. “Go next door and show your principal, Mr. Green, how pretty and adorable you all look.”

And then the round-faced lady on the bus saw something else in her vision. She saw a little boy next to Mae stand up from his chair and wave his hand madly at the teacher. “Mrs. Perkins, Mrs. Perkins. Wait. You forgot Mae! She has on a plaid dress!”

Mrs. Perkins looked at Mae and glanced away. “No, no, not today. Mae has a sweater on.”

The last thing the lady with the soft round face saw was Mae trying to force a smile. The lady closed her eyes and felt her heart break. The bus pulled over to a stop. Mae and her mother and the lady all got off. The lady leaned down to Mae and said, “May I say that you look so very pretty in that plaid dress! I have a granddaughter about your age and I think I’ll get her a plaid dress for her birthday.” The lady started to walk away, then turned. “She looks a lot like you. Big beautiful eyes and bangs. She lives far away.”

A tiny smile crept onto Mae’s face. It almost stretched into a big smile. “Thank you,” Mae said to the lady with the soft round face. “Say Hi to your granddaughter from me, Mae.”

To write about a child’s deep sadness, from the child’s perspective, can be challenging. What do you all think, writers?

May your writing run deep in any form you choose: realism, humor, fantasy and poetry.

Mae’s plaid dress

Sophie’s plaid dress

Lisa’s plaid dress

Bethany’s plaid dress

Peggy’s plaid dress

Alison’s plaid dress

WRITERS AND THANK-YOU THOUGHTS

Posted on November 19, 2015 by writ7707 Posted in The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing our Gratefuls, Writing Thank-You Thoughts Leave a comment

Writing Practice and Meeting Up with Your MUSE

Writing Leap #60

Hi Writers,

It’s Thanksgiving season and a writing friend suggested writing about our gratefuls. This can be a lovely writing journey and can touch deep down to a place where creativity lives. Writing our thank-you thoughts can crystallize our own personal moments as well as moments for your characters.

Give your characters one of your thank-you thoughts. Or ask them, “Are you grateful for anything?” Your character may surprise you and take you into one of their interior moments.

Here’s mine.

There are some moments that give me glimmers into my soul. To twirl under a tree and be part of that dance when fall leaves swirl to the ground. To bring my baby grandchildren to a pumpkin patch and see those new toothless grins. I’m grateful for the wonder. Even crying about the Paris attacks brings me closer to my humanity. So yes, such moments for me, happy and sad, are simple ones. They reach wide and make me more available as a person. They help to withstand the wallops, light and heavy. I’m grateful, really, just to be here.

Enjoy your Muse who might be sitting next to you at the Thanksgiving table. Happy Writing and Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

WRITING THE INCIDENT

Posted on October 29, 2015 by writ7707 Posted in The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Writing, Writing from a detail, Writing Inspiration, Writing Muse, Writing the Incident Leave a comment

Writing Practice and Meeting Up with Your MUSE

Writing Leap #59

Writing the Incident

Hi Writers out there,

Things happen to us every day. Ho Hum things. Like spilling a box of clementines on the super market floor. Or finding a stash of acorns on the back seat of the car. I find that almost anything can ignite a story if I don’t get all “writerly” about it and just let my imagination fly me on its back to who knows where? Like a father and a son in a car, for example.

Dad does not stop lecturing me about defensive driving habits. Honestly? I don’t know how he can concentrate on the road and go into such detail about safety behind the wheel plus horrifying possibilities–at the same time.

Get this. As we approach the entrance to a four lane highway he says, “Always, always ease up to the highway slowly, Teddy, and look around you.” He gives me his, “I’m wise, you are not,” look. Doesn’t he realize I’m fourteen and know everything there is to know about driving a car?

Suddenly a car swerves around our Jeep from behind, budges ahead of us and zooms onto the highway.

“What the heck?” we both say.

The car zips over to the left lane, cutting off cars in its way. Then switches lanes back and forth to get ahead. Dad tries to keep up with it lane to lane. Clearly he was forgetting his own advice. “I have to get a glimpse of this idiot driver,” he says. “Has to be a real jerk.”

We pull next to the idiot driver and stare.

It’s Grandma.

She pretends not to see us and pulls her hat lower on her face. My cell phone rings. “Teddy? Don’t tell Grandpa about my driving style. Just tell him I’m a real slowpoke on the road. I love you.” I hear the dial tone.

“I guess it wasn’t Grandma who taught you to drive,” I say to Dad. He had to laugh. He grins at me ad I feel real close to him in that moment. I sort of feel we will laugh about this together for a long time.

***

The inciting incident for this story was just one moment when someone pulled in front of me and dashed onto the highway. I actually pulled over and stopped to write down my imaginary scenario. That’s why I always travel with notebook and pens. You never know when your muse will snuggle up.

Here’s to all of our imaginations!

LINKING THE ARTS

The Blue Boat: A painting of a father and son by Winslow Homer

A Good Word: Bonding, as in father and son moments when their hearts meet in familiarity and love.

WRITING AND VERBAL EXPRESSIONS

Posted on August 24, 2015 by writ7707 Posted in Literary categories, The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Writing, Writing from a detail, Writing great dialogue, Writing Inspiration, Writing Muse 2 Comments

Writing Practice and Meeting up with your MUSE

Writing Leap #56

Hi Writers,

My sister, Laurie, and I were laughing recently and reminiscing about our late mother’s wonderful farm town expressions. They were part of her even after many years of living outside a big city. Mary Magriel was a country girl from upstate New York and her turns of phrase revealed so much about her nature, her background, her era and what tickled her.

What about giving your characters expressions that express their personalities, perhaps their biases or fears. Particular turns of phrase, either unique to your character or not, is one way to give readers a gateway into your character’s make-up and your fictional world.

So writers, listen to your characters! How do they express themselves? They may be telling you a lot.

Mary Magriel’s Expressions: What they reveal about her.

Some of these are doozies. Her word. Thank you to my sister for remembering so many and for enjoying them together all over again.

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

Our mother would persist until she figured out a solution. Nothing was too much for her. Fitting things in a tiny closet, dashing her famous tomato seedlings over to a friend right before it was time to prepare dinner.

“I like to trade at the local butcher.”

Does anybody today say, “trade at the “A &P?” No! Trade is a farm town term from an era gone by. I would think it came from the fact that farmers traded their crops for goods. Our mother “traded” with a sharp eye for quality.

“My heart is klopping.”

As in beating hard. She either made this up or it was some version of a Yiddish word. Our mother, a Protestant, adored Jewish expressions. Maybe it was an expression of her love for our father who was Jewish and who loved to joke around with old Yiddish sayings. She would laugh and laugh, pleasing our father no end.

“Slower than molasses in January.” This just sounds really small town.

“Your father took us all the way around Robinson’s barn.”

There was no Robinson’s barn. It was how she expressed getting lost. Barns evoke rural environments and that’s where she grew up.

I wish my sister and I could remember more. Her farm town-isms bring her back.

Happy Writing! May you create many perfect expressions for your characters.

LINKING THE ARTS

A Wonderful Book

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley: An authentic rural voice and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992

A Funny Word

Hayseed, as in country boy. Slightly insulting. My father occasionally teased my mother about her high school boyfriend. “Only a hayseed like Tommy would say, ‘No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney,'” my father kidded.

“Robinson’s Barn”

Red Barn by Esther Marie Versch

WRITING THE IMAGE

Posted on July 15, 2015 by writ7707 Posted in The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing the Image 1 Comment

Writing Practice and Meeting up with your MUSE

Writing Leap #55

Hi Writers,

It was like being led into a room of Writer’s Secrets and opening a box marked, “Image Systems.” It was enough to turn this writer’s head around and wonder, “How did I ever think I could get to the soul of my story without digging into my imagination and pulling up just the right images to evoke my story’s world?

In a recent workshop at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Conference in Massachusetts, author and teacher Tim Weed elaborated on the magic of imagery. The kind that takes us beyond surface descriptions to the essence of the story’s world. Writers do this, he says, with specific sensory details that are part of a broader category of images and integral to the story. The images come from the writer’s subconscious and hit the reader’s subconscious as well.

For example: Tim Weed points out the imagery in Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass where there are, “…images of the north: icecaps, polar bears, the northern lights.” The north is the larger category of images and the rest are the all-important specifics.

See Tim Weed’s essays: http-//weedlit.blogspot.#4689A5

timweed.net/.webloc

Have you ever considered your imagery, writers? I think it’s a game-changer and can take your writing from really good to beyond good. Thank you so much, Tim Weed. Imagery may be a writing secret to some but it’s an exciting gift to me.

Here is my attempt. Not easy to try and make it right! But along with everything else writers think about I have found it thrilling to switch gears and put my focus where I dream. Perhaps we have all done this already. For me it has never been focused in quite this way. The passage is from my children’s middle-grade novel in progress. Maggie is nine years old.

Maggie’s ocean cove was empty and the surf sounded sleepy, like a lullaby. She sniffed the salty air. It smelled different, more like honey and lemon peel. Uh oh, Grammy Apple’s scent. Grammy Apple and her witchy magic? She closed her eyes and felt herself floating in a wide-awake dream. Suddenly little white clamshells, lots of them, and inky blue mussel shells sketched themselves into a fancy flower pattern on the wet sand. Maggie stared at the shells arranged like petals with strings of seaweed for stems. Draw, draw the shells my darling grandchild. The words slid right down the dunes into Maggie’s ears. You will be accepted into the Nantucket Art Fair.

Imagery, the kind Tim Weed is talking about, is a challenge! But go ahead, writers! Editing is what we do over and over, until our gut tells us, “Yes! I’ve got it!” Isn’t it worth it? You know there is no better feeling in the universe, right?

LINKING THE ARTS

For evocative imagery in the very first paragraph, Tim Weed’s book, Will Poole’s Island

With the images of the visual artist, the cover of Will Poole’s Island evokes a gray, moody ocean with a lone boat that looks very small on the dark horizon. We get a strong feeling of the book.

Word of the Moment: Imagery, as in writerly imaginings.

WRITING A CHARACTER DESCRIPTION

Posted on June 5, 2015 by writ7707 Posted in Character Description, Description, The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Writing, Writing Description, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment, Writing what you mean 2 Comments

Writing Practice and Meeting up with your MUSE

Writing Leap #54

Writing a Character Description

Hi Writers,

I belong to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (S.C.B.W.I.) They have a new offering for their members. Write a 50 word description of a character for a children’s book, using the word wart. They will post it on their widely-subscribed website (scbwi.org) for agents and editors to see.

At first I dismissed the idea. I wasn’t inspired by warts. Then my closed mind decided to open up and I had an idea! Big lesson: Consider everything as inspiration for your writing. Don’t be an inspiration snob like me. Stretch!

Writing a 50 word description of one of your characters is great writing practice for showing not telling. Fifty words is a challenge to try and evoke, not describe, something about your character that is real. Try it Writers! It’s really satisfying, I found.

Here’s mine inspired by the word wart.

The plump Queen had a wart on her bottom. So embarrassing. Especially when she sat on her throne and cried, “Ouch!” Her round cheeks blushed cherry red, her round mouth resembled a doughnut and her round eyes opened as wide as two apple pies. She heard everybody giggling quietly.

Happy Writing Everybody,

LINKING THE ARTS

The Queen, trying her best.

A Favorite Word: Evoke, as in to summon or suggest. This is one of the jobs of our muse.

WRITING ABOUT FEAR

Posted on May 7, 2015 by writ7707 Posted in The Writing Muse, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing Inspiration, Writing Muse 1 Comment

Writing Practice and the Muse who is ALWAYS THERE

Writing Leap #53

Hi Writers,

Feeling deeply what your characters fear and then using that understanding to create their actions is one way to make him or her breathe with authenticity. When I “looked my 9-year-old character in the eye” and asked her gently, “What are you afraid of, darling?” she revealed something that surprised me.

So sit down, get quiet, comfortable and non-judgmental with your characters and ask them with kindness, “Are you afraid of something?”

I asked myself this question a few hours after my recent shoulder surgery. When I tried to lift my arm up in my sling it was dead weight, a heavy sack of potatoes. “My arm is paralyzed,” I thought, envisioning a life as a true lefty without the use of her left arm. Images of a useless left arm and an awkward right one bombarded my imagination. I stopped breathing. I tried to lift my arm again. Worse. With my right hand I punched in dear Dr. Yasgur’s telephone number with effort. It was a baby’s hand learning how to land on the correct button and missing. My fears escalated.

“No, No, Cynthia. That’s the nerve block we gave you for your surgery. It will disappear in six to twelve hours.”

I relaxed my grip on the telephone and felt a tidal wave of relief.

Fears, irrational and real, can pop up anywhere. Discovering what our characters fear can be a way for us to find the subtleties in their behavior. Just ask them! If they say, “None of your business,” persist. Use your wily, writerly ways.

LINKING THE ARTS

The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry. Workman Publishing Co. N.Y. 2010

An indispensable, glorious book for writers and my new go-to for clear insights into the world of writers, agents, editors and publishers.

Writers, I urge you to put this book on your head and hope for osmosis. And read the chapter “Rejection Section” over and over. I have.

Ah, writers’ fear. Who among us hasn’t been afraid at times of a litany of terrible possibilities concerning our work? Often following rejections by individuals in the publishing world. It’s a raw fear. My writing falls flat. I have nothing new to bring to the literary world. Do I even have my own voice? Chatter, Chatter, Chatter. The inner demon doesn’t shut up, even in the face of praise for one’s work and worse, in the face of an inner knowing that what you have just written sings with truth. Writer’s fear is a misery.

Listen to Arielle and David. Let them take your writing fears and send them off like so many birds escaping from their cage.

A GOOD PHOTO

A GOOD WORD

Dancing: As in “Keep on Dancing.”

WRITER’S WRITE

Posted on April 15, 2015 by writ7707 Posted in The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Writing Leave a comment

Writing Practice and the Muse who is ALWAYS THERE

Hi Writers,

A thought for all of us.

“It’s impossible,” said pride.

“It’s risky,” said experience.

“It’s pointless,” said reason

“Give it a try,” whispered the heart.”

Unknown

WRITING THE TRAVEL MOMENT

Posted on March 3, 2015 by writ7707 Posted in Anecdote, The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Travel Writing, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing from a detail, Writing Inspiration, Writing Muse, Writing the Vignette, Writing What You See Leave a comment

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.

WRITING THE MOMENT THAT TICKLES

Posted on January 11, 2015 by writ7707 Posted in Art and Writing, Literary categories, The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Writing, writing funny, Writing Inspiration, Writing Muse Leave a comment

Writing Practice and the Muse who is ALWAYS THERE

Writing Leap #50

Happy Creative New Year Writers! May you have many spontaneous bursts of ideas for your writing. And the discipline (ah yes) to sit down and turn some of your sparklers into articles, stories, plays and poems.

An unexpected moment can tickle and delight us. Writing about it (as close to the moment it happens as possible—carry your notebook with you at all times) can be great practice in capturing a revealing aspect of you the writer or your characters. In fiction, the moment may not tickle you the author, but if it tickles your character the reader will get to know him better.

Here’s mine.

Teddy is almost five months old and he is going to Paris. What will his eager little face take in when we, his grandparents, send his parents off to a café and push him in the stroller down the Boulevard St. Germain? I can’t help the ripples of delight I feel each time I imagine it.

And the funniest thing? Teddy needs a passport! His mother texted me a picture of this passport. He is smiling one of his new grins and he’s all official now. I stared at the passport, shook my head, enjoying lots of tickles around my funny bone.