Commentary Archives - Writing Like a Dancer

WRITING THE EMBARRASSING CONFESSION

Posted on October 29, 2013 by writ7707 Posted in Uncategorized, Writing the Embarrassing Confession, Writing what you mean, Writing What You See 2 Comments

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

edible-ireland.com:2011:10:31:barmbrack

THE SCENE IN FICTION

Posted on July 16, 2012 by writ7707 Posted in Literary Genres, Writing, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment, Writing Muse, Writing the Scene Leave a comment

(To my email subscribers. Click on the title THE SCENE IN FICTION in the above box for full post, links—and color.)

Playing Around With a Story Line in Different Literary Genres

Hi there Writers,

Writing Leap #6 The Scene in Fiction

SCENE comes from the theater and the movies where the action takes place in a single setting. It’s a little story of it’s own with a beginning, middle and end–within the larger story.

Are any of you in the middle of writing a novel or a short story?

I find that focusing on the scene is great practice for writing moment-to-moment in the NOW.

The reader is there, right in the middle of it, feeling the tension and ready to dash to the next section of the story to find out WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

Have you ever read anything that had a one-hundred-eighty-degree turnaround impact on your writing?

From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler landed in my writing sensibilities with a welcome thump.

The book is all about telling your story in the pulse of the moment. For me it’s a lifelong practice, with varying results. When it works it dances! When it doesn’t I go back and look and see if too much “telling” is taking over the “showing.”

Story Line

Sometimes Love Hesitates (And Sometimes it Doesn’t)

Go ahead and write your scene moment to moment. Here’s mine.

***

Love Hesitates

Nora waited for him outside the café in Montparnasse, the one where they had fed each other oysters and kissed a lot. She was tapping her foot in fast little beats.

Just like Bertrand to include his last name in his phone message. What did he imagine? She had forgotten him after two months? Or knew a lot of Bertrand’s? Or didn’t recognize his voice?

He arrived. Obligatory kisses on both cheeks. He hugged her with awkward little pats on her back.

“Bonjour Nora.” He stepped back.

His French accent put the emphasis on the second syllable and released yet again the attraction, love, whatever it was she felt for him.

“Hello Bertrand.”

He led her to a nook in the corner.

“Alors,” (So) he said brightly. “Are you hungry?”

Nora wondered if she could eat.

“Would you like to share my salad? Please have more than just onion soup,” Bertrand said.

Were they going to talk?

He said, “Ah, I’ve been brutally busy, my exhibition, the teaching. We’re enjoying the sunshine in Aix.”

Nora looked at Bertrand. He was trying his utmost to set a light tone. He made a point of alluding to his wife.

She didn’t like him. No, it was true. At this moment she really didn’t like him. He was pompous.

She took a sip of her soup and broke off a small piece of the crust on the bread. She didn’t answer him, just nodded. Her full-out struggles to convince him that she could fit into his life one way or another made the trip of her spoon to her mouth a little shaky. Did she really want to hurt another woman?

They spent the rest of the lunch forcing small talk. They finished and rose to leave their little corner of the café. Bertrand took her hand and kissed it for several long seconds.

“I live with a lot of sadness about us, Nora. I love you and I always will.” He let go of her hand. “I’ll call you before I leave.”

She looked away and teared up. She didn’t want to see him again.

***

Happy Writing Everyone,

LINKING THE ARTS

A Favorite Scene

The opening scene of Gigi by Colette is a little story in and of itself. It’s so light-hearted yet promises much drama to come. It’s very moment to moment.

I sometimes ask myself, which writer’s magic most takes my breath away? For me it’s always the same: Tolstoy and Colette. Who takes your breath away?

A Good Strong Word

enough (in the emotional sense)

In Nora’s case, how much is she willing to endure?

A Mood Painting

To me the melancholy colors and the woman’s heavy arm on the table evoke resignation, like Nora’s. What do you think?

Café de Paris by Richard Edward Miller

THE EDITORIAL COMMENTARY

Posted on June 28, 2012 by writ7707 Posted in Commentary News, Editorial Commentary, Literary Genres, Personal Writing, Writing, Writing Inspiration, Writing Muse Leave a comment

To my email subscribers. Click on AN EDITORIAL COMMENTARY above for full post, links—and color.

Playing Around With A Story Line in Different Literary Genres

Writing Leap #5 An Editorial Commentary

Hi Writers,

Did you ever hear or see something on the news that struck you as particularly horrible, funny or sad?

If it’s sad, like the event below, I find that writing about it helps me to think about it.

A commentary is an opinion about an event that reveals the writer’s feelings about the situation. A foray into journalism. Readers may respond to the details as well as the common human experience the piece may portray.

Story Line

Sometimes Love Hesitates (And Sometimes it Doesn’t)

I’m going to play loose with the story line. In this case I’m interpreting the word love as empathy.

***

My Commentary

Matt Lauer of NBC has seen many shocking and distressing film clips. Hardly any have aggrieved him more, he said, than watching a grandmother on a school bus attempt to ignore vicious taunts from twelve-year-olds.

The bullying incident upset a lot of us. I watched the clip and felt sick.

What was she feeling? The cruelties were coming at her like bullets.

“You’re so fat.”

“You’re so fat you don’t fit in the seat.”

“Put your glasses back on. Cover your ugly face.”

Did these boys know that her son had committed suicide when one yelled out, “Your family should kill themselves so they don’t have to be around you.”

She started crying. The boys pulled at her hair and poked her.

In the next couple of weeks the outpouring of compassion for this grandmother overwhelmed her, she said. People responded. Many sent money. An airline offered to send her and nine friends or family members to Disney World.

Perhaps the humanitarian response was more than compassion. Perhaps it was empathy. We are her. Could this woman’s experience have touched raw feelings of our own humiliations at the hands of others? Or moments of shame when we might have said something unkind?

The outpouring of compassion helped her, the woman said. But what did this incident really do to her perception of herself?

****

How about you? Do you write down your reactions/thoughts on news stories that have touched you? Do you send letters to newspaper editors? Or comment online? Go for it! You know you have a lot to say, even if you think you don’t. You have feelings and reactions, right? So you have a lot to say.

Warmly,

LINKING THE ARTS

A Favorite Columnist

Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed Columnist for The New York Times, won a Pulitzer for Editorial Commentary in 1999.

She has a razor pen and a kind heart. She is mistress of the metaphor and plays on words. Maureen Dowd makes me cringe sometimes but she always puts ideas in my head. Plus she makes me laugh.

www.nytimes.com/archives/maureendowd

A Powerful Word

Bully

A person who torments weaker people.

These days we are all more aware of the prevalence and harmful effects of bullying. Many schools have created consciousness-raising classes to educate bullyers and victims alike about the dynamic of bullying. About time.

A Favorite Painting

Willem de Kooning

I think of empathy when I look at this painting. Maybe it’s the warm yellow colors.