Tag Archives: writing life

Writing Practice and Meeting up with your Muse

Writing Leap #69

Hi Writers,

WRITING ABOUT CHILDREN

Writing fiction can be a heart-expanding journey. With all characters that we create, we succeed most when we are able to inhabit their internal world. With children we are challenged to hop back into their experience and bring them to life as they really are, not seen through the eyes and pen of our adult selves. Fictional children, to come across as authentic, require that we go right to a most sacred part of ourselves, our empathy, our ability to feel another person deep down. If we can become our fictional child, without looking down on her because she is shorter, that child will come alive in our stories.

So writers. Create a child and have a wonderful time, “scoring that home run with the older kids.”

Here’s mine.

Emma snuggled in between her Grammy and Grandpa. It was a magical time to be out, really late, like 10 o’clock. Nice music floated out of the gazebo in front of them and the summer moon looked pretty in the dark sky.

Emma clutched her doll, Arabella Ann and gave her a quick kiss. She looked over at Daddy’s sad face. Tears flooded Emma’s eyes again and the ache came back. She held Arabella Ann even tighter against her chest. Where was Mommy? Why had she left? She’s been gone since Tuesday. That’s three whole days. Emma let herself sink into Grammy’s arms and felt herself shaking. “Shhhh, my darling,” Grammy whispered. Her voice cracked and Emma heard the pain. “We just don’t know why she went away.”

Emma’s eyes followed a couple dancing on the grass. She got off Grammy’s lap and walked with Arabella Ann over to the gazebo and the music. Clutching her doll close, she began to dance and twirl around and around and around.  She stopped twirling. “I’m your Mommy, Arabella Ann, and I will take care of you forever and ever and not leave. Even if you are a bad girl. Well, I’ll be mad if you are bad, but only for twenty minutes and then I will hug and kiss you and make you birthday cakes even when it’s not your birthday.” Emma ran back to Grammy’s lap and held on to her hard. She and Arabella Ann fell asleep.

May your muse be bright,

LINKING THE ARTS

Arabella Ann

Books

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Harry Potter has grown up. We struggle along with Albus, his youngest son, who hates being a wizard like his famous father. We become Albus, fighting to discover who he is and we feel a personal thrill when he triumphs.

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 #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.

Here’s to your tickle moments writers! Maybe your own passport picture will inspire a funny story?

Warmly,

LINKING THE ARTS

An Old Master Painting

Franz Hals, Dutch, 1582-1666.  Tickled by an owl?

Good Word.  Delight   As in the kind that bubbles up like a well.

Writing Practice and the Muse Who is ALWAYS THERE

Writing Leap #48

Hi Writers, 

Thanksgiving is the official time to verbalize “gratefuls.”

What about asking your fictional characters to tell you their “gratefuls?” They may surprise you! Maybe they think they don’t have any, or maybe they will reveal something about themselves that will show you a deeper side, an unexpected layer of who they are. Your character may show you he’s not always dense, or loving or grouchy or intelligent.

Asking your character questions, listening for his answers or “seeing” a new gesture or facial expression emerge is one way to add revealing dimensions to his behavior. It’s a good way to avoid the dreaded “one dimensional character.”

Go ahead and try asking your characters what they are grateful for. Start with a blank page, put the character’s name on top and ask the question! Give them a chance to show you how richly layered they may be. They might reward you by breathing right off the page.

Here’s mine. I asked my character if she were grateful for anything. She revealed something I never knew about her and I realized I had done her an injustice. She wasn’t just one way. She was another way too.

She had to get rid of this dog. He bites, well nips, her ankles, the delivery man’s ankles, guest’s ankles, everybody’s ankles. He whines every hour on the hour at night. Can he tell time? Here’s the worst. Sometimes he goes poo-poo in her husband’s back office, in front of the bathroom door. Right after a long walk outside.

Here he was now, looking up at her while she sat reading, tissues piling up in the basket next to her. Her nose wouldn’t stop running and her throat was sore and her head was hot. She crossed her legs trying to find a comfortable position. Holding the top leg slightly out in front of her felt good.

The dog lay at her feet. He  reached his big paw up to her lifted leg and plopped it there, on her ankle. He was very still. She stared at him for a few moments, then a few more moments. She couldn’t help the smile and she  ruffled the dog’s ears. She leaned back and felt the warmth of his paw spread through her, landing, she realized, on her heart. The dog looked her in the eye and didn’t move his paw from her leg. She really would be bereft without him. How could she be in her house without that doggie love following her around?

A Very Happy Thanksgiving Writers with many “gratefuls!” As for me, I am so grateful I am a writer because my eyes are always open wide.

LINKING THE ARTS

 A Good Word

Trust, as in trusting that your characters know who they are. 

I wonder if Dickens or Tolstoy or Edith Wharton had conversations with their characters?

Writing Practice and the Muse who is ALWAYS THERE

Writing Leap #47

Happy November to all you Wonderful Writers!

Writing the unexpected joy, in memoir, fiction, a poem, is great writing practice for evoking a moment. It’s a chance to filter everything out except those words, those sounds, those smells, that rhythm that calls up the feeling of the moment—for the character and for the reader.

Have you been startled by something that dazzles you lately? Touched by a kindness? Go ahead all you idea-filled writers out there! Practice evoking a joyful moment. Maybe it will turn into a longer piece or turn out to be a horrible moment. Just start.

Here’s mine.

The old man stared at the picnic table by the sand dunes. The sun was peeking down  through the clouds, covering half the table in warmth. Crisp, November ocean breezes blew some dried seaweed off the weathered table top.

“C’mon Finnegan.” He pulled his big old brown dog, a mix of god-knows-what, in close. “Let’s do it.”

 Leaning on his dog and with a bit of effort, he pulled one leg up on to the table bench.  Oof.  He stopped to take a breath. “Bossy Dr. ‘Cautious’ would have ten fits if he saw me now, Finnegan, stiff as I am and creaky as I am.” The old man had dizzy spells sometimes and a hip that annoyed him.

He hoisted his other knee beside his foot. “O.K. O.K. I’m almost up, Finnegan.” Oooof.  He pulled himself on to the tabletop and turned himself bit by bit, ouch, ouch. He lay down on his eighty-nine year old back.  Aaaaah. The table was hard and the muscles in the top of his back hurt. He scrunched up his scarf and put it under his head. Yes. Better. Finnegan settled on the bench just beneath him.

The old man smiled and switched his awareness to the cloud pictures passing by in the sky that didn’t end. A slow sense of peace and utter contentment began to release his body into the warm wooden tabletop. The smell of the ocean and the lullaby of the crashing waves delighted his senses.

 “I miss you Lizzie,” he said to a floating cloud. Was she clucking at him for doing such a darned foolish thing—climbing up on top of a picnic table? No, no, she’s glad I tried and did it. She only wanted me to be happy. Always.

 After a nice long stretch he took one last blissful breath and began the trip down from the table top to the sand.  Steady, steady, I can do it. O.K. O.K.

 “C’mon Finnegan. I think we deserve a nice shot of whiskey.”

Happy Writing,

LINKING THE ARTS

This does look like a lovely spot to dream some new writing ideas or discover that elusive answer to a revision problem.

A Favorite Word: Contentment

Not to push this too far, but for me to feel deep contentment is what I imagine might be a state of grace.

A Favorite Book

The Outermost House by Henry Beston is full of unexpected joys at the seashore.

Writing Practice and The Muse Who is Always There

Writing Leap #42  Writing About Young Children

Hi All You Writers Out There,

Young children love to look up to you and announce the most surprising things; little bursts of observation that can be funny, troublesome, endearing or savvy. We are often charmed because they are small and new to this world.

Capturing a ‘child moment’ is sometimes a challenge for writers. We are not three years old and unless we have young children around us we may harbor pre-conceived notions about what childhood feels like. Our memory may not be reliable and cliches about children like to insinuate themselves into our writing.

Cliche is a place we do not want to be. As much as possible I try to creep into the child’s experience and write that. With adults reacting to children I try for a spontaneous response.

Go ahead writers and create a story around a child. You may feel refreshed by this work, as I do.

Here’s my attempt.

The outdoor arbor of branches and twigs was bedecked with small flowers and ribbons. The light scent of roses wafted among the seated wedding guests and you could feel the buzz of anticipation and excitement in the small grassy meadow. The groom and minister were in place under the arbor and the processional was about to begin.

All eyes were turned to the back where Oliver, the five-year-old ring bearer, held fast to his satin pillow that cradled the two gold rings. He was standing with the groomsmen ready to walk down the aisle. Light music from the musicians’ violins began to fill the meadow.

Oliver pushed his round glasses higher on his nose, looked up at the best man and whispered, “Don’t you think this is so romantic?”

The whisper was a loud whisper and it floated down the aisle bringing on many soft chuckles.

Halfway through the service, during a relative’s recitation of “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways,” a small voice whispered to the best man, “I have to go to the bathroom. Badly.” It was again a loud whisper and again amused, delighted  titters spread though the gathering.

The minister paused and grinned down at Oliver. The relative stopped reciting.

“Me too,” one of the little flower girls piped up.” “I have to, too.” The other flower girl, a toddler, stepped out of line.

Oliver’s mother rushed up and escorted the three to the house. They were squeezing their legs together.

There were only one or two “shouldn’t the mother have taken care of this beforehand?” Haven’t they ever had a similar emergency?

Happy Writing Everyone,

LINKING THE ARTS

                                                                                        A Huge Responsibility. Must arrive safely to the alter.

Children’s Writer’s Word Book by A. Mogilner and T. Mogilner

When writing from a child’s P.O.V. I really like to consult this vocabulary book organized by grade in school. If the child is a genius (and most mothers’ children are geniuses) you can skip a grade or two.

Maya Angelou died on May 28, 2014, four days ago. When I heard the news, a moment from “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” a book of hers I had read a long time ago, rose up into my memory. The jolt it created was as strong as it was back then. Here’s how I remember it.

She wrote of the night when she and her mother snuck into the office of the town’s white dentist; round to the back and ever so quiet. Both shaking. It was after hours, of course, and close to midnight. No coloreds allowed anywhere near there. Her toothache was splitting her head in half but if they were caught–oh, boy. The two of them, and possibly the dentist, would have been tossed in jail to face unthinkable brutalities.

Just last year in 2013 Maya Angelou appeared before an audience filled with respect for her, a woman whose strong soul reached far beyond itself to enfold all of us, everywhere. Accepting the Norman Mailer Lifetime Achievement Award, she said, “Just Imagine.” And after a pause she said, “Just IMAGINE.”

Her warm, low, heavy voice resonated right out of the video into the center of my being.

Yes, Maya Angelou, a little girl in the 1930’s raised in Sparks, Arkansas, a dot in the deepest of the deep south, was now receiving another in a litany of high honors for her poetry, autobiographies and speeches; work that illuminates the way to decent, moral, O.K. behavior amongst human beings.

If I had been her friend, and oh how I wish that could have been, I would have tried to absorb her unique humanity into my psyche. How extraordinary that would have been. It tickles me that she fudged about how many husbands she had during her lifetime. She didn’t want to project a flighty image. I love her.

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 Different Literary Modes

Writing Leap #21  The Writing Life

Hi Writers,

Writers are all part of the same tribe and for me it’s exhilarating to connect with members of my tribe in person, in their books and on the internet.  We all share a lot of deep joy and angst.

Many writers have written about their writing journeys.  To name just three: Annie Dillard The Writing Life, Anne Lamott Bird by Bird and Jill Krementz The Writer’s Desk, a collection of photographic essays of writers and their thoughts.

Writing about the writing life is not just about technique and “how to scribble right.”  (Crucial to the writer as those books are.)  Writing about the writing life is about your personal flight to the moon and back or aspects of that trip.

So writers, out with your pens! 

Find some of your writing moments; highs, flops, your inspirational triggers.  Be true.  Don’t fuzz over the hard times.  They may lead to new insights about your stories.

Here’s mine.

Chaos

         Gabrielle Roth was a dancer, author and sublime muse.  She created a movement practice that follows the path of our innermost rhythms: from flowing to staccato to chaos to lyrical and finally to stillness.  Dance journeys with Gabrielle through these five rhythms have in some mysterious way paralleled my writing journeys.

         I am at this moment in deep writing chaos with my middle-grade children’s novel.  My creative self is darting here, running there, going nowhere.  Help me out again Gabrielle!

         Flowing is lovely.  Like the feeling I had dancing through my first draft, my imagination graceful and never-ending.  That first draft exhilaration now seems far away.  I read it now and sigh.  So many flaws.  So much to fix.  I wake up these mornings with an ache and a certain dizzy dread.  Will I get myself out of this hurricane?

         I have all 28 chapters of my book spread out end to end on a very long table in a pathetic attempt to interweave plot lines, cut (should it be most of the book?) make my characters compelling.  The chapters blur.   I try setting them up on the left of my computer screen and a work in progress blank document to the right.  The Rules of writing technique, all of them, are bossing me around, hammering me on the head.  OK you Rules.  I’ll make Maggie, my main character, less sensitive so she will be likable.  I’ll bring in more conflict for her, I’ll create a more threatening antagonist.  I’ll bring in more details about the setting. 

         But Ha! There is a personal perk that comes along with my painful revision.  I must go back to Nantucket, my locale for the book and search out more unique physical details of the island.  Don’t shake your head.  It’s not a vacation.  I must!  I really don’t want to lose my original thrust, in this case a lyrical voice and magical realism.  I leave tomorrow.

         Here’s what I’m telling myself.

         1. Revision IS writing.  I know that, of course.  And I know what to do.  When I make a revision work it takes me to Gabrielle’s clear stillness that allows my creative self to move.  Back full circle to flowing.

         2. The love for my story and for Maggie is herculean and doesn’t waver.

         3. What I know from my writing tribe is that most if not all writers get caught in riptides.  But most rescue themselves.  Will I?  I will too, right?

LINKING THE ARTS

My Dancing and Writing Muse

Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth

A Good Word   Chaos.  In the sense of not finding the path out of many  swirling possibilities.

This painting by Mark Berson is called Chaos