Writing Moment to Moment Archives - Writing Like a Dancer

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.

WRITERS WHO READ POETRY

Posted on May 12, 2014 by writ7707 Posted in Reading like a Writer, The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Writers and Poetry, Writing, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment, Writing Muse 2 Comments

Writing Practice and The Muse Who is Always There

Writing Leap #40 Writers Who Read Poetry

Hi Writers,

Take a moment away from your writing time, find a comfy place to sit, open a poetry collection and read a poem at random. Breathe in the poetic lushness of the phrases, the evocative images and the essence of the words that open up to a larger universe. Close your eyes for a moment and let it all swirl around inside. Then read it once more, to be enchanted all over again with what words can do.

The poet is the writer’s muse, no matter your genre. A poem can show us how to cluster words together so they say what we mean, a lightning bolt from writer to reader.

I read this poem from time to time. It kind of haunts me. The perfect word in a perfect phrase is a lovely thing.

Picking Blueberries, by Mary Oliver New and Selected Poems, 1992

Once, in summer

in the blueberries

I fell asleep, and woke

when a deer stumbled against me.

I guess

she was so busy with her own happiness

she had grown careless

and was just wandering along

listening

to the wind as she leaned down

to lip up the sweetness.

So, there we were

with nothing between us

but a few leaves, and the wind’s

glossy voice

shouting instructions.

The deer

backed away finally

and flung up her white tail

and went floating off toward the trees—

but the moment before she did that

was so wide and deep

it has lasted to this day.

I’m stopping at these last three lines (there is more to the poem) because they are the ones that linger for me and the ones that have often affected my thought processes as I’m writing.

Happy Writing all you Wonderful Writers out there!

LINKING THE ARTS

A Visual of the deer/blueberry experience

A Good Phrase:

the expanded moment

A Story Poem for children, grown-ups and writers: Words with Wings by Nikki Grimes, 2013. For me the story shines behind and beyond the words.

WRITING THE VIGNETTE FURTHER THOUGHTS

Posted on January 16, 2014 by writ7707 Posted in Art and Writing, Character Sketch, Literary Genres, The Writing Life, The Writing Muse, Writing, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment, Writing Muse, Writing the Vignette, Writing What You See 2 Comments

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

WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION

Posted on November 16, 2013 by writ7707 Posted in Fiction Based on Fact, Literary categories, Literary Genres, The Writing Life, Writing, Writing Historical Fiction, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment, Writing Muse, Writing what you mean 4 Comments

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

Writing Leap #32

WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION

Hi Writers,

Historical Fiction is a blend of historical facts and your imagination. It takes place in a definite period of time and place in history. Your characters are involved in a conflict or situation that is real for that time period.

The serious challenge for us writers is to eschew historical cliché. We have to do our research and then plunge ourselves back there. You don’t have to spell out the historical facts but they should be hovering underneath your fiction.

So writers. Do you have a time or moment or place in history that feels curiously familiar? Or that you are curious about? Take yourself back there and write.

Background on my fiction piece: The First Thanksgiving

Juicy, fragrant turkey with the stuffing you’ve loved since a child. Tart cranberry sauce and candied sweet potatoes. Yuuum. Creamy pumpkin pie with the flavors of autumn. Cinnamon, nutmeg, a pinch of ginger and maybe allspice. Thanksgiving.

But not anything like the food served at the harvest gathering in the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1621. Based on two slim accounts, 32 colonists and 90 Wampanaug feasted together on duck, geese, venison, maybe pumpkin and squash. Nobody knows if the Wampanaug were even invited or just showed up. With five deer. But they were welcomed. Chief Massasoit had signed a peace treaty with the Pilgrims.

Over the last 392 years since that gathering in Plymouth the romance of Thanksgiving has blossomed in our country’s fanciful mind. It is a uniquely American way of saying grace. Here’s my imagining of the first gathering.

The First Thanksgiving

He would eat standing up. To sit next to an ash-skinned man at a crowded table, maybe have to touch arms, would kill him.

He was fourteen.

He was a ferocious warrior.

And he would stand.

As far away from those moon-colored faces showing all their teeth as he could.

Which wasn’t far. He felt his father’s eyes flashing fire at him,

But even if his father suspected his thoughts he would never see them on his son’s face. The muscles around the young warrior’s eyes and mouth were as still as stone.

His weapon hung loosely at his side begging him to grab it.

Lots of gunfire this morning from this white settlement. Surely an attempt for a full out attack on his whole tribe. His blood raged. He would devour them. Chop them up like whale meat. He was well aware of how easy that would be for him.

She brought him a platter of paleface overcooked venison and stupid-looking cranberries. She was his age, he thought, but mush. Not hard and magnificent like his mother and his sisters.

“Seconds?” she asked. Washed out blue eyes. Worst of all she had yellow straw for hair. A freak.

He just stared.

He pinched her breast through her starched apron. Hard.

Her mouth flew open and her eyes rolled back and she collapsed to the ground. In a dead faint.

He didn’t have to look at his father to see the gesture of fury directed at him. It said, “Leave. NOW.”

Happy Writing Everyone and Happy Thanksgiving!

LINKING THE ARTS

An Evocative Engraving

The Pilgrims Receiving Massasoit

Charles Henry Granger, 19th century

Maybe my fuming young warrior is in this crowd?

A Word I Like: Grace. In the sense of generosity of spirit. Like the young warrior’s father who surely must have harbored some fury against the pilgrims who stole their corn and worse, yet rose above it.

I Like this Book.

Thanksgiving by Sam Sifton, National Editor and former restaurant critic for The New York Times. He is very funny. His book is full of tips and comments both culinary and amusing.

THE WRITING LIFE

Posted on May 14, 2013 by writ7707 Posted in Art and Writing, Personal Writing, The Writing Life, Writing, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment, Writing Muse 2 Comments

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

WRITING GREAT DIALOGUE

Posted on March 9, 2013 by writ7707 Posted in Literary categories, Writing, Writing great dialogue, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment, Writing Muse 1 Comment

To all my email subscribers: Click on Writing Great Dialogue above for full blog and color.

Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Literary Modes

Hi Writers out there,

Dialogue is the fastest way to get your reader to connect with your characters. It’s immediate.

A good thing for us writers to do is to tune into people talking; the cadence of their voice, the way they put words together, the emotions they evoke. But to recapture on the page what people actually say we have to edit out the “uhs” and any words that don’t add to the flow of the plot. That’s our little writer’s secret on how to make dialogue read authentically.

We can’t be sneaky and try and use dialogue to give the poor reader extra information. Instead, include the information in little beats, the action narrative you write in between the dialogue.

And we can’t let those seductive adverbs ruin our writing. As in, she said graciously, lovingly, stupidly. They distract as all seductresses do and they make editors sigh, amateur. Adverbs may tempt you. Show gumption! Strangle them.

Story Line

Moments, made up or real

Here’s mine. It’s real.

Sarah dropped her ski pole off the lift into the deep, rocky snow-covered gully below. She and her little friend YiPei leaned way over in the chair and giggled. YiPei dropped hers too. More giggling.

“Hey, you girls! What the heck do you think you are doing? Todd yelled at them from the chair behind. He was trying to be their ski instructor. “Cut that out!”

“We’re sorry Toddie.” Giggles.

Two little girls in puffy snowsuits, wool hats with pom-poms and bibs that said “Snow Puppies” turned around and laughed.

“Let’s drop the other pole too,” Sarah said.

Down went their second poles onto the trails below accompanied by giggles, giggles, giggles.

“I’m warning you two,” Todd called out from behind. He shook his ski pole at them. “You’re not funny.”

“O.K. We’re sorry Toddie.”

Cascades of giggles.

At the top of the mountain they skied off the lift.

“O.K. wiseguys. Get your smart-ass behinds back down the mountain. Now!”

Sarah and YiPei assumed their favorite tandem position, Sarah in front, skis in snowplow position, YiPei behind holding on to her waist, skis in snowplow position. They took off down the mountain, leaving a trail of giggles.

“No hot chocolate! That’s for sure! Todd yelled after them.

***

Very Happy Writing All,

LINKING THE ARTS

Sarah and YiPei having fun being naughty.

A Good Word

I love the word naughty. As in spunky.

The Incredible Toni Morrison

writes dialogue like nobody else.

Just read through Beloved and you’ll see.

CREATING POETRY

Posted on February 5, 2013 by writ7707 Posted in Literary Genres, Personal Writing, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment, Writing Muse Leave a comment

To my email subscribers. Click on CREATING POETRY above for full blog and color.

Playing Around With a Story Line in Different Literary Genres

Hello out there all you writers,

Writing Leap #17 Creating Poetry

For me reading and breathing in a poem can take me to a place deep inside from where I can swim into fiction. Emily Dickinson’s “…page(s) of prancing poetry” can open our writer’s sensibilities to the evocative essence of words, the purity of flow, exquisite economy. Poetry can teach so much to us writers.

Who with just a few words wouldn’t fall in love with Roger the Dog and by extension any dog that might have snored his way into your heart?

“He hogs the fire, he bakes his head, As if it were a loaf of bread.

He’s just a sack of snoring dog, You can lug him like a log.” By Ted Hughes (A Family of Poems compiled by Caroline Kennedy)

My dear friend Carol Bell, a widely-published poet from Colorado, can expand a moment into a shimmering truth. Here is her wonderful poem, CROWS

Main Street.

Frothing panting

jackhammers ranting

road crew cursing

sweating beside

a cottonwood

alive with crows.

Noah’s crows.

Iridescent crows.

Mesmeric wings

taunting beaks

black and bawdy

scavengers’ bodies

catch the sun.

Their Ariel magic

plucks me

from the heat,

holds me

in its hands,

and the city

shrivels

like a spent iris blossom,

a dark circle falling away.

Crows was published in Bayou Magazine, Issue 54, 2010

***

“Moments” is our story line. Take the leap and think of your own moment and evoke it in a poem. Yes, yes, you can do it. Or, find a poem that inspires you, by its flow, by its subject, by its metaphors. Use your own flow, your own subject, your own metaphors and express your moment in fiction.

Happy Writing Everyone,

LINKING THE ARTS

Here is Carol Bell’s poem “written” in watercolors

A Good Word: kindle, as in igniting words in your poetic imagination–perhaps in metaphor, perhaps in free verse, perhaps in rhyme, perhaps in narrative.

A Book I Love about Poetry

poemcrazy freeing your life with words by Susan G. Wooldridge Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1996.

STORIES PEOPLE TELL YOU

Posted on January 16, 2013 by writ7707 Posted in Literary categories, Literary Genres, Personal Writing, Stories overheard, Stories people tell you, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment, Writing Muse 1 Comment

To my email subscribers: Click on STORIES PEOPLE TELL YOU above for full blog and color.

Playing Around with a Story Line in Different Literary Genres and Categories

Hi Writers and Readers Out There,

Writing Leap # 16 Stories People Tell You. (Or if you are snoopy, like all writers must be, Stories You Have Overheard)

You never know when a passing comment or an amazing story whispered to you in confidence will send up firecrackers in your writing imagination. Writers are always tuned in.

The Story Line is “Moments“

Find a moment in a story you were told and write about it. This could lead to—anywhere!

Here’s mine.

“I have a little story to tell you about my granddaughter,” my friend Nancy said leaning towards me.

We were in the middle of tea at our favorite cafe where the tables were small and round. Just right for lovely conversations.

“You know Mae has just turned three and her brother Grant is now five. Well, they go to the same school now.”

Her grin signaled something either funny or endearing. I was in.

“It seems that Mae took it upon herself to leave her classroom and walk down the school hallway to the bathroom. She passed the open door to the director’s office who happened to notice her. Mae stopped in front of her brother Grant’s cubby, put both her arms around his coat, nestled inside and gave it a long hug. She then trotted on to the bathroom.”

Nancy shook her head. “She is something.”

My mouth dropped open. “How adorable is that?” We both leaned back in our chairs and took in the sweet baby love of that moment in front of Grant’s cubby.

Sharing stories brings us together, captures worlds and moments face to face. Unless we are yawning. And those stories won’t feed our imagination anyway. So make a date with a friend and see what comes up. Get there early and eavesdrop–be very cool–on other people’s conversations for bits and pieces of stories to store away for future story ideas. Eavesdropping is your privilege writers!

Warmly,

LINKING THE ARTS

A Good Word

flow As in the flowing connection that happens between two people when one is telling a story and the other is drawn into it.

Terrace of Cafe Weplar Paris by Francois Henri Morisset

This would have been A PERFECT PLACE for keeping your ears and eyes open for little inspirational writing gems. You never leave home without your notebook and/or phone (full of notes) right?

SETTING AS CHARACTER

Posted on August 14, 2012 by writ7707 Posted in Literary Genres, Setting as Character, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment, Writing Muse 1 Comment

(To my email subscribers. Click on the title SETTING AS CHARACTER in the above box for full post, links–and color.)

Playing Around With a Story Line in Different Literary Genres

Writing Leap #8 Setting as Character

Hi there Writers,

You have a feel for a certain locale and love/fear/wonder about being there in your imagination. If your character shows the same involvement with your setting then the locale can become a character as well. They interact. Physically and emotionally. Flat description doesn’t bring a place to life. For writer Donald Maass it’s about, “…exploring the ways in which a character experiences a place.”

Where would you love to be right now? Imagine a character (you?) involved with the place and write about it. Doesn’t writing give us the gateway to “live many lives” of our own creation?” And for you readers out there–Isn’t it extraordinary to feel what it might be like to be plunked down in a new locale? As the character and as yourself?

Story Line

Passion: And Then What?

Here’s mine with a setting that has a mind of its own. It’s a modified scene from my almost-finished-revising (is any writer ever really finished revising?) middle-grade novel for children, “You Are a Real Artist, Darling Maggie.” Maggie and Jacqueline are ten years old.

Jacqueline Loves Sea Lettuce

Another gusty breeze pricked their legs with sand. They laughed and ran on up the beach.

“Jacqueline, doesn’t the sand feel great on the bottoms of your feet, squishing through your toes?

Maggie scrunched her toes deeper and covered the top of her feet with little piles of sand. It tickled and felt warm and friendly. Jacqueline stuck a mussel shell in the sand on Maggie’s foot and they giggled.

A sharper wind skimmed across the sand. It pushed the dunegrasses into backbends and Maggie saw the waves whip up to a furious froth. She frowned.

Jacqueline wandered a few feet closer to the shoreline, eyeing a big piece of lime green sea lettuce floating in the waves.

“Let’s go get that lettuce for my seaweed collection. C’mon Maggie, it’s close to shore. We’ll grab it and come right out.”

“Hey NO!” YOU KNOW THE RULE. No going in the ocean without an adult. And there’s no one here.” Maggie darted after Jacqueline. “The waves are getting huge! Stop!”

“It’s right here!” Jacqueline dashed into the water to snatch the sea lettuce just within her reach. Before Maggie could blink Jacqueline was sucked down into the center of a high, dark crashing wave. Maggie’s heart leapt into her mouth.

PLUNGE

Maggie dove into the icy waves to grab Jacqueline.

WHERE WAS SHE?

Yellow bathing suit! WHERE?

A wave roared over her head as she fought to stay in control. It smacked her in the face with a salty force that stung her eyes. She blinked hard. OH DEAR GOD. Jacqueline!

Maggie wasn’t even aware of the shaking in her legs, arms and shoulders as she put all her effort into keeping herself afloat in the surly surf.

CRASH! BOOM!

“JACQUELINE!” she screamed. In less than a moment she felt a strong, sucking current yank at her body and in a blink she was pulled rapidly out to sea.

A RIPTIDE! They were caught in a riptide! She fought hard to swivel around towards shore. Jacqueline! Jacqueline!

A drenched head and open mouth surfaced a good distance away. Maggie heard a faint, “I can’t. I can’t.” She powered her way towards Jacqueline who was sinking, rising, sinking, struggling, spitting out salty water, disappearing here and resurfacing there in the deadly surf.

CRASH BOOM! CRASH BOOM!

Maggie swam hard and heard her father’s voice in her head. ‘A riptide has no pity. It can pull you out to sea in a breath, even a strong swimmer like you. A riptide doesn’t care.’

Jacqueline could barely dog-paddle! Maggie’s heart hit her ribs.

Then, as if the undertow were giving them a fraction of a second’s grace, a wave bumped Maggie up against Jacqueline. MAGGIE GRABBED HER. They were so far out. Get yourself in the right direction. Look for the shoreline. She held on to Jacqueline with one arm and forced her strokes to swim parallel to the beach.

Maggie saw Jacqueline’s eyes go wild. “Go limp Jacqueline! Don’t fight! I’ve got you,” Maggie shouted. Another wave engulfed them in a mighty pull further out to sea.

She could get them out of this riptide. She could. Just get parallel to the shore and try and stay parallel. Swim steady. Steady.

“It’s OK Jacqueline. I’VE GOT YOU.” She spit out another mouthful of saltwater. Fishy taste. Fishy smell. Forget it.

Focus, focus, on the lighthouse way down the beach. The front and back of her head throbbed. She heard nothing. No gulls calling, no crashing surf.

Just, parallel.

Jacqueline gagged on salt water. Maggie held her slippery body tightly. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” Exhaustion attacked every fiber in Maggie’s body. She willed herself with every cell to stay calm and fight the current with steady, dead-on strokes.

Suddenly, she found a moment to wrench them free of the rip current, swam them into shore with a push from a breaking wave and pulled Jacqueline out of the water onto the sand.

They were shaking and Jacqueline was sobbing.

***

Happy Writing Everyone,

LINKING THE ARTS

Books

I’d love to know your favorite books, short stories, or poems where the setting is a character. There are so many incredible setting-as-character writers out there, past and present. Tell me!

A favorite scene of mine is from Tolstoy’s War and Peace when Natasha dances to the balalaika in the woodsman’s cottage and feels her Russian soul.

A Word I Love

clarity: In the sense of a crystal-like awareness and focus. Maggie found this in the riptide. Clarity even sounds illuminated.

A Painting

I wouldn’t want to be caught in the middle of this

THE PROFILE INTERVIEW

Posted on July 30, 2012 by writ7707 Posted in interview, journalism, Literary Genres, lobster shacks, profile interview, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing Inspiration, Writing Moment to Moment Leave a comment

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

Playing Around With a Story Line in Different Literary Genres

Hi Writers and Journalists,

Writing Leap # 7 The Profile Interview

Are you curious about what might motivate people deep down in their hearts? What makes them come alive?

The profile interview in journalism is one way to bring people to life on the page, using their own words and your observations. The journalist listens.

Journalism has made me a better person. I have learned to go into an interview with an open mind, judgment free. I slip into their world and that allows the magic to happen. People sharing. Me really hearing.

Before I even open my notebook I try to make everyone comfortable. I rely on feelings of good will.

I just bring about ten specific questions around the theme I am pursuing. I let their responses veer away from these questions and look for small details. Pertinent direct quotes are the backbone of the interview.

It’s a good feeling if and when both the interview and the written piece flow. So find someone who interests you and give it a try!

New Story Line

Passion: And Then What?

Passion has consequences ranging from miserable to sublime. Notice someone’s passion and do a profile interview with them. It’s fun.

This interview below with the lobster-fishing and lobster-roll-serving Mansi family in Guilford, Ct. was a pleasure.

Passion for Lobster

Guilford, Ct.

Thick green marshland grasses and winding harbor inlets, fishing boats and sailboats with tall masts, the fragrance of light salty breezes, the dock and lobster shack at the Guilford Lobster Pound has it all.

Heavenly.

Painters paint it, photographers photograph it and some give their pictures to the friendly Mansi family, owners of the dock and the lobster fishing/eatery operation here.

But don’t think this is just another picturesque spot where you sit outside at picnic tables with umbrellas and enjoy morsels fit for the gods. There is something special going on here.

Yes, you remember the luscious lobster rolls and the extra tasty clear-broth clam chowder chock full of quahogs. But what you remember most is feeling the genuine, easy warmth of the Mansi family. It makes just a pretty setting turn beautiful.

Her work is her passion, Janice Mansi said. “On the really hot days it has to be. Making people happy is the best part of this job,” she said. “It’s the customers we love.”

The customers love the Mansis back.

“They come with drinks (it’s B.Y.O.B.) and invite us to toast with them. They want us to stay here till they go home to bed. I want to go to bed! Let them stay,” Jan said.

Mansi daughter Erica, 21, may have revealed the reason for the warm and welcoming feeling that floats around the dock.

“What’s special for us is we get so close as a family. We are four peas in a pod,” Erica said. The customers benefit.

Most every morning during lobster season (April to January) Jan’s husband, Capt. Bart Mansi and their son, Bart IV, 24, take their lobster boat out on Long Island Sound to bait their traps and collect the lobsters.

“I like being on the water catching the product. It’s a freedom I have,” Bart said. He has been lobster fishing for thirty-eight years, since he was fourteen. His 42 foot fiberglass Maine boat, the Erica Paige, named after his daughter, is docked next to the shack where they sell their fresh lobsters to restaurants and loyal customers.

“We put the catch in water tanks. For the dock we steam them; crack them; cut them in chunks and put them in quarter pound bags. The size of one lobster roll.” he said.

“What makes us unique is the boat. The product comes right off the boat into the stomach in a matter of a day or two,” Bart said, stretched out on his lounging chair in the Lobster Pound shack. It was late afternoon and he had been working the lobster boat since 4 A.M. after all.

At their pushcart on the dock Jan and Erica pour sweet, warm butter over the lobster chunks and pile them high in toasted rolls.

“Each lobster roll is unique,” Jan said. “We say, ‘Look at this one! Or ‘Let’s hide this one!” When Jan gives you her genuine smile you almost feel like hugging her.

And when Erica asks you how you like the food she really wants to know. She’s a Mansi. “You get crazy tan lines, one day runs into the next, but you feel weird when the season is over, she said.

“People tie up their kayaks to our dock, climb up in their bathing suits and eat,” Bart said. “They come with their dogs.”

A wedding, an eightieth birthday? Both have taken place in that “Little Piece of Heaven,” as the Mansis call it.

The Mansi family rarely eat lobster themselves. “You smell it coming off you in the shower at night,” Jan said. They were about to go out to dinner for Chinese food.

“Others eat the lobster rolls like M & M’s. We all really love lobster but we’re around it all day,” Erica said. One exception is their seven fish Christmas Eve dinner when Jan, who loves to cook, makes her lobster sauce with garlic and parsley.

“The passion for me is family. More than the cooking,” Erica said.

The Guilford Lobster Pound also serves homemade stuffies, steamed hot dogs and authentic homemade Italian gelato.

505A Whitfield Street

Guilford, Ct 06437

Tel: 203 453-6122

Happy Writing,

Check out Guilford Lobster Pound for photos and information.

LINKING THE ARTS

A Funny Word That Evokes a Memory

quahog: an edible clam found on the Eastern Coast of the U.S.A.

Quahog makes me think of a morning I dug for clams as young child on the bay in Wellfleet, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. The ocean floor at low tide was squishy, kind of yukky between my toes. I dropped the quahogs into my pail, plunk, plunk and felt giddy as they piled up, very pleased to be a “wonderful quahog digger,” according to my mother.

Photographs can take you on vacation. These are of the Guilford Lobster Pound.