Choose a Line, Any Line

Today’s prompt, of the penultimate day of this April challenge, was to choose a line from a previous poem and use it as the title of today’s work. The line I chose was from Day 17, Poets Express, and chose the line, “reapply for our poetic license. I put the poem in the form of a pair of Shadormas just for fun.

Reapply For (Y)our Poetic License

The only
real requirements
are time and
awareness,
a desire to juggle words
and some elbow grease.

Just breathe deep
and make up your mind.
Try to write,
every day.
Dig deep. Try being honest.
Then the words are yours.

Flashy Fiction

I did a little flashy fiction on Sunday. I’ve included the prompt so you can keep up with the idea.

***

You’re browsing through the shelves of the poetry section at the library. As you select an ancient book of love poems, a note falls to the floor.  It is folded into fourths, and yellowed with age. You uncrease it carefully, and settle in to read, discovering it’s an old love letter. 

What does it say? Was it ever sent? Tell the story behind the letter. 

***

You find a letter in a book of poetry by William Blake. It is next to the poem,

“Love’s Secret.”

Never seek to tell thy love,

Love that never told can be;

For the gentle wind doth move

Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,

I told her all my heart,

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.

Ah! she did depart!

Soon after she was gone from me,

A traveller came by,

Silently, invisibly:

He took her with a sigh. –

 

The letter reads:

My darling,

I know you love Blake, and my hope is that you will eventually get to this volume. His words are sweet, but not as sweet as the love I feel for you. I placed it in this volume beside “Love’s Secret.” You understand.

You may never get this, but I can hope, because this is the only explanation I have been able to improvise. I know you must wonder why I disappeared the way I did. Family pressures have become unendurable. I was made to live with my grandparents for some months. I went half mad with worry for you, but I was kept from the telephone and am watched continually. I was only able to contrive this letter because they allow me books from the library, though I am never allowed to go choose them myself. I have been asking for William Blake, though, and this was the best I could do to try and explain.

I am a virtual prisoner. But my heart still aches for you. I fear a marriage is being arranged, and soon I will be sent across the country to live with my new husband, probably in some town on the frontier, rife with danger and far, too far, from you. I am desolate. If only I could see you just one more time, and kiss you goodbye at the very least. But my parents will never understand our love.

Just remember I love you, and always have.

Yours forever,

Anne

[In a different hand, this addition follows the original letter.]

Dearest Anne,

I have been in an unendurable state since your disappearance. I have shunned all my usual habits; even my reading has fallen away. It has been some years since last we met. I only lately discovered this letter, and my heart again is broken.  I have read and reread your words, so fondly I remember you that I can hear your very voice.

Your family has refused to even speak to me, let alone tell me where you have gone or what your name is now.

Perhaps, one day, my dear, you will see this addendum. I live in hope that the fates will once more bring us two together; but if not this life, perhaps the next.

Always your loving

Elizabeth

 

(For more about William Blake, see http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19961#sthash.czEbQSbE.dpuf )

 

 

In the Company of ______

Wednesday poetry prompt 200! And though I cannot claim to have done every one, I have done many, many of them!

Today we must write a poem beginning: In the Company of _____ – I have two here. One is perhaps more suited to Halloween, yet at the end of the year, it seems right somehow. The other is more of a wish to be better at this craft. ^_^

In the Company of the Undead

Dry bones, dusty and
acrid with the patina
and scent of
years long
gone.

They rattle as I move,
and I try not to move too much
so as not to disturb
their slumber,
though I am half-asleep
myself,
awake in only the most
subliminal sense.

Still, my mind is not asleep,
and I wonder if this,
this is the actual fate of those
with insomnia
and busy minds that are never still.
Is it my destiny to really
never
rest?
Ever?

I surely don’t belong here,
yet,
here I am,
surrounded by
the emptiness
and hollow sound
of me not breathing,
my heart not beating,
again trying to fit in
and not wake the rest
of the dead.

In the Company of My Betters

How can I explain? I feel
like a poser
at times.
And maybe somehow,
I figure
if I practice
a lot
and rub shoulders
with giants,
then, someday
maybe, with some hard work
and lots of inspiration,
I might be as fine
a poet
as you
talented people.

 

Inspiration: People Watching

Do you find yourself, in moments of boredom, watching the people around you with different eyes—with focus? What I mean by that is, say you find yourself at the mall or a restaurant or in a doctor’s waiting room—anywhere public—and you just cannot help but watch the people walking by.

I’ve always been a people-watcher, but when I was a young teen and became interested in theater I read books about learning characterization. The best book I found was called “Acting is Believing” by Charles McGaw. In reading his book, I learned the principles of the Stanislavsky method, and if you want to become a better performer, I heartily recommend it.

However, this essay is not about acting, but about inspiration. A writer often needs to access personalities, realistic personalities, to make their writing believable. In the same way an actor must learn about people, so must a writer. One technique is people watching. There is only so much information your own mind and book-reading can gather without learning more about others. And that is where people-watching comes in.

I don’t mean this in a stalkerish way, I mean simple observation. For instance, in theater, one might have to portray an aged person. At the mall, you may sit on a bench and watch an elderly person, the way they stand, the careful way they walk. Perhaps they use a cane. Perhaps they try to hide their weakness from their family, or they are angry because their life is empty or filled with pain and nobody understands. But just observation and a little imagination will put one inside the mind of that elderly person. Then, on stage, one can access that information and become that person convincingly.

Writing about people, the same process is necessary. One cannot convincingly write about an elderly person without taking their history into consideration, without knowing the person you are writing. Perhaps the person has arthritis. Perhaps they are missing their recently departed spouse. Perhaps they are losing their faculties. Figure out about when they might have been born, and examine what the world would have been like when they were growing up and went to work. One must be able to understand the background and feelings and motivations of the person one wants to portray or the character will be flat and one-dimensional. And each character must be different from every other character that is in the scene, the story, the book. One character’s reaction to a car accident, say, will be completely different from the other’s. One may focus on the financial loss, one on the emotional situation, one may focus on retaliation or become forever afraid of riding in cars. Each person needs their own personality and character, and without understanding others, there is no way to draw that from inside oneself.

Think about your favorite book. Chances are the characters are well-defined and strong and remain true to their backgrounds and experiences. In “Jane Eyre,” for example, Jane remains true to her own moral code, no matter the difficulties and no matter what crosses her. This is what makes the challenges that come along so compelling and what make her trials so emotive. She could have escaped all of the difficulties in the book by not being who she is, by pretending and playing along with others in authority over her, but she chooses to fight and struggle to remain true to her morals and that is what makes the story. Without that strong character, there would have been no story. Jane would have buckled under her aunt’s harshness, and become a meek, servile poor-relation in her aunt’s home like so many in her circumstances in that time period, and that would have been no story at all.

So when people watching, there is no such thing as wasted time. Every person out there is an individual with their own motivations and lives and that means there is an endless pool of characteristics and life to watch and learn from. A trip to a mall or park or even a bus ride, trip to a coffee shop, or simply standing on a street corner can be enriching and may provide just the spark you want for the character you are writing.

If you haven’t tried this technique before,  mindful people-watching is an excellent learning strategy to improve your writing. And, as an added bonus, all this people watching could make you a deeper, more sympathetic, understanding person as well.

(For more inspiration, see my first inspiration post on Dreams and Archetypes!)

Technology – PaD day 12

Today’s prompt was to write about a piece of technology that SHOULD exist, or one that now DOES exist that was dreamed of by writers.

So. Many. Books.

I though I would hate you,
my little e-reader,
I thought I would never
get over the fact
that you don’t have
actual paper
pages
and covers
and that smell,
that old book smell.

But then
I discovered something
lovely.

Once I was used to the way
the pages turned
(at the press of a button,
and not the flip of a page),
I realized that I could hold
my entire
collection
in just one hand.

I have everything from
Patrick Rothfuss
and Agatha Christie
to Williams Shakespeare.
From H.G. Wells
and E.A. Poe
and Arthur Conan Doyle
to Janet Evanovich,
J.D. Robb, and
Isaac Asimov.

Asimov and Heinlein and
Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury
would all be thrilled to learn
that the idea of having a computer
full of books for use on
long space missions
came far earlier
and easier
than they imagined in their books
(that I also have safely stored away).

Now, I can carry my library
in my handbag.

I can sit at the doctor’s office
and read that 600 page novel
without tiring my wrists at all.

I can plug in my headphones and listen
to audio book, or to any music
I care to download to my e-reader.

I can read my favorite magazines
in color
without contributing to any landfill
anywhere.

I can switch books on an airplane
without digging through my luggage,
and can get the next volume
in a series from the car seat
in the middle of nowhere.

We live in the future,
and I am a happy resident
here.

Jenny Lawson – The Bloggess

My friend Chris and I went to Jenny Lawson’s book signing this evening. Jenny’s blog, The Bloggess, is one of my favorites because, as she said this evening, she’s realized that she belongs to a tribe — a tribe of people who are just as weird as she is — and it is awesome. If you haven’t read her book, “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened,” you are missing a mostly-true memoir that recounts, in hilarious fashion, her early life with a taxidermist father, her teen and growing up years, and how she ended up becoming the person she is today. And that person just happens to be someone with a huge internet presence through her own blog and through the regular columns she writes for a newspaper in Texas that I can’t remember the name of and which I’m too tired to go look for, but she links the stories on her blog and one of them is about parenting and the other is about sex. Which is actually kind of fitting if you think about it, because you GET kids through sex, so they kind of go hand in hand. But they are also really hilarious. And when I’m having a really long hard day, which happens occasionally, I can count on Jenny to have me happy and laughing again in no time.

And here is a picture of Chris, me, and Jenny. She is super nice, and, in fact, I think we’re best friends now. ^_^

Oh, just me (and Chris) standing next to Jenny Lawson!

And here are some pictures of her doing a reading and answering question. She really is charming, though you should be aware, she cusses. A lot. ^_^ If you don’t mind that, you will probably like her just fine, and if you are weird enough you will love her. ^_^

Oh, and before I forget to mention it, this all took place at the Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, Arizona. Support Local Business!! (Seriously, it’s important!)

Jenny Lawson Q&A at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, Arizona

Jenny Lawson doing a reading at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, Arizona

Someone Else

Someone Else

Don’t you wish you could be
someone else?
Someone you might have been
if you’d made different choices?

Perhaps I would have never married
and become the marine biologist
I once thought I would be.
I would spend my days on boats
and in labs
and in classrooms
and with the animals
and beside the sea.

Perhaps I would have waited to marry
and would just now be a mother,
rather than someone with
children grown.
I would be discovering all the little
things that make children so dear.

Or perhaps, if my choice had been different,
I would have different children
altogether.
I would be a mother of girls, maybe,
or more, or fewer
or none at all.

Perhaps my dreams of travel,
of living
and working
in foreign places
would have come more true.

Or perhaps,
just maybe,
I would really change
nothing at all,
realizing
changing it all would
make me lose the love I have
and the children I have
and the life I have
even if
I occasionally long
for
another life,
another me.

Inspiration: Dreams and Archetypes

Does anyone else get inspired by dreams? I do all the time. I keep a dream journal by the side of my bed, too, so when something interesting happens in a dream I won’t lose it. It just takes a bit of practice to be able to journal dreams, and it’s much easier than one might think.

All it takes is a little mindfulness. At bedtime, just tell yourself that you are going to be interested in your dreams. You are going to try and remember them and try to keep them with you. Put a paper and pen by the bedside with a tiny reading light, and be prepared and willing to quickly write down the gist of the dream without getting up. Believe it or not, writing it down before you get up is important because while reclining, your mind can hold onto the dream so much more easily. If one gets up and thinks one can remember it, well, the body takes over, starts making demands, and the dream slips away.  I’ve found that just writing a few words, the basic premise of the dream and the major characters, and go back to sleep, then when I wake up and re-read the few words, the entire dream floods back into my mind.

Dreams are amalgams of experiences and ideas and experiences and images. And sometimes our subconscious minds are actually trying to tell us something, to solve some knotty problem from our waking lives. I’ve done dream interpretations for myself and friends for years now, and it is really interesting to see what our inner selves have to say. Dream interpretation is not a black-and-white art, however; there is quite a bit of room to contemplate and ponder and finally determine what the dream means to each individual.

But as in writing, archetypes are extremely important. What’s an archetype? An archetype is something that speaks to the primal mind, at its root. If you’ve ever heard of the “big bad wolf” or a “happy miser” or “lady luck.” These are archetypes and there are thousands of them. The young hero; the helpful mentor; the lion as the king of the beasts; the greedy king with the beautiful daughter; the wise animal that gives the hero advice; there are so many and our inner selves speak that language fluently.

So this is me, saying you to as a writer, poet, novelist, or just a person interested in the subconscious mind, pay attention to your dreams. And comment here if you want to discuss dreaming or archetypes. I find them fascinating!

 

(For more inspiration, see my second inspiration post, People Watching!)

Neil Gaiman Addressing Class of 2012

I think this is wonderful and I think everyone who is creative needs to see it. Since most of you (I think) are creative in some way, writers or artisans of one sort or another, you need to see this. Of course, the standard disclaimers apply. I did not have anything to do with the filming or production of this video, I have no rights in relation to it, but I find it wonderful and hope you do too.

Neil Gaiman Addressing the Class of 2012

What did I take away from this?

It’s time to get busy. ^_^ Thank you Neil Gaiman.

April 27, The Trouble Is ________

The prompt today is a fill-in-the-blank: The Trouble Is______. The first thing that popped into my head is what I wrote – and now I have to get back to work. ^_^

ticktockticktockticktockticktockticktockticktock

The Trouble is Time

It’s not like I don’t love my job,
I do.

It’s not like I don’t have a million
other things
to do.

It’s not like I’m not interested,
riveted even,
when I do
have a moment.

The trouble is time.
(There is not enough of it.)

Now if only my plan for
thirty hour days
would go
through.