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Showing posts from 2012

Writing Time

It's cold and gloomy here in the northeast and a perfect climate in which to write. When it's gray outside I feel more confined and sheltered in my little writing room. With a jazz CD playing softly in the background, my heart stills, the chatter in my head stills, and the pen slips over the blank page like skates on a frozen pond. I blogged yesterday about my varied tastes in genres, but today focus seems to be my theme. Although I have an unfinished novel  waiting for me. Characters who are waiting for me to tell them what to think and feel and do next. I am into poetry. I'm at work on a poetic memoir. I've written fifteen poems so far in the form of prose poems, haibun and tanka, and have worked with a teacher to help me hone the poems into their best personas. I'm searching for more poems in my stack of notebooks and writing new ones so I can have a 30 to 40 page chapbook to submit. I love writing poems on quiet gloomy days. The atmosphere seems ripe for met

I am Multi-textual

I admit it. I am multi-textual. I didn't have to come out of the closet, just out of my writing room to face the truth. Some writers focus on poetry, or memoir, or novels. I have a slew of writing interests--I write memoir--in essay, poetry and book length. I write poems. I write short stories and flash fiction. I combine poetry with art. And I have a third novel in progress. Some say focusing on one genre is the way to succeed. Others claim reading and writing different genres keeps the writing fresh and the writer from getting bored. I just figure I have to accept and admit that I like to read and write in several genres and go with it. I want to do it all, I don't want to have to choose. So as this year drops its velvet curtain and the curtains rise on 2013 I will write in whatever genre shows up at my desk or computer. I will accept I cannot choose just one. And I will do my best to keep a writing flow and to submit my work because no writer ever got anywhere with her p

Midnight Muse

Night is a blue velvet drape outside my bedroom window. Between the clicks of the baseboard heater the muse comes tapping. Long golden tresses flow over her shoulders. She is dressed in pale blue and green chiffon. Her slender hands pull me from dreams and needed sleep, luring me with poetic lines and dramatic scenes with irresistible characters. I toss and turn, knowing it's hopeless to try and go back to sleep. Now the muse begins to hum, melodious tones spill from her mouth filling the room with the siren's song that calls me to my desk. In that vaporous alley between midnight and dawn poems rise like mist over the ocean. My pen glides across the page as the muse whispers in my ear. Her hand braces my elbow nudging me to keep writing. All thoughts of sleep vanish in the verses and I keep writing until sunlight glints in the window behind me, chasing away the dark night shadows that spawn poetry and stories. As the shadows fade the muse disappears leaving me to continue t

Writing Retreat

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On a clear and crisp November weekend three members of my writers' group Tapestrie s venture out to the south fork of Long Island for our twice a year retreat. Staying at Sea Crest Resort in Amagansett we find the time to write and the support of other writers. As the sun rises in the east I brew a pot of coffee, have breakfast, then go for a walk along the beach. The sand is soft beneath my sneakers. The waves roll softly into the shoreline and the seagulls' cries greet me. As I walk, characters appear in my mind, new plot lines unroll like the waves, and as questions are answered others arise. These will be raised to my fellow writers later today when we have our brainstorming session. Back in our suite, I shower and get dressed, then settle at the kitchen table, notebook open, purple pen in hand poised above the blank page and begin to write. The time and silence in which to write is a rare gift for a writer, especially the three of us who all have full time jobs and fam

WRITING CONFUSION

In four days I will be driving out to Amagansett to attend a weekend retreat with two women from my writers' group. It will be a welcome getaway after a late season hurricane and an early snowstorm. Thankfully the resort we stay at, Sea Crest, has power, heat and minimal storm damage so they are open for business. Open to welcome us into a little suite with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, 2 bathrooms and a living room and dining area. We will take our pens, notebooks, and laptops and write away. In between meals and snacks we will create characters, weave plot lines, amp up suspense and tension, and hopefully make significant progress with our novels. We will also spend time brainstorming so we can give each other ideas for plot lines and character development. Writing is a solitary sport but sometimes three heads create more of a story! So you may wonder why I called this post writing confusion. It's an old tale for me. I've been beating my head against the plot wall of my nove

ENTERING POETRY

I enter poetry and find my self. The images and metaphors beat with my heart, the rhythms float on my breath, and the lessons in the verses are my life blood. I found poetry as a child hearing and reading nursery rhymes and soon began to write my own poems. As a more independent reader I discovered the humor of Ogden Nash and the world of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Child's Garden of Verses." In poetry I found my own private Camelot, a place of perfection. Inside the silence and solitude of writing poetry I record my world and learn about my own heart. I discovered Mary Oliver's astute descriptions of nature and Billy Collins' persepective on the everyday world. I ventured into the mystical realm of Rumi and Hafiz. I travel away and into prose--fiction and essay, novels and memoirs, but always return to the land of poetry. I read it, write it, study it and read about writing it. It is my heart and soul and herein I will always abide.

GIFTS OF TIME

After a four day weekend away at a wedding with no time to write I received a gift. It's an odd gift with a real demon side. Hurricane Sandy is pounding up the eastern coastline and preparing to slam into the New Jersey and New York shorelines. Due to Sandy we have two days off from work. Of course it would be better if there wasn't a natural disaster at the helm of this unplanned vacation but here it is in my lap. So far I have completed revisions on my flash fiction chapbook in preparations for submitting it to a contest next month. I'm also working on queries for my short story collection so I can send them to publishers. I'm going to target some small publishers and see how it goes. Next it's back to my novel. I would love to finish a first draft before my retreat in three weeks so I can begin revisions, or put it away and turn to poetry and flash fiction again. I need the quick results of short forms. But at odd times the characters and plot lines of my nov

TEN THINGS TO DO INSTEAD OF WRITING

Saturday was spent out at the wineries with friends and we had a grand time. Sunday bloomed crisp and sunny and free. A good spread of hours in which to write. But as much as writers love to write, we also seem adept at finding other ways to occupy our free time. Here are ten things to do instead of writing. Some fun and some not so much fun, but they supply the coward's way out of attacking that plot twist, that end rhyme, that perfect tie up to an essay. clean out your closet take photos of your shoes to glue on the boxes so you know what's inside bake a batch of brownies read a good novel make lists of ideas for new novels and stories walk in the woods do laundry take a nap chat on facebook enter writing contests (well okay at least this one is related to writing) After all that is done it's time to tackle that new chapter and figure out exactly why Meghan's twin sister committed suicide on her sixteenth birthday. Or was it really suicide?

SHORT FORM OR LONG

I just read an article in last month's "The Writer Magazine" that presented writing advice from the inimitable Edgar Allan Poe who died at the ripe age of 40. He lived an addictive and tortured life but managed to create some of the best crafted prose and poetry of his century. Indeed, he treaded the first steps in the genres of mystery and horror. A writer to be reckoned with for sure. Poe scribed essays about writing for a variety of magazines in between penning his poems and short stories. In one of those essays he talks about the value of writing short. His claim was that a reader needed to be able to consume a poem or story in one sitting so as not to disrupt the mood and tone of the piece. In this way the reader was able to keep the "whole" of the story in his head. He claimed that when reading a novel, where the reader is forced to put down the book in between reading sessions, he loses the thread of the plot and the mood of the fictive world created by

RAINSTORMS AND BRAINSTORMS

There's nothing like a rainy Sunday for writing when you are in the flow. Although I was greeted by the sun this morning, the clouds are now drifting in and I smell rain in the air. I'd already planned to spend today working on my novel but now I am even more motivated and revved up. At my Tapestries' meeting yesterday, one of the women in our group came up with an idea that has blown my plot out into the open. I am so excited to start writing with this new character goal in mind. It makes the plot stronger, the stakes higher, the conflict more suspenseful. I love it. I spent the early morning writing pages of notes on this new plot idea and listing modifications to some of the characters to make it work. Now I can get to the keyboard and write. I love sharing this novel writing process with my blog readers and hope it motivates you writers out there to pick up a pen and get to work. Once the fire ignites in the brain there is no stopping us.

WRITING GROUPS

It's Saturday and the sky outside my writing room window is mottled gray. A moist autumn breeze flickers the pages piling up on my desk. And a chorus of sparrows and cardinals offer background music to the click of keyboard keys. Words flow-- ribbons of ideas onto the white screen. But this isn't just any Saturday morning. This is the special Saturday that occurs each month when my writing group meets. We were born ten years ago when a small group of women writers responded to an ad in The Network--the journal of the the International Women's Writing Guild. We met in one woman's kitchen, over coffee and cake, to read our stories and share comments and critique. A few months later we named our group Tapestries, referring to the intricate weave of our varied fabrics. We have been meeting monthly ever since then although there have been some women who left the group while others have joined us to add new texture. It was and remains amazing that our writing abilities,

BIAM

So what in the world is BIAM? It's a book and a program called Book in a Month and it guides you to creating a simple first draft of your novel in one month. I've decided to take on the challenge and hope I'm not crazy. For me it's not essential that this gets done in a thirty day period, although that would be nice. What's helpful is all the charts and questions and tracking that help you to lay out plot and keep track of characters and scenes. If offers a way to record changes you make mid-novel so you don't have to go back and change all the previous chapters before you finish the first draft. This coincides with my taking an online class call Writing Your Novel from the Ground Up which also pushes you to answer a lot of questions about the plot and the characters before you begin writing so you go in knowing which paths you are writing down as you go. Writing is a mystery, even to writers, but I am off to solve yet another mystery of story and see if I c

DON'T BACK DOWN

We saw the movie "Don't Back Down" today and it truly inspired and motivated me both for my job and in my writing life. The story is about a group of parents and teachers who take on the school board in an attempt to make the school more effective. It's based on a true story, one I'm not familiar with and I will do some research on it. I want to know how they changed the school to make it better. As a school administrator working with a system and bureaucracy that are more interested in saving money than providing services for children, I know what it's like to be frustrated and angered at the powers that be. I know that it isn't easy to make changes. In a time when job security is hard to find it often seems nonproductive to fight the system. How do you risk your own financial security in order to make things better? Better yet, how can you possibly sit back and watch kids continually get short changed? The movie brought a lot of questions. I need time

AT THE BOOKSTORE

I don't normally like to write outside of my little writing space at home. I've created a nice "room of my own" where I have a computer and a separate desk to sit at and write longhand scenes in my spiral notebooks. I have soft instrumental music playing, not the slam bam of what they play at Barnes and Noble these days. In the past, when I went to Barnes and Noble, soft classical music followed book lovers as they perused the shelves. Now, not only do they play pop music, but shelves of music CDs and DVD movies and a huge bank of nook e-readers have overtaken the space that used to hold books. The books have been pushed back making room for today's vast array of media materials. Today however I learned something. Barnes and Noble is not a bad place to rack up pages of novel scenes and outlines for chapters. A cup of decaf at my elbow and my laptop opened on the table in the cafe I was prisoner of my thoughts. I couldn't take off and clean, or go watch tv, o

NOVEL EVOLUTION

I've had a novel-in-progress for three years now and it's time to commit to finishing it, revising it and sending it out into the world. I am grateful to my writers' group, Tapestries, for reading and critiquing my evolving chapters, commenting on characters, and helping me find direction. Now it's time to put aside all other writing and be done with this. I just enrolled in an online writing class on www.Wow-women-on-writing.com . They offer wonderful classes in many genres. I've taken a couple of helpful and inspiring ones on flash fiction and poetry. But now it's novel time. To keep up my commitment I am going to blog about my writing progress and post bits and pieces of the novel here to tempt whomever might be interested. It's a struggle to write a novel, creating fascinating characters in suspenseful stories and written in an alluring way. But it's also great fun to get into the heads of people you've created. It's magical to get lost i

STALLED IN THE WRITE LANE

I believe that writer's block occurs when you face the blank white page or monitor and no story ideas flow from your fingers. No characters march, or stroll, or jog leaving plot footprints. No inciting incident startles you, no turning point shows its dramatic face. So I can't say I have writer's block. I prefer to think of this thought bare state as a stall in my novel. I have characters and plot, the inciting incident has run its course, I know the main character's goal and I know some of the obstacles that will befall her. But still I am stalled. I've revised this story several times and suddenly that goal has shifted. Usually I know where I'm going but have to find the ways to get there that provide a good read. Right now I'm not sure where I'm going. I'm trying several exercises to figure that out. I'm writing more character profiles and trying to rework the plot trajectory, but I'm not getting too far. It's at this stalled poi

The Lost Notebook

I have been working on  a novel, temporarily called "Megan's Gift," for three years. Of course it's off and on so not actually representative of three years' writing. The story itself has changed several times and was down to it's last incarnation up until today. I've gotten up to chapter 25 in the first draft of this present version. Right now I am trying to refine it's final core story so I can finish the darn thing, though I have a few ideas for changes brewing in my mind. The thing is I'm on my fourth day of a four day weekend and just sat down to work. But . . . I lost my notebook. Don't feel too sorry for me as everything in that notebook has been typed out and backed up. But I prefer to write first drafts in longhand in spiral notebooks and I hoped to pick up where I left off and get a new running start. Now this is my excuse for procrastination. Losing three longhand chapters, plus the chapter typed out whose pages I stuck into the

COMMITMENT

A commitment to writing is a dangerous animal. It roars and breathes fire that licks at the brain even when you are sleeping. It never leaves you alone and yet it adds a dimension to your life that warms the heart and stresses you to the nth degree. I've written before about my constant genre jumping but lately I feel a pull into a more committed type of writing. It takes work and perseverence which is difficult to do when I already have a full time job, but I have no choice. It is in me and it is what I do. I have had enough success with short stories recently to know I need to concentrate on that as my writing genre. Of course poetry will still abide as it is my first reading/writing love and my true passion. Why waste all that time on trying to finish a novel that has been in progress for three years now when I have written at least 20 stories this year, and numerous poems. I need to put some time into revising and submitting all that work. Nothing gets publsihed sitting in a

More success

Did you ever feel like life was handing out all its joy to you and you alone? That's how I've been feeling. So I have a new car and a new computer. I am married to a wonderful man who adores me and I have a good job, despite the fact that my license plate says, "I'd rather be writing." Who could ask for more? I have more though. Besides cooking and laundry my husband works hard to pave the path for me to get to my writing and it is beginning to pay off. In the past year I have published two more short stories and a poem. I now have 30% of the stories in my short story collection published and that means I can legitimately submit queries to agents and publishers. I am in the process of refining my query letter with the help of my writng group, Tapestries and Melanie Faith, a teacher I have taken several online classes with. I hope to be sending that query out this week and waiting for responses. It's a long wait, I know, and I want to fill that time with more

WRITING AT DAWN

It's just before dawn when I open my eyes and tiptoe from the bedroom. At 4:30 the sky is still a deep steel gray and even the birds are still nestled, beaks tucked beneath their wings. Early August, summer in full heat, and already daylight comes a bit later each day. At my writing desk I switch on the Ott-lite and watch the blank white page glow like a rectangular moon. Writing in the morning is a habit and a treat I look forward to. The short story collection is complete. I have only to compose a titilating query and send it off and see what happens. In the meantime I began an online poetry class yesterday. The class involves reading contemporary women poets and then using some of those poems as launch pads for our own writing. This morning, as the sky outside wavered into a pink and blue watercolor I opened a collection of Mary Oliver's poems. She is the first poet we are studying and one of my favorites. Reading her lines is like walking into a field of wildflowers. Be

Looking Through Windows

"Looking through Windows" is the title of my short story collection. No it's not published yet, but writers have to reward and brag about the steps taken toward completing a project. I'm almost there. Two stories to revise and send out. They claim you should have 30 to 40 percent of the stories in a collection already published in jounrals so I'm close. Two more acceptances and I will have four out of ten published. In the meantime I have commited to getting this done. Over the past five years I have worked on and abandoned this project--back and forth and getting nowhere. Now I've promised myself to do no other writing but what I need to do until I can start querying agents and publishers about a collection. The title is symbolic of what I, and other writers, do when we create settings, plots, characters and dialogues. We pretend we are looking through the nightime windows of other people's homes. Backlit against the warm golden lamp light we watch si

NECESSARY

Writing is just something I have to do, like eating, sleeping, breathing. When art journals, collage and paint distract me, when I want to hide inside a new novel, or just stare at the television, writing calls me. I suppose it's the voice of my muse and her gentle hand, that pushes me to the desk. I can't get away from it. It can be morning pages, an idea for a new short story, a prompt for a flash fiction piece or some line of poetry that latches on, whatever--it calls and I must answer. I ask myself often, perhaps daily, why I write. Why does the feel of a pen in my fingers and the slick smooth surface of a blank page on the heel of my hand make my heart beat faster? why can I never ignore it. And not just writing itself, but things related to writing--classes, conferences, books on writing, lists of writing prompts, articles online about how to put together a chapbook or a short story collection. They sing like the robins and sparrows whose lilting warbles wake me in the

JUST A POEM

MOTHER AND CHILD It was the hum of your voice That etched the first smile on my face. The beat of your heart Against my own That made me feel safe. The touch of your cool hand On my fevered brow That let me know I was loved. And the release of your hand Setting me free in the world That let me grow.

A VERY SHORT STORY

SEARCHING FOR STORIES I walk across the quilt of glistening snow. The dying sun casts blue, white and yellow gems on the crust beneath my booted feet. The air crackles with cold. My breath billows, furls in the air, then disintegrates before my eyes. Miles and miles of white marble headstones line up in straight rows. I turn and they all sift into diagonal arrangement. I search for Mom’s grave and hope I’m not too late. Years have passed. I was away from home, trying to find myself. I didn’t know my womanhood, my selfhood, lived in the stories I didn’t stay around to hear. I find the headstone. Margaret Leah Peters 1918-2009 Beloved wife, mother, daughter, sister             I kneel and trace the carved letters of my mother’s name. I press my ear to the frigid earth. Silence. All the stories are gone.

A NOVEL START

DEATH BE NOT PROUD The sparkling July sunshine mocked the somber funeral participants. A semicircle of mourners curled around the open grave and watched as a smooth ebony coffin was lowered into the damp earth. Away from the crowd, huddled beneath the shade of a maple tree, three women looked over the proceedings. Tears studded their flushed cheeks and sweat bloomed beneath their black dresses. “It’s so sad,” Lenore muttered. “Celia was so healthy and then this heart attack out of nowhere.” “I know, “Paula agreed. ”And look at Warner he looks so lost and bereft.” “And handsome too,” Corinne whispered. “He’s still a hunk. Celia was lucky to have him.” “For sure. She was a wonderful, big hearted woman, but not so hot looking.” Corinne wiped her face with the back of her hand blending tears and perspiration. “Even in college she was the least good looking of the four of us.” “Well,” Lenore said. “Age sure levels the playing field. Now in our sixties I think we

A NEW CHALLENGE

Never one to completely give up I am giving myself a new challenge. I have just completed two five week long online writing classes. One in poetry and one in flash fiction. These are my preferred genres as I love the intensity and brevity of the pieces. These writings are small but make a huge impact on the reader. I also like being able to work with each poem or story as a whole unit rather than bits of scenes in a continuous long stream that I have to handle when penning a novel. My new challenge involves posting a poem or the opening of a flash story each day for the rest of this month. Let's see how this goes!

CHALLENGE FAILED

No one likes to admit she failed, but in failure there always sleeps a lesson waiting to be aroused. I set out to post every day for the month of June based on one writing prompt or another. I wanted to write twenty minutes a day--a story, poem, or essay--and post it here. But as John Lennon said so well--life is what happens while you're making other plans. What lesson was asleep in this recent failed challenge of mine? Of course, the lesson is when you commit to something you need to follow through, but we all know that. And it is significant to the writer because you can't publish if you don't write. But there is another lesson that perhaps slept a little more deeply. The lesson, or question, of finding time to write so I can follow through on my commitments. I did find twenty minutes a day to write--exactly where I'd left them each morning. I've been a writer of "morning pages" a la Julia Cameron's suggestion in her book "The Artist's

A Story Behind Every Face

Writers are frequently asked where they get their ideas for stories or poems and the answers seem endless. Sources range from dreams, to news stories, to the ephemeral muse, to strange voices in the night. I never know the original source of my story ideas but I don't go looking for them, they seem to seek me out instead. They find me, grab me, reside in me, until I finally agree to write the story. I have notebooks filled with ideas for stories, poems, essays and art pages and if I had 24 hours a day, every day I'd never have enough time to write them all. Ideas are everywhere, at least for me. There are stories behind every face I see. Faces of family and friends. Faces of strangers in coffee shops and colleagues at work. No one is storyless. As the stories around me reveal themselves I see that this world is filled with stories. You never know what dramas--triumphs and defeats, joys and sorrows-- live behind the faces you see each day. Sometimes the stories come out of hid

CHANTEUSE

This poem was inspired by a true family story. Her father sent her to Paris to make money as a chanteuse. She boarded a plane, baggage in hand, and hummed a few bars on a flight over the Atlantic. While in Paris she learned to sing like a bird. She went nightly to cabarets and wore the finest silk dresses in the colors of jewels. One night she met a tall dark man who offered her his love, a kiss and a ring that made her eyes light like sapphires. She accepted the ring. She silenced her song. She stopped answering her father’s letters asking when she would be coming home. One night, on a flight back over the Atlantic With her tall dashing husband, she returned To New York, where she and her young man started a farm in the Catskills. And she never heard from her father again. But her song can be heard in the wind that races through the trees and over the sharp pointed mountains---and she is happy as a lark.

PROMPT: looking back it was the eggplant that caused it.

            “What are you doing?” Alice yelped.             Her husband, blonde ponytail knotted from an afternoon in the wind, looked up.             “What do you mean? I’m planting eggplant seeds.”             “They’ll never grow. I told you to stick with tomatoes and cucumbers.”             Tony laughed and wiped sweat off his forehead leaving a trail of moist dirt.             “Of course they will,” he said. “I need a change. We always plant tomatoes and cucumbers. I wanted to be innovative. Can’t do the same things all the time. Break out of the box. Fly the coop. Don’t be so boring.”             “Boring huh?’             Alice snapped around and stomped back to the house. Eggplant will never grow in this tight earth. They need loose sandy soil. He’ll see come August when this garden is barren.             In the bedroom she pulled the blanket down to the foot of the bed. Then she showered and anointed herself with musk scented body oil. When Tony came up fro

A NEW WRITING CHALLENGE

Today is the first of June and as good a time as any to begin a new 30 day challenge. In the month of April, in honor of National Poetry Month, I posted a daily poem and art piece on my sister blog http://www.amarriageofpoetryandart.blogspot.com/ . Now in honor of Short Story Month I am challenging myself to post a daily story on this blog. It will be a 20 minute free write from a daily writing prompt. The inspiration for a twenty minute a day writing challenge came from my online writing teacher Len Leatherwood and her blog http://www.twentyminutesaday.wordpress.com/ Len is an amazing teacher and seeing her daily writing encouraged me to do the same on my own blog. My prompts will come from Melanie Faith. Melanie is a fabulous flash fiction and poetry writer and teacher. I've taken several classes online with her. Today I began a new flash fiction class with her. Melanie provides daily prompts to her students so I will use those for my free writes for this blog. I'd also

ONLINE WRITING CLASS ADDICTION

Some women are drawn to slabs of dark chocolate, some to the glitter of diamonds or the opalescence of pearls but what does it for me are online writing classes. Over the past two months and into the upcoming two months I have taken, or will take, a total of 8 online classes in essay writing, poetry and flash fiction. When I find classes being offered I hone in on those that intrigue me, those genres that I actually write in. I get updates from Story Circle Network, WOW-Women on Writing, Writing It Real and from writer and teacher Jordan Rosenfeld. I also explore on a regular basis classes offered by Gotham online classes and Writers' Digest. So what's the intrigue? motivation to write honest and professional critiques exposure to writing I might not discover on my own connection with other writers going through the same challenges prompts and exercises that get me writing and give me direction Just creating my pocket folders for each class, with neatly typed labels

RETREAT

On Thursday April 26 my writing critique group, Tapestries, set off for a twice yearly retreat. On a brisk partly cloudy morning I drove to Amagansett on the south fork of Long Island, almost to the tip at the Montauk Lighthouse. I met one of our members at Sea Crest on the Ocean where we stay and we went to lunch. Over a tasty chicken salad sandwich on rye bread we relaxed into the few days of peace, quiet and writing as winds blew across the sandy coastline. For three days, four writing women read, wrote, brainstormed and walked on the beach searching for stones left by our muses. Picking up these invisible stones of inspiration we fondled them in our hands, turning them over and over in search of a unique character trait or edgy plot twist that would make our novels rise above the slush piles in editors' and agents' offices. At the end of our peaceable retreat I had revised two short stories and a chapter of my novel. A quite productive opportunity to be the writer I k

TIME OUT

I am just begging for someone to ground me, send me to my room and put me in time out. "Time out" as a behavioral intervention for preschoolers is frowned upon and in many cases prohibited. But I believe for adults--mothers, teachers, therapists, and especially artists and writers--it should be implemented frequently and for long periods of time. The formula for "time out" is one minute for each year of the child's life. For me that would be 62 minutes of glorious peace, quiet and creative time. I prescribe it for myself about three times a day so that morning, noon and night I can hide away and get something created. Unfortunately I cannot self medicate so I am doomed to wait patiently until some physician discovers that this is the best treatment and it has only healthy and positive side effects. In time out I could read quietly, absorbing poems like mist on my skin instead of gobbling them up without a chance to fully appreciate the rhythm and the message.

GOOD DAYS/BAD DAYS

Progress in writing is like the weather, especially if, like me, you write in several genres. Sometimes there are sunny skies and the writing goes well, I am focused on a project and moving along at a good flow. For instance, Saturday was one of those days. I typed out several pages in my novel and stashed them in  a binder to await revision. Then I wrote one and a half new chapters in longhand in my ever present spiral notebook. I also made a few plot notes and created a new character. It was writing bliss. Then Sunday came, and not so good. The weather itself was warm and sunny--a glorious day for winter in the northeast. The writing weather was a disaster. I did a lot of reading, got some errands accomplished and enjoyed the warm sun, but the only writing I achieved were my three morning pages--which I didn't write until 5:00 in the evening. Not feeling very productive I ended the weekend grateful for what I got done on Saturday. Sunday night I made a commitment to make this

WRITING AT 30,000 FEET

I discovered a writing secret on my recent trip to LA. In the 757 aircraft the pressure equalizes, the lights dim, and the white noise of the engines is so loud it feels like it's coming from deep inside my own body. I've heard the safety instructions, eaten my take on board lunch, since sandwiches on the plane are too costly, and I've drunk enough water to keep me from getting a dehydration headache. I have also read several chapters in the novel I brought along on vacation and listened to Adele's album on my i-pod. There are several hours left of this cross country flight. I take out the spiral notebook I am using to write first draft chapters of my novel and here is where the secret reveals itself. Stuck in the plane at 35,000 feet about mountains and streams, nestled into the narrow, even for me, seat of the plane, strapped to my seat with few distractions, the story comes to me like a film on a 3-D screen. My characters' voices speak in my head, the movements

WRITERS' BLOCK

I am not so arrogant to say I never get writers' block but I'm learning to call it by different names. Some days it's just laziness and lack of interest in my project. Other days it's strong resistance to work and thinking. Resistance is like a stone wall I have to barrel through--it hurts my head but releases me from the bonds of idleness. I've read that "writing begets more writing," and I believe it's true. It's like priming the verbal pump with a trickle of good sentences. When the block comes in the guise of procrastination there's only one thing to do--sit at my desk, whip out a spiral notebook and my favorite purple pen and start writing. When I encounter the block of badly written sentences and characters that fall flat I have to force myself not to quit writing. If I keep going, tossing my lack of confidence out the door, I find dialogue, characterization, and settings building and scenes stretch out over several pages. Maybe not

LIGHT ON A GRAY DAY

Saturday was rainy and gloomy but I was happy to be indoors and sheltered by the quilt of gray clouds and the light of my muse. Sometimes it's just delightful to stay home all day and gather my poems into a notebook to await revisions. To leisurely lounge in bed, have a lovely breakfast and relax with that second cup of coffee while discussing politics with my husband. Then read without thinking about where I have to go, or what I have to do next. I need these points of stillness in my life in order to let the muse in. She's shy and doesn't like to appear in the midst of noise, people or chaos. Somehow these rainy days, with soft music in the background, and the comfort of hot tea, beckon her out onto my shoulder where I can just sit, stare into space, not thinking, and let her guide me in the right direction. Lately she's been nudging me toward poetry, but the other night she gave me a significant push back toward my abandoned novel. I could use more days of soft s

WADING THROUGH WORDS

Yes, writing is wading through words. First they hunker behind the gray convolutions of the brain. I nudge them out with a long walk outdoors, maybe some instrumental music, hot tea and candles, perhaps a dip into some good poetry or an exciting well written novel. Then all those anxious words begin to tumble around in my head like so many schools of krill. I toss my net into the chaos hoping to catch the train of a plot, an image to turn into a poem, an exciting character to build a story around. As I string the words across the page the magic happens. Scenes build, sentences become doorways into new worlds, characters spring to life before my eyes. I am compelled to keep going, it brings me back to the notebook again and again. It seems the more ideas I have for poems and short stories, the more ideas I get. Once all those words get loosened up there is no stopping them. I feel free. I believe I am a writer. I am halfway through revising short stories for my collection. As I finish

WRITING UPDATES

Okay, I had resolved to write every day, complete a short story every week, and start sending some things out. I'm getting there. Life nudges our resolutions out of view, giving us other things to do or think about. Stress in the guise of disappointment threatens to wipe all writing commitments aside while I hide inside the pages of a novel. But that won't get me anywhere. It was a tough week, not getting what I thought would be mine, but I had to shake it all off and hunker back to work. So, 3 haiku and two stories have been submitted, three stories were revised, making my short story collection halfway on its journey toward publication. (well submisison anyways.) Now it's back to some daily writing and getting those poems revised and sent out. As the afternoon stretches out in front of me I am flagging but it's time for a shot of caffeine and some real work before this day ends. in time for lunch the muse settles in pen slides across paper

WEEKLY PROMPT

Write about your ideal day

SOLITUDE IN AN ELANTRA

My car is only several yards away from the chaos and stress of work but inside its red shell I find solitude. At lunch time I sneak out to the parking lot and hide in the front seat. My mp3 player whispers soft melodic music in my ears as I watch rain drip down the windshield like tears. I am sheltered, at peace and alone. There is much to be said about solitude, about not hearing the words of others or dealing with others' wants and needs. Here by myself I can read or meditate or just stare into the gray wet afternoon and let its cooling breath cleanse me of strain. As I sit and listen to the patter of rain and the occasional whir of an airplane words come to me. Lines of poetry tiptoe through my mind like tiny mice leaving little footprints of metaphor, similie, imagination. Characters emerge in the shapes on the glass or the billows of clouds. Story lines weave in and out of the strains of the music. Free of phone calls, visits to my office and the chatter of colleagues I can ab

SANCTUARY

It was small as closets go, with bi-fold doors painted shiny white. The doors were louvered as if to provide ventilation to something alive that resided within. But over the ten years I played and slept in that bedroom no living creature ever emerged. My little sherbet colored cotton dresses with their long sashes that Mom tied in big bows at my back only reached a short way down from the closet rod, leaving lots of space for the really important pieces of my childhood. Born a rigid little girl, I’ve never had tolerance for clutter or disorganization and apparently that trait began way back then in the confines of that closet. To the left was a neat stack of boxes that held all the clothes and accessories for the dolls that sat on the top of my bookcase. Next to that was the pink vinyl tote box that I took to dancing school. It carried my leotards, ballet and tap shoes and in its corners dreams of prima ballerinas and bouquets of red roses offered to me center stage. Next in line wer

SNOWY SATURDAY

It was snowing when I awoke and I was happy to see a gray day. I needed a day to unwind slowly and sleepily over morning pages and then bacon and eggs for breakfast. And then I actually accomplished something writerly. I took all the stories for my short story collection and organized them in a binder. Then I created an index of titles and comments on the status of each---"published," "revise based on notes," "revise or write new version." I feel settled now. I even whipped off an email to my two writing instructors for suggestions on how to get this collection out into the publishing world. Plan to have this done by end of April before our Tapestries writing group retreat at which time I will start planning my "memoir in poetry." I also took all the other short stories I have, put them into a second binder, also with a table of contents of titles and status of each story. I feel so productive! Now off to do some free-writes, revise a story

WEEKLY PROMPT

Write a 500 word story, but write it backwards. End with the scene just before the inciting incident and back up to where the story starts. GO!

ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION

I returned home yesterday after a stressful and busy work day to find two familiar envelopes had come in the mail. When a writer finds an envelope with her own return address label on the face it means one of two things---a poem, story, proposal or whatever has been either rejected or accepted for publication. Yesterday I found two such business sized envelopes from the same literary journal. In one was an acceptance letter for a poem I'd written, VOICES IN THE CEMETERY which appeared a few weeks back on this blog. I'm taking bragging rights here. I was so honored to have an editor like what I'd written from the heart enough to publish it. It was, seconds later, tempered by a rejection, from the same editor, of a short story I had submitted. I can't let the rejection overshadow the acceptance so I am bragging about it to everyone I know. And the lesson here is to go back to the drawing board, or writing desk as it were, and make that story so good that the next editor

WRITING PRACTICE

It's Friday and I just ordered yet another writing craft book from amazon.com. Why do I believe that reading all these how-to's will teach me to write? Why do I complain about not having time to write when all I need to do is clear away the stack of books on the coffee table and go to my writing desk? Many of these authors recommend doing a daily writing practice. Writing practice is the process of choosing some random prompt and writing stream of conscious sentences for a set time, like ten minutes. Using a timer the writer has to race to finish some complete idea before the buzzer startles her from her writing trance. Almost every writing book suggests this, except one or two I've seen recently. And of course when you read conflicting information you have to decide which is more correct, or which is right for you. "The Memoir Project" suggests that writing practice is not only unnecessary but hampers you from getting to the real work of writing a book, short

WEEKLY PROMPT

Start a flash fiction with this first line:   The first thing she saw when she opened the old scrapbook was . . .

THE MONSTER UNDER MY BED

I couldn't see it but I knew it was there. It burrowed with the dust bunnies, orphaned shoes and lost socks. At midnight, it would speak and wake me from my dreams. "Do you really believe you can do this? Aren't you too weak to handle it? Don't you know it might kill you if you even try?" I didn't want to listen but the monster voiced my own fears about my ability to write and get published. "Your fourth grade teacher was right. You can't succeed at writing. Go get a real job." I tossed and turned and tried to shut him out. He persisted night after night until I would sit at my desk, pen hovering over the blank page, unable to scrawl even one sentence. Then one day I took the broom and swept up all that lay beneath the bed. I tossed the unwed socks, the worn shoes and the dust bunnies into the trash. That night I waited to hear that voice, but he was silent. When I awoke I filled a school girl's spiral notebook with story after st

Weekly Prompt

Write three pages on the following: If you could live one day of your life over and over again forever which day would it be? GO!

AM I A WRITER

It's 5:00 AM and the sky is a dull cast iron gray. I'm sitting at my desk, a spiral notebook open to a blank page, my purple pen in hand. After entering today's date I rip into "Morning Pages," essentially three longhand pages of moaning and complaining about my life. My biggest complaint is not having time to write, even as I sit at my writing desk doing just that! The stillness around me is so conducive to mining that rich territory of the imagination that I feel I could fill this whole notebook in one sitting, but of course after my twenty minutes of kvetching is over it's time to go to work and my writing life is aborted like a failed space mission. So my question for today is "When do I get to call myself a writer?" Do morning pages count? Does journaling count? Do free write exercises count? Do I have to be published to call myself a writer? Oh yeah, I am published, several times in fact, and still I don't feel like a writer. I think it&#

MORNING PAGES

The light through the window blinds is silver. It's 3:30 am and technically I have an hour before I have to wake up. Knowing I will be awake I shut off the alarm, as I do every day, so it doens't wake my husband. But this morning is a new story. I drift into a dream filled sleep and waken at 5:00 am. Very early for most, but for me it's late and I now have a decision to make. I only have enough time to either wash and blow dry my hair, or write my "morning pages." What will it be? While brushing my teeth I glance in the mirror. The hair will have to suffice for the day. I cannot give up my writing time. Julia Cameron, in her book "The Artist's Way," recommends three longhand pages of writing each morning. I have been doing this for years. It's a mind dump and an entrance to my writing voice. It also gives me a chance to communicate with my gut and intuition and to resolve questions and issues. With few exceptions I do this every morning. Came

ON A ROLL

After a long day of work it's difficult to get to the page to write. Much as I love the process my mind is tired and weary. I want to watch mindless television and scan magazine articles. At this time of night I'd rather read about writing than actually write myself.  But how does someone call herself a writer if she isn't writing? So I pushed ahead today. I did a free write in hopes of mining the gem of an idea for a new story. I sent a short story to an online journal. I revised two stories for my class this week. And I spent twenty minutes doing the next exercise in my guided journal book. A successful writing day--plus I got in twenty minutes of exercise too. I can now go to sleep feeling content and productive.

SNOW DAYS

Today was a writing day. With three inches of snow on the ground and driveways and sidewalks replicating the ice rink at Rockefeller Center, I chose to stay indoors. After a hip fracture and hip replacement, the possibility of sliding on the ice wasn't something I wanted to risk. I spent the cloudy cold day reading flash fiction stories, critiquing flash fictions from the members of my online writing class, and creating some new story germs from prompted free writes. All in all a creative day.  I even revised a couple of stories and finally, finally sent out a short story and three poems in hopes of getting them publsihed. I feel relaxed and productive even though I didn't get to organizing my art supllies in the plastic bins I purchased last week. Productivity and creativity are measured by numbers of words on the page. I'd say about 1,000+ today. And I am confident my genre jumping days are narrowing. I am so focused on flash fiction now I can even put aside poetry for

FAIRY HOUSES

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The house fit in the cup of her five year old hand. The pink mound of flesh on the heel of her hand made the perfect front porch. She’d found the house, a tangle of twigs and leaves, tucked inside a chipmunk’s burrow. Holding her hand as still as possible the girl veered off the dirt path and into a clearing in the woods. She sat, legs twisted like a pretzel, on the cool grass. Sunshine bounced off her long curls that were the color of corn silk. Her eyes, the color of woodland violets, darted back and forth making sure she was alone.   She always knew one day she’d find her escape route and here it was--- a tiny unoccupied fairy house left in the woods just for her. She set the house down in the grass. She squeezed her tiny fists hard as she could against her head, squeezed her eyes shut and tightened all her muscles like piano strings and waited. It only took four seconds for her body to become fairy-sized and in a wink of time she slipped through the door of the fairy house and