Creak, creak

If this blog were a box, it would be made of smooth-sanded hardwood and inlaid gold, and I'd be lovingly wiping away a thick layer of dust right now, having rediscovered it among a jumbled pile of loved but forgotten possessions.

Last posted on November 30th, 2009, upon finishing the second draft of my WIP. What's happened during the 16-month ellipsis? Well, most significantly, my 14-month-old daughter happened, who is now snoozing next to me. Almost no actual writing has happened on the WIP; it was reviewed and comment on in detail by an absolutely incredible crit reader, but the only work I've done in response to her comments has taken place in my head. I've read a lot of blog posts lately about moms who started (or went back to) working on a novel the same day their child was born. Kudos to them - it did not happen for me. I think I did write a poem for her the next day, and have written sporadic poems since her birth, but in no way did my writing life possess anything resembling discipline until a week or two ago.

In all honesty, that was due as much to a dormant period in my writing as it was to arrival of The Teensy One. Let me be clear: I'm not making excuses. It's been more than a few years since I realized my creativity goes through periods of dormancy. It used to freak me out, but once I figured out that the times of silence are always followed by outpourings of creative energy, I stopped worrying about it. Nowadays when the muse goes silent, I let her rest for a while, although I listen with a keen ear for her to speak again.

Although this latest cycle of creativity started a couple of weeks ago, the arrival of National Poetry Month helped me get back into a disciplined routine, which feels oh, so good - like a bird on wing. There are a couple of sites I've been using for daily prompts, both of which I found thanks to that perennial friend-of-writers, Twitter.

The first is @robertleebrewer's Poetic Asides blog, which he writes for Writer's Digest: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/. Some good prompts here - some reliable and familiar stand-bys, and some creative prompts that provide good nudges to the brain to approach a poem with a fresh perspective.

The second, Instapoem, is a collaboration between @inkyelbows (Debbie Ridpath Ohi) and Rand Bellavia: http://instapoem.blogspot.com/. This blog features a series of one-word prompts, one for each day of the month, and the rule is to write it within five minutes of seeing the prompt. It's a great concept, although there are days when the word of the day just doesn't strike me; on those days, I just use a word from a different day.

Oddly, a lot of the poetry I've written since I got back into the swing of things has rhymed. I have nothing against rhyming or free verse, but I tend more towards free verse, generally. Not lately, though - it's a little disconcerting to have all these rhymes popping up, but I'm rolling with it and focusing on using them to challenge myself rather than as crutches for simplicity.

Today's prompt from Poetic Asides is to write a "what if" poem. Here's mine:

Songs for Abigail XV

The freight train howls its lonesome song
Cloud upon cloud piles white upon grey
The heron tucks its head under wing
What if you were alive today?


Well, now that the dust is cleaned away, I'm hoping to post semi-regularly on here. No promises, though; some days I'm lucky to get five minutes to myself for a quick writing exercise. Hey, a girl's gotta have her priorities. Cheers.

what dreams may come (and how to stop procrastinating on your daily writing exercise)

Do I get a prize for the longest post title ever? The satisfaction of it, huh? Man, that's lame.

So thanks to a Twitter tip from @motjustes, I came across this fabulous tool for procrastinating writers. It's called Write Everyday, and alls you have to do is click this link and enter the minimum time you want to write. It gives you a prompt and a timer. Away you go! Amazing.

I realize that someone who's considered herself a writer for a quarter-century should possibly be a little more self-disciplined. But there is not a whole lot of self-discipline about me, and it's better to know yourself (and find ways to successfully trick yourself into being a better person) than to hold yourself to impossible standards and berate yourself for falling short thereof. And so on. So that's my take on that.

Anyway, using this tool (which I learned of yesterday) I have actually written for two whole days in a row. How 'bout it?! And no, it's not great literature, but it is writing with ye olde creative bente, and just now I turned out more than 500 words before even starting this blog post. Ooh, ouch, I think I just pulled a muscle patting myself on the back. Still, it's a decent accomplishment, and one that far outstrips not freewriting 500-plus words today.

Sooo, in case you haven't gotten enough of my brain ramblings for today, you can read what I wrote from the prompt below. The prompt was, "When I wake up in the morning, the first thing to cross my mind is..." It's not the world's greatest prompt, but it still did the trick. The prompt I used yesterday was better, but being a bear of very little brain, I can no longer remember it. I may, however, go eat some honey now. Enjoy the further ramblings.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing to cross my mind is usually the fleeting footfalls of my dream hieing itself back into my subconscious. Sometimes it takes me a minute or two to realize that I'm actually awake, so engrossed is my mind in continuing the train of thought in the dream.

In pregnancy I dream vividly. As someone who loves to interpret dreams, and has what you might call a well thumbed dream dictionary (if you wanted to be unkind, you might call it a tattered, falling apart dream dictionary), the pregnancy dreams are none too difficult to interpret. Occasionally a more obscure symbol will surface (what does my fat orange tabby cat mean to me, really, and why was I taking her to the amusement park with my husband and apparently already-born baby?) but for the most part, it's pretty straightforward.

There's no question that my brain considers dreaming heavy therapy, and discusses a lot of my issues with itself on the flickering screen of my mind. I suspect most of my dreams are about my fears, at least, of the dreams that I can remember. Some are about my joys, and a few are about my hopes. Perhaps my subconscious considers my waking brain to spend more than its fair share of time on my joys and hopes, and wants to even the score. Occasionally I'll have a dream that's more like living in an alternate reality than a dream, or one that predicts the future, if only I could realize that when I wake up instead of when the shit actually goes down in the future and I think, "Oh, right, I dreamed about this."

Perhaps two of my favorite dreams involved me beating the shit out of someone I hated - both times featured the same girl, who as you can imagine, I really, really, really did not like. (Bear in mind that I have never in my waking life beat anybody up. I do kill spiders, though.) It was disturbing, naturally, but what was perhaps even more disturbing was the fact that it was oh, so satisfying. I'd like to think that much of the satisfaction came from the fact that I would never really beat someone up, but it also could have come from the fact that I was beating the shit out of this godawful, horrible, evil person. In fact, I even hated her less after the dreams, perhaps because I'd worked out my anger so very thoroughly in my mind. Who knows?

Anyway, it's been lo, these many years since I had a violent dream like that (nine or ten, to be precise, and oh, dear god, I just realized my ten-year college reunion is coming up next summer - talk about nightmares). Nowadays they're much more realistic, except for the cat at the amusement park thing. Oh, and the recent journey through a cave and up the magical holy mountain with a good friend. Okay, maybe they're not really that realistic nowadays either. But really, what are dreams for?

Favorite Writing Exercises

I've been taking writing workshops for nearly 20 years now. As you can imagine, I've come across quite a few good writing exercises.

Why do writing exercises? Creativity is like a muscle; frequent use keeps it in good shape. You'll be amazed at how easily the words start flowing when you get into a writing "workout routine". Other times, writing exercises can help you work through a tricky bit, when you can't quite figure out the problem but you don't like a sentence, word, line of poetry etc.

"Yeah, yeah," you're saying. "We've all heard the recommendation to write at least 15 minutes a day, but even when I can find the time, it's hard to get into it." The problem could be that you're trying to be too focused. Muzzle your inner editor, and just let the words flow without worrying about getting them right. You'll be amazed what great stuff comes out.

DISCLAIMER: I am a total hypocrite. I don't write every day, unless you count email and work. But writing every day remains the goal.

Some days, you may want to write in a line completely different than your current work in progress, just to keep your brain from stagnating over the subject.

Every exercise has a thousand variations. This is just a general road map.

Writing Exercises

When (character) woke up this morning, little did he know...
...destiny was about to bring him:
...he was about to make the most amazing realization:
...his worst nightmare was about to come true:
...his lifelong dream was about to come true:
...during the night, his pet had:
...his (family member) was about to arrive on his doorstep:
...he would meet his future spouse that day:
...his significant other had already left him:


Describe in detail (character)'s...
...favorite chair
...kitchen table
...closet
...bedroom
...yard/garden
...hometown
...first/current car
...first/current pet
...first time drunk/high
...first/current crush
...first kiss
...first sex
...first breakup
...most embarrassing moment
...greatest triumph
...recurring dream
...very good or very bad day
...favorite or most hated chore
...favorite or most hated teacher
...favorite or most hated food
...favorite or most hated holiday
...favorite outfit
...sunglasses
...treasured piece of jewelry
...favorite shoes
...favorite alcoholic beverage/drug
...favorite work of art
...favorite book

Describe the first time your character's best friend met his significant other.

Describe a parent-teacher conference between your character's parent and his favorite or most hated teacher.

Describe where your character dreams of traveling. What would he do when he got there?

If your work-in-progress has a word, phrase, sentence, paragraph etc that just doesn't feel quite right, but you can't identify why, use this exercise from phenomenal poet Suzanne Gardinier, from whom I took an amazing workshop in college. Take that item (a line of poetry, in my case), start a new document or get a fresh piece of paper, and write an entire page (or poem) just about that item. Expound to your heart's content, then take the best parts of the result and work them back into the original document.