Thursday, March 28, 2013

One by one


Bare feet on grey stone. 

The ever growing puddles seep between my toes as I step across the driveway. 

That smell, the smell of rain. Years later a friend would hypothesize that the smell comes from dirt getting wet, or something like that. But right now, the thought doesn't even cross my mind.

I am fourteen-years-old.

I feel the drops on my arms, my face. One by one.

Then I dash back inside.

(Two days later I develop a cold that will linger for two more weeks.

But I still think it was worth it.)

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Now and Then

     June 19, 2003
I love Saturdays. Especially this one. I just got out of school yesterday. Now I'm done with fifth grade. I am gonna be in Middle school next year. I am going to go to Shivela with Caleb. That will be awesome. Now I have two and a half months to do whatever I want. I'm kind of sad that it's raining, but I can still play with Caleb and Kyra. We made a fort on the bunk beds and had a toy war in the loft. Maybe tomorrow it will stop raining. Then we could have a war in the backyard.

     March 27, 2013
That is me as an eleven year old, writing my feelings about the first day of summer ten years ago. Okay, in all reality I was never good at keeping a journal so I don't have an actual excerpt for you to read, but that would probably be how it sounded, if not a little longer and better flow than I would have written. Sad, huh. Oh well, I was eleven and language arts was not my favorite. I enjoyed science. Don't worry, I'll translate what I meant.
   I was probably sitting at the desk by the window that overlooked our backyard. It was in the master bedroom which, in our old house, was never actually our parents room. My dad built a series of four bunk beds on one wall and a loft jutting out from the top bunk. It was pretty much the coolest room ever. It was my sisters' room, but I loved that window. It overlooked the backyard. The dirty, somewhat shabby, but awesome backyard. We didn't have a lawn back there. As far as I can remember it never looked like a nice, pretty yard, but it was functional, and perfect for a bunch of kids to play in. We had a tree on one side, a trampoline in the middle that was buried down to ground level, a basketball hoop closer to the house, the remnants of a vegetable garden opposite the tree, and a playhouse in the back at the bottom of a slope. If you can't see what was so great about this yard either I'm not explaining it right, or you have totally lost touch with childhood.
    In the rain I could smell the wet bricks from the patio/basketball court. It was better than wet cement. The whole yard became a swamp on those days. I looked out and could see the patches where the water would gather and imagine how deep those puddles were. The trampoline was the best; the rain could come down from above and up from beneath for maximum soaking. The small plywood house was a shelter from the storm (which was pretty much any time it rained harder than a light drizzle). I would look out that window and see a whole summer ahead of me. At the time, it was a fantastical mystery to be discovered over the next two months.
   Knowing what I know now, that window was a portal to adventures with siblings and friends acting out our favorite movies and tv shows, creating our own adventures in other worlds complete with several scrapes and bruises. It also was a picture frame for moments that nobody ever thinks to take a picture of because they don't need to. The kinds of things you just don't forget, like walking in circles for hours with your older brother, sometimes talking and making up stories, sometimes both in complete silence. Or the time that I threw a football with my mom on her birthday, because she wanted to spend some time with me. I look back and remember some of the best times I can think of, and it makes me sort of sad that their over, but then I look out this window and see a whole new mystery to solve in the coming months.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Writing Prompt # 3


Think back to where you lived ten years ago. Look out your favorite window there. What do you see? Make it the first day of summer; it's raining. What does it smell like? What do you hear? Are you wearing shoes? Close your eyes and for five minutes look out that window. When you're finished, jot down what you saw.



This prompt was taken from Writing Poems by Robert Wallace and Michelle Boisseau.

SIDE NOTE: Remember that you can respond in any way that you want: essay, poem, short story, etc.

Monday, March 25, 2013

What Dreams May Come



I am standing alone in a shallow pond, metallic pebbles underfoot.  The luke-warm water is clear, but as soon as my foot moves it kicks up cloudy debris mixed with the black and red exoskeletons of dead bugs.  I hear my mother's voice, muted, and far away.  Then suddenly, I am playing a bizarre game of tag.  Someone is chasing me and I am leaping and running through the water, when I spot something up ahead.  Something massive, and dancing under the water like gold sunlight.  I watch it's supple movements and realize it's a sting ray.  My heart starts thrumming in my chest, and I, already panting from the impromptu game of tag, back peddle as fast as I can.  I've awakened a sleeping giant.  It starts swimming toward me.  

I am mesmerized.  I am terrified.  

I do nothing as the pond has suddenly grows in size to resemble a large lake, and the giant has now been joined by two companions.  They are swimming at an alarming speed around me, causing the once shallow pond to vortex like a tornado.  Raw panic slices into me, it is acrid on my tongue.  It is jagged rocks on bare feet.  A wave of water crashes and catches me in the tumult.  There are tidal waves encircling me.  The deafening roar of water fills my ears.  It causes my thoughts and emotions to swirl:  I can't swim.  How am I still alive?  Where are the sting rays?  I see them still circling, still creating their deadly cyclone, swimming upside down in curling waves.  Sun yellow giants against an agonizing cerulean sky.   A half-drowned tree's limbs twist out like suffocated fingers, convulsing at me as the water madly drives me on.  I am going to be impaled.  I close my eyes and tense every nerve in my body.  

And wake up.

What stops me from writing?  What stands in my way?  Pride?  Fear?  Un-originality.  What can I say that hasn't been said already?  How can I stop the tide of words that swirl meaninglessly in my brain, and calm it into something that will become tranquil and life-giving?  How can I share my inner-most feelings with complete strangers?  Or share my observations memorably?  Can I withstand to their criticism?  

Will it pierce me?  Do I dare disturb the universe?

Will I wake?

Sunday, March 24, 2013



"There is no agony like having an untold story inside you."
Zora Neale Hurston

Monday, March 18, 2013

self-indulgent. conceited. greedy.

Every time I watch a beautiful film, I stay up for hours afterwards just writing. Not usually about the film. Not usually about my day. Usually something that I hope to use somewhere else, usually a meandering of thought and language, a selfish experiment that doesn't lead up to anything.
There it is.
Why should I be allowed to spend my time just putting words next to other words in an attempt to make sense of or to imitate the world swirling around me? My doing this doesn't help anyone else - only myself. Should I be allowed to spend this time sorting out my thoughts and making personal discoveries when surely I could be honing a skill that will enhance the lives of those around me?
Ultimately, I wish my writing could influence others. I wish I could express a thought that catches someone's breath and makes them stop on the page. I wish I could share a sentence that would send an innocent reader into a surprised belly laugh. I wish I could create a piece that hundreds or even dozens would experience and be different because they read what I had to say.
But this doesn't happen. Not yet.
I type in still darkness in the wee hours of morning ruining my eyes, I steal two minutes of each hour at work to jot down a phrase that I'll hate myself for forgetting if I don't write it down NOW. It's all very secret because it's still very selfish to me to take this time. Not when you could be working, running, eating, dancing, hiking, socializing, living...because where else am I supposed to get the material to write if I don't go out there and experience it, but by the time I've gone out and participated with this world, when it comes time to reflect and write, I feel like I shouldn't take this time to do that, and it's incredibly presumptuous of me to think that someone might find my words worth reading.
It's a mystery that I'm afraid to explore - I'm afraid that I'll find that writing isn't worth the hours I put in each week when the sole audience is myself, but I need this lifeline so badly. I need this selfish hobby, this selfish dream, this selfish desire. I crave these words, I turn animalistic and cross without putting something to paper. I want to join the ranks of people whose words influence someone else, but here I sit, writing a screenplay in a Google doc entitled "writing. 48." I number the documents that contain words that only I have seen. It contains hours of work for which I have nothing to show anyone.
Maybe one day I can influence someone. But it will always be selfish of me to have written it in the first place.

The "What If?"

"What are the insecurities or walls that are holding you back from pursuing your desire to write?"

I didn't want to come straight out and say that it was pure laziness keeping me from writing, but I just found a chocolate stain on my bed sheet, so now you know. And now I can get on with this laziness issue.

I have found myself thinking about being intentional with creativity. There's this idea in my mind, a recognition of truth, that says that if I spend as much time creating as I do with school, my internship, or my job, then everything will fall into place beautifully. It will be better than I can even imagine. Creativity alone awakens my soul in a way that nothing else has, but what if I can feed not only my soul, but my own physical body with creativity? What if I can make it?


And then the pressure to do everything. And then I am behind in school, in my internship, in my job. And then I watch Parks and Rec on Hulu and it is hilarious and then I sleep. (There's a Diet Coke somewhere in there).


Maybe it isn't pure laziness. Maybe the idea itself-- that I can really do this-- is what is holding me back.

"Insecurities" Sounds so Sad

What is it that keeps me from writing? If I had to sum it all up in a few words it would be this: my level of writing is not up to par. The good news is, I can use so many more words than just those nine. I can use several paragraphs if I need to, but I don't think I do (at least I hope I don't). When I say that my writing isn't up to par I mean to say that I am one of those people that has fallen into the sad habit of comparing myself to others. When I read books or poems or even blogs that have been written by others, I see them as writers. I can hear the words flow through my mind and they sound so lovely. When I write, however, I feel like I have to stop all too often to make sure things fit together nicely, and it makes all my words bounce around in my head rather than wash through it.  It makes me uncomfortable at times.

This isn't to say I dislike the things I write. On the contrary. I enjoy writing and coming up with subjects. I think It's just new to me still (I never was one for reading or writing until my third semester in college: last spring). It's one of those tricky spirals that I have to remove myself from. I have trouble writing because I don't feel comfortable with writing because have trouble writing...and so on. I guess I just need to keep stepping out of my comfort zone and practicing as much as I can. Would you look at that? Two decent paragraphs and I found the problem.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

On holding back...

"If a writer...knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writing is truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."

Ernest Hemingway

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Writing Prompt #2


What are the insecurities or walls that are holding you back from pursuing your desire to write? Maybe you feel guilty about the time it takes to write (taking you away from other responsibilities and people in your life). Maybe it is the curse of comparison and self-deprecation.  Maybe you have to work on the wall one brick at a time, breaking it down and throwing it in the back of the pickup truck to be gone for good. Put them to paper and start to let them go.

Monday, March 11, 2013

To Forget

There are chunks of my life that I cannot recall. Moments that others remember and recite to me seamlessly, but that I cannot even gather. There is a hole in my mind (or heart?) that I cannot explain.

But I remember the bitterness I felt toward one, and the devotion I so badly wanted to give to another. I remember the aching, the loneliness, the fall, because I put them into words.

I write to connect. I write to hide. I write to savor that darkness that I can't otherwise define.

---

"To live in the world of creation-- to get into it and stay in it-- to frequent it and haunt it... to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation-- this is the only thing." -Henry James

---

[I'm Allison, and I'm a musician. I write songs, but dabble in other areas when the opportunity arises.]

Ira Glass // being at the beginning and not giving up


It's hard to be at the beginning but listen to Ira Glass and keep working at it. It will get better... or so I hear.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Because of Ray


First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys….School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along….And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.

But one strange wild dark long year, Halloween came early.

One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight.

At that time, James Nightshade of 97 Oak Street was thirteen years, eleven months, twenty-three days old. Next door, William Halloway was thirteen years, eleven months and twenty-four days old. Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands.

And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young anymore….

And that was when I felt it. A shortening of breath. A quick pause in my heart’s normal rhythm. A widening of the eyes. And I was hooked, sitting on the bottom bunk of my room, reading the first paragraphs of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Ray Bradbury had my number forever after that.

And when I am honest with myself—when I trace the connection from my fingers to my pencil, I find, there at the tip, his name. Ray is the origin of my creation myth….

He looked at language the way a composer looks at music (I imagine, anyway, not having any real ability to draw from when it comes to composing music). He builds his sentences to ebb and flow, to run together in musical rivers, every word chosen to fill a role in the symphony of the sentence. You don’t really read his words, you sing them. I am captivated by every paragraph. Enthralled. In ecstasies. And yes, that sounds rather dramatic; but if you’ve read much of Mr. Bradbury (no, not just Fahrenheit 451), you understand, and you probably agree. Yes, I will be presumptuous and say that you agree.

And this musicality of language was about…. well, sometimes nothing. About summers and lake swims and evening walks and curio shops; and young boys’ sneakers pounding across pavements; and sunburnt men riding in the backs of station wagons, sputtering philosophies. And he wrote/sang/painted of things fantastical too: Of robots spouting the words of Orson Welles in their last moments of circuitry; of merry-go-rounds that rode you years into the future in the span of a two-minute ride; of priests and aliens finding common ground and touching holiness together; and mummies long dead, entombed below the ground, and listening, listening with wonder to the mundane sounds of the living above.

And in his words and worlds I learned that this was what writing was for—not for shouting across the pages The World According to Me. But for listening with wonder. For discovering the rhythms of life, and translating them to paper. I learned to ask things like, “What if an end-of-the-world story actually came to an end? What if it wasn’t saved by some hodge-podge team of astronauts in the last ten minute window of the world’s humanity? How would that change the whole story, if it began with no hope?”

Or, “What if I stood face to face with an alien, and found that it wasn’t so alien? That we both worried about making a living and trying to understand our parents and holding onto faith in a harsh world?”

Or, “What if I lived in a society that was rotting underneath its façade of perfection? Would I have the courage to read the books I was meant to burn? Would I ask questions? Or would I press on, head down, day after day, adding my little portion of oil to the rotting engine?”

I became a writer because I want to know the answers to these questions. But not just my answers. I write because I like to watch people and wonder about them. About how Aunt Vera would deal with the death of a childhood friend. Or how my very practical neighbor, Nancy, would cope if she met the harbinger of death on her evening jog, and he walked and talked like a young boy, and was actually cordial and winning even. Or how my son, Coren, would face a post-apocalyptic world alone, with his younger sister to look after. I wonder about the tenacity of humanity, on every level, mundane and monumental. I like to watch how we all go on the way we do, amid the cacophony around us.


One day I hope to capture that tenacity with the grace of my favorites—Bradbury and McCarthy, Gaiman and Barrie, Sanderson and Snicket and Valente—but it is a long way off yet. Until then, I hope to keep watching and writing and wondering. There is truth to be found there that enriches me, in subtle and singular ways.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

writing every day



I have been trying to write every day. Sometimes I tell myself that I will write for ten minutes, while other times I tell myself I have to fill two full pages of my notebook. Honestly, most of it is crap. I write about how I don't know what to write or I write about what is out my front window. I always pray that no one will happen upon this notebook and know it was mine. Every so often a sentence feels smooth and clear as the pen moves across the page or a word stands out and I think I must use it again. But most of the time it is crap.

But that is fine. Because I do it every day. I am not always setting out to write perfect prose every time but working the muscles that are in desperate need of a exercise. And it has become a little bit easier when I want to write a letter to my daughter on her birthday to sit down and write something that I am not totally embarrassed about. It becomes a little more frequently that I write a line or two that feel good as I am writing it.

So I will keep doing in everyday. And maybe in a while it won't just be a sentence here or there but a whole page.

"When I have students who have written many pages and read them in class, and the writing is not all necessarily good but I see they are exploring their minds for material, I am glad. I know those people will continue and are not just obsessed with 'hot' writing, but are in the process of practice. They are raking their minds and taking their shallow thinking and turning it over. If we continue to work with this raw matter, it will draw us deeper and deeper into ourselves, but not in a neurotic way. We will begin to see the rich garden we have inside us and use that for writing."

"We must continue to work the compost pile, enriching it and making it fertile so that something beautiful may bloom and so that our writing muscles are in good shape to ride the universe when it moves through us."

From the book Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (page 16).

Note: Don't forget about the current writing prompt! And once we have a new writing prompt posted, you can always go back to old ones and post your responses to them!

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Costco is Apparently One of my Muses


            The other day I was shopping for diapers, when I happened to come across a book signing.  Several things happen in quick succession when I see an author at Costco.  Usually, I  avoid eye contact.  Then pity strikes.   Everyone else is probably doing the same thing that I'm doing, and ignoring the them.  Jerks.  I think of that poor author, sitting there for hours, without anyone to talk to, and that makes me feel guilty enough to take a look at the book.  If I'm honest with myself, signed books are my kryptonite.  So I'm not just buying books out of a sense of guilt.  A book signed by the author with a personalized message goes a long way.   On this particular day, the author was a little girl.  I almost stopped in my tracks.  I couldn't believe it.  She's published at that age?  Seriously??  And everyone is buying her book because...Hello!  She's twelve!  She's adorable, and the book is like $5.  Heck yeah!  I'll support you!  I had her write a note to my little girls and she even threw in a smiley faceCute.
 
            As I make my way through the checkout line the cashier scans my items and holds it up, "Oh! You're buying THE book!" she gushes.  
 
             "It looks so cute.  And I'm just blown away that the girl's already published!"

             "Do you know what that says to me?"  the cashier asks giving me a conspiratorial glance.  "Good parenting."  I have to agree.  It kind-of made me want to ask the girl's mother, who had been sitting sitting right beside her, "How did you go about the whole publishing thing?”  I really want to know.  
 
            This is a new development for me, wanting to know how to be published.  I have always written in one form or another.  I've kept a journal since I could hold a pencil.  In high school I wrote essays, in college, papers.  But, most of the writing I've done was so boring, so mandatory.  Books that I had to read, poems I had to analyze.    Then my English classes were cut off all together as I decided on a degree.  I'd thought having to write technical English papers was bad, writing technical engineering papers was so much worse.  My reading and writing pleasures were sandwiched in-between classes and studies.  I missed the beauty of the English language. I would carry around second-hand novels, sit in the USU library cafe, and sip cups of hot cocoa.  I can still feel the sunlight pouring through those obscenely large windows.  I wished the sunshine could burn away all the sterileness in my world.  

              That period in my life taught me that I really missed creative writing.  I kept a blog, and continued journaling.  It was such a fabulous outlet.  I wrote about my crappy boss that I had as an intern who kept me locked up in an office writing the same dumb computer program for 10 hours a day, 4 days a week for an entire summer.  Psh.  I still hate that guy.  I poured more of my thoughts and feelings into my journals then is probably healthy.  I really hope no one ever reads them because, let's face it, I have an ridiculous amount of journals for someone my age who has done very little and been very few places.  Still, I would wake up in the morning, and a re-occurring quote from Walden would pop into my mind, "Morning is the philosopher's hour." So I would seize the morning, and the clarity of thought that came with it.  It has become my favorite time to write.  I found myself writing things in my head-my next blog, a story I had yet to scribble down, even some poetry.
 
            It hasn't been until recently, after a book binge that lasted half a year, that I finally set down a novel and thought, I could do that.  So, I grabbed an empty notebook and resolved to fill it. I'd had an idea for a story that had been growing in my mind for a few years.  Writing a novel, it turns out, is a lot harder than I thought it would be.  Surprise, surprise.  And now days it seems like you have to have some great oppression in order for your book to be successful.  You need to be gay, or come from a third world country.  Do we really need to take the oppression so far?  What happened to writing for the pleasure of writing?  Or the freedom that it offers?  I found with writing, the only limits are the ones that you make yourself.  I can go against the natural and man-made laws that I studied so faithfully all those years.  Maybe knowing so much about them can work for me.  One of my favorite authors wrote that good fiction has a foothold in the real world.  If you put a bit of science in magic and fantasy, it makes it more palatable.  I sincerely hope so.
      
            So what do I want to do with all of this?  The self-realization?  The opportunity?  Let me be candid:  I have no idea.  I haven't really even found my writing style or my voice yet.  I'm at the very beginning.  But, I heard once that you're meant to do the thing that you think about in your free time.  The thing that creeps into your brain as you're rinsing your hair out in the shower.  That's an intimidating and powerful idea.  My writing is far below the standard I want it to be.  I have a lot of work to do if I ever want to fill the gap between how I want to be able to write, and what my current skills actually are.  But, if a twelve year old girl can do it, so help me, I can too.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Why I Write by Alicia Fish


It seems much of my life has been spent wondering what to do with myself. I excelled at school but I excelled generally. Nothing to truly make me stand out. There were my interests in reading and running and “spending time with friends” but who can make a career out of those? When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I sheepishly answered “hair dresser” but only because that was what everyone else said.

In college, after deciding to pursue a degree in math, I decided I would spend my free time writing novels, because what else is there to write? I wrote outlines, created characters that were reminiscent of friends and family members. But the whole thing lacked imagination. Those pages were quickly hidden and the notebook used instead to make to do lists and grocery lists. Still wanting to be immersed in words, I started a book club. Because if I couldn't write an amazing novel, by golly I would talk about them.

Time passed and eventually I found myself preparing to leave my life for a year and a half for my church. Bored of the typical missionary letters home, I told a friend of my desire to not bore my loved ones with emotionless travel logs. She suggested to take one or two events that happened that week and tell the story. Tell the details of the people, of the experience  Let others experience it through me. So I tried. It was not very eloquent and not every week did something flow from my memories through my finger tips. However, each week I was excited to tell the stories of the crazy and extreme and sometimes mundane life that I was mine. And I loved when people wrote me to tell me how great my emails were to read. These were people who did not necessarily want to live that same life or who did not share my beliefs but my stories still touched them. That was exhilarating.

Eventually I returned to my life, married fast and found myself clinging desperately to faded memories of math concepts and terms. What should have been easy was now absurdly hard and oh how lost I felt. Numbers no longer anchored me and guided me. Now they were the rocks falling from the cliff on which I was perched. I powered through (and eventually found some solid footing) yet found myself lost among other college graduates who didn't quite know what to do with the knowledge they had acquired.

I found myself drawn to blogs, particularly those who wrote. I loved how they shared details of their lives, both great and small. They found beauty in the everyday or they found hope in honestly sharing their experiences, good and bad.

One day, while reading Essays of E.B. White, I realized how drawn I was to his writing. He wrote of his everyday life. Things that others might overlook or not find interesting but here he was, writing about the his geese as though they were people. I loved it. I drank in his words and looked around at my life, seeing the trees and the birds with new eyes.

And that is when I knew that, not only did I want to write, I wanted to write like him. I wanted to write like those bloggers. I wanted to be an essayist. To soak up the world and all its details and put it to paper. To share my stories, my human experience. Because that is the experience I know best. And in writing about it, I understand it better.

Not only did I want to write this, but I wanted to write it well. With the power of words, I wanted to paint a picture that others could enjoy and feel. That even if they had never experienced what I experience, that they could still step into anothers life and story. 

So here I sit, a little more focused in my writing aspirations than I was a few years ago, in need of great practice and more learning. But at least I now know where I want to go.