This character from the Neverending Saga has no idea the miracles still to come in the future. But I do.
Tag: journals
Placeholder on Hump Day
Wednesday got away from me–a whole lot going on at Houndstooth Hall at the moment. I read a stunning poem by Lynne Shapiro in Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems, and it inspired me to begin a character poem, but I’ll need to finish the poem later and will return to this post to add it when it’s ready. (ETA: Done! See bottom of this post.)
In the meantime, this is Shapiro’s poem.
Your Dead Mother
Dangles from the sky
Like a slim moon
Strung on a string
Silvery blue dress
Pleated like a curtain
Shimmers in your
Room at night
As cocktail gloves
And long fingers
Reach down to caress
Your sleepy head
Composing my poem also made me think of this sculpture that was our late friend Steve’s, which always has a place in our home.
ETA:
Below is the poem I wrote using the word list and title from Write The Poem. It’s a scene that’s maybe two novels away in the Neverending Saga, though it’s been planned a long time. It’s as if whoever put this list of words together could see into the future. My poem is the reason I thought of Steve’s sculpture.
Nighttime
Darkness holds a secret.
He’s in his fourth decade of keeping it.
Less than two decades since four collaborators
joined him in the shadows.
Sleepless, he keeps vigil over her in the dim room.
He wants to whisper,
“She is the one who cradles you in the moon’s crescent.
Even when the sky is moonless, she is there.”
His silence ensures she will not become wakeful.
The black secret will not touch her.
Tiny Tuesday!
She’s like a small but deadly insect, threatening everyone this character loves and tries to protect from her malevolence. If there’s any battle in the Neverending Saga, it’s this one, between mother and son, but also the one he wages with himself out of fear he will become like her.
These sticky poetry words and phrases include lots of given names, and when I saw hers, I knew I had to give him a poem. I’d never give her one.
Mindful Monday
I used Joseph Fasano’s The Magic Words poetry prompts book to speak in the voice of a Neverending Saga character whose trust has been broken. My characters’ lives may be radically different from mine, but I think their voices come so willingly to me because we share fragments of our identities, emotions, and experiences.
This was the prompt:
This is my character’s poem. I don’t reuse the same nouns or verbs (which Fasano says is fine–better to write for the poem than to a formula).
This is how a connection persists,
by losing its expectations.
This is how a falseness roots,
by falling in middle ground.
This is how a trust erodes,
by stumbling on concessions.
I am what I am, a willing accomplice
that loses, that falls, that stumbles,
and then that rises.
Look at me. Look at my breakthrough.
This is how a connection fractures.
©Becky Cochrane, 2025
Sunday Sundries
Sometimes, it’s all about poetry. Bottom left, my three new sticker books with words and phrases that can be arranged into poetry or thoughts. The Magnetic Poetry™ refrigerator tin that holds words and also provides a fridge “door’s” magnetic surface for assembling them. A Write The Poem book that offers many writing prompts. Three works of contemporary poetry to get me away from my go-to poets like Dickinson, Frost, etc., and read (or re-read) and enjoy Lynn Domina’s Corporal Works; Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems with over 101 contributors; and Aaron Fagan’s Garage Poems. Joseph Fasano’s The Magic Words: Simple Poetry Prompts That Unlock the Creativity in Everyone.
Finally, my Inspire Journal, because I intend to use all these different means to write a poem every day this week which directly corresponds to the voices or experiences of characters in the Neverending Saga.
Today, I used The Healing Words Kit™ from Magnetic Poetry™ to pull words and arrange them on a magnetic board for one of the four main voices in my series. In case you have trouble reading from the photo, her poem is:
only
beauty of body and voice
but I am
wisdom courage
grace compassion
heart love
so our time is no more
goodbye
free
I can be my whole self
©Becky Cochrane, 2025
Sunday Sundries
I don’t think I’ve ever featured this book on here before, though I see it’s in a shot of a group of journals and other books I took in June of 2021, so it’s been around a while. The Magic of Mindset is a journal, by Johanna Wright, to be written in, so if I had filled in any of the pages (I haven’t), it’s likely what I wrote would be too private to share.
That’s still true with the page I’m featuring, where under the title “Expect Resistance,” a girl meeting a dragon says, “Oh, hi.” The text on the accompanying page says, “RESISTANCE is A NORMAL PART OF THE PROCESS. LIST all of the REASONS WHY IT FEELS impossible TO LET GO OF YOUR OLD MINDSET AND MOVE OUT OF the stuck PLACE.
Those little items on the plate are like small talismans (crystal ball held in cupped palms; a wee dachshund carved of wood; a soapstone container, lid off, to show a variety of tiny stones; a small river rock in the shape of a heart; a sunflower incense burner holding a stick of sandalwood incense) that are either from or reference people, all a part of my history, who at one time or another were a force that could either subdue my voice or inspire and encourage it.
Relationships are complicated, and more than once, I’ve allowed them to block the flow of my creative energy. This time, I want to face that dragon and make a choice truer to myself.
This week’s theme may be arriving organically on each new day.
Tiny Tuesday!
I’d have sworn I’ve used this book more than once on this site, but I could find only one instance back in September of 2019, which was of course before the world went into lockdown. I didn’t realize in those months of 2020, when my life altered so much (as did most people’s, worldwide), how an old companion of mine, Anxiety, came to stay. Even now, though I don’t navigate through the world quite the way I used to, I grapple with anxiety every day and do at least one thing that scares me.
I like the concept of “shrinking the wolf.” On this site, when I share a personal story and photos, or a bit of fiction, or lines of poetry, or a painting, even a coloring page, or post a photo on the Photo Friday site, or express a political opinion, I’m shrinking the wolf.
When I’m out of my comfort zone and out in the world (grocery store, drug store, bank, doctor’s office, retailer–it’s a small world!), I look for and try to extend only kindness (caveat: you would not believe this if you’re a passenger in my car, but none of my muttering is heard by its deserving recipients, so I give myself a pass).
It’s always reassuring how much kindness I’m given when I’m out and about. Kindness inspires me.
Whatever your fear is, today or any day, I hope you can shrink that wolf.
ETA: I got this book/journal in February of 2015, so this is officially the THIRD time I’ve posted it. I need to use it more often.
Mindful Monday
Taking my own recommendation, I realized I have another book I haven’t used but once on here, Hey, Thanks: A Guided Gratitude Journal.
I found this page that you might reflect on and answer (in comments or only to yourself):
I thought it fit in with the mindful theme of “be who you are in this moment.” So I found a coloring page in this book:
And colored it for you.
The quote on the back of the page, from “Unknown,” says, “Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”
Plotting
Haven’t written in this journal in a while. It’s a gift from Lynne that I use as a sort of character journal when I’m trying to figure out things in the Neverending Saga. I blurred out the thoughts I wrote down, and tried to photograph it in such a way that you could see what the dragonflies look like with and without their shimmer.
I liked the quote from George Sand because the character I’m writing is making changes to her life, her home, herself. To me, she’s a person who shines, but not every character sees her the way I do. That seems true to life. When I was young, I wanted all my friends, however different they were from one another, to know and be friends, too. Experience taught me how unrealistic that is.
Today I watched a 2016 film called Maudie which came highly recommended by a dear friend of many decades. I think she realized I’d like it both as a character study and a look into the life of an artist. It’s an odd kind of…romance…and it’s quite sad. Really, it’s both sad and somehow not sad. The character Maudie is played by an English actor, Sally Hawkins, who won lots of praise and awards for the role. Interestingly, the male lead is played by Ethan Hawke. My friend didn’t know it was supposed to have been my Ethan Hawke summer, so it was a cool coincidence. Sometimes people who know and love us have an intuitive sense not only of what we’d like, but when we need it. It’s a great part of friendship.
Random Saturday musings
Back in March of 2019 is when I think I posted using Keri Smith’s Wreck This Journal for the first time. The page I chose to do involved fruit stickers, and it looked like this.
I may have added a few since then.
Here’s a new one I did this month. Another way to test my memory.
When I did it, I kept wondering what smelled so wonderful. Well, it was a couple of pages prior, done in April 2019, and still smelling as FABULOUS as ever: splashes of Chanel N° 5.
It took me more than five years to have the nerve to do this one. It is done as of yesterday.
Author Keri Smith warned it would be difficult.
Did you flinch a little when you saw that I did it? Even book lovers who read the cheapest of paperbacks protect the spines. (And most of us use bookmarks to keep from bending down the pages.)
No worry about cracking the spines or bending the pages when I read ebooks on my iPad, including this latest one from Carolyn Haines in her Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series. Of course, my iPad has fallen to the floor a couple of times and now has thin cracks across the surface of the glass. I don’t blame the dogs, who ran into power cords and pulled it down. I blame whoever makes covers for devices like this one. When my old iPad that I had for many years stopped working, it still had a flawless screen because of the great case that kept it well-protected. When I replaced the iPad, I couldn’t find a case even close to that one in quality or protective features. So I deal with those hairline cracks; it’s worth it to read my favorite writers. Carolyn Haines is certainly among that group.