An Aries (Who Knows Some Stuff)
Sometimes opening one of these and doing what I could was enough during the last sixteen months. A few of them are older, one is new. If you write; get stuck in a mindset you want to shake; need an idea to prompt creativity; or need a diversion from the world or your thoughts, these books are good pals.
Those twenty pages on the left took one solid month to write. That is because they don’t include the thirtyish pages that were written and discarded in the attempt to create this chapter.
This is a truth: Sometimes you think you know a character well, and you keep writing from his POV, and it goes nowhere because you are not hearing your character’s directions, or you are mishearing them. On this trip you’re taking together, you drive yourself down dead-end streets again and again.
Very often, for me, the way off those streets is to scour my surroundings for objects that will make me turn right, turn left, do a U-turn, anything to find a road into the story my character’s trying to tell me.
An old novel… a hippie van… a hotel towel, discolored by time and decades of storage, that was once taken from the backstage dressing room of a pop band as a memento of a wonderful day. All of it led to a different character who said, “Let me help you. I know him. Listen to me since you’re not hearing him.”
And it worked.
Bonus: The drawing is one I modified from a coloring book for an imaginary tour. It put the fun back into what I was trying to write.
April is National Poetry Month, and it’s no secret I love poetry.
Two favorites: one written for and read at the 1993 Presidential Inauguration by poet Maya Angelou; the other at the 2021 Presidential Inauguration by poet Amanda Gorman. Both are stunning in their range and language. They are connected through the decades with their messages of hope and promise; that we are better, greater than our past.
Our struggles are always with us, and our questions. Humanity moves forward sometimes too slowly, and all we see and hear and know can break our hearts. Poetry can heal us, nourish us, and also inspire us to keep moving, to keep doing better.
Language is one of the gifts humanity has given itself. We should use it passionately and thoughtfully.
Inspiration.
I must admit that I never guessed the book that would make me break a nearly year-long reading dry spell would be Nikki Sixx’s The Heroin Diaries.
Oh, the places research will take you.
I don’t how or when I’ll complete the story, and I’m fine with that.
Just found a new book, though, that has writing prompts. Some of them look like a lot of fun. However, I won’t be playing for now, as it might provoke a couple of people to demand I send a new chapter from my work in progress.
Still, this is an enticing beginning, and I encourage all you writers or aspiring writers or just humans with some time and creative energy to have fun with it. (If you have trouble reading, I can put the text in comments.)
In my own personal continuing story, today I received my second COVID-19 vaccination. The hope is that based on the timeline of other Houndstooth residents and friends, there may be actual socializing in our small group by the end of April.
Arriving and being checked in. Hi, Luke from Nebraska–thank you!
Just after shot. My other National Guard were from Idaho, Georgia, Washington State, and Germany. They said they are meeting so many new Guard and appreciate the opportunity to help. They also said Houston has been really good to them. =)
Vaccination tents in my rearview mirror as I stop for the 15-minute post-shot waiting period. They do that in case of reactions. If you blow your horn, a healthcare worker will come to assist you, and they have portable rooms set up on the spot for that.
I remain in awe of their organization, efficiency, and upbeat attitudes.
Timmy and my mother share this birthday, March 4, and it’s pretty cool that I have a photo with both of them in it. Considering how infrequently any of us were in the same place at the same time, this was a miraculous event. I THINK (can’t be sure) it’s from January 2005. That was a magical night with the most amazing convergence of people at Borders for a Timothy James Beck booksigning.
I miss my mother, and I’m glad her day is shared by someone special. Happy birthday, Timmy!
Mad Girl’s Love Song
Sylvia Plath
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
This week I’m having an uncommonly productive period of writing, and the process is always gratifying even if there is no “goal.” I’m not sure I have goals, except to let story unfold as it will.
My character holds two books. These are the lines that resonate with her.
From Emily Dickinson:
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant–
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind–
******
From Edna St. Vincent Millay:
Who, now, when evening darkens the water and the stream is dull,
Slowly, in a delicate frock, with her leghorn hat in her hand,
At your side from under the golden osiers moves,
Faintly smiling, shattered by the charm of your voice?
There, today, as in days when I knew you well,
The willow sheds upon the stream its narrow leaves,
And the quiet flowing of the water and its faint smell
Are balm to the heart that grieves.
Together with the sharp discomfort of loving you,
Ineffable you, so lovely and so aloof,
There is laid upon the spirit the calmness of the river view:
Together they fall, the pain and its reproof.
Who, now, under the yellow willows at the water’s edge
Closes defeated lips upon the trivial word unspoken,
And lifts her soft eyes frightened with a heavy pledge
To your eyes empty of pledges, even of pledges broken?
A lovely page to color from Jenny Lawson’s* book You Are Here:
“It’s a magic lamp. It’s a sorcerer’s hat. It’s a time machine and a songbird and a treasure chest. It’s a weapon and a weight. And also you can type with it.”
Such a small machine to hold infinite thought and imagination.
*I can not recommend her blog enough, especially if you deal with depression and social anxiety and like humor.