Tracking the Single Shoe

Do you even wonder about single shoes and socks along the side of the road? How did they escape their mates? Who left them lonely on the highway?

We develop comfort zones in our writing. Once in a while, we need to delve and take risks to push boundaries. Once I published a story about a typewriter who ran away with a skateboard because of his frustrations with the computer age. Marianne Wiggins has written a book, Shadow Chaser, that combines memoir with fiction. She uses her own name for a character in one chapter.

Writers today search desperately for the next "genre." Writing grows when everyone experiments. Go for it! If you feel frustrated with a writing project, try a radical revision.

Read, "Lost in the Fun House" by John Barth: angol.btk.ppke.hu/kieg/lost_in_the_funhouse.doc

Take a look at characters in mythology. How would they do in today's world?

What if Socrates met Shakespeare and helped him rewrite "The Tempest"?

Take characters from your favorite books and have them play together.

Experiment with sounds of words on the page. Sing your writing.

Try writing in two languages at once - one word at a time. Does one language add to the other?

Write a story this way. Dialogue with an emotion. Create a character from an emotion and develop a persona.

Make up words and see how far you can take them.

Experiment with conflicting ideas.Try for color sounds and sights that taste a certain way.

Be silly!

Find humor in mysterious places.

If you do a freewrite, your mind will carry you into a variety of experiences. Start by writing an emotion across the top of the page. Then let your mind go. After 15 minutes, begin with the ending and write a story.

Play. Play. Play. If you find your internal editor invading your playground, write yourself out of the judgment.

Creative Write: Nurture your freedom to risk and choose one of the above for a fun write.

Anger and Cooked Carrots

Words act as symbols for a variety of emotional and intellectual connections. Everyone feels visceral responses from “color” words resulting from life experiences. Anger, love, war, and friendship stimulate mind pictures, sensory responses and complexities of mood.

During my early years when my father read to me at bedtime, he encouraged me to close my eyes and create mind images of the stories using my ears, sense of smell, taste and feelings. One evening I must have fallen asleep during his reading of Arabian Nights because I awakened suddenly out of a dream where I heard my father's voice say, "The villagers were angry."

I saw mashed carrots steaming from a bowl on a window ledge. I could smell them. Their cinnamon and clove flavor exploded into my mouth. From then on when I heard the word, angry, it elicited an association with carrots. It became a beneficial trigger to make me laugh and not get caught up in the emotion the word represented. What a benefit this has become in most of my life situations.

Creative Write: Think of the "color words" that stimulate your emotions. Do you have experiences with them from the vantage point of your other senses? Share a humorous story.

Imaginative Trial-and-Error for Characters

Some learn by commiting experience. The wise anticipate and use experience.

A probe into the memory of a meaningful event or situation provides possibilities for character development. Use a life experience to germinate from a story or poem viewed from a variety of angles.

Choose a significant event from your life you can use for a character. Name your character and place that person in your memory of a past event.

Write the details of an emotionally charged event to fill one page.
Why did the event occur? What importance did it have at the time?
What happened to your character before the situation?
After the situation did your character change? If not, why not?
What does your character observe in current time that he or she didn't perceive then?
What did the younger person not know then?
Did the event help your character understand him or herself?
In what ways did your character grow: intellectually, emotionally, socially?
What other forces were involved? What was hidden?
How did others react?
Reveal new insights about the event.

In life, we try not to translate all of our feelings into actions. In storytelling and poetry, they add to the intrigue. Picture your character before commiting the experience. What alternative modes of behavior and their consequences could provide additional ideas for story?

Use imaginative trial-and-error to try out different behaviors in the situation.

Creative Write: Use this exercise for both male and female characters. Use first and third person.

It's About the Write Habit

“I’m a full-time believer in writing habits ... You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent . … Sometimes I work for months and have to throw everything away, but I don’t think any of that was time wasted ... And the fact is if you don’t sit every day, the day it would come well, you won’t be sitting there.” -- Flannery O'Connor

Young seagulls learn how to use their flight feathers by instinct and encouragement from parent birds. As writers, we need to develop our talents accompanied by good writing habits so it takes more skill on our part.

A writer's most necessary habit involves an appointment with the keyboard or writing tablet. It goes beyond the good intentions of: "today I will write." Regardless of demands on your time, set aside a time of day and time allotment. Sit there and work on a current project, begin a new one, or freewrite.

Over time you will discover the habit strengthens your desire to get to the writing.

As I've written in the "Wordling" article referenced to the right, reinforce yourself in positive ways. If you quit when you can't think of anything to write, you will always fall into that behavior. Write one more sentence and keep going even if it feels like gibberish. Only stop writing when you think you could write forever and do not want to end the feeling. This works with any human behavior to develop discipline to continue. You will want to return to that buoyant feeling of flow.

Become aware of your tendencies to procrastinate your writing. Write about them and develop tricks to ensure that you will write at your defined time. Surprise yourself and write when you don't feel like it.

Write a letter to a friend or your writing demon that prevents you from the page. Name the creature! It also might help to vary your environment. Take a notepad for a walk around the block and write as you go. No matter where you wander, the words will follow along.

No more excuses, just write!

Create Write: I procrastinate in writing because________. Here's one idea that will break that tendency____________.

Steps to Positive Change

Design your daily journey with curiosity for each moment's potential. Focus on what works, not what's broken. When your dreams and ideals intersect with life's real journey, let your discontent energize your positive energy.

We open a newspaper or turn on the news and feel blasts of words detailing what does not work. How can we avoid the daily intimidation into negativity when inundated with the media's interpretation of a broken world?

My father told me, "Don't say can't. It doesn't exist in the dictionary." Defiantly, I ran to my dictionary to show him the word. I found cant but not the contraction can't that meant cannot, so I believed him. This reminds me of one of the best lines in from a movie, "Can't walks on won't street." When we say we can't, we really mean: we don't want to and won't.

Success comes in cans but it takes our will.

Creative thinking results from an innovative choice in the moment. This attitude adjustment pushes beyond the onslaught of impossibles. Negativity becomes a bad habit.

Everyone has the power to make changes!

Begin a list of what works in your life as a reminder. What gives you satisfaction? Go deep into the details and sensory imagery concerning your potential.

Consider one action you can do as soon as your eyes spring open each morning that pushes you beyond inertia.

What can you do for the environment or a loved one to express your responsibility?

Each day expand your list with creative solutions whenever you confront or learn of a difficulty or problem.

Attract and invent ideas for possible ways to balance the negativity around you.

Become O Positive in your donation of energy to others around you.

Creative think and write: Take the front page of the newspaper and circle the headlines that push "broken" at us. Revise the headlines and columns to reflect what works or write in new ideas.

Wordling

I freewrote in diaries years before reading Anais Nin or Natalie Goldberg. I called it wordling because it felt like the words doodled along the page. They flowed from my pens in turquoise or magenta. The scent of ink aroused my senses as I eavesdropped on the amazements and amusements around me. Characters representing my emotions and ideas chased each other around the pages.

If you haven't adopted a writing habit, try wordling along with me. Writing requires a daily routine. Like developing a muscle, you strengthen writing by exercising with words. Find time each day to write. Vary the location, engage your imagination and ability to link all your senses.

Doodling with words liberates your writing zest. Wordling, if practiced daily, will energize the power of your mind and push your ingenuity to new heights. You will disappear into your deepest source of creativity and return refreshed with power renewed in thoughts and words.
Keep a notebook of your wordling. A spiral bound book without a rigid spine provides flow from page to page.

Please do not write with a pencil during your wordling. Discover a pen that flows across the page. Fountain pens or rollerball pens are the best choice. Colored ink will spark imagery.

How to begin:

Find your location and take a few moments to relax with several gentle breaths.

Write the date in the upper right-hand corner on each page of your wordle book. Date each session in this manner.

Allow yourself to become unstructured, playful and free to flow in any direction. Freewheel with your creative spirit!

When you begin, write a word at the top of your page. You could begin with a command such as, Astonish! or an emotion such as Eager. Write to the end of the page without stopping. In your next session, continue for ten minutes. No crossing out! Attempt longer writing sequences changing your command or emotion at the top of each page.

If you find a vacant spot, ask yourself, I think . . .I feel . . .If you stop again consider the opposites, I am not thinking of, I don't feel.

Write Impossible. Turn it into I'm Possible. Write with colors, smells, tastes, textures, times of day, sounds, and sights. Return to the words you wrote at the top of the page to spark your flow.
Lose yourself within the momentum of words and phrases. Write what spills from your pen with awareness and thrill. Feel the freedom of movement and power as your mind moves in each moment.

Forget your internal editor who wants to change words. Keep comfortable with the process like a river flowing over all obstacles in its path. Notice how your pen progresses and trust it. This will provide a foundation for your writing habit.

Stop writing only when you are in the middle of a surge of words. Stop when you feel so full of words you cannot write fast enough. Please never end your wordling session when you are frustrated or stuck. Write just one more word.

Conditioning yourself to keep writing will reinforce your positive habit. If you stop when you want to write more you will always feel an excitement to return.

Think of writing students in Shakekspeare's time advised to, "tatter your quill." Keep that feather tickling the page.

It's time to write! Astonish yourself with wordling.

Invite the Reader to Your World

Guy de Maupassant wrote, “The public as a whole is composed
of various groups, whose cry to us writers is:

Comfort me.
Amuse me.
Touch me.
Make me dream,
Make me laugh,
Make me shudder,
Make me weep,
Make me think.

And only a few chosen spirits say to the artist:
“Give me something fine in any form which may suit you best,

according to your temperament.”

This brings up an amusing, thought-provoking and realistic concern. As poets do we write for ourselves and hope for the reader’s connection? Or do we weave an experience filled with sensory imagery, rhythm and detail for a few readers who bring a similar understanding to the page?

Often when I wish to satisfy the reciprocity between poet and reader, I attempt to show the human experience in a fresh or comical way. If I tickle my own funny bone, I feel a sense of accomplishment.

The Heart of the Matter

Why does the heart always get credit
when pleasure or pain take the breath away?
“We do the work, ”say the lungs.
“Breathe. Breathe. We fix it.”

The heart claims it doesn’t break,
“I don’t even wrinkle.”
Fingers create fists, “We feel, really feel.”
"Well, we run from distress,” the feet say.

Liver and kidneys shout that they
deal with all bodily evils first.
The eyes widen to say,
“Tears wash away the chaos.”

“Hey, don’t forget us adenoids and tonsils,
- if you still have them."
“Anyone home?" asks the spleen.
"Appendix can’t pronounce vestigial.”

The navel chuckles, “Don’t ask the colon's opinion.”

Throughout this discourse,

the brain has remained complacent.
“Have fun without me,”

it sings as it flits out an ear.

Writing Ponies

All writers experience various rhythms of writing's ebb and flow. I hesitate to mention the "B" word - writer's block - because we can always write . . . something. It becomes a vital part of the writing process to keep track of the times of peaks and lows in our writing life.

We can move beyond frustration and make peace with our unique style. Tricks help us survive and get more out of ourselves during slow times. Calendars serve to identify times of day, week sequences, and seasons that cause our writing auxins to move freely, or not.

What times of day do we have the highest creative energy? Are we sprinters, milers or marathon writers? As we approach the fallow ground of winter in writing mind set, we can discover strategies and techniques to tease ourselves into the writing flow again.

For me, a fountain pen provides pleasure more than fingers tapping on the keys. The scent and flow of a pen pony across the page creates rhythm and energy that equals meditation. Use of colored ink also enthuses my writer's mind.

I keep a full stable of fountain pens filled with green, turquoise, yellow and magenta inks.I also have red rose-scented ink. Some barrels feel feisty to my touch like Thoroughbreds. Others create the syncopated ride of a Missouri Fox Trotter. I have quarter horses and a Morgan or two that move my words with a pleasing gait. My Arabians kick up their heels on cold mornings. The scent of ink on a variety of papers stimulates my imagination.

Writing letters to friends and other writers encourages an action similar to freeflow but with a friendly recipient. To break old habits of frustration with our writing, we need variety and new points of view. Often it helps to write about when we have felt trapped by a thought or feeling before. How did we get out of the way of ourselves and reroute old pathways of feeling into positive possibilities?

Start a collection of writing ponies that feel good to your fingers. Gallop and hurdle any writing B words!

Sentence Bridges

A sentence creates a bridge from writer to reader. Every word moves the ideas and action. Add texture by naming the sparrow, hibiscus or magnolia tree. Stress key points with the details of color and sensory imagery.

If you break long sentences into short ones you will attract the reader's attention. Create a breathing stop. To achieve emphasis, reverse the usual word order. Read your sentences aloud to gain rhythm, emphasis and impact.

Active verbs intrigue and intensify sentences. Avoid the use of passive voice and the "to be" verb. The subject needs its verb near the front rather than separated by a clause and stuck at the end of the sentence.

Ask yourself what does an adjective or adverb add? Often they creep in like bandits and hitchhikers to rob your sentences of power. Make verbs your heroes to defeat them.

Creative Write: Select a paragraph from your current work. Circle the adjectives and adverbs first. Then use a green underliner to color your nouns and verbs. Begin to re-arrange the sentences to add texture and movement to the sentence. It helps to sing your sentences!

Snapshot of Relationships

Twelve legs remain.

As writers, with our awareness focus, we learn to project the elements of story on all situations. Our minds spin with ideas and notions of what happened in a location? How did it happen? Who became involved? Do we shift beyond the obvious to another point of view?

Consider the setting above. Potential for story teases the viewer with myriad sensations. Ask questions to formulate a story or poem.

What does the display of table and chairs reveal about who arrived and left?

What conversations attracted and distracted the individuals here?

Move into details to use: the dry grass, position of the chairs, the ash tray on the table. What else could you bring to this scene or take away?

Knock over the chairs and table or re-arrange them.

How would you populate the situation?

Add a dog or cat.

What clues could you give to reveal motives and repercussions of an event that unraveled?

What qualities of a relationship reside here without people?

Bring an Aha! moment to the attention of your reader by showing a relationship in sensory details.

Go beyond a predisposed notion of mood. How could you change it by adding or subtracting from the scene?

Creative Write: When you have collected details, do a freewrite to describe the experience. Avoid the tendency to skip the experience and go into the idea. Don't tell the reader what to think or feel. Communicate with imagery and sensory detail. . Start with the imagery and move into emotional connections. Use the power of suggestion to lead the reader.

Unfold a truth in a snapshot view.