What's in the Middle

Once upon a time . . . and they lived happily ever after. What happens in the middle?

Think about a roller coaster ride when creating the middle of a story, essay or poem. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland provides a variety of twists, turns, and the intrigue of sights and sounds to hold the traveler's attention. Write that experience for your reader.

Keep the action going to avoid a sag in the middle of your writing. Hold onto the reader's attention from beginning to end by gathering speed, surging up and down hills. Race around corners and into tunnels. Develop surprises and darkness. Add sensory imagery in sounds, scents, and textures to gain momentum.

Let characters cause dilemmas and struggle their way out. Maintain tension and mystery to keep the reader curious.

If you feel stuck, consider adding another element or two. Choose a danger, a discovery, a surprise, a new character, another location, an argument, an accident, a chase, a secret revealed.

Continue the pace without telling the reader what to expect.

Go for the release of tension in the ending after your readers' heart rates shoot up. 

Make a list of five favorite stories, essays or poems. How did their middles hold your attention?

Take a  look at the middles of your writing. How would you rewrite a dippy middle? 

Prop them up with intensity in action.

 

The Heart of the Matter

Louise Bishop's work, Words, Stones and Herbs (2007) focuses on the healing power of literature. She discovered a 15th-century manuscript which provides treatment for everything from a flesh would to mental ailments. In medieval times, medicine involved the study of language related to the seasons and the  power of nature.

A doctor often placed a written charm on a broken leg to speed the recovery process. What we today consider the placebo effect became a vital part of medicine back then. Bishop mentions that people would memorize 150 lines of poetry to assist healing.

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 never breaks,
“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 edge in,
“Tears wash away the chaos.”
“Hey, don’t forget us adenoids and tonsils,
if you still have them."
“Anyone home?" asks the spleen"  The appendix
can’t even pronounce vestigial.”
The navel chuckles, “Don’t ask the colon for its opinion.”
The brain has remained complacent
“Have fun without me,” it sings
as it flits out an ear. -

                              - Penny Wilkes

Handwritten Letters

During my participation in February's International Correspondence Writing Month, 

( INCOWRIMO), I think about my first handwritten letters.  

My father discovered me with an open book, sprawled on the floor in my bedroom. When asked about what I was doing, I said, "I'm writing."  With an open book spread out ahead of me, I attempted to copy the page's black squiggles with a crayon. 

He hugged me with a chuckle, then brought me to his study where he began my lessons in cursive writing. With his hand cuddled over mine, he led with a fountain pen in a magenta color.

Letter writing would connect me with friends during our many travels around the world, he told me. Also, I could write creative thank you notes. With the later, he wanted to make sure I could do more than write, 'Thanks for the gift.'

"Write about what the gift means to you. Use your senses," he requested. 

I wish I had all the letters to my Great Aunt Anna where I thanked her for the knitted items. Imagine bringing in the sound and scent of socks, wool hats, and sweaters she made. It must have amused my family.

Over the years I've kept energized with a variety of pen pals who enjoy the process and cursive writing.

My stable of fountain pen ponies, as I call them, always feel eager to prance upon the page.  

I enjoy this fun more than a romp on a keyboard.

Write a card or letter to a friend to celebrate INCOWRIMO before February moves into March.

Playfulness Explored

 

Plato said, "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."

Play promotes curiosity, seeks novelty, teaches perseverance, and invites creativity. It even nourishes the immune system. Each person has a unique play personality. When one gets in touch with it, the pleasures and fun abound. 

Animals have a lot to teach human beings. If you've ever dangled a string in front of a cat or played ball with a dog, you've seen their playful expressions in action. 

In his book, THE GENESIS OF ANIMAL PLAY, Gordon Burghardt, a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee, reports playful behavior in lizards, turtles, and birds. Even fish have been known to amuse themselves.

Stuart Brown, one of the authors of PLAY: HOW IT SHAPES THE BRAIN, OPENS THE IMAGINATION AND INVIGORATES THE SOUL, believes in the necessity of play for children and adults. Brown's organization, the National Institute for Play, focuses on making human play a "credentialed discipline in the scientific community." 

Children have lost touch with tree climbing and scouting for discoveres in nature. Computer games attract them more than wriggly creatures, birdsong, or flying clouds. 

Nagel Jackson writes, "The truly great advances of this generation will be made by those who can make outrageous connections, and only a mind which knows how to play can do that." 

Play in a freewriting exercise reveals attracts ideas that will evolve into stories and poems. Problems find solutions through activities that have no specific goal. They flow in a fun process. 

In today's fast-paced world, taking time to play - reall play - feels frivolous to many. 

BECOME PLAYFUL. You may have to work at it.

How will you play in your writing today? Dangle words and images, make connections and search for nuances. 

A few play starters:

What would you do with a teapot, a jar of maple syrup, a parakeet and a harmonica?

Create a story about a cardboard box you can crawl into, a blanket, a flashlight, bananas and daisies.

Go for a walk and choose five items. Touch, smell, listen and notice their characteristics. Play and Write.

Make faces at someone and write their reactions.

Teach a mockingbird your school's fight song. 

Create a sand castle with a crocodile.

Go for FUN today.

Axe Adjectives

Avoid the use of adjectives to describe. If you wish to gain the reader's attention, show an action. Why and how does an event occur? Reveal it in detail like a photographer or painter. Watch a sunset for beautiful and express its qualities. Search for metaphors and similes. Do the ridges appear like fans or curtains and then what? Does a scent arouse attention?  Reveal how the sound of dew hitting the rose ping or pop or snuggle the petals.  Sense of focus and specificity intrigue. Express the opposite of beauty to enrich the experience. Create an image that reveals a judgment. Include weeds that blossom and stretch themselves beyond the concrete?  A   S   T   O  N   I   S   H Active verbs move sentences Sentence variety relieves the reader Tickles with metaphor engages communication Oh !  get rid of adjectives and adverbs Nourish with wonder  Ignore words like beautiful Simple works Help the reader into your story A   S   T   O  U  N   D Astonish with verbs Startle with a noun        Tickle with metaphors Out with the adjectives and adverbs     Nurture the reader    Design sentences Notice where metaphorical thinking connects to a secret inside not yet explored.    Trace the ridges and boundaries. Dip into the center.        Unfold, release, relent to your imagination. Delve into your concept of beauty and communicate it to the reader with description. Let it fly. Axe adjectives.

Shape Story

It zings the page and rises, curls like waves dashed into foam.  Grasp a first line that leads to a vanishing point. 

Notice how sun at the horizon mystifies and dips behind the sea. 

Paddle out to discover a story's shape.

It is hidden and teases

waiting for notions to collide.

A mythology of merriment,

bubbled by the waves.

It exists beneath

foam left for discovery.

Anenomes bloom pink

with purpled tentacles 

soothed by flow

then fingers or prey

get sucked right in.

Gather flavors,  sounds of birds, colors of earth, scents of stones. 

               Arrive to speak . . . to reveal.

Imaginate and Make Mistakes

“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”  - Thomas Edison

Use of the imagination stimulates travel into a wilderness of mind and movement where connections and cross-overs exist.  Mistakes happen as one careens in search of mysteries.

Often a stumble on the path leads to a butterfly hidden in a tree's root system. Foraging into the density of undergrowth uncovers beetles and ladybugs.

Dragonflies chased with a camera might defeat a photographer. When a song sparrow's call excites, its wings move faster than the shutter on a cell phone.

Missed photographs do not discourage. Determination energizes the stalking mind and eye. 

A step forward. A head's turn. A sit and wait. All lead to success.

Photos that blur still provide clues and insights. Patience and perseverance outlast creatures' antics.

Forged with determination and patience, a photographer occasionally turns away in despair.  Then captures an osprey as it arrives with dinner and takes time to munch.

A true believer in failure as motivation, Thomas Edison welcomed mistakes and challenged rules. As a result he probed the unknown and experimented with the unseen. He recast the idea of failure as a learning opportunity. 

Edison claimed, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” 

With a diary that had over 5 million pages, Edison felt writing ideas expanded his creativity. This helped him discover an awareness of patterns in thinking and actions. He claimed he liked, "to find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.”

Edison bragged, “I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.”  

If writers and photographers risk with mistakes, challenge rules and move beyond them, they can make discoveries about themselves and their art. What a way to applaud the fearless persistence, positivity and perspective that Thomas Edison maintained.

Edison's thoughts spark creativity, “There are no rules here — we’re trying to accomplish something.”  

Get Unhooked

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." 

- Alan Watts

Pema Chödrön promotes shenpa, which is Tibetan for  “biting the hook” with our habitual reactions. Shenpa thrives on the insecurity of living in a world of constant change. 

Tibetans call shenpa, "that sticky feeling." We feel a tightening, a tensing, a sense of closing down. Then we experience a withdrawing. The tight feeling has the power to hook us into self-denigration, blame, anger, and jealousy. Emotions lead to words and actions that do not serve us well.


Chödrön writes, "When someone criticizes us, our work, or leaves us, we may bite the hook of grasping. When something unfair happens, we may bite the hook of rage. When we are disappointed, we may bite the hook of numbness." 


What would it look like not to bite the hook in an action of non-shenpa?




Chödrön's philosophy involves how to grow and learn from experiences. She advises not to waste time berating oneself for supposed sins. Learn and move on. 

If we cultivate clear sight, which Tibetan Buddhists call prajna, we view our life without deceiving ourselves. Once we observe the self clearly, we grow and gain strength for the next encounters. 

Consider how you talk to yourself concerning unhappiness. Do you malign and denigrate yourself to induce a wave of guilt that proves you are unworthy? 

"At moments like that, what is it you feel? It has a familiar taste in your mouth, it has a familiar smell. Once you begin to notice it, you feel like this experience has been happening forever," Chödrön says. She continues, "All we're trying to do is not to feel our uneasiness. But when we do this we never get to the root of practice. The root is experiencing the itch as well as the urge to scratch, and then not acting it out."

Learn to recognize when you get hooked in your experiences. Realize you have the wisdom to see your frustrations for what they are. 

The more you practice that realization the less control outside forces have on you. 

When negative feelings intrude, focus on the breath. Stay in the moment. Relinquish the need to react.

You'll benefit by not biting the hook. Feelings of freedom will take over. 

Activate with Verbs

Even though Shakespeare wrote "to be or not to be,"  active verbs to animate ideas. Verb variety engages the reader. Choreograph sentences. Make verbs dance and tumble.

It feels natural to write sentences with is, am, was, and were, and contractions such as that’s or there’s. On a subconscious level, we move into the “to be” groove. 

Just because a favorite writer does it, you don’t need to. 

Make friends with verbs and play.

Consider verbs the work horses of your sentences. These power ponies add description, details, and action. If you alter the structure of the sentence, you can eliminate the use of the ‘to be’ verb.”

To practice, return guilty sentences to: subject, verb, and object. At first the alteration in sentence structure will provoke frustration. Style becomes altered as a result of eliminating the “to be” verb. When you realize new possibilities, your attitude will change.

Relent and deconstruct sentences. Begin to realize that  verb awareness permits also a selection of stronger subjects with fewer adverbs and adjectives. Believe in the possibilities of metaphor.

Go through a piece of writing. Circle all “to be” verbs and notice if a habit rather than a choice has developed. With this focus on awareness and the process of verb choice, you learn more than the elimination of the “to be” verb. 

The hunt for muscular verbs will help you move away from overusing modifiers. Select subjects with vigor. 

When you read work aloud, see the difference in rhythm. With more practice, you will feel less irritation and restriction.

Activate your sentences into flight.