The Writer’s Craft: Writers on Writing

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Welcome to this Writers on Writing series, where authors share how they do what they do: Find inspiration, create drafts, make choices on how – and what – to add, subtract, revise. In this series, each author will offer insights into her creative process that we hope will inspire your own.

Ghost Whispers and the VoiceCatcher journal
by Tricia Knoll

At the age of 65 it seems odd to say I’m a new poet. I’ve recorded poems in my head since the age of 16. In the last three years, I have gotten much more serious about my process, but the inspiration – a couple of words or an image – always seems to come on like some whisper in the wind. I’m new in the sense of how much I’m learning, how much I’m loving the learning, and how much more I want to do.

“Tree Ghosts” appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of VoiceCatcher: a journal of women’s voices & visions:

Tree Ghosts

Ancient winds caressed the kin corpse
hoisted to the tree platform, offered to return
where the sky bowl claims
meteor showers and haloed moon.  

This morning a tossed-off plastic bag sticks
high in a red oak, a tug-of-war chuffing kite, 
snagged in purgatory
fettered to wood with roots,
as unholy as it gets.  

What if I cat climbed,
stuffed this tree ghost with weights
unfit for pockets

        mother’s apron strings 
        key to the blue house
        the twenty-five-cent milk tooth
        Ares and Scorpio wedding ring
        letters from the man I left 
        the coarse black braid hacked off
                before her hair fell out

and begged for breeze
to blast that bag
into my hoarding hands.

However tethered the tree ghost is in this poem, its images are securely tied down in my memory. Crossing the footbridge over the river in Ashland, Oregon while hurrying to see a play, I noticed the bare branches of trees hanging over the creek. One snared a plastic bag, ripped and cast-off trash that looked like it was going to stay there a long, long time.

Still hurrying, I remembered a friend with a house in Sisters telling me that just down the road from their cabin was an old native burial ground where corpses were mounted high in the tree platforms, a veneration of the dead.

I traveled the psychic distance between those two tree captives in several leaps. First, I saw the precious secretness of where we put treasures for safekeeping. Then sometimes chance, fate or luck deposits our cast offs elsewhere. I used a tree as a repository – like a child returning the acorn to the oak – out of my trust in the sanctity of rooted things.

The contents of the bag are mine – not valuable enough for safety deposit, but too rich with memory to recycle, destroy or toss in the trash. A very small church outside Truchas, New Mexico has a side room where people have offered up, for prayer and gratitude, remnants of healings and wounds – candles, dozens of crutches, infant shoes, casts cut from limbs – and one long shank of black braided hair in a place of honor on an altar. I can’t forget that braid or the story-building curiosity it spawned in me. At the time I guessed it must have come from a hair cutting, possibly a precious letting-go ritual, before chemotherapy. There are other possibilities.

I had help with this poem. The help of poets is a kind of fondle-stone, or what I also call a pocket rock, that we hold onto from the trip to some beautiful place we want to remember. “Tree Ghosts” was workshopped at a Colrain Manuscript Conference in Truchas. At that time its breath had mostly to do with trash caught in our brainwaves, our trees, our neglect of natural places. The reference to the tree burial was there, but not the specifics of my first wedding ring or my daughter’s tooth in my jewelry box. I spent several hours under an intense New Mexico full moon asking myself what was inside that hoarding bag dangling in the tree.

The editors at VoiceCatcher also recommended some changes. I eliminated three lines that were mere rants on wind-blown garbage. A suggested change of one word refined the list of my unfits for pockets, strengthening the emotional content. Having written this poem hasn’t allowed me to let go of any of these weights – and I’m not done with the shank of black, braided hair, that unknown. I’m grateful to VoiceCatcher’s editors for this opportunity.

Meanwhile, whispers keep coming. I carry tiny soft notebooks with me to write them down when they come. Fondlestones. Four Flames. The UnMoon. My Weary Sister. I’m not sure what experiences will bud forth from them – but I am grateful to trust that poems will.

 

Tricia KnollTricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. Retired after teaching high school English for one decade and doing communications work for the City of Portland for several more, she focuses on her gardens, tai chi, writing poetry, haiku and letters to the editor. Recent publications include New Verse News, Flycatcher, Elohi Gadugi Journal and Street Roots.

In Dreams Begin Collaboration: A Conversation with Diane English

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by S.H. Aeschliman

The idea for VoiceCatcher came to Diane English in a dream. “Literally came in a dream,” she says. She’s sitting in her new electric wheelchair in her studio apartment, the colorful silk scarves hanging on the back of the bathroom door providing a multi-colored halo effect around her head. (Note: I might be idolizing her just a wee bit.)

Okay, maybe it wasn’t the idea for an anthology or an organization, per se, that came to her in a dream. But the phrase voice catcher came to her. It haunted her; she couldn’t imagine what it meant or what to do with it. She wrote a poem called “Voice Catcher,” but even that did not satisfy.

Around the same time, the women in her writing group – a group led by Emily Trinkaus, whom Diane credits with making her “feel brave” – were talking about self-publishing their work and distributing it beyond the members of their own group. “Why wouldn’t we want to get our work out?” Diane asked.

But they wanted to by-pass the formalized process of waiting for their work to be “blessed by the gods-that-be.” When Diane suggested distributing Xeroxed packets of their best poems to a wider audience, much in the same way that neighborhood newspapers were distributed, one by one the women volunteered talents – graphics, making flyers, marketing – that would lead, nine months later, to the first issue of the VoiceCatcher anthology.

“Just enough time to have a baby!” I say. One of my catch phrases.

“That’s exactly what I thought,” replies Diane.

A Story about Community

Before I met Diane, I decided, based on the fact that she is one of the founders of VoiceCatcher and has recently self-published a book of her poetry, that this would be an article about self-empowerment. And at one point, Diane describes the way VoiceCatcher came into being as “a testament to how much we can do on our own.”

But before I leave her apartment, she lances me with a stern gaze and says, “This is very important to me. This is not a story about me. It’s not about my writing or honors or achievements. This is about a community of people supporting one another.” She adds, “I believe this came through me. I take no credit.”

This reminds me of the way writers – or creative types in general – sometimes talk about their creative process as being more passive than active. They don’t create; they are a vehicle for the creation. The work comes through them, not from them.

Diane has thrown a wrench in my plan. This becomes less a narrative about self-empowerment and more about service to a higher cause: to whatever planted the words “voice catcher” into Diane’s consciousness or to the women in her writing group—Jenn Lalime, Sara Guest, Marti Brooks, Elizabeth Jones and Stephanie Shea—or to the greater community of women writers and artists in the Portland-Vancouver area.

But as much as my inner feminist rebels against the idea that a woman wouldn’t own up to her own awesomeness, I have to admit that I see a benefit to thinking about it in this way. Because Diane doesn’t take credit for the idea, there’s no sense of ownership over it. This has allowed VoiceCatcher to evolve over the years without anyone’s ego getting stepped on.

Actually, I don’t know that for a fact, but my experience of the organization so far would seem to support that hypothesis. When I volunteered to start writing interviews, I knew I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want to merely transcribe a conversation, and I didn’t want to pretend objectivity in my articles. I wanted to be transparent about my perceptions of interviewees and how I interacted with them and their ideas. When I asked Carolyn Martin, President of the Board of Directors, whether she was open to my putting my own spin on the convention of interviews, she said she’d be thrilled.

This is a totally different form of collaboration than what I’ve experienced in the past. It’s a version of collaboration that, until now, has only existed in my fantasies. Instead of having a stable structure that plugs round pegs into round holes and square pegs into square ones, VoiceCatcher flexes to accommodate new volunteers, who bring different strengths, needs and visions to the organization.

What started with one woman’s dream quickly became a communal endeavor that has evolved in response to new community members’ passions and abilities as well as to a changing socio-economic environment. This culture of collaboration must have emerged precisely because Diane and the other women who founded VoiceCatcher didn’t “own” it. And today it provides more women than ever with opportunities to share their talents in ways the original founders never dreamed.

 

Diane EnglishA California transplant, Diane English retired early from her education/administration career and relocated to Portland hoping to find a refuge to focus on her writing. She experimented by writing memoir, then a screenplay. All the while, a private poet was practicing. One of her workshop teachers said it takes at least ten years as an apprentice to become a poet. That was fifteen years ago. She still calls herself an “Apprentice Poet,” but has compiled a small chapbook of her poems, Sunbreaks & Magic Acts. Her poem “Late Bloomer” won an Honorable Mention in 2005 from the Portland branch of the National League of American Pen Women.

 

S.H. AeschlimonS. H. Aeschliman is a native Oregonian living in Portland with her dog, Milton. By day she’s a freelance writer, editor, educator and learning assessment consultant. By night she’s a writer, reader, learner and dreamer. She blogs about culture, travel, food and lifestyle and writes poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and cross-genre work. Her prose piece “On Voice” appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of VoiceCatcher, and she’s thrilled to be volunteering for the organization. You can learn more about her work on her website.

Writer’s Craft: Dotting Your Ts and Crossing Your Eyes

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by Trista Cornelius

Nice or Necessary? Commas and Interrupters
In last month’s column “Dashes, Parentheses, Commas (Which Goes Where – and When?),” I tackled the issue of how to use commas, dashes and parentheses to separate interrupting material from the rest of a sentence. I made the point that dashes are shouts, commas are conversations, parentheses are whispers; and I suggested that your choice of punctuation mark can impact the tone and rhythm of a sentence.

As I promised, this month we’ll look at commas more carefully. Sometimes you need commas around interrupting material; other times, you don’t.

Here’s the rule: If the interrupting material is essential to the meaning of a sentence, you do not use commas. If it’s nonessential, you do use commas.

But what do essential and nonessential mean?

Basically, if information can be lifted out of the sentence and the meaning of the sentence is still clear, it is nice-to-know, but not essential. Nonessential material needs commas around it. Imagine a little grammar helicopter attaching cables to the two commas around the nonessential material and lifting it out; the sentence still works without the interrupting material.

For example:

Monique Landers, who drives a behemoth-sized Cadillac, dented Octavia’s blue Porsche.

The interrupting material – who drives a behemoth-sized Cadillac – is nonessential because the material simply adds information. If you take that phrase out of the sentence, it’s still clear who dented Octavia’s car.

On the other hand, essential material is important to the meaning of the sentence and commas should not be used. For example:

The woman driving the Cadillac dented Octavia’s blue Porsche.

The interrupting material – driving the Cadillac – is essential because it clarifies the meaning of the sentence. It’s not any woman who dented one of Octavia’s precious cars; it was the woman driving the Cadillac. Since that’s essential for the reader to know, no commas are used. (No cables for the grammar helicopter to lift the information out the sentence!)

Another comma challenge
Here’s another example you might see and use frequently. Let’s say you’re introducing your spouse. Current culture is monogamous, meaning if someone is married, they are married to only one person. So, if you include the person’s name, it would be nonessential and need commas:

Octavia invited us to her annual party. This is my wife, Priscilla, she said.

Here, Priscilla is another word for wife. You can lift Priscilla out of the sentence and it’s still clear whom Octavia is introducing.

Now, say Octavia is introducing a particular friend, but she has more than one friend.

The sentence would be punctuated like this:

Octavia’s friend Emma Jean tends to twelve Dachsunds each day while the owners go to work.

Here, it’s clear that Emma Jean is the friend who tends Dachsunds, but not Octavia’s only friend. What if, however, Emma Jean is Octavia’s one and only best friend? A sentence indicating that would look like this:

Octavia’s best friend, Emma Jean, makes homemade dog treats every Sunday evening to prepare for the week ahead.

Here, Emma Jean means the same thing as best friend. Her name can be taken out of the sentence and it’s still clear who is making the dog treats.

So as a writer, you have decisions to make: If interrupting material in a sentence is essential, it does not need commas around it; it’s vital to the meaning of the sentence. If it’s simply a nice-to-know detail that can be removed without loss of meaning, it’s nonessential and commas are needed.

Sounds simple in theory. Now put the theory to work. Post examples or questions about this or other topics here, and I’ll get back to you.

 

Trista CorneliusThis is the eleventh in a series of practical grammar tips every writer needs to know by Trista Cornelius, English Instructor, Clackamas Community College. She’s both the best and worst person to share these tips with you. Best because she’s made all the mistakes herself and learned the hard way. Worst? Same reason!

We 3: Another Baby Boom

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We 3
by Theresa Snyder

If I started this column with that old horror story cliché, “It was a dark and stormy night,” I wouldn’t be too far off.

“Has Donnie started sleeping through the night yet?”

“Heather has been throwing these temper tantrums lately. Do you ever have trouble with Jennifer doing that?”

If it isn’t the babies, it’s the youngsters.

“Erick is doing so well in school this year.”

Everywhere I turn, people are talking about their children. Well, I have two “grown kids” at home. I can tell stories with the best of them.

I know the worry of sleepless nights. Mom sleeps through the night now, but she used to walk the floor. Her diabetes made the nerves in her legs jump and it kept her awake all night. These nocturnal wanderings led to little sleep for me. I knew she was not steady on her feet. Like a new mother, I would lie awake listening.

I know about temper tantrums. When we first moved in together, we had a settling-in period. Mom was very ill and short-tempered. Dad was recovering from surgery and did not have the patience that he normally shows. When they would get into an argument, I would leave the room to go to my side of the house. Mom would pursue me to come mediate. I just told her that if we weren’t living together I wouldn’t be there, so it would be best if she simply acted as though I had gone home for the night.

I can brag on my charges’ accomplishments. Dad has gone back to school. He is taking a screenwriting class. I am very proud of him. He entered the Willamette Writers annual contest this year. Mom has started doing exercises to improve her balance and stamina. Even though it is hard, she is very diligent about doing them each night.

Got kids that don’t eat because they have spoiled their appetite with snacks? I came home the other night and asked Mom and Dad if they had thought of what they would like for dinner. (I don’t mind cooking; I just hate trying to think something up every night. I have never been a mom; plus, I used to eat cheese and crackers at night when I lived on my own.)

My parents informed me they weren’t that hungry. They had a snack at teatime. Usually, tea at our house consists of tea, or other drink, and fruit or graham crackers at around four o’clock.

With that in mind, I asked, “So, what did you have for tea?

“Dad bought us an ice cream,” Mom answered. Now, I know that Mom likes Dairy Queen. There is one right down the road and occasionally Dad treats her to a cone.

“Did you go to Dairy Queen?”

“No,” Mom paused, probably thinking of how to break the news. “We went to the old Tillamook Creamery in town.”

At this point, Dad gets all enthused and starts to tell me about a huge banana split. I figure he saw it being carried past their table on the way to another. After all, Mom and Dad are both diabetics and carefully watch what they eat. “What did you and Mom have?” I asked innocently.

“A banana split,” Dad answers as though he had just wasted his time telling about the wondrous concoction.

“So, you shared a banana split.”

“No, we each had one,” Mom confesses. She knows I may play the disapproving parent in this part of the scene. I surprise them both.

I think back to my grandmother and the story of how she walked through the kitchen and found her girls – including my mother – eating raw chocolate cake batter. She merely said, “That will make you sick,” and kept right on going. She was right. It was almost 30 years before Mom could eat chocolate again.

I also paused long enough to remember a story about my father that concerned a bowl of pickled cucumbers his grandmother told him not to eat. To this day, he gives Mom the cucumbers from his salad.

I just looked at them both and said, “Well, fine. If you get a high sugar count tonight, don’t come crying to me.” I think I do a pretty darn good job as a substitute mom.

 

This is the third in a monthly series, “We 3,” which introduces VoiceCatcher readers to Theresa Snyder and her stories – sometimes touching, sometimes hilarious, always authentic – about caring for aging parents. First printed as a monthly column in the Gresham Outlook between 2003 – 2008, they were collected in book-form in 2007 (Mt. Hood Community College Press). The columns have been updated and are reprinted here with permission of the author.

Theresa Snyder Theresa Snyder has been writing ever since she can remember. In 1996, shortly after she moved her elderly parents in with her, she realized she couldn’t resist writing “out loud.” She found an audience in east county interested in reading about the challenges and rewards of being a baby boomer caregiver. Unlike other authors, she does not possess a degree or a long list of publishing credits. Instead, she likes to think she has earned her title as “author” through life experience and a great deal of reading.Check out her work at Baby Boomer Caregiver.

Writing Memoir: What’s Your Story?

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By Lyssa Tall Anolik

Writing from the senses
In last month’s column, we explored physical sensation and movement to help characters come alive. Another dimension of that topic is the use of sensory detail – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Adding vivid sensory information to your writing connects readers more deeply to the places and experiences you’re writing about. As an example, compare the following two passages. Which gives you the strongest sense of being in that moment?

It’s raining in Victoria. I walk into the museum lobby. There are some tall totem poles.

 or

October rain falls in slick sheets on the island city of Victoria. My boots splash through rivulets on the sidewalk … . I step into a … lobby with vaulted ceiling and lines of people waiting to purchase tickets. Three totem poles, carved from cedar logs, tower over the visitors. They’re worn with chipped paint and jagged gashes, etched by wind, rain, and time … . Lines in the shapes of eyes, beaks, and wings still stand out in black, turquoise, and white… .

In the first example, we don’t learn much about what this place looks like or the emotional impact it has on the author. In the second example, however – an excerpt from my essay, “Eyes within Eyes”* –  the visual and imagined details strongly define a sense of place and the awe it instilled in me.

Sensory details make writing more intimate and satisfying for readers by inviting them fully into a moment. Here are two more examples:

The ooey-gooey sweetness and graham cracker crunch exploded in my mouth,” instead of, “I ate a s’mores.

 

My chest swelled with the heart-pounding booms and screaming violin strains in the second movement,” instead of, “We went to a rousing symphony.

We could discuss this topic further, but the best way to get the hang of using sensory details is to practice doing it. In that spirit, I offer you some of my favorite writing exercises and prompts this month.

Practicing sensory observation
May, with its busy birds, bursting flowers and changeable weather is an ideal time of year to step outside and listen, smell, see and touch a plethora of things. Here’s a simple exercise to help develop greater awareness of each of your senses. You can do this anywhere – your yard, a park, a street corner, etc. It helps to bring a childlike curiosity and sense of discovery with you. In fact, this is a fun project for kids as well as adults!

  • Bring a notebook and pen and find a place to stand or sit comfortably.
  • Close your eyes and come into an awareness of your breath.
  • Listen carefully to all the sounds around you, the loud ones as well as the subtle ones.
  • Record a list of the sounds in your notebook. (You can open your eyes now!)
  • Tune in to your sense of smell: how many different scents can you identify – pleasant and unpleasant?
  • Try to describe them in your notebook.
  • Now begin cataloguing all that you see.
  • Look more closely at one area; observe minute lines, patterns and miniature landscapes.
  • Describe them in your notebook.
  • Next, begin to touch things. What do they feel like?
  • Describe the textures. You can even draw some sketches if you like.

You can do this exercise once, or multiple times, in different places, or in the same place at different times of day or in different weather. Sometimes I like to sit in one place for half an hour or more and watch how things change. Different birds or people come in and out of view, and I start to notice things I missed before: more nuanced sounds and smells, a tiny beetle laboring over a blade of grass, etc.

Recovering sensory details from memory
You can also use a version of the exercise above as a brief visualization technique to help you recover sensory details in memories, or to imagine details if you can’t remember them. The three prompts below can be used with or without the visualization that follows.

Prompts: (10 – 15 minutes each, or longer if you choose):

A meal I remember …

A song I remember …

A place I remember …

Visualization:

  • Choose one of the prompts above, or a place/experience from a piece of writing in progress.
  • Close your eyes and focus on your breath for a few moments.
  • Now place yourself inside that memory.
  • Notice where you are. What kind of place are you in?
  • What do you see around you?
  • What do you hear?
  • What do you smell?
  • Are you touching anything? What does it feel like?
  • If you’re eating, what are the array of tastes and textures of your food?
  • What emotions do you experience? How do they manifest as physical sensations in your body?
  • When you’re ready, open your eyes and begin freewriting … .

This visualization can be used at any point in your writing where you want to go deeper into the physical sensations of a place or experience.

As you practice layering sensory information into your writing, I encourage you, as always, to begin noticing sensory detail in the books you’re reading. If you have a favorite example of strong sensory writing, please consider sharing the title in a “Comment” below.** I wish you all a sensuous journey this May!

* From “Eyes within Eyes: At the Royal B.C. Museum,” by Lyssa Tall Anolik, in Drash: A Northwest Mosaic, Vol. 6, 2012.

** My personal favorite resource on sensory writing is Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses. It will leave you reeling!

 

This is VoiceCatcher’s seventh article in a series by writing coach and teacher, Lyssa Tall Anolik. If you ever wanted to write a memoir, here’s the perfect place to start. Check in every month for Lyssa’s practical tips on telling your story.

Lyssa Tall AnolikLyssa Tall Anolik received her MFA in Writing (Creative Nonfiction) from Vermont College. She coaches writers and teaches memoir in Portland. Her personal essays and poetry have appeared in Drash: Northwest Mosaic, The Wild, VoiceCatcher3 and 4, EarthSpeak and other journals. Lyssa is a founding member of The Writers Next Door.

Language Can Be Heftier Than You Think

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Chaucer Stirs Things Up
by Anita Sullivan

Welcome to the first of a four-part series on the physicality of language. Writing from direct experience with sharp, sly, and sometimes ham-fisted words, poet and essayist Anita Sullivan will speculate on some of the ways language may have worked in early societies as a part of the biological human toolkit – and how that has changed.

 

One evening I sat in the audience at a poetry reading, waiting for it to start. Other people were talking quietly, but I wasn’t conversing or paying attention to individual words, only aware of the general hum. Then from directly behind me a voice began to speak slowly in a hoarse whisper:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour … .

The first three lines from the “Prologue” of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was recited in such beautiful dialect, that I felt as if a black hole had opened briefly and accidentally into another room some 600 years earlier.

Immediately my body began to shake beyond my control and my eyes filled with tears. I could hardly breathe. This was a very different reaction from the one I would soon be having when I listened to two poets read their contemporary lines.

I didn’t turn around to see who was behind me. The uncanny whisper ended abruptly after these three lines and never resumed for the rest of the evening. But I was stunned by the simple, almost brutal physicality of my response, as if I had been actually touched by these words, and I felt a need to think about the experience after I got home.

In what way can words alone become so physical? Daily we exercise our human capacity to emit, absorb and shape a variety of sounds with our ears, mouths, chests, stomachs; we are physically involved in regularly altering air. Words themselves are not objects. Yet listening to three lines of Chaucer at that particular moment was for me the same as being struck in the solar plexus by a stone. It was like being rubbed down all over my body, inside and out, with something uniquely rough and prickly. I had a physical reaction to something about those words that did not come from their meaning, nor from some passing resemblance to noises of predators, weapons or the mesmerizing rhythms of drum beats. Several persistent questions refused to go away:

Was this just a fluke brought about by an odd combination of circumstances?
Did this used to happen quite often? And if so, where, when, why?
Why doesn’t it happen any more?

Mine was not a secondary reaction, first processed by the conscious mind; it had little or nothing to do with meaning, rhythm, meter, assonance, alliteration, rhyme. This felt much farther down the brain stem ladder towards the visceral – and yet more refined at the same time – than that.

I had been unaccountably catapulted into some kind of earlier human relationship with language. And it was neither a simple nor an unmindful one.

Chaucer’s words had to do with spring. Therefore my response may have been pre-conditioned to be stronger than if he had been talking about a divorce or a fishing trip. Nevertheless, some combination of meaning, sound, rhythm and the particular situation had conjured for me an original emotional experience, not simply evoked the memory of a previous one.

Speaking as a poet, I have come to recognize that raw emotions are like rare natural resources: They must be actively mined through some extraction process with tools. They do not obey ordinary verbal commands or cues any more than volcanoes and hurricanes do and, like weather gods, their powers should not be fooled around with. Not surprisingly, humans seem to be constructed much like Earth itself: We have a seething central core, well insulated from the surface by various levels of relatively opaque matter (our brains, for example!). But there are vents through which the steam is regularly allowed to come up. I believe the ritual of oral storytelling and poetry was one of those vents, and one of poetry’s original functions. It is a function now basically obsolete.

And yes, my brief experience with the first few words in Chaucer’s amazing poem was related to spring, and, through the propelling ‘juice’ of this season, I came into the rhetorical space that ancient poetry used to carve out for itself whenever people gathered for important rites and ceremonies. I could feel a seething in his words; I could feel the ancient, collective urgency and “riddlic fire”* moving through his lines. I was connecting with the enormous tradition in ancient myth and story in which words, under the right conditions, can have actual power to bring up new matter into the world, rather than simply serving as a stamp of identification and approval afterwards.

So, the first thing I settled in my mind was that my physical reaction was not because I was re-membering some event in my own past, one that the words had almost brutally yanked from my poor quivering unconscious mind. Poetry can do that too. But this was not about me – this was much older, like the language of original naming.

But what does “original” mean when you talk about the enormous subject of language? This is the can of worms I intend to foolishly rush into next. Stay tuned.

*From Craig Williamson’s introduction to A Feast of Creatures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), a wonderful book on Anglo-Saxon-Riddle-Songs.

 

Anita SullivanAnita Sullivan wanted to major in anthropology in college but ended up with an MFA in Poetry. Her career as a piano tuner allowed time to indulge in a narrow but (to her mind) related set of avocations: archaeology, folklore, oral tradition, translation, early keyboard temperaments and religious studies. She has published two essay collections: The Seventh Dragon (piano tuning) and Ikaria (Greek travel). She has a chapbook of poetry, The Middle Window, and a full-length collection, Garden of Beasts. She is a founding member of the poetry publishing collective Airlie Press in Monmouth, Oregon. Find her at www.seventhdragon.com.

May Prompt: Opening in Aftermath

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by Pat Phillips West

The other victim the summer my wife left me was my dreamlife, which, like a mirage, dried up completely the closer we came to the absolute end of us. In the fourteen years we were married, I had been a ferocious dreamer, drawing all I knew or feared or loved about the waking world into my sleeplife.

- From “Dreams of Distant Lives” by Lee K. Abbott

Unpleasantness is difficult to write about. A good place to start might be once the dust has settled. Abbott begins his story in the aftermath of a broken relationship. But he finds a way to tell about the pain of something large – his wife’s departure – by talking about the pain of something small – dreaming.

Start at the end, after a significant event has happened. Hit your readers right between the eyes and quickly raise questions they will want answered. You don’t need to give all the details at this point because they can guess the significance of a spouse leaving or some other loss.

You might consider beginning with the word “after.”

For example:

After the house burned down … .

After the eulogy at my father’s funeral … .

Another possibility:

Open with a tragedy and some parallel behavior that the character starts to experience. When life crises such as death, divorce, or the loss of a job occur, the body manifests physical and psychological symptoms. Perhaps your character develops anxiety attacks, depression, insomnia, a case of hives, irritability or anger.

 

Pat Phillips West moved so often even her closest friends asked if she was in the Witness Protection Program. She refused to comment, except to say she’s in Portland, OR, for now. Her poems appear or will appear in Imagination & Place: Weather, Persimmon Tree, VoiceCatcher6, Manzanita Writers Press, San Pedro River Review and elsewhere.

Drawing, a Love Story

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by Yolanda Wysocki

I’m standing at my easel in class, sweat on my upper lip, more running down my belly. I‘m not hot; it’s anxiety, panic. Drawing is not easy for me. I draw a line to connect with another line to make a fold in fabric, but my mind gets confused about which line connects where. Where does the shadow actually dissolve into the fold? Where does the curve begin? How does it relate to the next fold and its shadow? I think I see it, but as soon as I look away, my mind jumbles it up. I erase and draw, erase again, feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information in a yard of fabric.

I never knew how to draw. That was an accepted fact throughout my school years, confirmed by experiences like my second grade teacher saying, “That doesn’t look like a pumpkin.” Every twenty years or so, I took another class just to have this belief verified once again.

At the Art Institute in Chicago one summer when I was in my twenties, the teacher kept asking me, “What do you see?” Apparently the gap between what I was supposed to see and what ended up on paper was so enormous that we both agreed I had absolutely no drawing ability. Another twenty years passed before I tried once again in a continuing education class in Hawaii.

Why? Because I am one of those people who stare and gasp whenever I see a beautiful realistic drawing. I feel envious of the skill that produced it. Whether old master or current student, a good drawing is a good drawing. By this time I was painting for the pure pleasure of it, not trying to make anything look realistic. I had done photography off and on for several years and had begun again in Hawaii. I was also working with glass and loved the fusion of light with color. My confidence and joy in creating were high so I braved another drawing class. This time something changed. I finally understood the question, “What do you see?” It was the first time in my life I could actually make a few things look recognizable. It was the first time I understood drawing was a skill that I could learn.

Being a kindergartner
The next year I became a full-time art student in photography. I was not so naive about my new awareness to become a full-time drawing student, but drawing classes were a required part of the curriculum. Every week I stood in front of that easel and every week I felt like a kindergartner among PhDs. This time I knew I could learn, so I spent hours on my homework correcting, redoing until the drawing had some semblance to reality. But my marks on the page were so light that at a distance they disappeared.

For the final project we had to draw a life-size portrait of ourselves. Imagine a six-foot long, four-foot wide piece of paper that needed to be filled with an image – by Monday. I started Friday morning and ten hours later I was sitting in the bathroom crying – with not one bit of drawing on the page. I had spent ten whole hours drawing and erasing, drawing and erasing, creating a grid, then erasing it all because it wasn’t correct. I thought of not doing the assignment, but I hadn’t worked so hard all semester to quit now. I needed a solution. A little voice inside me said, Do the grid again. This time it worked.

Thirty hours later
There are many ways to approach a drawing. One way is to start with a light-colored or white paper and fill in the blacks, lines, shades of gray – the usual way we think of drawing. Another is to blacken the entire page with charcoal and erase to create highlights, line, and shades of gray. I blackened with charcoal and erased out the image, inch by inch.

As each little square of the grid slowly developed into something recognizable – a foot with real looking toes, a rocking chair solid enough to support me – I became increasingly excited. Magic was happening. The power and love I had always felt for other people’s drawing – the mystery of creating a realistic representation out of darkness and light – took over. Every bit of my attention was focused on making this drawing. For more than thirty hours I drew, stopping only for quick meals and bathroom breaks. Like the energizer bunny, I felt like I could keep drawing and drawing. As every crease in my hands, and the walls and floor blackened with charcoal, I slipped into another world – one of magic, mystery and joy. To this day I hold that drawing as one of my prized possessions. After that I thought, now I can draw, but it wasn’t that simple.

Drawing is a continuous dance with the unknown. To be able to draw something I have to show up, all blinders, filters, and expectations removed. I have to be fully present and willing to see what is right in front of me, not what I think or imagine is there. I become an intimate lover of the object I draw. When we love we want to know everything; the object of our love engages our mind, feelings, senses. We give our full attention. In that we are also affected, touched. We are stripped of our protection.

Drawing is about relationships: relationships between objects and to space on the page. Everything in a drawing is related and impacting everything else on the page. Light and shadow create depth and richness, time and space. In class, everyone has a unique perspective – literally. We stand in slightly different places which shifts our point-of view just enough to make very individual drawings. Not only must I see what is there but, if I don’t like something, I can shift my perspective, re-organize, re-create it.

Erasers are important
Because drawing is also about correcting. We are often afraid of making mistakes. We need to be perfect right from the start and are embarrassed by what appears not to be. In drawing, every “mistake” is an opportunity to learn again, to look again, to see again, to strip off another misconception until you get to the truth of it. My eraser is as important as my pencil or charcoal. In fact, I don’t hear the word “mistake” in a drawing class; it’s always about correcting. If we could see mistakes as constant opportunities for correcting, for clarifying, getting closer and closer to getting it the way we want it, there would be no “mistakes.” There would only be the continuous process of becoming more accurate, creating life as we want it, seeing life as it is.

Although each time I draw is different and new, a fresh opportunity to step into the unknown, I bring along tools I learned from previous times. So it’s always starting over, but with experience that builds on itself – like wisdom. When overwhelmed, whether with life or drawing, I have learned new tools for dealing with it: Either break it down into smaller chunks, or step back to get a broader perspective, drawing the largest shapes and filling the rest in as I go.

When it is working I feel completely alive, present, connected to whatever it is I am drawing. And afterwards, when I step outside, I see everything so much more clearly. I feel connected and in relationship to life, to myself, to people. I feel at peace and in joy. That’s why, despite – or because of – what I go through, I will keep putting myself in front of that blank piece of paper over and over.

And here I stand, drawing a line that suddenly becomes a curve, disappearing into shadow, adding another line, highlighting, darkening until the lines become folds, the fold become drapes, and I am in love again.

 

Yolanda WysockiYolanda Wysocki works as a life/transformation coach. Her background has been in counseling and social services for over 25 years. She went back to school for a second bachelor’s degree when she was 51 years old. Seven years and three schools later, she completed her art degree, a lifelong dream.

The Writer’s Craft: Writers on Writing

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From the personal to the universal: “315 C”
by Kristin Roedell

Writing poetry can be hard work. Somehow this seems unromantic; one feels that poetry should flow straight from the emotional center to the page in flourishing script. More often a poem begins with a good line and is built around it like the infrastructure of a skyscraper. My poem “315 C,” which was published in the Fall 2012 issue of VoiceCatcher: a journal of women’s voices & visions, was like that.

Although it went through many revisions, this poem began with a single experience that moved me. My daughter and I visited friends in Cheney, Washington, a very small town on the outskirts of Spokane. I failed to book a hotel in advance and the only spot in town with rooms available was seedy and run down. I rented a room and, as my daughter and I went in, a group of young men smoking beside the stairs watched her stretch her arms and yawn. I suddenly realized that the time when I could protect her as a child was passing away. That experience germinated and “315 C” was born. Over time, the experience became something more than that single event; it became a metaphor for my history and my understanding of what it means to be a woman.

315 C

The sign said W LL W SPR GS,
a nod to the muddy creek bed
where autumn leaves
floated like dead spiders,
bellies and legs to the moon.
It was the only hotel in town
that tolerated dogs –
with a pet deposit
management turned a blind eye
to its balding carpets.

At ten past, the street lights
cast parabolas
in the littered parking lot.
My daughter slept in the back
folded like an origami bloom,
dreaming dragons and fireflies.
Our collie had chewed through
the Mercedes floor mats
until bits of rug clung to her fur
like dandelion seeds.

There was a battered card stuck
to the office desk, tape curling:
HOURLY RATES, CASH ONLY.
My daughter yawned her way
into 315 C, her hair matted
on the left side, skirting the rain
channeled by a broken gutter.
Boys slouched with hoods
pulled over ball caps,
and watched her.
Their cigarettes made scarlet
A’s in the dark.

In the night, I counted the freckled
constellations on her back.
I thought long about what leads women
with unerring aim
towards the inhospitable;
no faith withstands it.
My daughter slept
folded into sharp corners;
she dreamt that hope fragments.
The rising sun kindled the scales
of dragons still gathered outside.

In order to be objective about my poetry, I take myself “out” of the piece, and think of it as narrated by another woman with her own feelings, history and experience; she observes and learns individually. Each poem should begin with concrete details to draw the reader in through sight, smell, taste and sound. With this in mind, “315 C” immediately reveals the undesirable character of the hotel with the missing letters on its sign:

The sign said:

W LL W SPR GS

The poem continues to illustrate this with a muddy creek filled with dead leaves, balding carpets, a littered parking lot, a curling sign in the office, the broken gutter and the fact that the hotel rents by the hour. Clearly, this hotel is unsafe. This picture is core to the development of the poem, as we also learn very quickly that the narrator still views her daughter as a child:

My daughter slept in the back
folded like an origami bloom,
dreaming dragons and fireflies.

Nevertheless, the poem suggests that the boys who watch her daughter do not view her this way. These boys are hooded, creating a sense of menace:

Boys slouched with hoods
pulled over ball caps,
and watched her.

The next lines –

Their cigarettes made scarlet
A’s in the dark -

refer to The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne. This novel labels its heroine as an adulteress, requiring that she wear the letter “A.” The reference is one of sexual danger and misconduct, which is what the narrator fears. The desire of the “boys” in the poem is inconsistent with her belief in the childlike nature of her daughter. It is the transition of this belief that is core to the poem as the narrator comes to understand her daughter is becoming a woman – and reaching sexual maturity is dangerous:

I thought long about what leads women
with unerring aim
towards the inhospitable;
no faith withstands it.

She watches over her daughter through the night, unable to protect her either from her disturbing dreams, or the sexual danger that exists outside the room and outside her influence. The poem closes with this sense of loss.

she dreamt that hope fragments.
The rising sun kindled the scales
of dragons still gathered outside.

After the first draft of “315 C,” I let it sit for a while. I usually wait a few weeks after I write a poem, then come back to it. I hope to gain enough distance to be a reader rather than a writer, and I’m usually able to see what needs revising. One of the points that benefited most from revision was changing the title. It began as “315 A,” but VoiceCatcher’s editors pointed out that the “scarlet letter” should be emphasized by using it only in reference to the menacing boys.

I think the most powerful part of “315 C” is the last stanza, as it is the most personal. After I wrote the poem, I became objective enough to realize that my fear and sadness are present in my relationship with my daughter. I became willing to change that. I always write as if I am the only person who will read my poem, and then I look for the courage to let it go. It’s like letting a child go; one hopes it will be treated with kindness.

When your poem finds readers, there will be a shift from the particular to the universal. The poem will mean something new to each reader; this is what gives it value. The reader should have the “ah-ha” experience, a moment when the events the poet narrates touch some part of the reader’s own story. The poem becomes illuminated by this commonality. In a way, it writes and rewrites itself as each reader relates to the poem’s content in a unique way. I imagine this as casting seed over fertile ground. It’s even possible that a writer may be inspired by a part of your experience, and that another, more rare poem will take root and flower.

 

Welcome to the latest article in our Writers on Writing series, where authors share how they do what they do: Find inspiration, create drafts, make choices on how – and what – to add, subtract, revise. In this series, each author will offer insights into her creative process that we hope will inspire your own.

Kristin RoedellKristin Roedell graduated from Whitman College (B.A. English,1984) and the University of Washington Law School (J.D., 1987). Her poetry has been published in over sixty journals and books including Switched on Gutenberg, Ginosko, JAMA, Damselflypress, Eclectica, Ekphrasis, Tacoma City Arts, and VoiceCatcher5. She is the author of two chapbooks: Seeing in the Dark (Tomato Can Press, 2009), and Girls with Gardenias (Flutter Press, 2012). Her third book is forthcoming from Legal Forum, a press publishing poetry by lawyers. She has been nominated for Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize.

Writer’s Craft: Dotting Your Ts and Crossing Your Eyes

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by Trista Cornelius

Dashes, Parentheses, Commas (Which Goes Where – and When?)
What’s the difference between using commas, parentheses, or dashes to set apart material in a sentence? Aren’t there instances when you don’t need the commas?
For example, do you write:

Octavia’s business partner, Joan, never makes it to the office before noon.

or

Octavia’s business partner Joan never makes it to the office before noon.

Similar to my two-part column about the apostrophe, the answer to this question is complex and contradictory, so this topic will also require two parts. I’ll start with what I consider the fun information because it gives you choices as a creative writer. Then I’ll address the complications, including the answer to the above examples, next month.

First, let me explain what some grammar books call “interrupting material.” Sentences often include a descriptive phrase. These words interrupt the flow of thought (often separating the subject from the verb) and can be called interrupters. In the previous sentence, for example, the phrase in parentheses could be considered an interrupter.
In the next sentence, the interrupting material is the description of Octavia:

Octavia, the wealthy countess, arrived at her shuttered mansion shortly after five o’clock.

This descriptive material (the interrupter) usually needs commas to frame it, but parentheses and dashes can also be used

Setting apart interrupting material with commas
The commas show the reader that what is between them is descriptive, but not vital, material. For example:

>Octavia drove her car, an old Honda Accord, to the farmers market.

Here, it’s implied that the type of car Octavia drove adds detail, but the fact that the car is a Honda is not important to the story.

Interrupting material like “old Honda Accord” is also called an “appositive” because it contains a noun that means the same thing as the noun before it. Honda means the same thing as car. In the earlier example, “wealthy countess” means the same thing as Octavia.

Setting apart interrupting material with dashes
Dashes draw the reader’s attention to the material between them, like flashing neon arrows pointing inward at the descriptive material. For example:

Octavia drove her car – three blocks – to the farmers market.

Here, the dashes are acknowledging the reader’s incredulity that Octavia would drive a mere three blocks. The interrupting material is important and tells us something about Octavia’s personality or her physical limitations.
Unlike the parentheses or commas around interrupting material, you might occasionally see only one part of the dash-set used. For example:>

It took forever for Octavia to drive to the farmers market – fifteen minutes!

 
Setting apart interrupting material with parentheses 
If dashes are like a shout and commas like a conversation, parentheses are like a whisper. Parentheses frame material that is not as important as the rest of the sentence. For example:

Octavia drove her car (the navy blue Porsche, not the pearl one) to the farmers market.

Here, the parentheses demotes the descriptive material making it an aside, nothing vital to the story. It’s an unobtrusive reminder that the pearl car stayed in the garage.
So you now know how to distinguish the different meanings of material set apart with parentheses (a whisper); commas, a conversation; and dashes – a shout.
 
Play with this paragraph

Octavia bent the spoon – with the tips of her freshly manicured fingers – and set it in the empty bowl. She would not allow anyone to tell her what to do (especially after this morning). It had taken her a long time, fifteen minutes, to drive three blocks to the farmers market. Her friend Georgina left in a hurry after witnessing the bent spoon.

Use the above passage to experiment and replace commas with dashes and vice versa and see what happens. What’s the difference in meaning, tone and pacing when you do? For example:

It had taken her a long time – fifteen minutes – to drive the three blocks to the farmers market. Her friend (Georgina) left in a hurry … .

See you next month for part two –  and complications!

 

Trista CorneliusThis is the tenth in a series of practical grammar tips every writer needs to know by Trista Cornelius, English Instructor, Clackamas Community College. She’s both the best and worst person to share these tips with you. Best because she’s made all the mistakes herself and learned the hard way. Worst? Same reason!