Scene 15: Blood, sweat and tears

This week I took a leap towards liberation.

This leap was years in the making, a lifetime really.  It was frightening, made me break out in a panicked sweat, caused my heart to race, and paralyzed the rest of me.  Standing there on the edge of vulnerability, I felt more a prisoner than I ever had.  My lungs refused to take their fill, my limbs refused to wrap around myself for comfort.  And yet, somewhere I found the courage to move forward to push off with my legs and dare to cross the chasm.  Perhaps it was merely desperation that forced me to do it.

The landing was hideous.  I lay ragged and bleeding for sometime.  Then one by one, those that came across me on their path, stopped to tend to my wounds, to speak words of encouragement, to praise my brave, idiotic leap.  Some even called it inspiring.  I watched on as a few standing on the other side of the divide took flight, making a leap of their own, daring to meet me where I lay trying to recover.

Their courage, their daring soothed my battered body, beat life back into my heart.  And, slowly, I rose to my feet.  I rose with tears in my eyes to meet them, my fellow leapers, to hug them and thank them for their faith, love and encouragement.  To celebrate the freedom that my vulnerability gifted me.

It's something I have always know: that blood, sweat and tears are the only path to liberation; that wall-shattering vulnerability is the path to true writing, the sharing of our souls.

So if you're standing on the cliff's edge wondering if you should take the leap, take heart, fear not, there will be others ready to nurse you and celebrate with you on the other side.

Scene 14: The Unwanted Key

Death is a key.
It unlocks the floodgates
and frees all things hidden there.
The refuse, the misfits,
the unseemly memories.
They pour, an avalanche,
a rain, they drown me.
And it is all Death's fault.
How happy we would be

had that lock never found its key.

Scene 13: Update for Poetry in Progress

It's a been far longer than I originally anticipated.  I had hoped to work on this poem and update its progress more like once every other week or so... not once every three months.  Such is life.

The original post and poem can be found here.


I've spent the last few iced-in days to work on it again.  Rather than post a little progress here and there, I'd like to share where it stands now.  I'm not sure it's finished.  I may work on it more, but I like it a lot better.  And it's interesting to me how the idea morphed and focused itself as I worked.  I'd love to have some feedback :)

A lonely lovebird's sick heart aches for the company of her kind.
A bird of her feathers to comfort her and speak peace to her mind.
She knows she'll never be content in this land of featherless, flightless birds.
She doesn't belong, though she doesn't know why, and she fears her song will never be heard.

She circles and she paces 'round bars unseen but felt.
Her heart encased in ten thousand scars made of betrayal and guilt.
They tie her down and bind her tight, her dreams locked deep inside,
Pushing the world far and away, until the fire within her dies.

The cage is an illusion, Love. The master magician's lie.
Open your eyes, stretch your dreams, unfurl your wings and fly.
Let love pulse life back into your veins.
Hope erases gravity, dear Bird.
Breathe deep, and sing again.

Scene 12: Prompted

I've recently joined a writing group.  The North Texas Writer's Alliance.  I love writing groups.  It's a great way to hone the craft and gain useful insight and feedback.

This month, I was asked to provide a prompt for our group.  Writing prompts are also awesome in my book.  It's a great way to get the juices flowing and allow yourself to open up and spill it out.

The prompt I gave the group was:

We all know how important setting can be in your writing, whether it's fiction or non-fiction.  We even talked briefly about how the setting can become another character in the story.  And I recently stumbled upon this quote:

"Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective."  -Ernest Hemingway

So the prompt for this month is about gaining that perspective.  Write at least one descriptive paragraph about a place, any place, that you've been.  This can be a physical place (a childhood home, favorite vacation spot, you're grandpa's lap, the creepy lady-next-door's house) or this can be a figurative place, a place in time and thought, if that makes sense.  Let yourself be there again.  And as you write about it, try to keep in mind all your senses, even those things that you feel inside your body while you're there.

Here's what I came up with:

Inside

It’s dark in this place.  The kind of dark that paralyzes every muscle and weighs heavy in one’s lungs. It presses in on my ears with its silence, causing them to ring.  I want to scream, but my mouth won’t open.  Every joint and ligament is tense, waiting to spring into action. The very marrow in my bones struggles against unseen restraints.  Sweat collects on my forehead from the effort.  My head spins as my breathing grows evermore shallow.  I’m on the verge of implosion, though, from outward view it probably seems like a quiet collapse.  It is not quiet.  The shrieking pain of it all pushes blood from my ears. I am dying.   No, I realize.  My fate is worse.  I’m a prisoner here.  Fear has me in his clasp and laughs at my timorous attempt to escape.  Hot tears pool in my ears, not blood, though the volcanic pulsing there would suggest otherwise.  Exhausted, and despite my reluctance, I tumble into restless oblivion. It would be many years before I realized: there is no escaping one’s own mind.  

Scene 11: a Prose

Landscape's Lullaby

Ears are not the only parts that hear. Our eyes hear those things too quiet for our ears; they hear those songs that can only be found in the curves of the landscape.  Those songs are in the inclines of the mountain and the tufts of fur tree shivering under the freshly fallen snow.  It is those notes that are in rivers fighting the freeze and in the sun piercing through the clouds, its rays magnifying the melody.  It is the song of birds unwilling to leave their homes boldly defying Mother Nature, and of the stubborn orange bushes, naked of their leaves, which refuse to be hidden.  It is the bass undertones of the red-brown etchings in the cliff face that stands as a sentinel.  My eyes hear their song.  Their harmony calls to my wandering heart and thrums in my bones.  It blankets me in its beauty and sings to me, “You are home.”

Teton Mountain Pass, taken on our drive through yesterday... the drive that inspired this prose.

 

Scene 10: THE Challenge

I have taken up the mantle.

That's write... I mean, right.  I'm at it again.

My first NaNoWriMo was in 2010.  And I won.  Meaning that I reached my goal of writing 50,000 words in one month.  That manuscript is the one and the same that I finally finished on July 4th this year and have been editing and rewriting since.

I'm ready to take a break.

Three years is a loooong time to work on one manuscript.  Not to suggest it's all I've worked on in three years, nor that I have worked on it consistently for three years, but all the same... it needs to rest for a while.

What better way to take a break from your writing than to start something new?  Am I right?

Day One: Beautiful crisp fall morning.  Husband at work, kids at school.  Dog sleeping at my feet, his stomach making suspicious sounds.  Birds tweeting away, mama bird happy in her nesting box where she is warming her four little birdie eggs.  Me in my p.j.s and fuzzy pink socks, perfect writing attire.  Flipping through my various notebooks, I find pages of notes I've made (to include a map--yes, be impressed) of my chosen project.  Crack the knuckles, adjust the computer chair... and login to facebook.

Wait!  What?  Not what I meant to do, I swear.

Let's try again.

Close browser.  Open Pages-> New Document.  Flip through my notes, finding my intro I'd written months and months ago.  Begin to type.  Yes!  Now, we're in business.  Hit enter.  Reach to turn the page on my notes... slide the lock bar on my phone and check my email.

Seriously!  Who's in charge here?

Focus, Leigh.  Just focus.

Type away.  Let those fingers fly.  Excellent.  The intro is finally in print!  Now to the story.

But first... let out the dog.  Use the restroom.  Have a snack.  Check facebook while you eat... it's multitasking, people.  Brush your teeth so you can put your retainers back in.  Ew.  Best to clean your retainers.  Check your email, clear it all out so you can sit back down and truly focus.  Get lost in an article about learning disabilities and working memory issues that leads you to another article that you really love and need to share so you post it on facebook where you see an article about a family of 11 living in a garage that your sister should read so you email it to her and she texts you a response, which reminds you, you didn't respond to your friend's text earlier so why not now and while you're at it you should text your son just to let him know that you love him which reminds you that you need to switch over the laundry because you do love your kids and you want them to have clean clothes and as you pass through the kitchen to do the laundry you realize you haven't thought about what to cook for dinner yet so you decide you'd better get that started too and then you proceed to wash the morning dishes and sweep the floor and suddenly remember that what you really want to be doing is writing since the house is empty and there isn't anyone home to interrupt you so you make your way back to the computer and sit down to write a blog post.

Challenges are by definition "a task or situation that tests someone's abilities" or/and "entering into opposition" and/or "to do something that one thinks will be difficult or impossible".

It's going to be a long month.

p.s.  I did get 2634 words written today... eventually.

Scene 9: Mid-Writing Crisis

I seem to be having a mid-writing crisis... for not the first time.

I have started/finished/half-written/outlined three novels and a half dozen 'short' stories. (I say 'short' because, in reality, I have a hard time being brief and my short stories soon become more like novellas.)  Inevitably, at some point, I become dissatisfied with my writing.  Not to be confused with discouraged. I have those moments too, when it seems like I will never be able to finish.  No, dissatisfaction is a beast of an entirely different breed.

How is it that I become disenchanted with my own writing?  It is completely frustrating.  This gap between what I want to write and what I'm actually writing.  I want to write something of value and out comes fluff.  It's not what's in my head.  Somewhere between my brain and the clicks of my fingers on the keyboard, things are getting lost.  How do I find them?

It's not that I don't want to do the work to find the right words.  I have spent three years on my current manuscript, writing, re-writing, doing character worksheets, plot webs, etc.  And it's not about perfectionism.  It's not.  Truly.  It's about the literary value of the writing.  I want to write something of value, not simple escapism literature, but real literature.  But no matter how I try, the bridge I need to close this gap eludes me.  And then I begin to wonder, am I writing my truth?  Am I writing what the author in me should be writing?  What she really wants to be writing?  Is it possible that I'm not being true to the creative creature inside of me?

And then I get a headache.

It's all very non-productive.  So what do you think?  Do you think we can truly write whatever we want?  Or is there in each of us a certain type of creative creature that is only happy and satisfied when writing its truth?

For now, I am pushing through my mid-writing crisis again in the hopes that someday I will bridge the gap between what I'm writing and what I actually want to write.   I hope that someday I'll walk across that bridge and bask in the glory of satisfaction on the other side.

Is it possible that with each re-write and revision I am adding bricks to my bridge?