Storyteller
At some point in the month, I always start falling back to sleep before writing anything… then waking up and writing at whatever time it happens to be. This happens to everyone. Just keep writing if it does.
This one was more like a 5:15 poem.
Alas sleep has kidnapped
my night at least
I’m well fed
you have great waking skills
tumbling waiting for
alarm the sound of
shapes calling
shapes breaking morning
to father the day
I decided to share this 3:15 Experiment poem not because its one of my favourites or for its fine literary quality, but because it is such 3:15 language… that and I don’t remember writing it!
I remember writing, I recall my hand moving by some force, but I don’t recall any of these words (and some I’ve had to interpret as they were illegible), where they came from, or to what they were referring – other than the fact that my husband went bike-camping on Mayne Island and saw views of islands.
This is something that continually fascinates me about the experiment, that I could actually physically write, but not be conscious while doing it.
August, 8, 2009
Vancouver, BC
I have frozen in this
finite heat. the islands,
the islands have mass and must wait.
temptation. the islands have both the
call and response. we were there.
come.
Witnesses may always refuse –
then we’re stuck hungrily
hiring the land.
I started on land & ended on air
I swallowed the clues
ingested as my own DNA
The island lines up
my timing near-perfect
Bring her in. Bring them
all in.
time for a game
a test of time.
milquetoast
The pieces are mulled over
the den gone. Civilized votes any
confidence
a circular witness : a time beast
The water comes. The room is
occupied. We have the presence
of salt to slow them down.
And eyes on the backs
of our heads.
My favourite thing about it is the random word “milquetoast” that appears in the middle of the poem. In my journal I had started a new page and written that at the top, then drew a line underneath it.
You can still JOIN in the madness… there are 20 days left to participate in the 3:15 Experiment.
HOW TO DO THE 3:15 EXPERIMENT:
* Begin at 3:15 AM on August 1st (so set your alarms on JULY 31) . Continue each day until August 31.
* You may write any length, style, form, content, voice, rhythm, etc.
* DO NOT EDIT your work. This is raw stuff, baby. That’s part of the experiment. You are welcome to edit, collage, break apart the poems later for whatever purpose you choose, but please SHARE THE RAW STUFF with the rest of the group here or on the website once the experiment is over.
* (Optional) Do not read what you have written until the month is over, except to skim the work to make sure everything is legible.
TIPS: Do not use a felt tip pen unless you don’t care about ink stains on your bed. Many a poet has fallen asleep in the middle of writing. If you can help it, don’t even get out of bed! The point is to ride that dream state, that precarious point between sleeping and waking and sleeping.
(This is the first year I have broken the “optional” rule and shared poems during the month. )
August is a fine time to work your creative mojo. Everyone’s doing it! And they’re doing it in the form of challenges and experiments. Below are a few that I recommend.
Please let me know if there are any more out there in the coming month/s and I’ll add them to the list.
Anyone who follows my blog with any regularity knows that I participate in the annual 3:15 Experiment every year. Basically, a shifting menagerie of poets (and prose writers, actually) wakes up at 3:15 AM EACH morning during the month of August and writes. Our goal is to write while riding a 1/2 dream state. Magic happens. We have a Facebook Group now. Join us.
Started by Paul Nelson and Lana Ayers, the Postcard Poetry Fest challenges you to send 31 postcard poems, one for each day of August. They START it NOW if you’d like to participate… and I’m not sure you still can, but you can go to their website or FACEBOOK group and ask.
The rules say that on July 27th (tomorrow!), you write an original poem right on a postcard and mail it to the person on the list below your name. Starting on August 1st, ideally in response to a card YOU receive, keep writing a poem a day on a postcard and mailing it to successive folks on the list until you’ve sent out 31 postcards. I’ve never participated but some year I think I’ll write my 3:15 poems on postcards. That would be fun.
10 shorts in 10 days
This is a little invention of my friend Tod McCoy and myself. It happens irregularly (whenever we feel like lighting a fire under our butts). We write either 10 short films or 10 pieces of micro fiction in 10 days. This August we’re writing short scripts. Anyone out there is welcome to join us. There is no official website and no official place to post them, although if you’d like to post them on your blog and send us a link, that’d be swell.
We’re starting on AUGUST 10 and running until August 19. The rules are simple: Write a short script (or story) per day. Badda bing, badda boom. In the past our short scripts have run about 3-6 pages (in standard format). If you wonder what I mean by micro fiction, check out any one of my 56 Flavours stories, most of which were written during a 10 day challenge.
This contest has been running for 30 years. It wins. I’ve only participated once, but had a blast doing it. Some day I’ll dig out the novel and rewrite it. It happens over Labour Day weekend (Sept 5-7 this year). They also have a Facebook page. If you want to officially participate, and for a chance at fame and fortune, you have to register, which involves $50. If you just want the challenge of trying something new and don’t care about official registration, I suggest forming a group and holing up somewhere in a 24 hour coffee shop together. Oh, yeah, the object is to write a novel in 3 days.
Dropped Pages is a series of poems that were originally dropped from my books or chapbooks. I have reclaimed them here.
~ ~ ~
I wanted to find an older poem, something dropped from my first book, Traffic. I found this funny little poem in the rubble. I think it’s at least 15 years old. It was written as a “mistranslation” of Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
It’s odd how it suddenly shifts into another poem… I wish I had the original hieroglyphs.
You can mistranslate of any piece of foreign writing (as long as you don’t actually know the language, then you get stuck in translation). Russian, Greek, and Egyptian are fun to work with.
When I Lived in Egypt
I saw you down at the baths
toe cold stare
reptile eyes
hollow lips
You had a rose between your fingers
and were feeding slugs and fishes
little pink petals in a bowl
You stoned me with a stare
so I brought you trinkets
to appease your fiery needs
you waved me on
like setting a question free
This bird is a hawk
claws sink earth into
you
a cloudless wind
with teasing breasts
the ripple calls
let me navigate
your drowning
1994? 5?
Jump on the Poetry Train
The first time I redid my kitchen floors I read the instructions on how to lay linoleum tiles and all the measuring of the room and penciling the lines to fit the tiles into just sounded like too much work to me. I thought, hell, I’ll just lay them out. They’re square; it will be fine. As I glued them down, they started to wander a bit. Eventually I had to cut away pieces to make them fit. It probably added a great deal of time and tedium (not to mention a great deal of frustration).
~ ~ ~
I always recommend that my students do plenty of pre-work before they sit down to write their screenplay. This thinking on the page (and out loud) helps to flesh out the story, the structure, the characters, and a lot more. There are quite a few books on screenwriting, and in every one they’ll tell you the same thing. Knowing what you’re writing about, what the key turning points are, and what the players are all about is tantamount to measuring out that kitchen floor before you lay the tiles.
After I chose which story I was going to write, all I could think of was that I didn’t even have a fully-formed idea. It was just an opening scene that had gotten stuck in my head. I didn’t know about the story. I didn’t know exactly what the conflict was, what the dilemma was, if there was a ticking clock, and what my protagonist’s goal was…. so I started my writing exercises using the start lines I’ve posted in previous posts.
After two weeks, I still wasn’t feeling it. It wasn’t gelling. I couldn’t SEE the story, which is vital to me.
So I decided to get back to basics.
In Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat, he says not to do anything else until you’ve written the “one-line,” otherwise known as your logline. Screenwriters are notoriously nervous about writing loglines. They’d rather have dental surgery. I mean, how can you reduce your entire story to one measly sentence?
The thing is that the root idea of your story should be simple and basic… and strong so that you can build your story from it. It sharpens your story into a clear point… And you’ll know when you get it right, because a big light will go on in your head. BINGO!
So I sat down to do just that. And in a moment of inspiration, a logline emerged, and I knew exactly what my story was about:
The Van Goes
A free–spirited woman must choose between her gypsy lifestyle and the son who has grown too old to live with her in their camper van.
As soon as I wrote this down… the heavens opened and the muses poured golden sunshine upon me… I could SEE my characters. The protagonist (the mother) popped almost fully-formed into my head. I knew this woman, and I knew the relationship she had with her son, and I knew that relationship was about to change.
Take a moment during your pre-exercises this week and write down your logline. You may have to do it several times. For me, the key is in the MUST part… what MUST your character do, what choice MUST she make, and what will be the consequences for doing this thing or making this choice.
So, I had a streak of things happen that could be considered sucky. My short film was declined from its 3rd festival, our team didn’t get the NSI drama prize (we were short-listed, but didn’t win), and I got two rejection letters.
Taken one at a time, I could easily shrug them off and move on. However, this was in the space of a week when I was already feeling pretty wobbly about the quit-your-full-time-job-and-become-a-full-time-writer thing.
The producer for our NSI project wrote the director and myself to say “Congratulations!” and I thought, Oh, no, she misread the letter NSI sent to us. She thinks we’ve won.
But no, she was congratulating us on being short-listed out of 200 applicants. Yeah, but isn’t that suckier? To be so close and then not chosen in the end. At least that was my attitude yesterday; today’s a new day. (and the semi-colon is my favourite form of punctuation)
The thing is I have a choice. I can choose to feel sorry for myself, or I can choose to take another step forward. Which one serves my purpose? Sometimes I DO actually choose to be down for a day. The difference is I make it a conscious choice. I say, you know what? I feel like staying in my pajamas all day eating popcorn and being sad. I just experience it, have a good time, and move on. In the end, it connects me with my humanness, which always inspires me, ultimately, to create.
Don’t pile guilt on top of being sad and pitiful, you’ll hurt your brain. Celebrate the mess that you are. I laugh when I cry all the time. (Baby has learned not to freak out when this happens.)
And as my badass friend Lisa says, The alternative is not an option. What, I’m going to go back to my SSJ (soul-sucking job)?
So today, I move forward. One thing is enough. One idea, one lightbulb, one connection…
PRE-WRITING EXERCISES PT II
1) Set your first meeting with one of your “team members”. Decide and commit to your regular basis check-in, whether it’s by phone or in person. I think in person is better. Tell them what you’re working on.
2) Get a timer. I use an old Pillsbury Doughboy Kitchen Timer. It’s sole purpose is to time writing exercises. My students tease me, but I think they secretly covet it. I am a big fan of timed writing.
3) As many days as you can this week, do the following exercise. Commit to those days. Pick something doable for your schedule. Pick 3 days and if you do more you’re a star. I’ve decided to do it every morning for 7 days straight simply because I need to be that hard core with myself right now to get back into the flow.
STEP ONE – Set timer for 5 minutes
Using the start line I want to tell this story because… start your timer and finish the sentence. Keep writing the phrase and finishing each sentence (like a list) until a scene “jump starts” your muse. Then dive in and spontaneously riff from there and avoid punctuation from then on. Keep these sentences long. Keep that pen moving the whole time, if you fumble and stall, write I want to tell this story because… and keep going)
EXAMPLE:
I want to tell this story because I need to do it for myself right now. I want to tell this story because I have so many ideas I need to pick one. I want to tell this story because I think everyone can relate to Chelle how she has given up on herself because we’re always doing that and they don’t stand up for their creative selves. And even though Chelle is staying true to her art she’s not staying true to her own success and we shouldn’t have to give up on anything to be the Truth of who we are…etc.
STEP TWO – Set timer for 7 minutes
When your timer goes off, go the the MIDDLE of that piece of writing and pull out a sentence. Set your timer for SEVEN minutes. Use the line you just pulled from your own writing as your start line. If you get stuck, just write I want to tell this story because… and go from there. You can always go back to listing / short sentences. Remember not to stop or edit. Just keep writing.
You can do more long sentences or, as in the example below, I use the “chaining” method taught to me by the infamous Jack and Bob, in which the last word of a sentence is repeated as the first word in the next sentence. You can try that for fun and see how it goes. Some people really like where it takes their writing.
EXAMPLE
Poop or get off the pot has become my new motto and it’s got to become Chelle’s. Chelle’s daughter Violet says, “mom, sometimes you just gotta poop or get off the pot.” Pot like the one Chelle attaches to the back of their van so she can plant a sunflower. Sunflowers are her favourite flower and she misses her gardening. Gardening is the only reason she thinks it might be nice to have a home. Home for her seed collection and for the twins’ pet rat… etc.
Step Three – Set your timer for 10 minutes
Repeat the above process: go to the middle, pick that line, write. THIS TIME set your timer for TEN minutes. It is important that the time grows longer as you go to get deeper into the work. If your writing time is limited, try 3-5-7 minutes instead.
This exercise is very good at getting you unstuck, I’m telling you. I was resisting any kind of writing on The Van Goes and when I did this exercise I had 3 pieces of new information about my story. That’s exciting.
Additional startlines (for Step One) to keep you busy:
This is a story about… (always an effective one)
In this story, my protagonist learns to/that…
My protagonist’s deepest wound is…
My protagonist’s greatest fear is that…
My protagonist’s most treasured possession is…
4) This is also a good time to do any research you might need to do for your character and story. I need to research different types of camper vans, sizes and styles, and what one can fit inside. I also need to research names for the Van Gogh kids and decide whether I want to name them after artists or if that would be too much.
Have fun with it! I’m not sure how often I’ll post chapters of the screenplay saga, at least once a week.
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
~Kahlil Gibran
I turned 40 last year and decided it was time to get my poop in a group. Pull it out, as they say in Australia.
I had allowed my life to get kidnapped by work that wasn’t serving my passion and purpose. It was depleting my energy and spirit. I desperately needed to get back to my creative writing and the daily habit of it… I had to extract myself from my 7 days-per-week job. But then what? I hadn’t written anything new in a year (other than a few poems). I was frozen. I thought I had forgotten how to start something new or edit anything old.
Years of personal development have convinced me that I’m the only thing standing in my way… yet I still stand in my way. (well, duh, eating popcorn for dinner isn’t good for me, but if left to my own devices, that’s what I’d do)
What I failed to realize was that even though I was standing in my own way, it didn’t mean I couldn’t ask for help in pushing myself out of the way. I didn’t have to do it alone. It’s so easy to “suffer” through it all alone, because then I can be right. I can be a victim of circumstance and say See? This is the reason I can’t succeed… I’m stuck at this job and I don’t have any time because… blah, blah, blah.
I needed a little cosmic bitch-slapping.
So I started asking for help. Major help.
I read Pronoia, A New Earth, Love Made Visible, works by Pema Chodron and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and Anne of Green Gables. I cast soul cards and recorded dreams, I enlisted my friends, had psychic surgery and bio energy sessions, called the entities, angels, ancestors, and avatars. The big guns… Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Gaia (and Madam Pele when I was in Hawaii)… and a tonne of small furry animals as well.
One of my human helpers was the amazing Alanna Fero, who literally wrote the book on how to do what you love to do: Love Made Visible. I was armed, energized, and ready to dive in head first. Alanna helped me successfully resign from my soul-eating job and transition into something that better supported my writing life and my sanity.
…and still I resisted doing the thing I professed to love to do the most.
One day I was telling her all about how I had gone from one job to the other and it was still a bit crazy and although this job was way better than the old one and I was so grateful and now I had less stress and more time to work on the house and blah and blah but I just couldn’t focus on my writing right now except little blog posts and maybe I can start next month…
She said, There are 11,000 reasons why it can’t be done and none of them are true.
Darn. That’s what happens when you enlist helpers to really help you. They don’t let you get away with anything.
If anyone had said that to a much younger me, I would have gotten self-righteous and indignant. Now I know what real support, love, and compassion look like. One of my favourite lines from a lecture by Allen Ginsberg is I never learned so much as when I shut up and listened.
(BTW – If you tell your friends all the reasons it can’t be done and they nod and concur and tell you their own woes, then they are not supporting you.)
Alanna asked me how many script ideas I had. I laughed and told her, Enough for several lifetimes. She told me to pick one and start by Feb 1st.
So here I go, and you can come too. Whether you’re working on a screenplay or novel or something else entirely, the following exercises will help. This week is about pre-work to writing the thing. This is to get you ready to do the thing you profess to love to do the most. (And if you’re already one of those keeners who works on their novel every morning from 5:30 AM – 7:30 AM without fail, you may still be amused.)
Always remember the universe is on your side. Once you make a commitment to something with passion and persistence, everyone and everything will jump in to support you. That’s pronoia!
PRE-WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
1) Find a support system, a team of people who’ve got your back. You meet on a regular basis. They can be individuals, a small group, a paid professional.They hold you to your commitments and keep you on purpose.
I meet every week with two friends to go over challenges, successes, new goals, and support needed from each other. I just hooked up with another writer to meet once a month to critique and brainstorm. And I’ve got Alanna, who I’ve scheduled a total of 12 sessions with. Hiring a professional (life coach, career coach, etc) can be affective because they have no emotional attachment to you or your situation.
2) Take a long walk alone. Let your mind wander. Allow all your ideas and stories and characters and images float around in your brain. Decide on your next project before you get home. Make a mental commitment that when everything else seems more interesting and easier, you will stick with that project. Tell everyone on your team what you’re working on.
I took a walk this week and decided to work on a script of mine called The Van Goes. I call it my “Lttle Miss Sunshine.”
3) Buy a notebook and a bunch of your favoutie pens. This notebook is your brainstorming and exercise book for your story. Write the name of your story on the cover. Carry it with you everywhere. Any time you have 5 minutes (on the bus, waiting for a friend, etc), write your ideas down in it (I’ve suggested some start lines below). Do not edit, do not cross out, just write without stopping.
You can use the startlines below, write character lists (names, ages, descriptions, etc.), or write down what I call “moments.” That’s when a scene hits me and I’m not sure when it goes in the story, but I want to write it down. Scene when Chelle overhears Max getting a girl’s cell phone number and she feels like a bad mom because she can’t afford to get the family a cell phone.
4) Pull a page out of your notebook and write a letter to yourself that you will not open until you are done with your screenplay, novel, story, etc. In the letter congratulate yourself and give suggestions of how to celebrate. Tell yourself you knew you could do it, etc. If this seems cheesy, it totally is. But sometimes we forget to celebrate our successes and just keep going. Your team will also help you celebrate.
START LINES FOR STORY JOURNAL
If you find yourself stuck in front of a blank page, here are a few start lines you can try. Remember, write quickly without stopping and without editing. If you run out of things to say, write blah, blah, blah, i can’t think of anything to write about my character Susie because I’ve never known anyone like her… etc.
Also, I use conjunctions to connect ideas and use very little punctuation… keeps things flowing.
This is a story about… (forgiveness, forbidden love, jealousy, revenge…)
Before this story began, my protagonist…
When this story begins, my protagonist…
More than anything, my protagonist wants…
By the end of the story, my protagonist has learned…
What if… (always a good one, just lists when you get stuck on an answer… what if the twins find a kitten? what if Max wants a job? what if her father dies? and then when you strike something that resonates, riff on that for a while… Oh, yeah, Max not only wants a job, he wants to be emancipated and move in with this girlfriend…)
Feel free to mention the project you’ll be working on in the comments. Saying it out loud keeps you more committed to it.
Thanks to Julia at Piece of My Mind for this great idea… found poems from old diaries.
I’ve been digging through all our boxes that are about to be liberated from storage after a year. What a treasure chest of material. I dug out my very first diary, a little red thing with a lock.
The following are slightly altered lines from the diary that I wrote when I was 8 and 9 years old. I removed some words to form the haiku, but the messages have not been changed.
~~~
I am sick. I don’t
know yet but I might be get-
ting tongselitis.
I went off a slide
into a big pool and it
was over my head.
nothing romantic.
wanted to say, I’m in
multiplication now.
Chrissy talks to boys.
had no idea they could be
so interesting.
dear diary, a
boy in square dancing likes me.
I think he is nice.
the best day I ev-
er had is when I went to
Jennifer’s new house.
(six days later)
went to a wedding.
danced with the bride. was the
best day I ever had.
april 18, gave
the key to my diary
to jeannie libert
april 28,
got the key to my diary
back from jeannie
Kendal found a key
to a car. I stole some of
my dad’s cigarettes.
dear diary, I
like one of the boys at camp.
He is too short, though.
I ALSO have a Monday Poetry post on my OLD BLOG this week.
get some poety. join the TRAIN.
I found a found poem exercise that I want everyone to do. I am so going to look for my high school diaries (if I didn’t destroy them in some mad rampage).
Julia Smith over at A Piece of My Mind created a found poem from a diary entry she wrote when she was 15.
HERE’S the poem I ended up creating from this exercise.
I recently quit my 24/7 job so I could focus on my writing and create more balance in my life.
Today I am cleaning and packing, contemplating what to trash, recycle, give away… Baby and I are renovating the lower portion of our home and moving downstairs. We’ve been living upstairs with a friend for over a year in a house we all bought together.
Right now it is snowing and the power is out so baby doesn’t electrocute himself while untangling some wires downstairs. I’m cleaning the upstairs bathroom by candlelight.
I only want to take downstairs what we need and/or want to bring into our new sacred space. We are creating a home, a place for us to work and play. I told Baby it would be our Zen Den of Love.
In the theme of letting go of the old and creating space for the new, I am challenging myself this weekend to let go of something precious. Throw it out, recycle it, give it away. The more precious the better.
When I moved to Vancouver from Seattle I gave away my favourite statue. A bronze and gold Buddha from Thailand. I gave it to a young kid who bought all my vinyl albums at our garage sale, including Free to be You and Me, that old childhood staple of the 70’s. Within a matter of minutes, all my records were gone and this object-reminder of my trip to Asia.
There’s something about releasing objects I’ve been holding onto. In Pronoia, Rob Brezny talks of the high he felt after tossing one of his most beloved talismans into the speeding jaguar of a woman who had just pissed him off on the freeway. He’s one up on me… I gave the kid my statue cuz I liked him.
In any case, as I clean and pack, I will ditch something precious and write that experience in my journal for my weekend workout.