Prompt # 30

My dreams were about writing process. I was writing with a young woman who kept stopping every two lines to cross things, out, scribble over words and line edit. She was frustrated and was sure she couldn't write. I remember saying  just keep going, you can edit later. She couldn't. She was terrified of getting it wrong. 

I am still terrified of getting it wrong. Years and years of practicing writing without stopping- from the days when my copy of Writing Down The Bones by  Natalie Goldberg was never far from my elbow  I still find myself stalling in the middle of a paragraph, wanting to go back to the beginning, wanting to start over. One of the things that helps me most when I get lost or tangled up while I'm writing and hating it, is an old prompt of *Jen's that I use often, unconsciously- what I really want to say is: or what I really want to tell you- once those words get written, I find that  the writing will change direction or find it's way. Sometimes none of those old, hard learned habits work and I still end up wandering on the page, with every word feeling painfully wrong. 

Sometimes I do get it wrong. The page feels full of stacked up words that are stiff like a cord of wood from different trees; having nothing in common except they all are wood. Sometimes all the words feel like empty printed on the page. Sometimes they run into each other instead of flowing together, the tenses are all out of alignment and nothing is right. Getting it wrong has to be okay. Risking being wrong, or dull or unclear has to be okay with new writing or I will never get to the good stuff. And no matter how wrong or crappy it reads to me when it's first done, if I set it aside for awhile (for me at least a month is best) I will pick it up and find almost always find something that isn't wrong. Even if it's just a single sentence, or three words that stack up beautifully and make something clear. Then I take what I want out and leave the rest. Sometimes I leave it all. That's okay too. 

Sometimes I get it all wrong, entirely wrong. The words don't capture what I want to say. The words don't carry my characters from my head to the page. The reader can't see them as I do- so clearly in my mind. But if I don't muddle it through the first time I'll never get to the second time. For me, it's both scary and necessary to show up to the page while risking being completely wrong. 

Growing up, being wrong was not an option unless it was a pre-designated role. Perfection was expected and sometimes the very definition of a tolerable day. Not being perfect was not a viable option. Perfectionism has it's uses but often just gets in my damn way. Perfectionism comes in really handy for the final edit. It doesn't serve me in the first writing. It doesn't help me do these prompts. This is new writing each day, complete with misshapen metaphors, missing commas and typos. If I waited till it was perfect there would be a prompt a week or a prompt a month or perhaps, no prompt at all. 

I'm still learning at 52 to let go of perfect in order to find that one vein where the blood is flowing freely and will fill up those plastic tubes at the blood work lab. When it's the right vein it the blood just pours out into that tiny tubing that carries it to it's destination. They've always reminded me of ballpoint pen innards with blood for ink.  When the vein is missed you end up with an arm full of holes and a grim faced phlebotomist fishing with a needle, uncertainly hoping to hit a good vein. I have tiny veins that are hard to find. I always apologize for this as if I hid them on purpose. 

I"ve noticed that the best phlebotomists feel for the vein with their fingers, looking away, or closing their eyes, nod to themselves as they find it and put the needle in without hesitation. They almost always get it on the first try and if they don't, they don't throw me out or give up or think they've gotten it all wrong. They just say, not that one. And they do it again. Never fishing. Always trusting their fingers and knowledge that they know how to do this work, they know how to get the needle into the vein. 

I admire and appreciate them. I hate being full of holes. I want to be like them in my writing. Trust that I know how to do this work and sometimes I may miss the vein. Sometimes I will be completely wrong but I need to keep going. I need to risk getting it all wrong in order to write, to get the good, free flowing words. Also, sometimes, what feels totally wrong will take me to an unexpected place in writing and surprises in writing are almost always good, even if they don't make it to the final draft. 

______

She knew she got it wrong...or... I got it all wrong

***

This is what risk feels like....or... I risk everything to (or when) 

****

Here is where to find it...or...here is where she found it 

****

This is how it is supposed to be...or...this is not how it's supposed to be 

***

If none of these work for you follow your writing where it wants to go. Start anywhere, it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be a certain way. It's your writing and belongs wholly to you. 

I hope this coming day is good to you and your writing selves. 

* Jen= Jen Cross, Bay Area Writing facilitator. If you haven't had the chance to write with her yet- you should have that experience. As soon as possible. 

Prompt # 29

Today's prompting has been slow for me. Mornings like these, I really miss coffee; strong dark coffee with good cream. I had to give it up but I'll miss it forever. It used to be a huge part of my life. I woke up with coffee, had it on my work breaks, in between jobs when I had more than one and sometimes when my insomniac brain just gave up on sleep at three in the morning. Those were good writing mornings, hot coffee in my hand, the world still asleep and my pen ready for  the page or my fingers itching for  the typewriter keys that would decimate the silence. 

Over the years I've had automatic coffee machines, a beautiful glass and wood Chemex  coffee maker and a french press. I made coffee with paper towels when I ran out of filters, and with a small little red plastic filter holder when I ran out of machines. I still have a one cup, silver stove top, espresso maker that was a gift from a woman who once took me on a four day road trip, in a yellow mustang convertible, to a tiny beautiful little cottage right on private beach, with a hot tub on the deck. It was my first vacation as an adult, at forty something, and I'll never forget how it felt to be in that car headed up highway 101, top down, music playing and that moment when we were driving through a highway that was so full of trees it was like a canopy when I looked up. I remember kneeling on the seat, my hands stretched up to the sky as if to touch those trees as we drove through the underneath. I remember driving way too fast and not caring, I remember stopping at a little store and the rainbow bandanna she got me for my long hair that was flying everywhere in the wind we made as we sped up the highway.    

Our mornings began with her coffee ritual. She brought her own beans from Seattle, and made espresso, using a little silver pot on the stove. I never did understand why it took so long, but she was like a zen master about her coffee. She didn't like any chatter. She liked to focus completely on the grinding of the beans, the careful tamping down, the water, the wait for the boil and then there was still more waiting while the aroma of the espresso, got thick and rich in the air. Then she would pour it with agonizing slowness and then swirl a little bit of heavy cream in. The cups were tiny and the color of the coffee beans on the outside and creamy white on the inside. She handed me that cup as if it were a fragile piece of spun glass. That was the best tiny cup of  coffee I've ever had. That intricate process was so slow it changed the quality of the morning. Time seemed to slow with the waiting, the quiet and the sipping. I remember her grin as she watched my face as I took the first sip. I've never managed to replicate that coffee. I've never had better. I don't know if it was just her skill and focused process or the fact that while waiting, I could hear the waves hitting the beach, see the ocean stretched out and out and feel the quiet of her concentration. She would insist that it was the Seattle coffee beans and her skill. She was smug about both. 

How can you not fall in love with a woman who makes you the perfect cup of coffee? How can you not love the women you bring coffee to, with or without sugar or cream, or with three ice cubes in it because she takes it black? 

Do you have a ritual with coffee or tea? Do you have memories associated with the smell of coffee or the taste of coffee? Does your character? Or is it tea, from a bag, a mixture of herbs or what my son would call real tea, that he orders from Upton and carefully steeps in a white tea pot till it is perfect and fills the apartment with a lighter and more complicated smell than coffee. He makes a good cup of tea. 

My character, Slo, makes his coffee with a Chemex, with good beans he buys in town. When his coffee is ready he adds sugar and cream (though he wishes he liked it black like all the men in his family do) and he sits outside his beat up white trailer and drinks it there, sitting on an old, brown straight baked chair and he looks out at the land he watches over and misses his wife. 

If you think of the smell of coffee brewing what comes up for you? 

When you think of morning rituals for you or a character what comes to mind? 

You could start there. 

Or 

I remember...or...the last thing she remembers...

***

She woke up that morning, to the smell or sound of ...

****

This is what that coffee tasted like  ..... or.... the sound of the coffee pot shattering....

****

She hated waking up hungry...or...there was never enough...

****

If all this coffee business is not doing it for you think of other things that you or a character drink. Is it tomato juice, ice cold vodka, iced tea?  What does the glass or mug or bottle look like. What does the hand holding the glass look like. 

As always turn it around till it suits you. Write to anything that comes to mind. Just begin and see what happens next. 

I hope your day started with something you like to drink or taste and that this is a good writing day. 

Prompt # 28

Last night I slept in a bed. A simple thing but after three years of sleeping in a chair and waking up constantly in the night, to shake out stiff limbs and wrestle that small upright space with a cat- this is a miracle. The cat thinks so too. He's curled up on the end of the bed, and I'm sitting on it, cross legged, typing to you now. This is a bed that belonged to a writer and a friend and so it is full of writer dreams. It belongs to my collection of talismans now, another little bit of writer magic. I have a collection of visible and invisible talismans, bits of inspiration and things that I have around me that remind me to write. I have rocks and seashells, pictures and post cards, There is the post card from years ago with a picture of the members of Dirty Ink- A Dyke Writing Collaborative with the words Fist. Muscle. Bone next to our picture. I look at it and remember. I  remember  how we came up with that name for the performance. I remember the stories we wrote and read. I can see and touch it and remember:. It happened then, there was writing and performing. It can happen again.

My talismans are always with me, even if I can't see them and they are part of what I hold on to, those things, or people that remind me just who I am and what I do. I need that reminding, those good luck charms, that magic, often. I use them when the doubts come, as they did this morning when I woke up wondering if this book is going to work as one book or if I need to peel it down and turn it into two. I count on all this magic when I get stuck like today looking at the moment of prompt writing and feeling a panic as not a single word came to mind. I live with the fear that the writing will disappear at any moment. I don't know if all writers know this fear. I only know that it is a constant, as constant as the certainty that I write, that I will write, that it belongs to me. Both ends of the same stick that I hold in sweaty hungry hands. Writer. Not writer. So far I am finding that if I show up to the page so do the words though sometimes it feels like writing through molasses or as J said yesterday, like digging in gravel. Hunting for the words. 

Merriam- Webster defines Talisman as

1. : an object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune

2  : something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects

Do you or a character have a talisman? Are there objects you hold sacred? A rosary, a river rock, a lock of hair, an old locket? 

Write to an object that holds meaning for you or a character. You can imagine one if there isn't one already coming to mind. 

or 

Imagine opening an old, cracked cigar box resting on a table. What's inside? 

***

If that doesn't work, switch it around. Maybe there is something you or a character doesn't have but longs for: a red dress hanging in a store window, a beautiful pearl handled knife in a pawn shop, a set of oil paints at an art store. What is that longing like? What is it like to want something you can't have- an object, a memory of what didn't happen, a person. 

Write for ten minutes today if you can or longer. Write in sentences or fragments or single words. Just write. 

I hope this day is good to you and your wishes,  your writing, your art. 

Prompt # 27

This is the short and easy prompt (for the prompter)- the last part of the weekend prompt. My brain is sluggish and the only thing I know in this moment is that my cat is restless, the green tea feels good on my sore throat and that I am finding poetry in unexpected places. 

Flight of the Dragonflies

I am a turtle
Watching the dragonflies.
I look at my surroundings and I am in
A crazy play I see
Couch springs that are red, blue, and black
Flying through the air.
I see dragonflies with
Colors I cannot describe,
I hear thunder and a drum

Beating. The ground is muddy and smells like
Rain, but it is silky and feels like
Velvet. A dragonfly
Lands on my shell
Although I am in a
Crazy place
I am happy
Where I am.

Mercedes Madrid
Lawrence Intermediate School

Dragonfly... a drum beating, the improbable couch springs- red, blue and black. Anything that calls to you there? 

Or some borrowed fragments from Pablo Neruda's If you forget me: 

I want you to know one thing...

***

You know how this is:

****

If I touch near the fire...

****

and one from me: 

It's never the same after...

Write for ten minutes or more or none. Draw or paint or read instead. 

I hope this Sunday is good to you and your writing self. Is it a day of rest from words? The Sunday Paper? A walk? It's all material for dreaming, for writing. 

Prompt # 26

I woke up hot and cold at the same time. My throat feels sandpapered and my skin hurts a little. Fever. I kind of like fevers if I don't have to try and walk far with one. I like that feeling of thick dreamy resting, eyes closed under the covers till I can't stand it anymore then feeling the air on my hot skin. Fever dreams- I love a strange surreal fever dream. Maybe this means I should have taken that acid and those mushrooms my friends all tried to get me to take when I was young but I always said my brain is hallucinogenic all on it's own- I didn't need the help. 

I dreamed i was a hothouse flower. I'd like to have been a delicate paper thin orchard with purple and green patterning against pale white with a long delicate stamen. Instead, I was a short sturdy cactus, rough skinned and prickly with garish orange flowers. 

It should have been a dry desert dream. Instead of taking place in a sealed up garden with the glass walls and that airless wet feeling of controlled humidity. It felt too small, even for a short cactus like me. I was trapped in someone's inside place and I just wanted to be outside again.  

I love those desert dreams. Where it's sandy and dry and very hot even though I a fog loving woman, a rainy day child who loves inclement weather. Too much sun makes me oddly cranky and difficult. My writing always shows up best in the rain. But in my dreams the desert is my home. I like the colors, especially if I'm in red rock country. I like the sleepy days spent hunting shade I like the lizards and snakes. I love the black clear desert nights and I love the relief of the temperature dropping. Sometimes I am a lizard skittering green. Sometimes I am a snake with beautiful black and gold skin and venom to protect me. Sometimes I am just bones rattling in the dry sand wind.

What places do your dreams take you waking or sleeping. Do you ever dream you are an animal or plant or someone completely different?

You might picture a place of extreme weather. You may have been there or just imagined it or seen it on television. It could be hot or cold, real or fictioned like another planet in the future or this one in an ice age. What does it feel like there?  If you are in a dwelling what do you see from the window or door. Or maybe you just sleep on the ground. Does your character have two legs or four. What are the smells? Is there a tea kettle or coffee pot? Water canteen or watering hole?

***

Standing at the window she could see... or... from the ground I see...

***
The heat...or The cold... made us want...

***
Where did you go last night? or She had to leave this place. 

***
He needed, more than anything... or... she threw it all out or he threw it at or they threw it on

So yes fevered prompts for you today. Does anything catch your eye? If it's all too much weather for you pick a concrete thing you can see from your chair and start from that image- the handle of your coffee cup. The ceiling crack. The plant on the table. The garlic bulb. Or see what is waiting for you on the page. I love the surprise of writing that is unexpected. 

Write till a timer goes off, or for ten minutes or until your stomach growls or the fever breaks. 

Thank you to everyone who has shared writing back with me- that is such a gift and my face goes all grin when I see I have writing in the in-box. Thank you all for writing, for bring your brave to the page every time you do it. 

May this day be good to you and your creative. 

Prompt # 25

I woke up with my head buzzing from my time yesterday talking and working on visual journals with my friend E. I am loving this process of making pages I will write in. The act of working in these pages is a little like waking dreaming. My characters show up with things to say. The images spark a different kind of thinking and allow things to shift and erupt and settle, alow me to puzzle
things out in a new way.

I had a strange remembering while working with images of when I was in high school and how I would compulsively cut out images and make intricate collages. 

When I was growing up there was no safe place to hide my writing. No matter where I hid it my mother would find it and destroy it, always leaving the remains for me to find. A pile of ashes or pages torn up into impossibly small piles. It didn't matter what the content was, my writing, the act of putting words on the page, threatened her. She used to destroy my art too by crumpling it up in a tight little ball.That art took a long time to make.  I started using other people's images, pictures from magazines and newspapers and and used them. I was languaging image.. Telling stories in code that she could not decipher. It did not threaten her. Soon my walls were covered with my own stories and wondering and desire- they were just built  in images I cut, changed, shaped as I wanted. 

I realized that  I was still writing. I just kept finding sneaky ways to do it. So this morning I am thinking about resilience and adaption and marveling at how strong we are. How we bend and change and language in our heads even if it's not safe to put words on the paper. I  am grateful. That I write. That this storying stayed with me. I am grateful for all the ways we can access our creative.

I think if  words were outlawed tomorrow, we would still find ways to write, to story, to speak even if we were never allowed to open our mouths. Writing is strong in us. Cave paintings and graffiti, the way some stones are arranged. It will out, one way or another. 

If you feel like it, you could settle someplace comfortable and just rest a minute. If you want to you can close your eyes or let your gaze un-focus. If you feel like it just take a moment and drift a little looking for images. You might see a color or colors. A memory or dream scrap. You might want to think about the natural world. What comes to mind?  A lake or body of water, a beach with a piece of drift wood, a hermit crab or colored beach glass. A dusty trail that leads where? Maybe it's cityscape. Tall buildings and traffic and the people walking down the sidewalk. Is it  faces? The face of a lover or a child or you or a character? It's all good material, even if nothing comes. If nothing arises what does that look like, feel like. Does nothing have a sound or taste?.

This might work or it might not or you might hate this sort of imagining. The good news is you get to not do any of it, or do some of it or turn it upside down or flip it sideways. You might take a walk instead and see what you see. Or turn the music up that you love best and listen. 

You can start there.You can start anywhere. You can just write. 
.
She only wrote in red ink ...or... She never wrote in...

****
They stole the only _____... or... I wanted to steal that_____
****
I want to show you something... or... look- here in my hands

****

My feet were already walking....or she didn't know where they were going 

****

Does any of this work for you? Is there an image or idea, a memory or a place that comes to mind? If not write where your pen wants to go. Sometimes I get suck and that's where I start. I'm stuck like glue to this stupid piece of paper...and if I keep going I find that words will show up. 

I hope this day is good to you and your writing, art or day dreaming. 

Prompt # 24

I woke up in a panic thinking about the book. This writing a novel is so different from a short story for me. A short story is familiar ground. I can see where I'm going more clearly and I get there faster.I know fairly soon if it's good enough and what it needs to be a better story.  A book is alien territory and there are just too many roads to go along. I feel a bit like a hyperactive child who has stepped into a favorite video game. I'm distracted by the sounds, the flashing lights and the jumping and falling and rolling. The colors are all too bright and I forget where I was going. 

I have too many characters. They are unpredictable and stubborn and do what they want. I'm at the point where I need to be making some sense of things and following certain story arcs and instead I feel dizzy, trying to figure out who to follow today. The characters in the truck on their way to get the knives from the old man's house ? The crows who are very busy and everywhere and nowhere all at once?  Or  the smaller characters, who should not be essential to the story but who are absolutely charming me. One of my favorites is Slo (short for slow eye)  who has a problem with anxiety and chronic hives. He is always itchy, awkward and is profoundly good. I like him too much. He is becoming more central to the story. I gave him a larger role. Something about those hives...

****

The itching wasn't the problem...or....the itching was the problem.  

***

She reached out with shaking hands to... or... Her hands couldn't keep a hold of.....

***

This story begins with.....or... this story ends with

****

This is a story about ... or... This is not a story about

***

Itchy

BY DAVID YEZZI

   Hard to reach, so you yank your clothes

getting at it—the button at your neck,

the knotted shoe. You snake your fingers in

until your nails possess the patch of skin

that’s eating you. And now you’re in the throes

of ecstasy, eyes lolling in your skull,

as if sensing the first time the joy one takes

                     in being purely animal.

             It’s so good to have a scratch,

though isn’t it a drag living like this,

jounced on a high wire of impulses,

every wish the same programmed response

to another signal passed from cell to cell,

amounting in the end to a distraction—

if truth be told—from rarer things, thoughts free

                     from the anchor-chain of self?

             For even the least sweetness, we

behave like the old man on the low wall

I saw outside the hospital today,

who had his hand inside his flannel shirt,

scratching at his chest, trancelike, agog,

his eyelids fluttering like butterflies

in a meadow of snowy Queen Anne’s lace.

                     I never saw him stop.

             Such root satisfaction is like

the dying desert legionnaire’s in films,

when he finds, against all odds, a water jug  

and, lifting it, delights to feel it heavy.

The score swells, his eyes relume. He tugs

the stopper out, then fills his mouth with sand.

Though, worse: we’ve seen the film; we know it’s sand;

                     we gulp it anyway.

Source: Poetry (March 2010).

Do any of these prompts capture your attention? A line from the poem appeal? I like the phrase root satisfaction- and I start to think about things more interesting than itching. 

If none of this works for you -what's the last thing you remember thinking before you fell asleep, or the first thing you though of upon waking. If you can't remember you can make it up. I remember falling asleep worrying about my story. I'd rather have fallen asleep thinking of the way she looked at me when we said hello for the first time. You get to do that. You get to bend things, shape them, make them your own. Write about anything you want to for however long you want. Or pick a line and write for ten minutes or twenty. 

Set a timer if that works for you I like a timer- right now I don't need one because I have story anxiety. I know exactly how much time I have to write before I get on a bus for someplace else today. 

I hope today is good to you and your creative selves and that none of you get itchy.