Heads Up, Writers!

Heads up, Writers! 

It’s time to save the world! We need a Charles Dickens, to show us what the census numbers really look like walking; we need a Thomas Paine to tell us just what might really work; we need a Rachel Carson to bring us to our senses; we need a Martin Luther, to bring us back to God.

We’ve had plenty of minor players.  Who’s going to write the story that brings us fully back to center?

People who are great in their various professions, skills, and callings think profoundly but narrowly.

Only writers think of all the connections and the what-ifs; and some of you must wrap your imaginations around all our ideas, events, and characters, and write the words that will save the world.

You know who you are.  Heads up!

Writers Forum Find Your Muse #10 - Holiday Disaster

For this week's Writers Forum I am again attempting to hone my skills at writing fiction:

 

Saturday, December 16, 1972

Dear Carole,

          I have so much to tell you!  Every day I ask God why you had to move away just when school is getting good.  We aren’t the shrimpy little 7^th graders any more.  Yay!   The boys at school are so dumb but I met a freshman from the high school yesterday and he is so cool.  I hope he asks me out.  Of course, Mom and Dad probably won’t let me go out until I’m 20 years old or something.  I don’t care.  He is soooo dreamy, and his name is Nate, and I am sure that some day I will marry him.

          Oh!  I suppose you want to know how I met Nate?  Well, Mr. Harquin, my English teacher, asked me to take a note over to the high school office yesterday morning.  I had to wait for Mrs. Shoreby to get off the phone when I got there.  This very cute boy was waiting right in front of me, and he smiled at me, and he even talked to me.  I am just in heaven ever since.  I hope he sees me again and asks me for my phone number.

          Last night we had to go to Rita’s dumb wedding.  I didn’t tell you she was getting married, did I?  Ha ha.  I know I didn’t tell you because nobody in the family even knew about it until Monday!  How dumb is that?  Rita just met this guy, and he is really strange, if you know what I mean.

          Rita still thinks her name is Gracie.  Rita used to be so cool when she first went to MSU, but ever since she thinks she found Jesus or something, she is like a zombie from the Twilight Zone.  Remember when my mom and grandma took us to Lansing last spring to see Rita?  She was still Rita then, but she was already talking kind of weird, don’t you think?

          If you wouldn’t have moved away in August, you would be able to see what I mean.  I didn’t get any letters from her for a long time.  Maybe I did, but Mom and Dad hid them.  They say Rita is “subversive.”  Isn’t that romantic?

          Well anyway, she came home all of a sudden in September, but then she’s no sooner home and Mom tells her she had better go stay with Grandma so she won’t be a bad influence on little Judy.  Mom heard Rita telling Judy some of her strange “end of the world” ideas, is why she sent her to Grandma’s house.

          Oh!  Speaking of Mom, she is calling me to set the table for supper, so I will be right back.

          Well, I’m back.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, Rita/Grace.  They made her pick a new name in that group she lived with.  Mom made us watch a show on channel 8 about cults so we would understand.  Rita’s biggest worry from what I could tell was that America was going to end on Election Day.  Rita was staying with Grandma, and she could have voted for the first time this year, but she didn’t even vote.  She was too worried about the end of the world.

          When the world didn’t end, she went and found a new group of people in downtown G.R. to live with.  She likes communes, I guess.  Maybe that’s romantic too.  I don’t know.

          Anyway, she moved there just before Thanksgiving, and she handed out food to poor people on Thanksgiving and didn’t even come to Grandma’s house.  I think Grandma told her not to come, because my mom gets so irate every time she sees Rita.

          Well last Monday out of the blue Rita calls home from her new church place, and she wants to come over, and we missed Glen Campbell on TV to meet this guy God told her to marry.  I think he was a hippy out in California before he found Jesus.  I think he still smokes loco weed.  He has creepy eyes.  He looks like he is lost in space, if you ask me.

          Well, they got married last night, and it was a weird wedding, and now they are off on a honeymoon in a car somebody loaned them.

          So that brings you up to date on life here in Wyoming.  J.V. basketball starts in a few more weeks, and I think I will go to all the games just in case Nate is on the team.

          Don’t forget to play Daydream Believer every night before you go to bed, and remember me.  I am pining away for next summer when I can come and see you or you can come and see me.

          Rita and her new husband will be home from the honeymoon in time to come here for Christmas, and that is going to be a disaster – I just know it.

          Write me back as soon as you get this.  Maybe I will send you a picture of Rita and the creep, as soon as Dad develops the film.  Ta ta for now!

Love,

 Sherri

Writer's Forum Find Your Muse #9 'Language Barrier'

"Lost in the Scenery"

Drat!  Now this is EXACTLY why I won't let myself imagine in color:  Because I ALWAYS get lost in the scenery if I do.  I have absolutely no sense of time.  I am "directionally challenged" in my home town.  So what am I gonna do now?  Just HAD TO gaze into that painting, didn't you, girl?

I'm in Rome.  I was in the Sistine Chapel with a tour group.  Why did I let Joyce talk me into coming on this tour?  I NEVER go on tours.  Joyce is so dang visual.  Joyce is so into experiences.  Joyce is so gregarious.  Yeah, and Joyce is off with the rest of the tour, because she can see things and remain connected to reality.  Not me, though.  Oh no.

In the sixties they started calling this phenomena "tripping out."  Mom and Dad just called it "day dreaming."  "Earth to Rani," is what my sister Vickie would say.  Yeah, well, earth (or the part of it I'm familiar with) just walked away and boarded the bus without me.  Yeah, I don't just get lost in the scenery in my imagination.  Oh no, I'm more lost than that.   I am a wall flower.  Absolutely forgettable.  I am so quiet, nobody notices me.

Yeah, they probably said "last call" or something.  But I was reading Michelangelo's mind.  I was living in his world.  So now how do I get back to my hotel before they all head back to America without me, for crying out loud?

"He is a foreign man.  He is surrounded by the sound, sound.  Angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity.  I said hey, hallelujah!"  Paul Simon.  I love Paul Simon.  What would Paul Simon do?  He travels all over creation, and he's a poet.  THINK, Rani!

I need to ask somebody how to get back there.  NO!  I need to beg somebody to GUIDE me back there.  Or I need a map.  In English.  Okay, now what am I going to do.  Think!  Think!

Hello ... does anyone here speak English?  No.  Well how about this one then, Parlez-vous Francais? 

Yeah, like that will help if somebody says, "Oui, je parle francais."

When I was foster-mom to Than and his English wasn't so good, I tried to remember my French, because he'd told me he'd learned French in school in VietNam.  But my schoolgirl French and his schoolboy French didn't sound the same, so THAT didn't work.  I had wanted to impress upon him some concept, and I just could not find the English words he knew to do it. 

Oh!  I remember!  Finally I found something along those lines in my Bible, and then copied the same chapter and verse out of HIS Vietnamese Bible.  I don't remember if that worked, though. 

But what the heck!

Bibles, Bibles, this is a CHAPEL for crying out loud.  Do they have any Bibles here in Italian?  More importantly than that, is there ANY dang verse in the Bible that says, "I am from America and I am lost.  I do not even remember the name of my hotel, let alone the street it is on."  Obviously THAT is not in the Bible.  So pointing to a verse in an Italian Bible and using that to express myself is NOT going to help me out of this situation.

Yeah, well, quit thinking about that.

Universal language.  Music is the universal language.  Yeah, but not all songs are universal.  What songs do I know in English that your average Roman is going to know in Italian?  Think!  Think!

Pavarotti is the only Italian singer I know.  No, wait, Placido Domingo.  And he sang a few in English: "Perhaps love is like a resting place, a shelter from the storm ..."  SHELTER!  Where is my shelter in this foreign land?  And WHY isn't my group coming back in search of me?

"Stop and stare.  I think I'm moving but I go nowhere ..."  Now WHY am I hearing that song by One Republic in my head?

No, wait!  That isn't a song in my head.  That is the ring tone on my cell phone!  Cell phone!  Answer it!

My son!  Back at home in the USA!  Hi, honey; how ya doin'? ... Oh, ... Well did you look in the study?  Yeah, under Dad's desk, in that little drawer thing.  Say, listen, do you have your computer fired up?  ... Good.  Listen, honey, could you do a Google Earth for me?  ... Yeah.  See if you can find the Sistine Chapel in Rome.  ... Okay, I'll wait.  ... You've got it?  Great!  Now could you look on my desk next to the calendar for the copy of the itinerary of this tour I'm on and see what the name of my hotel is supposed to be? ... You found it?  Great!  ... No, I don't need to know the name of it.  Just do a Google map for me of the directions from the Sistine Chapel to that hotel, and then STAY on the phone and talk me back there. ... Yeah, I know.  Just help me, okay?  STOP laughing and start Googling.  Thank you!

Fiction by Rani Kaye - All Rights Reserved

Notes to Self

Go look at this week's Picture Perfect entries when you get some time.

If you want to hear Luciano Pavarotti or Placido Domingo, go to Vinster's videos.

See what the CC challenge is on Bill's page.

Try to read some more of those De Maupassant short stories, because they might be good for the writer in you, even if you don't like the endings.

I'm Yours

Before the cool done run out I'll be giving it my bestest
And nothing's gonna stop me but divine intervention
I guess that it's again my turn
To win some, or learn some

So I won't hesitate
No more, no more
This is our fate
I'm yours

-- Jason Mraz

OKAY, I will write the story, if YOU will watch the video!  It's posted in My Videos on my page!

Heard it on the radio ONCE, while driving in my car.  The lyrics grabbed me.  Hurried home to do a google search for the song.  I was lucky that the title turned out to be "I'm Yours" because the radio announcer did not give the name of the artist or the title of the song.

Now please, go hear this one.  I think you might like it.

Still trying to write "Fiction"

I got an email with the next Writer's Forum challenge just before I went to bed last night.  It will have to be fiction, because I have no life experience of this challenge to draw upon.  So I'm laying in bed last night trying to imagine myself in the situation required for the story.

My imagination is totally self-talk.  My imagination is not even slightly visual.  And so, the story I wrote in my head was all words.  Had I been at the keyboard, I can type almost as fast as I can think, so the story would have appeared on my blog with the click of a mouse.

Today, I can remember what I wrote in my head last night.  And I suppose it may have been a good enough story.  But it is a story that I now am bored with.

I have until next Tuesday night to do a new one.  Next time, I guess I'll imagine another scenario, but this time I will do so at my keyboard.

So I learned something about myself, anyway.

And sorry if it seems like I am "teasing" here.  I did used to write fiction back in school.  But I wrote it at the typewriter, and never worked at it for very long.  I'd just type it out and hand it in and get my usual "A" and everybody would say how "creative" I am.

My creative writing teacher wrote in my yearbook, "To a girl who is creative to her very fingertips ... "

Well, apparently it is ONLY my fingertips.  Because if I am not at the keyboard, I can "write" it in my head, but once I've written it, I don't want it any more.  Unless it's poetry.  Poetry I keep.  Poetry is my soul.  Fiction is just my imagination, which I do not actually employ in my day-to-day life unless it is to rehearse possibilities or to try to solve a problem.

But I do enjoy reading fiction.  And I can see great value in fiction.  Because with fiction you can hide in plain sight, and spotlight a truism without seeming to be doing so.

Stay tuned for the story, I guess.

But I'm not going to think about it again until I feel inclined to actually write it.  Because in order to write it I will have to re-imagine.  And I do not particularly enjoy imagining.  I much prefer thinking, sorting, and looking for connections.

Taking a stab at fiction

Well, I started working on this around 1 p.m. today, and I had to be someplace else at 1:30, so I wrote it on a snatch of paper.

When I got home, (from the place I had to be at 1:30) I changed a couple of words, and then changed a couple of them back, and then I let it sit some.  (The snatch of paper, I mean.)

Then I came online and read some real fiction over at Writer's Forum.  Liked most of it, and admired the ones who can spin a tale out of wisps of imagination.

So I let my own muse play around with thoughts and characterizations in my head, while I chopped potatoes, cabbage, onions for boiled dinner for tonight.

Now I'm bored with the whole idea (I apparently was gifted with a boring muse), and I'm thinking like, "Crap (I say crap nowadays sometimes.  Learned it from my son.)  I don't feel like messing around with my so-called 'muse' -- it's so much plainer just to say what you want to say."

But I figured I'd type out my little piece of fiction.  I can type.  So here goes.  (Oh, I guess I should point out that this is only the opening couple of paragraphs to a potential short story.  I dang well do NOT wish to write a novel.  Just the occasional short story. ...  So that I can hide in plain sight, I guess.)

... Nope, never mind.  The dinner's almost boiled and my son will soon be home, and we will eat and then do stuff; and I'll either shred the piece of fiction, or tuck it in a notebook, or lay it on the counter, or type it out some other day, in some other blog, when nobody remembers that I am hiding in plain sight.

Writer's Forum Find Your Muse #8 'Secret Rendezvous'

A Shared Secret

My literary career began before I could read or write, and I suppose that Mother Goose may be partly to blame since I learned of rhyme and rhythm from the sing-song-y verses Mama read to me at bedtime.

It's the wanting to REMEMBER, though, that birthed the writer in my soul.  More specifically, it's the COMPENSATING for FORGETTING.

And it is as simple as this:  I often heard songs, I often heard poems, I often heard stories that I loved.  I loved to hear a well-told tale.  I loved to hear a lovely song.  I loved to repeat a well-turned phrase.

The stories my Mama read to me, she read over and over again; and I could remember every word.

The songs my grandpa taught me, he sang with me over and over again; and I could remember every word.

But there were OTHER songs.  There were OTHER stories.  I would hear them once.  I would want to tell them.  I could not remember the words.

I would try to sing a song I had heard.  (This was generally for my own amusement.  At that point I was a toddler, and for the time being, an "only" child.)  I would recall a phrase or two, but not the whole.  So I would think.  I would try to remember. I would wonder what comes next. "Now what word sounds like sky?" I would say to myself. 

Then I would sing, and just PRETEND my new verses were how the true song went. 

I needed to memorize my made-up verses as I went along, though.  So I would do two lines, and get them to rhyme, and then repeat them again and again before making up the next two.  Repetition like that is how my grandpa always taught new songs to me.

Sometimes I would remember almost nothing of the "real" song, and I mustneeds make up MANY verses, in order to go with all the notes.  It seems I could naturally remember the tune and how long the song should be, even if I heard it only once, but I couldn't memorize the words fast enough to keep them forever.  And I mustneeds keep them forever.  That I cannot tell you why, because I do not know.  I have simply always wanted words to be kept forever.

When I got older and went to school, I loved to share songs; but at first I continued to pretend these all were songs I'd learned somewhere.  I ashamedly hid the truth that I had "written" them myself.  At that young age, I somehow felt it was wrong of me to selfishly make up words just so I could teach myself to sing the pretty songs.

Eventually, however, when I was nine, a teacher found me out.  I had escalated my criminal behavior to include teaching my songs to a girlfriend whose daddy played guitar, and this little girl had a charming voice.  Her daddy had her sing for people, and she liked to do that. 

Our teacher played piano, and our whole class sang at the beginning of every school day.  My little entertainer girl friend volunteered to sing my songs in front of the class and dragged me up front with her to sing along.  I could carry a tune, and she could sing like an angel.  Our teacher loved music, and she encouraged us to perform this way every time my girlfriend said that she and Rani had a new song.

Without my knowledge, that teacher started writing down some of my words, and she gave typed-up copies of my "poems" (as she called them) to my mama at parent-teacher conferences. 

When my mama showed those "poems" to me, I was stunned to discover that it pleased my parent and my teacher that I was doing this dishonest thing of making up my own little stories and rhymes.

Well needless to say, my temperament being such as it was, I was all about pleasing the parent and the teacher; and heck, by that time I could make a rhyme out of anything, any time it struck my fancy to do so.

So that's my story
Each word is true
And I have remembered it here for you.

My girlfriend's name was Mary Lewis.  Her voice sounded just like Mary of "Peter, Paul and..."  I just this moment remembered her name.  The school was Malcolm, the town was Sault Ste. Marie.  Mary, if you're out there, write to me.  You moved away before I did, and I never knew what became of you.  I wonder if you knew that I was "making up" the songs.  I do not think I told you.