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Take Time

Yesterday, my cousin from Wisconsin and I drove to a lovely winery and had lunch outside. Lush greenery gave us a sense of peace. We relaxed, and when the food came, we really took time to enjoy each and every bite. It isn’t every day we do this, is it?

As you eat today, sit with a notebook and pen by your side. Describe every morsel you eat. What does the sensation feel like on your tongue? List words describing the taste, texture, and smell.

What does your body feel like after you’ve taken the bite? Note your surroundings and your mood.

On her trip to California, Mary has kept a travel journal, noting the details she is experiencing, bits of dialogue she hears, and her impressions of everything. What a treasure this will be a long time from now, when her memories fade. What a gift it will be if she decides to write an essay or a piece of fiction or a poem about this later.

Have you ever used a journal or a note to create a creative piece? Try it now.

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Paying attention

Writing Exercise: Take a pen and a notebook. Go to a public place. It could be a mall, a coffee shop, a train station, or a park.

Observe. Don’t stare, but watch for details. Jot down descriptions of what you see. Notice the specifics of characters and your setting. Listen for dialogue. What do your characters say and how do they say it? What do you think they are feeling at the time?

Later, highlight the details and characters you like best. Choose one. Create a “backstory” for this person. What is going on in his or her life? What does she want more than anything in the world? What does she fear? What will she do to get what she wants?

Create a story about your character.

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Write a Mystery

In a mystery, a change happens in the beginning of the book that propels the story forward.

What are the elements in a mystery? A crime, detective, witnesses, suspects. To have suspects you must have motives.

Clues may be physical and psychological. (Hey! A motive!) You can have a chase in your story, where the detective follows the suspect.
Mysteries are the most moral of all genres, because the criminal never wins.

***To make your mystery suspenseful, use short sentences for your exciting scenes.

You may use the “time-running out” idea. (Remember the scene with Dorothy locked away with the flying monkey? Every time the camera showed us the sand running through that glass, our heart quickened several beats . . .)

Put your sleuth in danger.
And the climax is the most dangerous of all. It could be a physical danger, or her reputation.

How to: Plot backwards. Find the solution to your mystery FIRST. Then decide which clues you will show your sleuth.

Plant a clue by burying it. Point your reader’s attention somewhere else. At the end of the story, the reader should be saying, “Gee whiz, now why didn’t I catch that clue?”

Choose one of these to get started:
1. Your story is set in a movie theater. Your main character has just bought a large popcorn and sits down to watch the movie.
2. Carnival music plays, and your main character buys a ticket to ride on the ferris wheel.
3. “Open wide,” says the dentist.
Your main character hears a scream. It isn’t from tooth pain . . .
4. Or use one of your own settings and ideas to write a mystery.

If you’d like to share the first few lines of your mystery story, place them on the comment section of this blog.
Or write in a title or two of your favorite mysteries.
A few of my favorite mystery authors include Dashiell Hammett, Mary Downing Hahn (ghost stories) and Joan Lowery Nixon.

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Ideas for Writing

From Fatima:
During the summer, I am going to write entries for some contests. But I have a really hard time thinking about what to write about. What should I do to get ideas of what to write about?

Great topic, Fatima. Hopefully, you will check here and scroll backwards. I’ve put some writing prompts, or story starters to help you begin. Here are some more:

1. Use a first line from any book you can find. Continue writing a NEW story.

2. You are an object. What happens to you? How do you feel?

3. Write a story using one of these first lines:
It’s not my fault that . . . .
If I had been born 100 years ago . . .

She sat by the door listening for . . .

4. Write an alphabet paragraph. Example: Aaron bought Carol diamonds.
Each . . .

5. Write a scene in five sentences. The last word in one sentence is the first word in the next.

6. Choose a picture from a magazine, newspaper, or art book. Use it as inspiration for a story or essay. (You can do this one over and over again and it’s very helpful to adult authors too. We use “people pictures” as sources for characters in our books.)

7. List as many different and exciting verbs as you can. Then make a list of strong nouns. Combine them to start a story.

8. Choose a wordless picture book that has been published. Create the text that could accompany the pictures.

9. Start a story. After you write a few paragraphs, trade stories with another person. Write the middle and the ending of the other person’s story. (You can do this online too. I once did this with a friend and each day we’d write another paragraph to the story, and then e-mail it to the other person. We had a ball!)

10. Create a unique character. What is her/his passion? List words that relate to that passion. (If the character likes to cook, list words like barbecue, bake, condiment, dash, fry, grease, grill, mash, pulp, sizzle, toast . . .) Come up with as many as you can. Sprinkle some of them throughout your story for “flavor” and humor. Also list metaphors. (as soft as . . .) Can you use any of your theme words to create a simile or metaphor to use in your story? (As soft as bread dough . . .)

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Drama and Emotion Captures Readers

What is the most dramatic moment of your life? Did you have an emotion so overwhelming that you could barely cope?

In your writing today or this weekend, use this as a motivation for a story or scene. First, write about it exactly as it happened to you. Slow-down-the-moment with details, description and your thoughts as it happened. Quicken the pace when there is action with active verbs, dialogue and fragments of sentences.

Next, use this idea but turn it into FICTION. Create an imaginary character. Have this event happen to him or her. How can you make it MORE dramatic? MORE suspenseful? Make it WORSE? Heighten the emotion for the reader? Add more conflict and make it more important to the main character.

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Play the Universe’s Writing Game

The Universe Speaks!

Play the Universe’s Writing Game by choosing any book you like. (Even the dictionary or a encyclopedia.) Close your eyes and open it to any random page. Point to a sentence, word or picture. Now, use that to form the basis for your writing project. It can become a theme, a character, a setting, a problem . . . you get the idea.

After you write awhile, you can open another book and find out what you should add to your story or poem by playing the Universe’s Writing Game again.
What does the universe have in store for you today?

Note: Read the San Francisco Chronicle’s Insight this Sunday. I have an essay in it regarding what happened to me at the mortuary when my father passed away.

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My Great-Grandmother Sophia

In the 1860’s in Baden-Baden Germany, when Sophia was in her twenties, her family was very sick with a disease called diptheria. Although now we have vaccines for this illness, none were available at that time. With an epidemic raging everywhere, it was nearly impossible to find a doctor to come to the home.

But their neighbor knew one. As as special favor to their family, he arranged for the doctor to pay the family a visit. After Sophia’s family got well, Sophia asked the neighbor what she could do to repay him.

“My brother lives in America. His wife just died leaving him six children. He needs a wife! Would you go to America and become his new bride?”

Leaving her homeland and her family forever, Sophia packed a large trunk and took a sister with her for America in 1866. She was twenty-five-years old. For six weeks, they traveled over the Atlantic Ocean and then on to Jefferson, Wisconsin to meet the man named Ludwig, who was to be her husband.

They married on April 24, 1866. He was eighteen years older than Sophia. Throughout their marriage they had three other children.

Writing Exercise: Do you have any stories within your family history you can discover and share? Interview a family relative. Find out information about your family tree. Which relatives were born where? Who was the first generation in America? Which countries did your ancestors come from? How did they come to America? Ask as many questions about what life was like. 1. Take good notes. 2. Tape record their answers. 3. Better yet . . . video tape their responses! This is VERY valuable for sentimental reasons, historical record, and for all of your creative projects now and in the future!

Questions you may want to ask: 1. What was life like back when you were a child? 2. What did you do for fun? 3. What was a typical summer day like? 4. What was a typical school day like? 5. Who was your favorite teacher and why? 6. What was the most memorable holiday or family outing? 7. What was the most sad day in your childhood? What happened? Recount that day, moment by moment if you can. 8. What was the happiest day? Recount that time, moment by moment. 9. Do you remember anything funny that ever happened to you or to a family member? 10. Did you have any pets? What did they look like? Act like? 11. What was a proud moment for you? 12. What did you used to play/pretend? 13. What did you want to be when you grew up? 14. What was your first job? Tell me about what that was like. 15. Did you ever go to the hospital? Share any experiences when you did or when you were sick.
******* You can also write about YOURSELF by answering these questions!******

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Squirrel Obstacle Course and Animal Mania

Every morning, I have a ritual. As I feed my dog, make breakfast, and “tidy the kitchen” as my English neighbor would say, I commune with nature. Does that mean I gaze with rapture upon mother nature?

No. I lie in wait with my ammunition, a 7-11-sized glass filled with water. As soon as SQUIRREL lands on one of two hanging bird feeders in the front yard, I in my old blue bathrobe fly out of the front door, with water glass in hand.

It usually takes at least two of these attempts before I actually douse SQUIRREL. Next, he’ll actually stay on the ground and eat the seeds there. But if I miss – – the battle rages on.

Later in the day, when I eat lunch, he’ll visit me from his perch on a tree over the deck and chatter non-stop, nagging me in what I’m sure is unmentionable language for a squirrel.

Perhaps I should set up this in my yard?

Writing Prompts: 1. Write in the voice of the squirrel. What happens when he discovers an obstacle course? 2. How does a squirrel plan to get his next meal? How will he outsmart the humans around him? 3. Write in a person’s point of view of someone driven absolutely crazy by a VERY intelligent squirrel or other animal. 4. Write about a squirrel on a school campus. What happens?

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Of death and humor

Last Friday, the most wonderful man passed away. He was on this earth for ninety years. Almost a century! Born in a Wisconsin farm house, with nine older brothers and sisters, he road in a horse-drawn sleigh, milked cows by hand, carried in wood for the stove, pumped water instead of turning on the faucet, attended a one-room school, and listened to the radio for entertainment.

He toiled long hours on the forty-nine-acre farm when his brothers and sisters got jobs . . . got married . . . joined the priesthood . . . or became a nun. He married a city girl, my mother, in 1949, and ten years later they sold the farm and moved to a small town. He worked as a painter and held other jobs in a factory for over forty years.

I never heard him complain once.

Dad was a quiet man. I was closer to my mother growing up, so when she passed away in 2002 and he moved to California to be near us, I knew it would be a new chapter in our lives.

It turned out to be an enormous gift. I got to know him on another level. For growing up an “old school” Catholic, he never fit the stereotype. I introduced a friend of mine to him once and I later told Dad that this friend was gay.

“Poor man,” he said.

I understood Dad’s meaning. Yes, it is difficult to live as a gay man in our society of unacceptance. However, Dad accepted him and loved him as he was.

Dad’s whole being radiated love. His hugs were the best! Ask any of my friends, often the receipents of those hugs. He held on tightly, as though he were infusing you with his energy. And of course, he was. You walked away feeling loved, happy, and joyful.

Dad had the most amazing sense of humor. Dry and quickly delivered, you’d miss it if you weren’t paying attention. And his laugh! Uproarious, the kind of laugh that proclaims it a GOOD THING to laugh!

So last Friday, when the call came unexpectedly, I first denied it. “Your father just passed away,” said the nurse.

I’m so in-tune to his every need, that I expected I’d have a warning. A buzzer would certainly go off in my head, right?

“No he didn’t,” I said back at her.
Pause.
“Liz, I was there.”

Oh. Right. Reality check.

When I appeared in his room, it wasn’t a big deal to see him. After all, as a Catholic of older parents, with lots of relatives, I’ve been to my share of funerals. I’ve seen so many dead bodies by now I can’t even estimate the number.

But somehow, when that body is your own parent, it’s different. I leaned over and kissed him and smoothed his hair. It hadn’t even been an hour, and he was already cold to the touch.

My friend, Cathy, was on her way. Why not get started? I began with taking down the multitude of 90th birthday cards and pictures that adorned his walls.
When she appeared, packing up his room at the nursing home went quickly. She took out the clothes in his closet and I began folding and piling.

“Uh, Liz,” Cathy looked down at the stack of clothes. They were all on top and around Dad’s feet and legs.
“Isn’t there something terribly WRONG with this?” she said.
“You think he’d mind?” I asked.
“No.”
“What do you think he’d do?” I asked.
“Laugh,” she said.
And we did.

Writing and Reading Exercises:

Sometimes we think of reading and writing HUMOR in a category all by itself. But really, is life like that? Just a day of all humor? Isn’t life a mixture of sad, happy, funny, tragic?

As you read some of the best books, the most wonderful scenes, note the way the authors handle emotions right along with humor. Sometimes life is filled with both.

Exercise: 1. Write a moment of sadness from your life. 2. Turn this moment of sadness into a moment in fiction. 3. What kind of humor can you add to it to lighten this moment? Sometimes a light touch helps with pacing too.

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When was the last time you received a real hand-written letter . . .

Ever hear of the old-fashioned tradition of pen pals?  My mother had one as a girl  in Minnesota in the early 1930s.  She wrote to her England friend through the depression, during World War II as she worked a job as a book-keeper that later requried SIX men to replace her (she received one-third of ONE man’s salary) and up until her 82nd year  . . . when she passed away.  Seventy years of friendship through hand-written letters, Christmas gifts, and even one tape recording of our family’s voices.

Today I treasure a hand-written letter in the mail from a friend or relative.  When was the last time you received one?  Wrote one?   It takes more thought and time than a dashed off e-mail and a push of the send button. 

Writing prompts:  1.  Write a note to a friend telling her/him of an experience you remember you’ve done together.  What was enjoyable about it?  Fun, funny, sad, memorable? 

2.  Write a letter to someone who hurt you recently. You don’t need to send it.  Say what’s in your heart.  Don’t speak of revenge and hate, but of the hurt in your soul.   Let it “sit” for several days and then revisit it.  Perhaps it can be used to mend your feelings or the relationship. 

3.  Write a letter from that person to YOU.  What would they say to you?

4.  Write a dialogue in the perfect world between the two of you.

5.  Write a letter to a character in a novel you have read.  What would you like to say to this person?

6.  Write a letter from one character in a novel of one book to another character in another book.  (Thanks to the College High School teacher’s student’s great idea!)

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