Poetry, Short Stories, and Realizations

A good friend just reminded me that today marks the beginning of Story-a-Day May–a challenge to write a story every day for a month. This comes on the heels, of course, of Poetry Month and Script Frenzy, a challenge to write 30 poems in a month and to write a script in a month, respectively.  And then, of course, there is my personal favorite, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the challenge to write a novel in a month, in November. This has me thinking that one could easily spend a whole year devoted purely to writing challenges, with all the “off-months” consumed with revising the frenzied outputs of April, May, and November.  In fact, I like this idea so much that I’m tempted to make this my “writing project” for 2012 (which is, incidentally, also the year that I’ll get married, which should give me plenty of material.)

As of now, I came in short of the April 30-poem challenge at 23 poems (respectable or measly, depending on your perspective). 24 if you count the one that LiveJournal deleted of its own volition.

Until November, I’m continuing to explore short forms. I realized recently why poetry and short stories are so difficult for me — it’s because my writing Kryptonite is endings. With these forms, the end is always looming within sight, even from the very first word. Perhaps my preference for novels doesn’t come just from the fact that I read more in that format, but because it allows me to procrastinate writing an ending, sometimes for years and/or for over a hundred thousand words. BUT shorter forms also mean that I get to revise sooner, which, for me, is the fun part.

I won’t be doing Story-a-Day May, but I WILL commit to finishing my short-story-in-progress this month.  Strange that that can feel like a bigger challenge than the 50,000 words demanded by NaNo!

Snow Days and Writing

Snow days are so good for writing.

Being snowed in today reminded me of living in Duluth, and the time I was snowed in my apartment for two days in a row. My room-mate was in India, missing the only blizzard we got that year. I was working on the novel I jokingly called “Go to Hell” because it was a companion novel to one that had the word “Heaven” in the title, and because it gave me so much trouble while I was writing it. But there was something about those snow days that kept driving me to the computer again and again to get those scenes down.

Today I finally collected my 30+ poems from November, pulling them from my paperjournal, my Pictojournal, my Livejournal, and even my program for the Call to Action conference. Now I need to cull the collection down to 10 – 20 pages (currently it’s 36, but I won’t be sorry to see some of those poems go.) Here are a few that I feel more comfortable showing in the light of day now that they’ve gone through a first revision:

Tower

Did I ever tell you how happy I was in that tower?
From there I saw blue water stretch out forever—
I thought the silver moon on the black lake
Was the essence of joy.

From there I saw blue water stretch out forever—
And a narrow bed is never lonely under a full moon.
Was the essence of joy
Lining up my shoes perfectly at the door?

And a narrow bed is never lonely under a full moon,
And no one ever kicks my shoes across the floor.
Lining up my shoes perfectly at the door,
I rearranged the furniture to fill the empty places.

And no one ever kicks my shoes across the floor
When the hours stretch before me like the water below
I rearrange the furniture to fill the empty places,
And I don’t wait at windows for you anymore.

When the hours stretch before me like the water below,
I thought the silver moon on the black lake
And I don’t wait at windows for you anymore.
Did I ever tell you how happy I was in that tower?
- Nov 5, 2010

Disturb the Dandelions

Did you hear what I said
as you glanced up at TVs and waiters?
This conversation
has been choking my brain
like dandelions overrunning the lawn.
I watched them grow as I watched you shrink.

She accused me of pulling out my hair,
dropping it in the breeze like dandelion fluff
just so she could make all
those nights of crying make sense
as I kept my secrets in the room upstairs.
We can open the door to that room tonight,
even if it says
Do Not Disturb.
- Nov 30, 2010

Up to My Eyeballs

My status over at gmail, which is where I keep my “freelance/writing” account, claims that I’m “up to my eyeballs in writing projects.”

And the end of the year certainly is a busy time for writers, but now that we’re on the last day of November, I’m finally able to tick some of those items off my list.

1. NaNoWriMo. No, I didn’t participate this year. But I did spy on my friends who were participating. How did you do? And when can I read your stories?
2. The McSweeny’s Highwire Fiction Award: This is a grant given to a woman younger than 32 to work on her writing. I sent my application off the week before Thanksgiving, and it wasn’t nearly as daunting as I expected it to be. The moral? Don’t ignore opportunities because they seem hard in your mind. Try it before you decide how “hard” it is.
3. The Gotham YA Novel Discovery Contest: This contest requires only the first 250 words and title of your novel, along with a $15 entry fee. I entered it last year, but the rules didn’t say anything about not being able to enter the same novel twice. So, I did. I’m sure the first 250 words are better this time around, anyway.
4. The PAD Chapbook Challenge: I wrote 30 poems in November, y’all! Although I’ve won NaNoWriMo 3 times, this is the first time I’ve successfully completed a poetry challenge. Now I’m putting them aside as I focus on December’s projects.

Numbers 1 – 4 above ALL have November 30 deadlines. What does that mean? If you read this post immediately after it goes up, there might still be time for you!!

Now that those writing adventures are behind me, I can focus on these, in deadline order:

1. Finishing the revision on my final chapter of the YA novel, in time to turn it over to my writers’ group on December 11th.
2. Frantically spit, polish, and shine said novel between December 17 (writers’ group) and December 31 (Delacorte Press First Young Adult Novel Contest deadline).
3. Turn my attention to this jumble of 30 poems and perform same treatment on them to send them off for the January 5 PAD Chapbook Challenge deadline.
4. Prepare a curriculum for Writing for Expression, Reflection, and Legacy, a writing class I’m teaching to senior citizens this spring.
5. And after the class ends in April? There appears to be . . . a void. For now. I can’t wait to see what fills it!

Poem #15, Writers Group, and a Meeting w/ a Publisher

Cats for a Day

Every morning I used to ask my cat,
“Why don’t we switch things up a bit?
This time, you go to work,
and I lay around all day.”

She blinked, chirped, walked away.
I grumbled about how some people
just don’t pull their own weight.

But do you remember the time
we decided to play cats-for-the-day?
More commonly known
as playing hooky.

You had the day off work
and I had a bit of an ache in my arms
and my period –
not enough to keep me home,
except that you looked so cozy
in your bed, goading me:
“You should do it. Call in sick
and hang out with me.”

For seven years we shared small spaces
cheered each other up onto our soap boxes
had conversations in broken Spanish
played guitars and cards at the kitchen table.
Even then, I knew those nights of movies
and reading books aloud
were our glorious moments of stretching out
basking in the sun
just because it was there.
Two kittens dashed across
slippery tile floors
as two women lay on two sides
of the same wall
and reached out their voices
where their hands didn’t touch.
Except for the nights when talking
wasn’t enough and my body shook
and the tears came rushing down my face
as fast as you came rushing into my room.

But then one day, you wore an expensive white dress
and we had a big party
and that meant that it was time for you to share
small spaces with someone else,
curled up with him in bed just like
kittens curled up on the couch.

And so I have no regrets
about the half lie I once told
so that I could spend the day
beside you on a scratchy green couch.
Not an ounce of guilt
for when we finally gave in
to our desire to be
cats for a day.

I think I can officially count myself “caught up” for that one missing poem, since I technically wrote three poems on Saturday night, all of them about my childhood relationship with My Little Ponies (there was a My Little Pony pic that I used as a prompt in my Picto-Journal). Two of them were terrible, and really what just felt like a ‘warm-up’ for the third, which might actually be worth salvaging. But nobody ever said these poem-a-day creations had to be good! (If that were the case, I wouldn’t be able to count the dreadful six-liner I jotted out last night while my boyfriend was in the bathroom, but count it I did!!)

I met with my writers group tonight via webcam, which was an exciting change full of the suspense of wondering what-in-the-world-the-person-on-the-other-end-might-be-saying. Dropped connections, distorted voices, and frozen videos abound, but it was still really lovely to hear the voices and see the faces of my writing posse. They’ve promised to scope out better Internet possibilities. Technology could be so wonderful if only it would work!

I’ve been saving the best bit for last: I have a phone meeting on Friday with a publisher who is interested in an anthology of young, Catholic voices. I fielded his “fan-mail” to one of the Young Adult Catholics blog writers last week and decided to respond with a bit of a pitch. We had interest from a Catholic publisher over a year ago in doing a similar project, but his team decided our voices were just too dissident for their press. The press I’ll be talking with on Friday is much more comfortable with dissidence–and that’s the kind of press I like!

Poem #10: The Shirt Poem

The Shirt Poem

I. To my Dog

I cleaned out my closets today
and filled the backseat of my car
with boxes overflowing with shoes and jeans
and sweaters destined for others.
My apologies to my doggy –
there’s no room now
to take you for a ride.

II. To my Sisters

I said goodbye to a rainbow striped sweater
I tried to get rid of so many times before
Stretched, worn, at the bottom of the drawer
I never wore it.
Yet, my sisters both had the same sweater
and whenever I came close to giving it away
I felt like I was giving them away, too.
Until Jessica gave me a box of clothes
she didn’t want anymore, her rainbow
sweater lying at the bottom. It was
all I needed to finally say goodbye to
that sweater and the memory of standing
next to Krystl outside my dorm room,
matching, smiling, even though I
knew our matching smiles matching shirts
were just a facade to hide
the growing realization that we
were really not the same at all.
It was the scariest realization of my life.
The photo remains but the sweater and fear
are finally gone.

III. To my Mom

I kept the green sweater with gray leggings
because they all wanted me to wear it
that Christmas: “It’s so cute, and you’re
the only one thin enough for it.”
This is how I’ve acquired most of
my clothes. I’m 29 but my mom
still loves to dress me up like a doll,
not so very different from when I was
in second grade and would come
downstairs to find my clothes laid out
on my chair in the kitchen
(and perhaps that’s why to this day I
have no trouble stripping down
in the middle of kitchens.)
And I remember the morning
she laid out a Rainbow Brite shirt
with real yarn for Rainbow’s ponytail,
and I looked at it and thought,
“I don’t think I can wear this anymore.”
I was getting just too old at 8
and already it felt like a betrayal.
So when I was 21
I bought another Rainbow Brite
shirt — it’s still there, it made the cut and
wearing it is just fine.

IV. To my Love

I kept the sweater I wore on our first date
(and other first dates, too)
because I thought it made my lips
look kissable, even though I was quite
forthright about how I never kiss
on first dates. You were not an
exception. Not yet.

I kept the sweater from our second date
The nerdy one, the one I wore partly because
I thought nerdy might go over well with you
and partly because it didn’t make me look all that pretty
and I didn’t need you all that bad.

I almost said goodbye to the sweater from our third date
because I almost didn’t wear it that day at all.
Blue, plain, past its prime
but it was clean and at least
it made my eyes look bluer.
But that was the night you passed my test
and the night that I knew so little about you
but that I somehow still knew enough
to say yes.
And when you stood in my kitchen
at 1 o’clock in the morning,
you said, “I want to kiss you,”
and then, “You look great,”
and then, “I want to kiss you again.”
And all the while, I was coaching myself:
don’t pull away, just let yourself feel it.
Later, you told me that you tripped over
yourself on the way out to your car
because you were so happy that night.
And I woke up in the dark
for once my insides spinning with
joy
instead of panic.

Now I press the shirt to my lips,
because you aren’t here.
My mom drapes clothes around me
as if I’m a mannequin.
But you and this shirt
transformed me that January night
into something else, someone warm,
and worth kissing.

This doesn’t feel quite done yet, but it’s almost midnight and I need to go to bed. I didn’t get the various paperjournal poems pulled together and revised and compiled today as I intended to do, but I sent a proposal to a publisher, cleaned my house, did some work, updated my book reviews, and of course, cleaned out my closet, so I’m still feeling pretty pleased with myself.

November’s Ninth Poem

Pills and Purple-Striped Hat Boxes

My memories are packed away
in neat, purple-striped hat boxes.
She used to hold my hands
when my eyes were closed
and say, “Okay, time to get out
your hatbox.”

One morning I woke up with
my throat raw from memories
of a drive down country roads
I got out of bed, walked around
in circles, dug through my email
turned to Google trying to make
sense of this resurrected memory.
And when I couldn’t find my way
back to me, I threw the pills away instead

Now there’s a new pill that
erases traumatic memories
and no one will ever need
purple-striped hat boxes again.
The U.S. government wants
truckloads of it, so they can
give it to soldiers. Erase,
Send to War, Repeat. Without
a memory, there is no trauma.

Except the way that I still
wake up drenched in my sweat
in the middle of the night. Take
a deep breath, think of Jesus,
rise, robe, and rummage until
I find my hatbox and  pack everything
away where only my dreams,
or maybe some pills, can find it.

Is procrastination a sufficient writing goal?

I’m sorry to say that I haven’t touched my novel in about a week, but nor have I often had to write the dreaded word NONE on my writing spreadsheet every day. I’ve been keeping up better with the poem-a-day challenge better than I’ve ever been able to in the past. (Despite the fact that I’ve won NaNo three times, I’ve NEVER successfully completed a poem-a-day-for-one-month challenge. I came closest in April of 2009, mostly thanks to this blog, I think).

I think I’ve done so poorly with poetry challenges because I have this misconception that poetry is easier than prose. I mean, you don’t have to really worry about “what will happen” or “resolving” anything, right? But you do. You have to worry about it every single day, every single creation. So while it may not rely as heavily on ability to sustain long-term tension, I can’t pretend the need for a good beginning, middle, and end aren’t there. I’m also reading The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry because it was the most enticing, current anthology I found at the library. And what do you know? Just as I suspected, reading poetry DOES help in writing poetry. I AM one day behind on my poems, by the way, because I was too exhausted after a sleep-deprived weekend and 9-ish hour drive back from the CTA conference last weekend. But it was all worth it, and my latest entry at the Young Adult Catholics blog explains why. [AND tomorrow I will be revising the poems I managed to squeeze in the other two days of the conference, along with some other poems from this project scattered amongst various paperjournals. Hopefully I'll be posting something here.]

I’ve also been hoarding all sorts of neat writing links and discussions hoping to reflect on them here, but, I do worry about this blog’s ability to distract me from the novel that needs to be finished soon. Still, November is like an all-you-can-eat-buffet for writers, with excess writing tips and discussion everywhere. And it’s hard not to fill myself up to the brim with it all, and then pass it on to the audience of this humble blog as well. Who knew NaNoWriMo could still consume so much of my time even when I’m not participating? Still, I did pull together a write-in for teen NaNo-ers (and other teen writers) at the library next week, and I can’t wait. It may be the perfect stretch of time for me to finish draft three of ETD at last (and it may also be the perfect excuse to keep procrastinating whipping that last chapter into shape until then!)

NaNo Congrats, Writing Advice from a 12-year-old, And Poem #3

I’m pleased to announce that all the friends I’m spying — er, cheering — on at NaNoWriMo now have words to their names. Yay!! The public guilting shall abate for a time.

This morning I programmed this article to run on the homepage of NewMoon.com. Check it out — this 12-year-old will cut through all your wimpy excuses for not writing (I don’t have time, I’m not a good speller, my grammar sucks, etc.)!

And, here’s my poetry attempt from last night, using the help of my picto-journal:

Religious though he is, even he can see the

hyporcrisy of praying to the Lord Almighty

when no one has a prayer

left anyway. They mostly all

turned away the summer the

war tanks rolled over the

many fields so pains-takingly planted that spring,

taking away the one thing that had

always made them trust in the

Goodness of the Lord,

from whom came the soil, the rain, the growth.

“Too much sin,” proclaimed the preacher.

“God has his reasons,” the old women’s voices murmur

as they rock on front porches

just as they’d said when Baby Dawn was born

with her parts all in the wrong places

when Mary’s husband left for groceries

and never came back

when Nyla’s son got so drunk

that he didn’t think to check for the train.

This is bigger, perhaps, but no different

makes no more sense,

so they clack rosary beads between their fingers

which tremble from palsy

or explosions.

The image was from some religious publication — a pic of an old preacher in a black robe with a massive cross spreading his arms in prayer while a tank rolled over a field in the background and with an explosion in the distance. The caption said, “Religious hypocrisy has turned many away from God.” I used the words from the caption as the original “spine” of the poem, although I think the poem would be better off without them in later drafts.

Day 2, Poem 2

My friends still have 0 words on their NaNoWriMo‘s. Nooooooo!! (You may think I’m being over-dramatic, but I really do stress out about other people’s procrastination).

Today I put together a NaNoWriMo display at the library, and when I went to the site to download the graphics, I felt this ache in my heart not to be updating my word count. Last year I had Europe to distract me through November. But this November, I’m daily fighting the temptation to throw the rest of my life and projects away for a while and plunge in, just for that wonderful sense of accomplishment you get when you update your word count every day (I mean at least there, those words do mean SOMETHING, even if it takes you two years to untangle the mess you made of them).

I did feel a nice sense of accomplishment while working on ETD tonight; I reworked what’s essentially the “emotional climax” of the novel so that it resonates more deeply and ties into the rest of the novel better as well. I even discovered a few new connections. That means I only have one chapter left to revise, but it’s going to need some pretty big revisions just to make the logistics of it work. It’s a bummer to have logistics get in the way because I do like the last chapter pretty much the way it is. But unless children start going to school 7 days a week, I’ll need to do some tweaking. (This stuff didn’t even exist in draft one, and draft two was created over MANY long months — so many long months that I lost track of things like how many days in a row the main character was going to school. Oops.)

I wrote my first poem based on a LiveJournal prompt tonight! Here it is, November’s 2nd Poem:

She says if I saw it today
I’d think it was funny.
But all I can remember
is a gray-faced girl
with blood in the bathtub,
eyes and ears and tongues
mutilated to corn-hash mush.
See No Evil
Hear No Evil
Speak No Evil

Like the three monkeys,
we were three little girls
and one unexpected boy
huddled together
in one big bed
With screams from the living room,
our eyes closed tight
was not enough to save us.

When I sit beside you on the couch
you confirm what I remember:
This was never funny
You grew up listening to
the noises in crumbling walls,
and made ghosts your only fear.
Three little girls again,
and you the unexpected boy –
well, your parents only wanted one.
And after that, you knew what happened
to your brother.

You know it’s not funny
but you find a way to laugh away fear
and that’s why I crawl into bed with you
and imagine myself brave after all
burrow into your neck
to see no evil
hear no evil
speak no evil

NaNo-ers, My Heart is With You!

The badges are so pretty this year!

Well, it’s here! For writers and would-be writers everywhere, this is the day you’ve been waiting for. November 1st, the official start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Well do I remember the joys, the sorrows, the euphoria, the stress, the comraderie! of this month of exuberant, frantic writing. And although I’m not participating this year, I am hoping to do all I can to support those who are: I created a NaNoWriMo page for the girls at NewMoon.com (which will also be featuring writing tips on the homepage all month long), I’m using my adult power and influence to pressure teens at the library to participate, and I’m planning to spy on and harass my friends who are participating (0 words so far, for shame!! If you’re participating and would like me to harass you, leave a comment with your NaNo username below — mine is sedeara.)

I certainly won’t be slacking on my writing this November, though! Besides asking my friends and associates, “Are you writing? Are you writing? Are you writing?”, I’ll also be:

1. Writing poetry every day for the PAD Chapbook Challenge. Poetry is not my strong suit due to the fact that I don’t read a lot of poetry, so I’ll be doing that this month, too. I intend to rely heavily on my Picto-Journal for inspiration (I’ll be adding some new pics to it tonight). I also plan to convert the daily “writers block” prompts over at LiveJournal as poetry prompts. And, I hope to bust out the guitar for the first time in 11 months and try to write a song for the first time in 4 (yikes!) years. And of course, I can’t forget magnetic poetry! I hope to share some of my efforts here.
2. Finishing the third draft of ETD, which is, incidentally, my NaNoWriMo project from 2008 (written just as I was starting this blog).
3. Attending the Call to Action national conference in Milwaukee. I write for CTA’s 20/30 (young adult) blog, with my most recent post being about the Biblical idea of “holding all things in common.” (Is it Communism? Socialism? Democracy?) I’m excited to hang out with the other bloggers in person again, to be traveling to the event with my best friend, and to hopefully be gaining some inspiration for upcoming blog posts.
4. Fantasizing about what I would be writing if I WERE doing NaNoWriMo this year. Lately, I’ve become very preoccupied with an idea I have for retelling Rapunzel. Thus, I dressed as Rapunzel for Halloween and have been listening a lot to a Rapunzel concept album a friend made for me. How fitting that Disney’s Tangled (which I’ve been looking forward to for years) also comes out this month!

Rapunzel dreams of having a life outside the tower

Enjoy all the wonderful writing November has to offer! I know I will!