The poetry of it all….

Most of my posts have been about fiction - but this one is a shot out to all the poets out there!

I have written many poems - MANY. I have a drawer full of them. Some are handwritten, some typed, some in cd and thumb drive forms. There's my thick portfolio from my college "creative poetry" class, a notebook that was started when I was about 10 or 11, another from what I label "the darker days" in high school. Again. Many!

I don't write as many poems these days, mostly because my head is lost in the clouds of fiction flying from the recesses of my mind. However, I still do write them - sometimes even to practice figurative language in a more free form environment.

(As for those who passed their literature classes years ago - figurative language uses figures of speech for impact and color. Alliterations simulate similar sounds in the sentence. (See what I did there, with the "s" sound?) Similes use the words "like" or "as" to compare things. (Ex: His breath smelled like the ocean had spit out its dead.) Metaphors serve a similar purpose, but without the use of "like" or "as." (Ex: He was a breath of fresh air.) Personification gives human qualities to something that isn't. (Ex: The tree reached towards the heavens, holding its leaves for the sky.) There are many more types of figurative language, but I will stop there.)

The use of poetry is an excellent tool for any writer to utilize when stuck in the muck and mire of the mundane. (Sorry, I just can't stop myself!) It helps remind us to bring color to our pages - even the most technical of dialogue can be spruced up with a touch of figurative language.

The Boy

Little tuff of light blonde hair,

He's only four years old,

But leaves his tired mother's side,

Ignoring what he's told.

Shamelessly and there to shock,

He wanders to the street,

And right before our very eyes,

Lets his pants fall to his feet!

The embarrassed mother runs to him,

As the crowd all laughs inside,

Her naughty little boy just runs,

With butt bare, he tries to hide.

But when she caught him in her arms,

Of that I won't forget,

She covered him with kisses,

Not saying what she might regret.

(An example of what popped onto a page when I had a writers block, years ago…this ties in, a bit, to writing the antics of children (previous blog post), I just imagined what an observer may have thought about a scene with my son and I. It worked, too - wrote me right into novel land!)

Writing what we know, and don't know...

"Write what you know." I can't remember how many people have said that - teachers in classes, authors, and the likes. I really did try to stay true to that…at least when I began writing.  (I suppose that is obvious from the previous post?) However, if we only "write what we know" - aren't we limited to characters that only do/say what we would (or those who we know personally enough to write as another voice)? What about subject matter? Also, to add another wrench into this pitiful pot, we would only be able to write how WE perceive life. So, how about the reactions and responses of other points of view? A left brain vs. right brain? An extrovert vs. introvert's take on a situation? Man vs. women? Let's face it - no two people are going to act or respond in the same way…most of the time.

Of course it is easier voicing off personal experiences, but what about writing a scene or subject matter in which you have no personal experience - nothing to pull from while penning?
Let's say you are a twenty-something year old writer who wants to base a novel during the Great Depression. Well, obviously, you didn't live it and neither did your parents. Maybe your grandparents did, though? So, how do  you go about making a believable story, set in a time in which you have no personal experience? Research! If one of those grandparents did live during that time period, talk to them about it. (Two for one with this - find out more about your family as a whole, that specific family member, and be inspired by the way the tell it- their voice. I guess that is a four for one when you add in getting the information that you need.) Biographies, primary sources (like newspapers from the time, interviews, etc.), and other sources (like government sites with statistics and information - on-line sites that end with  .edu, .gov, etc.), are all great places to start and gather more. Avoid movies and Hollywood glorified fiction - those are great at romancing eras, but not necessarily telling raw truths.

Bottom line - when writing what you don't know - be INTERESTED and INVESTED in it. If you don't do your homework, you can lose your credibility. There will always be a historian out there, picking apart the frayed edges of your fiction. Of course, that concerns the setting. When it comes to topics - subject matters that your book might hit on, but you know little about, do the same. Does one of your characters have a mother with Alzheimers and you know nothing about the disease? Find medical websites, forums where children of Alzhiemers patients discuss issues, etc. - KNOW it, don't guess it. Please, please, please don't guess! (An aside - I will not name the tv show, but I was watching a series once and one of the character's donated bone marrow for his son. Great dad! However, the same day the father donates, the kid gets the transplant and they both leave the hospital the next day. What?! Ooook - first off - donation/transplant usually don't happen at the same time. Secondly, pediatric bone marrow transplant patients are generally in the hospital a minimum of 45 days - sometimes as long as 6-8 months! The first 13 days before transplant are all about massive doses of chemotherapy and radiation to kill the patient's bone marrow before the transplant can even occur. So - I could keep preaching from this proverbial soap box, but will stop there. Obviously, this subject is more personal to me, so trivializing a bone marrow transplant got under my skin. But it wasn't just that - not with this specific situation or when I reading - it is that a writer clearly was not invested in being credible in their writing!)

A warning to writing what you don't know, though - it will take longer to complete a project, assuming that you want to be credible. In fact,  you may spend more time in research and digging than you do writing your book! I have an ongoing project that I am writing that covers the Western, Pacific, and Home fronts of WWII. The characters are based off combined individuals, most of which I am related to by either blood or love. However, since some of these people are no longer with us, I have had to spend hours combing through military logs, databases, translations, records, etc. I want to honor these people 100% by getting every possible detail correct. I spent 4 hours one afternoon locating which prisons and camps housed prisoners of war from the lower ranks of the Royal Yugoslavian Army, who also came from the Serbian area of the country. I wanted to discover which were near to Belsen Bergen the year that it was liberated and who liberated them. Needless to say, it took a lot of time to translate Serbian and Yugoslavian documents to finally find what I was looking for! BUT - it was worth it! I discovered where my beloved Chicko Bronko had been held, the unit he was with, and conditions that he suffered - all details that will be readily employed in that section of the book!

So - there you have it! Write what you know and research what you don't! You've got this!

The spark of creativity...

Back in the day, when bangs were sprayed two inches high, anything neon was the color of choice, faded blue jeans graced most lower bodies, and fanny packs weren't only for the elderly, I was hiding in my closet - pen and floral patterned journal in hand, writing out my deepest secrets. For a nine year old, these weren't exactly dark, more like how I snuck a call to my friend without asking my Mom or what boy I thought was a little cute. Pretty deep, huh? When I was ten, I was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocitic Leukemia while on vacation in Southern California. A month later, back in our hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, I was writing even more. Prednisone cheeks, a rapidly balding head, and poor immune system (not to mention many trips to Vanderbilt clinic for treatments and procedures) freed up lots of time to read and write. It was then that I penned my first short stories. Understandably, many of these had to do with kids who had cancer.


One of my longer short stories, Hope, was completed around the time that my Mom's best friend's father came for a visit - published author, Joseph Gilmore. I came to him one evening, hands trembling, holding my story's manuscript. He graciously read it and critiqued it for me that very night. I came across that copy while unpacking some boxes recently and the memories that evening came flooding back again. I highly doubt he ever knew the impact that our conversation had on me or how it would encourage me to keep writing. He told me I had talent! Whether or not he was just being nice to that bald little girl or truly meant it, I will never know. Still - I believed him and continued to pen things onto paper for all the years that followed.


One of my favorite "cancer" books was Erma Bomback's book: I want to grow hair, I want to grow up, and I want to go to Boise." It holds many stories and antics shared by kids with cancer of all kinds. It also inspired me to start writing some of my memories. I never knew what I would do with them, but they were therapeutic to write.


So, without further ado - here is one that I penned right after I turned twelve. (Note - I did clean up the spelling and grammar a bit and my writing style has changed a LOT since then, but I was twelve! :) )


 You Want Me to Swallow That??

After living a sheltered life of liquid antibiotics, liquid Tylenol, liquid decongestants, and basically liquid everything, one can only imagine how my eyes about popped out of their sockets when nurses brought in my first set of pills. All I could think of to say was, "You want me to swallow that?" I figured that either they were playing a really mean trick on me or else my sheltered liquid existence had presently come to a screeching halt. Sadly, it was the latter.

Apparently the extent of knowledge that nurses acquire goes beyond basic medicine, and includes dabbling in the art of creative pill-taking. When it became evident that I wasn't going to be able to swallow those pills, a nice solution was presented - ice cream! Actually, it was sherbet, to be exact. Slip those annoying little suckers into a spoon full of lime flavored goodness and down they glide. This concept worked great until Prednisone.

My dad called it the "pregnant zone," sort of like the twilight zone, only involving an unnaturally massive appetite. Prednisone causes one to become a regular eating machine. All I wanted to do was eat everything in sight! I suppose that was a good thing since we were told that if I didn't eat whenever I was hungry, I could have developed an ulcer. Our doctor told my family about a two-year old who had polished off a dozen hard boiled eggs and still wanted more! The flustered, and somewhat worried, mother called the doctor, wondering what to do. The doctor, completely not alarmed, asked if she had any more eggs. Since she did not, he suggested she make a run to the store!

Back to the sherbet...one of the many downsides of Prednisone (the drastic mood swings and weight gain wont be discussed here) was that it tasted terrible!!! Even if I swallowed it in one gulp, the taste of the pill merely touching my tongue was unbearable! My dear aunt, we will call her "Aunt L", provided a wonderful tip. She suggested coating the pill in butter, so it would glide down easier and not taste so bad. So, I bet you can guess what I did everyday at pill-taking-time. I would sit down with my glass of 7-up, a butter tub, and a handful of pills.

One day, I was doing my daily ritual of pill taking. I had buttered my pills and taken all of them, except the Prednisone. Well, unfortunately it was one of those dreaded days that I didn't swallow it fast enough. Gross! I made a fast run to the refrigerator and grabbed the first thing that I saw, the sweet pickle jar. I opened it up and took a big swig of the juice. As disgusting as it may sound, it took away the taste instantly! From then on, along with my glass of 7-up, butter tub, and pills, was a jar of pickle juice.

Chemotherapy experts know that not all pills are as small as others. Take Methotrexite, for instance - even though I had to take twelve of them in one sitting, they were so small that it didn't really matter. (I did, however, sing the chorus of "Mary had a little lamb" and other such juvenile tunes in between pills to "clear my passageway" for the next one. It was, of course, only pointless stalling.)

The first "big" pill that I had to take, which really wasn't all that large, I took in my initial hospital stay. It was the Colase pill - one of those red, gel-capped ones that are supposed to easily slide down. Well, in my pill-phobic mind, that pill was going to get in my mouth, turn sideways, block my throat, and make me choke to death! It didn't occur to me that I was in the hospital, the best place to choke. So, starting at 8pm, I held that pill, rolling it and squishing it, trying desperately to make it smaller. My dad was with me that night and was being extremely patient, waiting sitcom after sitcom for me to take it. After three hours, I still couldn't take that scary red gelcap. Eventually, I just wimped out, so they brought me in the liquid. "It has comes in liquid?" I wondered why they didn't just start with that option! You may think that would be a miniature glimpse of heaven to me, which is what I thought, as well - until I had a drop or two. Those drops of blue fire burned everything they touched. (One of my friends in the "clinic gang," which I will tell more about later, called it hot juice. No kidding!) The nurses improvised with a plan C. They poked a hole in the pill and drained its inside liquid into a large cup of chocolate ice cream with whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and chocolate chips. Although it might sound tasty, it was awful!! A tip: Never put these types of medication into chocolate, it just isn't an efficient cover for the bad taste.

The saga of the Colase pill didn't end with that night. The following night, my grandmother stayed with me in the hospital and she helped talk me through taking it. It was a much easier task, since, for once, the liquid solutions were definitely not options! When I finally swallowed the monster, I was so excited that I nearly ripped my IV out in my plunge for the telephone. I had to tell mom and dad that I had swallowed that dang pill!


 
  

Hearts and Shamrocks (with little to do with writing)...

                   
                              

In the span of a month and 3 days, we have two holidays dedicated to Saints - the only two on the American calendar.

Hearts - February 14th - A day of celebrating St. Valentine's with overpriced flowers, chocolates, and Hallmark cards - that special day, set aside because of?? If I polled 100 random American's, how many would know anything more than, "It is named after some saint?" I had assumed he was some martyred man, who was canonized and made the patron saint of something to do with love, but wasn't sure, so...I looked up St. Valentine. Martyred, yes (beaten, stoned, then decapitated). Patron saint of love, yes (also of young people and happy marriages). However, there were two of them - both men named "Valentine" who were tortured and beheaded by Claudius II in Rome. Although there are stories about both, according to the catholic websites, there is little known of either. There are stories to justify the connections to love and marriages, but lack of proof. (Clarification - I am a curious historian, not a cynic. To set aside a day specifically to remember our love for one another is wonderful.)

A portrait of St. Valentine

Shamrocks - March 17th - A day of celebrating St. Patrick by wearing green, sporting shamrocks, and spotting lucky leprechauns while drinking green ale- that special day, set aside because of?? Again, I had the assumption that he was some martyred man, who was canonized and had something to do with the Irish, but I wasn't sure about the rest, so...I looked up St. Patrick. Martyred, nope (poverty and suffering yes, but no martyrdom). Patron saint of the Irish, yes. But he wasn't Irish - he was British, taken by raiders to be a slave in Ireland. So, why canonized? After he escaped and returned to Britain, he dreamed the Irish were calling him back. He became a priest and returned to Ireland, bringing Christianity to the people. The Shamrock? He used it to explain the Trinity to the people. That, I must say, it pretty cool!The green, the shamrock, the Irish...but the green ale and leprechauns? For that one, I am still lost.

A portrait of St. Patrick

Of the over 800 canonized saints of the Catholic church, St. Valentine and St. Patrick were the only two celebrated with American holidays? Why that is, however, is a question that I can not answer - yet. Happy Valentines, everyone!

Beginnings and endings...

So - what happens when your three-year-old American Bulldog breaks your charger, the computer is dead (read: you can't access those handy auto-saved passwords), and the kids keep bringing in viruses faster than the previous ones are exterminated? As my elongated absence may have tipped you off to that answer - no blogging! Alas - such is life. (On the upside, we are 4 days into a week without stitches, broken bones, emergency chiropractic visits, chipped teeth, and/or antibiotics! Go Roses!)


All that being said, I have been thinking about books - specifically their beginnings and endings.


I get obsessed about the order of a book - where to put what part to keep it interesting, but still make sense and flow. I tend to be drawn towards stories that are told, at least a little, out of order. Whether it flips from past to present to future or something completely different, like changing whose point of view is doing the telling - I prefer it. It is, most likely, this bias that inspires me to write in that fashion - making order out of the chaos. 


Prologues. I have yet not to include them - using snippets of something to come that grabs attention, answering questions posed in the first chapters of a book.  I fail to remember the name of the series that I loved as a teenager, but they always started with a prologue that occurred in the characters' distant future. It was like an answer to a question that I would inevitably have at the end of the book, something that brought a semblance of sense to the finale. (I suppose I should research the names of those books, for sake of my avidly reading 13year old daughter.)


Epilogues. I must say that I often use these, as well. They are like a beloved television show's series finale, set sometime after the end of the story, glimpses of what will be. They are closure. The same holds true to some books. Maybe the girl and the guy finally get it together at the end of a story, but what about their futures? Will they get married, have kids, stay together? Seriously, I want to know!


Points of View. To spice it up a bit - reading a novel that tells the same story, but from different points of view, is also appealing. If written in first person, the reader can only guess what other characters are thinking or feeling. However, if who the first person is changes through out the novel, that makes for an insightful difference! Even when written in third person, a change of focus is always refreshing.