trending: telling the girl what to do

Girl, wash your face and count to three...(he ran to someone who wasn’t me).

Girl, stop apologizing and just breathe...(this is where you see you're free).

Girl, open your eyes wide and see... (fairytales are cautionary).

Girl, wash your face or leave and make do...(streaked mascara as a face tattoo).

Girl, stop apologizing for wrongs that aren’t yours...(salvage the damage and build a door).

Girl, open your eyes and take a look...(it’s about time to write that book).

~~~*~~~

:: One year and a handful of months later, I wrote on the last page of my Morning Pages journal today. It is literally time to start a fresh chapter, and even a whole new book ::

The Artist’s Way Contract

I believe I can succeed in this course...as long as I get to make my own rules. 

Writeriffic Lesson 6 Assignment: Newspaper

WHEW!  I had several story ideas based on articles  (which I may continue to develop) but I ran with this one that came from a homework session at my local MIDTOWN DELI. Each section of the day's paper was at a different table and being read by a vast array of characters. Yet we were all under one roof, reading about what was happening in our little town... 

Initially I had 700 some odd words. I let it cool and fought dismay as my word count initially went up, not down. 

Two painful character cuts later, I made the 300 mark. 

I am submitting that version and then returning to my drafts to invite those two characters back into my diner while I shine the tables up a bit.

::ASSIGNMENT POSTED BELOW::

THE MILLCREEK MALLARD: SATURDAY EDITION 

Sports & Weather lay abandoned on the table nearest the window. Grant had placed the paper over his laptop like some kind of theft deterrent when he left to reckon with the coffee he’d been drinking all morning. Not that anyone here would steal. He knew that, and somewhere deep-down, he knew it was himself he hoped to hide under that paper-thin shield. What would folks in Millcreek think when they read how much he’d stolen from them? 

~

Sitting upright, Jen resisted the chair’s embrace where she perched. Flipping swiftly through Lifestyles, she paused to wring the last drops of Earl Grey into her cup. Clipping one of the hundreds of announcements due to be printed this weekend wouldn’t change anything, but clipping this one may slow the avalanche. Jim, who understood half the town got their news from his one, coffee-splashed paper, had graciously agreed to her maiming of the diner’s copy. He brought scissors with her tea, and she noticed, a pastry she hadn’t ordered. Jen smiled to herself, “Consolation croissant”.  

~

Ed and Mary split the Comics and sipped their coffee, his half milk and full of sugar, hers slick black. At 65, Mary still went straight to SlyLock Fox. She solved the mystery before Ed was ready to trade. He preferred to read from first square to last; no skipping the boring strips, either.  Mary sipped her coffee and smiled at Jim as she waited for Ed to finish . 

~

Jim wiped the tables and shuffled the scattered paper back into one packet. With a satisfied nod, he cut the lights and locked the door.

 He loved his little corner of Millcreek and the people who shared their lives with him. As he walked home, Jim whistled up towards the clouds… 

“The sun will come out tomorrow…”

The Artist’s Way Assignment: The Censor

Assignment: “Think of your Censor as a cartoon serpent, slithering around your creative Eden, hissing vile things to keep you off guard. If a serpent doesn’t appeal to you, you might want to find a good cartoon image of your Censor, maybe the shark from Jaws, and put an X through it. Post it where you tend to write or on the inside cover of your notebook. Just making the Censor into the nasty, clever little character that it is begins to pry loose some of its power over you and your creativity.”

I chose to sketch (and paint) my inner censor, then use its description as a writing prompt. 

My rough draft (because I’m working on getting okay with sharing them): 

I imagined my Censor as a many armed thing. It wears my wedding ring on one tentacle, a watch on another. In the grip of one flange is a bottle of bubbles and in that bottle the mom I’m supposed...the mom I want to be.Perhaps there is a mop in one tentacle and a set of car keys in another. Two weigh the difference between a teacher’s Apple and a stack of textbooks, they fail to find a balance. The last one is empty and placed across my mouth. I have named my critic Samctimony. 

And another- not necessarily final- draft: 

MANY-FLANGED SANCTIMONY

Around one tentacle, stretching long 

Sings a ticking timepiece song 

To another feebly clings 

A pocked and tarnished wedding ring 

In the next, child's bubble wand

And four children of whom I’m fond 

Mop in one flange, unstick the floors

When that’s finished, chores galore 

Tossing car keys to and fro

This one bellows, “Time to go!” 

One long tentacle dials my phone

“Call them all before they’re gone!” 

One is measuring when I look 

the gap ‘twixt reading and teaching books

One last tentacle holds a key

Placed to my lips, it shushes me 

The critic inside, no one trick pony 

I will call her Sanctimony 

Writteriffic Assignment Lesson 4: Personify a color

The assignment: Personify a color, make hefty use of a thesaurus.

What I turned in:

I chose to write about one of my favorite colors. You can only see it for about ten minutes in the morning and maybe five on certain evenings and then, only on days with proper conditions. It really doesn't have a name (that I am aware of) but if it were a crayon, perhaps they'd call it Herald. 

I am a color, not yet named. 
Though a body could be lain to rest never having seen me(if that body were given to much sleep or staying indoors)
I assure you that I am. 
I ride the rim of the rising sun and throw back the shades of last night's sky.
With a blast of golden trumpet, I herald the coming of a newborn day.
I bathe the infant in splashes of light and wrap her in blankets of pink and glowing orange.
I have written her name in the clouds with lifting birds, she will be called Possibilty.
I tip-toe from the room, leaving her to dream and wake and do.
 I will return in the Golden Hour, to see what she has become.
 "Beauty!" I cry, forcing the oversized sun into an inky sea suitcase.
 I pull the starry lid behind me, and wink at you from the horizon. 
"I'll be back, when the day is new, and I'll have more ideas for you. You'll have things you want to talk about...I will, too." 

  

Attribution Footnote: quote from https://youtu.be/K1Dvq0cDRsI

Writeriffic Assignment Lesson 2: Complete the prompt

The assignment was to choose one of the provided prompts and complete it- with as much of a twist as we could muster.

I chose the prompt: "Looking at Paris in this light..." 

Looking at Paris in this light, Adkins could almost forgive the rookie his dumb mistake. Almost. 

Like the flashes of amber waxing and waning over them from atop the ambulance, Lieutenant Michael Adkins alternated between looking at the shape of his mangled partner on the stretcher and out into the fog-drenched darkness of Seabridge Avenue. Too terrible to look at and too terrible to ignore, Mike's reflexes kept snapping his attention to Jimmy's face and just as quickly away. 

On the stretcher, Officer James 'Paris' Frenchy, lay unconcious and bleeding. His badge dangled from his uniform and his left eye socket was empty. 

 Adkins sighed heavily into the thick night air. Tonight's shift already felt a year and a half long and he hadn't even begun the paperwork. So much paperwork, and tonight, it would all fall to him, obviously. 

Whether Paris pulled through or not two things were certain: tough conversations must be had, either with Frenchy or his sweet young bride and paperwork was still the piper who would be paid. 

Adkins mindlessly pulled the pen from his shirt pocket and, turning toward the open ambulance doors, gave it a decided click. 

It was time to take names.