Ivory Peonies

Somewhere in the dark corners of my mind

The places we go to hide

I wish I were four and still a child

You say grow up, be a little more mild

 

I never asked you to stay and wait

In fact I think I warned you I’d be late

Flowers only bloom in the spring you see

And it’s been winter for eternity

 

Explains the cold shroud around my heart

And you thought i was just playing tart

No babe, but dessert sure is sweet

Yet haven’t you learned that I ain’t

 

I made you a pie, you baked me a cake

We spent that whole winter down by the lake

Trying to fix, to forgive, to forget

Strangers out of season, frozen with regret

 

I told you I did, I warned you I would

Get bored with gardening in the cold wood

He thawed my ivory peonies one magical night

Now from you I run with fright

 

Back to the comfort corner of my mind

Very safe place to go and hide

I’ll pretend I’m four, a prodigious child

I can’t hear your screams, your call of the wild

 

Some say a cold-water death can be euphoric

For your sins, I know you will burn for it

You and your dreams, now locked in a hard cell

I hope I haunt them from my cold watery hell

WRITER’S BLOCKS

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It is no secret; Authors such as John Updike, Ernest Hemingway, and George Bernard Shaw sat down every morning, without fail, and wrote. Some counted pages, some counted words. Some stopped mid- sentence, mid-process, mid-flow when they reached their daily goal. Others did not. James Thurber said, “Don’t get it right; get it written.” How did the literary geniuses do it, when getting started is the hardest part? Since the beginning of Creative Writing 2001, I have discovered a brave new world in fiction writing. What I think, I thought I knew I did not. I knew nothing. Writing is damn hard and the line between art and cliché is as thin as the line between love and hate.

Realizing the only way to start is to start. We are a conflicted group. How do you start with the constant barrage of interruptions? The tea calls from the cupboard. Make me. The cat purrs. Scratch me. The dishes pile. Wash me. The phone rings. Answer me. It is procrastination. Finally, you sit down to write and nothing happens. You want to smash your computer into smithereens, bash your head on a gritty sidewalk…anything would be less painful. Then you get an idea. A glimmer of hope emerges. You are tossing it around when your critic shows up. He tells you it sucks and so do you. You tell him he is not welcome, that is he who sucks, not you. You are a writer, an artist. You toss him out, but he is a persistent bugger. Joe Schuster chair and associate professor in the Communications and Journalism department at Webster University believes: “The fear is the disease, the block just the symptom.”

Shuster among others believe in order to combat block a process must be employed. Free write, journal, blog; write anything and everything that comes to mind. Go ahead; explore and experiment. Write about the things you know, research what you do not, but keep in mind that research does not replace experience. The blank page is not your prison; it is your playground. There is more reality in fiction than you think. Use everything; nothing is sacred. Be furtive, no one is looking. You have an immense power called revision. Earnest Hemingway said, “All first drafts are shit.” Hemingway is right, but do not let it stop you. Through first drafts, I have learned as much about myself, perhaps more, as I have about the process.

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If we look at art as our design and craft as the execution, how do we bridge the gap? How do we take a killer idea, a rambling of free writes and shape them into a gripping narrative? Art defined is as the creation of beautiful or thought-provoking works, produced through creative activity, skill or the ability to do something well using a set of techniques in a particular field or a superior skill that is learned by study, practice, and observation. It is the process or product of deliberate arrangement of elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions encompassing a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression. A craft defined is a profession or activity that requires skill, training, experience, or specialized knowledge to produce or create something with skill and care. As artists, we break out our drafting tools. We study the process. We invest time in learning how to structure a story and design a grabbing plot. How to use point of view and show character nuance while creating time, space and place details that ignite the five senses. We evoke theme using metaphorical comparisons, symbolism, and allegory. We strive to manufacture tense conflicts; crises converge, and offer resolution in blinding twists.

Writing is damn hard. Good writing is even harder. Learning the art of storytelling is not simple, but it does have a formula: read, write, revise, and repeat…read, write, revise, and repeat. So, if you are going through Hell now, keep going because writing is less expensive than therapy. In the words of Joe Schuster, “I can learn to write badly until I learn to write well.”

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