Found this on the Third Sunday Blog Carnival

http://danasitar.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/bucket-list-infographic1.jpg


Enjoy!

When Characters Attack

42000 words into nanowrimo, three days away from the November 30th deadline, I decided I could not go on. I was sick of words, sick of staring at the computer screen for hours and not being able to see anything clearly for at least a half hour after finally walking away from my laptop. I had had enough.

But, dammit.

Shelly, one of my characters, forced me back to the keyboard. She insists on revealing her darkest secret to Michael, the protagonist. In turn, Michael also shares his ugly secret.

But I have work to do, I tell them. Papers to grade. Sleep of which to partake. I’m tired. I just want to clean my house, sweep the cat hair out of the corners. Do a load of laundry. Cook a meal. Be a person. Your problems can wait, characters

No, they can’t, Shelly and Michael bellow. We are on the edge of something crucial, you moronic, self centered writer. We might slip off, become covered in mud. Or worse. Crack under the tension and do something stupid like break off our relationship. So get your giant ass in a seat and help us tell our stories. Yeah, you’re a crappy hack, but you’re all we have right now.

Ugh! I hate you people. I mutter some expletives under my breath.

Feeling’s mutual. Now get over to Starbucks, order your latte, and open that laptop. Plug in your headphones so you won’t get distracted. We’ve met you and your ADD, “Oh look at the pretty sunshine, is that a cardinal?” ways. We like instrumental music, by the way. The soundtrack from Slum Dog Millionaire works. So does the one from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Sort on an Indian fusion vibe that rocks. No words. You need to concentrate on ours. Focus.

So for the next two days, every spare moment, these two characters hold me captive. They invade my dreams when I try to ignore them, wake me in the middle of the night like shrieking children. By 7 pm on November 30^th, a Friday, after I had worked with sixth graders all day, I lookeat my word count. I am about a thousand words short. Shit. I can't see. My eyes burn and I just want to rest.

Yeah, so do we, but you have to move on. It’s a nice day for a picnic lunch of bread, peanut butter and wine. We have to have that long conversation Shelly has been promising Michael these past few weeks.

You owe me I say.

Yeah, yeah. Whatever.

So I hunt and peck more of their story. 50,835 words of it. But it’s not even close to being done, I whine.

They laugh. Yeah, ironic, huh? Hey, you chose to be a writer. 

#

How did YOU survive the nano experience?

Happy REwriting.

It's the end of the school year, I am in the middle of inventory, ready to grade AP Final projects, have not yet written this week's poem for my poetry workshop, and need to prepare for my YA writer's workshop this Saturday. I need more to do!
NOT.
This morning I dreamed a complete poem to write for Diane's workshop this week, and in my half sleep it sounded fantatsic. Can I remember any of it? Nope.
I have tons of great opening lines.
Like:
By the my father and brother died
I was an expert at sudden death.

Or
Losing weight is like excavating for dinosaur bones.

For a long time she idolized salt like it was Salt God

And these could be titles:
The orange flower of afternoon
Ordinary things worth saving
The brief history of butter
But my brain stops after a few syllbles. Maybe I need a reboot. So Diane,and my fellow poets in workshop, I apologize ahead of time for writing the crappiest poem you will see in a long, long time.
Happy Writing.

The Kingdom of Silver Doubt

What was I thinking when I decided to write a blog? I don’t write every day, much less blog. I COULD post everyday and tell you I ate oatmeal with nuts for breakfast and describe the cute funny things my cats did last night, but that’s what Facebook is for. So, yes, I know I SAID I was going to blog every day, but poets aren’t all that reliable. (They keep changing Poem in Your Pocket Day. I thought it was the 28th. It was LAST year!) so there will be gaps.

Poems, like stories, have an apparent level and an underlying, simmering one. Take for example the draft of a poem my friend Elizabeth wrote, a brave and lovely poem seemingly about her belly(which I will NOT be sharing with you. Drafts are like Vegas. And I want to still be friends with her,) yet what shimmers under the surface of the poem is an ineffable link to her mother.

A poem works when we can pull back the layers and think, ahhh, yes. For example, Billy Collins’s poem The Lanyard. What kid over fifty doesn’t remember making lanyards at summer day camp? On one level, the poem presents itself as a simple childhood memory with its gentle humour, yet we walk away realizing NONE of us has lived up to the valiant act of our mother’s giving birth to us and facing the daily grind of raising our self centered selves. The poem asks, Do we ever repay that?

So if a poem is to be successful, most of which mine aren’t, the reader will walk away with a universal question, and that question could be what sparks your own poem.

Here are the first few, very crappy lines of my response to Elizabeth's poem:

I have become my mother.
wide hips, bruise to the touch
“I can think about food and gain weight.”

Happy Writing.