If I had Any Sense I’d have Scriptophobia

I felt disappointed and adrift without a Scintilla prompt. It’s like crack for writers. Then I saw a twitter feed for a bonus prompt to write about the time you left home. My family moved a lot, so leaving home was not a new experience for me. I looked forward to new adventures, locations and people. I was a fairly easy going kid, and usually made friends quickly with each move.

One summer I flew to London, England to spend a few weeks in England and Kenya with a British family Caroline, a Brit, was in my class at school, and her mother, a college professor, was journeying to Kenya for some anthropological research. Caroline and her brother each invited a friend to go along for summer. Caroline chose me because I’d had overseas travel experience and we were good enough friends to spend long stretches of time together. We’d be staying three weeks in England before jetting off to Nairobi.

This trip occurred only a few months after my mother passed away, and I had not yet exhibited residual effects of this trauma. Within a week of her dying, my brother Paul and I moved across the country to live with our dad, who had just started a new job. My oldest brother stayed behind because he was in college. When kids at my new asked where my mother was, I lied and said my parents were divorced and she stayed on the west coast. I couldn’t say the words, “my mother died.” My brother appeared to adjust well to the move, attending school each day, making new friends. With Mom gone, I cooked diner each night and the rest of us shared in housekeeping. We all kept busy and never talked about my mother.

A few weeks before the England trip, Memorial Day weekend, my father and I went boating on Lake Erie with some friends. I’d enjoyed boating since I was a kid, but as soon as we pulled away from shore I experienced ineffable dread. I clung to the side of the sailboat and did not want to keep my father out of my sight.

A few weeks later I flew over to England with another friend (who was going on to Germany after the rest of us left for Africa.) The three of us bunked together in Caroline’s room, and there were others in the flat; but the first night, after the lights went out and we settled down to sleep, I was engulfed in deep sadness.

I stood at the window, rain pelting on the window, and felt tears on my own face. I had been away from home countless times: summer camp, and sleepovers. By the time I was thirteen I’d been around the world twice. But never this far from my now fractured family before.

I think this is the first time I realized the weight of the past few months. My mother was always eager to hear stories from my adventures. She would not be hearing about this trip.

Teenagers resemble adults physically, but they lack the skill and development to process life changing events without consequences. This trip ignited seeds for phobias I developed in the ensuing years. I didn’t seek therapy because, other than my new fears of flying, boating and riding in a car, I was highly functional. (When I got my driver’s license I was afraid to drive on freeways.) The things that scare normal people like public speaking, snakes and heights have never bothered me.

Oddly enough, I credit Cosmopolitan magazine with helping me a few years later manage my irrational behavior. I read an article about fears and phobias and using behavior modification to get over tem. It took me forever to get to school and work because I refused to drive the freeways, so as a way to cure myself of this, I got in the car and drove to Oregon from Ohio to see my brother. Those first few miles I screamed and cried. By the time I reached Dayton the rhythm of the road calmed me down, and spent the next five days driving alone to Portland, Oregon.

I still have lurches of fear when friends and family go on journeys, either flying or driving. But these days that concern is rational; the world has gotten scarier. And reasons to hate flying go beyond fear.

I don’t like this prompt. It’s hard to “go there.” And remember that freakishly phobic girl. I didn’t HAVE to write this, but real writing comes from those dark corners we don’t want to visit.

So here is your prompt: What are you afraid to revisit? Go back there. Write about it.



Happy Writing.

Songs Are Like Tattoos

Day 3 of The Scintilla Project where the goal is to write a response to a prompt every day for two weeks. Today’s prompts are 1.) Talk about a memory triggered by a particular song, or 2.) what’s the story of your most difficult challenge in a relationship?

Funny how small things spark memories.

The smell of Jergen’s hand lotion floods me with memories of my mother’s hands. She would purposely pour out excess lotion, and say to me, “Oh look, I have too much. Bring me your hands.” She would grasp my fingers and our hands danced off the excess fluid.

I can’t clean the cat box without thinking about George Clooney (who ironically was arrested today). On a talk show Clooney a few years ago described an incident where a former roommate was sloppy about keeping the litter box clean. One day George himself pooped in the cat box. After that the roommate was vigilant about cleaning up after his cat.

Songs trigger permanent memories, too.

I was one of those kids who never wanted to go to bed. I might miss something. My mother had to bribe me with putting music on the Hi-Fi (For those of you under fifty, the Hi-Fi is a precursor to the stereo. It had a turntable for 45s (singles) or 33s (albums) and a solitary, giant speaker. And a closeable lid. It was an attractive piece of blonde wood furniture that could double as a table for a vase in front of a window. At bedtime, Mom would place up to five records at a time and bank on my brothers and I being asleep by the time the last album dropped onto the turntable. Her taste in music was eclectic. The best music to get elementary and junior high kids to sleep, (and most likely invite some romance with my dad if he wasn’t out of town) was jazz. My parents’ collection included greats like John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Gene Ammons, Ella Fitzgerald, Les and Larry Elgart, George Shearing and Thelonuius Monk. If Dad wasn’t home, Mom might select Etta James, B.B. King, or Louis Armstrong. We all liked show tunes, and owned soundtracks for West Side Story, Gypsy, South Pacific and Auntie Mame.

By the time we were teenagers, each of us had or own stereos( and headphones.), and our tastes grew more divergent, and my flavor in music devolved to The Monkees and David Cassidy.

My mother died a month after I turned sixteen, and I couldn’t listen to music that reminded me of her. The somber tones of Tchaikovksy and Sibelius cushioned me, provided a new soundtrack for my life that included years of veiled depression.

It’s too much of a cliché to say writing saved me. Writing was only part of the equation.

I listen to music when I write, paint, clean house, and read. Music plays in my car as I drive. I hate to fly, so in the 80’s and 90’s I carted cassette and CD players on board, and now my ipod serenades me to relax while 30,000 feet above.

I can’t identify a specific song as my favorite. In high school I ritually wallowed in broken-hearted breakups with boys during my Joni Mitchell years. (Her Blue album always sent me further inside my blues.) The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” is a great driving song, and Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight” is my karaoke staple.

My first kiss and quasi boyfriend had a song: “In My Life,” by the Beatles. “There are places I remember….some are gone and some remain...In my life I have loved them all.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZpVxLjqXPE


Happy Writing.

Who Says I'm a Grown up?

When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to grow up so I could reach cabinets so I could reach cabinets without a boost and make decisions about not having to eat broccoli and other things I deemed gross. I grew to like broccoli, and my five foot seven stature ensures I can reach most of my cabinets. I wanted to stay up late and no longer be relegated to kids’ table. Chronologically, I have been an adult for many years, but am I a grown-up?

I felt grown up when I got a driver’s license and my first credit card, and paid my first rent check, but I still wanted to play in the sand and eat chocolate frosting directly from the can. Perhaps when I stopped liking the taste of canned ravioli and spray cheese and developed a preference for fresh foods I became an adult. Or maybe when I bought my first new car or signed the litany of forms to become a homeowner.

On a visit to my brother’s family, when his daughters were still small and I was close to thirty, I showed the girls how to make castles with their mashed potatoes. In a voice eerily similar to our dad’s, my brother looked at me and barked, “stop playing with your food.” After an awkward moment of silence, we all cracked up laughing.

Recently I visited with a couple of old friends from junior high who I had not seen in forty years. Time did not end our adolescence. We giggled and gossiped the same way we did back then. The difference is we did it over wine this time.

I don’t recall having a singular moment when I thought, “Wow, I’m an adult now.” My mirror reflects this jowly faced woman with silver streaks in her hair, yet sometimes I still feel like a teenager. Maybe spending the last twenty five years working in a high school has prevented me from fully becoming a grown up.

I will be retiring in three years (When did I get old enough to retire?) and I feel
I tell people I am finally graduating from high school because it feels like a second youth of sorts. My options are not as unlimited as my twenties when my body was more facile. But my mind is still flexible, and I get to reboot my life with a clean slate. I can choose to get another job, move across the country, become a beach bum, write full time, design jewelry, or return to school and get a doctorate.

On a rerun tonight of That 70’s Show Eric and Donna try on marriage when Donna’s father goes away for the weekend. She undercooks the chicken, and suggests if Eric doesn’t want to eat it, she says,” You can have Fruity Pebbles instead.”

Eric, who constantly tries to prove to his father he's not an irresponsible kid, says, "Grown ups don’t eat Fruity Pebbles."

Do you know what? Grown-ups can eat whatever we want.

Here is a no fail writing prompt for helping add detail: write about food. Food uses all the senses, and in a scene between characters, food bonds people.



Happy Writing.

There’s a First Time For Everything, Along With a Great Book About It.

Since my graduate school days in Library media, where I spent countless hours in libraries learning about the plethora of reference sources, I first fell in love with Famous First Facts: A Record of First Happenings and Inventions in the United States. The 1964 Third Edition in my high school library (I don’t have the heart to weed it) comprises 1165 pages. Like most resources, there is an online version, but I found the Sixth Edition published in 2006. The book is arranged by 600 pages of alphabetically listed famous firsts, with 400 plus pages of indices by year, days of the month, personal names, and geographical location. The first entry is the “First abdominal operation”, see surgical operation: abdominal operation, which leads one to a description of an ovariotomy for an ovarian tumor in 1809 in Danville, KY, performed without an anesthetic. The patient, Jane Todd Crawford, was 45 years of age and lived to be 78. She may never have been notable for anything, but as a writer, I am intrigued by Jane Crawford. Here was a woman who braved surgery without anesthesia, and lived to be nearly 80 years old at a time when 60 was considered old. She was tough. A further internet search led me to a series of medical articles and books about her, where she is called a ‘pioneer heroine of surgery’. Already a mother oif four, Mrs. Crawford thought she had a late life pregnancy,, but Dr. Ephraim McDowell discovered a tumor, which at the time was fatal. She rode on horseback 60 miles to the physician’s home, where because the surgery was experimental. Given only a small dose of opium, Mrs. Crawford had to be helf down by several attendants. She reportedly sang hymns and repeated psalms. The tumor had been twenty two pounds, and she was fully recovered in less than a month. I don’t know about you, but this story makes a great historical novel or a treatment for a film. Picture Meryl Streep or Julianne Moore cast as Jane, and Dr. McDowell played by Aidan Quinn or Hugh Jackman. One first leads to a chain reaction of firsts. The first boy I spent time considerable time alone with led to my first kiss, and later my first heartbreak. No kiss has ever been so anticipated as that first one, on a balmy summer evening under stars. We were alone in the world that night, and the I am reminded of a Rumi verse translated by Coleman Barks: I would love to kiss you. The price of kissing you is your life. The person you shared that first meaningful kiss is always in your life, even if you never see each other again. Nothing replaces that first synergy between people. First heartbreaks don’t necessarily salve the subsequent romantic calamities, but one learns from the first one, and perhaps learns how not to fall in love with another Mr. Wrong. Or some of us never learn. In the Index by year in Famous First Facts, the first entry, dated 1007, records the first child born on American soil by European parents. Another possible film? And speaking of movies, the first moving picture with a plot was produced by A. C. Abadie. Your assignment is to track down a copy of Famous First Facts at the public or college library. Open a page and find a selection that draws you in. Perhaps the first Railroad Guide or mail-order house. Let that entry be an inspiration for a story or poem. Extend your knowledge by doing further research. If this is your first time using FFF, Congratulations. Hopefully this won’t be your last. Happy Writing.

The Scintilla Project will make me write every day

Beginning tomorrow, I will be adding a blog post every day for two weeks as, against my lazy nature, I signed up for the Scintilla Project.

http://scintillaproject.com/
For two weeks, write the kind of blog posts that remind you why you started blogging in the first place.

The Scintilla Project gives you a reason to unlock your storytelling voice. We provide a selection of daily prompts and encouragement, and you provide a post that goes beyond the surface into Why. In some you'll be the hero, in some the villain, and in some an innocent bystander. Every day is a new chance to go deeper.

If this sounds like something you would like to do, it's not too late to sign up.


Happy Writing.

Bad Poems Are Good for the Blog post

I was at a conference for English teachers Friday and Saturday, and Saturday attended a workshop on writing Bad Poetry. The instructor, author Chris Crowe, a lovely professor of English from Brigham Young University, gave us five minutes to create a Bad poem. The irony is in order to write Bad poems, one must know something about good poetry. For example, a parody of Robert Frost’s “A Road Not Taken” ( The Toad Not Taken) falls flat if the audience has never studied the original.

Chris made the distinction between Bad Poems and drivel, or what he terms Sad poems: verses tend to focus on awkward syntax, unnecessary repetitions, forced rhymes, themes of death, darkness, and heartbreak, and over the top sentimentality, earnestness or anger. The kind of poems I wrote in high school, and no doubt scribbled out when I first began writing. (I’d like to think I have improved somewhat.)

Chris likened the appeal of Bad poems to Bad movies, and cited an NPR story entitled Company Bets Bad Movies are Good For Business. http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/810374/company_bets_bad__movies_are_good_for_business/
He also noted the 2004 American Idol contestant William Hung who was so bad yet we fell in love with his infinite charm.
So being Bad can be good for us.

Chris showed examples of his own, like a limerick to lyme disease called Lyme-rick.

In four minutes I wrote this silly ditty entitled
Brushing My Teeth With Harrison Ford

The spicket breathed like Darth Vader
As if it were a tomb raider
That Indiana Jones discovered
And stole as he hovered
To escape the snakes on a plane
Funneling al his energy down the drain.

Horribly fun stuff. Since I had another minute I cranked out this gem:

O my love is a red, red velvet painting of Elvis
bought at a garage sale with the money I stole
from your wallet as you slept
in the back of your rusted pickup.

So here is your assignment.:
Write a Bad poem. Take a good poem you know well, and parody its syntax, rhyme scheme or form. Or take an offbeat point of view, like a Zombie Haiku. Write a Zombie love sonnet in iambic pentameter.
Abuse the language. Have fun with it. Have a contest with fellow poets as to who can write the Worst Bad Poem. Make the Prize something Awful like a Bad book you bought at Goodwill or the ubiquitous fruitcake.

This exercise will {hopefully} help you to get over yourself and free up energy to write real poems.


Happy Writing.

The Science of Writing

This morning I participated in my school’s Science Olympiad invitational. Middle and high school kids built rockets and towers, tested their food science and microbe knowledge, and read one another’s minds. One of our teachers, who proctored a group that built catapults, remarked, “this is how we should teach science in the classroom.”
This is also how we should teach writing, I thought.

The event I coach, Write it/Do it, involves a little clairvoyance and a lot of clarity. One student studies a two or three dimensional object and writes a set of instructions succinct yet specific enough so another student can blindly reconstruct the object. The first time I met with my group of kids for a practice session and explained the tasks of our team, one of them said “So you
‘re saying we have to read each other’s minds.”
“Yeah, pretty much.

The writing team has twenty-five minutes to write, and their directions must follow a sequence of steps and contain directives like, “In the NW quadrant, one inch from the top center, draw a two inch red line at a 45 degree angle that moves SE.”

While it is not scintillating prose, the purpose is to help his or her partner recreate the object. Details are important, along with common language. Teams with the closest dimensions and placement of elements score the highest.

Writing connect us, and reading and writing are subjects which connect all content areas. When we teach writing we need not to keep it limited to literature but enable students to make connections across the curriculum.

Here is a prompt to get your writing started. It’s a line from The Poet’s Companion, Kim Addonizzo and Dorianne Laux.
“Places leave their mark on us….”


Happy Writing.

A Tribute to a Luminous Poet

Poets are not mere mortals, and their passing, even if I have never met the poet, saddens me deeply. Former Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska died on February 1st. NPR calls her a “poet of gentle irony” who “deployed a whimsy,…even ion weighty themes.” Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski wrote, "In her poems we could find brilliant advice which made the world easier to understand."

At 88, her career spanned more than sixty years, and at the time of death she was still working. In spite of her long career, only 400 poems survived her “ trash bin in my room.”Symborska said, “A poem written in the evening is read again in the morning. It does not always survive."

If you are not familiar with her work, and you should be, please visit the following link.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/340

As a tribute to Ms. Szymborska, I composed the following poem.

The Last Time it Snowed in Krakow
for Wislawa Szymborska

She sits by the window of her apartment, a cat on her lap and a cup of tea in her hand, watching.

On the street below it snows; it is always snowing these days, she thinks.

She sets down her tea and writes the line, The last time it snowed in Krakow was the day I died.

She strokes the cat, stretched across her thighs like a striped yogi, and imagines its thoughts in her absence.

In her poem “Cat in an Empty Apartment”, where something doesn’t happen as it should, she foretold this unfortunate creature’s future.

The cat will lie awake like a lone bird on a housetop; his days will pass like smoke as the poet’s ashes burn.

“You’ll be a pelican in the wilderness,” the poet says to her yawning companion, "because my days are declining like shadows.”

She ponders the weight of its grief; Ecclesiastes said he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Soon the cat will know the weathered world outside the window lays out its welcome mats only so long.





Happy Writing.

Monopoly Is a Dangerous Game

I have a love-hate relationship with the whole eBook thing; I love that I can instantly download a book on my kindle, yet I also feel a little ashamed. Yet now that my city no longer has a physical bookstore, and the selection at Walmart is limited, downloading and purchasing from Amazon has become a near necessity. However, those of us who love books and bookstores have an obligation to support independent stores and the remaining chains like Barnes & Noble. Otherwise, Amazon will monopolize the industry and deplete our choices.

Amazon, which opened its e doors in the 1990s, quickly became the world’s largest retailer due to its expert marketing strategies. Products are readily available, shipped with astonishing speed, and available worldwide. Recently, Amazon accommodated independent authors through its create space and KDP services, thus opening publishing venues to books the “big” publishers and agents refuse to look at. No matter how much or little an independent author sells his or her title, Amazon will provide a market, encourage options for marketing such as a free author page, open your title for reviews, all the while happily accepting its cut.

All is not rosy with Amazon. Recent issues of Harpers and The Writer have noted how Amazon openly acknowledges its goal is to create a publishing monopoly. They succeeded in helping Borders’s demise. Is Barnes & Noble next?

The benefit Barnes & Noble-and any independent bookstore- has over Amazon is human; you can walk into an actual store and get customer service. Try contacting a human at Amazon; it’s easier to break into Fort Knox. While Amazon customers can sit and browse, albeit online, the aesthetic of browsing quietly in a brick and mortar bookshop is missing. We mortals are social beings, and sometimes we crave the company of like minded people, people who love books and the stuff in bookstores. [see http://laura-moe.blogspot.com/2011/12/bookstore-is-wounded-not-dead.html]

Barnes & Noble now refuses to carry Amazon titles, which seems a little petty. But the book business has become like David and Goliath.
I was somewhat encouraged today when I visited a Barnes & Noble an hour’s drive from my house. It was crowded, and I had to wait in line.

Shop at Amazon. They provide remarkable access to an almost unlimited number of products. But also shop at independent bookstores (like Malaprops in Ashevile, NC or The Tattered Cover in Denver) and the extant chains. All of them have web sites. Yes, you’ll pay a little more, but those small shops also encourage independent authors to promote their books with readings and author talks in the store. Most of all, they provide personal service.



Happy writing and book shopping.

The What and Why of Reading

Upon return from holiday break, our Queen and Fearless Language Arts Department Head Cindy Rucker challenged the High School English teachers with a set of tasks: Bring in any books, magazines or other materials you are currently reading or have read over break. We will run off the covers and display them on a bulletin in the hallway as the visual portraying the department’s commitment to reading outside of school.

She also posted questions for us to ponder:

How does this reading influence the why and what of your teaching?
How do you decide what to read?
Where and when do you read?
What book or article has had an impact on your life?

Because I teach writing, reading is essential. But even if I taught Math or Biology, reading is still an essential; all content is driven by the word. Many factors influence what I choose to read. Along with grading student papers, and reading selections from the text, I often read articles about writing or social concerns I share with my class. Lately I have also been reading a lot about the ever changing state of libraries and bookstores, my two loves who may be spiraling toward demise. In my last blog I wrote about The Yellow Lighted Book Shop, and over break I underlined and book marked passages I plan to share with my students this month.

Cindy encouraged us to construct verbal or written reactions to these questions. A few of us wrote short poems, which have me an idea. I constricted the beginning of what needs to be a lengthy poem, and as a challenge to YOU, I want you to add your own four line stanza and sign it. Think of this as a perpetual poem. Reading is an infinite activity.( I plan to do this in my classroom and with my young writers at the library.)

Here is mine:

When I read I become an Arabian night,
I fly above the African terrain,
Fall in love a thousand times,
and hold a kingdom in my hands.

Laura Moe

Add your stanzii.....
Happy Writing. Read Every Day.