Anatomy For Poets

At dinner last night, my poet friend Elizabeth and I discussed cat anatomy and how cat owners have difficulty slicing open cat cadavers in anatomy class. I had a college roommate who majored in nursing. She also had two cats, and I asked if it bothered her to dissect dead cats. “No, because the ones we get come from the shelter. They’re nobody’s pet. At least this way they make a contribution to science. Their lives aren’t in vain.” For a couple of weeks she seemed to be just a touch more affectionate toward her own feline pets after her Anatomy class.

Elizabeth’s and my conversation shifted to leaving our bodies to science. “I think it would be kind of cool to donate my body,” she said.
“Are poets different inside?” I asked. “When we’re flayed open on the table, are our organs uniquely shaped? Brighter? Placed more randomly?”
She laughed, and told me I need to write a poem about it.

Suicidal poets might not be good anatomical subjects, especially those who jumped off buildings, or shot themselves.

Does a poet’s blood flow in metric patterns?

The bodies at the Bodies exhibit were rumored to be prisoners who allowed their corpses to be displayed. I wonder how intently these men and women were encouraged to become specimens.

Were any of the Bodies poets? Perhaps the ones whose nerves resembled threads for a brightly woven scarf.

This post has gotten weird. It’s Friday. It's Spring.


Happy Writing.

Writing a Good Query is Like Getting a Root Canal While Hanging From a Trapeze

The clouds shimmer like aluminum in the crepuscular light as I write this.

I had a one hour consult with Mark Malatesta, a former literary agent who now offers consulting services to writers. His blog, which you can access for free, is loaded with good insight.
http://literaryagentny.com/blog/

I took advantage of his limited time offer to new clients for a one hour phone call for $97. Before our one hour phone call Mark sent me a set of questions to answer, as well as information about my work. The session includes a free MP3 recording of our conversation. In addition, Mark sends a link to another MP3 on insider secrets to getting published. Before my phone call I had already gotten a lot of bang for my bucks.

Some of what we discussed was encouraging. He praised my body of writing and knowledge of the YA markets. He feels my books are marketable and I am ready to be represented. Yet he confirmed the difficulty in breaking in. For example, one needs to contact a minimum of 100 agents, and expect only 10% to respond. There are many reasons why agents do not bite, the chief being a poorly written query. The letter is the key to the castle, and I would rather write a 300 page novel than a query letter. It’s easier.

Our dialogue provided me with ideas on how to improve my horrible query letter, and the conversation reinforced something I already knew; I have a lot of work to do. Drudge work, not the creative fun stuff like crafting characters, placing them in peril and letting them talk to you. Writing is an art, but publishing is a business, and if I want to get published, I have to suck it up and put on my metaphorical three piece suit.

If I decide to use more of Mark’s consultations, we will work on producing a query that will hopefully attract a number of agents.

So my assignment to those of writing prose (Most agents don’t represent poets) is; visit his web site, download the MP3 and sign up for his newsletter. You have nothing to lose because these things are all free.


Happy Writing.

Finding Success in Losing

We all like winning and receiving accolades. Recognition for writing validates why we bother to spend endless hours suffering over a word or a sentence.

nobody sane does it.

Why bother trying when in that vast world of published material your body of work is just a comma? Why bother entering a competition with hundreds of other writers, most of who are wag better than you?
Because we need strangers to tell us our work is worthy. Our friends and family believe we are brilliant. Strangers tell you the truth.
I recently lost a contest. Didn’t even get an honorable mention. Yet this loss proved successful.

I had entered Under the Veil in the Writer's Digest Self Published. Awards in the middle grade/young adult division . Books were judged on four criteria with 5 being the top score. My marks were Plot 4, Grammar. 5, character development, 5, and production quality and cover design, 3.
My two highest scores were for the most important elements: craft and character. Plot is necessary, but it 's the weakest literary element.
but the judge wrote "this is a wonderful book…my favorite….it is perfectly written for the age group intended…it was very beautifully done.”

The only negative comments was the judge wanted to know more about me (There is an author page in the back with a photo. And I do explain my motivation for writing the book on that page. I don’t know how much more I can do there.)

So my design cost me an honorable mention, or even a prize, But I got what is truly important: validation from a total stranger that I am a good writer.
Tomorrow begins National Poetry Month. I plan to write a poem a day. Most of them wil be terrible because it’s hard to write a good poem in a day.

Even so, I will also READ a poem every day.

If you haven’t already, sign up at napowrimo.org to write thirty poems in thirty days.

Also here is a blog post from last year rife with exercises:
http://laura-moe.blogspot.com/2011/03/poem-day-for-all-you-april-fools.html



Happy Writing.

Two for One Deal

This poems fulfills two Scintilla prompts. (, to write a list, and 10, to write about heartbreak. I love a 2 for 1 deal.)

Twenty- three Word Romance


1. Pyrotechnics (n.) a brilliant fireworks display, like when we saw each other at that Fourth of July party.
2. Emanate (v.) to send forth, like the vibes emanating between us
3. Convivial (adj.) merry festive. The atmosphere at the fete was convivial. Lots of wine and beer flowed.
4. Vernacular (n.) everyday language spoken. Our dialogue was convivial and rife with vernacular.
5. Swoon (v.) to enter a state of ecstasy, I swooned when you leaned to kiss me.
6. Spangle (v.) to sprinkle or stud with bright, glimmering pieces, like how I felt inside the first time you kissed me.
7. Tangible (adj.) to be able to be touched or held, real, not an apparition or a figment. The heat between us was tangible.
8. Opiate (n.) something that induced relaxation and torpor. Your skin on mine was an opiate.
9. Whimsical (adj.) childlike, fun, like the time we stole a grocery cart from Kroger and you wheeled me home
10. Laugh (v.) something you made me do every day.
11. Ineffable (adj.) an unexplainable feeling spangling inside me at the thought of you, the sound of your voice, the scent of you on the sheets.
12. Love (n.) the feeling which animates a person who is deeply fond of someone. Syn. Affection, attachment, devotion, adoration, allegiance, loyalty, emotion, crush.
13. Sempiternal (adj.) enduring , everlasting, like that sense of infinity, where the snow globe figures hold another snow globe and , or the picture is a picture of a person holding the same picture, on and on. How I imagined we were.
14. Precarious (adj). dangerously lacking in security and stability. You were reckless and spontaneous, and there was always plenty of beer. Exciting, yet unsettling.
15. Unsettling. (adj.) something felt wrong. Call it a sixth sense. On the surface things looked fine (ignore the copious amounts of beers), but something felt off.
16. Discordant (adj.) unpleasant; harsh – a feeling that gnawed at me.
17. Crush (v.) crushing, crushes, crushed. How I felt when I saw you kissing her on our bed. It was such a cliché. I came home early from work.
18. Inconsolable. (adj.) how I felt when you cheated on me with a friend of mine, no less. It had been going on for awhile.
19. implacable (adj. not be pacified or appeased, like your tendency to be unfaithful
20. Ambivalent (adj.) Having mixed feelings about something and not being able to choose.
21 splinter (v.; n.) bitter, committer, critter, embitter, emitter, fitter, flitter, fritter, glitter, gritter, hitter, jitter, knitter, litter, permitter, quitter, remitter, sitter, skitter, slitter, spitter, splitter....
22. Denouement (n.) the final resolution of a dramatic plot.
23. Entropy (n.) • A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.• A measure of loss.• The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.• Inevitable and steady deterioration.


exercise- find a random word in the dictionary and use it as a springboard for a poem.

Happy Writing.

Time Keeps on Shrieking into the Future

The Scintilla 8 prompt has to do with writing about how you feel about a specific time in your life. This time I chose to write a poem. Maybe my mind is already set for April and National Poetry Month.

Stowing Away the Time

Thirty years ago it was yesterday.
The sun wrinkles time.
Knowledge etches lines on the skin.
Knowing grows grey hair.
Words are thinned by lips.
Aches are heavy with chins.
A body is scattered in broken bones.
The heart is stronger in years,
yet funerals shed more tears
The soundtrack to my life
is now sold at a discount

Laura Moe


Exercise
The weather has turned and you need to go outside. Using Basho’s quote:”Unless things are seen with fresh eye, nothing is worth writing down”, find a place or object (flower, weeds, the sun), sit, and observe. Take field notes as if you are in a biology class. Use all the senses. What di you see? Smell? Hear? Taste? Feel? Take your notes and connect your subject with a larger theme to create a metaphor.ie, Sun and eternity, or a blade of grass and the passage of time.)


Happy Writing.

Best Face Forward

Today’s essay has nothing to do with either of the Scintilla prompts. I’m tossing Friday confetti and writing rogue.

As we approach National Poetry Month, I feel it necessary to pay homage to Billy Collins.

I was watching Billy Collins’ TED talk earlier today,http://www.ted.com/talks/billy_collins_everyday_moments_caught_in_time.html

and his mention of cereal boxes ignited a string of childhood memories at the breakfast table, studying the back of the Grape Nuts or Cheerios boxes (my mom rarely bought us the good stuff like Trix and Sugar Frosted Flakes), sick days watching cartoons and black and white reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I also enjoyed watching my mother "Put on her face" each day.

My mother was so adept at applying lipstick she could do it in the dark while riding in a car with no mirror. Mom had an army of lipsticks; some platoons in the red family, others orange. Season dictated her hue. Pinks and peach for summer, red and burgundy shades for fall and winter. The color varied, but the application always went like this: She stretched her lip over her bottom teeth, making her appear as if she was going to sing, and swiped the color across in one stroke. She repeated the motion with the top lip. She pressed a Kleenex between her lips to absorb excess color, applied another coat, and pressed again. If she didn’t like that shade, she would erase it with cold cream and start over.

She applied the rest of makeup with the same painstaking care. Once her face was done, she took a lift comb and inserted it into her hairstyle to round out the teasing in the back of her hair. Her hair was naturally ash blonde, but she dyed it blue black, which created a striking contrast with her pale pink toned skin.

She checked her reflection in the glass, corrected any errors, and always asked, “How do I look?”
Even as a kid, I wondered, why aren’t we good enough without all the paint?
#

Here is a bonus TED talk by Andrew Satonton on story. Watch it, then write a great story
http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story.html

Happy Writing.

Turn up the Music and Dance

Today's Scintilla story prompt asks to write about when you first saw one of your parents as an individual adult rather than just Mom or Dad.

It was summer and I was six. We lived on the outskirts of Chicago and my mother took me to the beach with her single frind Diane. My parents’ social circle was couples, except for Diane. She belonged to my mother alone. Diane was tall, thin, with dark hair, resembling a young Marlo Thomas. They had met at a local playhouse where my mother performed in plays.

On this occasion I spent the day alone with the women, a girl’s day out: lunch on the beach, dinner out, and the evening spent in Diane’s beach front apartment. I loved her apartment. It was a single woman’s flat with one bedroom and a beaded doorway separating the kitchen from the tiny ding area. In the evening, Diane lit well placed lamps to provide a sophisticated ambiance.

I was young, and hurried off to bed as daylight faded. But I didn’t go to sleep. I heard the women chatting, clinking wine glasses and sharing an ashtray. It was too good of a temptation not to spy on them.

Diane was the same age as my mother, thirty-one, but she seemed younger, more dynamic. She worked every day, wore chic clothing, took trips to Europe and dated handsome men. Around Diane, with me safely stowed away in Diane’s bed (they didn’t realize I crouched at the door and watched them.), my mother replicated her friend’s carefree posture. Diane placed some records on her Hi Fi, and the two women danced. My mother erupted in raucous laughter, easy, casual, adult laughter.

Did my father know this woman? Or was she a mysterious side of my mother only Diane knew? Marriages can’t survive without holding a piece of your identity for yourself, so maybe the free spirited woman dancing in Diane’s living room was my mother’s secret self.



writing prompt: Play a favorite old song and freewrite for twenty minutes. Let the music lead you.
Happy Writing.

A Matter of Faith

Todays's Scintilla prompt is to write about an experience with faith.

I was ten years old the first time I saw my grandfather stand at the pulpit. This handsome, good-natured man transformed into a scary figure. “Damnation and Hell await those who do not believe!” I was stunned. I already knew I had to mind my Ps and Qs around my mother’s family, who lived their lives at a more conservative pace; they did not smoke, drink, dance or play cards. Visits with my mother’s family were sporadic because lived more than a day’s drive away. When I was small, my brothers and I attended Sunday school while the adults went to the service, but now I was old enough for the sermon. At home we attended the staid Presbyterian church, where I often daydreamed, but I did not nod off with my Grandpa at the pulpit.

His flock was engaged by his ranting and scripture quotes, and many of them eagerly skittered to his pulpit when he called for souls who were ready to be saved.

Saved from what?

I envy the faithful, those individuals who yield control of their souls, who believe in the intangible and freely raise their arms and shout, “Praise Jesus.” I don’t get it.

Yet I also envy those who staunchly commit to not believing. I believe in God. I think we should believe in something (just in case), but my faith is nebulous, undefined. I've tried to be one of the faihful, bu my wolf slaps her tail and the sheepskin falls off.

I feel like a foreigner at family reunions; so many of my relatives place their fates in the Lord’s hands, and let the Lord give them a blueprint for their lives.

Consequently I avoid theology discussions with most of my mother’s family. I attend church services when I visit, and I mumble the prayers and sing the hymns at the appropriate times, but in the back of my mind I wonder how much of Christian ideology is fiction. The Bible is a series of stories through multiple voices translated from archaic texts. It’s the human story whose major themes are the basis of western literature. But is it the absolute truth?

I believe in spirituality, but cannot agree that God condemns all non Christians to one way tickets to Hades. The whole concept does make sense.

In The Crucible, and there is a line by Judge Danforth defining people as “either with us or against us.” The black and white either or ideology limits ys humans. We’re all children of God, whoever He or She is. Each culture finds a way to finding Him.

God exists in the interstices of life, as in the marginalia Medieval monks scribbled on the Illuminated Manuscripts.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/21/monk-complaints-manuscripts/


To quote Hafiz
“God courts us with the beauty of this world."

Here is an exercise: read a story from a Holy book of your choice. Let that inspire your writing.




Happy Writing.

Global Warming melted my brain tonight

We had parent/teacher conferences tonight and after putting in a twelve hour day, I have no brain cells left, so I am recycling a poem that somewhat fits the "Got away with it," Scintilla prompt. This is based on an experience I had while attending AWP in 2000.

Comment Card at the Ramada Inn
In Downtown Albany, New York
by Laura Moe

The value of the room? Honey,
I’ve stayed in Red Roof Inns
that were nicer, for half the price,
and your restaurant leaves
a lot to be desired.
While I’m at it, I’d like
to complain about the guy
in the room across the courtyard.
In the middle of the night, I got
up to close the window because I
was cold. There he stood at his window,
butt naked, lights on. I watched
for a few minutes: He paraded
in front of his open drapes, alone,
and rubbed his arc of a belly like a lucky stone.
He sat on the bed nearest the window
and faced me. He held his penis
in his hand, gazed in my direction.
Looked straight at me,
penetrated the glass;
dared me to keep watching.

#

Today's prompt from me: Write about something off-kilter that happened to you.



Happy Writing.

Plan A, B and C

The Sunday Scintilla bonus prompt this weekend says to write about an outrageous idea.

It was a perfect plan; I’d buy a horse and ride it to Hollywood and get discovered. (I was oly ten, too young to drive.) I wanted to become a famous Hollywood actress, and with my additional equestrian skills, maybe I could star in a remake of National Velvet.
there were only a couple of problems with this plan:
How and Where would I buy a horse? I’d only ridden once at summer camp under supervision.)

I wasn’t nearly as attractive as Elizabeth taylor. I was pudgy, blonde, and had just gotten blue cat eye glasses.
I had no acting. This fact was later confirmed my Junior year oif high school when I played Joan of Arc’s mother. Every time I said opne of my lines the audience erupted in laughter.

So much for my dreams of getting an Academy Award.

Plan B- write a movie!

I’d written and performed plays for the neighborhood kids. Okay, so I had to bribe them to watch by passing out candy and popcorn.)

The closest I had ever come to writing a movie is again in my junior year I put together a three act play. After getting laughed off stage I still had a burning interest in theatre, so I concentrated on reading and writing plays. The problem with this plan was I didn’t have enough direction in life to enable me to create compelling characters. I’d had plenty of interesting, and even traumatic events happen, but not at sixteen I lacked the perspective to write a serious piece.
That play, along with most of high school scribbling, ended up in the trash. I kind of wish I could see how my mind worked. Maybe I had more talent than I imagined.

You’ve never heard of me, so it’s apparent my plans for stardom and fame fell through. But I still have shelf space reserved for that Oscar. I have written three YA novels,(Under the Veil, Chasing the Dragon, and Parallel Lines) and who knows? Maybe one of them will become the next Hunger Games or The Lightning Thief. I can always dream.

Writing prompt: What was your childhood dream? Write a short narrative on how that dream did or did not get realized.


Happy Writing.