The Hag by Robert Herrick (1648)

The Hag is astride,
    This night for to ride;
The Devill and shee together:
    Through thick, and through thin,
    Now out, and then in,
Though ne’r so foule be the weather.

    A Thorn or a Burr
    She takes for a Spurre:
With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,
    Through Brakes and through Bryars,
    O’re Ditches, and Mires,
She followes the Spirit that guides now.

    No Beast, for his food,
    Dares now range the wood;
But husht in his laire he lies lurking:
    While mischiefs, by these,
    On Land and on Seas,
At noone of Night are working,

    The storme will arise,
    And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder,
    The ghost from the Tomb
    Affrighted shall come,
Cal’d out by the clap of the Thunder.


Anybody else ready for Halloween? I know we sure are...

...happy happy happy...

How Can It Be I am No Longer I by Lucie Brock-Broido (1997)

Winter was the ravaging in the scarified Ghost garden, a freak of letters crossing down a rare Path bleak with poplars. Only the yew were a crewel Of kith at the fieldstone wall, annulled As a dulcimer cinched in a green velvet sack. To be damaged is to endanger—taut as the stark Throats of castrati in their choir, lymphless & fawning & pale. The miraculous conjoining Where the beamless air harms our self & lung, Our three-chambered heart & sternum, Where two made a monstrous Braid of other, ravishing. To damage is an animal hunch & urge, thou fallen—the marvelous much Is the piece of Pleiades the underworld calls The nightsky from their mud & rime. Perennials Ghost the ground & underground the coffled Veins, an aneurism of the ice & spectacle. I would not speak again. How flinching The world will seem—in the lynch Of light as I sail home in a winter steeled For the deaths of the few loved left living I will Always love. I was a flint To bliss & barbarous, a bristling Of tracks like a starfish carved on his inner arm, A tindering of tissue, a reliquary, twinned. A singe of salt-hay shrouds the orchard-skin, That I would be—lukewarm, mammalian, even then, In winter when moss sheathes every thing alive & everything not or once alive. That I would be—dryadic, gothic, fanatic against The vanishing; I will not speak to you again.

I'll Turn off the Television Once in a While

Sometimes I get so sick of the television noise that I turn it off. And they get so mad at me. They stomp and pout and swear up and down that they're missing something really important. Eventually they run out of steam and settle down.

And they do this.

And I love it.

Make Like Billy Madison...

And head back to school.

Last week I got my school assignment. I've got a new district, but I'm staying with 4th graders. Yaaaay! I have a soft spot for them...Boy Wonder being one himself and all. Yep, I'm biased.

To start each assignment off, we have a sitdown meeting with the teachers I'll be working with, a member of the WITS office, and myself. It's a short time to get to know each other, get a feel for what the teachers are looking for in the coming weeks and a chance to familiarize myself with the school.

I should jump in and say that I was 20 minutes late to the meeting despite leaving my house 90 minutes ahead of time. I-10 hosed me, ya'll. It HOSED me. What a great first impression I must have made...

This year, instead of four teachers, I have two. Two super nice, extra gentle fourth grader ELA teachers. Is it silly that the nice ones scare me more than the more stand-offish ones do?

Their biggest concern this year is adding voice to the students' work. It makes sense. Most of what their learning is aimed for the annual standardized test in the spring and it seems the rubrics are getting more rigid. Kids are getting dinged for not having enough "voice" in their essays...even the dreaded expository. (Barf.)

I've been thinking long and even longer about how to teach kids what their writing "voice" is. I have no clue where mine comes from and I'm pretty sure that it changes depending on the material and whether or not I got enough sleep. It might even lean on the amount of gas in my truck, truth be told.

It's such a vague notion, isn't it? How do you teach someone how to sound like an individual when they're taught to answer the same thing, the same way, every single time throughout their education. We're creating a generation of test drones, but we want these test drones to have an individual voice inside the 34 lines provided. But then go back to having the exact same answer as everyone else.

Luckily, the awesome teachers get to figure that part out, god bless 'em. I get to show up, make them laugh with my Lumpy Space Princess impression and let them go HAM on the paper, no rules, no censoring, just writing.

But here we are. Tomorrow is week one. We're concentrating on voice.

I'm goin' in folks...

...happy happy happy...

Coe's Grocery

A couple of Sundays ago I posted a list of blogging prompts for folks and managed to get too busy to do them. Why would I do my own homework? That's just silly.

But one of my prompts, one that came completely and most randomly off the top of my head asked people to write about their grocery stores. Why did they go there? Convenience? Products? Did they shop the same route each time?

I've been mulling it around in my head these few weeks because some days it seems like I'm back in the grocery store at least four times a week, no matter how big my weekend haul is. (Truthfully, I feel like those Alaskan fishermen some Sundays when I'm dragging in grocery bags stuffed like crab pots. Give me a yellow rain suit and I'd fit right in.)

I always hated grocery shopping and I've never been a gourmet cook. But hwne you are a family of six, food evaporates like rainwater in El Paso.

I shop at the local Walmart. I'm not really thrilled about it, but given the pros I'd be crazy to go anywhere else.

They price match.

I can use coupons without feeling too bad about holding up the line.

I can overstuff my cart and not wince in shame because all six carts ahead of me and the three behind me are dripping with Cheez Its and cans of condensed soup. One flustered lady back there even has two cars to her name.

Walmart is also the closet store to me and my risk of getting pulled over for my expired registration and Alaska plates runs pretty low. I'm riding so dirty I have one snow tire on because my tires are threadbare and scream in pain whenever I drive too long. I live on the edge, ya'll.

 I'd love to go the HEB more often, but that's a local police hangout and then I'd just be playing the odds like an idiot. Walmart it is.

I hit the back first. If I'm down a kid or two (or heaven help me, with NO kids), I might take a luxurious stroll through the candle aisle and smell 18 versions of pumpkin pie wax melts. I hit the back and grab water and baby supplies because we're always out of both.

Then it's dairy. I haul four gallons of milk in at a time because nothing's worse than putting everyone to bed and realizing you're out for the nighttime bottles. (Don't judge. Just don't.)

I bounce around through the grocery aisles. Up two, back three. Then it's sequential and then back two more because I forgot refried beans. Ignore the old lady who's managed to get the sit'n'scoot lodged sideways in the aisle as best I can (think: Austin Powers) and try not to threaten my  daughter too many times out loud for tossing the cereal boxes out when I'm reaching for bread. I'm a good mom and threaten her in the privacy of the truck. 

I take my time in the produce aisle because it's my favorite and I do my best not to dwell on the fact that most of the veggies were grown in some sort of lab and will never, ever decompose on their own. Do yourself a favor and don't think about it, either.

While I'm at it, I'll stand my ground and finish grabbing all nine of my cucumbers in my own sweet time, impatient man behind me be hammed. (Yes, I said ham on purpose. You're proud, aren't you?)

Then it's line time. If I'm alone without a time frame, I'll pick the longest one on purpose and read three magazines like I'm at the library. It's my alone time in a world where I don't even get to pee without the dog, a dollhouse, and two girls fighting over the green Power Ranger.

Not long ago my mom sent me a photograph collection from our family. One is my great-grandfather, Coe. He died young (at 38, I believe) and in all my genealogy obsession lately, there isn't much about him out there. But there is a census in 1930 when he lived with his father. After his own divorce and after his mother died and when it asked for occupation, it listed "salesperson."

The picture is of Coe in a fanatically clean, well-stocked and simply grocery store. He's well-dressed, looking attentive (and handsome, obviously) and I can't help but wonder how far we've come from those days when there were relatively few ingredients to purchase because everyone made everything from scratch to today.

I'd probably like shopping at the grocery store a lot more if was more like Coe's grocery store.

...happy happy happy....

5-Minute MFA: How I Use the Three Act Structure to Plot (Day 14)

On Saturday I talked about using the Three Act Structure to plot your most basic story line of your novel. (See the post for yourself: Plotting and the Three Act Structure)

I mentioned it was just the beginning for me when I start my plotting journey. It's a small, but very powerful tool I like to use.

I thought today I'd show you how I used the tool to start plotting a recently completed middle grade novel I wrote.

Like I said...there aren't an overload of details, but just enough to get me started. I have two more steps after this before I feel comfortable enough to let 'er rip. More tomorrow!

...happy happy happy...

Miss a day? Check out my 31 Day MFA Challenge Master List!

A Week of Prompts: Blogging

Day One: Talk about a time when you should have helped someone… but didn’t.

Day Two: What’s the most dreadful (or wonderful) experience you’ve ever had as a customer?

Day Three: Talk about something you think is terribly unfair — and explain how you would rectify it.

Day Four: What would it take for you to consider yourself a “successful blogger”? Is that something you strive for?

Day Five: Talk about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they've taken you.

Day Six: When was the last time you really stood out in a crowd? Are you comfortable in that position, or do you wish you could fade into the woodwork?

Day Seven: What bores you?

5-Minute MFA: Plotting and the Three Act Structure (Day 12)

Over the next few days, I'm going to dig into just how I plot my novels. There are a few pieces to it, so I thought I'd spare the 50,000 word blog post and break it down into manageable chunks.

Today, I want to talk about the three-act structure.

Whether or not we realize it, we all know the three-act structure. Most movies live or die by the three-act structure and when we write most commercial (and plenty of literary) fiction, the three-act structure is our default story structure.

It has its detractors. Some people swear modern storytelling does not depend on breaks in the action, etc., etc., but I 'm not worried about defending my own plotting methods. I'm simply sharing what works for me. (/end disclaimer!)

It's really just a model that divides the written work in the beginning, middle, and end. Fancier terms would be the set up, the crisis, and the resolution.

Act I

In the first of three acts, we establish the characters and the world they exist in. We learn the rules of their world and toward the end of this first act, something happens. It could be anything. Plague. Zombie apocalypse. The murder of Uncle Owen and Aunt Verue. By the end of the first Act, our hero or heroine has changed and must move on for the story to take shape.

Act II

The second act is called rising action. The speed usually picks up and our protagonist spends the majority of act two trying to resolve whatever problem was dropped on them toward the end of the first act. We learn more about our characters and subplots and the "darkest moment" usually occurs sometime in this second act.

Act III

The third act is our resolution. We resolve the problem (or we fail, or we suffer defeat) but the climax occurs and we wind down our story. Our hero usually returns a changed character.

How do I use this in plotting?

In its most basic sense, I'll sketch out the novel's story line and divide the action into the appropriate act. It helps me develop scenes and important moments and I sketch out the conflict, action, and resolution based on this three act structure.

Sometimes I don't follow the "roller coaster" diagram to the letter, but when it comes to plotting the rise and fall of my story's action, I've found that the three act structure is the first step in my rudimentary story building.

I use the three act structure to build my most basic framework. From there, I add more to my outlines, but it all starts with those three acts for me. See my preliminary use of it here: How I Use the Three Act Structure to Plot.

This week? I'll talk about how I layer on the Hero's Journey onto the three act structure and get more detail out of my novel's outline.

Miss a day? Check out my 31 Day MFA Challenge Master List!

I Vlog, Therefore I am. Then I Give You a Book. For Free. (Day 11)

Hello, friends!

Just a 31 Day Challenge check in here....and a giveaway for an awesome copy of "Still Writing:The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life" by Dani Shapiro.

Good luck!

5-minute MFA: Use Your Notebook Correctly (Day 10)

Ugh. Last week flew by so fast. I have my last 9 days (of the 31 day challenge) written on Word, but I have yet to transfer those bad boys over. Bear with me, writers. They'll get here, I promise!

So let's talk about today's tip: your writer's notebook.

If you're anything like me, chances are you have MILLIONS of pretty, cute, sleek, fancy notebooks floating around your house, littered with thoughts, words, and doodles. It's fun to dream in these books, but are they really working for you as a writer? Are they helping you get to your goals that much faster? My guess is no.

When I was in graduate school, they  never taught me methods for productivity, despite how badly I needed them. In grad school, you simply show up to your workshop each week with whatever story or poem or essay that was due. Nobody cared how you managed it, you just did. That was fine when I was a single 20-something without kids, who could stay up late and pound out a few poems in haste and sleep in the next morning to recover.

But here in the real world, with kids, and jobs, and bills, and laundry, and Sleepy Hollow....how do we get it done?

One of my methods is the writer's notebook. But more powerful than the notebook itself is how you use it.

In years past, I collected notebooks and filled them with a few pages of character sketches and basic plot notes, but that's about it. So I had 47 notebooks with the first ten pages filled in and not much more. These days I keep my character and plot notes on my computer, print a few sheets out to STICK in the notebook for reference and use my notebook SOLELY for production of material.

I took an online workshop a year or so back that focused on productivity and how some authors just seemed to be book machines. How did they do it? What was their secret?

The biggest weapon these writers had, it turns out, were chunks of 15 minutes sprinkled throughout their days that they claimed. And they wrote in these notebooks during these two or three 15 minute blocks and at the end of the day (or the beginning) when they got to sit down for their larger block of writing, they had at least five or six notebook pages of material they could transcribe and from there, the material kept flowing.

It's a pretty simple concept: work on your draft for 15 minutes at a time, a few times a day, in your notebook and suddenly at the end of the week you've amassed up to 20 pages in your non-writing time.

More on how I stack and organize my notes online tomorrow.

Happy writing!

...happy happy happy...



Miss a day? Check out my 31 Day MFA Challenge Master List!