On a Writer's Walk

In the neighborhood, June 2013 (kendaturner.blogspot.com)

"Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

I had a pretty good walk the other day when all along my route a world of words and writing accompanied me, and not just the mechanics of the notecard and pencil I carried in my pocket:

Fallen catawba blossoms poured out like popcorn around a tree trunk--simile.

A deer, white tail straight up, bounding across a yard--poetry.

A mug lying in the road in the midst of a wet puddle still smelling of fresh coffee--mystery.

Rustling in the mulberry tree and the surprise of a squirrel dropping to the ground right in my path--the unexpected.

A mother jogging with her pre-teen daughter--supporting characters/character change.

 Sweet scent of honeysuckle--detail and description.

Two small bunnies, one following the other, across the road to the bushes beyond. "Think we're going to make it before a car comes?" "Dunno' but we'd better get a move on"--dialogue. (Or maybe foreshadowing. See next...)

Awful, stinking roadkill of an opossum--complication (I had to turn my head and hold my nose) and conflict. (Sorry, TMI?)

Honk of passing white van, wave of neighbor--satisfying ending.

"Seeing is a gift that comes with practice."--Stephanie Mills. I find this to be true. I must practice seeing. My proclivity is to walk with my head down, preoccupied with my thoughts, tuned out. I must consciously look up, look around, tune in, see things with a wider vision. And then it becomes a game--what can I see? What new perspective, what unexpected wonder or connection might I make? What new idea or breakthough will surprise me? And then writing is fun again.

What about you--is your writing vision already "sharp" or do you have to practice, too? What have you seen in any of your activities this week that has re-energized your writing batteries?

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Words, For the Fun of It

My friend here showed up one day tacked on the side of a tree that stands at the foot of the hill along my walking route. I feel like I've got a companion watching over me as I go now. What fun.

And speaking of fun, here are some quotes on the subject of words. Just for the fun of it.

"Words--so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them." --Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes." --Theodore Dreiser

"Words set things in motion. I've seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges." --Toni Cade Bambara

"The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind." --Hortense Calisher

"Words fascinate me. They always have. For me, browsing in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank." --Eddie Cantor

"Wrestling with words gave me my moments of greatest meaning." --Richard Wright

Any *words of wisdom* you might you have to share about words?

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October Morning Gallery

We took a walk this morning, hubby and I, to the top of the hill beyond our house. We do this a couple of times a year, different times, different seasons. Thought I'd share pocket-sized views of October from over this way. It's been a beautiful day.

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The poetry of the earth is never dead." --John Keats

"To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more

welcome than the most luxurious Persian carpet." --Helen Keller

"Climb up on some hill at sunrise. Everybody needs perspective

once in a while, and you'll find it there." --Robb Sagendorph

"The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful." --e.e. cummings

"Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man."

--George Wherry, Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot, 1896

"Nature is the art of God." --Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 1635

"Nature is a writer's best friend." --Agave Powers

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Have a great rest of the weekend! Hope your pockets are filled with beauty, too.

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Imagination Gone Wild

"Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun." --George Scialabba

I came home one day this week from a morning jaunt (thinly disguised as exercise :-) to an innocent question from hubby: "How was your walk?"

Well, I had rehearsed what I was going to say most of the way home. This is how it went:

"Oh, nothing unusual. Except...well, I saw a cowboy, got accosted by a bandit, was quizzed by a tax collector, and had a four-legged senior citizen teach me a life lesson."

What's that all about, you say? Did my imagination get the best of me?

Or did I run with my imagination?

Imagination: n. "the action of imagining; power of forming pictures in the mind of things not present to the senses...the ability to create new things or ideas or to combine old ones in new forms...a creation of the mind; mental image; fancy.

This is what really happened. At a point, I heard a noise behind me. I turned to see a guy riding a black horse and leading a spotted gray one across the road. Now once upon a time my neighborhood consisted of a few little farmhouses dotted randomly about, but no more. Most have been replaced by newer homes. So where did these horses come from? Where is the barn? Where was the rider going? He was not wearing a cowboy hat.

The bandit? Bandit--the name of a white yappy dog--ran toward me just after the horses passed from view. I swear this noisy thing was going to nip at my ankles. The owner, an older guy who had great difficulty walking, came out and tried to round Bandit up, all the while assuring me his dog would not bite. Yeah, right--did he get Bandit's word on that?

A friend drove up shortly afterwards, slowed down and kept pace with me for a little while. "Say," he said as he kept an eye on his rear-view mirror for any cars that might be coming, "you know your taxes are going to go up." He had noticed we recently had a new patio put in at the back of the house. "You think so?" I responded, and waved as he went on down the road. Not really a tax collector, but curious all the same.

And the four-legged senior citizen? I greeted Cindy who was walking her slow, meandering lab, Cameo. "At least she's still moving," Cindy said of her 17-year old dog. "Ha," I replied. "I think there's a lesson in there somewhere for us, too!"

Don't know if I'll try to weave a story from any of these elements or not--but it was fun to craft a draft in my head and test it out on hubby.

It's sort of like something Thomas Edison said: "To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."

Or Dr. Seuss--"Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!"

Where did your "thinks" take you this week? Any plans to stir the imagination in a new and fun way in the days ahead?

*photo: sxc.hu/

Blue Birds, New Words

"Every time I see a bluebird, I say, well, hey, all this hard work is all worthwhile."--Ray Briggs

I saw my first bluebird of the year this morning on my walk. What a bright spot on an otherwise dreary day. Take heart--spring is really on its way. The bluebird told me so!

Then I went home, sat down at the computer, and got lost in revisions. My hubby came in at one point and asked if I'd been out of my chair in awhile. That's a problem. Too often I get engrossed and forget to stretch. And I've got a whole series of exercises lined out that I'm "supposed" to do while on the clock. Number one on the list of things to do to try to keep healthy. But that's another subject for another time.

Finally, I surfaced for air just in time to fix supper. Number two on the list: remember to eat. Number three: Don't forget to breathe.

But it's funny. As much work as revisions take, I still enjoy the process. It's getting those first few words down on paper that's the hardest for me. Maybe someone could drop words in my brain like people throw bread crumbs to ducks.

Whoops, wait a minute. That would be so not healthy. Gotta' do my own writing. Find my own healthy habits. Breathe spring's first bluebirds of words onto the blank computer screen, or notebook page, so the season of revisions can follow.

So, which is harder for you--those first words, or revisions?

"Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder,

It's the truth, it's actual, everything is satisfactual.

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay,

Wonderful feeling, wonderful day!"

                                                         --from the film The Song of the South, words by Ray Gilbert

p.s. sorry for the corniness of this post, but I needed an excuse to use this photo, one that I shot a couple of years ago in a city park in California. I've waited all year to use it. But I really did see a bluebird this morning!

Moments of Inspiration

The past week, for me, was filled with the study of story, the writing of story, fall walks, camera shots--and inspirational moments that can come from a mix of it all. Here's a peek at what I gathered.

"An author must learn the principles of good storytelling only in order to write better from the heart." --Uri Shulevitz

"Imagination needs noodling--long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering." --Brenda Useland

"I think you must remember that a writer is a simple-minded person to begin with and go on that basis. He's not a great mind, he's not a great thinker, he's not a great philosopher, he's a story-teller." --Erskine Caldwell

"Moving around is good for creativity: the next line of dialogue that you desperately need may be waiting in the back of the refrigerator or half a mile along your favorite walk." --Will Shetterly

"Any work of art must first of all tell a story." --Robert Frost

"Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." --Albert Einstein

Wishing you beauty and inspiration in the week ahead...

The Sun Will Shine

It's the end of a long day of revision. Most of the day I've felt like I was still on yesterday's walk, which means I was in a deep fog. Literally. A thick gray curtain had settled in over the neighborhood, and obscured vision so much that I was afraid I wouldn't be seen by approaching cars. We don't have sidewalks out our way, so I'm right on the edge of the road when I go. But I finally relented and decided to give it a try--and I'm sure glad I did. It turned out to be a great walk. I'm also glad I stuck with my hours in the chair today. For, you see, by the end of yesterday's walk, the sun was shining. By the end of today's work, progress on my WIP (I think) has been made.

And so I share a few quotes that helped me along the way:

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."--E.L. Doctorow

"I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up." --Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

"Are you prepared to keep writing when you sit down to write? One challenge is starting; but another is continuing." --Eric Maisel, Living the Writer's Life

The sun will shine. Keep writing!

Rebound and Rewrite

They say experience is the best teacher. Well, if that's the case, what lesson did I learn after I experienced a fall on some ice this morning? Ha. Winter isn't over yet.

I had headed out for a walk, glad the weather finally cooperated. I not only looked forward to the exercise, but to quiet time and any writing inspiration that might pop into my head--as often happens--along the way. The sun shone for the first time in days and everything felt great, although I did almost slip on a slick spot at the end of the driveway.

I should have read the signs, but didn't. A bigger patch of ice farther up the road proved to be my downfall--literally. Ouch.

Well, I've slipped in my writing recently, too, and was reminded of this yesterday when sharing an article draft with my critique group. Pesky problems and weaknesses had worked their way back into my story but, much like a covering of ice, proved slick and difficult to see until my writing friends pointed them out to me.

"Rewriting," William Zinsser noted in his classic On Writing Well, "is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost." Thanks to critique partners, I rebounded and got back in the game--ready to revise and rewrite. Thanks, Connie and Lanita.

As for my walk, I revised it, too--opting to go home and rebound on our mini-trampoline instead.