Of course on Superbowl Sunday someone just had to have a Big Screen brought in before the game. This image sat outside of our house for an hour at least until Travis finally said how strange it was and I looked and saw the teeth.
A good writing prompt is to begin with where you are and what you see. If you have a digital camera, take a picture of what you see and write about it. And if you don’t wanna, write about this one.
One of our faithful blog readers says, “Once again I have awakened to disappointment in your refusal to change your blog. So, in my efforts to move your blogging career along, I call your attention to the Calendar Section of todays LA Times and the article on Bi Polarism. Since Bi Polarism seems to be the common connective between artists, musicians and writers you might like to poll your readers who are mostly writers to see how many of them have Bi Polar disorder or if they don’t have it would like to have it in order to further their careers. I think this would be a noble public service on your part. No thanks is necessary.”
I think this is the story J. is talking about.
So, to please J., I must ask you …. what do you think?
I’ve talked about NewPages.com before but it’s been a while, and who looks at archived blog posts, anyway? It’s hard enough keeping current on new blog posts.
Newpages.com is a clearing house of sorts for print and online magazines and journals. Check it out if you’re researching publications.
And talk about a first line that’ll grab your attention. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, offers one up right here.
…to the quiet of the library. It doesn’t look like much here, and mostly you can’t hear the quiet–the blizzard of quiet–which is what I love most.
I also like sitting where I can look out into a patch of wild.
Where do you write, and do you love it there?
The other thing is, in a photograph, you get what you see, but you don’t get what you don’t see.
In other words, in yesterday’s post, if that were a photograph (and I know I have photos of the kitchen circa 1998), you wouldn’t get the sounds of the car outside. You wouldn’t get the history of the table that Brian and I painted, and you wouldn’t get the Rampalski’s house across the street (they have long moved away). You wouldn’t get Travis’ dialogue and my supposed verbal abuse (according to Brian). You only get what you see. And most likely it wouldn’t be a panoramic vision.
So right now, where you sit, create a written photograph. Look up from your computer, and straight ahead, what do you see? If all you see is a wall, turn your head a bit. Now what do you see? Or take your pen and paper and go into another room. Go on the front porch. Look out a window. If someone’s sleeping, go into their room and take a written photo.
I try to take my own advice. So here’s mine:
…
Our younger cat, Rosie, sits on the table beside the front window and sticks her head through the curtains, looking outside at the dark morning sky. It is 6:39 and the sky is periwinkle, with swaths of white. It looks like rain. Through another window a branches stir.
I pull back. The 25-gallon aquarium that sits in the fireplace–the house filled with smoke when during our last few fires so our aquarium took up permanent residence there–sounds like a tiny stream, reminds me of Vermont and the last place I lived there, with the creek behind it. In the winter the creek would freeze over and in the spring you would hear loud thuds and creaks as the ice flows broke apart and the water rushed downstream.
Travis likes noise. He doesn’t like it to be too quiet. He misses the sound of the aquarium in his room and at night turns on a miniature electric volcano, for the sound, as he goes to sleep. He blames his desire for sound on me. He says it’s because I vacuumed when he was a baby, getting him used to sound so he could sleep anywhere and not need quiet, as I usually do unless I’m exhausted.
Now Rosie turns this way and washes herself, sitting back like a cartoon cat, her legs splayed this way and that, her white-tipped paws pointed at me.
….
Creating a written photograph gets you accustomed to paying attention to the details and gets you writing visually and viscerally.
If you feel like it, post your written photo.
A long time ago Andrea Schulz, my editor at Harcourt, suggested I post chapters or sections that didn’t make it into Pen on Fire. I’ve been meaning to. So let this be the premiere entry!
……….
The kitchen clock, with the watercolor painting of a blue-eyed sun and his full dark lips, ticks loudly. The green wicker chair on which I sit creaks as I shift my position. Clean dinner dishes crowd the red dish drainer.
The retro high chair with chrome arms and legs and duct-taped vinyl is pulled close to our small round kitchen table. Brian and I painted it with acrylics and lacquer. Its sides go down. And hanging from a white cabinet knob is a vintage red fabric heart that my student Robin gave me for Christmas that first year she took my class. January 1998.
Does the past exist if you neglect to record it?
A year later I wrote this:
It is nine o’clock on a balmy June night. Travis, almost four, took a late nap and is still sleeping. Knowing him, he will wake at midnight, kick up his heels, and be ready to party.
The front door is open, and Leao, our Portuguese water dog who has webbed feet but hates going in the water, lies on the carpet midway between the open door and me. The houses in this beach town sit so close to one another I occasionally hear the shake and shimmy of a neighbor’s washing machine.
Strains of jazz from somebody’s stereo drift across the fence along with the rumble of voices, and the computer I work on which is usually rather quiet now sounds loud. Someone’s phone rings, a car whishes by, and someone else parks and slams the car door. I’m sitting in a direct line with the front door, and it’s dark out, getting late, so I get up and ease it shut.
Before I do, I look outside. Across the street, the Rampalski’s porch light is on, and in the corner house Jordan’s room throbs and changes colors from the TV.
When I sit back down, the refrigerator motor kicks in. The noise distracts me but Brian likes it. For him, a quiet fridge when he returns from a gig in the wee small hours of the night makes for a too-quiet house. For me, the fridge, plus the hum of the laptop, makes the room a prime source of noise pollution.
On a day last week when my nerves felt particularly jangled, Travis was yelling, and I said, “You’re creating some real noise pollution, honey.” In his low key style, Brian said he wasn’t sure, but I may have just committed verbal abuse.
Of course the past exists if you don’t record it. But its details drift away. You strain to remember.
Writing down the details can evoke a scene more than a photograph can. And I’ve been a photographer for a lot of my life!
Set the timer (an exercise)
Record a scene with words (instead of, or in addition to, taking a picture). Note the details–what it sounds like, smells like, looks like. Include snippets of dialogue.
Palm Springs Noir, an anthology published by Akashic Books, edited by Barbara, also features her short story “The Water Holds You Still.” Order anywhere you buy books.
Amazon
Bookshop.org
Keep up to date on Barbara's many activities and postings by subscribing to her mailing list.
Get in the flow with typewriter music by Travis Barrett.
Support Indie bookshops and this site by purchasing books through my BookShop
