Pastel on paper ©Carolyn Dennis-Willingham
*
Does everything change?
Love grows broader or thinner.
Hope blossoms or wains.
Despair peaks or evaporates.
Fear paralyzes or fades.
Does everything change?
No need to hurry.
Even change itself shifts its pace
But nuggets of moments tucked neatly,
a pocket filled of treasures preserved,
remain.
Venture to a road less traveled
mysteries wither, then unravel
a fate explained
a purpose gained
amidst the trodden gravel.
© Carolyn Dennis-Willingham
You know how, when you finish that memoir, novel, book of poetry, and all of a sudden, your realize it’s done? Over?
Maybe your writing is in the hands of an editor. Maybe your work is already published (Hooray!). But now?
Perhaps you’re all-too familiar with this phenomenon called writer’s block. Maybe you feel the agony of it now because any new characters at your door aren’t knocking loud enough for you to hear.
You miss forming words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into a manuscript. You long to taste new words on your tongue and massage them between your fingers. But they are out of reach. I’m included in this category of empty blockheads.
Perhaps, for novel writers, we should start with a real block. Each of the six sides holds the secrets to starting anew.
Side one: Think of a cool protagonist.
Side two: A badass antagonist.
Side three: The inciting incident. Is it dangerous? Emotional?
Side four: The setting. Dark? Beautiful?
Side five: Devise a plot around sides one through four.
Side six: There’s a theme in there somewhere. What is it?
Don’t know about you, but I’ll be tossing my block around for a while until it hits me in the head.
I have a character, and, like most, she just sort of showed up. But now she lies dormant and I ache for her to return. I think about her but can’t rouse the crazy old bat – even now when there’s plenty of time to spend on the computer.
I know Olvie lives alone. It’s the 1960’s and she takes up space in a small house just outside the old freedom town of Clarksville in Austin, Texas. She tries to fix her hair Marilyn Monroe-style but it comes out looking like Sally’s on the Dick Van Dyke show.
Olvie hates calling telephone numbers that contain a zero. Takes too damn long for the rotary dial to circle all the way back to its starting position. And the rabbit ears on her Magnavox don’t work to satisfaction until 10:00 a.m. when Let’s Make a Deal airs.
Until she chunked old Singer out the window, Olvie used to be a card carrying member of the Sewing Guild. She does, however, still have a license to check out books should she have the hankering to stare at words instead of the boob tube.
A real visitor might enter her house and think they have stepped into the Twilight Zone. Mannequin Gladys, wearing her flapper dress, stares out the window. Half-torsoed Fritz wears the top portion of a lederhosen and precariously balances on the television.
When she encounters the poor soul walking past her house, she poke, poke, pokes his chest, asks if she can spit on his shoes, then adds, “it won’t take long.”
Returning inside, she kicks off her duck slippers and does a quick “shuffle off to Buffalo” to impress Gladys and Fritz. They are catatonically dazzled by her performance.
Dear Olvie, please come back so I can plunk your words and actions down on a keyboard. Get in my face, spit on my shoes if you want. Just show up again.
Your friend, Carolyn
image credit
Wreath of light, it then surrounds
the wonderment of joyous sounds
hear the laughter
trailing after
blessings with no bounds.
See previous here.
If you find that you are thumbin’
but there’s no place you can go
’cause the trains, they won’t be comin’
and the cars, they’ve all been stowed
Just ponder momentarily
where it is you’d like to be
The perfect place
that you’d embrace
to let your mind roam free.
I’d love to know what image you have of a carefree place to hunker down. Please find a picture and ping me back. Let’s dream together.
Here’s mine:
The mourning dove, late afternoon
cooing out its peaceful tune
the sounds of grace
that fill the space
of any lonely room.
Is it not Life tries to ruse
by preaching riches can amuse?
The unpretentious
conscientious
find true meaning in life’s clues.
Carolyn Dennis-Willingham 