Poised Above the Shadow Mentors – Denise M. Ford

Writing may sometimes find me precariously positioned above a void. I come prepared to flex my muscles, to put into motion the movement that will unlock the words which will pull me forward to the edge. Recognizing that I am ready to swing out to thrust my ideas towards a single bar, I focus on the awaiting trapeze.

Most days I completely ignore the safety net below me, or rather I take for granted that it exists. I know it offers a rebounding resurgence if I require it. It may appear like a memory foam mattress reassuring my wavering courage. I acknowledge its presence as it offers me a place to tumble into where I will recall the authors and stories that have surrounded me and modified my thinking.

Regardless of where we grow up or how we receive our education, we have built-in repertoires of narratives or pieces of writing that have influenced us. How we open ourselves to those resources varies based on the particular writing genre we happen to approach.

For my first writing job I wrote a column about my hometown in the local Emmaus Free Press. Each Friday I submitted several paragraphs noting the events and activities happening in our small community. At the time the writings of Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain, influenced the way I approached these assignments.

I wrote in a friendly conversational style, choosing to entertain as I informed my fellow townsfolk. Often, I chose a tidbit of history or folklore from our local environs. Fortunately, much like Mark Twain, I had real life individuals surrounding me from which I could base my character sketches. I learned to incorporate my anecdotes with homespun wisdom served up as slightly blurred mirrors that might reflect cultural missteps to my small-town populace.

Not that I strove to preach or judge. Not that anyone perceived my column in that regard. It truly seemed as if each week I wrote a letter to my friends, and in turn they would call me with a newsy item or idea they thought I should consider for a future column. I found I wove words according to the colloquialism of the people I knew. Of course, because my readers could “hear me” through my sentences, they accepted this way of receiving weekly news.

It wouldn’t be the last time that I allowed a writer’s style to provide an undercurrent for how I shaped my approach to a written task. During my years spent pursuing interviews and promoting companies I leaned on the foundation of realism. Get the facts, make observations, reveal the truth, answer the questions. Then as demonstrated by Sinclair Lewis and Charles Dickens, I didn’t flinch when painting the picture of as many details as I could to help draw my reader into the vivid imagery.

Surprisingly I have found myself swept up into the cadence and symbolism of poetry as a way to soothe myself when stressful deadlines and family mayhem become more prevalent in my life. I alternate between Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost to entice me into short reveries of verse that nudge my soul into the space it requires to stretch out and relax. In fact, I often reread the books sitting on my poets’ corner of my bookshelves. I marvel at meanings that eluded me in prior poetry perusals.

These past few months I reopened the complete works of Jane Austen and delighted in comparing the journals of Louisa May Alcott to her own published novels. I sought to understand the way both of these authors observed human relationships and how they strove to compose scenes into tales. They invited readers to walk amongst the characters and become imbued with their distinct culture and time period.

I truly marvel how any particular story I may have read has settled within my consciousness. I picture a master shuffler as my brain files a specific writing style so that I may choose to let it affect my future creative flare in a written piece of art.

I welcome the classic shadow mentors of the past and the innovative daring guides of the present. These reside within me and about me. I trust they will provide ways to influence me as I reach out to fearlessly perform, tossing my words forward, spinning them into a unique style so they may be caught in the minds of a reader.

Finding Theme by Lynn J Simpson

“Your theme is a Petri dish and experimental bubble in which you’re going to test and explore your theme and premise.” Ted Dekker

In The Creative Way, author Ted Dekker instructs writers to develop theme by looking within to the questions, struggles and victories they are experiencing in their own life.  Every aspect of your story must serve your theme. And never to cheat by forcing a conclusion, but rather be vulnerable. Experience and explore where the story takes you, be open to surprises and let go of your own preconceived endings. “Everyone is dealing with the same questions in life, so they will connect,” he writes. 

Creating connections through stories has been my goal for my writing as long as I can remember. As a very shy child, books were ways to explore my world safely. Looking back on the books I connected with most, I began to see a theme of the lost being found. 

In my childhood favourite book, Are You My Mother by P.D Eastman, I flew with a baby bird hatched in an empty nest who goes searching for a mother it’s never seen and is rescued by a bulldozer that drops it back into its nest where mother soon appears.

In elementary school my favourite books were Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White and A Cricket in Times Square by George Seldon. Reading Charlotte’s Web, I cheered for Wilbur, the pig, as his lonliness lifted when Charlotte, the spider, befriended him and webbed encouraging messages for the world to see.  Imagining Chester, the lost cricket, and his songs blessing the crowds in Times Square, The Cricket in Times Square showed me that friends can come from the most unlikely of places. 

In middle school, I fell in love with Lucy Maud Montgomery’s character Anne of Green Gables, an orphan girl adopted by a brother and sister who wanted a boy but ultimately wins them over and finds friendship and love. And the year my birthday told me I was a teenager, I journeyed with sensitive Ponyboy in The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton), as he navigated being poor, tried not to get beat up by the rich kids, sought love from his big brother and a place where he belonged.  

Lately my writings of personal essay and creative non-fiction have also had the thread of loss. After my dad passed away, I wrote Steering Dad, a story of navigating Dad who lost his eyesight at age 60. I wrote other essays on the loss of my mother, my best-friend, my brother, and the loss of children no longer living at home. I wrote a long Creative Non-Fiction essay on the fading memories of being a young mother in the Yukon and called it A Mother’s Gold. In each of these pieces, although recommended to have a theme before writing, the theme found me. 

I cannot say for sure it is this way for all of us writers, but I do believe that Ted Dekker has it right.  Our own wrestlings within is where our themes can develop and through our writings, whether fiction or non-fiction, we explore resolution to our own Petri dish of struggles and questions. A story that may even lead the lost to being found. 

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.
John Newton

Lynn J Simpson is a mid-life gal doing life a step at a time with faith, hope, and love. You can read more of her reflections at Keeping It Real.

A New Technique - Linda Aleta Tame

I'm a third-year university student in a Creative Arts program.  Last term I completed a course called, the Multi-genre, Multimedia, Disjunctive Poetic Narrative Dream Text.

My professor, Di Brandt, an accomplished Canadian poet, stated that the genre that includes so much variety has been around for awhile, but has never had a permanent title.  It has been referenced as the Long Poem or Experimental Writing and probably many other non-specific identifiers, but none that took hold as the official title.  In an effort to include all that the genre entails, and to inform students, Professor Brandt created the Multi-genre, Multimedia, Disjunctive Poetic Narrative Dream Text title and course.

We studied several texts, reading through them all at the same time.  This provided the small group of inspired students with a multi-genre-multimedia-disjunctive-poetic-narrative-dream text reading experience.  (Okay, I'll spare you further repetition of the lengthy title, but in class we had a lot of fun with it!)

All the texts were by Canadian authors:

• Blue Marrow by Louise Bernice Halfe
• I Knew Two Metis Women by Gregory Scofield
• Seed Catalogue by Robert Kroetsch
• Questions i asked my mother by Di Brandt and four others

All of these are noteworthy and inspiring, but my favourite one, and one that has most influenced my approach to writing is NOX by Anne Carson.  I haven't space to describe its many unique and unconventional characteristics, but if you'd like to investigate it further, Google and Youtube have many articles about it.

One liberating factor is that the pages of NOX are not just filled with printed text.  They include photocopies of poetry, prose, word definitions, single-line-on-a-page statements, images, bits and scraps of letters and envelopes, smudges and even some long-hand writing.  Carson's technique inspires endless possibilities, and this freedom seems to alleviate writer's block for me.  I may not use all the ideas, maybe not even more than one, but knowing I can seems to open the creative gate.

I think it was the author's random-but-ordered style that intrigued me most.  Here's what I learned:  You don't have to start at the beginning.  I can't express how this opened the way for me to explore other options in my own writing process.  Start anywhere, organize and compile later.  What a refreshing discovery! If I have a thought, I don't have to write it down to save for a later chapter or paragraph.  I can write it now, expand on it in the moment when the inspiration is fresh and powerful.  It'll all come together when it's time.

I'm grateful for the Multi-genre, Multimedia . . . I think you know where I'm going with this.  It broadened my vision to get a head start on a writing project I've wanted to do for a long time.  Why not give this genre a try?

NOX by Anne Carson