Tag: writing

Writer’s Quote Wednesday – The War of Art

My choice for Writer’s Quote Wednesday this week is from Steven Pressfiled’s The War of Art:

WQW

Writers. People who second guess whether or not they have what it takes, and yet are still bold enough to go on. This quote reminds me of what it’s like to be nervous. We’ve all experienced it and we are all familiar with that feeling. Your heart beat races, your palms become sweaty and your body gets all jitterbug on you. Truth is you are scared to death of whatever it is you are about to do. It does not mean you have no confidence, it just means you are not so dependent on yourself that you forget about the big picture and you can’t stop thinking about the possibilities. You know that you can do it; you just don’t know whether or not it will succeed. But still you push forth and you show up at that place or do that thing. It is the war of art. You battle yourself until finally, you put pen to paper and you write. Writers. Sometimes fearful. Sometimes doubtful. Sometimes afraid. But always humble in confidence, and yet courageous in character.

About The Author: (from Wikipedia)

Steven Pressfield (September 1943— ) is an American author of historical fiction and non-fiction, and screenplays.

He was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1943, while his father was stationed there, in the Navy. He graduated from Duke University in 1965 and in 1966 joined the Marine Corps. In the years following, he worked as an advertising copywriter, schoolteacher, tractor-trailer driver, bartender, oilfield roustabout, attendant in a mental hospital, fruit-picker in Washington state, and screenwriter. His struggles to make a living as an author, including the period when he was homeless and living out of the back of his car, are detailed in his book The War of Art.

His first book, The Legend of Bagger Vance, was published in 1995, and made into a film of the same name, starring Will Smith, Charlize Theron, and Matt Damon, and directed by Robert Redford.

His second novel, Gates of Fire, is about the Spartans and the battle at Thermopylae. It is taught at the U.S. Military Academy, the United States Naval Academy, and the Marine Corps Basic School at Quantico.

In 2012, he launched the publishing house Black Irish Books with his agent Shawn Coyne.

******************

And that’s it for Writer’s Quote Wednesday. Click the pick to join the fun.

writers-quote-wednesday

http://silverthreading.com/2015/05/13/writers-quote-wednesday-sir-winston-churchill/

Appreciating Body Parts

150510_0001I’m typing with nine fingers today. I do have ten fingers, but one of them happens to be out of commission today. Brilliant me slammed it in the car door last night. Now my wonderful husband can take care of his disabled wife. OK well, it’s really not that bad. It is in a bandage though so I really am typing with nine fingers. But this got me thinking: How often do we appreciate the value of the little things, such as a finger? Do you appreciate your body parts? You’d be surprised how important this small part is to the body. It’s a challenge not using this finger, but I know of a beautiful young woman who was not born with fingers. She has a rare disease that caused her to have webbed feet and no hands. This started me reminiscing on bits of my own history. What if I told you I don’t have a right leg? Well, technically it’s more like no femur bone. Your femur bone is the long bone in your thigh. It’s the only bone in the thigh in fact. It is both the longest and the strongest bone in the human body, extending from the hip to the knee. But I don’t have one. Instead, I have a steel plate. You see, it all started about eighteen years ago:

120831_0001

The day was beautiful. The sun danced in the streets and illuminated the green grass. There was an abundance of little ones running around, riding bikes, roller blading, and playing tag. One of the many things I always loved about the neighborhood was the pouring of children who came out to play in the summer time. (I don’t know what’s up with this new generation where everybody stay in the house and play video games. Staying in the house was punishment for us. We loved to play outside).  It was 1997, and school was just letting out. 8023 South Paulina is an address I would never forget. It’s the first apartment complex we lived in after moving out of the projects and today, Auntie Roslyn had rewarded us for passing on to the 5th grade. That’s back when a $1 was golden. We spent most of the time hustling for quarters to buy candy, but dollars? We were rich now.

My twin sister and I decided this was the perfect day to visit a friend. And this meant bringing every toy in the house with us. We were excited and that meant that we would invite everyone to the festivities: Barbie, Ken, their car and the whole gang. This wasn’t unusual for the twins; these are the same little people who baked cakes in their easy bake oven and sold them to the kids in the neighborhood at a quarter each.

“Time to come in the house!” Boomed my mother’s voice. She actually called our names though. This was when parents still stood in the middle of the street and called your whole government to attention because the street lights were on and you were not at home. The day had gone smoothly. Our friend didn’t give us a reason to argue our ten year old genius about why she shouldn’t do this and that and for the most part we all played nicely. But as the sun began to set and the street lights crawled to attention, it was time for us to leave our dear friend down the street to come on back in the house.

This is when the story gets interesting. Cradling toys in our arms, my ears caught wind of the music before the ice cream truck floated down the street and a smile crept on my face. You see, I’d been scheming on how to spend this dollar since earlier that day. It was a precious gift and I wanted to make sure that I used it on something really good. I suppose now is the best time to remind you that my most favorite desert is ice cream. So, when the jolly jingle of something that sounded like, “pop goes the weasel”, sang down the street with its bright lights and large display of choices, I knew then and there what I wanted.

“Hold my stuff,” I instructed my twin sister. I was after all the oldest and back then five minutes was like five years, and let’s just say I wielded my authority proudly.

“But mama said to come in the house,” she whined.

Why must she do this now? I hated when twin started whining and complaining. It always brought attention to the seriousness of the situation. Why can’t she just get with the flow? The annoyance of her pleas etched into my face. I smacked my lips as I ignored her common sense.

“Just hold my stuff,” I said.

Before she could protest any more I decided to take a quick dash across the street. The ice cream truck was on the other side serving the people on the other side of the street. This should have been my warning that tonight was not the night for ice cream. However, I was stubborn so this logic didn’t occur to me. I wanted ice cream and I wanted it now.

I looked both ways before speeding across the street. I saw a white car and it all went black.

When I came to, I was rolling off the hood of this stranger’s car and onto the concrete. Twin and I were premature babies, only 3 and 4 lbs. each. And so we had always been small coming up. We were ten but we looked more like we were five. It is only now that I understand weight gain, but all throughout elementary and High School I never had to be concerned about my weight. When I graduated from High School I was 100 lbs. and could fit into size 1-2 jeans.

Needless to say that car tossed my small body around like a rag doll. When it was finished I lay on the cold concrete praying no one moved me. I had no knowledge of the medical field or any of that stuff at ten, and yet I knew enough to know I didn’t want anyone to touch me. Somehow, I knew that if I was touched it would not be good. But despite my pleas to be left alone, my mouth didn’t move and my voice shut down. No one heard my cries because it was all in my head. I was in shock and though I wanted to scream my mouth didn’t move. As a result, someone scooped me into their arms and not only could I not speak; now I could not breathe.

The person laid me in the grass and my breath returned to me. There was no pain as I lay there surrounded by the neighborhood. Everyone had come out to see the kid who got hit by a car. Either by walking by or peeking heads out of windows. I scanned the crowd until I realized my hand was being squeezed. To my left was the woman who hit me and her tears soaked her face. She pleaded and pleaded her apologies over and over again.

“Get over yourself,” I thought.

I wasn’t being mean; it’s just that I forgave her already. I still had not felt any pain and only prayed now that I would live. I forgave her over and over again while simultaneously praying I wasn’t going to die. But I was talking in my head again. The lady had not heard me and my mouth still had not moved. It wasn’t until I looked down at my right thigh that the pain came and my mouth opened. The thigh (it couldn’t have been mine) was twice the size of my real one and the pain was excruciating. To make a long story short my leg (or more precisely my femur bone) was broken. I had to get a steel plate put in and twenty-four surgical staples. I came home from the hospital with a walker which I thought really sucked. Here I am with a broken leg and all I was concerned with was why they couldn’t have given me crutches. Truth is I was fitted for them, but they couldn’t find two of the same height for tiny ole me.

“Aww man”, I thought, “I love those.” Yea, I was the kid who played on other people’s crutches. But the one time I needed them I was given an ugly brown walker instead. It didn’t help that they tied balloons around the thing. Yea, it really looks good now.

I was spoiled rotten of course when I came home, though the wrapping and unwrapping of my bandage and going back and forth to the hospital was no fun. Today you would never know the difference, though I still do have the scar which starts a little above my knee and stretches to right below my hip. It’s basically the whole thigh. Trace your finger from above your knee till it stops at the end of the thigh, that’s the length of my scar. The only side effects are the weather. When the weather changes dramatically, like from warm to cold, I get aches similar to that of arthritis. And sometimes I know when it’s about to rain (my leg tells me).But other than that I’m fine. I learned a valuable lesson though:

Obey your mother and father AND appreciate your body parts! Someone somewhere does not have what you have. And just think, I broke my femur, the strongest bone in the body, how ironic.

The Short Story

short-story“The short story….. wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.”

–V. S. Pritchett

“I have always enjoyed short stories and have now found them to be an added joy. They are easy to read and digest, quick to review and……….. a great introduction to an author’s work. They act as an appetizer if you like, tempting you to tackle the meatier course of someone’s novel where you need to commit serious time.”

– Georgia Rose Books

“The particular problem of the short story writer is how to make the action he describes reveal as much of the mystery of existence as possible…The type of mind that can understand [the short story] is the kind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.”

–Flannery O’Connor

“…the short story is a natural form for the presentation of a moment whose intensity makes it seem outside the ordinary stream of time, or the significance is outside the ordinary range of experience.”

—Wendell Harris

Butterfly, My First Writing Love

150508_0002

Where do I trace the birth of this longing? I have not photographic memory as many do, nor do I remember the exact moment I said, “I want to be a writer”. And as I ponder this history of mine, the thunder growls and the winds roar. The skies darken this very moment and hover around this building; leaning its body against my windowsill and making my living room look like evening time. I like it like this really. To hear the thunder roar in the midst of the quiet and the skies darken. It has a calming effect on me. The appearance of lightening is a chance to see pure light, and the sound of horns is a reminder of great power. But I digress. Really I just think they must be excited, just as anxious to discover this mystery. A collection of horns and quarter notes gather from beyond the clouds and deep inside the galaxy, shouting melodiously. The floor beneath me pulsates and sends shivers up my spine. Meanwhile, raindrops tap dance against the roof. Perhaps the scream of heaven is prompting me to remember. I do remember the first time I had the material to organize my writing. I do remember my first journal. I do remember my first writing love.

I was just about to turn fifteen, and though by then I’ve been writing for some time, I had not the care of keeping things organized. I wrote at will and on whatever pieces of paper I could find. But the close of eighth grade presented me an opportunity to confide in that pretty pink booklet with the blue sparkling butterfly on the front. I purchased it in Cincinnati Ohio during our eighth grade school trip. I spotted it at Claire’s, a store at the mall, over in the corner and it was a unique version of many of the journals I had seen in Chicago or anywhere. Somehow I didn’t think I would find it anywhere else in the world. As my peers busied themselves in appropriate teenage endeavors, my pupils danced in delight. Immediately upon seeing it I had to take it home. And I must say it dressed up well for our first date. The pink was fluffy and soft; my fingers found comfort when they slept on top the cotton. The butterfly on top shone bright like the dye was squeezed from fresh blueberries, and to top it off there were little diamonds imbedded in its wings. It wasn’t a diary so there was no lock and key. Nor did I use it as such, but it holds some of my early poems. In fact, I pretty much just used it for poetry, and maybe a journal entry or two here and there. When it opened, the euphoria of opportunity greeted me with the smell of fresh ink, and elegantly curved lines. It wouldn’t be long after this that I would begin my collection of journals and notebooks, but none of them would compare to the first. Butterfly was that first real writing love. The rest were merely copies. And as you can see, I still have it, though it is obviously not as beautiful as it once was. I think I’ll give it to my daughter one day. Maybe. OK well, let me just flip through it first.

She’s Not Human

monster_paintingI saw this episode once on Tales From The Hood. This little boy came to school with bruises on his body and he said a monster did it. This perplexed his teachers because surely this couldn’t be an actual monster. But the little boy proceeded to insist it was a monster. He drew pictures of this giant green entity with razor sharp teeth and big hands. In the end, we discovered the monster was really his mother’s boyfriend who beat him from time to time. But the little boy never drew him as a person, just as a monster; interesting the perspective of children, the innocence and fragility of their minds. I imagine this is how they see her, a monster. Even though her face looks gentle, her blonde hair pushed back into a pony tail and her petite figure causing no stirs among the neighbors. Then again, I don’t know what it’s like to wake up to a growl like they do. Even if I did, it’s different when you’re a kid and just the slightest increase in tempo rattles your entire body. At best all you need is a look and you are frozen in mother’s authority and your mind is prepared to listen. But a growl? I don’t want to wonder what that’s like. That’s what I wake up to most mornings. At first, I didn’t think the woman had any children. I thought maybe she was cursing out her man. A slew of profanity escaped her mouth like I hadn’t heard since I banished it from my very own vocabulary. I envisioned her entire presence overtook the house. I’d be willing to bet she grows claws and turns green in her spare time. Only to shapeshift back into the harmless little lady we see walking to the bus stop. I don’t understand people who abuse children; it is a most cowardly act. When I discovered my neighbor was ripping the heads off her own children it disgusts me. But it did not disgust me more than actually seeing the babies. I wanted to just cry. They did not have little bruise marks on their bodies like the little boy in the movie. It’s just that they are small children. I would not have guessed someone was speaking this way to children all under ten years old. And then one day, I saw that one of them is in a wheelchair. So you have two very small children and one is disabled. I don’t understand the logic that goes into this kind of behavior. This is why self-love is so important. How can you mistreat what came from your own body, except you have no love for yourself. Without self-love, nothing can be accomplished. We cannot love ourselves, we cannot love our neighbors, and we cannot love those around us. More frightening than our inability to love, we cannot be loved. Self-hatred illuminates. It surrounds you like a plague and can be smelled from a distance. It causes you to act out of character and abuse anyone who tries their hand at loving you. Because you have not given it to yourself, you are unwilling to accept it from anyone else nor are you willing to give it. Be careful the way that you treat your children, they are a reflection of you and they have no shame in keeping it real. If their mouth does not reveal who you are their actions will. It’s funny, I can always tell the true intentions of a person just by looking at the behavior of their children and interestingly enough, the parents never seem to notice. Be careful how you treat your children, whether you notice it or not, their actions reveal who you truly are.

Writer’s Quote Wednesday – If You Don’t Define Yourself

Yayy I’m back :). Time to get back into the swing of things. What better way to start than with Writer’s Quote Wednesday. This week, I take my inspiration from Audre Lorde. And since I just came back from a Stage Play, I thought it’d be fun to use the picture of me on the set in my costume right before going onstage lol.

Besty Mae

“If you don’t define yourself for yourself, you’d be crunched into other people’s fantasies of you and eaten alive.” – Audre Lorde

When it comes to writing, and also to life, what sets one person apart from another are those individual qualities that are specific to that person. There is uniqueness about each of us and our style of writing that defines our work and defines also who we are as individuals. It is a kind of branding that does not have to be created, it already exists. We just have to discover it. There is a lot of good advice out there and a lot of good living examples to follow, but if you do not yet know who you are as a person and as a writer; if you do not yet know what sets you apart from the rest; if you have yet to define yourself, it is easy to get lost in all the opinions and philosophies and false images of who everyone perceives or desires you to be. Many invoke what others are expected to see. As a result, they lose sight of a definition of self. They cannot find the voice that is exclusive to them because they are trying to be a mirror reflective of someone or something else.

While I disagree with many of Audre’s views, I enjoy this quote because it is a constant reminder, for both my personal as well as my writing life, to be true to myself no matter what. I also chose this particular quote because my next book deals with mixed ancestry and it is noted that Audre Lorde’s mother could pass for white, while her father was darker than the family would have liked. Lorde is therefore among many African Americans to have experienced in some way the question of the colored line.

About the Author:

220px-Audre_LordeLorde was born in New York City to Caribbean immigrants from Barbados and Carriacou, Frederick Byron Lorde and Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, who settled in Harlem. Lorde’s mother was of mixed ancestry but could pass for white, a source of pride for her family. Lorde’s father was darker than the Belmar family liked and only allowed the couple to marry because of Byron Lorde’s charm, ambition, and persistence. Nearsighted to the point of being legally blind, and the youngest of three daughters, Audre Lorde grew up hearing her mother’s stories about the West Indies. She learned to talk while she learned to read, at the age of four, and her mother taught her to write at around the same time. She wrote her first poem when she was in eighth grade.

Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet, essayist, etc. and her poetry was published very regularly during the 1960s — in Langston Hughes’ 1962 New Negro Poets, USA; in several foreign anthologies; and in black literary magazines. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities (1968), was published by the Poet’s Press. She died in 1992 at the age of 58.

****************************

That’s it for this week’s episode of Writer’s Quote Wednesday. Be sure to check out Silver Threading to join in on the fun. Just click on the pic below!

writers-quote-wednesday

http://silverthreading.com/2015/05/06/writers-quote-wednesday-the-buddha/