Do You See as a Writer?

I took this photo last week when I went around town taking architectural photos. An eyesore if ever. But something made me snap this. Then planning Monday’s post I was thinking of seeing as a writer sees: seeing the things that are and aren’t there, the hidden stories in scenes, the things that make Story. I like to do image prompts, a daily writing exercise from whatever springs to mind from an image. This picture is as good as any to start with. What do you see in this picture? I’ll list what I see. A gaudy paint job in the midst of a neutrals only neighbourhood, paint discolouring from the sun and weather, graffiti on the side. An overgrown front yard, with a few stray cottage garden perennials still bravely growing fenced in blue picket. Missing soffits and a big black splotch on the canopy that now reads ‘taurant gallery.’ This much is obvious to any viewer.

Closer in is a door nailed shut and unreadable letters scratched in the yellow  near a peach doughnut shaped peephole. And top left–what’s that? A man cage near that other window? It’s too big to be a light fixture. What  is hiding behind those foggy windows? In those roof top gables? The neighborhood wild man? Does Frankenstein hang him in the cage at night to give the neighbours nightmares? And that canopy is a great hang out for bats that buzz around the wild man at night and make him frantic with hunger. He zapps them like a mosquito zapper if they get too close.

What else might a writer see in this place. Perhaps it’s an eccentric fellow’s paint factory. He’s trying to make eco-friendly paints with all natural dyes that don’t fade in the sun. He tests them himself on his own house. Every batch of new paint has to spend the night in the cage to cure in the moonlight.

Personally, I think its a free daycare. It’s painted bright sunny colours to show that children will receive bright sunny care, from a bright sunny lady. She lets bright sunny flowers grow randomly over a strange mound in the front garden, that gets higher every year. Occasionally bones poke out of it and in the dead of night she adds soil and seeds to it while humming bright sunny songs. And that  cage, once in a while it’s covered with a thick tarp and muffled noises come from there. But no one asks any questions.

Challenge: Take one of the following pictures and see what all you can see in it. Make a story or list it point form and remember, writing exercises are for fun–don’t take yourself too seriously or you’ll never fly!

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Bathroom Bash

What is it with girls and bathrooms?

From very young on little people of the female variety seem to be drawn like magnets to bathrooms.

At school it was to crawl into at recess when you didn’t want to go outside on a cold day. Then later to meet friends and gossip. Even though I was a girl of the female variety I could never figure it out when schoolmates took their lunches and ate, in the bathrooms.

In the bathrooms at church we have a small change rooms. And yes it’s a magnet for the teens and tweens. I mean why wouldn’t you sit in the bathroom and chat when there are benches right there to giggle on.

I don’t think they have any sense of smell left anymore.

But last Sunday I did a double take when I entered the bathroom to see one middle-aged lady teaching stretches and calisthenics to a nigh-on seventy year old  with hip problems in the middle of the bathroom.

Okay. I should check the church bulletin board. I’m definitely missing something. Perhaps next week they’re offering bathroom ballet or horse races.

I wouldn’t want to miss that.

“The toilet flushes—The stall doors fly open–And they’re off—“

The 3 I’s: Instinct, Intuition, Imagination

“Different forces are at work today with regard to imagination. . .Some writers second guess their instincts and devalue the sense of play that infuses creative endeavours.”  —Jeff VanderMeer, Wonderbook Wonderbook is a new fiction writers’ book I am exploring and the line above, a few pages in, struck a chord.

 

The paragraph, in a nutshell, tells how in a digital technological world, we are obsessed with absolute perfection.

How does this then affect our imagination? Imagination is the component for fiction writing. Yes we need facts and yes we need perfection in grammar and story arc in order to publish, but what if we lose the free rein of imagination in the process.

 

Over analyzing story–where does that take us as writers? Very often to the above sentence, where we begin to second-guess our entire story and every element of impulsive, intuitive imagination that went into it and characterizes that story as mine. As something that only I could have written.

 

When I read that sentence in the book, I realized why I was stuck on my work in progress. I was no longer playing with imagination, I was over-analyzing and killing the spirit of the writing.Writing is hard, a spiderweb where all the threads have to meet at one point in the center. But it’s the dew drops on it that sparkle in the sun and catch the eye, teasing, tantalizing. And that’s it–it’s the sparkly dew–the imagination overtop and throughout all that captures the eye and becomes magic. It’s not the dotted i’s and crossed t’s with all the commas in the right place.

It’s the story’s essence that captures the reader and why we write it in the first place. It’s the imaginative details that fly through our brain in intuitive dance that makes or breaks the story.

 

If we lose that magic of instinctive, intuitive imagination, we’ve lost all.

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Book Shop Signs

A few weeks ago we had a look at some lovely book store fronts, today I’m showcasing some lovely book store signs. Enjoy.

Book Shop Day

Found this sketch today by one of my favourite author/illustrators, Chris Riddell:It isn’t quite “World Book Day” until April 23, but here and now we’ll celebrate book shop day by exploring these images of independent book stores. After all, in the midst of the Canadian Prairies in Freezin’ February what better activity than to curl up somewhere warm cosy and read?

I have personally been to this one in Minneapolis, US. You can read my post about it’s fabulosity here: http://dragonflydithers.com/2013/04/08/wild-rumpus-books-2/:

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Imagining Too Well?

I’ve said before how I imagine all sorts of scenarios in my head especially when driving or doing similarly mindless things.

It’s something I’ve done since being a wee lass. And I still do it as a writer, because I come up with some of my best ideas when I let my right brain do it’s own thing.

But there were a few years some time back when I forced myself to–“stop it”–! I was not just scaring myself silly, but putting myself through trauma however vicariously. Honest. It’s sort of like when I was young and in my dream reached for something, I would always wake up with my hand, well, reaching.

I did it again just yesterday and realized, finally that this is why I don’t read stories about wars, unless they’re far in the past, you know, on horseback, with swords, or fantasy-surreal. But anything since 1900– I won’t touch it. It’s way too real in my head. I also will not read deeply emotional stuff. Books about ” how I survived my–” insert any life haunting disease or accident or attack you wish. The news is overloaded with awful current events. I never read it either, knowing that the worst will reach my ears anyhow. There’s always people who like to spread sensation, at the expense of others, however impersonal.

Yesterday, I don’t even recall what fancy scenario played through my imagination but at one point I shook myself. My insides had tightened up. My shoulders had curled in, my jaw clenched, my toes curled and more. I consciously relaxed my body and smiled. Until I realized that I do vicariously and in part experience my imaginings. No wonder I don’t wish to dwell on terrible things. They leave me reeling.

When I read, it’s not much different. I can so thoroughly immerse myself in what’s happening on the page that too much tough stuff has a bad effect. So when people talk to me about this fantastic book they’ve read, so enlightening, so vivid, so “It’s like you’re there” and I ask them what it’s about, they tell me and say, “You should read it! It’ll change your life.”

Right. But in my case not for the better. I whistle for my imaginary chauffeur and  take my leave.

So I stick to giving my right brain some slack of the reins. I can always reel it in if it runs out of the corral. And I can prompt it in more exciting directions. Because I can semi-experience the thrills too, and that’s a good thing. Especially as a writer who wants to paint as exact an image as possible.

I can hear undercurrents in my readers. Shame on you. I am NOT barmy, crazy or two sticks shy of a campfire. Imagination is encouraged in children. Why not in adults?

PS. Now that winter is on its way, I’m doing a lot of imagining about Australia. That’s a good thing right. I mean, if I do it hard enough, I may actually feel the sun through my parka. Right?

You Dream, I Scream

Why do some people love to record their dreams or nightmares? Why do they love to torture others with tales of their dreams?

I detest my dreams, when I remember them. If I’m running from someone, I never get away, but only just manage to stay one block ahead, and my legs don’t move much faster than a sloth. If I need to punch someone, my swing is weak like moving through water. Occasionally, all my teeth begin to crumble and the more I spit them out, the more bits there are. And the backdrop is changing 20 miles an hour. My dreams are such a messy jungle, a knotted juxtaposition of queer over crazy and never leave me with any refreshing thoughts upon waking.

If I kept a dream journal as some do, and anyone read it, they’d call me a Specimen, surround me with shrinks who would then tap their pens against their lips and overuse the words, “Fascinating” and “Remarkable” in a thick German Professor accent, then occasionally poke my head to make my brain spout eccentricities.

Perhaps my own dream experiences are what causes my intolerance toward others relating, “Oh! Guess what I dreamed last night! It was so Interesting. Quite funny. You were in it. And there was this—”

Grmmmm, shhh, grmmmm, shhhh, SNORE—

My breakfast becomes officially devoid of flavour and appeal as I gobble it down and run—over the hills and FAR away.

Maybe because, being a writer, my mind is not only crowded with my own life experiences but those of a multitude of diverse characters and their lives and conflicts. My imagination flies so that it can’t keep up with itself and subconscious thoughts and images layer and twist in a great maelstrom, real and fictitious, doubling over in a tsunami and slam to earth as a dust storm in a desert. Much too fast to make any sense.

As for dream diaries and the why’s of keeping one, I couldn’t tell you. My mind is too busy. I don’t often keep it tamed in the day, let alone when I sleep. Perhaps there really are people out there who can only figure themselves out through dreams. I wouldn’t know.

As a Postscript— I did dream recently that I was having dinner with Johnny Depp (and about a dozen other faceless people.) He was very relaxed and congenial. Go figure.