Rosalind Guy's Blog, page 47

Stoking Your Own Fire

One of my favorite strategies for coming up with jewels to mine for my writing was keeping a writer’s journal. One of my Creative Writing instructors required us to keep the journal and we had to turn it in for a grade. There were a certain number of entries we were required to have in the journal, meaning we couldn’t wait around for inspiration to hit us, we had to actively seek it. When I was in that class, I remember doing some things that I normally might not have done otherwise. I went to IHOP and chose a booth that would allow me to eavesdrop on the conversations of the diners around me, I listened to scanmemphis.net to hear the calls that were being made to 911, I looked for fresh ways to describe scenes that I had witnessed everyday, but scenes I might not have taken note of if I had not been completing that assignment. I also read the newspaper and sought out interesting stories, usually those that were one paragraph in length and buried somewhere deep in the paper. I read obituaries for names. I was actively stoking the flame of my creativity. 

Sometimes I still do this. I was in Starbucks one day and watching this couple being openly amorous with one another. Rather than turning away, I watched them and began describing the scene that was unfolding as if it were in one of my stories. Though I still do this, I don’t do it with any regularity. I want to undertake the challenge soon, though. I’ve been thinking about calling it something like “Mining for Diamonds: Thirty Days of Journaling.” Yep, I have to give it a title. That’s just me. I can’t do anything simple. *shrugs* Whatever works, right? 

Today’s entry might have something to do with what happened to me this morning. It was raining out and I decided to sleep in today. I got up and turned down the dimmer switch for my overhead light and changed the television to one of the cartoon channels and climbed back in bed. I had settled down and fallen back asleep when I thought I felt someone shaking my bed, trying to wake me. I jumped up and turned around to see who it was and nobody was there. I could describe the fear I felt at that moment or just write about why I think it happened. I’m always looking for meanings in everything. Nothing is incidental as far as I am concerned. Or maybe I’ll write a line that intrigues me from someone else’s work. My newest issue of The Sun came in the mail yesterday and I spent most of yesterday reading it. There’s a poem in the magazine titled, “Dark.” A line in it struck a chord with me and I highlighted it: “He likes his job because no one else would want it, because a man feels comfortable with shit.”

So, yeah, I’m stoking my own fire.

I was reading the one that I kept in 2010. It just seemed to hold so much that can be useful for my writing at any point. Here’s one entry that I found particularly interesting:

  

Another idea for story or character motivation:

A student wrote about losing her father a couple of years ago around Thanksgiving. Her father was found burning in a car – not an accident – her grandfather was the one who found him and tried to put the fire out, but it was too hot for him to approach the car.

     They were sitting around at the house talking about what they wanted for Christmas when they got the news.

      She describes seeing her dad in the hospital, burned from head to foot.

     Her mother had tried to keep her from going to the hospital, but she just needed to see him. She stood at his side loudly wailing/crying uncontrollably. The nursing staff told her that she had to leave because she could not calm down and she went into the hallway and threw up on the floor.

     She’s about 15 or 16 years old now. Two years have passed and she still cries uncontrollably whenever she thinks about that incident. She probably can still picture him lying there in that bed.

From this I realized, there’s some very interesting stuff going on around us daily. All we have to do, as artists, is be attuned to the ordinary elements of life so that we can breathe life into them, making them extraordinary.

Here’s to hoping you find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Make beautiful music, my friends, because whether we pay attention or not, music is being made all around us. From the crickets communicating with one another last night while my son and I went for our after-dinner walk or the dialogue of the waitress who served us last night. Never stop searching for the extraordinary in even the smallest of moments. 

“You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.” –Mitch Albom, For One More Day 

Peace & Love, 

Rosalind 

Experimenting: Hair and Love Poems

Today was a day for experimenting. I’m still learning how to style my hair as a black woman with natural hair (no chemicals and no heat). And today I decided to try rolling it with perm rods to see what my curls would look like. It’s just one of those things that quite frankly embarrasses me: that I know so little about the texture and ability of my own natural hair. The other experimentation was with my poetry. I have been trying to strengthen the imagery of my poems by flawlessly incorporating poetic devices that are so smoothly written the reader almost misses the comparison but catches it at the same time.

The result for my hair was a flop. Instead of curls, it looks like I have little Vienna sausages on my head. Not exactly the look that I was going for. I will be combing them out and starting over as soon as I finish this post. The poem…well, let’s just say, it’s not great. But that’s what the revision process is for, right?

I was going to put up a picture of the sausage curls, but, nah that would be too embarrassing. I will share the poem though.

 

Nothing feels certain anymore,
nothing set in stone. Celebrities

elate their egos in the foundation of a love struggling
to find its own. Doubt washes her hands in the

space between our deep, exploring kisses.
Questioning presses a palm into the space between

your all too infrequent visits. Disbelief climbs
in and roller skates a path thru your heart,

leaving a trail of bread crumbs behind, an insignificant
treat to entice the icy pain of loneliness.

It’s an act of defiance to skate across the Passion
Walk of Fame wearing anything but glass slippers.

And only when you stand back to admire
those cemented hand prints do you realize

that Holly-would is a city of dressed up,
dolled up starlets whose only mission is

to disassemble actuality and introduce us to
confusion accepted as reality and resignation
disguised as love. Is this an act or is it fate

that keeps us questioning the depth of a love
that is trapped in the universe above, searching

for a place to land, knowing in the end that
there might never be a place that’s safe for
our love to exist.

Now, back to the drawing board :-) Take care peeps! It’s a lovely Saturday afternoon, and I’m off to experiment some more. 

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

 

Grandma’s Shoes

It’s been a while since I had something that I’ve had a burning desire to share. The last few weeks have been filled with reading: “The Best of Me” by Nicholas Sparks and editing a couple of stories I’m working on. During that time, I’ve started a few poems, just nothing I want to share right now. Not every poem I write reflects what’s going on in my life, but the most recent poems have. Even the one I’m about to share reflects some of what I’ve been dealing with lately.

This poem did start to come to me when I was thinking about my grandma and how she wouldn’t run right out and buy new shoes. Sometimes she’d just cut a hole in the toe of the shoe, giving her foot room to breathe. Then I started thinking about how when I love, I love deeply and hard. Not everybody is ready for that type of love. Some people are attracted to people with loving spirits, and like ATMs, they show up to make withdrawals, but hardly have much to deposit. Sometimes this leaves the one with the loving spirit feeling weak and depleted. Somehow I made a connection between that feeling of depletion and gradma’s shoes.

In the end, my poems, like my stories, will go through several more revisions. This is the first draft of Gradma’s Shoes:

 

Grandma never was much of a diva, she
was never impressed with material things
and she would wear shoes with the toe
cut open just as quickly as she wore those
from the store.

She was the type of woman with so much
love to give that we always sought her out
when we were feeling empty and needed a
refill. I see a lot of my grandma in me.

If love were an ATM, I’d be just like grandma,
cutting the toes out so that the shoes still could
fit; shoes never were meant to last forever.
But love was. Wasn’t it?

If my daughters ever ask me what love
should feel like, will I have to tell them
that love doesn’t always fit? There isn’t always
room for love? Will I say, you’ll know when it’s
right? “You’ll just know.” When it fits, I’ll say
it’ll just feel right and you’ll never want to
take it off –like grandma’s shoes.

That’s all for now. I have very little free time for writing these days, so now I’m spending it with my stories. But, I’ll be back. I promise. Until then continue chasing your dream. We are the dream chasers. We are the ones who believe we’ll eventually catch up with our dreams and that’s why, one day, we will.

Love you all!

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

RIP Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Everybody wants two things in life: to love and be loved and to leave a legacy when we die. Gabriel Garcia Marquez left behind a legacy that many writers desire. Outside of the family members who loved him and are missing him terribly, Marquez touched millions of readers with his stories. As the pictured quote demonstrates, love is the root of all else.

RIP to a man whose legacy will extend to generations to come.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Begin Today

Admittedly, I haven’t experienced success in terms of what many in the publishing business deem success. But I have experienced enough, for myself, to know that I am on the right road.

Every time, I hear from one of my readers about how they are re-reading one of my books, it takes me to heights I cannot begin to explain. The books that really resonate with us, those are the ones we re-read. And, the fact, that I have a few supporters who not only supported me by purchasing the book once, but who continue to read my words…that’s a feeling I enjoy. So, no,  I haven’t sold a million copies. And, no, I haven’t made the bestseller list. Yet. I have reached a new level in  my writing career, though. I have to acknowledge that.

Many things inspire me to continue writing: rejection letters (especially form rejection letters), the voices that I continue to carry with me (the ones who share their stories), and those people who have supported me so far.

I won’t paint my picture any differently than it is because I love the view from where I am. No one forces these people to seek me out to tell me that they enjoyed the poetry book and have dog-eared some pages because they love the poems so much (I do this as well), nor is anyone forcing them to message me and say, I’m re-reading Tattered Butterfly Wings again because I can totally identify with this character or that character. I begin every day feeling renewed with inspiration to work toward my writing goals, and today is no different.

It’s hump day people. Keep going because there’s no telling what’s waiting for you on the other side.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

 

And, just a reminder: I’m giving away two copies of Tattered Butterfly Wings. There’s four days left to enter the drawing. Just visit my author’s page on goodreads.com for a chance to win.

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/85599-tattered-butterfly-wings