The Lisa Life

Share My Pain

Here's a poem I wrote when I was fifteen.  Please have your barf bag handy.

Beautiful unicorn

Let me climb onto your back.

Share with me

The secrets you hide

Beautiful unicorn

With your lovely white mane

Take me over rainbows

Into the unknown and unexplored.

Protect me

From the evils this world

Has shown me

The hatred, the guilt, the wars.

Take me back to where is is

Loving

Peaceful

Warm.

Beautiful unicorn

You are so free and untouched

So untroubled and stable.

I am frightened to touch you

For fear I mar your pureness

I am not worthy of a creature

So beautiful as you.

This world knows only how to

Hate

Destroy

Hurt.

It has hurt me terribly.

It leaves a huge empty pain

Inside of me.

I have loved.

And lost.

I could not be hurt again.

I am too vulnerable.

The pain would destroy me.

Beautiful unicorn.

If only you were a man

I could love you so much.

Jan. 3, 1982

OH.MY. GAWD.

In the course of packing, I came across a box of stuff my mother had saved that I'd moved a few times and never really went through.  I did a cursory examination of it and she had saved a big envelope of stuff I'd done.  School papers (The AP English one I got a D on comparing David Bowie's song Devil Devil and Marilyn Monroe was among them), articles I'd written for the school paper and this horrible little dirge of a poem.  I cringed when I read it but hey, I was fifteen, obviously this was about some unrequited crush I was angsting about and I like to spread the joy around.

What I've Learned

Since I have joined my writing group, I have dedicated many hours to learning more about writing and improving my craft.  I have, you could say, gotten serious about it.

I've read dozens of books and hundred of articles about writing.  I've tried to take what is practical for me from each one.  I've picked up a lot of information and while I am by no means any sort of expert (I haven't published anything professionally), I think the writing I have done for my writing group exercises and the writing I've done on my blog and the fiction I have been working on has improved exponentially and continues to improve.  I could be blowing smoke up my own skirt, but that's my prerogative and you're here reading, after all, so humor me.

Here are some things I've learned about writing.  I'm not going to quote sources because these are all written down in my notebooks and I didn't record where they came from. 

These apply mostly to short stories:

*Don't start with descriptions like lighting or weather.  Boring!  Start with the action or a startling statement or the most compelling aspect of the story.

*Don't make a novel excerpt a short story. 

*Get rid of dialog tags and just write "she said, he said," etc.

*Avoid phrases like some, a little bit, started to.  Make your statements decisive.  Likewise, omit editorial comments like believe me, you know what I mean.

*Take out anything that is not completely essential to the story, especially evil adverbs and adjectives.  (That was difficult to do at first.  I love a good adverb or adjective.  They smell like Napalm in the morning to me.)

A Action

B Background

D Development

C Climax

E Ending

I got this tip from Anne Lamott's wonderful book, Bird By Bird:  Jot down writing ideas on index cards as they come to you.  If you get stuck on what to write about, pull out your index cards and write 300 words on one of those ideas.  I've now accumulated quite a collection of index cards.  They also are handy for making to do and grocery lists.

Joining a writers group was suggested in many cases and I have found it a very rewarding experience.

The most difficult thing about writing is the writing, of course.  You have to actually sit down and write.