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 |  Day to day stuff....a memoir without order. |
 Imagination is described by Webster as...The act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses in reality. Albert Einstein said "Logic will get you from A to B, but imagination will take you everywhere."  I never realized it until I read it somewhere but there are ways to boost one's imagination: Create a visual journal Draw whatever you see for 15 minutes a day. You don't need to be an artist. Think like an artist Cut out pictures from magazines & piece them together to create an original image. Listen to Bach Close your eyes while playing your favorite music. Or listen to the sounds of nature on a CD or in the great outdoors. Play word games Try thinking of as many words as you can that begin with MAR...or you pick. Daydream Let your mind wander, or focus on a single object & study its characteristics.     Everyone has a story....here's mine.....c   |
I skipped church yesterday in favor of listening to some friends play their music at a local art festival...good choice  . Our weather is so beautiful now and the crowd was in good humor. A few food vendors set up and my front row seat was next to the Original Nut Hut. The aroma of sugared pecans overpowered me and I succumbed  .With my micro fiction class over, I am searching for another class that might be interesting, maybe a drawing class. A friend in my critique pod teaches one and I am seriously considering it. It's in the afternoon so night driving would not be a problem... I love to draw portraits and even more I would like to improve. She looked at some of my work and even knows where I can publicly hang something. That's a little scary....but a good scary .WAG (Writers' Alliance of Gainesville) met yesterday afternoon. It was all Toastmaster's Club information. They are a group that teaches people how to speak effectively in public, apparently important for writers who want to be successful, doing interviews, speaking to groups, doing book signings, and other marketing tactics. Interestingly, one of the speakers remarked that most (yes, most) writers are introverted...well, yeah. I have submitted a couple of stories since I signed on to Duotrope - having to pay does tend to get me off my butt on that score. I have submitted hardly nothing since I was in the "sheep pen" with asymmetrical....missing those days and chat sessions. until next time...c |
| Well, I did plan on staying home today, but around noon a friend called saying she and some other girlfriends were going to see Gravity and did I want to come...so, yeah. It was a good movie, the fastest hour and a half I ever spent. I am afraid of heights and for the first thirty minutes or so I actually felt a little nauseous, then for the next thirty minutes my palms started to sweat...should I say more? So go, if you get the chance. Afterwards, we all went to Red Robin and had burgers (mine was veggie, of course). They were very accommodating, even bringing me a side of broccoli instead of fries. We were there almost two hours rehashing the movie...a very red-letter day on my calendar .I haven't gotten any zucchini yet to make my soup but I did make the coconut milk and it turned out great. It gets creamy on the top after setting awhile...can't wait to try it in the soup...farmers' market tomorrow morning. until next time...c |
| I made it out alive from Zombie Town last night at the Hippodrome. Here is a teensy bit of the show, We had a yummy Italian dinner before and a leisurely walk to the theatre in the cool and crispy fall air, a perfect evening. This afternoon our WWII oral history group had a lively discussion over a light afternoon luncheon. I ordered the most delicious zucchini and coconut milk soup I ever tasted. I had to look up a recipe when I got back home and found one here, http://www.cookincanuck.com/2010/06/creamy-zucchini-coconut-milk-soup/ I will be trying it very, very soon. Hope it tastes as good. And I just happen to have some coconut I do not know what to do with so I will try to make the milk, too. The recipe says to add 4 cups of very hot water to 8 oz of grated coconut, blend 45 seconds and strain. Sounds good (and easy) to me. Since it was still early after the luncheon I decided to get my hair trimmed...big mistake. Thank goodness hair grows, it is now short, short. This girl had no idea what take off 1/2 inch means. Yikes! Oh well, I need to stay home a few days anyway .until next time...c |
I had my last micro-fiction class tonight...so sad  . We reviewed the major points of what defines micro-fiction (actually all flash fiction).1) It must begin in media res ... that is, in the middle of the story. 2) Make your title and your first sentence hook the reader. 3) While in real estate, location is everything, in flash fiction, focus is the key word. A novel may be compared to looking at the inside of a house, a short story is like looking through the window, but flash fiction is that peek through the keyhole. You see only one little slice of life 4) Usually, flash fiction is no more than 1,000 words and can be as short as a few words. Hint fiction is 10-25 words. It's all in the implications. 5) Flash fiction should never involve more than 3 characters, including the narrator if he is one of the characters.. 6) Dialogue tags should be kept to a minimum, only he said, she said, and eliminated completely whenever possible. 7) Stick to one story line. A character-driven story might not have a plot, but every word should move the story forward. Every story must have a conflict and a change. 8) Compression is the secret to good flash fiction, forget the back story, and dialogue is usually never used as the opening sentence. Kaye mentioned another site for finding places to submit, newpages.com. She thinks this one is better than Duotrope. I haven't had time to check it out yet. So that wraps up my class, and I think I will try to take a break from a few things to find some time to write  .I do have a few commitments this week though. Tomorrow night a girlfriend and I are going out to dinner and then to the Hippodrome to see "Zombie Town: A Documentary Play". That should be interesting. And on Thursday afternoon, the Sam Proctor Oral History Program is having a get-together for its volunteers...moi included, transcribers meeting interviewers. I'll be able to put faces to some voices. I really did enjoy my class. Even though we were small, quality made up for quantity. We had a journalist and two technical writers among us. It was a lot of fun. until next time...c |
| In honor of the anniversary of the death of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, I dedicate today's blog to him. This looks like an interesting site....http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/default_flash.asp Perhaps you can find others. R.I.P., Mr. Poe  .until next time...c |
| Listening Chatter behind the fence. Friends gather for breakfast. Glasses clink, a dog splashes in the pool. |
| I woke up last Monday with a terrible sore throat, but by Tuesday I was able to go to my book club meeting and micro fiction class, although it continues to hang on, even now . The book club get together was fantastic, fourteen of us in all. State of Wonder was the book and a lady who had read Bel Canto by the same author started off the discussion. She did not like this one, thought it was unbelievable with outlandish characters. That got everyone talking...a lot! Differences of opinion make for a lively interchange of fresh ideas. What a good group. My micro fiction class proved interesting as well, but first I'd like to share a little comedic test I found for distinguishing literary fiction from other fiction. After reading the last sentence of the piece, look in the mirror. If your eyebrows are closer than normal, the answer is "yes". Works for me .After reading our "Mrs. Jones found her wings" stories, Kaye told us all about Submishmash. If anyone has submitted anything lately, most are using this format for submitting. I do not submit a lot, but I did know about it so my account was already set up. I worked on my bio in the profile section and tweaked a few other things. I already knew about Duotrope as well but had let it slide when they started charging for the service. They have a massive listing of submission sites. You hone the number down by entering info on what you are submitting...genre, length, etc...still a great bargain at $5/month. So I signed up for that again. Maybe the paying part will make me want to submit more .Kaye warned us about using negatives in a story as it usually leads to passive voice. Every sentence should move the story forward. Our only homework for next week is to read more Russell Edson and Barry Yourgrau. She suggested we all stay in touch to critique each others work, a good idea I thought. Also, we were told to read The Falling Girl by Dino Bussati. If you're interested, just google The Falling Girl and the entire doc is the first thing to come up. It's a short story with many, many meanings (implications, Kaye calls them). I wrote an entire page about things I got out of the story. Wednesday, I went to a church group senior luncheon. It was at a place called "Bubbacues" (not exactly receptive to veggies) but the fellowship was good. I sat near a lady who leads an acrylic painting class each week at the church...sounds interesting....maybe. The restaurant did have some yummy collards, but I'll bet they were seasoned with ....... I ate 'em anyway. I did turn down the baked beans because I could see pieces of pork in them. Yesterday I went to my 'writing your life history' group meeting. I read my story about Ellen, and boy is it a small world. The gentleman sitting next to me has two daughters who attended the University of Delaware (Ellen was my roommate). Isn't that something? We had some sad news. One of our members lost her husband two weeks ago. I hope she feels like coming to our next get together. She's a good storyteller. Well, I guess that's my life up-to-date other than yard work and regular stuff. Hope everyone is enjoying the fall weather. I hear we have a hurricane (Karen) on the way, but I think it will miss Gainesville, maybe just more rain. Stay safe and... until next time....c |
| My micro fiction class went very well yesterday. It seems as though it takes three or four meetings for everyone to get at ease with each other. We hit that mark yesterday evening and had a very talkative and enriching discussion. We even shared emails and are going to send next week's story assignment to each other ahead of time for critiques. We had our own lottery arising from The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, which you might enjoy. The prizes for our lottery were three free books on different subjects (memoir, prose, poetry) compliments of our instructor. Unfortunately, I did not win anything, but we shall have another next week she says .Everyone had fun with their assignment, writing prose about a holiday. One of the things Kaye keeps saying is to forget those adverbs. Short stories and prose have no room for them and they add nothing to the message. Short fiction is all about implication and prose is all about image. At times it can be difficult to tell one from the other with the exception that prose need not tell a story, only create a image. For next week, we are to rewrite our original story (from our first assignment) and up the words to 500, no back-story, no adverbs, introduce some dialogue, with desire thwarted, some action and consequences, limit adjectives, max of three characters, in first person point of view. I almost did not go to my class since it rained all day with a terrible thunderstorm around 3 in the afternoon, but at 5 the sky started turning blue, the sun came out and created a beautiful rainbow in the east. It was a sign .until next time...c |
| I am working on my prose for my class tomorrow evening and wanted to share something with you. Kaye, our instructor, gave us a list of famous fiction, prose, and short story writers and mentioned her favorites, Russell Edson and Yasunari Kawabata. I read a few by each and here is the link for the one I want to share, http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-fall/ If we do not know what prose is, we are not to look it up. We are to read prose and emulate it. She gave us a prompt - write about a holiday but do not use any of the props associated with that holiday. Write about it so we know what holiday it is without its normal words of identification. Taking classes has been one of my favorite things all my life and this one is no exception. That old cliche, learning opens up new worlds, is so true. Hope you like the prose and if anyone wants to try his (her) hand at our prompt, I'd love to read it. until next time...c |
| I was sitting on the porch swing yesterday evening when Mopsy flew up her cat tree, kicked out on the top level, and leaped onto the swing canopy. I sat like a dummy and watched the cat tree descend in slow motion, diagonally to the concrete porch floor. The top perch, which sets at an angle to the other two, hit the floor on its corner and separated itself from the rest. Now, Mopsy has a two-perch cat tree. I had plenty of time to jump up and grab it, but as on many other occasions in memory, I froze like the proverbial deer in the headlights. How come? until next time...c |
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