Today's Writing Prompt: "I will show you the place where I am ….." and then simply write.
You are welcome to join us at any time - write here, along with us, either on our live teleconference writing session or simply read the lesson and follow the prompt.
Please feel free to participate in our next optional teleconference writing session which will be held today at 8:30 AM Pacific time.
Simply Dial-in here: Access Number: 1-712-432-3100 and enter the Conference Code 440137.
Carl Zimmer wrote these words in his book _Soul Made Flesh_ "Emotions sharpen our senses, focus our brains, help us remember more clearly."
The places or settings which fill our writing do something similar – your writing changes according to both the space you are in and the place which provides the backdrop for your writing.
Your voice changes, the mood changes. The atmosphere provides a Technicolor accompaniment to the words themselves.
Have you ever imagines what the musical "Oklahoma!" would be like if it were "Ohio!" instead? What if "Chicago", the play and movie, was instead "Phoenix."
What wouldn't work anymore if you picked these words up from their spaces and ploppedthem down squarely in entirely different locales.
The people would speak differently, they might move differently – the rules would be shifted due to the culture of the area.
It would be like the difference between lounging at home in your pajamas and going out in the community in a velour jogging suit. Both outfits are very
similar – but the jogging suit is more appropriate to wear out and about than your jammies are, even if they are very similar.
The behavior changes when we change the setting.
Let's go back to the pajamas in the living room versus the jogging suit at Starbucks. How do you act differently?
Perhaps some of you don't.
Think about that for a moment.
Speaking of your living room and Starbucks, here is something else
to consider.
The places we write also impact the words we choose, our pacing, cadence and rhythm.
Writers have been known to bring their writing gear out into the community. Natalie Goldberg often alludes to her "writing dates" with other writers. They
meet in coffee houses and restaurants and scribe separately together.
It is a perfect solution both for more extroverted writers as well as for the sake of accountability. If you have challenges with getting your work done,
consider meeting up with a buddy and writing together socially so that you can get your "with people" needs met and at the same time honor your craft.
I took yesterday's prompt to a spot beside the Kern River and wrote from the prompt, right there, into my notebook, as I sat listening to the river flow past. Listen to my words and imagine for a moment if I had written, instead, from my kitchen table or my porch:
Today the divine brought me into one of my favorite spots to write. A loud silent place, under a bridge, graffiti on the walls. I love it. I can't hear a thing there except the sound of flow. I see in my notebook where I wrote, "Come write with me you crazy person, write!" I suppose that was divinity saying, "Write this into an essay, Julie! Write it I dare you!" so here, I sit and I do.
When I was under the bridge with the water flowing I realized some people would label this little slice of heaven "smelly." Never, I say. Interesting smell. Sort of like decomposition and nature, changing form from one to another. I watch the trees sway above me and I realize I can't hear the leaves with all this flow around me. I call the sound of leaves in the wind 'God sounds' since so often I hear the divine in the rustling leaves.
Today I exchanged one version of God sounds for another. Sometimes we hear divinity differently.
Under this bridge I can't hear the Sheriff's firing range that was bothering me while I was above this spot. I watch as a leaf offers itself to the river and a blue dragonfly investigates the trees and settles on a large grey rock so I can see the dragonfly actually has a red body and its wings are blue. I look up and see some of last year's leaves freckling the green leaves and branches of a large tree above me.
I see a spider web bridging the river, too, echoing this spot where I am sitting.
Later, the web seems to have disappeared, playing a silent game of peek-a-boo with my pen.
I thought I was seeing destruction. I wasn't. I just needed to perceive from a different angle.
I stop to pause, noting my fingers first wrote a wrong word: angel. They meant ANGLE, as in moved differently to see a different perception.
"Now you see me, now you don't!" giggles the angelic spider web, so delicate yet so hardy.
Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote the children's classic, "The Secret Garden". Her work became a Tony Award Winning Broadway Musical with music written by Lucy Simon (sister of Carly Simon.) She said, "I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden." She writes in the garden and tunes into the setting as it literally seeps into her being.
Question:
Is there a place in your current life or in your past that the setting has seeped into your being? For Frances Hodgson Burnett, her garden became the inspiration and framework for the classic work which continues to sell well even nearly 70 years after its initial publication date.
One of the joys of working in theatre has been the actual building and painting of the sets. When we build the sets, we are literally creating a place from nothingness.
From this set, the entire story is built.
It creates a "concrete" place for the actors and the director and the technical people to realistically portray the lives of their characters.
I have learned to love this sacred time when we make the rooms or backdrop perfectly compliment the time period, the character's personality and creatively piece together what we have on hand and then create effects to fill in the rest.
One day I spent 12 hours in the theatre painting. There was on 4 hour shift standing 10 feet off the ground on a ladder, painting dot after dot after dot to simulate the pointillism method of painting developed by French Impressionist painter, Georges Surrat.
The background created a picture audiences could see – they could understand the character or George better because the audience literally became a witness to George's painting through the dot-dot-dot-dots everywhere.
The painting – the setting – became as much of a character as everyone else in the production.
As writers, part of your job is to fashion word pictures from "the thing air." Painting a picture with words is like inhaling the swirling heat from a mug of hot chocolate at a football game in a game in the middle of November. Everything is cold – except for the pieces of flesh quietly kissed by that swirl of heat and then your lips, tongue and throat feel the ripple of warmth from the cocoa which reminds you exactly what heat means.
Let's prepare to write:
Let's tie this all together.
For our writing today we will paint a word picture inspired from a quote from Anton Chekhov.
In your writing, "show" the reader your setting through creating vivid word paintings. Your setting for this exercise is either the place where you live
(and write) or the setting for your current project.
Here is the Chekhov quote:
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
Now your task is to show your setting to us in your free writing. Write freely and see how many different important sensory details you are able to use.
Your prompt is simply "I will show you….." and then simply write.
Again, "I will show you….."
Please write until you hear my voice requesting that you stop.
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