Writing with Emily: for the Most Creative of You Creative Folks

I bet the very creative among you will recognize yourselves in my words today.

I can’t even tell you how often this happens to me:  the car behind me honks to startle me awake from solving all the world’s problems or writing my shopping list or deciphering last night’s dream.  Does this ever happen to you? Sometimes I am thinking about how to help my children lead their best lives or what I will cook for dinner or trying to remember the details of a story from long ago.

My mind leaps from thought to thought to thought and all of a sudden  the car behind me honks, frustrated because I didn’t leap to go through the intersection because the light just barely turned green.

Actually, in these cases I have no idea how long the light has been green because I am too lost in reverie about whatever is happily holding my thoughts so attentively.

Last night on the way home from an event at the Art and Spirituality Center where I created from a whole new-to-me version of Hansel and Gretl, I wondered how Emily Dickinson might write a poem about a particular intersection here in Bakersfield.

I sat in my car, looking at a street light. I thought, “How would Emily Dickinson see this seedy neighborhood with this high powered street lamp?”

I was having so much fun I almost didn’t see the traffic light turn green.

Are you ready to experience the darkness on a Bakersfield street corner with Emily Dickinson and me?

Street Light, Corner of 21^st and Union

Electric orb

Sharing luminousness with the

Members of the pearly ancient profession

And the shaking, tittering loose toothed

Hungry for the next, next, next….

As well as the cars who have lost

Their way and landed

Underneath you

# # #

Think about one of your favorite characters: fictional, historical, literary, and consider what might happen how they might experience your life through you. Then write as that you-Emily Dickinson character or You-Cat character or You-Green Lantern character.

Whatever it is, whichever or whoever combines with you – have fun and write it.

Just beware of when the light turns green. The car behind you might honk to startle you awake from your poetic word play.

Here I am, writing on the Lawn at Emily Dickinson's House in Amherst, Massachusetts

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott