Blogsplash: Thaw by Fiona Robyn

Ruth's diary is the new novel by Fiona Robyn, called Thaw. She has decided to blog the novel in its entirety over the next few months, so you can read it for free. Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow at http://read-thaw.blogspot.com. * These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It's a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we're being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides. The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they're stuck to the outside of her hands. They're a colour that's difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world. I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I'm giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don't think I'm alone in wondering whether it's all worth it. I've seen the look in people's eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I've heard the weary grief in my dad's voice. So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I'm Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I'm sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there? Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat - books you have to take in both hands to lift. I've had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I've still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust. Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about - princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad's snoring was. I've always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I'll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, 'It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,' before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It'll all be here. I'm using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I'm striping the paper. I'm near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I'm allowed to make my decision. That's it for today. It's begun. Continue reading at http://read-thaw.blogspot.com. Fiona Robyn -------------- www.fionarobyn.com www.plantingwords.com

Get Unreal

Get Unreal: A Writing Exercise

By Hal Zina Bennett

Legend has it that Picasso once got into a discussion with a neighbor who looked at his paintings and told the artist that while his colors were nice and the picture was very pleasant, he should try making them a bit more realistic. Otherwise, he advised, nobody would know what Picasso’s paintings were supposed to be about. The artist, exercising a rare amount of patience, nodded thoughtfully and asked his neighbor if he had an example of what he meant by realistic.

“Ah, yes, I do!” The neighbor quickly reached into his pocket, brought out his wallet, and handed over a photo of his wife for Picasso to see. “Now that’s what I call realistic,” he proclaimed.

Picasso took the photo in his hand, turned it this way and that, studied it from every angle, then handed it back to its owner. “She’s awfully small and flat,” he said.

In writing as with painting, there’s an ongoing dialogue about what’s real. Is the author’s description of the house realistic? Is the communication between characters true to life? Is the story credible — could it happen in real life? Is the motivation of a character psychologically plausible? Is this or that action physically possible?

Sooner or later writers come to the full realization that the reality depicted on the page or on the canvas of the painter has its own reality and is not a copy of life. The ultimate question we need to ask ourselves is, Does it work as a story and on its own terms?

Consider Franz Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis, about a man who turns into a bug. It couldn’t happen in real life but within the framework of the story it is convincing. Nor does that author try to convince us that it’s possible for humans to turn into bugs. However, he creates a reality on the page that causes us to identify with the poor victim, so much so that our skin crawls. We suffer with Kafka’s character, with his bewilderment, and then with his abject horror at what’s happening to him.

How does Kafka draw us into this reality? As readers we must, of course, be willing to go along with what the author creates. It’s that willing suspension of disbelief thing all over again. In this particular story, Kafka accomplishes this with the first sentence: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” The author never attempts to explain how this happened or to justify its feasibility. Instead, he focuses our attention on what Gregor is experiencing. He describes, well, nothing more or less than what any normal person would experience if he woke up one morning to find he had become a giant insect!

At first Gregor’s reactions are very human: he notes the size and number of his insect legs, then a framed photo on his wall, then the alarm clock that reminds him, with horror, that he’s late for work. Many of his responses are downright mundane, which oddly enough makes us believe the story even more. For example, he looks out the window and sees that the sky is overcast and it “made him quite melancholy.” He also struggles to make the horrible reality of his metamorphosis go away, “shutting his eyes to keep from seeing his struggling legs.”

As time goes on and Gregor becomes increasingly bug-like, he discovers that his feet have a kind of stickiness that gives him traction with the floor, that his efforts to speak only produce strange, undecipherable sounds, and that his appearance horrifies his parents and his beloved sister. Through trial and error, and her own loving kindness, his sister discovers that in his present manifestation as a bug he likes rotting foods and notes that he seems repelled by fresher foods. In fact, he drags the decomposing food away from the fresh so that he can better savor his consumption of them.

The ludicrousness of this story is made believable through the author’s ability to describe the very human reactions of his protagonist. While we might not believe it possible for Homo sapiens to turn into bugs, we can imagine the experience of being rendered helpless, imprisoned by our own bodies, and alienated from our loved ones. In the end, that’s the message we go away with, made possible by creating a reality that could exist only in fiction but that is nevertheless meaningful and purposeful, reminding us of the limits of our own mortality.

Using literary devices such as Kafka does in Metamorphosis, write a few paragraphs, or even a short story, about what it might be like to wake up one morning to find that you are living in a world and perhaps a body very different from your own. Create a reality that could exist only on paper, yet that is credible in whatever terms you set up. This could be anything from being an animal in the wild to being an inanimate object. Maybe it’s a reality existing on a different planet, or in a parallel universe, or in an imagined world that nobody has ever heard of. The experience of the characters you create could be horrifying or wonderful, pleasing and filled with discovery and insight, or as limiting and dreadful as turning into a bug. But the bottom line is that this is a reality completely of your own making — and certainly not “small and flat” like the photo of Picasso’s neighbor.

Author and editor Hal Zina Bennett has published more than thirty books, including Write from the Heart, Zuni Fetishes, Follow Your Bliss, and Spirit Guides. A workshop leader, writing coach, and book doctor, he has helped over two hundred authors and publishers develop successful books, including several bestsellers. He lives in Northern California and his website is www.halzinabennett.com.

From the book Write Starts. Copyright Ó 2010 by Hal Zina Bennett Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800/972-6657 ext. 52.

A Lesson from Henry

A lesson from Henry

By Karrie McAllister

“What would Henry do?” is something I often ask my kids, although lately not so often because they’ve finally caught on to the beauty of their own feet.

A children’s book by D.B. Johnson entitled “Henry Hike to Fitchburg” will probably be one of my most favorite books, and children’s books, for a long time. For me, no other book demonstrates the purpose of taking time and slowing down in nature as much as this book, all the while showing us that even at his slow pace, Henry achieves his goal.

His goal? Getting to Fitchburg. Henry, a caricature-ish creature of Henry David Thoreau, is challenged by his friend to see which one can get to Fitchburg the fastest. His friend works to earn money and takes the train. Henry hikes.

The book is littered with beautiful artwork and mentions a slew of transcendentalists. Beyond that you’ll just have to read it for yourself to see the simple pleasures of Henry’s hike.

In real life, I find myself always fighting to be the Henry. We are fortunate enough to live in a part of the world where we’ve got hundreds of acres available, and quite a chunk of them that our family actually owns. Available weekends, which become fewer and fewer as the children get older, are spent at the cabin in the woods where we escape from reality and step full-force into the hills.

There’s a TV there, but we don’t watch it. Instead we sit and watch the herons on the pond and crackle of a camfire.

There’s a phone, but we don’t make any calls. Instead we sit in the woods and call in the turkey or the owls in the next valley.

But there are also four-wheelers, and we do ride them. I won’t lie that at times I crave the wind in my hair and the mud on my jeans. My children, a girl at 8 and a boy at 6, like that feeling too.

“Take us for a ride!” they beg and plead until one of us takes the baby and the other parent hauls the kids up old logging roads and through fields of poison ivy.

At least once on every trip to the cabin, I tell the family that I’m going for a walk. “Why don’t you take the four-wheeler?” my husband asks.

“Nah.”

And sure enough, like lemmings, they all don their boots and grab their collection boxes constructed from old lunchmeat containers and animal stickers, and out the door we go. We walk around the pond and look for tadpoles, then down by the creek to check the beaver activity.

At least once we’ll pass a new wildflower that has us wishing we’d packed the field guide.

There are deer rubs and turkey nests and what seems like three million squirrels in the beech forest. Blackberries when the season is right, and old apple trees later in the year.

Breathing in the quiet, tasting the apples, sharing the magic that is the slow pace and the open eye.

Thanks, Henry.

Karrie McAllister writes from Small Town, Ohio late at night when the kids are asleep. Besides writing and mothering, Karrie teaches a music-and-nature program, combining her two of her greatest passions. Contact Karrie at www.KarrieMcAllister.com.

Recipe for Outdoor Writing Fun

Today we have two guests on The Motherhood Muse blog! First we hear from Cara Davies of "Write from the Start" (http://twitter.com/Writestart). Then Paige Hilfer of "Magic Lantern" shares with us a new insight into hope for our children!

Recipe for Outdoor Writing Fun By Cara Davies

This is a wonderful way to get outside and enjoy nature while having some fun writing at the same time. It is recommended for all ages!

Here’s what you need:

Comfy Clothing
Block of uninterrupted time
A good imagination
Paper – any shape, any size
All kinds of writing tools – crayons, pencils, markers

Here’s what you do:

1. Get outside – Whether you live in an urban or rural setting, nature is right outside your door. Pick a place that you would enjoy spending some time. It might be your own backyard or the park down the street.

2. Set up your writing station – Gather your materials in one spot and get comfortable.

3. Use your senses – Stop. Be still. Take in the world around you. There is no doubt that you will find many writing inspirations.

Ask yourself and your child these questions:

What do you see?
What do you hear?
What do you feel?
What do you smell?
What do you taste?

When answering these questions, use as many description words as possible.

4. Be flexible - You may only get to answer one question and then take off writing a story about the ladybug on the leaf. That’s okay. Many times all it takes is one spark to ignite the inspiration for a fabulous story.

5. Commit to doing this activity again- Before you know it you will be writing and journaling on a regular basis!

Paige of "Magic Lantern" shares with us a personal story about children and writing...

Sometimes we tend to give up if our child doesn’t immediately take to writing or if they give the all too familiar deep sigh when we pull out the journal or paper and pencil. Here’s a short story about my own experience…

I've been giving Sam, my 8 year old son, the small black journal in the Journal Writing kit to take with him every time we go camping, on a vacation, hiking, or on other short trips. For a year I've "made him" fill at least one page with writing on each trip. He could write sentences, bullet points from the trip, or just fill it with word after word that just related to the trip. It's been a laborious task for both of us for a year. But, coming home from Gunnison several weeks ago, during our 4 hour drive (yes, I forced him to pack the journal in his backpack with snacks and books for the trip), he actually came to me after the trip and said, "look what I did" - he had written 3 full pages about the trip. I didn't even make him do it this time. He just picked it up and did it! It was a whole year of consistently placing value on this activity (for me), not killing him over it, but giving a slight kick in the pants each time, to finally get him to take on that activity on his own. I think parents need to know that it may not happen the first time - especially for boys. And, that with practice, it just becomes a habit for them, just like anything.

To learn more about lighting the path to literacy, please go to Magic Lantern. (www.mymagiclantern.com) Her site offers many fantastic options for encouraging children to write and to engage in nature!