Recently I stumbled upon a website titled “Books that Changed History.” (www.historynow.org). I love it when I find others who agree with me, so I was happy to stumble.  It is a fact that books have a long and distinguished history of changing the world.

The written word is very powerful. You can affect the lives of dozens, hundred, thousands, perhaps even millions of people, now and in the years to come – just by writing. Even if you reach only one person, that person will reach others. You never know who your book, or your article, or your blog comment, may touch.

Your words may even contribute to the historical record, since if you tell the stories of your life in this time and place, you have just become a primary source.  Historians will love you. Genealogists will thank you. 

Think about it. If your great-great-great grandfather voted against Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860, or fought in the battle of Gettysburg, or helped runaway slaves escape on the Underground Railway, or shook hands with Jefferson Davis, or worked in the cotton fields of a Deep South plantation – wouldn’t you like to read his own words on the subject? Well, your life too is a part of the historical record. Who might be reading your words in 200 years?

Technorati Tags: hitory, written word, book, article, blog
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

if you are mixed up
look around, take in the view
before you unmix

Technorati Tags: Haiku, mixed up, look, unmix
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Almost ten years ago, I wrote my first novel, Eating Mythos Soup: poemstories for Laura. In this novel there is a passage that I think contains the real truth about why I do what I do. It is as true today as it was ten years ago. I’ve shared it before, and I’m sharing it again. Here it is:

I write because when I do I am alive. I write because without writing I live in the half-light of a dull November day when everyone else is at a birthday party. I write because then I am at the party too. I play with balloons and wear colored streamers in my hair.

I write because the world smells good and the light is so bright and beauty sits like a beating pulsing bursting heart underneath my skin, and if I don’t put it down on paper I bleed from every pore.

I write because my life is important and I want everyone to know that my life began and ended and in between love flowed through me and my spirit danced with God.

I write because every signpost I come to points me back to the writer’s path, even from the depths of the electronic jungle. I write because when I do I feel the soothing aahh begin in my own throat, and I hear it echoed from the throats of my loved ones as they see me finally coming home.

I write the little stories and the big ones, in the voices of bells and heartbeats. They are mythic journeys and frantic dances, humdrum vacations and gala celebrations. They are slow and dangerous, fast and clumsy, sweet and smooth tasting. They knock you flat when you’re not looking.

I write because if I don’t my life is ashes and lice, and a gluey film of dust lies thick over my skin. I write because it is my protection from the vast and awful fear of nothingness; because it is the narrow plank I have laid across the chasm of the Great Void.

I write because a God lives in my pen and my keyboard and my hands. Over my left shoulder I see the air currents swirling around Her. Her immense presence settles around me like a thick warm quilt,, and we are wrapped together snug on a snowy winter day while we watch my genius burn. I feel the warmth on my back growing yellow, and my skin turning peach-brown with the soft smell of joy.

I write because God says.

Technorati Tags: Write, Eating Mythos Soup, alive, life, smells good, soothing, voices, heartbeats,
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

in just one morning
two new ideas spring up
you are Mighty Mouse

Technorati Tags: morning, ideas, Mighty Mouse
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Today is my grandmother’s birthday. If she was alive, she would be 105 years old.  She was born in Leeds, England, but emigrated to Toronto when she was under a year old.  When she was 7, she accompanied her widowed mother to Vancouver BC by train. Her mother had purchased a boarding house in Vancouver, sight unseen.

Near the end of her life, at the age of 99, my grandmother told me about that train trip in 1911. Up to then she had known only city life. “I can close my eyes now,” she said in her quavering old-lady voice, “and see the dawn rise on the Rocky Mountains, as I pressed my nose to the train window. I had never seen a mountain before, and I didn’t know what they were. So I woke my mother, but I was so excited all I could do was point out the window.  She wasn’t very happy with me for waking her up, and snapped ‘for goodness sake, it’s just a mountain!’ and went back to sleep.”

“But you know,” she added, “I’ve lived a long time and travelled all over the world, but I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as the dawn coming up on the Rocky Mountains, framed in a train window. When I think of heaven, that’s what I think of.”

And when I think of my grandmother, that’s who I see – an awestruck seven year old gazing at her first sight of a mountain, looking out of an old lady’s eyes.

Technorati Tags: Grandma, birthday, England, Toronto, Vancouver, Rocky Mountains
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

It’s nearly Halloween, or Samhain, and a good day to write about the subject we all think about even though it makes us uncomfortable. Death.

Nowadays I often think about death. Although I’m still clinging to middle-age, I can clearly see old age coming closer. And right behind it, grinning at me, is Death. I’m healthy and both my parents are still alive, but they are old. — 87 and 91.  87 doesn’t seem as far away as it used to be. Thirty years is nothing, a mere blip. I remember thirty years ago easily. I wasn’t so different then.

Death is the ultimate unknown. We don’t know what comes after death, even though many people tell themselves pretty stories about what comes next.  According to religions, Heaven for the good guys, and Hell for the bad. Or we reach nirvana, where everything is perfect, but only after we’ve been reincarnated several times. Or reincarnation that never stops, just on and on forever. Even many non-religious folks talk about a vague “force” or “energy” that may survive after death.  And then there are those who see or talk to ghosts, and believe that some poor souls wander the earth forever as themselves.

Even those scientists who study “near-death experiences” which seem to suggest something is happening after death, cannot prove anything is.  And the atheists say that there’s nothing happening after death – when you’re gone, you’re gone, and that’s it.

Really, these are all just guesses. Although we all know what happens to dead bodies (and it’s nothing good) nobody knows for certain what if anything happens to our “soul” or “essence” or “energy” after we die. We all have to sit tight and wait to find out.  But we’re such an impatient species, so we had to invent stories to make the waiting easier to take.

Technorati Tags: Samhain, Halloween, Death, middle-age,

One reason I love being a ghostwriter is because I get to hear such amazing stories. But sometimes it can be frustrating. My work does not belong to me. The stories I tell belong to someone else. And my clients are not always as bold or as “out there” as I am. Sometimes they tell me their stories and ideas, some of them so brilliantly bold, some of them shining examples of courage – but with some politically incorrect or “not nice” facets. It’s often these not-nice facets that make the stories real and alive and worth writing about.

Some of my clients like hiding behind hedges, and I like to tear the hedges down, branch by thorny branch. Oh, how painful it is when I have written a passage of such poetic grace, such searing wisdom, that it nearly sings aloud from the page – and my client says, “Oh, I can’t say that – what will my mother think?” (Or her Aunt Grace, or her boss, or her husband, or her old boyfriend she hasn’t seen for thirty years.) “Can’t you put it another way?” she asks, by which she means without the truth in it.

So guess what? It’s her story, not mine, so out that passage goes, if I’m unable to convince her otherwise. And I’ll write a tepid version and mourn for those wild, outrageous, unused words.

But really, this is good for me.  It may not be good for the art, but it is good for me.  It reminds me that my opinion is not the only one that counts. My artistic goals are not always the goals of others. It’s not always about me.

In fact, the real in-your-face thorny truth is that it is never about me.  It’s good to be reminded of this sometimes.

Technorati Tags: stories, ghostwriting, artistic goals

In an earlier post I talked about an exercise in using nouns and verbs. Sometimes when I do this exercise, I choose 10 or 20 verbs and nouns, and make 10 or 20 sentences. But sometimes I get stuck on just one noun and verb, and find myself writing on and on. Here’s an example of this.  The noun I picked out was “crow” and out of the verb pile I picked the word “disgust.”

Well, my first reaction was disgust – at myself. Why did I put a transitive verb like disgust in the action verb pile? You can’t use the word disgust as an action verb – “The crow disgusts himself” was the only one I could come up with, and that gives no picture at all of what the crow is actually doing. To understand disgust, one must use action verbs. “The crow sneered at the hawk flying overhead” – I’m not sure how a crow sneers, but at least it’s an action verb that indicates disgust. Or “The crow gagged on the rotten peanut” shows disgust, and I’d kind of like to see a crow gagging, I wonder what sound they make if they do. Or “The crow flipped his right feather at the hawk” or “The crow pointed his middle claw at the hawk” – now these are action verbs showing the anthropomorphic crow being disgusted – or perhaps just pissed off. “The crow dropped the empty peanut shell on the ground, and flew back to his perch in the fir tree, where he cawed loudly so all the other crows in the vicinity heard what a lousy trick some human had played on him.” A bit long, but again one can see that the crow is disgusted.

I did make a mistake by putting “disgust” into the action verb pile, but on the other hand, I had a lot of fun writing about that disgusted crow.

Technorati Tags: verbs, nouns, transitive verbs, disgust, crows

you’re vulnerable
when you’re too lazy to think
let the lies begin

Technorati Tags: vulnerable, lazy, lies

Here’s an exercise that I like to do, just to keep my writing sharp. Dull writing uses lazy nouns and verbs, those general catch-alls that tell and do not show. But sharp writing uses action verbs and specific nouns, and puts them together in unique or surprising ways.

A good way to practice this is to make two lists.  One list contains action verbs – not run, which is a general verb, but skip, or scamper, or dart, or lope – all specific kinds of running. A trick to picking good action verbs is to choose a profession – any profession – and ask yourself what this kind of person does. For instance – what does a boxer do?  Well, a boxer thrusts, jabs, shuffles, weaves, bobs, and punches. Those are all action verbs. Or what does a psychiatrist do? A psychiatrist probes, nods, smiles, questions, listens, suggests. All action verbs. Or a dancer, or a chef, or a secretary — you name it, and then tell what it does.

The other list contains specific nouns. They don’t have to be fancy nouns, in fact you can look around your living room or kitchen or office, and start naming things – but be sure they are specific nouns, not general ones.  For instance, if you spot a tree outside your window, the noun you write down on your list is not “tree” – instead write down maple, or oak, or cedar.  If you see your car in the driveway, the noun is not “car” – it’s jaguar, or SUV, or pick-up truck, or VW Beetle. Of course, you might also see your kitchen faucet, and the word “faucet” is specific enough for anyone.

Your lists can contain as many words as you like, but I usually aim for twenty. Don’t put your lists in any kind of order – in fact, it can be fun to put each word on its own little slip of paper and put it in a “verb pile” or “noun pile.” Then randomly pick out one verb and one noun and make a sentence. The sentence doesn’t have to make sense, but the noun must carry the action.  For instance, if your noun is “rake” and your verb is “thrust”, the sentence should not be “He thrust the rake into the pile of leaves.” Instead show the rake thrusting – “The rake thrust its prongs into the intruder.”  Of course rakes do not thrust on their own, but your aim in this exercise is not necessarily to make sense, but to use common words in a new and different way.  

Have fun.

Technorati Tags: nouns, verbs, action verbs, specicfic nouns