This is my entry for the Trifecta Challenge, which is this: For the weekend challenge we’re asking for exactly thirty-three words written in first person narrative. Have fun with it and we’ll meet you back here on 3/3!
(image courtesy of Google)
I am afraid. Not of being alone, or of being sick, but afraid my words will not adequately express my thoughts. I am afraid my brain will betray me. I am its captive.
Writing, for me, is like dining on a fine meal. I ease my way into the plate by starting with the vegetables and starches, but the true heart of my writing is in the protein. It isn’t until I sink my teeth into the real meat of the dish that I truly get the taste for the potential of the story. Lately I have been spending an inordinate amount of time being distracted by the side dishes and leaving no room for the most important part of the meal.
Blogging has become a very special part of my life and I look forward to writing every day and reading posts from others afflicted by the same passion. I’ve been so wrapped up in the world of WordPress that I have all but abandoned the book that I had begun writing a while ago. Until recently, I had great intentions of setting aside time to do nothing but continue the journey of the characters I created so long ago. But that has finally changed.
(image courtesy of Google)
With encouragement from fellow blogger Sage Doyle, we made a pact. We vowed to set aside time two mornings a week and make the other accountable for getting up early and devoting time to write. With coffee in hand, we check in with each other in the wee hours of dawn, bid each other adieu for a couple of hours and we write. There is no TV, no noise, just caffeine induced creativity. It’s been a fantastic way for me to shift focus back onto the book because I have that accountability, and it is truly inspiring me to dedicate that much-needed time to the WIP. My characters are animated once again and brushing the dust from their clothing. They have attitude and they now know there is a time and a place that they can bring it.
Fleeting ideas are now forming into meaningful sentences and paragraphs and 1,500 words magically transposed themselves onto the screen on Wednesday. My plate is full and it’s time to gnaw on the chops of my writing as well as enjoying the appetizers.
What is your writing ritual?
I have never had much faith in my ideas. I used to think my opinion wouldn’t be worth the air used to expel my thoughts. But I’ve come to realize through blogging that there will always be at least one person who shares my opinion. Some of my thoughts may go against the grain and rub people the wrong way, but opinions are like belly buttons, everyone has one. Inevitably the words I put into cyberspace will resonate with someone and that, alone, makes the time it takes to write a post completely worthwhile.
There are days when I receive comments that completely argue the other side of the coin and that, too, makes the effort worth it because it always gives me another way of looking at a subject that perhaps I was viewing in too linear a way. Those comments may help me to form an alternate opinion and see a point of view that I may have never considered.
(image courtesy of Google)
Sometimes the opinions I express quickly get the most profound reactions. I could spend hours trying to piece together a meaningful post, one that comes from the depth of my writing soul, and it inspires nothing. But a collection of sentences that I didn’t over-analyze and spend hours interrogating spurs discussion and controversy and keeps the comments flowing.
It’s difficult to know what will grab the attention of other people, but I can only write with the hope that my opinion matters. And the most important person it should matter to is me. I have to give myself permission to stand behind what I believe, whether the masses agree or they differ in that opinion. Perhaps what urges me to continue in this quest is the love of a healthy debate – being able to hear arguments from both sides to come to a healthy consensus.
That is the true joy of expressing a thought. Regardless of what thought it is, an opinion will undoubtedly weigh heavily on at least one person and make them think. Maybe that one person will be me, and maybe it will be you, but whomever that person is, it was worth putting the words on the page.
What’s your opinion?
Here is my take on this Trifecta Challenge.
The clanking sailboat masts shouted with panic. He wouldn’t look for long. He could not abide the thought of any child discovering what he had discovered. The woods were now around the remnants.
~
This weekend we are playing another type of word game with you. Below are photos from the 33rd page of one of our very favorite books, Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. What we want you to do is to scour the page (click to enlarge), choose 33 words, and reshape those words into a piece of your own. Your piece does not have to tell an entire story. We just want to see what you can do with this particular word bank. Punctuation is up to you. Use whatever you need, whether or not it appears in the photos.
(image courtesy of Google)
my words embrace me.
my words do not judge me from the outside.
my words speak volumes about who I am underneath.
my words define me in a way my speech never will.
my words convey an emotion that churns in the pit of my being.
my words will help you see who I truly am without the facade that I present.
my words are me.
my words allow me to speak with no sound.
my words allow me to feel with no pain.
my words are who I am and not who I pretend to be.
my words come from my soul and not from my mind.
my words drip with my emotion.
my words are rich with imagery.
my words are me.
my words bring me to a place of comfort.
my words help me find understanding.
my words draw characters in my imagination.
my words make those characters breathe life.
my words implore me to continue my journey.
my words free my creativity.
my words are me.
For all intents and purposes, I am a still somewhat of a virgin in the blogging world. I started this journey in August and have been doing my best to stay true to what really means something to me. But as it is in many cases, I felt somewhat lost along the way. I spent a great portion of my time watching the stats on my blog instead of focusing on what was truly important – the honesty and sense of self in the words that I write.
I began this journey because of a deep yearning to free the ideas in my mind, to let loose the writing demon that was trapped in the confines of my cranial matter. I spent my days off this past weekend utterly disconnected from the outside world. I turned off my phone, ignored my television, refrained from playing any music and just lived in the silence. And within that silence, I found my inner voice. I connected with what it was that brought me to the blog world in the first place – the love of writing. I finally allowed myself the chance to be what I desperately yearned to be – a writer. Although there was no looming deadline and no urgency to put ideas on a page, I fervently followed a passion that has recently been rekindled. I conceded to the power of the words so desperately trying to form themselves into ideas and let them paint the landscapes of my prose.
For me, watching the stats on my blog almost made me forget why I began this journey in the first place. I don’t write for anybody other than myself. That may sound like an extremely selfish statement, but it is based in pure truth. I write because I want to, not because I feel pressured to write. The fact that other people enjoy what I write makes me utterly ecstatic and urges me to continue along that path of creativity. Throughout this journey I have met a great many people who not only share the same passion, but who are becoming friends in the process. They are people who have found a forum to let their inner voices escape and meet in a place where they are not only accepted, but adored and applauded.
Losing sight of what is important to me may have momentarily altered my bigger picture, but spending a day listening to the writer in me brought me back to reality. It refocused my yearning to write, if for nothing else, than to put words to a page and to connect with others who can translate my voice into their own words.
I had the rare opportunity to regain my vision and recapture what holds a true place in my heart. My writing is my passion and I will never lose sight of that again. The otters in the video below remind me that it is not about the people who are watching, it really is about getting back to the things that are truly important to us and forgetting what is happening in the world around us. It is holding true to the things we value the most.
Today’s Daily Prompt ~ brought to you by the makers of ‘what were you thinking’ ~ is this – Explain why you chose your blog’s title and what it means to you.
Perhaps it would have been wiser to choose something a little more mainstream, but when I sat myself down to create a name for my blog, the first person that spoke as a distant voice in my head was my friend Sandra. She and I went to college together and although she was 10 years my senior, we became fast friends. After two years of sharing great laughs and torturing our classmates, she moved back to Halifax and I remained in Ontario.
We spent countless hours on the phone and practically wore our fingerprints off spending so much time on our keyboards. When I would ask her what she had been up to, she would always reply, “pontificating on polysyllabic profundities”. That silly statement that may not have been significant then took on new meaning when Sandra suddenly passed away in 2003 at the age of 43 after succumbing to the flesh-eating disease. There would be no more pontificating with her. The polysyllabic profundities were all I had left.
It made absolute sense when coming up with a name for this blog that I would somehow honor her for all of the support and encouragement she gave me in her too-short time on this earth. I’m sure she still reads over my shoulder and I do hear that all-too-clever advise in my head on occasion.
Here’s lookin’ at you, Kid!!
In this day and age of technology and digital communication, spell check is a wonderful tool. It allows the author of written expression the ability to enhance the reader’s experience by communicating effectively and correctly.
Back in my college days, we weren’t as fortunate. Leather bound copies of Webster’s Dictionary and Roger’s Thesaurus were never far from my reach. I loved words and I wanted to be sure I expounded my visions in the purest possible form. During those impressionable years, I attended school with many people who seemed to be as permeable to prose as I felt I was.
There were certainly exceptions to that rule, and my best friend Sandra had a college room-mate who was the poster child for the opposite end of that word spectrum. (you know who you are!!) She spelled phonetically. However it sounded to her, she seemed to create a new language to convey her message.
They were very caring room-mates and diligent to a fault about keeping the others aware of their whereabouts to alleviate worry. They maintained a white-board on their refrigerator so they could communicate where they were and when they were expected to return. While visiting the apartment one afternoon I happened upon this board and stared at it with growing wonder. Although the symbols on the board resembled those of the alphabet I could not decipher the language in which the message had been composed.
Upon realizing that I had not left the kitchen, Sandra returned to find me still engaged in a staring contest with the white board. As many times as I listed my head from side to side I still could not digest the meaning of the strange epistle on the fridge. It wasn’t until Sandra took me word by word through the note, sounding out every syllable, that I finally understood the concept of phonetic spelling. After that the intent of the scribble became crystal clear.
The “fonetik spelr” and I are still close friends to this day. I find it amusingly ironic that she studied Sign Language in school!! I am happy to report that she has mastered much more of the English language – no longer will we wury bicuz she tuk her baik to wurk and waz caat in trafik – clooz the buuk on this peij, no morr keiass.
In this space we all strive to speak to an audience, to reach people on a level they understand and enjoy. Our intention is to enlighten or amuse, to shock and impact our readers, or to simply free the voice in our head. Regardless of why we are here, we want to write. We want to put our words into the world so people will read them and come back wanting more because something we said reached them on some unspoken level. We want to feel that some part of our psyche left an indelible imprint on their brain and they connect with our words in a multitude of ways.
We write for different reasons and we write in unique voices, but within the vast forum of the blogosphere there is a common thread that binds us all – we write. We may compose those words for a variety of reasons and our passions may be fueled by different fires, but we all burn with same intensity. Sometimes those flames completely engulf us and we are overwhelmed by the fury of the fire. And sometimes those embers simply lay in wait, still, with the hope of becoming a fire and requiring the strike of an idea to rekindle that pyre of words.
My intention when I started this blog was simply to write. What I didn’t expect was to encounter the myriad number of people who enrich my life with their words. I didn’t anticipate the number of people who are rapidly becoming a staple in my day by simply doing what they love to do and by sharing their voices as well. My voice has not been quelled, but amplified by the influence of those around me. My fire, although burning at a steady pace, is not only sustained by their thought-provoking words, it is intensified by their true passion for putting words to a page. For that, my fellow bloggers and potential friends, I thank you.
The light of the fire still warms me. It envelops me and hypnotizes me with the patterns in the flames. My sleep is disrupted. My moments of REM are becoming non-existent, but I accept that fate because my intention is to listen to the voices that rouse me from that slumber and give them the freedom to say what they want to say. Let the fire burn.
When I was eleven years old the writing Gods opened the heavens, the sky rained idioms and I was saturated with words. I stood in the downpour with my arms in the air, letting myself become soaked in their beauty and I was drenched in a freshly watered passion. The seeds of creativity took root and steadily began to grow. The garden of ideas was a portrait of spectral beauty and has continued to blossom in my imagination.
Perhaps I didn’t realize the depth of that passion until I was old enough to understand the true gift of being able to express myself from somewhere deep within my mind. At that tender age of eleven I began writing silly poems, at least I thought they were silly, but the words just wouldn’t stop. I began carrying a notebook everywhere and would jot down each idea as it came to me. During slumber parties with the girls, they would all sit in a circle on the floor giggling about the boys, and I would be in a comfy chair writing poems about them. Eventually I just stopped going to the parties because their incessant giggling was too distracting. We were twelve, I don’t think I missed much.
Teenage angst and unrequited love only fueled the creative fires when I reached high school. What teenage girl doesn’t write reams of hopeless thoughts about boys, loves lost to the mean girls and the ones that got away? My pubescent phase was a match made in heaven for the endless stream of sorrow filled words that tripped over themselves to be freed. I still read some of those old scribblings and am transported back to those ugly braces and bad 80’s haircuts, but I still can remember exactly how I felt when I wrote those words.
I lost that passion for a while. Perhaps it was losing myself in a bad relationship, or perhaps it was just life in general that drained my will to create, but during that period I felt empty. The voices that used to tell me their stories had fallen silent and I was alone with nothing more than my reality. When the fog eventually lifted, I began writing my novel a few years ago, but it didn’t access all of voices that had been quelled. It felt constrictive in a way because it followed one idea, and so it sat and the characters became idle once again.
This blog has helped to lift those voices into song and I am able to hear those choirs and the beautiful harmony they have been waiting to share. I even feel compelled to write poetry again which I have not done in a long time. The book now has new life being breathed into it and characters that were once cryogenically frozen in the tundra of my muted brain are now becoming reanimated. Perhaps they too feel the freedom to speak their mind because they are no longer in the spotlight. They have the will to move in and out of my consciousness and speak when they feel compelled to say something. We are dating again, getting to know each other which is sometimes awkward because there are currently three of them and one of me, but the conversation is never boring. We will continue our ritual dance of the double entendres and I will wait for the day that they are able to pick up the tab.
polysyllabic profundities 