I took a stroll through the garden today and found a few things still in bloom.

California Fuschia


California Fuschia


Refugio manzanita


Mallow


Cleveland Sage


Lacewing egg


One of our many wasps

Some of you have already seen this on Facebook or Google+ and if so, I apologize for the repeats. I'm still getting myself back up to speed with posting to my various regular haunts.

Here's the journey through a recent piece of art I did for a memorial book for a friend who had recently passed.

This was the beginning.





Next phase after many more layers.




And the final version.




I learned a lot through this process.

Really. Just a little thing to share some new words of a new project with my weekly goal's group, not my critique group of published writers, a group of readers who would just be listening for story and not thinking about construction and whether or not the book had the potential to sell.

It was just a little thing to read seven poems about one of the sisters in my novel. Really. Just a little thing. Or was it?

I've been away from writing and sharing and critiquing for a while so the thought of putting myself and my words out there made me feel all quivery in my stomach, just like a brand-new writer. But I printed out some pages and put them in the car before I could give myself a chance to change my mind. After all, I didn't have to read them if I didn't want to.

At my goal's group we go around the room and share the progress we've made in our creative life over the last week and talk about our plans for the coming week.I listened to a couple of friends, one beating herself up for not getting things done and another who regularly sets and achieves her goals. And then it was my turn.

The last few months while I've been getting physically healthy I've been doing a lot of thinking, trying to let go of excess emotional baggage (okay, all emotional baggage is excess and needs to be dumped.)  I've spent many years measuring my writing worth against too many of the wrong things --- Whether I write like someone else or as often as someone else. Whether I sell to a certain publisher or make a certain amount of money. Whether I get mentioned some place or not. Whether my reviews are good or bad or whether my books are even reviewed.

Like I said, all the wrong measurements.

Because for me, my writing worth can't be measured by what someone else does or doesn't do for me or to me.

I needed to remind myself of that. The reason I write may not be the reason anyone else writes and that's okay. I've felt a change in my writing self the last few months. Less need to compare, to feel jealously, to worry that I am somehow not doing it right.

I'm doing it the only way I know how. My way.

Writing has always been my way of making sense of the world. I write to discover who I am and why I think and feel the way I do. I write to explore the implications of choices I have made and to investigate the whys behind those choices. I write because writing defines me.

So today, when it was my turn to share about my week, I picked up a few poems and shared a bit of my WIP with readers who just wanted to hear an interesting story. They laughed at what I thought were the funny places. They gasped when I shocked them. And I could see in their eyes that question that every storyteller hopes to see in their audience, "What happens next?"

The best stories, the ones that stick in our hearts and minds, are the ones that reflect life as it is, not as we wish it were. The ones that bring us up close and personal. Sometimes the significance of a piece of work is not just in the work itself but in the memories each reader, and each writer, brings to it.

This is why I write.

I'm going to try and remember that.

Hello blog. It's been a while. First things slowed down (in the middle of the series about my incarcerated teen poets) because Livejournal had the attack on their servers and then, well, life intervened, as it has a way of doing. And even though people say you don't need to say to write a post about being gone I feel compelled to say a few things. Three, I think.

Number one, a couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of going to Las Vegas to speak at their SCBWI conference. I had a wonderful time talking about creating characters and met some enthusiastic writers. But if that wasn't enough of an event, the day after the conference I had the pleasure of finally meeting the half-sister I never knew I had.



My lovely niece capture the very first hug.



What do you think, can you see a resemblence?

We spent a wonderful day together talking about similarities and differences and telling family stories. And as I posted on Facebook (forgive me for those of you reading this/seeing pics a second time) there will always be a hole in my heart from not knowing my dad but getting to my sister and some of the rest of the family goes a long way toward filling that up again.

Second, I've been spending a lot of my time and energy on learning how to eat in new ways and man, that takes more time than I realized. It's taken most of my focus just to get into these new habits but now I'm feeling like yes, they are habits. I'm maintaining the healthy course I want to be on and I don't feel at all deprived. I've lost 38 pounds so far and plan on keeping with the program until I am as healthy as I can be and then staying on the program to keep myself that way. And by "program" I don't mean something like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or some diet with a catchy name. I count calories and track it every day. I've cut out sugar and flour except for rare occassions. And that's about it. It really is that simple.

And third, I've been able to focus on my writing again. At last. In the past year I've let go of a ton of emotional baggage that has been weighing me down for years. And then there's the whole getting healthy thing. Not eating the right foods was rotting my brain and affecting my ability to focus. So I'm back to work, hard and fast, on my YA verse novel, coincidentally enough, about a very interesting pair of sisters. I'm sure you'll get to know them a bit better as the character letters start going back and forth again.

I'm a lucky gal. Life is good and I'm smart enough to know it. You know those songs where they say, "I feel like I could fly..." Well it's like that.

Yeah, just like that.

So hello blog, I've missed you.

I heard a lot of bird chatter out back late this afternoon and went to the window to see if any birds were playing in the water. I took these pictures through the window (gonna have to wash them soon if this keeps up.)  Across about 10 minutes I took over 100 pictures. I kept waiting, wondering how many birds would land on the rock at the same time.

Poor lonely bubbling rock. Maybe some birds will come to visit soon.



One bird.


Two


Three


Four


Five


Six


Seven


Eight!!!


I actually think there might have been more than eight on there at one time but I was so memorized watching them swoop in, race off, and swoop back that I forgot to grab the camera right away.

Today was the eighth of twelve sessions teaching poetry to a group of incarcerated teenage girls.

It was a good day. I expected it would be. It happens in all the residencies I teach in detention facilities - a really bad day gets a few kids in trouble and then the next time I come in they do pretty well. I have four sessions left and the last three, I just found out, will be with a substitute in the class. That makes things really tough. Substitutes usually bring out the worst in them.

One girl got out yesterday so we had a new girl today. Pretty low key though she participated right off the bat. That doesn't usually happen. It's so hard to look at these kids and not know their stories, what brought them to such a place.

The word for the day was TRUST. Here's their group poem:


Trust
Feels like an unbreakable bond, like someone catching you when you fall
Trust looks like two lovers holding hands and it sounds like best friends gossiping on the phone.
It smells like incense in church
Trust tastes like leftovers your mom made and tears.

They wrote individual poems about trust and a few of them shared their writing.

We did another group poem, a sort of mad lib.


This is the poem
that goes in the place where you have to stay on your toes
that flows
because it runs through our veins
because we said so
and when thugs cry at night
happy, alone, solid,
this is the poem
that runs from the ground up to our soul

Another warm-up we did was envelope poems. I have a stack of envelopes, some have cards in them, some have paper folded up. Some just have a postcard. The envelopes are sealed and they are all different. Different colors, shapes, sizes. Some have stamps. Some don't. Some look like they've been folded in someone's pocket for a long time and some have words written on the outside. The idea was for them to have written a poem that is inside the envelope. Some of them did pretty well with this. Those that didn't, well, I think I need to do a better set-up to invite them to write.

I handed out copies of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How Do I Love Thee? I tried to get a discussion going about what they thought meant but that fell flat. I ended up just reading them the analysis. Then we brainstormed various ways you could let someone know you loved them without actually saying the words, "I love you." They were slow to get started but eventually filled the board. From there I had them write their love poems that never used the words love.

Again, only a few girls shared.

I handed out a copy of the poem You Learn (which I have attributed to Jorge Luis Borges) and this poem they felt more able and willing to discuss. They liked it a lot, especially the last line, "with every goodbye you learn."

Then they wrote their own versions of what they had learned and they wrote some marvelous poems.Really good stuff.

I read them the last pages of Hugging the Rock which then lead to a discussion about how come writers don't make very much money.

As I gathered up the folders one I asked one girl if she was doing okay because she didn't share anything today and she usually does. She said, "I'm okay. But I don't know what wrong me lately. All of the sudden my poems getting personal and stuck under my skin."

I told her good. That means you're a writer now.

A few months agao, laurasalas and I read and worked our way through Sage Cohen's book, Writing the Life Poetic with a little blog-to-blog book club we called, Write After Reading. The idea was that we read a lot of craft books but we don't often to the exercises. This way we read together shared the exercises that we did.

One of the chapters had an exercise about using someone else's title as the jumping off point for a poem of your own. The title I chose to write to was "How to Listen".

Today was the seventh of twelve sessions teaching poetry to a group of incarcerated teenage girls.

We had a substitute teacher, the same one we had a week ago and that the girls have quite often. They should have been fine but they were rowdy, talkative, up and down all the time. When I came in two girls had already had incident reports filed on them. One more had been yanked out to talk to a counselor and mental health pulled a different girl out every ten minutes for "check-ins" which makes all the girls uncomfortable.

I persevered but I knew right away it wasn't going to be one of their better days.

Several of the girls had pulled prompt cards on Monday so they could write on their own time. I didn't know if anyone would share but three of them did. Long poems. I was pleased and they immediately asked if they could have new prompts for today. (At the end of class 4 girls took 2 prompts each.)

The word of the day was SATISFACTION.

Here's their group poem.

Satisfaction
Satisfaction smells like victory.
It tastes like your favorite food, something you just cooked, sweat dripping off your cheeks after you win a softball game.
Satisfaction feels like a ton of weight  lifted off your shoulders, a medal hanging around your neck.
It looks like somebody climbing the highest mountain in the world
Satisfaction sounds like windchimes, applause, someone chanting your name over and over again.

We did individual poems on satisfaction but too many of them veered off into inappropriate topics. We tried "I seemed to be, but really I am" poems and we had rounds of "I don't get", "this is dumb" and "I'm done," even though the page was blank.

We tried some "I am" poems.

We tried to talk about Langston Hughes and "a dream deferred".

We brainstormed nouns, adjectives, emotions, and verbs on the board, picked a few out of each column and wrote poems on that.

I handed out prompt cards of unfinished sentences and had them finish the sentence and write a list poem.

Some girls wrote. Some girls popped up and down and asked to sharpen their pencil before every poem.

When I stopped to ask one girl if she needed help she asked me if I thought they were doing good today. I asked her what she thought. She said she didn't think they were having a very good day. She was right.

When I told them there were no treats to hand out today no one argued with me. They knew.

It wasn't the best day but it wasn't the worst. As the substitute they had today said, all we can do is come in with a pure and open heart. The rest is up to them.

These are some of the poetry prompt cards I use with my incarcerated teen poets (though they can and are used with all sorts of creative writing classes.) They can be interchangeable, of course, but for my planning purposes, yellow cards are good prompts for list poems, lavender cards are emotion cards that I use for our "word of the day" sensory warm-ups, white cards are questions and green cards are unfinished sentences. I add to these all the time.

From Poetry Prompt Cards

From Poetry Prompt Cards

From Poetry Prompt Cards

From Poetry Prompt Cards

Today was the sixth of twelve sessions teaching poetry to a group of incarcerated teenage girls.

I confess, it was hard to gear up the energy to go back there today. Two bad sessions in a row knocked the gumption right out of me. It's not that my other sessions have always gone perfectly. There's always a time you hit the wall but you can still see over it to where you know you're heading. But that last week left me feeling like I was floundering, unable to give them that undefinable something that is a gift from a teacher to a student, a power that I know comes with being able to voice your feelings.

I prepped hard all day Sunday. I had tons of writing prompts and ideas and lyrics to some of their favorite songs and a bag full of full-sized candy bars.

And oh how they surprised me. It's not that they suddenly became devoted fans of poetry. It's that they took chances and engaged with the process of writing.

On Friday several of them had asked for one of my prompt cards so they could write some extra poems on their own time. They shared those before we got started today. Then it was time to do a group warm-up on the board. I loved how they all begged for a chance to pick the word for the day. The word they chose was NORMAL and here's what they came up with.


NORMAL
Normal tastes like oatmeal and water and sometimes like Kool Aid.

It feels dull, boring, like tears or a paper cut 'cause life hurts sometimes.

Normal smells fruity like Mango-Tango and flowers and the air around you. It's like when you walk into your grandmother's house and it smells like food.

Normal sounds like your family talking, your favorite song on the radio, my mom

Normal looks like a boy and a girl in love, a girl and a girl in love, a boy and a boy in love, a drag queen.
Normal looks like the girls in here.


From there they went on to write their own poems on the topic of "normal." One wrote about how normal for her means getting up early to take care of children that aren't hers and making sure her mom has something to eat when she comes down from her high. Another wrote about how normal was being molested by her father. I was so proud of the writing they did even though I had to show my hands in my pockets to keep from handing out hugs.

We talked about various poetic devices in general and then more specifically as it related to the song lyrics they asked me to bring in. And then they wrote their own poems modeled on the songs. They all participated and before I left, most of them had asked for new prompt cards so they could do even more writing on their own time.

What was different this time from the last two times? I don't know. I was just thrilled for them to have such a good session.

One more thing was different from last week. This time, when I handed out chocolate, they said "thank you."

Today was the fifth of twelve sessions teaching poetry to a group of incarcerated teenage girls.

It's killing me. Not just the work, which is emotionally draining, but it is killing my spirit. My confidence is melting.

We had a new student today and she loves to talk and loves to be the center of attention. Major extrovert. Good for her but hard to teach around, especially with little backup from the teacher. Because she was new, the rest of the girls in the class were more interested in hearing her stories than doing their work. I brought in chocolate as a treat for the end of the day and their comment to that, "Whatever. I don't care."

We did the word courage as a group poem. It took twice as long than usual. I read to them from Ruth Gendler's book, The Book of Qualities. It should have been a nice lead from the emotions we did with the group poem but when I asked them to write one of their own they all said, "I don't get it. Can we do something else?"

We watched Sarah Kay perform her wonderful poem HANDS and managed about a two minute discussion on hands before they wrote their own. Only one person wanted to share.

I gave up and moved to art, asking them to trace their hands and decorate them, telling them it would be some of the art we would use to decorate the poetry collection we were building. I brought in lovely zentangle hands and encouraged them to try some tangles. Nope. Not a one.

The entire day the new student was up and walking around, going over to read the other student's work, constantly in motion, constantly talking (but she did do the work.) No matter what I said, she couldn't keep still for long. The teacher finally said something.

Something happened with one girl. She was called out of the room and when she came back she just slumped in her chair and cried. I couldn't ask why but I offered her paper and encouraged her to write about it. I told her she could tear it up when she was done. She just nodded, clutched the pencil tightly in her fingers, and continued to cry.

I don't know what else to do to try and reach them. They won't talk, won't interact so the time just stretches on and on.

This is hitting every single one of my insecurities. 7 more sessions to go. I have no idea what I will use to fill the time.

Today was the third of twelve sessions teaching poetry to a group of incarcerated teenage girls.

We had a full class but a substitute teacher. He seemed to really get into the spirit of poetry which I think made the session more fun for the girls. There were two girls absent on Friday. I had left them each a note with copies of the poems I had shared and the two poetry assignments for the day. I really didn't expect them to do the work but both turned in not one but two long poems. I was quite pleased.

Before we got started the girl who's poem caused such a reaction on Friday handed me a copy of her poem. She hadn't put it in her folder on Friday saying that she wanted to recopy it. I didn't expect to see it again. I thought that after she had written it and allowed it to be shared that she wanted to keep it to herself so I was surprised and pleased when she gave me the copy. But I was floored when a couple of the girls asked me read it again. I did and once more, just like on Friday, they clapped and cheered for the author. It was a great start to the day and, I think, a huge boost to the author.

The word they picked for today was "beauty."  Here's their group poem.

BEAUTY

Beauty sounds like little birds chirping in the morning and an angel playing a harp. It sounds like a waterfall, like the ocean waves hitting the rocks at the crack of dawn.

It tastes like a sweet strawberry dipped in chocolate, honey on your morning toast, an orange, chocolate turtles, a caramel apple. Beauty can also be bitter as a lemon.

Beauty feels like a baby's bottom, gentle as rose petals, soft as silk.

It smells clean,like a fabric softener sheet, like a red rose, like Cherry Blossom perfume at Victoria's Secret, like fresh cut lawn after the rain.

Beauty is graceful like a princess dancing at the ball. It looks like the setting sun, stars twinkling near the moon, a swan floating on a sparkling lake, city light.

Beauty looks like me.

After the group poem they each did a short writing on the topic of beauty. Unlike the boys, there's no grumbling about not wanting to write (even though they know that's why I'm there.) There's one girl who wears a perpetual scowl and rarely writes more than two lines, no matter what the topic. She never feels good and is always in a bad mood. I can sense a world of hurting going on behind her eyes. I just keep opening poetry doors and hope that one of them will click for her.

There are two girls who have slightly unusual names and I continue to struggle with the pronunciation. It is frustrating to both of us when I mess one of them up.

Next we talked about how people judge them, brainstorming various ways of being judged on the board. Then they wrote about how they felt the world saw them. It might have been too soon for this prompt. I don't know. Two of the seven didn't write anything. The others all wrote about how they didn't care what other people thought about them. By the third poem being read I got the feeling they were spouting back something they thought I wanted to hear, something they had talked about it sessions with their counselor. There were original thoughts in the poems but a lot of stuff that I think came from the therapy process this system uses. I'll have to rethink how I introduce this to perhaps get a better response. One girl chose to write about her uncle instead of herself and did a great job. I think the two girls who chose not to write had a lot to say but weren't quite brave enough yet to put it down on paper.

After that we talked about who they really were, who they would see when they looked in the mirror, who they wanted the world to see. The response was about the same. This was one of those exercises that didn't go over as well as I had hoped.

I'm finding that lessons that fell flat with the boys work we

Today was the second of twelve sessions teaching poetry to a group of incarcerated teenage girls. We were missing two girls today so we were a small group of just seven.

When I got there they were just finishing PE and complaining about working out. Two of the girls chose to not get credit rather than do the actual work and I was afraid I would be dealing with the same thing in the class. There was no happy, "Hey Miss Susan!" or "What are we going to do today?" When I work with the boys, even from the first day, they are talking to me, asking questions. The boys are usually much less interested in poetry than they are in talking to me. The girls, while all of them may not be interested in poetry, they'd rather do that right now than connect to me. I understand. I'm new. One more person with power over them (they think) or the power to hurt them. It all takes time.

After doing these types of workshops for a while I've learned it usually takes 3-4 visits before I feel I've made a real connection. And I'm not naive enough to think I connect with each kid. There are always some I don't reach. I know I can't save the world. Not even this little corner of it. I can only plant seeds in what I hope is fertile ground.

We did another group poem to start the day. I let someone pick one of my word cards. (Someone always loves to "pick a card, any card.) And the word they picked was joy. Here's the group poem they did.

Yesterday was the first day of 12 sessions teaching poetry to a group of incarcerated teenage girls. This is my first time with an all girl group, usually I work with the boys. There were subtle differences, less posturing and more giggling. There were more things in common, one tough kid in the back of the room who carried the chip on her shoulder like a flag. One who was determined to not get involved but then couldn't help herself. Several that sent out "do not get too close to me" vibes one minute and the begged for attention the next. And one, that one that is always in every class, that just loves poetry, jumps right into everything and has a couple of poems already written that I just have to read (her words) before I go home.

This is also a new facility for me. Not too far of a drive but boy was it hot! When I left the temp outside was 99 degrees. There's no AC in room, just a fan and the door and windows open which mean we were swatting flies away the entire time. I was impressed that they were able to write with it being so hot.

This is my first time trying out a two hour session. Two hours is a long time when the girls don't talk a lot but things usually open up after a few sessions. What two hours means is more poetry prompts which yields more poems for them. But I have to break it up so they aren't writing for two hours straight. This is the part about teaching that is always the hardest for me, trying to figure out how much and exactly what to say to them before giving out a prompt. One friend told me she found that her sessions went better with less talking and more writing. I can see that but I also feel an obligation to teach more. That could also be a pressure I put on myself. I'll be checking in with myself after each session and see how that evolves.

I started off with telling them a little about me and my writing but it was easy to see that didn't interest them so we went right to work on a group exercise. I have cards with various emotions on them and let one student pick a card. She picked WORRY so we brainstormed the five senses and how worry would look, taste, sound, smell and feel. This is the group poem they came up with when they were done.

For the last couple of days I've been playing around on Google's new social networking site, Google+ and I have to say, I'm liking it a lot. Right now my favorite features are the instant photo upload from my Android phone and the way you organize everyone into circles. Some people might be in multiple circles, say, friends, family, writers, poets. Some might be in one all their own, like techies. You can choose to send your post out to everyone at once or just select circles. Another plus is that you can also post something and include someone via email.

Hangouts are a cool integrated video chat that worked great for me.

The UI is clean and intuitive. I think you have more privacy controls than on Facebook.

Right now it's a small population but I think it will keep on growing, especially when Google formally opens the doors. For now, if you have a Google profile set up and you want to come play, send me your Google email address and I can open a door.

Oh, and they also have a vanity url. I grabbed mine right away.
http://gplus.to/susantaylorbrown

1. I've been cleaning my office this week and have succeeded, at last, (probably for the first time in YEARS) in having no miscellaneous paper pile. But I don't think it will last for long unless I can figure out better homes for things I touch a lot in the office area. I tossed a multitude of PR material for books that are no longer in print. That felt odd.

2. Like my current WIP folders. I have, in no particular order, Plant Kid, the sisters book, Max the dog book, the dog essay book, another MG verse novel and a whole bunch of loose poems. I do a lot of my writing by hand and all my editing off the paper so I need to keep lots of papery things around. I have three baskets on a shelf behind my desk but paper has to go in it vertically. That's okay for file folders but I have little snippets of paper or pictures and things that fall out. There's no room on my desk for the folders.

3. I have two empty drawers in the file cabinet in my office so yes, I could put the folders in there but there's something weird about me (okay more than just one something weird about me but here's ONE weird thing) I like to have all my stuff out where I can touch it, see it, not hidden away.

4. I have three drawers of nothing but potential books and articles. Some started and then abandoned. Some just filled with ramblings and research. These go back 15 years at least. I'm thinking I should go through them and if the idea no longer appeals to me, I should toss them. But that feels really weird to do.

5. I also have giant stacks of papers from books that have gone through various versions and have editorial marks on them. I'm not famous enough to think they should be donated somewhere. I'm about ready to toss them but it feels weird to think about doing that too.

*** Okay, this is not office related but LiveJournal related. Why can I no longer choose html formatting??? Also my tags no longer auto fill??? And when I look at this in the preview, it shows no date at all.

Write After Reading: Writing the Life Poetic has been a weekly online book club with poetry participation. It has alternated between my blog and Laura Salas's blog.

For a couple of months now Laura and I have worked our way through reading and writing poetry together. The exercises have been both fun and enlightening. It seems the more I struggled against the exercises the more I got out of it once I actually did the work. Having a buddy to read and discuss the book with made it more fun and, of course, made me accountable to actually doing what I said I was going to do.

We've reached the end of our journey with this particular book. It feels like the right time. And now that we're in the midst of summer, many readers have summer activities on their plate. I want to thank those of you who read along with us, whether or not you posted, and those who joined us in sharing our exercise here on the blogs. Poetry really can be a universal conversation.

The book we used, Writing the Life Poetic, by Sage Cohen, is so accessible. The chapters are short and the exercises are full of variety. Even if you didn't get the chance to read along with us this time, I highly recommend the book.


But wait, there's more! Sage Cohen has volunteered to answer questions for us. It doesn't matter if you posted during our reading adventure or not. If you have any questions about poetry, the book (we didn't cover all the chapters) some of the exercises, etc, please leave your question in a comment and we'll forward them all to Sage for a final wrap-up on our poetic adventure!

Thank you again, to all who participated and cheered us on. Stay tuned for further adventures in Write After Reading. If you have a book you'd like us to consider for the club, please let us know.

Last week when my characters wrote back to me I could finally hear a couple of distinct voices calling out to me. This is proving to be a great plotting exercise for me. Here are this week's letters to my characters.



Dear Plant Kid,
First off, some sympathy that Nan and your grandmother seem to be making you feel bad all the time. Sometimes grownups can be mean without even trying. I'm sure they both love you very much.

I want to hear more about how your dad died but I understand if you don't feel like talking about it right now. Maybe you could just tell me about that thing you found that used to belong to your dad. I don't want to fall into cliche territory here and it seems highly possible, considering your situation and all.

And what about Mr. Mac? You haven't talked about him in a while.

For the past few months laurasalas and I have been working our way through the wonderful  book, Writing the Life Life Poetic, by Sage Cohen. We alternate hosting the discussion on our blogs on Wednesdays.



Sage's book has a lot of juicy bits of knowledge for us and many fun exercises. This one was one of my favorites, an offshoot of Mad Libs. Another favorite was song lyrics as poems. And this one where we used titles as jumping off points for a poem.

Today I wanted to share an original poem I wrote by this week's exercise using word lists. 

My words were: pilgrim, universe, kneel, fly



Once trapped
in a carbohydrate prison
I am now a pilgrim in a new world,
a universe of edible wonders.

Stomach growling anticipation
I fly to the farmer's market
and kneel before the Produce King.
"Please sir, may I have some more?"

Susan Taylor Brown, all rights reserved


Poetry Friday is hosted today by Carol, at Carol's Corner.

I've been debating how public or not I was going to be about all this and finally decided that since it's something I'll be living with for the rest of my life, I'll probably feel better if I share it now so I don't have to worry about who does and doesn't know what's going on. Rants, however, will continue to stay locked and private. :)


1. I recently got a a diagnosis of diabetes. Why am I thankful for this? Well I'm thankful I was diagnosed before things spiked way out of my control.

2. At this point in time I am on no medication and I don't have to do daily blood stick tests.

3. This has been the giant push I needed to really get myself in gear to eat better and get more exercise.

4. Hubby is journey me in the get healthy journey.

5. Week one I've already lost 4 1/2 pounds.

Yesterday I wrote these letters to my characters. Today they wrote back and boy did they surprise me!

Dear Curious Author
Here's the important stuff you need to know about my dad.

#1 He died before I was born. Do I even have to tell you how much that stinks?

#2 According to Nan he was a cross between some kind of super hero and a movie star. "A perfect male specimen." That's just the way she says it. Right after she tells me how wimpy and skinny and pathetic I am. She says she can't even believe he could be my father because we're nothing alike. Do I even have to tell you how crappy that makes me feel?

#3 According to my grandmother, he did everything perfectly right the first time. Never made any mistakes. Do I even have to tall you what kind of pressure that puts on me?

#4 It was an accident, the way he died. I'm not going into all the details right now but here's the thing, he died right here, in the very house we still live in. Every time I walk past the place where it happened, I shiver. Not the kind of shiver because I feel like there's a ghost nearby (boy wouldn't that be cool?) But the creepy kind of shiver of not believing that there's something broken that my grandmother doesn't want to fix because it was the last thing my father touched. Do I even have to tell you weird that is?

#5 This last one is a secret so you can't tell my grandmother or Nan. But I found something that belonged to my dad. It was out in the garage and hidden behind a bunch of junk my grandmother won't touch. I knew it was his even before I saw his name on the inside cover. I never told anyone I found it before. Never. It's all mine. Do I even have to tell you how great that feels?

Signed
Plant Kid




Dear Author,
Every day I had with my sister was a happy memory. The problem is there weren't enough of them. But here's my favorite.

The day my mom came home from the hospital with my baby sister it was raining. Pouring buckets. Mrs. Winslow from next door was taking care of me. Mom pushed open the front door, cursing about the rain and being all wet and stuff. She put the baby carrier down as soon as she walked in the door and said she needed a hot shower and dry clothes. She didn't even care that  my new sister was absolutely soaked. Just left her sitting there, crying, and walked away.

So me and Mrs. Winslow took her over to the sink and gave her a warm bath. Mrs. Winslow showed me how to use towels in the sink with a rolled up one for behind her neck. She showed me how to wash her, real gentle like, so it wouldn't hurt. And then she showed me how dry her and put a diaper back on until she was all clean and warm and pink and dry.

Later, after Mrs. Winslow went home, I sat on the couch, holding my baby sister and watching her sleep. Every once in a while she would do a little hiccup in her breathing and then let out a sigh. I held her for a long time, even after I could feel my arm falling asleep, and I promised her I would always keep her safe.

Signed,
Frankie, the kid who broke his promise





Dear Author,
Sister #1 is like you in that she's a goody-two-shoes, (well except for that one medical incident). At least  that's what she wants you to think. And she has hole in her heart that she thinks is going to be filled when she finds her dad. And she's going to be disappointed.

Sister #2 is like you in that she is afraid for people to see who she really is. And so she's pretty much an expert in the "fake it til you make it" way of thinking. And she really loves dogs. Great, big dogs.

Signed,
The Sisters

Laura is leading this week's installment of Write After Reading: Living the Life Poetic, a weekly online book club with poetry participation. It alternates between my blog and Laura Salas's blog. Last week, right here, we talked about poetic forms and chapter 63.

This week, on Laura's blog, we'll be talking about Chapter 71 and lists as triggers

Come on over and join us!

Dear Plant Kid,
Tell me about what happened to your dad. How did he die? How was your life different before he died?

Signed,
One curious author





Dear Frankie,
Were you trying to shock me with that comment about how you killed your sister? Because it's didn't work.

I'm not shocked and you didn't kill your sister. Forget what your mother and her loser boyfriend of the week are telling you. It's not your fault. You didn't pull out a gun and shoot her or sit on her in the bathtub until she drowned. It was an accident. Really.

Can you tell me one happy memory about you and your sister? Just one?

Signed,
Author who wants to be sure she gets your story straight





Dear Sisters,
Okay, so I get your point about the medical procedure one you had to have. And I get that it's a great big secret. I'm even pretty sure I know which one of you had to have it.

But so what? What does that have to do with the story we're trying to tell here?

Signed,
Author who is trying to see what parts of each of you are inside of me

I haven't written a lot about what I'm doing writing-wise lately. I've immersed myself in art because it is soothing my soul which has been troubled by not writing. I have finished some fun art projects like my quote art journal and the art journal for my 15 words or less poems  and begun my work on the Sketchbook project where I hope to combine words and art.

But writing. I've jumped around a lot lately, which is my normal process. For now my focus is a book of essays about the 14 dogs I've had in my life. I have no contract, not even a publisher in mind. I've been told by a couple of agents and a couple of publishers that it is going to be a hard to impossible sell. I've been told writing books that aren't teaching an aspect of craft don't sell unless you're famous. I've been told collections of essays by not-yet-famous people don't sell.

I've been told a lot of things that should discourage me from spending time on this project.

But here's the thing. Working on this book makes me happy. Seems like a good enough reason to work on it for me.