Starting from Scratch

Hello followers, all 6 of you, and my Momma.


I know this is only my second post, but I'm somewhat frustrated with blogging.  Already.  I follow a few blogs of friends, and they all look so professional and well done.  Currently, the coolest thing I thought I could do with this blog was put up the picture of my niece Maddie, playing in the pump water.  But it's huge!  All you savvy bloggers out there, tell me, how do you make your blogs look SO good?


Now, on to writing. While I intend this blog to focus mostly on creative writing and what I've been producing this summer, I also hope to use it for some personal nonfiction as well.  I've been loving reading others' posts about their lives and their daily going-ons.  But somehow, when I'm writing, things don't seem to come out as well as I would like. 


In the last few days of teaching Creative Writing at Duke's TIP Program, (for gifted and talented middle-schoolers) I've felt more like a beginning writer than I have since my first workshop in college.  While I'm housing the information about technique, lessons, lectures about poetic form and the differences between prose, poetry, and prose poems, there's definitely something my students have that I don't.  


Certainly, it's age.  I've got at least 13 years on most them and 15 on some, and with my 28th birthday rapidly approaching, age seems to be the biggest indicator of the differences in our writing processes.  But is it really time that separates their kooky story ideas, vocabulary, ("ghetto-fabulous" and "swagger"--in all its variations, ie: "swaggasarous") their willingness to take risks, their race-car-fast imaginations, and their pure passion for writing? When we grow up, how much of those do we lose?


Maybe it's not just me.  Maybe others have experienced this as well--a loss--not of love for writing, but for the practice of it.  I'm a whip-cracker when it comes to writing in our class room.  They write for 10-15 minutes in their journals every morning on a given prompt.  They've written at least 5 poems in form, free verse poems, character sketches and scenes.  They love it.  They take their journals outside on breaks, they take them with after class and write during free time.  They write for another hour after dinner during evening study.  We have tell them to leave their work in the classroom and have fun!


I don't remember the last time I was so disciplined in my practice of writing, though it's something I've preached in class both at TIP and at ECU.  "Develop a writing schedule.  Stick to it.  It will be hard at first.  If you miss a day, the next three days will be even harder."  For me, writing every day has become like a diet.  Or rather, a "life-style change."  Every morning, if I don't have something to write on the board, look up on the internet, or get ready for class, I try to do the free-write with my students.  At the very least, I can get 15 minutes in a day, and I'm hoping every day will become easier.  And I think that's where the chasm between myself and my students deepens.  I never used to have to try so hard to write.


Starting from scratch, starting over, has been like going for a run after a year of eating potato chips and watching TV. (As if I would know what going for a run feels like).  At first, I'm full of optimism.  "Yeah, I can do this!"  Soon after, I start to flag.  "God, this is hard.  Who thought this was a good idea, anyway?"  (That comment is for running.)  If I've managed to stick with it for the 15 minutes I promised myself, I feel good.  I congratulate myself, pat myself on the back.  Probably reward myself with ice cream. 


The next day, I am in PAIN.  Muscles I didn't know I had are screaming, "WTF!" And it's that way for writing too, not just literally the pain of tendonitis in my wrists after writing by hand for 15 minutes straight, but also the places in memory that I didn't remember existed in the first place.  


Katherine Karlin in her great short story "Muscle Memory," found in New Stories from the South 2009: The Year's Best, describes it this way: "Then, lo and behold, one day I just did it.  Simplest thing in the world, like I'd been doing it all my life.  It just takes time to burn a new habit into your muscle memory is all."  It does take time.  Time and pain and bad writing before I can burn that habit into memory. 


As an effort to begin turning habit into memory, I offer an unfinished Pantoum, unofficial title of:


Peonies--A Pantoum


In the wooden hutch the ghost rests,
in the chiming of the clock
wound nightly by blue-veined hands
and woken early each morning, a shadow
in the chiming of the clock
the bells of sound pealing and empty
and woken early each morning, a shadow
held softly as pink peonies in a green-glass vase.


The bells of sound are pealing, but empty
in the dining room where we play cards.
Grandma holds them as softly as pink peonies in a green-glassed vase,
just cut from the dewed garden.


In the dining room where we play cards,
that ghost floats between us,
cut from the dewed garden
he grows in our words and sighs.
That ghost floating between us
buzzes and hums
his approval grows in our words and sighs,
then hides between coffee cups and the good silver.


He buzzes and hums 
with each chime of the clock
then hides between coffee cups and the good silver,
Each bit of his shadow wound nightly by blue-veined hands.