The Curious Incident and Jellyfish

Ah February. Where did you go? You're leaving at a dead run and taking 2012 with you.

I'm ready to do another book in 30 days, but I haven't decided which one yet. I have two All the Way Finished, two Really Almost All the Way Finished, and three More than Conceptualized - I Mean There are Words on the Page, and some Grand Ideas. but I'm wondering if I shouldn't just start with a brand new idea and run with it--something random.

For example: I'm more than halfway through The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes and I came upon this passage in "Silver Blaze..."

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

...which of course was where The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the award-winning book by Mark Haddon got its title. I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my list of books to read, so that was a fun discovery.


Based on that, I decided I'm going to spend the rest of the week revisiting great lines from books I've read to see if I can draw some inspiration for new story. Whether I base my new story on that or not, it will be a fun exercise. 

Next week I'll list some of my favorite lines.

This week my favorite poem is a song by Jellyfish. Enjoy!

Hush - by Jellyfish
In the breathless hush of 4 a.m. 

In the dark sits a sad cliche
Cloaked in the navy blue of slowly fading stars 
Tell me how this came to be 
Sleeplessness talk to me 
She'd say over and over again.

Fumbling through a cut glass vase 
Passing lipstick, cotton spools 
Burning jealous pictures of marriages of friends 
You never asked to be 
The glutton of sympathy 
She says over and over again that this is the end.

Cause I see it in your eyes 
What you don't know, time to let go
I see it in your eyes 
There is so much more out there to be learned.

Such mournful words on this snowwhite vacant page 
All the lessons that she learns she packs away 
Will you never cease to be the glutton of sympathy 
She writes over and over again.

Tossing turning roll away 
Indecision won't you ever make up your mind 
Lifetime Nighttime wake the day 
Cause tomorrow will see if you've had your fill of sympathy.

Will you never cease to be the glutton of sympathy? 

Don't you know the stars are all fading let the sunshine capture 
The sparkle of your smile.

Helpful sites and Shelley

For those of my followers who are also writers, I'm listing some Web sites that I've found helpful/fun. 


First is Query Shark by Janet Reid at http://queryshark.blogspot.com/. This is a good place to look over other people's queries draft by draft and Janet's suggestions. Go through the archives to get some very helpful hints. If you're brave enough--submit your own, but make sure you don't make any of the mistakes she warns against in previous posts or she won't post it.


Second is Creative Writing Prompts http://www.creativewritingprompts.com/#. I thought this was a fun Web site with 346 writing prompts. Just mouse over the number to get the prompt if you're feeling a little stopped up (as far as your creative flow, if it's something else, then eat a Fiber One bar).


Third is NANOWRIMO http://www.nanowrimo.org/. November is NANOWRIMO month, but this site has myriad helpful blogs, tips, and peptalks to get your through whatever writing challenges you may be facing all year long.


These are just a few of the sites I like. If anyone has suggestions of their own, I'd love to hear them.


My poem of the week is Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley


Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Synopsis End Game and Pablo Neruda

This week I sent my manuscript to a friend for review and she gave me some very helpful feedback about how "normal" people would react in a crazy situation, so I'll be working that into my story this weekend. I let another friend read it and he gave me some helpful feedback about some of the more mechanical aspects of my story and I'll be working those in as well. Thanks friends! It's nice to have the diversity of friendship that I do--my friends have interests ranging from sports and cars to poetry and psychoses.(They go hand in hand.)

Working all this knowledge and experience into my story has been enlightening. I'm having a good time fine-tuning all the details, and the synopsis is coming together nicely as well. I've discovered that my brain is finite. I am not an "expert" in everything (don't tell my children that). Sometimes we have to get outside ourselves to see things in a bigger way and this feedback is allowing me to do that.

I went through a Pablo phase where I only wrote poems in response to Neruda poems, because I felt they evoked such an emotional response from me. I couldn't tell you whether the resulting poems were "good" or "bad," but they may be stretch my boundaries a little and explore something different. So that you can share in my mental and emotional enrichment, I've included one of my favorite Neruda poems below. Enjoy!

I do not love you except because I love you - Pablo Neruda
I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,

From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.