Just write. Writing freely. The Write Spot Blog – Page 2

Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

Know Your Colors – An Introduction to the Plant Mood Chart

By M.A. Dooley

Luckily, my face turns colors when I feel emotions. Whether I am sad or happy or embarrassed, angry, jealous, afraid, confident, guilty, content, confused, giddy, flirtatious, thoughtful, nostalgic, hesitant, determined, focused, agitated, brazen –or if I feel a song coming on–I can consult the Plant Mood Chart. Rather than grasping at some external label that’s not quite accurate, I hold up the chart at the mirror, or sometimes with a friend, to make sense of the inside of me. It’s quite convenient, saving me lots of time and effort.

Much like the little cannister with the PH and alkaline hues used to test hot tub water, but far more complex, the color chart corresponds to feelings and can even suggest a backstory as in, “What happened that brought me to this point?”

Although little understood by the public, there is a consistent body of work by Species Translators over hundreds of years. They were doctors, spiritual leaders, druids, medicine women, scientists, and athletes who uncovered a correlation between emotions, humans (who change color) and plants including trees, fruits, flowers and vegetables. I just checked as I am writing this, and sure enough, I’m a white orchid, focused on explaining how the system works. Later on, I might be a pink lady – a little flushed with excitement to share my research with a broader audience – and then shrinking back in sepia, like an acacia, as some consider me a whacko, which turns me embarrassed into bright tomato.

Yet there is a great deal of science behind the Plant Mood Chart similar to the deeply analyzed Bach’s Flower Remedies. Recent neuroscience has shown how the amygdala strengthens the part of the brain’s cellular memory reaching back to reconnect with earth’s ancients – plant beings. They are the ones that came first, offering life to all that followed. Biologists and healers alike know that plants actually feel and communicate. Plants not only have feelings but create feeling. Like us, they exist partly underground hiding their vulnerable veins, cool and safe, but also seek the sun their heads shining for all to see.

As we breathe in their shifting colors, the more we become like plant beings. Today, we have a growing evolutionary opportunity to adapt as carbon emissions increase along with our CO₂intake. Oxygen transmuted by the sun through chlorophyll makes me turn ivy green with envy of their design to efficiently transfer and store life energy.

With so much wind driven cross pollination, subatomic particles get into genetic codes and distribute globally. Most color changers are part wood fairy (my 24 and Me results indicated Corklorian Sprite at 1.3%). Many people are finding it natural to burrow into a soft barked redwood (sienna – comfort) or hide amongst the autumn fern (pale yellow – shyness) or wave their arms in the meadow like a big sunflower (golden – pride). Since we don’t always have a mirror and the color chart handy to verify our emotional states, listen with the ancients and their children rooted and sprouting from the earth to learn the colors of feeling. Our relationship to plant beings becomes our guide to understanding ourselves.

M.A. Dooley is an architect, mother, skier, runner, and dancer who spent most of her life exploring the Santa Cruz Mountains, Sonoma County, the Sierra Nevadas, and the San Joaquin Delta.

M.A. has been published in The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year, and Poems of a Modern Day Architect, Archhive Books, 2020.

M.A.’s writing has appeared in Sunset, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Press Democrat.

#amwriting #justwrite #creativewriting
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

Just Looking

By Ken Delpit

What’s in a look?

Quite a lot, actually. Consider looks in their simple verb forms, for instance.

The meanings range from imperatives to advisories to admonitions to out-and-out warnings.

Look away. Look up. Look over there. Look down. Look around. Now, look here! Look sharp! Look out! Look at you!

Or, consider the noun forms. As with its cousin verb forms, noun looks span a range of meanings, from complimentary to critical to probing to mysterious.

Let’s take a quick look. That is a bad look for him. They kind of gave me a funny look. We need to take a deep look. Now, that is a good look for you. I was left speechless when she gave me that look.

Or, consider “ing” forms to describe appearances and states, from transitory to reputational to habitual.

Looking tired. Looking confident. Looking like a winner. No thank you, just looking. Looking surprised. Looking smug and haughty. Looking like you’re enjoying yourself. Looking Good!

In short, if you find yourself stranded on a desert island, and you have only a few words at your disposal, you could survive pretty well if “look” is among them. Well, that and a solar-powered satellite cell phone.

Thank you, Ken, for this fun take on the word look.

Ken Delpit has been writing for quite a while, that is if you count computer programming and technical documentation as “writing.” Since leaving those professions behind, Ken has discovered an exciting new world of creative writing. He is now giddily exploring new devices, such as adjectives, subtlety, mystery, and humans with emotions and feelings.

Aternatives for the word look, from Daily Writing Tips:

“Look, it’s perfectly acceptable to use the verb look, but don’t hesitate to replace this fairly ordinary-looking word with one of its many more photogenic synonyms. Many of these substitutions come in especially handy when it comes to finding one word to take the place of look-plus-adverb or look-plus-adjective-and-noun, as the definitions demonstrate.”

1. Blink: to look at with disbelief, dismay, or surprise or in a cursory manner
2. Browse: to look at casually
3. Consider: to look at reflectively or steadily
4. Contemplate: to look at extensively and/or intensely
5. Dip (into): to examine or read superficially
6. Eye: to look at closely or steadily
7. Fixate (on): to look at intensely
8. Gape: to look at with surprise or wonder, or mindlessly, and with one’s mouth open
9. Gawk: see gape
10. Gawp: see gape (generally limited to British English)
11. Gaze: to look steadily, as with admiration, eagerness, or wonder
12. Glare: to look angrily
13. Glimpse: to look briefly
14. Gloat: to look at with triumphant and/or malicious satisfaction
15. Glower: to look at with annoyance or anger
16. Goggle: to look at with wide eyes, as if in surprise or wonder
17. Leer: to look furtively to one side, or to look at lecherously or maliciously
18. Observe: to look carefully to obtain information or come to a conclusion, or to notice or to inspect
19. Ogle: to look at with desire or greed
20. Outface: to look steadily at another to defy or dominate, or to do so figuratively
21. Outstare: see outface
22. Peek: to look briefly or furtively, or through a small or narrow opening
23. Peep: to look cautiously or secretively; see also peek (also, slang for “see” or “watch”)
24. Peer: to look at with curiosity or intensity, or to look at something difficult to see
25. Peruse: to look at cursorily, or to do so carefully
26. Pore (over): to look at intently
27. Regard: to look at attentively or to evaluate
28. Rubberneck: to look at in curiosity
29. Scan: to look at quickly, or to look through text or a set of images or objects to find a specific one
30. Skim: see scan
31. Stare: to look at intently
32. Stare (down): to look at someone else to try to dominate
33. Study: to look at attentively or with attention to detail
34. Watch: to look carefully or in expectation
35. Wink: to look at while blinking one eye to signal or tease another person
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

Ascension Garden

By Stacy Murison

The first time, you drive by yourself. You have some idea you are going there, but are still surprised that you know the way, without her, through the turning and turning driveways. Left, left, left, left. Park near the rusted dripping spigot. The wind blows, unseasonably warm for November.

You bring the candy bar, her favorite, the one from the specialty chocolate shop, the one with the dark chocolate and light green ribbon of mint. You try to eat yours, but instead, stare at hers, unopened, where you imagine the headstone will go and sob without sound while the wind French-braids your hair just as she would have, and that’s how you know she is here.

She is still pushing cicada shells off white birch trunks with her toes, dancing around pine trees with roses garlanded in her hair, singing of her love of tuna and string beans, of percolated coffee, of lemon waxed floors, of gelatin molds, of cherries, of lilacs, of chicken soup, of kasha, of home sweet home, of you.

“Ascension Garden” was published August 16. 2021 in River Teeth, A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative.

Posted with permission.

Stacy Murison’s work has appeared in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies (where she is a Contributing Editor), Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, Every Day Fiction, Flagstaff Live!, Flash Fiction Magazine, Hobart, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, River Teeth, The Hong Kong Review, and The Rumpus among others.
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

Mycorrhiza*

by Patricia Morris

I live under the canopy of a grandmother valley oak. It grows in what is now called “my neighbor’s yard,” due to the way we white settlers swept through this what-is-now-called a nation over the past 300 years and took over everything. Massacred people who were living here, infected them with deadly diseases, tried to re-make them in our image. Declared that we “owned” the land, bought and sold it; built structures to live in, structures that got bigger and more permanent as time passed; built fences to delineate MINE.

But before all this, there was the valley oak. Like all oaks, it began as an acorn, scrunched into the dirt next to a small seasonal creek. Its roots sank deeper each year, reaching for the water. Its mycorrhizal fungi spread wide, linking fingers with the grandfather sycamore nearby, and the great buckeye at the deeper part of the creek. They grew up together sharing food; sharing information; sharing tenants such as woodpeckers, scrub jays, red-shouldered hawks, squirrels, and woodrats.

The grandmother oak watched placidly as the Coast Miwok women gathered its acorns, ground them into mush, and fed them to their families; as the Spanish and then the white folks pushed in and planted crops and orchards, grazed cattle and sheep; as roads were laid down and houses sprang up, displacing meadows and pastures.

Fifty-one years ago what I call “my house” was built beside the oak out of dead redwood trees. The oak, by this time the oldest living being in the area, grew protective of this redwood structure, and even of the humans within it, despite all the destruction they wrought. I’ve had no doubt, since first setting foot on what I now call “my lot,” that the tree is protecting me and sending me love. Its ever-expanding canopy of leaves covers over two-thirds of my house in the summer, keeping it cool on even the hottest days. In the autumn, as its acorns hit the roof, the deck, sometimes even my head, like small exploding artillery shells, I give thanks and gratitude for the way it shares its abundance.

On a cold, dark winter night, silver stars glitter through the outline of the oak’s bare black branches, its ancient arms reaching to the cosmos. My tiny form sits in a tub of hot bubbling water. Boundaries between me, tree, and twinkling stars dissolve into emptiness.

* fungus which grows in association with the roots of a plant in a symbiotic or mildly pathogenic relationship. Oxford English Dictionary

Patricia Morris lives under the trees in Northern California and writes on Monday nights at Jumpstart Writing Workshops. She dates her love of stories to being read to while sitting on the lap of her Great-Aunt Ruth, a children’s librarian. Her writing has appeared in Rand McNally’s Vacation America, the Ultimate Road Atlas and The Write Spot anthologies Possibilities and Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year, edited by Marlene Cullen.
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

All Summer Long

By Deb Fenwick

All summer long, busy house sparrows flit in the eaves of our house. Each morning, they collect tiny twigs and things I rarely notice from the ground and end up making a life with them. Seedlings sprout and reach toward a warm, welcoming sky. Children ride bikes and screech with delight. No hands! Look at me! Watch! When the sun sets at nine o’clock, those same children, liberated from the rigidity of school night routines, line up for ice cream with wide, wild eyes as fireflies send signals across the garden. The crickets just keep chirping.

All summer long, there’s lake swimming in midwestern waters that have been warmed by the sun. And better still, there’s night swimming where a body, unfettered by the weight of gravity, gets its chance to remember what it’s like to glide through dark mystery.

My feet don’t touch the bottom of blue-black water, and it’s just the right amount of uncertainty. I plunge into the cool deep and open my eyes to see almost nothing. Almost. Everything is opaque—shape-shifting while bubbles rise to the surface and my body moves through muffled sound. Everything I think I know in the daytime fades away under the water’s surface. When I come up for air, my eyes squint and adjust to July moonlight. Soft water splashes as I rise to stand on coarse sand. Maybe I’ll hear a screech owl. Not children screeching. They’re all asleep now. The flies send signals, and the crickets just keep chirping.

Deb Fenwick is a writer from Oak Park, Illinois, who spent many years learning and teaching in public school settings.
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

Ode to a Table

By Julie Wilder-Sherman

Lined with age, scratched without intent, indentations of mountain ranges from 7th grade homework reside in her second panel.

Rings of white from overly hot cups and larger spheres from sizzling casserole dishes placed upon hot pads too thin.

Dents on corners from swift, careless movement, black pen lines etched through paper, bleeding into the wood.

The long, suffering life of my dining room table, surviving, still standing with the family that unthinkingly scarred her.

Julie Wilder-Sherman began reading books at an early age, encouraged by her mother who would allow her to take books to bed when she was as young as two years old. Raised in a family of readers, writers, performers, musicians, and political activists, Julie followed her dream of singing professionally and met her husband, bassist Jeff Sherman, while singing on The Love Boat. Together they enjoy cooking, eating, reading, and traveling to all corners of the world. Julie remains politically active and helps to manage the Petaluma Postcard Pod supporting democratic candidates, issues, and policies.
By Cheryl Moore

It’s as slick and slippery as an eel living in a low walled enclosure, searching all the crevices to find bits of debris that didn’t find their way to the long, dark tunnel at its root. It spends most of its days and nights resting against the hard, upper ceiling except at meal times when it is an important assist in processing the food, or when in company its primary function is to express thoughts into language.

So many kinds of languages it helps to express — the hard, umlauted words of German, the soft shushes of Portuguese or Polish, the rapid clip of Spanish or Italian, even the clicks of Khoisan, and of course, the vast vocabulary of English which has borrowed from all over the world.

Such a useful organ, the tongue, it may even be aware of when to hold its peace.

When Cheryl Moore came to California in the early 1960’s, she realized she’d found her home. Then moving to Petaluma in the 70’s, she was as close to paradise as she’d ever be.

Travel has taken her to Europe and the Middle East. She has written on these memories as well as on the flora and fauna of the local river and her own garden.
By Julie Wilder-Sherman

Well, what am I going to do with all these masks?

Store-bought.

Handmade.

Giants-themed.

Kitty cats.

Bejeweled.

Blue flowers with yellow backgrounds.

Yellow flowers with blue backgrounds.

Plain, monochromatic.

Busy, colorful.

Cloth mosaic.

A quilt of masks.

Wait!

That’s it.

A Quilt. Of. Masks.

Imagine millions of masks sewn together like the AIDS quilt, honoring what we have survived and what we have lost. A memorial, a tribute and dedication to what we have endured.

I’m ready to let go of seeing half-faces. Of asking people to repeat themselves. At nodding to those speaking, pretending to understand. At straining to hear the muffled words behind the shield.

I’m ready to let go of images of cops and robbers. Of old movies with lepers, their faces partially covered. Of images of Isis terrorists with covered faces holding rifles over captives kneeling in front of them.

I’m ready to let go of the anger.

The anger.

The anger.

He did this to our nation. You know who I mean, and I won’t say his name. He prolonged it due to his stupidity and ignorance and narcissism and . . .

But.

Back to the masks.

I’m ready to let go and make peace with the memory of the masks.

I’ll bundle them up, put them in a bag and wait.

Someone will have the fortitude and talent to weave these cloths together and create something beautiful and meaningful out of something so horrific and ugly.

San Francisco native Julie Wilder- Sherman is a long-time resident of Petaluma, California. She began reading books at an early age, encouraged by her mother, who would allow her to take books to bed when she was as young as two-years- old. Julie would “read” them until she was ready to go to sleep. To this day, Julie reads every night before turning out the lights.
Guest Blogger, David Moldawer, is the author of The Maven Game. He writes weekly essays for writers.

Perfection vs Good Enough

Take the old quote: Perfect is the enemy of good.

Voltaire might have been the one to say it in this form, but the idea of “good enough beats unattainable ideal” has been around much longer. In fact, it warrants its own Wikipedia entry, if you’re curious to trace its history.

However it’s expressed, it’s good advice for a writer. But is it perfect? (See what I did there?) I’ve often said, “remember, perfect is the enemy of good,” to people stuck in the trap of perfectionism, but over time I’ve come to question the effectiveness of simply saying the words.

If you’re working on a solo project with no genuine deadline, more can be done to improve it. And even more. There is always a better solution to even the smallest creative problem in any work, whether or not you can find it in a reasonable amount of time. That simple fact can be paralyzing. In fact, I’d argue that while writers might not actually get “blocked”—nothing is truly in the way of getting words down—they can definitely be paralyzed by perfectionism.

While I’m skeptical of the value of the adage—it’s never gotten me out of any ruts—I do find demonstrations of the good-enough philosophy motivating. They get me going when nothing else can. Seeing good-enough in action, it becomes just a little bit easier to inject a little pragmatism into your own work.

I’ve written before about my love of the competitive forging reality show Forged in Fire and this is a part of it. When a smith accidentally snaps his blade in half with thirty minutes left on the clock, it’s inspiring to see a feat that took over two hours the first time somehow repeat itself in a quarter of the time with comparable results. A few minutes of an episode of Forged in Fire is often the kick in the pants I need to push through and finish instead of finesse.

Another place I turn to for good-enough inspiration is the YouTube series Pitch Meeting. In it, writer/actor/comedian Ryan George portrays both a sociopathic studio executive and the manically productive screenwriter tasked with pitching him on his latest project. (He’s the writer behind all the big movies.) As the screenwriter explains what happens in the film, the exec can’t help but point out all the things that don’t make any sense, or that might annoy viewers, or that might be downright offensive. “Whoopsie!” the screenwriter cheerfully replies. “Whoopsie!” The exec repeats. And on they go to the next plot point. After all, they’ve got a movie to make.

For over two years, George-the-screenwriter has pitched George-the-exec on dozens, if not hundreds, of movies.

The beauty of the Pitch Meeting concept is that it forces you, the viewer, to grapple with the fact that a real writer and a real exec—at minimum—had to force their way through all the inconsistencies and logical fallacies inherent in a screenplay in order to get it made. It goes without saying that they solved many more than they ignored, but at a certain point, the originators had to say “whoopsie!” and leave it at that.

Click here to read the rest of David’s “Whoopsie” essay.