Greetings Soul Writers. For you those of you not able to make it yesterday, we reviewed some basic parts of writing. We talked briefly about alliteration, assonance, and simile, before diving into a metaphor exercise. I was inspired to adapt an activity from Rob Blair's blog: http://robbieblair.com/9-metaphor-exercises/ Create a metaphor using the following three starters.
Life is...
I am...
My heart is...
Once you have a list of a few metaphors, really draw them out. We did this aloud with a group. Here is an example.
I am a mountain.
From there expand: I am a mountain, forged in fire, filled with impenetrable secrets, a fortress hiding in plain sight, a monument to self sufficiency.
Often writers fall into the trap of assuming all people will understand imagery in the same way. The purpose of this practice was to really dig into the metaphor to figure out what we really wanted to convey and to be precise with our language.
Our main free writing inspiration came from Mindy Nettifee's Glitter in the Blood: A Poet's Manifesto for Better Braver Writing. If you don't own this book yet, I highly recommend it. Mindy is an incredible poet. I had the opportunity to see her perform at the Seattle Poetry Slam. Some of her strengths include incredible imagery, narrative poetry, use metaphor, and specificity. Her work stays in my head long after I've read it and as a writer that is one of my big goals, to make a ripple in someone's brain. I read an excerpt from the forward then shared a list of objects to be included in the free write as the prompt. Here is the list (located on pg. 48):
- an antique pocket watch
- an elevator button
- a letter opener
- a restaurant match book with a phone number written in it
- a magnifying glass
- a Gordian knot
- a snow globe with a miniature city in it
- one earring
- a small statue of the Hindu deity Ganesha
- a mineral rock of some sort you cannot identify
- an old dictionary with the entire "R" section ripped out
- an old cassette labeled "To Jackie"
Here is what I wrote:
I fell asleep with the elephant cradled in my palm. Having the tiny God of remembered truths, God of cleared pathways, a God beyond obstacles right there in my palm print was a comforting lullaby. But when I awoke Ganesha was gone and the city had disappeared. Another God had crept in during the night and ladled out a thick gray bisque that settled swamp like at the edge of my porch where the yard used to be.
I wandered from room to room peering through windows and finding nothing. No neighbors, no neighbors dog, no neighbor's soda cans rolling down my driveway, no driveway. No neighbor's dog shit land mining my yard. No yard. No street. As though the Rapture had come and sucked up everything in its path leaving me and my house as the last remaining island.
His love had come upon me just as suddenly and uninvited, settled in swamplike at the periphery of my heart and mind, but stealing closer inch by damp inch. I pulled on boots. This was rain boot and wool socks weather. A cup of tea and a good book was tempting, but a part of me needed to know that the world was still out there somewhere. Instead I found the gray, a chill biting into bare hands. With every step forward a space cleared between me and the fog. There were in fact trees all around me, sidewalks, houses, tall metal street lamps glowing like halls cough drops. A tight globe of visibility moved with me as though I were fairy in a glass jar lit just enough to see my own footsteps and the nothingness moving in to erase them.
GPS only works when you can see the streets and the signs marking them. I was lost in him already, a foot beyond my house and wondering how some place so familiar could suddenly seem so foreign.
