Perspectives vary.
I have written for as long as I can remember. Early teenage angst, poems and songs in political protest and sensory delight. It has been a way through, almost over, the fray of my experiences. When writing, I perch Continue reading
I am looking for 3 bloggers who want to be guest authors on the My Writing Process blog tour. It’s not hard, I will be doing it this coming Monday 3/3/14. I will answer four questions (easy ones!) on my writing process in a blog on my site, acknowledging the person who invited me to join, and then identifying three authors who will post their own blogs on their process the following week on their sites, 3/10/14. They do the same and the blog rolls forward with three new bloggers each.
I will send you the invitation, the questions, etc. if you are interested. It’s a good exercise as well as a way to get your name and blog to new prospects. I want to be able to include your names on the bottom of my blog post next Monday, so please let me know ASAP.
Thank you,
Wendy Karasin, Musings of a Boomer.
Daily Prompt: Shake it Up
You’re 12 years old. It’s your birthday. Write for ten minutes on that memory. GO.
The scariest part is, I have none. How is it possible I have no recollection of my 12th birthday? I was heading into 7th grade, at Seth Low Junior High School in Brooklyn. I was on the young side, and was probably (one must guess when one doesn’t remember) nervous about entering a new school. We just left elementary school as 6th graders, the top ladder rung, the leaders, the senior students. Then, in little over a summer, we were back down to the lowest tier.
New school, new teachers, new kids, compartmentalized subjects, movement between classes. But I digress. My birthday. This entire exercise is conjecture because as I mentioned, I don’t remember it. I was hopeful bits and pieces would circulate and return as I began writing. I was hopeful. At the time, birthday parties were small and in our own homes. Those were not the days of Lazer Tag, or Paintball, or make believe Beauty Queens in businesses existing solely for birthday fantasies. They were at home with a cake and perhaps some festive decorations. The celebration was: you. Not who could make the best party, or give the best present, or wear the nicest clothing.
I think I prefer that time.
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/daily-prompt-shake-it-up/
Ah, sweet youth. No matter whether you grew up sporting a fedora, penny loafers, poodle skirts, bell-bottoms, leg-warmers, skinny jeans, Madonna-inspired net shirts and rosaries, goth garb, a spikey mohawk, or even a wave that would put the Bieber to shame, you made a fashion statement, unique to you. Describe your favorite fashions from days of yore or current trends you think are stylin’.
I’m the one on the right! Check out the belt from Morocco.
Bellbottoms, peasant blouses, flip flops and wild (let it be) hair. Mine were the years of political/corporate rebellion, folk singers with guitars, voices blazing trails of better worlds to be. I believed we had the answers. Who knew life and change would prove as immovable to conversion, as stubborn to alter, as every one of us ourselves. Continue reading
The second prompt of Saturday’s writing group was this: What holds me back…
My response: What holds me back stems from childhood – it’s wanting to be accepted, liked, cared for, not left.
My parents’ divorce left me with a loving but depressed Mom and a father adored from afar. Continue reading
Back to Saturday’s writer’s group and (part of) the Valentine’s weekend that rocked my world. In a cozy apartment we curl up on couches and chairs, settle into the afternoon with a fluted glass of Prosecco, pens and pads at the ready. Outside the large bare windows, snow lazily filters, thin and unremarkable.
With close to half our usual group absent, we who made it were proud of ourselves, and the apartment owner’s exuberance at each of our arrivals set the scene for an intimate and open atmosphere quickly adopted. For reasons I did not know (and am still not sure of) the perfect storm of being with my boyfriend the night before on Valentine’s Day, seeing the play Beautiful – which mimicked my life in ways that hit me hard and the writer’s group meeting, bore a draining tube into my well protected heart allowing excesses of old to pass through bypassing my brain. The feeling was alien, healthy and emotional.
After 30 minutes of catching up our first prompt is: Sometimes I am intoxicated by writing...In the 10 minutes allotted, this is what I write.
Sometimes I am intoxicated by writing. An idea will gel, my fingers tap words on the keyboard and I am unstoppable. Before I reread, before I edit my grammar and vocabulary, I am a mildly manic maniac intoxicated by words, ideas and expressions.
Then there are those times when I am NOT intoxicated by writing. When I sit still as brick before my computer screen staring at a blank Microsoft Word page, daunted by the task before me. Emptied, uninvolved, disconnected.
But, then there are times I HAVE to write down my ideas which, at that moment, I see as brilliant. The phraseology of my sentences, the topic of which I speak, the breath of song within. There are times when writing takes hold of my soul and I fly, hardly having to think. Words bubble up from a well of depth related memories and I am running at a gallop – pages moving quickly beneath my hooves.
The feeling is one of freedom as wind whistles through my hair and my eyes are wide. My mind is a step ahead of the rest of me and my fingertips race to stay in sync. It is in these moments that I break through the wall of me, (this is where my voice got shaky, breaking through the wall of me held power) I open boundaries and visit the foreign that feels familiar. I follow my thoughts fearlessly, naked in my vulnerability. I am somewhere else.
Life gets bigger to include all of me and I accept this. Before I judge, before I worry about what another thinks, before I become self-conscious – I am simply where I am, in the moment, with my expression.
Thursday, 2/13, the day before Valentine’s Day, I had plans to meet my significant other in Manhattan. However another snow storm of epic proportions fell yet again, so Thursday was not a day anyone drove anywhere. Instead we all shoveled, or in my case had son number 3 shovel, 10 inches of fresh, heavy, wet snow from the driveway and car tops.
Friday the sun shined for a mid day break and we quickly got ourselves into the city before any additional snow had the chance to communicate with the clouds. We had tickets to see the show Beautiful. For those who have not yet heard of this show, it’s about Carole King’s life and music. How she got started, who she knew, where she went to school, how she met her first husband, how she took to mothering. If you haven’t seen it, do. I expected it to be good. I didn’t expect it to shake me.
Saturday afternoon my significant other left for Pennsylvania to take his grandchildren to the circus and I headed uptown for my monthly writer’s group meeting. Five of us braved the snow, and the space took on an intimate, cohesive character with more personal sharing than usual. We spoke about energy, motherhood, writing, expectations. I mentioned the play I’d seen the night before on Valentine’s Day. There were two prompts we wrote about and I uncharacteristically cried reading both. Virtual strangers but writing friends embraced and supported me as I felt embarrassed and vulnerable. “Write about it,” they said.
The afternoon snow fell in ever thickening flakes and was more the snowstorm than the snow-shower predicted. The view from the apartment window showed swarming flakes of varying size and shape, massive enough in quantity to cover the existing sidewalk in additional layers of white. I left early because of the snow and my discomfort, and because I was meeting a friend that I hadn’t seen in years on the other side of Central Park. My dinner with my college friend was nourishing. We spoke as though we’d seen one another yesterday, time apart did not impede the conversation. On the contrary. We dove, arms outstretched, into the swirls of our beings, of what mattered, of truth. It felt freeing and energizing and emotional.
An obstruction dislodged. It was the best Valentine’s Day weekend of my life. With significant other who does not want to be named, with writers, an outstanding and touching play, and a close friend. My heart flipped off a block of accumulated mud caked on through living life. It felt momentarily foreign, vulnerable and valuable. I have reset an energy path (which I am confronting on physical and emotional levels) and I see a different life ahead of me.
Wendy Karasin - Musings of a Boomer 