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catalysts for writing
catalysts for writing
Here's one entry from my notebook: Here's a bad scan of a scan of my favorite picture of my mother and I. I can't find the original for the life of me! I've looked at it a million times in the 24 years since it was taken. I wrote the following piece a couple summers ago after studying it again. Shells
This is my favorite picture of Mom and me on a San Luis Obispo beach in winter, when you don’t expect people to be wandering beaches, at least if you believe what tvtells you, or if you grow up in the Midwest. I have carried it with me daily for so many years: in wallets and purses, folders and notebooks. Only right now is the first time I’ve noticed the shell she cradles in her hands. It’s a sand dollar like so many she had decorating the house in baskets and on shelves. The woman was shell-crazy! All her sisters collect shells as well, but none like my mother. As kids they grew up in a house across the street from Storm Lake in the tiny community of Lakeside, Iowa. So shells were plentiful and represent that seemingly idyllic place for at least the older kids. The shell is a quintessential Victorian decoration, so very appropriate for my mother, whose home with my stepfather on Lake Ave. in Storm Lake was built in 1895 and was as historically accurate as any museum. Wherever my brothers traveled in the world, they brought shells home for her: a conch from Australia, a giant mussel from San Diego. Me, being the Midwestern daughter who never traveled far, I brought her shells from lakes and streams. In our family vacations, we never missed an opportunity for beach-combing, mostly along the Great Lakes and Mackinac Island, offering our findings for Mom’s approval. I can’t remember when this started or why. But she loved every shell we found and spent a great deal of time admiring our finds, which of course, transformed into her admiration of us. So, it’s obvious why the practice continued anyway. It must’ve started with my Grandma. Her house, too, was full of shells. One beautiful conch I remember well. It always sat in the bookshelf on the window seat in the farmhouse, the house after the one on the lake. I would listen to its whispers for hours, fingering the shells we were allowed to touch. Next to the conch, a book was prominentlydisplayed for as long as I could remember: Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea. I never actually read this book, though I fondled its pages and cover many times. This book also is prominently displayed in every one of her daughter’s houses. I need to read it now that I might appreciate it. Perhaps then I can understand the talismans it has inspired in all these women’s lives. I know the shells had meditative qualities. And that for Grandma, as well as Mom, collecting them was a spiritual practice. The scallop symbolizes baptism and are often used in Catholic baptismal ceremonies. The sand dollar symbolizes both the wounds of Christ as well as the star of Bethlehem—thus the birth and death of Christ are represented in this shell. These shells in particular were displayed in all shapes and sizes. The other day my son brought home a sand dollar shell about five inches around. He gently displayed it prominently on a table in the living room. A major collector of rocks and other natural wonders, he stood back admiring it and said in eight-year-old reverance, “Isn’t it pretty, Mommy? I just want it where I can always see it.” My heart overflowed. He never got to meet my Grandma as she died when I was nineteen, and my mom died when he was ten months old. Their spirits live on in my son, though. And I know just what book to display next to it: The 50th Anniversary edition of Gift from the Sea that my aunt gave me for my birthday.
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You can use this strategy over and over again with personal photos as well as other images you find online, in a magazine, on the wall of your classroom, on the side of a bus. Or click on the Pinterest link that Sam S. found last year: http://www.pinterest.com/reallyrachel/pictures-as-writing-prompts/.
Spend some time studying the picture. List the details you are noticing: colors, textures, juxtapositions. What's outside the frame but still part of the story? Jot down what might have happened before, during, and after the picture was taken. Tell the story of the picture. Here's a picture I love: I took it in Boston Common in November 2013. What stories can it tell? "Dribble the page with the brilliance of your ballpoint pen." ~ Daniel Beatty in "Knock, Knock"
It was my 7th grade teacher who first told me I was a poet, though my mom had been calling me a writer for years. I spend a lot of time writing in a green spiral notebook. Like my son, my favorite color as a child was green. I copied down my favorite quotes and poems in careful handwriting, savoring their images and words and wisdom, just as I'd seen my mother and grandmother do, before you could get anything you wanted on the interwebs. Though the notebook is long gone, I still have the poems my 7th grade teacher wrote on, validating my mother's prediction that I was, indeed, a writer. I have poured out my heart in poetry since I was a child, dribbling the pages with the all the brilliance I can muster from my Pilot G-2 pen. The brilliance is not always evident in the content, but the act of writing daily polishes the gems embedded in the writing to a brilliant sheen. This is a notebook entry style you can do again and again. Just lift any line or passage from any text, including your own notebook entries, and write it at the top of a fresh page in your notebook. Then write for 15 minutes and watch the sparks fly!
Here are some great spoken word poems sure to burn some lines across your notebook pages. "Maskless" by Miles Hodges video & lyrics "Knock Knock" by Daniel Beaty video & lyrics "If I Should Have A Daughter" by Sarah Kay video & lyrics "When Love Arrives" by Phil Kaye & Sarah Kay video & lyrics "A Mother's Prayer For its Daughter" from Bossypants by Tina Fey audio & lyrics "Origin Story" by Phil Kaye & Sarah Kay video & lyrics Please share any spoken word poems you find that will help your fellow writers in the comments below. (I first learned this from Penny Kittle at her ICTE 2013 Keynote.) Write a response to the following poem. Begin: "Starting here, what do you want to remember?" And then fill in your own details. Source: http://www.williamstafford.org/spoems/pages/youreading.html
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AuthorMrs. Paulsen writes, reads, knits and shoots arrows. Archives
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