One Of Those Goofy Maid Animes, Except The Viewpoint Character Isn't The Hapless Master Or Mistress Of

slow down for your disabled friends. thats like a bare minimum kindness that we shouldnt have to ask for. i love that youre so quirky and walking fast is a cool personality trait to you and all that but i bet you can count your physically disabled friends on less than one hand

Service Station

You’re beautiful, sister, eat more fruit, said the attendant every time my mother pulled into the 76 off Ashby Avenue. We never knew why. She didn’t ask and he didn’t explain. My brother and I would look at each other sideways in the back seat, eyebrows raised— though lord knows we’d lived in Berkeley long enough. He smiled when he said it, then wiped the windows and pumped the gas. I liked the little ritual. Always the same order of events. Same lack of discussion. Could he sense something? Attune to an absence of vitamin C? Or was it just a kind of flirting— a way of tossing her an apple, a peach? It’s true my mother had a hidden ailment of which she seldom spoke, and true she never thought herself a beauty, since in those days you had to choose between smart and beautiful, and beauty was not the obvious choice for a skinny bookish girl, especially in Barbados. No wonder she became devout, forsaking nearly everything but God and science. And later she suffered at the hands of my father, whom she loved, and who’d somehow lost control of his right fist and his conscience. Whose sister was she, then? Sister of the Early Rise, the Five-O’Clock Commute, the Centrifuge? Sister of Burnt Dreams? But didn’t her savior speak in parables? Isn’t that the language of the holy? Why wouldn’t he come to her like this, with a kind face and dark, grease-smeared arms, to lean over the windshield of her silver Ford sedan, and bring tidings of her unclaimed loveliness, as he filled the car with fuel, and told her— as a brother—to go ahead, partake of the garden, and eat of it.

Bonfire Opera : Poems. -- Danusha Laméris.

How to improve your writing

(Exerpts from Chuck Palahniuk's article Nuts and Bolts, edited lightly for my own self reference)

From this point forward you may not use “thought” verbs.  These include: 

Thinks

Knows

Understands

Realizes

Believes

Wants

Forgets

Remembers

Imagines

Desires

Loves

Hates

As well as limiting the use of the following;

Is

Had/Have

Are

And many more.

Thinking is abstract.  Knowing and believing are intangible. 

Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing.  And loving and hating.

Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them.  Instead of a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.

Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing.  And loving and hating.

Don’t tell your reader: 

Adam knew Gwen liked him.

Instead, you’ll have to say: 

Between classes, Gwen was always leaned on his locker when he’d go to open it.  She’d roll her eyes and shove off with one foot, leaving a black-heel mark on the painted metal, but she also left the smell of her perfume.  The combination lock would still be warm from her ass.  And the next break, Gwen would be leaned there, again.

No more shortcuts.

Only specific sensory detail: action, smell, taste, sound, and feeling.

Typically, writers use these “thought” verbs at the beginning of a paragraph  (In this form, you can call them “Thesis Statements” and I’ll rail against those, later)  In a way, they state the intention of the paragraph.  And what follows, illustrates them.

Brenda knew she’d never make the deadline.  Traffic was backed up from the bridge, past the first eight or nine exits.  Her cell phone battery was dead.  At home, the dogs would need to go out, or there would be a mess to clean up.  Plus, she’d promised to water the plants for her neighbor…

Do you see how the opening “thesis statement” steals the thunder of what follows?  Don’t do it.

If nothing else, cut the opening sentence and place it after all the others.  Better yet, transplant it and change it to: 

Brenda would never make the deadline.

Don't leave your characters alone.

One of the most-common mistakes that beginning writers make is leaving their characters alone.  Writing, you may be alone.  Reading, your audience may be alone.  But your character should spend very, very little time alone.  Because a solitary character starts thinking or worrying or wondering.  

A character alone must lapse into fantasy or memory, but even then you can’t use “thought” verbs or any of their abstract relatives. 

Oh, and you can just forget about using the verbs forget and remember. No more transitions such as: 

Wanda remembered how Nelson used to brush her hair.

Instead: 

Back in their sophomore year, Nelson used to brush her hair with smooth, long strokes of his hand.

Better yet, get your character with another character, fast.  Get them together and get the action started.  Let their actions and words show their thoughts.  You -- stay out of  their heads.

And while you’re avoiding “thought” verbs, be very wary about using the bland verbs “is” and “have.” Instead, try burying your details of what a character has or is, in actions or gestures. At its most basic, this is showing your story instead of telling it.

The challenge.

In short, no more short-cuts.  Only specific sensory detail: action, smell, taste, sound, and feeling.

Pick through your writing and circle every “thought” verb.  Then, find some way to eliminate it.  Kill it by Un-packing it.

Then, pick through some published fiction and do the same thing.  Be ruthless. Find them.  After that, find a way to re-write them.  Make them stronger.

every writer knows the pain of having an idea that’s “too good” to write because you know you can’t do it justice

The Goose Explains

By Amos Russel Wells

It was a goose who sadly cried, "Alas! Alas! The farm is wide, And large the barnyard company, But no one ever looks at me; There really seems to be no use, Or praise, or glory, for a goose.

They pet the dog whose bark and bite Scare tramps by day and thieves by night; But when I bravely stand on guard, And drive intruders from the yard, They laugh at me. The kitten plays, And all admire her cunning ways; But when I venture in the room, To play, in turn, some stick or broom Soon drives me out. Those birds they call Canaries cannot sing at all In my sweet fashion; yet their lay Is praised—from mine folks turn away. They prize the horse who pulls the cart; But when I try to do my part, And mount the shafts to help him draw,

They whip me off. Last week I saw Two stupid horses pull a plow, I watched the work, I learned just how; Then, with my bill, I did the same In flower-beds, and got only blame. It really seems of little use To try to help—when one's a goose!"

Also picking up new books you’ve never heard of before because the premise sounds neat or the cover is pretty or it’s on a themed library display or you’re just trying to read your library’s entire catalogue of 90s cyberpunk is just fun. Sometimes it’s not your thing but you get to mull over new ideas or the diversity of people and opinions and thoughts in the world. Sometimes you discover your new favorite book of all time

Rites of Winter

We’d been feasting on the famous foods of winter: squash, potatoes, a steamed pot of dark greens. And after, we danced in Glenn’s living room above Crystal Creek, barefoot on the Persian rug, eating chocolate cake, and almost knocking over the candles. So when the frogs in the pond out front began to sing—a bass note followed by a high-pitched exclamation—we slid out the door and past the tall clusters of bamboo, over the wooden bridge, moving to the frenzied rhythm of the frogs, who—it seemed— grew louder and more intent the more we rocked to their cacophony. So it was frogs and moonlight and dancing under the bare bones of the trees, the creek suddenly swollen after six years of drought. And Glenn—one year older and nearing (though he didn’t yet know it) the end of his greatest love. And we were calling out to the frogs, who called back to us as we stumbled, nearly into the bracken water, and leapt up onto the pond-side boulders, hands in the air, a light mist falling on our arms, our upturned faces. And I couldn’t decide: was the world enamored with itself?— all this riotous back and forth? Or had we only invoked alarm, amphibian for get-back! get-back! I didn’t know. But how happy we were, for that hour, to believe we were one marvelous body, in our smooth and slippery skin. Even if the frogs did not want us. Even if our joint fates are written, already, in the tainted water, the dark and opulent mud.

Bonfire Opera : Poems. -- Danusha Laméris.

"sometimes I want to win. And sometimes I want to lose so badly I can taste it."

Worlds in Worlds, Bonfire Opera : Poems. -- Danusha Laméris.

Failing and Flying

Jack Gilbert. Refusing Heaven, 2005.

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.