I Was Diagnosed With Dyspraxia. A Lot Of People Know It As The “clumsy Disorder” But It’s A Lot

Blossom

A ghost is perched in the middle of the lane

softly swaying in a dull grey wind;

she has bloomed but now is still

full of ghostly feathers, like cotton

sheets fresh and waiting,

a new woven straw hat 

balanced on the crowded brass hook,

pillows of clouds and endless days

with no rain but the grass is dewy eyed 

and lost in a trailing book,

flyaways cutting a boundless sight,

some days are long and grey 

but then the nights --

           -- the blossom tree outside my window

tells me when spring is here

yet it is wasted in a silent darkness

softly perched in the middle of the lane,

feathers orange in the glow of a thousand sunsets

waiting to be seen again

Writing Notes: The Story Circle

The Story Circle by Dan Harmon is a basic narrative structure that writers can use to structure and test their story ideas.

Telling stories is an inherently human thing, but how we structure the narrative separates a good story from a truly great one.

The Dan Harmon Story Circle describes the structure of a story in 3 acts and with 8 plot points, which are called steps.

When you have a protagonist who will progress through these, you have a basic character arc and the bare minimum of a story.

As a narrative structure, it is descriptive, not prescriptive, meaning it doesn’t tell you what to write, but how to tell the story.

The steps outline when the plot points occur and the order in which your hero completes their character development.

These 8 steps are:

You - A character is in their zone of comfort

Need - But they want something

Go! - So they enter an unfamiliar situation

Struggle - To which they have to adapt

Find - In order to get what they want

Suffer - Yet they have to make a sacrifice

Return - Before they return to their familiar situation

Change - Having changed fundamentally

The hero completes these steps in a circle in a clockwise direction, going from noon to midnight.

The top half of the circle and its two-quarters of the whole make up act one and act three, while the bottom half comprises the longer second act.

In their consecutive order, the Story Circle describes the 3 acts:

Act I: The order you know

Act II: Chaos (the upside-down)

Act III: The new order

Working with the Story Circle enables you to think about your main character and to plot from their emotional state.

The steps will automatically make your hero proactive as you focus on their motivation, their actions and the respective consequences.

Sources: 1 2 3 More On: Character Development, Plot Development

Midsummer

I feel laden with unsaid dreams

spilling over my hair, my feet

walking through a daylit night

full of sparkling stars and troubled sleep

Black foggy mountains

bow beneath the legacy

of a golden sun

Introduction

I’m Ruth (she/her) and I write a lot, mainly poems, but I am also a historian, proofreader, and tarot card reader. I don't want to spill my whole life story but I'm also dyspraxic and hypermobile. I’m currently studying dress and textile histories, and my research is focused on deliberately concealed garments in UK buildings. I’m going to list a few of my WIPs and projects so that you know what to expect from my blog!

WIPs and Projects: 

Substack - I now have a newsletter for my historical research if you are interested! It is about deliberately concealed garments and concealment rituals around clothing and shoes, the stories of the people who owned these objects and their emotional dimensions.

Poetry collection - Holly House. I need to go back over some of my posts and add tags for the poems that are part of this collection. Holly House refers to the name of the house that I first started writing poems in and that has been a massive source of inspiration. 

Mirror World WIP - a historical fantasy/magical realism book I have been planning for a long time

Tales and Stories of the Fairy Kind - I can't help but dabble in rewriting fairy tales, but with much more of a historical perspective. Right now, I am writing a seventeenth century take on Cinderella that focuses on domestic relationships and how romance and fantasy is used as a means of escape and freedom for many people surviving through abuse

Here are all my links:

My Substack

My Etsy

My Instagram

My Pinterest

Thank you for stopping by!

Ruth

Changeling Child

I thought jewelweed pods were fairy peas and I picked them carefully so they would not pop and spoil my gift. I laid them carefully on leaf platters, along with berries my mother told me not to eat and colorful flower petals. A perfect feast.  I had a stone circle built, a fairy circle, a castle, an altar, and there I left my offerings. Sometimes I wanted a wish in return. Sometimes I needed the fae to remember that I knew how to take care of my own kind. 

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis // @i-wrotethisforme // Jorge Louis Berges // @smokeinsilence //@viridianmasquerade //Jorge Louis Berges // @honeytuesday // Kaveh Akbar // F. Scott Fitzgerald // AKR //Olivie Blake, from “Alone With You in the Ether” // Kaveh Akbar, Pilgrimage

On Existence and the Human Experience.

Joseph Campbell, “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth”, Ep. 4, “Sacrifice and Bliss” / Louise Glück, “Snowdrops” / Ellen Bass, “The Thing Is” / @obeliskandmetronome​ / Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” / Maggie Stiefvater, “Blue Lily, Lily Blue” / Eve L. Ewing, “Testify”

This numbness wails against the silence of my lips, my mind haunts the existence of my abyss...................

everytimeyousaygoodbye ©

I read to escape but then I always get trapped in a world that closely resembles mine