On Writing

Writing is hard. The words, the scenes the characters, they are there, swirling in my mind. I'm talking to them, plotting, scheming developing the worlds and talents. I know so many things about my story I've had such trouble with before. The problem? Getting it on paper. I don't ever have the time to write it down. Oh yes, see I'm one of those strange people that likes to actually put pen to paper or pencil and feel the words come out. I do write like this without writing it first on paper. I don't write my reviews on paper either. They actually suck when I write them on paper. I'm wordy and say way more than you could possibly want to know about how the book made me feel and what I did and didn't like about the book. 

But these things work in my favor when I'm writing a novel. These all add to the depth of a novel. So all those conversations my characters have had between each other that are swirling in my brain, everything they've seen and done, I'm afraid I'm going to lose the best of it if I don't get it down on paper. Yet, I'm constantly reading and reviewing because I have a book blog and I can't say no, especially to authors that are just starting out. So, my story is just up there, swirling with all the other information lost in a sea of thoughts that may or may not be remembered.

Oh and when I do have snatches of time to write it down, it's on a scrap of paper which always gets lost. I've got countless notebooks roaming around with various bits of my stories in it. Who knows they may be going to school with my kids and their teachers are reading them. God only knows what they are thinking. What I write down, what I remember is the bare bones of a scene. The stems of a plant in a garden. The leaves, the design, the flowers, the fruit, none of that has been added. Really they are just little sprouts poking out of the dirt. But they are there. And I think they are good. And I'll do it this time. Because I'm not getting any younger and no one is going to do it for me and it's my garden to grow. And I'd never want anyone else to touch it.  And I'm tired of one day. It starts, one day is now.  I may have to give up my book blog, but if that is what it takes, then I'll do it. It's time to do the work. It's my time. So I'll take one notebook and gather all my writing together and write. Then I'll take the next scary step. Find a critique partner/group. First though, I'll write. Every day. I owe it to that girl in fifth grade who said she wanted to be a writer. To the girl who earned a degree in English and said I want to be a writer and was told she couldn't do it so she didn't try. It's time to let go of that. Time to prove them wrong. Time is running out. 

WRITE!

Story Teller Prompt Saltwater Tears

I ran away from home. Or maybe it was to my home. I just knew that the saltwater, the sand, the wind and the waves, drenched me in a perfume that felt like a drug. My inner hurricane calmed to a gentle spring rain and my inner demons were lulled to sleep by the sounds of water gently lapping against the rocks. Breathe, breathe deep. Oh God, why does the ocean do what no pill, no drug, no therapy, no word can. And why do we always have to move away from it? My saltwater mixes with the pools that eddy around my toes and I'm part of the world that calms me. I dream of being a mermaid. To live in the watery world that calms me, to always be able to live there. Would I cry for land?  Would I wish for legs? I don't think so. I long for the sand, the water, the sounds, the waves, everything the sea can give me. Nothing I can give myself.

A car door slams. I have been found. I drag my sleeves across my wet face. I say goodbye to the lover's moon. My love, my salvation, my shelter in a storm has always been the beach. And now, I must leave it. Promises of visits to it are made, but I know they will be broken. This is it. I pull handfuls of sand into my pockets and breathe deep. Would that I could hold my breath forever. I would always have the peace I had moments ago.

I turn my back on my lover. It cannot come with me and I cannot stay. I know that. I cannot look back. I am in a fragile state. I think frantically of getting jobs here and splitting from my family so that I can stay here, beside my beloved beach. How many jobs would it take? Three? Four? I could do it. I'd live downtown close to the beach. The boys could come for the summer. We'd go to the beach. I am grasping at straws. I quell the frantic child in me. I grow up. I say goodbye. I wave. No looking back. Just gentle saltwater tears.

Story teller Prompt The Dragon

Raisa knew he was out there even though she'd asked him to stay away, afraid for his safety. She'd angered Mab and now she would pay with her life.  It was the time of Dragons in Feyland and the Dragon needed to be fed. If you angered Mab, you were more than likely to be the one to be fed to the Dragon next.  She'd only been jesting, but Mab wasn't known for a sense of humor and now Raisa was going to pay a high price.

The vines that held her to the bench, the Feeding Bench, had wrapped her tightly around the wrists, ankles and waist as soon as she'd sat down tightening with every pull of her arm or leg, with every breath.  She'd tried every spell she knew to break the vines, but nothing worked.  She turned slowly to look at him and realized he was eating through the vines.  That she hadn't tried.  "Puck, Puck! Mab is going to be so pissed at you. She'll feed you to the dragon next. It's over! I'll see you wherever faeries go in the afterlife. Go before he comes and eats us both!"  The rabbit kept chewing through the vine even as the ground shook.
When it had broken through the vine, it continued to eat up the vine instead of jumping on the bench to eat through the rest of the vines.  He followed the vine as it wrapped around her arms then jumped into her lap.  "Puck, if I escape this, I'm either going to kill you or kiss you, or both!" she said as he sat in her lap chewing her in very personal places where the vine was wrapped around her.

They both jumped as a roar and a breath of hot wind passed over them.  But Puck continued his eating, faster if even possible.  Raisa stopped complaining and swallowed hard. A large head towered above the rocks, red with blue scales and a gold sheen. It's large teeth were as big as Raisa's head.  Steam billowed out of it's nostrils. Raisa was frozen in fear, she couldn't even breathe. She couldn't warn Puck who was chewing on the other arm now. The dragon turned toward her, and Raisa knew she and Puck were done for. Then suddenly she was in the air and the dragon was behind them flying after them, but far behind and she was in her best friend's arms.  "Shit Raisa, next time piss off someone else!  That vine tastes like crap!"

Save You

Save You

You were so tiny and small when you were born

needy and hungry, my skin felt warm

when you lay against my skin and breathed.

But underneath that beautiful skin and those eyes

lay an evil so vile that took me by such surprise

I'd have spared you this evil to you I bequeathed

But I didn't know of my own disease before you came

I  would have saved you if I had known the game

The rollercoaster ride of life you'd have to ride.

But I was just starting my own scary ride and had

no idea that you would have your own bad

time that your up and down tide

Would be so forceful, that you wanted to die.

Now, I need to save you and I'm helpless, I cry

Knowing how you feel, I feel it too

But I stay because I have to save you.

I'm afraid for you.  Life will be hard, too, 

For you and I don't know how to make it easy for you.

I don't know how to save you from your sorrow.

I don't know how to save you from what you borrow

From my genes.  That ugly disease that makes you 

Wish you'd never been born. That makes you want to die

At such a young age, you feel such deep darkness and lie

In that black hole.  I can't save you, but I'll lie there with you,

Like I did when you were born, lying on my skin,

breathing your labored breaths warm, breathe in,

breathe out.  I'll always be there with you.  I need to save you.

You got this from me, I got this from them but I didn't know

I didn't know.  And I'm sorry because it didn't show

Until after you were born.  I have to save you.

I'm your mother, you're my baby, you always will be,

I'm sad for you. Life will be hard.  And all I see

Is that baby in my arms. I will save you.

Do You Remember Me

Little girl, Little girl I remember you well in your soft pink dress and you black mary janes,
Do you remember me too, while you're stuck in the past running happily in your black mary janes.
The shoes are gone, the pink dress is tattered but I can't get you out of mind
I can't seem to grow up from that little girl blond hair eyes sparkled and shined.

I am still two, stunted in growth emotionally shattered by his hands
No one believes me, I hardly trust myself but where's the girl between two and ten?
She's up on the ceiling not looking down closing her eyes to the pain,
And even now as grown up as she is there is still guilt and shame.

I am less than you and you and you, because of what he did to me
My scars run deep inside of me that are wounds you cannot see.
If he'd sliced me open taken out my heart would you believe me then?
But then he's already taken so much from me  I wonder who I could have been?

Run little girl in your dress of pink, run around the maypole this day
Run and laugh and giggle with your friends may you never know what comes your way
May you never be scared to speak out against violence may fear never make you pay.
Run little girl in you pink dress and mary janes run, run, away.

There's a Book

There's a book in my huge piles of books that I keep going back to that pisses me off every time I read it.  I'll break it down for you.

The characters-
A girl in high school, a senior.  Old enough to know better.

A mom with schizophrenia who can't know better. SHE's MENTALLY ILL.

A grandmother who has cut herself off from the family, knowing her daughter is mentally ill.

A dad who had divorced his mentally ill wife and left them for a younger wife and leaves them with next to no money and the senior in high school to take care of her mentally ill mother.  He knows she is not taking her medication, it's why he divorced her.

The storyline-
You've read it before in hundreds of other books but if you like I'll tell it again.

Stupid girl, in my opinion, agrees to not make her mother take her meds.  Even goes so far as to think creativity is a drug to her mother and wants to remove all her paints and brushes from the house.  Is afraid poetry and painting will make her own self schizophrenic.  I guess she's never heard of a computer or a library or even a doctor?  She doesn't ask anyone but her teenage mother best friend for help.  What is she supposed to do?  She's got a baby.  I'm thinking maybe this girl missed too much high school or sniffed to much paint fumes to get out of high school anyway.

Finally, after crazy woman (mom) does something drastic like trying to burn the house down to kill the mermaids they hung from the ceiling years ago, then becomes catatonic, girl goes to get help from grandmother.  Hello 911?  No apparently she hasn't learned those numbers yet.

Grandmother does dial 911 who get there just in time to keep mom from dying of dehydration and lack of food.  Hello?  Told you they shouldn't let the girl out of high school.  Yes, she's taking care of her mother very well.  I'm right there with you mom.  Right up until I let you die.  But I didn't make you take your pills.

So here's the kicker, in the back is an interview with the author and she's asked, "If you were aware that your creativity altered or infringed upon your mental state, would you sacrifice your art ( your writing, your music, your fine art if you draw like Aura or paint like Aura's mother) to retain your sanity, or would you continue to create?"
The author's answer-No doubt-I'd keep writing.  In all honesty, writing is so much a part of who I am anymore, so central to my life, I don't think I'd feel like I had much of a choice.

The author has likened the mother's paintbrushes and paint like giving a needle and drugs to a drug addict in the novel, following the daughter's thought that creativity makes you crazy.

As far as research the author states-" I didn't have to probe very deep into the subject of creativity to find out that many of our "great" artists (playwrights, poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, musicians) were in some way affected by mental illness-schizophrenia as well as depression or bipolar disorder...The idea of the "mad genius" is so pervasive, there's even a Wikipedia entry for "Creativity and Mental Illness!""  That's her exclamation point, not mine.  Continuing on..."And, yes, I did have to do some research into schizophrenia--symptoms, treatment, etc.  But I was writing fiction (oh, well in that case, please make it as awful as possible so that the person that is sick is truly as detestable as possible, a monster because that really betters the stigma of mental illness for everyone, thank you)---so of course my characters and their experiences had to drive the book, not descriptions of the condition.

So another book written showing that we with mental illness are burdens basically.  I don't see any other way to call it.  That's what this woman was to her daughter, her husband and her mother.  Of course, a person that sick shouldn't be given the option whether to take medication or not.  But that wasn't really the issue.  And I'm so glad the author got her information from Wikipedia.  That makes me feel much better.

Why is this bothering me so much?  I don't have schizophrenia.  But I care very much.  I can only imagine how horrible that disease is.  I've heard how bad the side effects of the medications are and how hard it is to lead a normal life.  I have refused to read independent and self published books about the victims of this disease because I'm tired of being the burden.  I am not a burden.  And neither are the rest of you.  And I want to fight back.  I want to put up a fight, but these authors hide behind, "It's a piece of fiction"  and I can't fight that.  Yet, it lingers in people's minds that's what they'll remember when they think about schizophrenia.  They'll remember the mother that tried to hang her daughter with herself  when they hear bipolar disorder.

So how do we change all those misconceptions about us in these books that are "just works of fiction."  Do I attack the books?  Because they actually are well written, except they make me a burden.  I am a person, not something to be borne by a pack mule.  What do you all think?

Heather

Answers

I'm trying to help but you rebuff me
I look inside for answers
There are none only outside
Those bottles that sit beckoning
Promising a way out from this worthless life
I live, I exist, I breathe, I am,
Nothing.

I plan my escape one more time.
It's always the pills, take too many
It seems such a peaceful way to go
I'm only afraid of what comes after.
Will God forgive me.  But then I'm living
in hell right now.  How much worse can it get?
Nothing.

I am nothing. My dreams will never come true.
I cannot help you, you turn me away.
I sit doing nothing watching you do it all
As I do not participate in life, a spectator
Life is a sport I don't get to play.  Just one
I read, and watch, and dream of.  I don't ever
expect to be picked for the game.  Not even
last.  No one sees me.  I am invisible.  My
participation is not desired.  I am tolerated in
the stands as a watcher.  It hurts.  Bone deep
I feel what your rejection means.
Nothing.

I was born nothing, an unwanted child
Given up by my mother to parents that
Wanted a boy.  No one understood
my emotions.  I was invisible.  I am
invisible.  I will be invisible.  Ashes to
Ashes, dust to dust, nothing to nothing.
Nothing.