Creative Writing Manifesto

Creative Writing Manifesto

I am a writer. I sit at the keyboard and words flow out from my fingertips, racing each other, vying for a place on the page. 

I struggle with consistency, mute until the deadline, then rushing to capture the torrent in writing. This usually happens late at night or mid-morning. 

I am paralyzed by bright, sterile places. My mind goes blank and the words freeze up in my head and on the page. Instead, I long to be in touch with nature or withdraw into the dark. 

I need human noise to be quiet. Then words can flow into that silence and stories make sense again. Sometimes I loop The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe soundtrack. The haunting yet hopeful melodies unlock my mind as well.

I want to make a habit of getting up earlier and writing, making it a top priority. I know I need to practice writing regularly so it becomes more and more natural.

I use writing as a healing catharsis from depression, a release from frustrating circumstances, forcing me to reach deeper and persevere through. If I’m upset, I will be agitated and restless until I can sort through my jumble of thoughts on a page.

I love stories. I am intrigued by the idea of character development, that a character could begin to do and say things that I didn’t tell them to do or say. That thought thrills me.

I realize that there is a contract between the reader and me, but I also hold a contract with myself. If I’m not interested by what I’m writing, I find it extremely difficult to continue.

I jot down ideas as I read, things that I find interesting or springboards that inspire me to write. I also make up stories about people as I pass them on the sidewalk, recording unusual snippets of their conversations.

I appreciate the empathy that writing brings. In understanding a character that you wouldn’t necessarily agree with, you can then be more compassionate in reaching out to other people you meet who are similar to that character.

I am not a writer because I have published books. I am a writer because I write.

Car Craziness

So my van wouldn't start for 20 minutes when I was supposed to leave for school- no turning over, nothing, just not starting. My dad has been working on it all weekend and charged the battery today, it shouldn't be dead. We call him on his way to work. Looks like the only chance is to push the van to be even with Mom's van. 


My mom and I go out to the driveway and start to push it but it doesn't budge. "Okay," I say, "we have to do this together. One, two, three." We push and it rolls. Called Dad back for instructions on how to jump it. "Well be sure you're completely dry." I look up at the downpour all around me, rain from my hood cascading onto my nose, and the down into the inch deep puddle coating our driveway and the stream taking over the yard. "I don't think that's going to work well, Dad." "Well get a towel and try to dry your hands as best you can." I duck back inside, grabbing the nearby dog towel and try to dry my hands but as soon as I move the water from my sleeves applies another generous coating to them. As I lean over the battery, drops bounce from my hood and onto the battery so Mom holds the towel from the hood of the car to over my head. I obsessively dry and redry my hands. 


"This is the dangerous part," comes Dad's staticy voice over the phone. "Only touch the insulated handle." After much cajoling, the clamps decide to remain on the temperamental metal. "Now start your van." The vans are parked too close together so I slide into my passenger side and reach the key over to the ignition, but it won't turn. I slide to the drivers seat and try again but with no better luck. "What do I do if the key won't turn in the ignition?" I ask. Dad immediately responds, "Is it the right key?" I look at the incorrect engraved symbol and reach into my pocket for the appropriate one. The van starts right up.


My mom thinks that the alternator is draining the battery but tells me if I just keep it running, I should hopefully be okay. She adds that I might lose my headlights partway there and if I do I'll have to pull over and get it towed.


Picked up Cora with no problem. Two hours to go in our trip and the battery light comes on. Keep hoping it will get there okay, check headlights on passing cars bumpers to make sure they're still on. 


Drive into Cedarville and almost park in a handicap space but remember the last time the police officer yelled at me for doing so. "It's okay," Cora says. "We don't have that much stuff, we can carry it." We drive around back instead and go to back into a space and Cora says, "Wouldn't it be funny if your power quit now?" Boom. Nothing. I quick stepped on the brake before we rolled down hill and turned to her saying, "You mean like that?" So with the help of a passerby we pushed the van the rest of the way into the space. It's a little crooked, but hey! :) We made it! :)

"Marywood"

When I first came to Marywood, the music camp I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. Then I saw where I’d be staying: in the four-car garage of an old mansion, built in the early nineteen hundreds. It was every sixth grade boy’s dream! The garage door wasn’t used anymore and the inside now was set up with bunk beds, but still, it was really cool! The counselor, John, was my french horn teacher for the next two weeks. His quarters were in the hallway between us and the bathroom and were as generously spacious as what a Navy crewman might hope for at sea. One of the nights, John told us about how he got mugged downtown and then chased down the mugger, pleading for his horn back. He explained how that was the way he made a living and talked about going from paycheck to paycheck until the guy finally agreed to give the horn back in exchange for a watch and a $30 cash card!

Now it was the Sunday afternoon of the final performance and all 40 of us were very excited and kind of nervous. Mom and Dad had come and taken me out for lunch. I just needed to warm up before the concert. Walking back into the garage, I didn’t notice anything out of place. I grabbed my horn from my bunk bed and tried to toot a few notes, but it wasn’t playing well, at all. “John?” I called, heading into the hallway, “am I doing something wrong? I can’t play my part.”

“Let me take a look, try playing again.” I blew into the mouthpiece but the rich ringing tone that should have followed was alarmingly absent. “Whoa,” he said, looking closer. “Let me see that a second.” I held the horn out to him. “What did you do to your bell?”

“My bell? Nothing, it was just laying on my bed, why?” I bent to look over his shoulder and realized that where before the bell had just had a bunch of dents in it, now the metal was quite crunched in.

“These braces are broken, too,” he said, twisting the horn back and forth a little to show me how the horn was moving when it should have been perfectly solid and still. “We’ve got to try to do something to fix this before the concert! Help me look for some tape or something.”

We started searching through our own stuff and the camp miscellaneous drawer. “Here’s some scotch tape,” I called.

“Looks like that’s going to be about the best we can do for now,” he said coming back around the corner. “Let’s see how it will work.” After trying to tape it back together, he handed it to me. “Try playing something.” I started playing my second horn part for one of the pieces that would be on the concert. It didn’t sound good, but it was a lot better than before the tape.

What neither of us counted on however, was how scotch tape would react with water. Not to long into the concert, the tape was rendered fairly useless by the moisture from my breath and the sound reverted back to the gurgling air noise.

After the concert, the camp director apologized profusely to my parents, explaining how the kids in the juvenile delinquent home across the street made a practice of sneaking over to Marywood once a summer and doing some act of vandalism. “Unfortunately,” she said, “it would appear that Chris’s horn was this year’s victim.”
    My parents sent it out right away to be repaired. When we went to pick it up, the repairman turned to me and asked, “So, have you been missing a pencil?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I answered. 

With a laugh he pulled a curved pencil out from his desk, handing it to me. “I found this jammed three-quarters of a turn from the bell! I have no idea how it got up that far but your horn should play a lot better now!”

The next day I headed in for my regular horn lesson. The perfectly smooth bell felt foreign to me in memory of it’s previously dented existence. 

“Alright,” my teacher said. “Play me the scale you’ve been working on.” I tried, but wasn’t able to play in tune at all. “What happened to your playing?!” While I explained the events of the past two weeks as best I could, he leaned back in his chair, scowling. There was a long pause and he finally said, “Your parents have got to get you a new horn!” 

"Misty"

The four year old girl ran towards the looming shelves of toys, roughly pulling a gray wolf with yellow eyes down and slamming it along the floor in harsh galloping motion like waves pounding a jetty. “Gabriella-Nicole! Time to go. Come take Mommy’s hand and we’ll get some ice cream!” The girl responded to the sing-songy voice coming from the other end of the Bar Harbor, Maine tourist shop and I watched with horror as she violently threw the wolf pup across the room and ran the other way. 

Quietly stepping out from my position of relative safety by the wall, I skirted around little tables with puzzles and beads towards the still figure. The pup had bounced off the shelf and was laying in a rather painful looking position on the floor. “Are you okay?” I whispered, kneeling down to assess the damage. She seemed fine. I scooped her up and petted her reassuringly before carefully placing her on the shelf. 

My dad had said I could get one of the wolf pups, now I just had to choose. The options can be overwhelming when you’re six. There were wolves with blue eyes, yellow eyes, green eyes, and brown eyes and some were sitting, some laying down, and some with looser legs so if you held them off of the ground, it looked like they were standing. We had come into the store earlier–before I had gotten permission to buy one–and I had decided that I would probably get one with blue eyes in the seated position. As I looked at them now though, I was struck by how similar those ones were. They seemed lifeless and, well, stuffed! I turned back to the recovering pup I had just put back on the shelf. I hadn’t been planning on getting one with yellow eyes. Then a terrifying thought struck me. What if Gabriella-Nicole came back? What if she tried to hurt the one with yellow eyes again? 

I looked again at the blue eyes pups, all sitting in uniform rows, wave after wave staring past me with a blank expression, then back at the one with yellow eyes and she looked back. Her head was cocked at me as if to gently inquire. I lifted her from the shelf once more, cradling her in my arms as I walked back to where my dad was looking at postcards of whales and lobsters near the counter. 

“Find one, Joy?”

“Yes.”

“What will you call it?”

I looked down at the soft gray figure in my arms, contemplating for a second before answering, “Her name is Misty.”

When they rung up the order, they rolled Misty in tissue paper and placed her in a white paper bag. As we walked towards the door, I said, “Hold on a second,” and crouched down next to the bag, easing Misty out of the tightly wrapped tissue paper and crumpling it up so she could perch on it. When her head was poking out of the bag to my satisfaction, we continued down the street in the salty air.

***

That was how Misty and I met. Since then she has accompanied me on innumerable trips, staying in hotel rooms, at camp, sleepovers, and relative’s houses and being a faithful comforter through tears or after one of my frequent nightmares. We were separated by an evil force called a pre-med major and a silly notion on my part that such majors didn’t have such close friends as Misty accompany them. Now that has been corrected and Misty once again occupies her rightful place on my bed.

"The Settlement"

“Mr. Andrews!”

“I gave you my answer Emily, I’m sorry.”

She ran after him anyway. “You don’t understand.” He turned abruptly to face her, catching her off guard. “No,” he said firmly, “That’s where you’re mistaken. You are the one who doesn’t seem to understand here.”

“But people’s lives!”

“Are their responsibility...Not ours.”

He restraightened his suit coat and strode down the glass hallway.

Emily didn’t try to follow him. Arguing would just be pointless. She leaned up against the cool glass window looking out at the Massachusetts autumn. Orange and red leaves swirled down from the dark branches, covering the grass and sidewalks. That they would fall was inevitable. Was it the same with the lives? Inevitable? Mr. Andrews came out the downstairs door, crossing over the leaves to his gold Ferrari. From the other side of the courtyard, the groundsman was blowing leaves off the sidewalk. “Remove them!” Emily said out loud, then quickly ducked her head and glanced around to see if anyone had heard. The hall was empty. That was what she would have to do, though. Her attempts to remove the threat had failed. This was her only option now. She fast walked back to her office to make the last minute flight arrangements. She could leave first thing in the morning. Hopefully it would be enough time. 

That night sleep was elusive and fitful at best. Her bags packed, she cleared security with no trouble at all. Nestled down in her seat on the plane, she took out her blank notebook and a pencil. Sketching was always a release for her, but now no ideas came. The blank page stared back at her hauntingly. Then, without really thinking she began to draw the house she’d grown up in, flipping pages to include her memories of The Settlement. Faces from her past began to cover the next sheets, those sweet, peaceful people who had always loved her. Emily was unaware of the tears running down her cheeks until they splashed onto the page blurring some of the lines. She quickly brushed them off of the paper and reached in her bag for a tissue, glad that her nearby fellow passengers were engulfed in their own worlds. 

The plane landed and she transferred over to the rental car she had arranged. Paperwork completed, she started driving towards The Settlement. It had been started by her mother, well, by the woman who had raised her. When Emily was eighteen, the woman had called her and her two older brothers into the living room and explained how she had adopted them. Her brothers had taken the news well, they had probably suspected it, but Emily was crushed. Soon after she had left The Settlement and everything she’d called home. 
    Driving back these many years later, she finally allowed herself to remember. She remembered all the people that had come to The Settlement, disillusioned with the world and wanting to live at peace with nature and each other. Many came from very broken backgrounds and Emily remembered hearing her mother talking with them late into the night downstairs in the kitchen. She counseled them some and listened a lot. Her goal was never for the people to stay forever, though some did and she wouldn’t kick them out, but rather for them to heal and then return to the “real world” to be bringers of peace in their own corners of the brokenness. 
    When Emily had left she had pursued her career with a passion seldom matched by her peers. She would now be termed successful, holding a position at one of the top testing companies in the country. It was a posh post and she went through all of the necessary motions to maintain it, working hard all day, then often staying up late still trying to track down her birth family. Then one day she realized that one of the projects was more serious than she thought. The company had been contracted by the government to do some secret testing bomb runs out west. That she had seen the map of the location was a complete fluke, but when she did, her heart froze. “I thought you said it would be tested in a uninhabited section,” she had said to Mr. Andrews.

“It is,” he replied, giving her an annoyed glance. “The government arranged it. Apparently some woman bought this huge piece of land about thirty years ago, but twenty five years ago stopped paying taxes on it and isn’t registered anywhere for anything, kind of dropped off the map, so to speak. Probably couldn’t afford it or died or something, who knows.”

“But people live there. There are houses there!”

“The government has no building permits on record and no one’s name is tied to the property except that women and there’s been no contact with her for twenty five years! The government considers the property to have returned to their hands and they choose to have us execute the testing at that site.”

Her arguments fell on deaf ears because the inhabitants of The Settlement were undocumented and Mr. Andrews didn’t want to lose his power. She turned onto the dirt road at the faded sign. She’d tried everything from that end, only to be told that if she didn’t drop it, she would be fired and blacklisted. Now she was about to reenter a world she’d sworn never to even think of again.
    There it was. The big house. It wasn’t all that big, but compared to the little cabins scattered around, it was a mansion. No one seemed to be outside. She parked the car and went up the creaky steps and crossed the wooden porch. The paint had seen better days. She knocked. “Hello?” When no one answered her call, she tried the door. Unlocked. Of course, why would she think any differently. That’s how it always had been. Everything was still. Silent. She walked through the house, calling out as she went. Dust and cobwebs danced through the air, as if the house waking from a long and dreadful sleep. The kitchen still had a plate with the remnant of a couple crumbs by a list and pen on the counter and two teacups nearby but all of the other pots and pans and dishes were in order, hanging from their own hooks, sitting on their own shelf. So organized. The living room was next. She just leaned on the doorway transfixed by the empty chairs. Had someone else warned them? Where had they all gone? Someone always stayed in the big house in case a new guest came. 
    What are you thinking, Emily? Of course it could change. You’ve been gone fifteen years. For a minute she forgot why she had come. She just wanted to run upstairs to her old room and then run out through the fields of wildflowers she had always played in. Then she heard it. The steady drone of the airplane.

"Shelby"

   “This is Zac, I’ve got a missing child at chair 4.” 

    “Go ahead Zac.”

    “Name: Shelby, just turned four...”

    Liz sighed as the alert came across the radio at her side. This was the third missing child today. She stood up in her chair at the same time as the other guards stood in theirs, raising her radio to her ear to catch the rest of the description from Zac.

    “One piece turquoise suit and lime green shorts.”

     He paused.

   “Last seen in the water.”

    Liz’s heart skipped. These were the scenarios she hated the most. Sometimes she even had nightmares about it: they would form the human chain and start combing through the water and thud, she would be the one to bump into the still, small body on the bottom of the swim area. It hadn’t happened yet, but it could.

    “The mother thinks she wanted to go out to look at the buoys.”

Liz glanced over towards chair four. What kind of mother is going to let her four year old go out to the buoys alone? Meg, the head guard, broke through the radio traffic.

    “Okay guys. This one seems a little different, let’s clear the water now, just to be sure.”

She was new and had just come on shift and was probably overreacting, but Liz sure wasn’t going to be the one to complain. She reached for her whistle and megaphone to start clearing the water.

***

    When Taylor heard the alert called across the radio, he started sprinting towards the concession stand. As beach patrol, he played a big role in these land rescues. At least, he was hoping it would be a land rescue. They were already calling everyone out of the water. That was a mistake on Meg’s part, he was sure. Not that any of the guards called her on it, not that any of them would–now–not while they could still be wrong. But afterwards. Afterwards everyone would be talking about it, criticizing Meg, they always did. And afterwards she would have the sun, moon, and stars to deal with, otherwise known as answering to their boss, Bill. The guards would wait 2 minutes now before starting to assemble the human chain. He started searching and calling each area as “cleared” as he went.

***

    Melissa turned desperately to the young man at her side, talking into his radio. “You have to find her! You have to find my daughter!” Why didn’t they do more? No one seemed to be taking her seriously.

    The guard turned and said with maddening calm, “Ma’am, we are looking for your daughter. Do you see all of the guards standing at their chairs? They are watching for her as everyone gets out and as soon as the water is cleared they’ll start searching in the water, too. We’ve made announcements and there are many people who are looking for her all over the park.” 

    Then he turned back to answer a question on the radio. Hadn’t Shelby just been there? Hadn’t she just said, “Mommy I want to go look at the buoys. Can we do that now?” Melissa had said no but then her son Jack had needed more sunscreen and when she looked back up Shelby was gone. Where was she now? Melissa fought the urge to dive in and start looking in the water herself. Instead she started jogging down the beach, leaving Jack with her sister. She scanned the kids playing on the shoreline only vaguely aware of the lifeguard tagging along behind her. Shelby must be here, must have found a new friend to play with, or something! But she wasn’t.

***

    Shelby huddled deeper into the wall, crying. She had just wanted to go see the puppies at the far end of the beach. She thought that her mom was following her, but when she turned around to ask if they could get ice cream, too, she didn’t see anyone that she knew. She took in the hundreds of people covering the sand and splashing in the cool harbor. She just wanted to be back with her mommy. Just wanted to feel her hug again. In the background, the snack shop radio droned on, but she didn’t understand what the were saying.

    “Kayak shed: cleared.”

    “Beach tent: cleared.”

    “Concession men’s bathroom: cleared.”

    “Concession women’s bathroom: cleared”

    “Pavilion: cleared.”

    “Pirates playground: cleared.”

    “Alright. Liz?”

    “At chair two, go ahead.”

    “Make an announcement for all free and able adults to meet at chair two and start organizing the human chain.”

    “Copy.”

    “Picnic tables: cleared.”

    All around Shelby people were buzzing around, flustered. Surely not all of them were looking for her. No, they were checking for their own children. She cried harder.

    “I have a possible confirmation by concession. Repeat: possible confirmation.”

    A man squatted down next to her. He was very tall with a white shirt and a funny curly wire connecting a radio on his shoulder with something at his waist. He slid his sunglasses on top of his head and stooped down further to look her in the eyes. “Are you lost?” he asked. Shelby nodded. “What’s your name?”

    “Shelby.”

    “Shelby, is it okay if I take you to the shore and see if we see your mom?”
    Shelby nodded again and the man scooped her up and started running into the crowd and toward the water. He clicked the radio at his other shoulder saying,

    “This is Taylor. I’ll meet you with the possible confirmation at chair two. Her name is Shelby.”

Poetry Reading

Just got back from a lovely poetry reading by Kwame Dawes. His work is so poignant and it was really cool to get to hear the backstory on each piece. I loved how he used the writing to create windows, glimpses of lives we'd never otherwise know about.

Fairy Tales... Absurd?

Today I started a book called "Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know." Now some view fairy tales with contempt, but are they truly absurd? I would argue not. Here is a quote from the book's introduction, "In the fairy story, men are not set entirely free from their limitation, but, by the aid of fairies, genii, giants and demons, they are put in command of unusual powers and make themselves masters of the forces of nature." It would seem to me that a fairy tale is simply a small attempt to imagine life almost as God originally intended. That is not to say that God planned for humans to count on the aid of genii, per se, but that rather humans acknowledge at least on some level, that we were intended to rule over creation. But that is not the full picture. We were also made to live under God's authority just as creation was to flourish under our authority. This is something that will never be fully obtained in this life, but we must still strive to live redemptively in our day to day lives. And in the mean time, maybe we'll even read some fairy tales again- with a different twist.

"Coffeeshop"

He walked into the urban coffee shop, ducking past the unwelcoming stares of the younger, college crowd who tended to commandeer the open tables at the front for their studying. At least the stares felt unwelcoming, to him. He edged past the sea of laptops towards some booths in the back. She would meet him here. The back corner she had said. It was empty. He set down his coat and then crept back to the counter to quietly order a plain decaf. Back at the table, he waited, tracing the lid over and over with his index finger. What would she say? Just six months left. Then she walked in. She was still just as beautiful as the day they’d been married, in his mind. He stood briefly to catch her eye, managing a quick smile which was smashed to the floor when her gaze locked with his and turned cold.