I don’t know what it’s like to be a friend any more than you do. I think “hard” when it should be “soft,” or “gentle” when “forceful” is the key. Often it’s giving every last drop of blood, then skinning myself and giving the skin too, when all you really want is my skeleton, wagging a bony finger, signing how much I love you.
I’ve drained and skinned and boned. I’ve signed back obscenities and watched your bone dust drift away. No, I don’t know the meaning of “friend.” Teach me?
Mots clés friendship writing rats
The tides wash up the Pearl of Great Price; I see it clearly. There it is: the secret so secret that even Indiana Jones has yet to discover it. But it’s mine.
It’s a style pointer, a favorite agent, a best avenue for publication. It’s a sure-fire fire-starter, a league of extraordinary information.
Shall we gather at the river and share? No. I found it. It’s mine!
Mots clés writing rats writing-secrets literary-agent pearl-of-great-price
Every once in a bestseller list, you come across a truly exceptional craftsman, a wordsmith so adept at cutting, shaping, and honing strings of words that you find yourself holding your breath while those words pass from page to eye to brain. You know the feeling: you inhale, hold it, then slowly let it out, like one about to take down a bull moose with a Winchester .30-06. You force your mind to the task, scope out the area, take penetrating aim, and . . . read.
But instead of dropping the quarry, you find you’ve become the hunted, the target. The projectile has somehow boomeranged and with its heat-sensing abilities (you have raised a sweat) darts straight towards you. Duck! And turn the page lest it drill between your eyes.
Mots clés writing writing-craft great-writing rats great-writer writing-excellence
Pulitzer is a word but accomplishment is an aura.
Chila WoychikMots clés writing rats pulitzer-prize pulitzer
You want to get your book to press. You rush it through. Revision number twenty—done. Do you really need twenty more? Yes. A half-baked book is a half-birthed child. It aborts, is put on life support; reviewers line the hall to pull the plug.
Chila WoychikMots clés writing writing-life rats writing-process-creative-process aborted-writing
Writing is a beast to tame, an energy to transform. Whip that toad into a prince and French kiss it to life. We start at the top but keep looking down, from macro to micro, from what could work to what does—but start with the dream. Nothing is real apart from the clouds, and all clouds pass with life in their wake—some rain thoughts.
Chila WoychikMots clés writing writing-life writing-process stream-of-consciousness on-being-a-rat writing-challenges
PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW OF SYLVIA PLATH
Conventions bleed my soul
squeeze me old
wear me grey
like a headstone in transit.
It’s tradition and form—
fear of the unknown—
driving me dead
in tight spaces darkly.
I cry aloud
but who can hear
when I stand alone
in the middle of an art show….
Mots clés poetry writing sylvia-plath rats writing-process on-being-a-rat
This piece of earth I billet grows small. Bullets of time dart past, dropping shards of opportunity at my feet. And until the rift that surrounds my decaying body clamps shut—swallows me up like so many remains—I army on, simultaneously ignoring and saving my comrades in the hole.
Such is a writer’s life.
Mots clés writing creativity writing-life rats writing-process on-being-a-rat
I read a book, am vortexed in with no escape; my face contorts, eyelids frost, breath comes short, body longs, heart stop-starts. Who’s to say too much won’t kill me? Who’s to say I care?
Chila WoychikMots clés writing writing-life rats writing-process on-being-a-rat writing-extremes
Split your skull—a hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrument—a scalpel, perhaps—and make a hand-sized slit; it doesn’t matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very bottom, pinch the inside layer of membrane and yank, hard.
If it feels like you’ve just turned your brain inside out, you have. Writing is brain surgery, pure and simple.
Mots clés writing creativity writing-life writing-process on-being-a-rat hard-writing writing-is-work
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