Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Creative Writing

I wrote this to read at my Creative Writing Class's public reading on 1/28.

Creative Writers

We fill our cups with each other’s words until they run over.

We fill picnic baskets, trunks, silos, freight cars, and hay barns with our words. Every one a gift.

Listening to each other’s words is as pleasurable as eating watermelon on the porch steps (with comments launched like watermelon seeds into the back yard).

Our words interlock

like the strands in a multi-colored braided rug.

Our words blend and sing harmonies.

Our words pluck long-forgotten chords in each of us.

Some words grow in neat rows, willing to be weeded and watered.

Other words escape and tangle into briar patches, resisting and drawing blood when we try to pick them.

Some words roam wild and free on the high slopes and have to be chased down and forcibly corralled.

Other words are as docile as sheep waiting to be penned.

As writers, we have to be

…as persistent as prospectors panning for word nuggets that will assay into stories.

...as faithful as fishermen, patiently casting into a pool of words to see which ones will bite, taking the keepers home to fillet and fry up as stories and poems.

…as tough as tight rope artists, walking the wire of writing and step by assured step bridging the gap between inspiration and story.

I celebrate the writers who have read their work tonight!


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