Writing - grace grits and gardening

Hemingway’s Barn

December 26, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

Stories that waited for paper now wait for me.

With so much to say, I search for a worthy beginning. Thoughts that swirled and drifted through dreams, now hide just out of reach.

Inside this barn, I am filled with something greater. I am filled with possible.

Through the windowpane, I gaze into a towering matt of dark green leaves. Trees inspire and shade and watch over me, the same trees that watched him too.

My thoughts are safe inside this space. I am free to explore, free to wonder and wander. The air is full of potential.

A ray of sunshine splits the canopy and brightens my writing table.

Dust motes dance.

In the distance, a train rumbles, then and now.

He said there is nothing to writing. Just sit down at the typewriter and bleed.

And so I bleed.

talya

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Hemingway’s Barn won 2nd place in the 2013 White County Creative Writer’s competition for the category “Favorite Writing Place”.

For information on Hemingway’s Barn and the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center, click HERE.

★
On
a
cold
winter’s
night,I feel
the weary world
rejoicing.❅ O
night divine!
Christmas is here
bringing good cheer.
❅Sweet silver bells
ring high above
glistening treetops
and city sidewalks.
❅ The thrill of hope wrapped
in silver and gold. ❅ Born
on that silent night so
no more may die.✞ Merry
merry, merry, merry
Christmas. ❅ Do you hear what
I hear? Do you see what I see?
Joy.

Merry Christmas!

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

This poem is in the style of cento—work composed from lines or passages from other sources arranged in a new form or order, in this case Christmas carols. This is also an example of a concrete poem – the visual appearance matches the topic, in this case a Christmas tree…

To read another cento I wrote using lyrics from Pink Floyd, Elvis, Sinatra, Creedence Clearwater and others, click HERE.

And HERE’s a concrete poem I wrote about Lake Norfork in the shape of a bikini:)

on writing First Sentences

December 9, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

In a recent article with The Atlantic, Stephen King describes the first line of a book as the reader’s invitation to begin the story.

“…a really good first line can do so much to establish that crucial sense of voice—it’s the first thing that acquaints you, that makes you eager, that starts to enlist you for the long haul. So there’s incredible power in it, when you say, come in here. You want to know about this. And someone begins to listen.”

My friend and writing mentor Pat Carr says the first sentence is a promise to the reader— a promise of what’s to come. The first sentence sets the story’s mood and tone.

What pressure! That first sentence is often a stumbling block to the second sentence.

I’ve been studying first sentences to test this theory. Here are the openings lines to a few of my favorite books… (in no particular order)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. (A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. (1984, George Orwell)

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. (The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett)

It was a pleasure to burn. (Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury)

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is when I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. (Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger)

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. (The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austin)

All children, except one, grow up. (Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie)

The terror that would not end for another twenty-eight years, if it ever did, began so far as I can know or tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain. (It, Stephen King)

When Augustus came on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. (Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry)

He understood what they were thinking and saying: Old man that he is, what’s to become of him? (To Dance With the White Dog, Terry Kay)

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. (Little Women, Louisa May Alcott)

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. (The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini)

At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring. (Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier)

At sundown, when they led him to the chair, Nail Chism began to understand the meaning of the name of his hometown, Stay More. (The Choiring of the Trees, Donald Harington)

What’s your favorite first book line?