Fear of Haunting

Welcome back for the thirteenth day of Writober. It’s Sunday, and the last day we’ll be looking at the universal fear of separation.

Fear of haunting isn’t only the fear of lingering spirits taking physical form, it’s a fear of lingering thoughts and feelings, memories and regrets.

By looking back at this week’s fears, the aspects of the fear of separation: abandonment, rejection, darkness, isolation, loneliness, and haunting have you gotten any closer to any of your core causes of these fears? What memories have come up for you that you may not have thought of since they happened? What’s still haunting you?

Line: Enjambment

Now that we’ve built up our tools to creating phrases and lines, today we’re looking at enjambment, continuing past the line. Enjambment means there is not a stop at the end of the line, but a continuation of a sentence onto the next line.

Fighting Fear of the Blank Page: How’s your relationship with the page coming along? Which approaches have been your favorite so far?

Segment the page with shapes and boxes: Try using the draw functions to put shapes on the page, overlapping boxes, circles, triangles, etc. Then write in the different shapes.

*Quick Note about links in this post: I am an amazon associate, so most of the links in my post will take you to amazon products. If you buy from these links, I will make some pennies which will help me pay for this site and my creative endeavors.

OctPoWriMo

Poetry Toolbox

These are quick exercises that I hope you’ll do every day. We will build on these exercises throughout the month.

Word list: Write down the first ten words you think of when you think of fear. Any words at all. Anything that comes to mind. Then choose your three favorite and say them aloud a few times until you hear the accented and unaccented syllables (if more than one syllable) and notice the duration of each syllable. (Inspired by Frances Mayes’ list of a hundred favorite words in The Discovery of Poetry)

I created this Excel Spreadsheet for you to use to collect and explore your fear words.

OctPoWriMo wordlist Download

2. Sensory Imagery: In your journal or a word processing file, fill in these lines as quickly as you can. Notice they are slightly different from last week. You may want to revisit one or two in more detail if you’re inspired and have time.

I see

I hear

I carry

I smell

I follow

The empty room

The tug of

I taste

The cold down my spine

I witnessed

I touched

(Inspired by a week one exercise in the poetry chapter of The Portable MFA in Creative Writing)

3. More Sensory Imagery: I find a great place to start when exploring abstract ideas, is to brainstorm sensory imagery. Write down the first few things you think of to answer these questions:

What does isolation smell like?

What does isolation taste like?

What texture is isolation? What does it feel like to the touch? What temperature is isolation? Where do you feel it?

What does isolation sound like?

What color(s) is isolation? What is a symbol of isolation? What does it look like?

4. Choose one poem to study all week: Read your chosen poem again. Read it aloud. Are there parts of it you’ve memorized? Can you recite the whole thing? Are there rhymes and rhythms that make it easy to remember? How do you see the poem differently now? Do you still like and dislike the same things? What has changed? Write about it in your journal.

Poetry Building

Enjambment is breaking the line before the end of a sentence, continuing onto the next line.

Example poem: Today we’re looking at The Haunted Palace by Edgar Alan Poe, copied here from poetryfoundation.org for educational purposes.

The Haunted Palace

By Edgar Allan Poe

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion,
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A wingèd odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute’s well-tunèd law,
Round about a throne where, sitting,
Porphyrogene!
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,
the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.

How does Poe use enjambment in this haunting poem? How might you break the lines differently? Try writing out one or two stanzas as sentences, and try breaking the lines in different places.

Today’s prompt: Write a poem exploring haunting using enjambment.

Form: If you’re looking for more of a challenge, write your poem as an Elegy.

Writober Flash Fiction

Write a story with a beginning, middle, and end with conflict that leads to change in less than a thousand words (no minimal word count) inspired by one of the images in the Separation folder of the Writober 2024 Pinterest board. What haunts your character(s)?

NaNo Prep

Time to explore some backstory. What happened in your MC’s past that still haunts today? What haunts your antagonist? How do they try to fight it? How does it show up and when?

Halloween Photography Challenge

Take a photograph that depicts haunting or fear of haunting and link to your photo in the chat.

Tunetober

How did it go? Did you come up with a haunting harmony, or counter melody? I hope so. This week’s challenge is to create some rhythm chords and/or a bass line, and add it to last week’s melody and harmony. Have fun.

Sewtober

This week, let’s make a fun Halloween decoration. You could make a stuffed pumpkin, a door banner or wreath, ornaments to hang in your trees, or anything else you can think of. Here are 30 ideas from gathered. And some fun ideas from We All Sew.

Get Moving

Now that you’ve read all the prompts and have all these ideas running around in your head, it’s time for motion. I found this comedy video, but I think the moves will get the blood pumping, and laughter’s good for you too.