#SoCS: Peril of Purloined Patience

The Patience in Impatience and Impatience in Patience by Maria L. Berg 2022

Contradictory Abstract Nouns (Photography Challenge)

Today I’m looking at finding the impatience in patience and the patience in impatience. While thinking about what I wanted to say about patience and impatience I thought “It takes time to have patience,” so I thought of my cog-clock filter. It wasn’t raining, so I hurried outside to play with my outdoor light set-up.

Wow, it was bitey cold out there! That’ll make someone impatient, but it takes patience to find the shot that represents these contradictory abstractions. I think purple LEDs represent the agitation of impatience well. And I liked how the net lights brought a patient order to the ticking of time.

Impatience in Patience by Maria L. Berg 2022

Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS)

Today’s prompt for some stream of consciousness writing is “your favorite word.” Linda invites us to choose our favorite word and use it however we would like. But how to choose?

Purloined is not my favorite word; it just seems to go very well with peril. For today’s peril poem, I did some word collecting and came up with around two hundred words having to do with peril. A lot of them are great words like exposure, gash, slipperiness, and one of my favorites wonder. But what to choose for my favorite word?

I just opened The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice by Tony Hoagland and read:

“A poem strong in the dimension of voice is an animate thing of shifting balances, tones, and temperature, by turns intimate, confiding, vulgar, distant, or cunning—but, above all, alive. In its vital connectivity, it is capable of including both the manifold world and the rich slipperiness of human nature.”

Tony Hoagland 2019

How often do you read the word slipperiness twice in one morning? It’s a great word. And I love that phrase, “the rich slipperiness of human nature.” So great. But slipperiness is still not my favorite word.

In April 2021 in response to a NaPoWriMo prompt, I made a Personal Universal Deck. It’s a deck of cards with words you like on them. I kept it, so I pulled it out this morning, shuffled it and picked a card. Each card has two word on it: one at the top, and one upside down at the bottom. The card I picked had the word “silence” at the top. I read it out loud to the cat twice, then said “That’s wonderful,” so I’ll go with “silence” as my favorite word today.

I adore this time of year for its silence. The boats of summer pulled and gone, the whooping boaters and their horrible choices of blaring tunes forced on everyone so they can hear barely an impression of them over the boat engine as they wake-board or wake-surf, or whatever the latest new fad is for pulling a body behind a boat. Now is the time when the vacation homes are vacant and the full-timers return to indoor lives. The revving of chainsaws, howling of leaf-blowers, and high-pitched squealing of power-tools lay dormant as glistening raindrops fill the air. And there is no sound, except the occasional haunting train whistle in the distance, even the planes and helicopters seem sparse today. So do I sit silently and soak in this silence? No. I put on a movie I’ve seen a million times, to silence my inner-critic, drown-out my mind-voice, and distract, so these words will flow. It appears I love silence, so I can choose what to fill it with when I can’t stand it anymore.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge

Today’s prompt is to write a peril poem.

Exposure to the Risk of Being (Destroyed)

Prickly sweet almond smoke
Obtuse spikes hazard taste buds
Exposing misconceptions of danger
Trouble steeped in gasoline fumes
Rough and hard and suddenly too close
Yells yield to yawns needing more air

Injury can be seen and unseen
Menacing snarls alarm the senses
Pitfalls surround the doubtful
Exhibitions of horrible imaginations
Remembered after nightmares
Indecision leaves one vulnerable
Looming risks a nuisance or threat
Soaked in sweaty incertitude

Stabbing in the pitch-black night at
Intimidation, an evil laugh’s shadow
Lording over, bigger than you
Endangerment, anxiety’s wager
Nerves afire go for broke
Chance brings quicksand’s change
Expressed as an exposé of panic

Patience in Impatience by Maria L. Berg 2022

NaNoWriMo

I woke up thinking about my novel! I’m excited to report that my draft is coming along very well. Though I have yet to have a day that I get to my novel before noon, it appears to be working for me, because I’m already over 17,000 words. I think this is my best start ever. And since I barely managed any planning, I believe the success so far is due to 4theWords.

This weekend I would like to organize what I’ve written so far into my Scrivener file, and into a chiastic outline; take some time to plan out my major plot points. But as long as the words are flowing, I’m going to keep having fun.

This Rain is a Cruel Kindness

Kindness in Cruelty by Maria L. Berg 2022

Contradictory Abstract Nouns (Photography Challenge)

Today I’m looking at finding the cruelty in kindness and the kindness in cruelty. I woke up planning to turn on the lights outside and admire the kind lights in the cruel demise of the colorful leaves, but it was pouring rain: a kindness for a Nanowrimo writer who enjoys writing on rainy days, but a cruelty for the electronics of the abstract photographer with her lights strung outside. So, still searching for the kindness in this cruelty, I took it as a sign that it was time to re-imagine the mirrorworld. I moved some things around in the attempt to find the eternal depth of field, and decided to only use white light today, and add more colors to my palette tomorrow.

I’m really enjoying revisiting some of my filters with new intention. For today’s images I used one of the hot glue filters I hadn’t really liked before, but the heart-ish shape worked so well for today. And a filter I made with the tiny hummingbird feathers that my friend sent me, which was such a kind gesture, which gave me the opportunity to repurpose the results of the cruelty of nature (cats killing birds and leaving their feathers strewn on the doorstep).

Nature’s Cruelty in Kindness and Kindness in Cruelty by Maria L. Berg 2022

November PAD Chapbook Challenge

Today’s challenge is a fill in the blank title prompt, “In the (blank).“

In the Thick of It

kindness is thick as molasses in a pudding of cruelty
cruelty is thick as fat in a stew of kindness

kindness is thick as thieves in a dense forest of cruelty

cruelty is thick as blood in thorn bushes of kindness

kindness is thick as pea-soup fog over the underbrush of cruelty
cruelty is thick as chili in the traffic of kindness

kindness is thick as smog in the darkness of cruelty
cruelty is thick as bodies in a mob of kindness

kindness is thick as spit in the mucous of cruelty
cruelty is thick as sewage in a mushy mud of kindness

kindness is as thick as secrecy in the oil of cruelty
cruelty is thick as perfume on conspirators of kindness

Cruelty in Kindness by Maria L. Berg 2022

NaNoWriMo

I’m excited to say that using Novel Writing Blueprint Workbook by Jill Harris as my morning pages journal is working exactly as I intended. This morning, I started writing in the “Genre Awareness & Organisation” section which inspired me to take a look at the Mystery genre at StoryGrid.com. I was surprised that Mystery wasn’t its own genre or under Thriller, using the Genre 5-Leaf Clover, I found it was part of Story Grid’s Crime genre. My story definitely fit the Crime genre, so I looked over the 5 Conventions and the 6 obligatory moments, and started brainstorming. I’m really happy with the timing, that I was inspired to do this this morning, because I can imagine a ‘speech in praise of the villain’ coming up in today’s scene.

The next section in my journal was tropes, so I headed over to TVtropes.org and searched for “mystery tropes.” There’s a long list of mostly over-done clichés, but Jill Harris reminds that some of these are reader expectations. So there may be some gems in there that I can twist and combine, reform and make my own.

So today I’m approaching my scenes with my genre and reader-expectations in mind.

I also want to bring my contradictory nouns into my scenes today. My protagonist is the personification of the truth in deceit and deceit in truth. Honesty can be both kind and cruel. How is my character kind in her cruelty, and cruel in her kindness? How will I show that?

Misguided Yearning for Contentment Without Agitation

Agitation in Contentment by Maria L. Berg 2022

Contradictory Abstract Nouns (Photography Challenge)

Today I’m looking at finding the agitation in contentment and the contentment in agitation. The last time I looked at Agitation, it was as the contradiction to Calm. It was July and I was playing with my first two reflection balls. Recently I have been feeling quite contented and yesterday, the smallest agitation left me irritated for longer than it should. But what does that look like. What shapes and colors are the agitation I felt in my contentment? Or how can I create the visual for the contentment I found within that agitation?

For today’s images, I took down my Halloween decorations, but moved a lot of the lights to the corner of the yard nearest the front door. I used the thief fingers filter I created for “haunted.” Today the fingers represented agitation, and the house shape represented contentment. The flashing lights in the autumn bushes and trees were agitation and me, the photographer enjoying the results, was contentment in that agitation. It started raining, or I think I would have stayed content in that agitation for a lot longer.

Agitation by Maria L. Berg 2022

November PAD Chapbook Challenge

Today’s challenge is to write a misguided poem.

I spent some time with my Merriam Webster’s Collegiate (tenth edition) and found: misguide v. to lead astray. I really like the word astray, so I looked that up and found: astray adv. or adj. off the right path or route. 2. in error: away from what is proper or desirable. Back at misguided I found: adj. led or prompted by wrong or inappropriate motives or ideals.

As you can see, misguided leads us to the contradictory abstract nouns right and wrong. Can someone or something be misguided without a common understanding of right and wrong? Something to contemplate. I was pondering whether pursuing contentment and avoiding agitation is misguided. A little agitation can keep one alert, and change a current course of action.

DVerse Poets Pub

Today for Meeting the Bar (MTB), Björn introduces us to the Bref Double form consisting of 14 lines: 3 quatrains and a couplet with a two options of rhyme scheme.

Achieving Misguided Goals

years spent yearning to be content
every step forward, a cycle back
finally reached a place of grace
promised morning free from need

clawing to stay in this present
she stares ahead as stories grow
like hurdles along the race
rushed to complete with speed

not a drop of cold rain to resent
but feeling agitation’s itch
misguided calm upon her face
as she offers words to read

But is it that an ease meant
once found to stay is stasis?

Contentment in Agitation by Maria L. Berg 2022

NaNoWriMo

Today, I used the first Exercise in A Writer’s Workbook by Caroline Sharp “What If You Don’t Like Being Alone? or Writing in the Company of Strangers” as inspiration to do the forum quests in 4theWords. Then I was inspired by the second chapter in Every Day is a Poem by Jacqueline Suskin “Make Meaning” to come up with five objects that are significant to my protagonist. I described those five things in my writing warm-ups, then labeled them as either calming or agitating and planned to use them in today’s scenes.

Woke Up Excited to Write

Disinterest in Awe by Maria L. Berg 2022

Contradictory Abstract Nouns (Photography Challenge)

Today I’m looking at finding the indifference in awe and the awe in indifference. I thought about how the cat was blocking the front door staring at the lights, but I imagined the squirrels were indifferent. I also thought about how in awe I am of each new filter idea—the new tiny brads idea creating moving parts, for example—but imagine most people would be indifferent.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge

Today’s challenge is to write a sweet poem.

Sweet synchronicity: I opened Every Day is a Poem by Jacqueline Suskin looking for inspiration for a sweet poem, and the first chapter is “Be in Awe of Everything.” I kid you not! I am in awe of serendipity. I love when ideas come together.

Suskin offers two exercises for writing awe poems:

  1. Close your eyes and point in any direction (I recommend spinning around a lot). When you open your eyes, be in awe of the first thing you see.
  2. Think about something that inspires awe then write a rambling list of everything you think about it. Write an entire page of unedited thoughts. Then “let awe find you in a singular detail.”

For ModPo, I still need to try the Bernadette Meyer exercise to remove a type of word from a text. It could be interesting to remove a-w-e in order from a text. But I doubt that will be a “sweet” poem, so I’ll be in awe of something sweet first.

In Awe of the Sewing Arts

needles sweet as honey
thread sweet as candyfloss
pins sweet as nectar
scissors sweeter than wine
stitches sweet as sweet, sweet, revenge
an iron sweet as molasses
trim sweet as dew
buttons sweet as sugar
sweet, sweet symmetry
sweetly sewn for you

Awe in Disinterest by Maria L. Berg 2022

NaNoWriMo

Yesterday I didn’t get started until after noon, but once I did get to my novel, it went well. I wrote over 3,000 words, got through the opening scene, and set up the next one. How can I bring awe and indifference into my scenes today? What is my protagonist in awe of? Which character would see the same thing or situation with indifference? What inspires awe in most people that my protagonist is indifferent to? I think I have a couple ideas.

Time to write!

The First Day of The New Month and the New Novel

The Distrust in Trust by Maria L. Berg 2022

Contradictory Abstract Nouns (Photography Challenge)

Today I want to create an image that shows the trust in distrust and the distrust in trust. I took all of the lights that made up October’s color palette outside to decorate the driveway for the trick-or-treaters, so today, since I woke up while it was still dark, I used a couple filters with my driveway lights.

I think I’ll leave them up for one more night and then bring all the lights inside and set up the mirrorworld for November.

Wanting to Trust by Maria L. Berg 2022

Today’s Poem

November PAD Chapbook Challenge

Today is not only the first day of NaNoWriMo, it is the first day of Writers Digest’s Poem a Day Chapbook challenge. After a month of writing a poem each day in November, we have a month to select and edit some of the poems to create a chapbook manuscript.

Yesterday I went to the library and found some fun books on writing poetry that will hopefully provide some insights to inform this month’s journey. The books I’ll be reading and talking about are (amazon associate links):

Because the challenge starts on a Tuesday, we get a Two-for-Tuesday prompt:

  1. Write a beginning poem, and/or…
  2. Write an ending poem.

I think it will be interesting to explore the beginning and ending of trust; the moment trust becomes distrust, and/or distrust becomes trust.

Modern & Contemporary American Poetry ModPo

There are also two weeks left to this year’s ModPo. This year I’ve been doing the work to get my completion certificate which means writing close-reading essays bout selected poems. This week, week 9, we are assigned our final essay. It’s a creative assignment to create a poem and then write a close-reading essay of our own poem: Should be interesting.

To create the poem we have the choice to either create a Mesostic based on the work of John Cage, using the Mesostic Poem Generator, or to use one of Bernadette Mayer’s experiments to create a poem.

Since I have all week to create my poem, and write my essay, I think I’ll play with beginning and ending as my mesostics, but what text to use? I could use the opening scene I write for NaNoWriMo. That would be fun for “beginning” and “ending” since my opening hook should set up my ending as well. However, I’m also reading On Truth and Untruth by Nietzsche, and the second selection “On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)” fits great with today’s look at trust & distrust. So I’ll start by typing some of that into the Mesostic Poem Generator and see what I get.

Beginnings: a Mesostic (reading through Nietzsche)

The Trust in Distrust by Maria L. Berg 2022

National Novel Writing Month NaNoWriMo

This is my 8th NaNoWriMo, and I have reached 50k or more words of a draft every time. If you are looking for prompts and ideas, every day of November 2017 I posted all kinds of prompts and ideas that I still look back to for inspiration. Every year is a completely different experience with entirely different ups and downs. This year I’m trying a few new things to try to get the words to flow instead of feeling like I have to yank them out of me.

First, I bought a paperback copy of Novel Writing Blueprint Workbook by Jill Harris and I’m using it for my Morning Pages Journal. I’m really enjoying writing in it. It’s the size of a large, thick paperback book, so it feels like writing a novel in a novel. I loosely follow the prompts in the book, so my morning pages stay focused on thinking about my novel. I feel like this was a good choice for a journal to use during NaNoWriMo.

Second, I joined 4theWords. I had been thinking about ways to gamify my writing that wasn’t only putting stickers on paper, and 4theWords did that for me. I battle cute forest monsters with my word count and win virtual loot for quests and costume pieces for my avatar. It is surprisingly rewarding. The time flies by and the words stack up. I’ve been using it to write my Writober flash fiction stories. Finger crossed that it continues to be as fun with my novel. My original idea was that I would use it as one of many writing stations through out the day, but I’m enjoying it so much, I can see myself doing all my writing in 4theWords, including my poems and writing warm-ups. There’s a special offer for NaNoWriMo in the Offer’s Section of the Writer’s Resources on the NaNoWriMo site. I highly recommend taking them up on the two free months. They don’t ask for any information other than a username and an email.

Third, I created a Pinterest collection of cinematic photography. Thinking about how I was able to come up with complete stories from just one image every day for Writober, I thought, why couldn’t that work for November? If I collected a variety of images, hopefully something in the day’s image would spark the scene, especially on days when I’m feeling stuck. I really like the images of Gregory Crewdson for story inspiration, so I started searching for photographers like Gregory Crewdson, and came up with all sorts of interesting images to look at. Just in the exercise of finding and collecting photographs, I solidified ideas about one of my characters that I really like.

#Writober Day 31: Happy Halloween!

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

As I did last year, I found this Halloween challenge inspiring. I made more detailed cuts for my filters this year inspired by PBS’s Monstrum, and came up with the idea to use tiny brads to add movable aspects to my filters. Thank you Tourmaline .

Today’s prompt is Costume. I put my lights and decorations along the driveway. The candy table is ready just inside the door, and the candy bowl is full. Now for my costume:

My Halloween Costume by Maria L. Berg 2022

I think it’s a good fit. I’m drinking “Three Ghost” Pinot Noir. I had to open it early to let the ghosts out.

OctPoWriMo

I didn’t see a prompt today, so I’ll finish out my thirty-one poems with an Ode to Halloween.

Ode to Halloween

The neighbor’s black cat
has crossed the path
and back, and he’s the
kind to keep company
of witches, so I await
their hour to witness
their power, or at least
a glance of bewitched dancing
in the moonlight

Soon it will be night
time to plug in all the lights
to invite the strangers to come
the monsters good and ill
the doorbell gives a thrill
and I’ll run to see the
hideous and cute candy
grabbing hands

Oh, Halloween
finally arrived
that one night a year
we accept the dead
alive, and slash
open the veil
to the other side
where do they all hide
when November comes?

Writober Flash Fiction

We made it! The last flash fiction story of Writober. Thirty-one flash fiction story drafts, or at least some. Did you try it? I managed full drafts the first two days, but then didn’t write much more than what I shared here until I joined 4theWords. The last few days, I’ve been writing one or two full flash fiction drafts each day. I mean, they are absolute garbage first drafts, but they are complete stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. It has been great!

Today’s image is “Tree-Demon” by Disse86.

I was so excited to be invited to the bonfire. Janie and I had been friends until middle school but then she developed early and I stayed awkward. And stayed awkward as she became more popular. I couldn’t help but be a little jealous when she was kissing Terrance by the lockers in High School. I had liked him since elementary school when we played kickball during recess. It was the only group game I was good at, and he always smiled at me when I kicked his serves, and he chased me, but always let me get on base. That was a lifetime ago. Now he was a quarterback, and I was a swimmer, good but not good enough for anyone to care. So when Jamie separated her lips from Terrance long enough to look at me and say, Hey. You comin’ to the bonfire tonight? I was so flustered I said, “Sure.”
She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t have to. Everyone knew about the bonfire. There was a place through the woods behind the school that led up a hill under the power lines. No one went there but high school kids  and there was always a bonfire on Friday nights. Now that I think of it, now that I’m on the trail, and see the glow of the fire, and hear the drunken laughter of jocks and giggles of flirts, I wasn’t really invited. Jamie just asked if I was going. She had never asked me before. I guess that’s why I considered it an invitation, but now I felt uneasy. Was this some kind of trick? Was she planning to embarrass me for some reason? I tried to play through the last week or so in my mind, had I done anything embarrassing, or bothered her in some way? I couldn’t think of anything. My AP homework and extracurriculars didn’t leave me any time to be around her and I usually ate lunch by myself in the library. But maybe that was it. Maybe they wanted to pick on some nerd.
I suddenly felt like my jeans were too crisp and tight, my shirt too low-cut, my make-up too—too something. But then the path opened and there was the roaring bonfire. It was all you could see. Tree limbs, and broken furniture, crates, and pallets all roaring with licking and lapping giant flames, sparking and reaching into the stars. It was beautiful. All the people were only small shadows joining, touching, separating, moving to the next group of shadows.
One of those shadows approached me along a serpentine path,  all wavy legs and arms. I saw a large cup in one hand. “Hey you. I’ve never seen you at one of these. Glad to see you. What brings you here?”

Maria L. Berg Writober7 Day 31 2022

I hope you enjoyed Writober as much as I did. Now it is time for Novel Writing Month. Are you ready? Me neither. But here we go!

#Writober Day 30: Simple Pumpkin Party

Pumpkin Party by Maria L. Berg 2022

Contradictory Abstract Nouns

So here we are near the end of October. This week I looked at Here’s the calendar I came up with for my continued study through November:

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is Party.

Party in the Pumpkin Patch by Maria L. Berg 2022

OctPoWriMo

Today’s theme is Simple Pleasures.

Pleasures Never Simple

Pain is a thief
stealing simple pleasures

the fuzzy, cuddly
warm blanket
now scrunchy
provides no relief
an irritant suddenly too hot
robbing needed rest
every toss and turn
a test of endurance

my body that betrays
can find no comfort
reminding me that no
pleasure is simple,
only taken
for granted
until not

nothing is easy when
every movement
threatens

Writober Flash Fiction

I couldn’t find any information about the artist or title of today’s image. That’s something that bugs me about Pinterest (and the internet in general). I’ll be more careful next year, and learn a little bit about each image I choose before I put it in the collection. Anyway, These lanky lamp-face creatures are intriguing. Where did they come from? What are they doing?

Once a few people witnessed how the monsters fled when the Nightlamps were in the area, they believed they were benevolent beings and saw them as saviors. Cults popped up in every town, demanding offerings, as if they would know what a Nightlamp wanted, other than to shine light on the monsters. Unlike us the Nightlamps had an obvious purpose. I came to envy them. Knowing exactly what your purpose is and being able to act upon it toward it always seems so freeing to me. For the rest of us attempting to continue in some sense of normality, we had to deceive ourselves into purpose.
The answer that never arrived was, What came first, the monsters or the Nnightlamps? It was as if the creatures had always been there in the dark, but we saw them differently, or didn’t understand them as monsters before the Nightlamps. I think they looked like people before. That we called them criminals, and evil. We didn’t understand that they were shape-shifters, mimics, replicants, whatever you want to call them. There were always monsters, we sometimes spoke of demons, possession, things like that, but that was only the monster coming to the surface, or someone being sensitive to it.
So where did the Nightlamps come from, and why now?

Maria L. Berg Writober7 Day 30

#Writober Day 29: #SoCS Surprise Halloween Element

Happy Jack by Maria L. Berg 2022

I’m so excited to share that I am now a published photographer!! One of my photographs is in the latest issue of Wrongdoing Magazine. You can view it online (pages 98-99).

Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS)

Today’s prompt for some stream of consciousness writing is “element.” Here’s an excerpt from this morning’s journal pages:

These days everything is an element of novel prep: story broken into characters, settings, plot points, broken into their elements: physical, psychological, sociological. My life, each day broken into its elements, sleep, work, play broken into their elements, trying to gear everything toward novel writing, to organize to efficiency and motivation.I’ve seen a periodic table of writing tropes, I wonder if there’s a periodic table of novel writing. How would I organize it? Like the periodic table of elements has metals, metalloids, and gases: my table would have story elements, writer’s life elements, and what else? Or maybe it needs for categories like the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. What am I thinking? I don’t have time to be making some silly periodic table of novel writing, I still need to develop my characters.

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is Pumpkin. I didn’t get a pumpkin this year, but I did grow some adorable tiny acorn squash in my garden. They are delicious. I bake them with a tiny bit of olive oil and fresh herbs. I thought I would have some fun attempting to carve one this morning.

I am so happy with how my tiny Jack-o-Lantern squash turned out. I put some color-changing fairy lights inside and this is now my favorite Halloween decoration!

Pumpkin Envy by Maria L. Berg 2022
Fairy Scary by Maria L. Berg 2022

OctPoWriMo

Death News by Maria L. Berg 2022

Today’s prompt is about writer’s block, and the challenges of birthing something new. Bianca mentions blackout poetry, and I decided that would be fun since I’m having a crafty morning.

Death News

When it comes,
timid and predictable,
It’s been watching the world.
You don’t survive
when it comes
nobody does

View—for the night has fallen

Switch on
in the early evening
You will see
I know scared,
ponderously slow,
ferocious, and seeking
to survive

View—for the night has fallen

Many are the figurative,
especially those
under the bus tomorrow
who are pretty and
have totally collapsed
that, of course, is no accident
I swaggered into a hotshot;
they carried me out in a body bag.

Writober Flash Fiction

Today’s inspirational image is “Shhh” by Gary Bedell. This somehow manages to take the monster in the closet to a new level. So creepy. Here’s an excerpt from “Clown Closet:”

As I reached for the handle to pull the closet open, he slid around my waist, clinging to my pink terrycloth robe like a security blanket. He had never been a clingy kid, not a thumb sucker or a blankie or teddy needer; this felt like a strange reversal to babyish behavior. My mind was searching through all the development books I studied while he was in the womb. Everything had gone so smoothly so far, I had forgotten most of it. ” Reese, what happened? What’s wrong?”
I yanked both doors open all the way as quickly as I could, imagining this was like yanking off a band-aid.  I paused for a moment taking in his box of toys on the floor, the lasso flopping out of the box, from his short-lived cowboy faze, the broken model plane from the dangerous dizzying glue faze, some strange stuffed animals—gifts that were never played with. His clothes all neatly hung across the rack looked in order at eye level, and on the upper shelf his collection of board games that we keep trying to play as a family when his dad has a free half-hour after dinner, which is almost never.
“Look, Reese, honestly, there’s nothing out of place. Everything is as it should be.”
Reese pushed me forward so my chest was touching the clothing on the hangers. I now knew what it felt like to be a human shield. He pushed around me to the right . The pause made me think he was examining up and down, every possible section of wall, then he pushed around to the other side. 
Certain that he must have been convinced, I said, “So what do you want to wear today? We’ve got to get a move on or you won’t have time for any cartoons.”  But when I tried to step back so he could see his clothes too, I felt resistance. “Reesey, come on. Let go of my robe.”
“Mommy, stay still. Don’t move. And don’t look up.”
I looked at the games. There was Twister, Chutes and Ladders. Nothing to be afraid of.
“I said, don’t look up,” he whisper hissed. “Mom? I’m feeling pretty sick. I don’t think I should go to school today.”
“Honey, if that were true, you would have said you weren’t feeling well when I first came in. There’s no such thing as sudden-sick.”
“Sick has to start some time. There’s always a start.”

#Writober Day 28: Courageous Screaming

Sound of a Scream by Maria L. Berg 2022

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is Scream. This morning I’m thinking of “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. How will I visualize a piercing, shrill sound? Is the scream the sound outside the body, or the gut-wrenching terror vibrating inside before it escapes through the vocal cords? And how would I visualize that?

Scream by Maria L. Berg 2022
Screaming by Maria L. Berg

OctPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is “Courageous & Daring.” What do I fear and avoid in my poetry? Is there something that I haven’t had the courage to attempt in a poem? It’s hard to know. If I’m avoiding it, I’m probably not aware of it.

In a State of Constant Courage

Sympathetic—
a misnomer of the very worst order for
a system so nervous it discerns all things as danger.
How does hypertension and an irritable bowel prepare me
for fight or flight when stuck on the porcelain bowl?
And how does a hand tremor fight human judgement?
Or loss of breath, sweating and racing pulse escape embarrassment?
There is no agreement in emotions between this system and me,
for I either fight or flee its hyperactive insistency constantly
and my intestines
show no sympathy.

Writober Flash Fiction

Today’s inspirational image is “Night Terrors” by Urchina.

“Quit screaming, Sasha. Oh baby. Can you even hear me. Wake up. Wake up. Please, wake up.”
Sasha’s eyes finally fluttered open. “Mommy?”
“No, sweetie. Mom’s not home yet. Its me. Sissy. Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.” But tears rolled down her cheeks and she was shaking.
My baby sister had had night terrors for a year now. I couldn’t believe someone so young could have such terrible tortures already. And she said she didn’t even know what the dreams were about. All she ever said was “Don’t you see him? ” while pointing at the corner of her wall by her head. Once we tried moving the bed thinking it was a shadow that scared her, but it didn’t change anything. She said she liked where her bed was before, so I moved it back.
When Mom got home from her second, “night meeting” this week, threw her purse on the counter, plopped down on the couch, flipped on the TV and said, “so how’s your sister”, I was frustrated.
“She’s been screaming and flailing. Almost threw herself on the floor, and almost punched me when I woke her up. How was your night?”
She snapped her head around staring ice-daggers, “You’re not supposed to wake her up. You know that. The doctor said it can do psychological damage.”
I shook my head, but she was already staring at the TV. Some wanna-be celebrity was reporting about some reality TV personality doing something horrible.
“Mom. Aren’t you more worried that if she dies in a dream, she’ll die in real life.” I think I said it just to give Mom whiplash.

#Writober Day 27: Carving Pretty Things Into Weak Flesh

Halloween Carving by Maria L. Berg 2022

Contradictory Abstract Nouns

Today, I start looking at the last of my chosen Halloween themed abstract nouns: finding the weakness in strength and the strength in weakness. This morning’s thoughts took me full circle to watching Hellraiser to start the Halloween season. Those movies are all about carving and weakness of the flesh. I’ve always found it fascinating how something as strong as human skin— that keeps all our moving parts together, stretches and grows with us while we slosh and throb about—is also so fragile. Any small, sharp point, even a thorn or tiny sliver of wood can open us up and let our vital fluids pour out, leave us open to infection and even (in extremes) death. Why, if we’re so evolved, don’t we have cool armor like an armadillo, or a pangolin? I would say our thermoregulatory system and our immune system are the strengths in that weakness, but still, pangolin armor.

Nano Prep and Looking Forward to November

Yesterday I started thinking about what I want to do here at Experience Writing during November. At first, I thought I would only post once or twice a week with dVerse poems, but then I remembered the Writer’s Digest Poem A Day Chapbook Challenge, and how continuing daily prompts really improved my abstract photography last fall, so I’m going to continue to post every day through November with photography, poetry, and things I learn while working on this year’s NaNoWriMo novel draft.

For my daily photography prompts, I will continue to explore contradictory abstract nouns. As I talked about back in mid-September when I finished Calvino’s Memos, I organized a big list of abstract nouns into the Big 5, highlighting the words with different colors that I thought put them into those categories. During November, since my characters will personify the Big 5 and their contradictions: Love/Apathy; Beauty/Ugliness; Truth/Deceit; Wisdom/Ignorance; and Happiness/Misery, I’m going to look at the other abstract nouns on the list that I put into these categories. I’ll make a calendar and put it up this weekend.

I’m glad I decided to try 4theWords, the words flow in a hurry, and I’m having fun. I hope it continues to motivate when I switch from my horror flash fiction to my novel.

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is Carve. Trying to think of “carve” differently this year, I looked it up on dictionary.com and found these three definitions in a row:

  • to make or create for oneself (often followed by out): He carved out a career in business.
  • to carve figures, designs, etc.
  • to cut meat.

These three together put very horrible images in my head. So using my new tiny brad idea from yesterday, I created a couple moving carving tools, and drew figures and designs on plastic in an attempt to replicate the texture of “meat.”

Carving Ms by Maria L. Berg 2022
Moving the Knife by Maria L. Berg 2022

OctPoWriMo

I’m not sure what happened this year: Tourmaline disappeared after Day 8, and there hasn’t been an OctPoWriMo prompt in five days. And no one joined me for Writober Flash Fiction (here at least). It has been a bit of a loner Writober. Luckily, I’m a lone water nymph who doesn’t mind throwing her voice into the void.

Today, however is Open Link Night at the dVerse Poets Pub, so whatever poetry I do come up with, I can share with this great supportive global community of poets.

When I Carve

When I carve into
this supple flesh
plump yet starved
of expression, indecision
of first incision stalls—
the point will pierce
raising fears as it nears
even the fierce flinch
and words will mince as
silver gashers glint
and a shiver quivers

goose-flesh—dents
bends, stretches, holds
then gives, slits, permits
lays open to grit
the slash brash
is but a start
this endeavor
is to sever, however
clever, to gut the glut
omit the pit, and outwit

then slice—twice
at any price a bargain
to excise this vice
and sacrifice the dry ice
to spice up this carving party.

Writober Flash Fiction

Today’s image is “Dark Ice” by Denis Loebner.

A faint greenish glow rose along the horizon. I thought I was imagining it, perhaps remembering a research trip to Alaska I had taken during graduate school. But no. It was there. The hum grew louder, as did Dr. Harish. He was chanting in a language I did not recognize. Then the ground shook. As I tried to steady myself, and avoid falling into Dr. Nakamura, the light on my helmet glanced upon something moving under the ice. I stifled a scream.
“What was that?” I whispered.
No one responded. Only Dr. Harish’s moaning mysterious tones and clicks, gutterals, and hisses, pops and grunts echoed in my helmet. I felt dizzy, began to see grotesque images dancing in my head. Scenes from past, present, the unknown whirling together, the vastness of time eternal, nothingness eternal. The ground shook again. This time I fell to my knees on the hard ice. I felt the pain in my knees, but I was still falling as if time had slowed and I would fall that short distance forever. And then it opened. The darkness below me under the ice slit open revealing and eye. A giant swirling black inky cornea within a glowing yellow iris.  I recoiled. It was as if I was swimming in the sight of a god., and I had never imagined such fear. I suddenly understood what all the “fear of God” was about and knew my insignificance. And yet, I was supposedly on a mission to save the Earth. How were we, three puny humans on this ice, one of us chanting, one standing silently, and one on his knees about to puke in his helmet doing anything to stop this asteroid?

Maria L. Berg Writober7 Day 27