Contradictory Abstract Nouns (Photography Challenge)

Today I’m looking at finding the disdain in pride and the pride in disdain. Though I’m not going to risk trying to take the images today—yesterday I twisted funny and almost ended up living in the mirrorworld because my back seized up—I did want to share an interesting find in my study this morning. Pride appears to be a Janus word, a word that also means its opposite. While exploring the definitions and collecting words in the thesaurus. I found disdain in the thesaurus under pride, and pride in the thesaurus under disdain. Thus finding the disdain in pride and the pride in disdain only takes looking in the thesaurus. There are positive aspects of pride such as happiness and self-esteem, but it also has negative aspects such as egotism and narcissism which can lead to disdain. I think this study deserves another look when I’m not in pain, and I’m capable of exploring its imagery.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS)

Today’s prompt for some stream of consciousness writing is “morning.”

This morning was so beautiful—the sun rising behind the mountain; the mountain reflecting on the lake, four shadowed water foul drifting on its surface, a soft, pastel world—and filled with sharp back pain.It’s hard to see what will be best for me. Some movement, some rest. All I want is pain free stillness. Hiding from the pain, from any expectation, putting words on the page, but worried that was what I was doing to get this pain n the first place. Why pain, why did you come to visit me? Why did my happy typing call you? Why did my contented creating deserve this? What did I ever do to you? And yet, here you are, my constant companion. What can I say, to kindly ask you to leave? To suggest your departure without being rude? Perhaps this is my punishment for pride. I don’t know if my happiness for finishing NaNoWriMo on the thirteenth was exactly pride: I was feeling grateful for finally understanding what it was like to feel the flow of words that others experience; I was feeling joy that my novel was continuing to inspire me to write, that my characters were talking to each other in my head as I made breakfast; I was feeling excited to possibly finish this draft in one month and see it through to the end: Is that pride? My pride? Before my fall? I didn’t physically fall. It just started to hurt. I don’t even remember when it started.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge

Today’s prompt is “The Myth of (blank).”

The Myth of Morning Pride

The sun crosses the horizon
a threshold accomplishment
she meets with glowing pride
she rises through the branches
casting shadows on nests
she awakens birdsong, and
taking it as praise, she rises
higher, buoyant in her importance
she shines upon the land, warming
the soft grass and sand, and the people
who come out of their boxes
and worship her with their lifted faces
closed eyes and smiles
they bathe in her glory
and she rises higher, kissing
their skin and their hair, soaking
up their laughter and joy
and then she hears,
“Get the sunscreen, hon,”
and the sparkle is blocked by shades
and she hears,” You don’t want to get burned,”
and descends in disgrace at the disdain
the people go back into boxes
the morning has ended
and the sun lowers her head
down the other side of day.

NaNoWriMo

Though I’ve managed to stay on track with my new goal of another 40,000 words by the end of the month which puts me at 2353 words each day, I’ve lost my excitement, and I’m back to having to yank the words out of me. I think it has a lot to do with back pain I’m experiencing causing frustration with life in general, but I think it may also have to do with not being excited about the scene I’m writing, but feeling like it’s necessary to the plot.

Time to brainstorm! If I’m not finding this scene fun, the reader won’t either. There has to be something that can happen that’ll be more interesting to get me from here to there. Maybe it’s time to explore a sub-plot, or maybe today’s the day I jump around a bit. I could even write the end, if that will get me excited again.

I also picked up a mystery novel, The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny. Maybe reading a few chapters with get me excited to get back to my mystery.