Crazy Creative Cleverness

For the weekend, I'll leave you with what's inspiring me these days, living-, writing-, and laughing-wise...

1. Sweeney Todd music: are you surprised? I'm gearing for the movie release in December and the musical coming to Dallas in January (hint, hint, Chris). The music is complex in its themes and its revelation of relationships through the characters' interaction in song, their harmony and disharmony. The story (and when the movie comes out, I'll do one of my movie and theology posts, which I haven't done in a while) is about a villian, who we all know is the hero of his own story. But this villian, a barber who goes on a murderous rampage, generates compassion when you find out his story, and you wonder, is he really the villian or the hero (or anti-hero)? And it's an excellent commentary on life and the detachment that's been going on since the Industrial Revolution (and dare I say Internet Revolution?). And if you don't laugh at "Try a Little Priest," then there's something wrong with you. Okay, enough about that one.
   


2. Pushing Daisies, the TV show. Have you seen this one? It's different from anything I've seen. I love the characters, the humor, and the color. I mean literally the color. Bright, vivid, and hopeful, as are the characters, come to think about it. Excellent writing.



3. The Memory Keeper's Daughter, my current read.


4. Lush writing. After The Road, which was minimalistic, the words and sentences feel like a feast on which to gorge myself. I love words. Okay, so no laughs here. But good story thus far. Good complicated characters. I love Caroline. And Al. I love Al.



5. My Mardi Gras yarn. That's not the technical name, but it's what I'm calling it because of the colors and the flashy gold weaved throughout. It's rich in texture with several strands weaved throughout--furry, glittery, and colorful. It inspired to make my own yarn. No, not by shearing sheep or picking cotton, but by buying different supplies--thin cotton thread which I'll knot like those 80s friendship bracelets with beads, furry "Elf Eyelash" yarn, and a strand of thin, gold, ribbon. Knotting the cotton and tying in the beads will take a long time since I have to do this with very, very long strands. I won't get started for a month or so because of some other Christmas knitting projects I need to do first. A secret dream--that I'll be able to someday sell these crazy, off-beat, gypsy scarves and wraps. I have a lot to learn. After I learn more about knitting, I'd like to take on embroidery. Hobby Lobby has these great embroidery patterns: Moroccan, modern, Indian. Love them. Someday, I'll put them on my jeans and then I'll start putting them on my crazy scarves and wraps. But that's a long time from now.
   
6. "The Velveteen Rabbit": how egotistical is it to say that your own writing inspires you and makes you laugh? This is a short story I wrote and am revising to submit to journals (it's a quirky piece written in 1st person--any journal suggestions?), and I can't help but like it. I think, personally, it's one of my best short stories, not that I've written many of them, but this one does something unusual, and I let the stream of consciousness flow. Yes, yes, I crack myself up.
   Oh, and because of this story (not my story but the children's book, which, if you ask me, is traumatic), I've never been able to get rid of any stuffed animals, and trust me, there have been lots. Finally, I gave away a garbage bag or two to charity hoping another child could love them. But Big Foot, who's been a close friend since before I was born, he stays with me.

I'll leave you with those five. What's inspiring you these days?

Writing Influences

Of course, there are thousands and thousands of influences--more than I know. From growing up on Anne of Green Gables and Nancy Drew and Janette Oke to digging in to Austen and Dickens to discovering new loves like Anne Tyler and Richard Russo and Lisa Samson. From practicing piano and flute to studying the symphony to poring over Kierkegaard.
But there are two things that I keep in the front of my mind:

1. One dance scene from a musical of which I can't remember the title, and
2. Hebrew poetry.

First, the musical: I remember the musical not being all that great. One song from it frequently gets stuck in my head, rather one line from one song. Some musicals resemble a two-term presidency: the first act too wrapped up in impressing you that it comes off on the idiotic side and the second act concerning itself with the story. This musical was the same. The second act was good. I could've done without the first.
Nonetheless, this one scene captured me. To set the stage: three sisters come home after the death of their mother and rediscover themselves and each other (we've seen it before). They grew up dancing together, and in this one scene, the youngest sister resurrects a dancing song. I don't remember the details, but she had to call out the steps and moves to her older sister (step, ball, change sort of thing). During the dance, the sisters get into more and more of a heart-felt, serious talk, all the meantime puncuated by "step, ball, change." I loved it. I loved how something everyday acted as an ostinato during their heart-to-heart. It both added to the tension but also kept it from being maudlin.
I want this in my writing. Life intersects. Kids don't stop fighting over the Batman toy just because your best friend called in tears. It meshes together.

Second, the Hebrew poetry. Two things in particular: metonymy and symbolic parallelism. Metonymy is a figure of speech where a word or phrase is substituted with another associated with it. It's saying "The White House said" rather than "The President said." It's claiming that "the hand of God was upon him" rather than "He acted with God's power." Sometimes it's taking a piece of something to represent the whole, or the whole to represent just a piece. I could give you thousands of examples, illustrations sometimes beautiful, sometimes shocking.
I want this in my writing. Pieces substituting for a whole. A grown woman crying because she lost her favorite stuffed animal as a child when really she's grieving her lost innocence.
And symbolic parallelism. Two lines in Hebrew poetry, both metaphors, usually, that echo the same thought.
In other words, my lists.
I love my lists. I can't resist them. Like in the beginning of my book about a single mom:

One of these days I’ll be able to say “single mother” without retching or having visions of Craig’s death, one where he falls out of a boat at Lake Wallenpaupack and gets caught in the propellers, one where he gets lost skiing in the Poconos and eventually gets eaten by wolves, and one where he gets poisoned by one of the hers when she discovers another of the hers.

Lists of painful and untimely deaths.
Reading Hebrew poetry my whole life, is it any wonder I love metaphors?