Wording Wednesday Writing Prompt: A Happy Life

I'm a fan of prompt writing. It keeps the playful part of a writing life alive for me, letting me write something new with no expectations for its future.

Sometimes a piece that began as a prompt turns into something that I can expand upon and publish, but most often, it's about keeping in touch with my creative joy.

I write every day, but when you're working on something large-scale, it can become a slog, and leave you struggling to remember why you love this.

All that is a longwinded introduction to this piece. Fellow author Andy Brokaw is the host of a writing prompt each week. She calls it "Wording Wednesday" because the prompts are released each Wednesday.  You can check it out and participate here if it catches your fancy, too.

Here's this week's prompt and my take on it: "A Happy Life."

"Graniaile" by Nicole Chartrand

"Motherhood looks good on you." Giovanni waggled his thick eyebrows, making the baby laugh, a wet, sputtery giggle that left Louisa's shirt further dampened.

She grimaced down at the infant in her arms. "How can something be so cute and so repulsive at the same time?"

"Are you going to keep it?" Angelo came up beside his brother, swinging an arm over his shoulders even though he had to tiptoe to do it. Louisa inhaled so sharply she choked on a strand of her long auburn hair. The two brothers looked at each other and shrugged. Angelo sounded disappointed when he said, "Guess that's a 'no,' then?"

Louisa held the child out at arm's length, noticing that it wasn't only her shirt he'd left dampened. A circular stain expanded across the thigh of her trousers and a sea breeze lifted the scent of fresh urine to her nose. A life at sea meant that she was never completely dry, but in the few days since they'd rescued this baby from the remains of a shipwreck, she'd found whole new worlds of damp and sticky and moist. She looked at her crew. "That's a no. Keep heading for the convent."

She leaned to set the child inside a woven basket on the deck, something Giovanni had found and cleaned out to serve as a holding pen and a bed for the little one. When she tried to straighten, she found that the little boy had grabbed the laces of her blouse. He looked into her face, his eyes wide and clear, free of malice or sadness, light blue as the sky above them. He was beautiful.

If life had gone differently, she might well have had a boy like this of her own. A strong boy clinging to her skirt while she kept a cottage in the mountain village where she'd been raised herself. It might have been a happy life.

The child's grip was strong. She had to pry the pudgy fingers apart to extract herself. Angelo squatted down to offer the baby his finger to hold, distracting him before he could start to wail. Louisa walked to the rail and lifted her head into the wind, closing her eyes to feel the caress of the sea air on her skin.

Yes, it might have been a happy life, but, then, so was this one.

IWSG: Overwhelmed

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.

If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

This month's wonderful co-hosts are Lee Lowery, Juneta Key, Yvonne Ventresca, and T. Powell Coltrin!

Be sure to check out their blogs (and others on this great blog hop) when you're finished here!
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I forgot to post this morning. That's how overwhelmed I am. I mean, I can give you a list of excuses, but I really look forward to this post every month and it completely slipped my mind. That's not like me.

Obviously I'm juggling too much. But what can I drop?

I did say no to a few things this spring, trying to help find a better balance. I didn't apply for any conventions or author events in February, March, or April, giving myself back several weekends of time for other things. I also left my long time critique group, deciding to be a little more selfish with that time as well.

But then I said yes to other things, helping to organize a few events for my Friends of the Public Library group, and taking on teaching a new class for a local community college.

I think I'm still suffering from what I complained about last month: the demands of a full time writing life squashed into part time hours leaving me feeling a day late and a dollar short all the time.

I'd love to hear tips from others who manage a writing life while holding down a day job. How do you make it work without driving yourself crazy? What do you let drop?

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers Zora Neale Hurtson

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Zora Neale Hurston
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Dear Ms. Hurston,

I wish I could have met you. All accounts paint you as a vibrant and fascinating woman, so charismatic as to charm the pants off a snake.

And your words! They sung on the page, so full of life and wonder and determination. Their Eyes Were Watching God has taken a rightful place as your masterwork. 

Janie is an unforgettable character and her story inspiring and heartbreaking all at the same time. Rather like your own.

In reading about your life, I've learned that you never saw much in the way of financial gain from your work, that, when you died, a collection had to be taken up to bury you.

Your work, too, might have been lost to time if not for the interest of another writer, Alice Walker. What a loss that would have been!

Luckily for me, and generations of readers, Ms. Walker's interest started a revival of interest in your work and now we can all read your words.

 

I hope you're a star in heaven now, like you deserved to be on earth.

Love,

-Samantha

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Empress Yamato

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Empress Yamato.
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Dear Empress Yamato,

I'm probably being very presumptuous to write you a letter. You're an empress after all, and I'm a middle school teacher living more than a thousand years and more than a thousand miles from your world.

That's the problem with us 21st century women. We just don't know our place. I like to think you'd understand that, as a woman ruler so long ago. 

There's just something about your story. Something comforting in knowing that a woman rose to power so long ago, and maintained it for eleven years. Something affecting in your words of grief and love.

I haven't seen much of your work. Not much has survived to this day, and even less has been translated and published in English.

Like me, you took special joy in observing the change of seasons, and the weather seemed tied to what you were feeling. My favorite is this one:

It speaks to me of the way grief can come along to smack you in the face at unexpected moments, when something innocuous and ordinary brings your lost love to mind and you feel the loss of them all over again. Those damp sleeves break my heart.

Your admirer from across time and space,
-Samantha

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Anne Sexton

 This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Anne Sexton. I'm cheating a little, using her for X since she has an X in her name, but I don't have a favorite writer whose name begins with X, so here we go!
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Dear Ms. Sexton,

 What a voice!

When people talk about a whiskey and cigarettes voice, they mean you, I think, whether we're literally listening to a recording of you reciting your poetry, or reading it for ourselves on the page.

It's scratchy and hard-edged either way, sounding as if there had been a lot of shouting to get to where we are now.

Some people praised your work for its confessional nature, others use the very same words to dismiss it. But "confessional" is just the right word.

Reading your work gives a feeling like someone is sharing a secret with you, something not normally said aloud, something subversive and strange and fascinating.

 You weren't a good person. After your suicide, the sexual abuse of your daughter was revealed. It gave me a strange feeling when I heard about it, as it often does when you learn that someone you admire has done something that isn't admirable.

It brought up that whole art/artist controversy. Can I still admire the work, when I know something ugly about the creator? My answer, is yes, I kind of can. Art after all isn't necessarily about what is comfortable and easy. Sometimes, it's about confronting uncomfortable mixtures of emotions and conflicting beliefs.

And you Ms. Sexton, if nothing else, were certainly all about ambiguity and contradictions.

Thanks for disturbing my complacency,
-Samantha

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Edith Wharton

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Edith Wharton
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Dear Ms. Wharton,

You broke my heart, one winter when I was about twenty.

With no idea what I letting myself in for, I picked up your novel Ethan Frome. My goodness, but Thomas Hardy has nothing on you when it comes to dark ironies of life and the cruelty of fate.

In literature at least, I have taste for having my heart broken. I like a good, sad story, one that hits me right in the feels. You were a master of it.

Much more recently, I read your Age of Innocence, another tragic love story where two hearts that seem destined to be together are kept apart.

You wrote longing and guilt and feeling trapped so beautifully, capturing the romantic ache of yearning for something you can't have like few artists can.

Some readers make a mistake in overlooking your work, assuming from the covers that it's another stodgy period piece more about corsets and hairstyles than about anything of worth, but about the depths of a person's heart.

It's true that a person could learn a lot about the circles you moved in by reading your novels. You're the main voice the world remembers when it comes to capturing "Old New York." But all that was just the setting in the end. The jewels were in the characters.

Thanks for breaking my heart so breathtakingly,
-Samantha

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Virginia Woolf

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Virginia Woolf
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Dear Ms. Woolf,

I first read your books as a college student. First was Mrs. Dalloway, a book that is both about everything and nothing at the same time.  An entire life contained in the events of a single day.

I have to admit that I didn't instantly fall in love with your stream-of-consciousness style. But I was fascinated by your portrayal of the subtleties of a person's heart. You "got" sadness.

Unfortunately, you got it too well. You died at your own hand. People say now that you may have had bipolar disorder, something the medical establishment knew very little about in the 1930s and 1940s. Certainly they didn't know enough to help you. We lost you to suicide. I like to think it would have been different for you if you lived now. I hope it would.

I recently read To the Lighthouse, and gasped as I read, recognizing so many of the situations: the way men and women speak past each other, the difficulty of finding your way as an artist.

Your style may have been radical, but your themes remain universal. A Room of One's Own shouldn't be a radical idea, but so may of us still struggle for literal and figurative space for our art.

I wish you'd found a lasting place for yours.

-Samantha