Uncovering Skeletons

Write to me of loss, I said. I'm interested in loss. Tell me about the first time. What did it feel like?

I wrote about losing my wisdom tooth, I've written about losing contests, I asked you to write about your losses. Succinctly, freely, instantly, 250 words or less. Some of you did, and it was fantastic.

Deb at Kicking Corners wrote about an old loss that somehow uncovered more recent losses.
Michelle at Buttered Toast Rocks wrote about the good kind of loss - the little loss of selfishness that comes with being a mother.
Larissa at Papa Is a Preacher wrote about the necessity of loss for growth, the divine plan in loss and even used a parable.
Masked Mom wrote about a loss of something indescribable as a child, but clearly a loss.

Jane In Her Infinite Wisdom sent me this marvelous link. It's a project driven by loss, to uncover the commonalities across the board in all kinds of loss.

Casey has a whole blog dedicated to dealing with cyber losses. Check it out here.

I had a few other responses, too. A fellow blogger commented on the BlogHer version of the post and wondered if it was necessary to examine losses.

A friend of mine told me this in an email: "I apologize, but I'm not gonna write about loss. I'm trying to explain, but I'm having trouble getting the words right. So simply put, I'm not gonna write about loss cuz I don't want to."


Only a very small part of this whole exercise comes from a creepy voyeurism on my part, I promise. I have been pushing my writing (obviously not my blog writing) to its limits and beyond lately. I've tried to stop being so polite, so proper. It has been the sweatiest of exercise for me. I don't like to sweat, but there is the hope that after I'm all showered up, I'll feel better for having done it. Not feel better for the sake of a kind of therapy, but that the writing will feel better - healthier, more toned, leaner, stronger. I believe in writing for therapeutic reasons; I don't necessarily believe in publishing said writing. I do, however, think we can use these intense emotions, these moments in our life that take our breath away (for good or for bad) to enrich our writing, rather than skimming merrily along the surface.

There is a price, though. It's sweaty. It's uncomfortable. It's exhausting. It sometimes takes you places you weren't quite prepared to go. Sometimes it frightens small children (this is why I write after they've gone to bed.) If you've read my blog for any time at all, you may have realized that I like to examine things. I appreciate so much all of you who chose to examine along with me. You are my comrades, my co-conspirators, my fellow travelers through the madness that is writing. I have nothing but the utmost gratitude and respect for all of you. As always, if you don't see your link or if I've overlooked someone, LET ME KNOW! I want to include everyone. Thank you.

So, my 230-some-odd words on loss. I wrote four different pieces to get to this one. I had to peel back several layers of defenses and I probably could stand to peel a few more. But I wanted to get this done, so I could share the lovely work you all have done.

It hurts in the center of my chest, and when I breathe around it, it leaks out my eyes.
I can't write this. It cuts to the quick and it hurts.
It divides muscle from bone and leaves me a lifeless, spineless heap.
It exposes my useless mask and the skeleton it hides.
We hide our skeletons, not in the closet, but right under our skin.
They prop us up, they keep us walking, keep up the framework of our appearances.
These skeletons aren't hanging out forgotten, underneath out of season clothes, dust bunnies, defunct vacuum cleaners and the shoes I forgot I had. That's not where our skeletons live.
They walk around just under the surface, always there. They hurt and they break us when we bump up against things unexpectedly. Like a picture. Out of the blue, just pops unexpectedly where there was nothing before and you bark your shins or stub your toe.
I didn't stub my toe. It hurts just behind my ribs, that skeleton that covers my heart. Protects it and other soft and vulnerable things. It hurts. The bruise is from the inside. It threatens to burst.
All unnatural, unnerving to see the skeleton on the outside. The little bit of bone, out of place, poking through flesh. It sickens. It must be addressed. It must be healed.
I don't want to write this.
It hurts.

This Is How We Do It

Last week I posed a question: How Do You Do That Thing We Do?
How do you write? From whence comes your inspiration? How does the process work for you?
There were a lot of answers. A lot of them were similar: a lot of people just seem to sit and write, then edit what comes out when they're done. A lot of people get sudden flashes of inspiration at the most inconvenient times. For some it is a necessity, a drive. Some of us couldn't explain, exactly. It generated so much fascinating discussion - read the comments on that post! So much good information there. It generated a few posts, too. And that, my friends, is the beauty of blogging. People in their living rooms, kitchens, offices, pajamas, all across the world can sit and chat together instantaneously about the things they love. For your reading and writing pleasure, I've assembled the posts (that I was aware of) here. Please, it is not my intention to leave anyone out, so if I've missed you or someone you know, let me know!

Masked Mom wrote three! Two are full of good information about getting an essay ready for submission and waiting on the answer. One is about her process - or as much as she can tell us about it anyway. AND she has a hat.

Tara at Faith In Ambiguity talks about being alive while she writes. About editing, about telling the muse to wait. About finding exactly the right words.

Dawn at Alphabet Salad surprises herself where she ends up. She also edits as she goes along and then tweaks, tweaks, tweaks until it's perfect.

JT at In Search of a Title talks about the different kinds of writing she does in her life - for work, for pleasure, for herself, for others and how they differ. She prefers to write essays over fiction and to find exactly the right word to express herself.

M at the M-Half of the M & J Show prompted even more discussion in her post about writing vs. blogging.

And! The fashionably late Jane In Her Infinite Wisdom talks about the most key ingredient for writing - courage.

Jewels at Frazzled & Frumpy is in the process of shopping a novel. I have read part of it and I think it's going to go places. She shares some what she's learned here.

Are there more? Link them here in the comments. And a great big thank you for such interesting discussion and input. Having all you people around every day keeps me writing when the muse is stamping his tattooed foot and saying "IDONWANNA!" and chucking great big cinder blocks in my stream of consciousness.

Also, speaking of blog friends, the lovely Deb over at Kicking Corners is a busy lady making this writing dream come true, so she asked me to guest post today. Go check it out - not for my nonsense, but for her gorgeous blog.

Sweating With My Blog Homies

What do cliffs, needles, blackberries, mothers, whirs, and voices have in common? Why bloggers, of course! Sometime in the past few weeks (they all run together in blog-land for me) I posted about a poetry exercise that tickled my fancy and extended an invitation for some audience participation. That's the beauty of blogging, isn't it? The community of it?

Several sporting bloggers gave it a whirl and I'm dancing and whirling with them. They all came up with such vastly different pieces using the same tools. It has just delighted me to no end to see that sort of magic at work. The exercise was The Ten Minute Spill and I outlined the instructions here.

Confession time: This exercise was hard for me. It was much harder than I originally imagined. The time limit panicked me a little bit, as did the line count, did I use enough of the words? My offerings pale in comparison with those of my fellow bloggers. For some reason, this also delights me no end. I love a challenge, I love to sweat over things. I even enjoy the feeling that I've done something rather poorly and therefore have plenty of room to stretch and improve. I will never climb Mount Everest - I find sports that can kill you somewhat distasteful. I do, however, create mini-Everests for myself to hurl myself against and grow dizzy and deplete my oxygen in the process. Thank you so much to those of you who did with me. It has been so much fun. For those of you still considering, please do. We all write for different reasons and about different things and with different voices. I think what ties us together is discovery. What's not to discover?

Here are the lovely contributors, my fellow climbers who took their ten minutes and spilled. I've also added my favorite line from each of their poems next to their links:

Larissa at Papa Is a Preacher "I'll take on all it entails, the celery, the strawberries, / The fails, the victories, all that I can be."


sebtown at In Search of a Title  "I can edge to the cliff. / I can fly. / Every day I can be scared and I can be alive."


Michelle at Buttered Toast Rocks "They teeter on a tightrope cliff edge / Dreaming dreams bigger than I had dreamed for them"


Masked Mom at Masked Mom "The desire to protect them all--from the world, from myself--overpowers nearly everything, / Until, finally, fear's voice is the loudest one in my head"


Julie at Feeding The Cat "I can't hear her voice, / or smell her spit on my hair / to hold down a cow lick."


Esbboston at My Worlds My Words My Worries "But I thought about how much I had grown in the last year, plus how much weaker my mother was getting since her ax accident..."


Please do go check out their links and read the whole poems. They are just delightful and imaginative and so very exciting. If you have done this exercise and not shared it, or I've overlooked it please link up! [If I've overlooked yours, please hit me with the Twitter stick or something and LETMEKNOW so that I can add you to the post. I just got a foot of hair cut off and I'm still heady from the fumes of the styling products.] This has been so much fun. Who knows? I may drag out a few more fun exercises that I come across. 


Oh, yeah. I promised you dreadful. Here it is. Catch me in my black lipstick and a dog collar reading this at a college poetry slam near you:


She didn't know how to jump.
The clouds lay beneath her
And tremble, wobble, no.
She didn't care a lick
about the gazes, intense as needles
from the faces below.
She didn't want her mother
to find her.
She could almost see the News vans, helicopters now.
Nothing left of her but blackberry jam.

Author's note: When I was just now typing this, I typed "feces" instead of "faces" and almost left it because it made the whole dreary affair a teeny bit more interesting. Thanks for playing with me, blog friends!