Tangled branches and writing

I’m a big believer in this Mary Heaton Vorse quotation: The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

I have to confess, my chair has not seen a lot of action lately, for all sorts of reasons, mostly the effect of distractions big and small, including a fraught holiday season during a pandemic. My creative brain has been pretty much a void for weeks. Maybe months.

But now that the new year is here and I’m looking ahead to what will or what might or what might not happen in 2021, I find myself starting to twitch a bit. Standing at the kitchen door looking out at my backyard – cardinals and chickadees sparring for safflower at the feeder; a pine bough, heavy with snow, touching the ground to form an arch; the snowy branches of a honeysuckle tangled against the sky – I’m starting to hear the voices of as-yet-unwritten characters talking among themselves. Nothing clear. Nothing important. Just voices – characters – starting to tangle up together in my creative brain. 

Sort of like the branches of my honeysuckle.

So, I’m not worried. I’ll just stand here for a while, sip my tea, watch the birds, listen to the voices, try to see through the tangled branches, and know that as long as I’m listening, I’m also writing. 

Writer-in-Residence Adventure: Chapter 1

What a fantastic afternoon today! Fourteen enthusiastic young writers and me, their (so far) fearless leader, in the school library, writing, talking, writing, laughing, and writing some more.

Today was the first chapter in my Writer-In-Residence adventure with Mrs. N’s talented grade seven and grade eight students. We talked about choosing the right words and thinking before writing. We shared stories and laughed (probably louder and longer than we should have) at some of the creative and chaotic ideas that came bubbling out. The room was humming with energy!

When it was time for free-writing, these young artists turned their focus to the task at hand and silence fell over the room – the sign of real writers at work. I was impressed with their commitment and concentration, not to mention the joy they obviously took in the deceptively simple act of writing a good story.

I can’t wait to read some of the projects “my” writers are working on, and I’ll have a chance to do just that several times before our Big Event next May: a Storytelling Cafe in which these young authors will read and share their work with an audience of parents, peers and perhaps other members of their school community: a kind of mini-Festival of Writers.

At the end of this afternoon, I shared my favourite writing quotation with the group: The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Something tells me these young writers have that “art” well in hand.

(Photo: Lemanz R, Creative Commons)