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[incrambles]

Quick And Dirty Tips For Creating Subplots

– Not everyone should love the hero.

– The more antagonists you have the more conflicts you create.

– Real life should happen to the characters, even if they are saving the world they have jobs and responsibilities.

– Give the character interests and friends outside of work.

– Multiple point of views aren’t a bad thing if you know how to juggle them.

– It all needs to come together at the end.

– Not every antagonist needs to be vanquished at the end.

– – Give us more than one character to love– (from Diantha)

— Make each and every character count — (from Diantha)

Stories need subplots. Make sure yours has one.

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“To write what’s scaring us, we have to be willing to scare ourselves, to write things we would never show anyone. This is how we build bravery while writing, and from the brave idea, we can make art.”

— Sara Brickman, “Micro Lesson: How To Write What Scares You,” for Hugo House (via tristealven)

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Here we all are, trying to find what makes us tick. Then taking those ticks, adjusting our metronome to a pace we can write music to, stumbling over our instruments to keep up with the ticking magic. 

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Edit Leather Hats 2015

I have all these keychains of leather hats, the first one, he painted with red love letters and gave to me, now lost somewhere in the back of a red car, driven by a taxista that tells me I have pretty eyes and asks me about my novio. I have all these little leather hats, small enough to snuggly fit my pet rats. In my head, they proudly wear them and dance to his Christmas lament, “What can a cowboy do? What can a cowboy do?” As the tide is pulled by his self-proclaimed moon. These trinkets become memories and memories become confessions. And this moment is now white flowers inches off the ground, a blanket covering lovers in a pool of dew on top of the highest mountain, crackling sparks dancing away from the fire in harmony with the whisper of a brook that is the only reminder of reality, while I search for a forgiveness I denied myself. I feel the bare beginnings of fearful young perceptions, from the tin rattles to the lost love notes of a 9 year old that were scolded by a woman who needed to let something go. I feel regret for complaints and dwellings when I had all in front of my face as I tighten my grip on a smoky friend who tried killing me but never asked any questions. But then they’re just keychains, just Central American souvenirs, and then they’re in a box that won’t be opened for years. 

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My room is still there. I walked in and nothing looked the same. The bed was in the same place and the desk hadn’t moved, but all the traces of the late nights were gone. The outline of the heart Jordan drew on the window is the one thing that remained. It was faint, but it was there…one small squiggle to prove to me this wasn’t a different enclosure.     

And I thought of the nights staying up with Ellen playing Mario, drinking coffee and smoking too much with Simran, and watching Sarah Silverman with Jordan instead of studying the human anatomy. I won’t ever go back there again. Whoever moves in probably won’t notice the remnants of the heart on the window, and they won’t know what went on there… the thoughts that I bounced off the walls every night, trying to figure it all out. They won’t know that I had the best friends anyone could ask for to sit with me on that bed and in that closet. I miss them more than I miss that room, and I think that we can paint the world the way we painted everything in sight the day we had our special Tree City Smoothies. I know they all painted my world. 

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Is Evasion a word?

This is the poem I wrote about us, my little Yoshi, the night we couldn’t sleep. The night we couldn’t talk. I hope it resonates with you like it does with me. 

Is Evasion a Word?

7, 8 lay them straight.

Hours of silence

with blinks of

“Are you awake?”

We spent all of 5 and 6

trying to pick up our sticks.

And though our bodies

were neat and parallel on the bed,

the 7 and 8

were out of reach in our heads. 

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Dear Annie, I loved you once.

This is a work in progress, I wrote it really fast so it needs some editing, I suppose. 

Dear Annie,

I loved you once.

You brought faeries to my forests.

And buttercup petals to my lips.

You brought huckleberries to my bucket

and tie dye to my heart.

And I saw you.

Your future was as straight and smooth as your hair,

although your past was a twisting road I couldn’t understand.

Alice’s eyes were always looking over the lip of the mushroom,

and the faeries you drew

were the ones I saw fly by me and hide in the curling stumps

in the crumbling mud.

I loved you once.

You were young but you gave her cloth diapers and flowers for her hair,

I saw you.

I walked to you,

did you know I was only walking to you?

Did you know I saw you?

Where did you go,

and how did you get there? 

To that place of rat droppings and spoiled food,

of towering trinkets and no-shows.

I can still see you in your cakes and tarts,

in your dyes and rubberbands.

In your laugh.

Where have you walked and what have you seen 

that made you lose yourself? 

Dear Annie,

I loved you once.

You were a song to me. 

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A Melatonin Journey

By Me

She can change without moving

ice fishing in luxury for half a grand 

one perfect circle

an absence of ice

an unlucky portal for her

a passageway 

to possible bragging rights 

for the fishermen.

She can change without moving

she can melt into the mattress

although her insides frost under the slick separator. 

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Leather Hats On My Floor Unedited and Unashamed.

I’m kind of drunk, so this is a raw, unedited mix of words that came to me off and on through the night. Maybe someday it will be a few different poems. But as for now, this is what it became, so this is what I present to you. 

I have all these little leather hats. The first one with tiny red painted letters,

somewhere in the back of a red car,

driven by a taxista that tells me I have pretty eyes.

I have all these little leather hats,

keychains but small enough to snuggly fit my rats

singing, “What can a cowboy do? What can a cowboy do?”

As the tide is pulled by the moon.

It’s pine needles,

it’s white flowers inches off the ground,

a blanket in a pool of dew on top of the highest mountain.

It’s crackling sparks dancing away from the fire

in harmony with the whisper of a brook,

against me.

It’s a peach sky behind two trees that are almost one.

It’s red fingers and pink hands and a forgiveness I denied myself.

It’s the bare beginnings of things I have never let go,

from the tin rattles to the lost love notes of a 9 year old

that were scolded by a woman who needed to let something go.

It’s complaints and dwellings when I had all in front of my face.

It’s acceptance and hanging on to a friend

who tried killing me but never asked questions.

It’s organizing.

It’s faking it.

It’s being a fake and not feeling ashamed.

It’s thoughts spilled in poetry with no pen or paper,

coming and going to never return

but serving their purpose on the back porch. 

It’s music in the background I never understood.

It’s bike rides in a tennis court, 

so close to the net,

I felt like a fish on the verge of being canned 

and turned into something that breaks down

in the stomachs of the fortunate.

It’s the end of a book I love and and am proud of

no matter the states of mind and the shame felt to fill the pages.

It’s the piles and piles of organized papers 

that still have no place to sleep. 

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Whitetail

No one will ever understand you.

You’re a whitetail with eyes of black puddles

that have seen every branch that breaks 

from the weight of the snow. 

You’re a thousand balloons 

that do nothing more than burst to bits

above the clouds.

You’re a mound to be decorated

with cloth Lilies and jealous pennies.

And no one will ever understand you,

but I am starting to see the branches break.

I’m starting to feel the weight. 

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Old poem

Lapses

She cuts her strings.

From there she can become the one she watches.

From here,

the twine cocoons around her lips,

yet to never float 

in the flowers of her promised future.

She cuts her strings.

But not without the tools.

If she finds scissors,

who will teach her how to use them,

with her clumsy, eyelash stained hands?

A prisoner.

She never had a chance.

A lover.

Lost in the lapses. 

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Louise's Belongings

A yoke-yellow object

on the mirror,

it’s made for Louise.

Their symbol,

painted in blood,

a bloody chick,

no feathers yet,

promising promises

of bedsheets

with boots on them.   

Covered it with a snowman,

so it wouldn’t crumble

in this hand.

But, don’t they say,

breaking the yoke 

is the best part?

Yeah,

but not when there’s vessels.

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Teenage Pines

My bare skin was encircled. Encircled in teenage pines. Vibrating inside my skull, vibrating inside my brain, the universe only sang       through the wires pulsating into my body’s tiniest bones,       through the cry of the hawk I heard,       through the syrupy summer sun,       through the ceiling of green needles.  My bare skin was encircled. Encircled in red wings. Gliding across my dusty path, gliding across my dusty plans, the universe only teased     through the signs stacking inside my head’s dungeon of Tetris blocks,     through a famous, naked, weaving dance,     through the plump birds that fucked with my fate,     through the waiting room of affection.

My bare skin was encircled. Encircled in the stale air of a waiting room.  

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Kicking it old school

This is an old poem I wrote fall of 2009. I edited it a bit because there were a parts that made absolutely NO sense (I don’t know what I was thinking) but for the most part, it’s the original. It’s not the best and doesn’t flow too great,  but it was the first time I wrote in a long time, so I hope you enjoy.  

Swings and mosquitoes

The summer days saw through me,

I felt maybe for a minute that you didn’t.

Your eyes in the street lights were worth the whole year.

Suzuki’s and parking lots.

You didn’t know it, but you built me

a week made of dreams.

College crashed my carefree approach,

a new page bleached by the sun,

you were on the tip of my tongue.

Finally, but gone too soon.

And I’ll meet you there, like I said: any day, any time.

So our glasses can clink and our egos can drink

compliments and coffee.

Now you’re down south

I wish I was too.

The end of the week tore me from you.

and you may not care,

and you may not fret,

but my eyes can’t look away just yet.

The bracelet, the branch, and the ring seekers,

Constantly in my thoughts,

And if we stay low enough we’ll pass their eyes,

and the night will swallow us whole.

If we get there in time,

we’ll have styrofoam cups

and ice to crunch.

Shivered walks, embroidering the street.

No drops grazed us in the backseat.

The sun came up by the time I drove home.

“I was out late with a vampire, Mom. Not alone.”

Someday, maybe someday.

You’ll be back and I’ll be back

and I’ll meet you at the corner.

Coffee. Pie. and Perfectly passed time.

And as I’ve hoped, at that moment you’ll be mine.

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Exercise: (Start With a Line)

The one thing you’ll notice when it begins to rain is that people huddle. They feel the community that they usually shrug away. A man, soaked completely from the storm, seeks refuge in a cafe. He sloshes into the warmness and, in unison, all the caffeinated poets raise their heads, distracted from their local newspaper and their steamed cream. This look is us human’s way of saying, “We understand the hardships of being umbrellaless. Come, share some of our warmth. We have room.” These huddles last until the blue sky, when everyone scatters their own way like a jar of marbles dropped to the kitchen floor. And it was during this particular huddle, and this particular downpour that I first met Annie.

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Exercise: (Start With a Place)

Beginning

She began the night under the church light. The harsh light illuminated her like she was a holy statue, wooden and chipped from age. The church steps felt cold against her thighs as she tilted the bottle to sip. It was almost as if the church had called her name that night. As she walked from the gas station with a heavy forty ounces tucked under her arm, the church light caught her eye in the dark. So she went and she sat and she drank. The field next to the church whispered a cricket’s lullaby to her as she sank into this space. She hadn’t been here before, but the air hugged her as if it had been waiting for her all along and its breeze was a sigh of relief to remember her presence. In the center of this sphere of illumination, her dark green jacket roughly contrasted the white of the heavy doors behind her. Each ounce of malt liquor made her feel more like the statue she resembled and less like a girl who sifts through the dark looking for a place to be alone. She wondered, can holy statues hear prayers?And if they can, do they also hear thoughts, the kind that become prayers without our approval while we’re looking the other way? Right now she didn’t seem to have any prayers planted or prepared. In two hours, she would meet him at the gated road. If she were to hand over a prayer to the wooden dolls, she decided that all she would ask is for this last follow-through. He would be waiting for her. Maybe he would hug her tighter than the breeze that encircled her holy perch, and his arms would say all those words that were always beautiful but out of order. Maybe he would ask her with disapproval why she walked, why she stumbled on her feet and her sentences. Maybe he would share her sips and walk her back to the comfort of the church steps, where she had fallen in love with the crickets two hours before. They could decide together how to draw a thick line between thoughts and prayers, and stack them neatly in two piles to compare against each other. Passing the halfway mark on the glass bottle, she swallowed the malt liquor and admired the church light shining through the caramel liquid. She played possible scenarios on repeat in her head, a child swinging on the playground with no way to slow down and too afraid to jump. Maybe the gated road would be empty, and she would walk back to the church alone, with an empty prayer stuffed roughly into her empty glass bottle.