Make the world smaller

Last night, I attended a reading and question-and-answer session with Anna Badkhen, a foreign correspondent who has traveled in and out of conflict zones with one purpose - to humanize the conflicts Americans read about quickly and without compassion.
Too often, she explained, western journalists write about war in terms of numbers. Two dead. Ten wounded.
Those people were more than bodies, she argues. They were humans - part of families and a community that laughed, cried and celebrated together.
In her work, she says, she attempts to "make as many people like us - our own - as I can."
In her book, Peace Meals: Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories, she does so by finding the common denominator for any society: Mealtime. Everyone eats - whether it is a handful of dust-covered raisins in the desert or a feast indoors. In Peace Meals, she frames conflict zones - Afghanistan, Iraq, and a number of dangerous places - in terms of the people she shared meals with. Some are still alive. Some are not. But Badkhen works to ensure the reader of Peace Meals and her prolific magazine and feature articles for various publications feels the same connection she did to the area and the people.
"We all have something in common," she said.
Badkhen covered a lot of ground during her Q&A, but stressed finding the commonalities all humans share as a means to connect to what is happening "over there." Her thoughtful pauses, head tilted to the side, eyes clear but distant, showed her connection to "her people there," both alive and dead now. Those who have died are not just casualties of war, but of a lack of humanity.
Her lecture, for me, helped flip the idea of what journalism can do for a community: open a window to a wider world - to make the world larger for people who don't have the means to see it themselves.
Badkhen put it simply. The mission, instead, is to make the world smaller, one intimate story at a time.

Here's how she does it: Dispatches

Quotables:

Badkhen grew up in the Soviet Union, has woven her way around the world, and recently became a U.S. citizen.
"I see myself as a set of eyes and ears and a notebook. And fingers to type it up."

On the decision to travel to Afghanistan on assignment
After reading through The Lonely Planet travel guide's note on when to travel to Afghanistan: "In the Afghan section, it said, 'Don't go.' So I went."

On traveling with a print library
"Someone gave me a Kindle once, and I gave it back to them. I thought it was a coffee coaster."

On revising a piece: Take as much time as you can from it, then look again.
"Sometimes you say this house is broken. It will not stand. You'll find you are putting siding on bad beams." "Be honest with yourself and your audience."

More to come on craft and keeping track of notes in a war zone to come. For now, work!

Inspiration, Part 2

I've been thinking of home a lot. Not where I live, but where I feel like I'm me. Here are some words on one of my favorite places: the shore. A writer friend said I should share it.

"The Shore"

The sun stares hard
makes me squint
as I try to find you on the line
bobbing up and down on the horizon
like a fly on a reel.

We glimmer, us, in this heat
dripping as we bathe in the rays
and scramble for the cool release
a crash of wave will provide.

We’ve simmered here for years
squinting at the horizon
wondering what’s on the other side.

It tastes like sweet salt,
our bodies pulled like taffy
in each direction they decide to go.

The first breath after losing control,
letting it hit or diving straight in,
it’s deep and hard and long.

It’s not the short shot of breeze
that blows grains of sand in my eye
as I watch you bob away in the distance,
a fly on a reel.

Inspiration

Zapped. That's my creativity right now. Words are my life, and life is a little rough right now.

So, being a list person, I made the following list of things that happened this week that made me smile. After I made it, I wrote a little something. And another little something. A full heart makes for a full palette.

Big hearts for:
1. Finding the pups curled up near me when I wake up
2. Huevos rancheros
3. Dancing like no one is watching
4. Napping during college football
5. A good, hard run
6. Stolen glances
7. The sound of rain on the windows early in the morning
8. Getting a handwritten letter in the mail from a source
9. Seeing baby tomatoes and peppers in my garden
10. Heart to hearts with Dad
11. Staring at the night sky, barefoot

What inspires you?

Characterization, Part 2

Here's the piece:

I light up when she looks at me, her eyes intent and direct and piercing my face as though I've the answers she's sought her entire life.
But then, like that, her attention switches. To paper, to people, to anything that comes through the door.
It tires me, this back and forth. Sometimes I close my eyes and dream of when her attention will return. I only desire to give her what she wishes, the window to a world beyond her wildest imagination.
So when her eyes return, urgently seeking, I leap to action. Our relationship is futile. I will always deliver once I'm turned on; she always is seeking just one thing.
And after she finds it? I get so turned off.

-30-

What am I?

Characterization

My betta fish, Elvis Andrus, is quite perky in the morning. He stares at me when I turn the light on in the morning, swimming to the top of the bowl to get his five pellets of food. I wonder what he thinks when we leave for the day. It's interesting to put ourselves on the other side. We tend to do this with humans - or at least we think we do - but it's not often we try to see ourselves through other animals' eyes, or even objects' eyes.

The exercise: View your daily activities through an inanimate object or an animal, creating a character and world for that object.

Check back later to see how today went.

Put your heart on the page

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the following: You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.

He goes on to say that it’s our only currency as writers. In short, we have only our emotions to sell.

Today’s exercise: Journal about an early childhood event that made you cry, terrified you, made you weak with shame or triumphant with rage. Write a story about that event. Relive these traumatic times to let the reader experience them.

(Dear Prompt Book: You’re cruel. Dear Reader: This piece is just a journal entry, so it's rough.)

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People laugh when I explain I can’t watch scary movies. Even trailers, with their minute window into a freakishly horrid world of twisted murders, vampires or bloody psychosis, leave me up all night. I analyze every detail in my house. Each creak is a killer. Reflected light from passing cars is really from a 10-inch butcher knife poised gracefully behind my back.

I have what you’d call an imagination.

-

The music still sends shivers down my spine. I’m in my room, where the 11-year-old version of me had been banished for interrupting an evening with Dad with too many questions and dives behind our couch’s big, white pillows. With Mom out of town, Dad ordered a pizza and plopped us in front of the TV for hours. He never really knew what to do with kids our age.

Adam and Kyle took to it, a treat for the boys who usually were running around out back. It was torture for this bookworm; I’ve always preferred pages to on-screen stories. I also got evil, sleep-stealing nightmares from any sort of unexplained discord in any tale.

So when “It” was the movie of choice for Dad and the boys, I tried to play it cool. It wasn’t often we got Dad time, as he frequently worked long hours past our bedtime. After watching for a while through my fingers – my hands were glued to my face the entire time, as if for protection – Dad convinced me that this part was OK to watch.

His lied. I shrieked. I was sent to my room.

There, without pictures on the screen, my mind was allowed to swallow up the sounds that crept through the walls. Of course, my room was just on the other side of the living room. Each bit of silence followed by muffled voices followed by fear-inducing music haunted me, forcing my imagination to fill in the blanks with gore and horror beyond to the director’s capability.

I didn’t sleep. I hated my father for the three restless nights that followed. It’s when I developed my keen ear and eye for things that didn’t belong – the change in the breeze outside, the flash of car light at 4 a.m.

I’ll turn 30 in a month, but I’m instantly the 11-year-old curled up, knees to chest, on her bed that night when a horror movie trailer comes on. I can tell when one is on its way simply by the first three notes of the ad. This is not a gift.

I don’t know if “It” was really as bad as I made it my mind, but I’ll never find out.

Verb's the word.

When I write, I mind my verbs. Active. Exciting. Motion. Power. Lately, the real verbs in my life feel … tired. If my character can slink, slither, chatter, plop, why am I simply walking or talking or sitting?

Today’s exercise will be a work in progress: I’m minding the verbs in my life. At a few points today, I’ll jot down what I've done, note the verbs and come up with more specific alternatives. Hopefully, I'll have clear idea of just how I'm spending my day - and pump some life into my action.

So far:

- I read a chapter in “The Success Principles” (a favorite book). Instead: I scanned the pages, zeroing in on the phrase.

- I made my coffee. Instead: I tapped my fingers impatiently, swallowed an Advil and willed this machine to just percolate already.

- I cuddled my dogs. Instead: Well, cuddle’s a good verb.

More to come.

EDIT: Here's more.

- - I ate dinner. Instead: I scooped the muhammara up with the pita, savored the sweet, nutty dip, then dove in for more.

- I was pulled over by a Fort Worth police officer. Instead: I wept openly to the man, my embarrassment over driving without my lights on bubbling over to a pathetic explanation.

- I watched The League and It’s Always Sunny. Instead: I numbed my worn out brain, eventually slipping into a sleep interrupted only by a wet lick to the face this morning. (Yes, it was the dog.)

We meet in the middle.

Any tale you tell or read has a past and a future. We enter the story in the middle, whether the story is a fiction short, nonfiction narrative, poem, song or any other assemblage of words. Something has happened before, and the action now will cause a set of dominoes to fall, however lightly.

Today’s exercise is again to start a story in its middle; begin a story with this line: Where were you last night?

If only you knew …

-------

Where were you last night?

The words blinked once on the phone, whose body shook violently on the table to deliver the text, before going blank. The phone, having done the deed, sat silent in her hand.

Joe had mentioned wanting some IPA fewer than 12 hours ago, slipped on some shorts suitable for leaving the house, and even brushed his teeth for the journey to the liquor store. I hadn’t noticed, too consumed with the latest book in a string of novels my eccentric professor had assigned at the beginning of the semester.

Well, go get some, I said, not looking up. Grab some cab for me while you’re there. Not that cheap one you got last time.

I fished a twenty dollar bill from the pocket of Joe’s jeans, the ones I wore when I holed up the couch for a while, working.

He’d seemed pensive, pacing the house and short with the cat, who’d knocked over the painting we said we’d hang a month ago. He reached several times for the phone, which buzzed healthily that evening. I’d assumed it was work.

When he took the twenty, he held my fingertips for a minute. Looking up at him, it was like seeing him for the first time. His eyes were lit – green and gold and fiery – bold against the gruff chin he’d let grow out over the last few weeks. Joe pulled me up, his jeans slipping around my waist in their sheer volume. He pulled me close, breathed in, fingered the ring on my hand that had crawled behind his back.

It was a sweet, fleeting moment. Then he left, without a word. Smiling, I returned to my work. He returned 45 minutes later, cab and Harpoon in hand, with the call of a Scrabble game on his lips. He knows how to distract me.

Now, 12 hours later, here’s another moment.

Where were you last night?

Her number was unmistakable, having been burned into the backs of my eyelids only a year ago. On occasion, I saw it in my dreams.

Here it is, staring back at me today: 756-345-9852.

First lines

Most great stories don't start at the beginning and end at the end. Nor do they work backward. Great opening lines put you in the middle of the action, the center of the story. They describe, succinctly, the situation, character, geography, class, education, potential conflict ... the list could go on. Writers are competing with the remote. Every word counts.

Today's move: Write at least three opening lines. Here are my attempts:

- The stairs seemed to spiral up forever, leading to his door. Jayne's chair wouldn't move.

- His eyes hunted her, then signaled hard: 9:30 p.m. I'll walk you to your car.

- The shovel hit the ground with a thud, and the stiff body in the bag followed.

- Dad told me what boys were after, three days after I found out.

- The wobbly fence barely held her weight, then tossed her into the cemetery.

Good? Bad? Intriguing? Tell me.