#foghorns

I spent a life time with rules, some I followed and most I broke with as if on a mission. Draw a line in the sand and I have to cross it, even if I know it means the end of everything. Which is not how the world works. It usually doesn't mean the end of everything. Sometimes it means Punishment with a capital P, sometimes it meant losing a job though I would cross all those lines in the sand again. I never understood that idea anyway. If you want someone to take something seriously wouldn't you draw your line in wet concrete, or with red spray paint or by hanging up razor wire? 

The one set of rules I always did try and follow was about writing. Writing rules, written by other writers or those people who just know all the things about writing and never wrote a damn word that wasn't a rule on how to write. My favorite writing teacher always said that the rules could be broken but only if you learn them first. Now I call bullshit on all the writing rules. Every single one of them. The good ones are few- like show don't tell- show the coffee cup I found this morning finally, while muttering where the hell are all the coffee mugs- which is an ugly clear glass big bellied mug with lines that show where the two halves of glass were pushed together to make it and an awkward little handle that makes it hard to hold. Show you the mug instead of telling you I'm drinking coffee. Tell you that it's instant coffee and that I carefully tried to use only half of what was left of N's soy creamer this morning because I was out of half in half in hopes that he won't notice that I took almost but not quite the last of the soy creamer.I weighed my guilt over needing to wake up enough to write and the writing won over the soy creamer. 

Show don't tell. It's a decent enough rule but even that rule can be broken. I stole the soy creamer and drank the coffee is a story too. The coffee sucked. Tells a shorter story. If I don't start somewhere, anywhere talking about this coffee I am drinking and what about this is important writing anyway? I won't move my fingers over the keyboard. If I don't start there I won't tell you the part about how I saw Dorothea, the woman I wrote about before with the big hair that died that night holding a bottle of pills in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other in my dream last night and she too had not followed the rules and her face kept turning gray then white again, like a cross walk warning sign, showing me what was going to happen to me because I didn't breathe when I was supposed to. 

If I don't start with the coffee I won't tell you about the writing I got in my inbox yesterday, writing I so want to tell you about but can't until I ask but I can say that the writing was important writing. Writing from four people each who claimed or named something important. Each piece was strong and had something unique and forever to say that no one else could say. Each piece said something to me and I will read each again today and be touched all over again. Because there is power in the word. And once I get past the coffee whether I say exactly the strange shade of brown that instant granule paste makes when mixed with not enough soy creamer or if I just say the coffee tasted strange I won't get to the part where a piece that I wrote at Writing The Flood this weekend took me into dissociation and my eyes were closing afterwards until the break. I won't say that the writing cracked another part of me open, and that it started with an auditory prompt of a fog horn and I was back in Ocean Beach again and it was a small me pushing words out onto the page and that for a moment, that writing ruined me, took me down and left me there, a little girl on a beach in the fog with her mother, took me to the one good memory of childhood in between the bad ones. 

I start with the coffee even if I just call it coffee and I keep going. Or I could start from woman who lost her temper because there were no good coffee mugs for her bad coffee or I could start with the tired place, or with the night before the waking or the years before Ocean Beach and the fog and the clean smooth sand dollars that had to be perfect and dry and sand free before they could come home or I could start with the words I said over and over again on Saturday, I remember, I remember I remember- like a child might, like a child did woken up by the distinctive sound of a fog horn in a peopled room on a sunny day. 

What I'm trying to tell you in my sleep deprived way, running circles around the cup of coffee is not to worry about the rules. Don't waste your writing life worrying about the rules. Just start. Just write one word and another and keep going. If you do you will find something strong and beautiful and important. Because that is the rule nobody talks about much. It's not a have to rule. It's a rule like a law of physics. It's like the sun that rises every day and the tides that move in and out. It's like your name is your name. If you put one word after another, if you keep going you will find something that is strong and true and beautiful on the page. It will happen. I promise. And you can ask my kids. I can count my broken promises on one hand and I will never forget them or what they were. Promise is a big word and I might lie to employers who ask me if I can take direction well but I don't use the P word lightly, 

Worry about the rules later. Get the words onto the page. Start from anywhere and keep going and you will find the words that surprise you. You will find the words that are strong and say something important. It's in you and wants out. Don't let the rules stop you, not any of them. Run with your run on sentences till your running so fast you can't remember where the comma fell out of your pocket. Write in any tense you want and scramble them. Change the pronouns or leave them out all together. Spell your words backwards or write in code only you can decipher. Just write. 

Only you can write your words. Someone else can edit them for you later. Or you can. You can eyeball them later with a jar full of punctuation. You can run them through spell check later. You can edit out the coffee in the end if the real story happened when that bee stung you, or the door opened that should have been locked or the woman you loved most in all the world looked at you like you were a stranger.  There is time after the writing to edit and make tidy if that is what's needed. You are the only person who can write for you and it belongs to you anyway, not the rule makers. Use the good rules if you like them, if they serve you. If they keep you staring at a blank page, give them the finger and start writing. 

That is what the land of alien dreams and not enough sleep gets us today. I know what I just wrote jumps around and I have run on sentences and those dashes----- I like to use all over the place, unevenly sprinkled. I have a cake I stuffed into one pan instead of two. And that's okay for today. 

What does your coffee cup look like or your tea cup or your water glass? What did you or a character dream last night or five nights ago or never? Start from anywhere today and get some words on the page. Write in pen or pencil or crayon or write with a computer or a typewriter. Write in your head. Story on the phone. Engage that part of your brain that has things to say and pay attention for five minutes or ten or more if you can. 

If I get pushy and urgent about this writing business it's because of where I sit now, cross legged on the cold sidewalk in a body that's 52 years old with a mind that let the writing rules slow her down for too long. I want you to write today because before you know it a decade can sneak up and swallow your life in good rules and hard work and blank pages. 

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Fog Horns

By David Mason

The loneliest days,    damp and indistinct,    sea and land a haze.    And purple fog horns    blossomed over tides—    bruises being born    in silence, so slow,    so out there, around,    above and below.    In such hurts of sound    the known world became    neither flat nor round.    The steaming tea pot    was all we fathomed    of   is and   is not .    The hours were hallways    with doors at the ends    opened into days    fading into night    and the scattering    particles of light.    Nothing was done then.    Nothing was ever    done. Then it was done.

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The sound of that foghorn stays with me. And the writing that cracked me open. Sounds are such good prompts. My typing before I corrected it was god not good. The sentence read- sounds are god prompts. There's a prompt too. 

Here's a few- as always pick anything that works for you or ignore them all together. ***

In such hurts of sound...

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She always followed the rules or she never followed the rules *** Then one day he broke the rule and nothing was ever the same... *** This is my punctuation...  *** Where did he go?

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He was hiding again... I hope this day is good to you and your creative. 

PS

A read this and talked about seeing some of my prompting as writing traps. I hope a writing trap catches you and you get the words onto the paper- even if it's just one question you are curious about or a list of sounds you remember from ten years ago or yesterday.