The Write Spot Blog by Marlene Cullen

Author: mcullen

  • The Seagulls Came and I Knew

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    The Seagulls Came and I Knew

    By Norma Jaeger

    The seagulls came to the back yard. We didn’t live that close to the coast, Portland, about 80 miles inland. We had never had seagulls in the yard before, as best I recall.  But there they were, drinking out of the bird bath, flapping around querulously, and generally making strident seagull noise, breaking the otherwise early Saturday morning quiet. 

    I had returned the night before from an intense, two-day job interview in Seattle.  With the seagulls in the backyard, such gulls and their cries, being ubiquitous in Seattle, I knew I would be offered the job. Because I had become disenchanted with my job in Portland, I was pretty clear I would accept the job. What I did not know, but realistically what I should have considered, based on what I had always observed about government in Washington, was how the decision would ultimately turn out.

    While I thought I was moving to Seattle, what was really going on was a short stop on my way home to Idaho – there, to an unclear future but one that became the best future of all – 22 years ago. 

    Birds, as ancient augurs, have always conveyed both positive and negative omens.  

    It takes time to sort it out.

    Norma Jaeger spent more than thirty years managing and evaluating addiction and mental health programs in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington.  She developed programs for pregnant and postpartum women, children’s mental health programs, and several programs for individuals in the criminal justice system. 

    She was the Program Manager for offender programming at the Idaho Department of Correction for one year leaving to become the Statewide Coordinator for expansion and support to Idaho’s 70+ Drug, Mental Health, and Veterans’ Courts.

    She served two terms on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, and received the Stanley M. Goldstein Hall of Fame Award from that association in 2018. 

    She taught for fifteen years at Boise State University in the Department of Criminal Justice.

    She currently serves as Executive Director for Recovery Idaho, a statewide recovery community organization.

    She holds a Masters’ Degree in Health Administration and is completing a dissertation for a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Boise State University, focused on procedural justice. 

    She is honored to serve as Executive Producer for “I Married the War,” a documentary film illuminating the stories of wives of combat veterans.

    Believing that writing can be a meaningful pathway of support for recovery from mental health issues, addiction, and trauma, Norma organized “Poetry for Recovery and Writing for Recovery,” a successful online program.

  • The Divorced House

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    The Divorced House

    By Simona Carini

    At the Greenwich Observatory once
    I straddled the brass line in the courtyard
    One foot East
    One foot West
    Heart at longitude 0°.
    Felt familiar.

    Walking around North Berkeley
    I happened on a house bisected
    Yellow on the right
    Gray on the left.
    Felt finely honed pain
    wafting out the divorced house
    East and West facing off at a meridian
    running down the front and a short flight of stairs
    Bright red on the right
    Burgundy on the left.

    Felt like the child going home
    having to decide whether to enter
    the door on the right
    or on the left
    To inhabit my father’s world
    or my mother’s
    Heart at longitude 0°.

    Except home was one apartment
    with one door
    one kitchen and one bathroom.
    One family
    never divorced.

    The mystery of the divided façade
    of my parents’ marriage.
    From the sidewalk across the street,
    the halves conflict.
    At close range
    the shift across the line is not a chasm
    but a shade easily traveled.

    The line they drew between them
    grew into a wall.
    They lost sight of each other
    talking to the wall
    yelling across it.

    I visit two cemeteries
    bring flowers to two tombstones
    balance on the line of compassion
    Heart at longitude 0°.

    “The Divorced House” was originally published in Star 82 Review.

    Simona Carini was born in Perugia, Italy. She writes poetry and nonfiction and has been published in various venues, in print and online. Her first poetry collection Survival Time will be published in 2022 by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She lives in Northern California with her husband, loves to spend time outdoors, and works as an academic researcher.

  • Layering

    Layering: The goal of layering in writing is to take unrelated elements and bring them together in a single piece of writing.

    “Layering means that we’re weaving in different elements of our story, characters, writing craft, etc. Some writers even start with just one element—such as writing their whole story just as dialogue—and then layer in everything else once they have the shape of the story.” — Jami Gold

    Ideas to add layering in your writing.

    Start with lists:

    List #1: Some facts about yourself or your fictional character

    List#2: Favorite food or music

    List #3: Favorite movies or TV shows

    List #4: Philosophical sayings

    List #5: A type of clothing or furniture

    Freewrite: #1: Using a word or phrase from each of the lists, spend a few minutes creating a piece of writing.

    Freewrite #2, Layering: Add an outside event as a metaphor to echo the theme of your freewrite.

    If you are writing about love, compare two people in love with two doves sitting on a wire.

    Use the movie, “Love Story,” or the TV show, “Love Boat,” or a book one of the character picks up from the coffee table while waiting for the other person.

    One of the characters could pick up something from a loveseat.

    A pin in the shape of a heart could snag on a sweater.

    If your theme is death, use an analogy from the game of chess.

    Quotes

    You can use quotes to mirror the theme of your writing:

    “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” — “Love Story”

    “Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awakeit’s everything except what it is!” — “Romeo and Juliet.”

    Ideas to layer your writing:

    Use something from nature: Land formations, flora, vistas, terrain, etc.

    Something human-made: Buildings, dams, highways, art, transportation.

    Use your imagination and create a memorable piece of writing by layering.

    Examples of layering in writing:

    Delicate as a Hummingbird’s Heart

    Reverberations

    Memory of a ‘giorno dei morti’ in Italy

    Thanks to Becca Lawton for inspiring this prompt at Writers Sampler in 2009.

  • Star 82 Review

    Star 82 Review is an independent art and literature, online and print magazine that highlights words and images in gemlike forms. Each issue includes a combination of flash fiction, creative nonfiction, erasure texts, narrative art, word+image, collage poems, and poetic storytelling featuring subtle humor, humility and humanity, the strange and the familiar, and hope.

    Star 82 is the code needed to unblock one’s phone number. Tell us who you are. Someone will answer.

    Submission Guidelines

    Star 82 Review was founded in 2012 by Alisa Golden, then a senior adjunct professor in the Printmaking Program at California College of the Arts, later, teaching letterpress in the MFA Writing Program, now a freelance writer, editor, and artist. She has been making books since 1983 under the imprint never mind the press. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, a BFA from CCA(c) in Printmaking. You can find her book art, art quilts, and links to her writing, blog, and YouTube channel, never mind.

  • Wait.What?

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Wait. What?

    By Brenda Bellinger

    Mindlessly scrolling through Yahoo News (a time suck, I know), I came across a headline titled “Caroline Kennedy’s first grandchild’s name revealed.” It stopped me cold and aged me a lifetime all at once. I still picture Caroline as that sweet little girl at her father’s grave site in 1963, two days before her seventh birthday.

    A moment that precipitated that image is forever etched into my memory. I was sitting in my third-grade classroom at McKinley School in San Francisco. Our teacher, Mrs. Johnson, whom I recall being about the same age I am now, was in front of the class at the blackboard when we heard a soft knock at the classroom door.

    The door opened and our principal motioned for Mrs. Johnson to step out into the hallway. The room was quiet. Mrs. Johnson returned a few minutes later, just as a couple of the rambunctious kids were beginning to get restless.

    Clearly upset, she reached for a tissue on her desk. “Our president has been shot,” she said, her voice trembling.

    My memory of that day is so clear, still. How is that so many years could have passed since then?

    I’ve been thinking about the major events that have occurred during our lifetimes, particularly during our formative years and how they shaped our thoughts, our plans, our futures. We remember exactly where we were when those key events began to unfold.

    John F. Kennedy’s assassination was one of the historic events that defined the generation of Baby Boomers along with the moon landing and the Vietnam War. Remember the odd/even day gas rationing of the 1970s?

    Gen Xers will remember the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Gulf War. Millennials will never forget the attacks of September 11. Neither will the rest of us.

    Our younger generations are marked by more than their share of impactful, ongoing events including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis and the war on Ukraine.

    It’s not the passage of time I should be worried about. It’s the future.

    Brenda Bellinger’s writing has appeared in Small Farmer’s Journal, Mom Egg Review, Persimmon Tree, THEMA, the California Writers Club Literary Review and in various anthologies, including several of The Write Spot books.

    Her first novel, “Taking Root,” a young adult story of betrayal and courage, is available through most local bookstores and on Amazon.

    Brenda’s Blog is a wonderful compilation of her writing.

  • Pitch Your Story to The Bucket

    From “The Bucket” Editor, Morgan Baker:

    We’re thrilled that you are interested in writing for The Bucket. We have a simple question to ask: How does what you want to write help people lead a more fulfilling life by acknowledging – even embracing – their own mortality? This is our mission. And our filter for the kind of article we accept.

    We are looking for articles that fall under three main categories:

    • Living Fully
    • Dying Well
    • Money & Law

    While these seem mutually exclusive, we have found them to be quite the opposite.

    But rather than get hung up on what goes where, just use our mission as your guide…we’ll figure out the details later.

    Our Brand

    The Bucket’s brand is bold, curious and unapologetic. We are not afraid of mortality and we want our writers to feel the same. We encourage humor, honesty and the ability to talk about the elephant in the room.

    Before you submit a pitch, ask yourself if the topic could easily run in another magazine. If the answer is ‘yes,’ that doesn’t make it a bad idea, but it probably means we’ll consider other ideas before giving yours the go-ahead.

    Length

    There’s a witticism attributed to Abraham Lincoln which claims that when he was asked how long a man’s legs should be, he said, “Long enough to reach the ground.” So take as many words as you need to tell your story. But know that any article that creeps past 1,200 words better be pretty riveting.

    Story length is also driven by whether you are doing an essay (750-ish), feature (1,200-ish) or investigative piece (1,500-ish).

    Exclusivity

    The Bucket creates original content. We do not allow any article that appears on The Bucket website to be published anywhere else without permission/attribution. And, with few exceptions, we do not publish articles that have already appeared in other publications.

    Submit a Pitch

    Have an idea for an article? Please submit a pitch which should consist of the topic, a summary of the idea and what makes it relevant to The Bucket’s mission.

    Include the methodology you will use such as interviews and research.

    Estimate the word count and your cost-per-word. Please note, we do not accept unsolicited articles and have no obligation to publish or pay for them.

    We also seek short fiction, poetry, art and comics. As with article submissions, please contact us in advance of a submission so that we can let you know if it is what we are looking for and to make sure we are not already publishing a similar subject.

  • Flowed beautifully . . . Prompt #668

    Write about a time, or an event, that flowed beautifully.

    Maybe it was a trip or a visit that was perfect.

    You could also write about music, art, or any creative endeavor that you cannot forget.

    Or write about something you read, or something you wrote, that conveyed a message succinctly and engagingly.

    Today’s writing prompt is inspired by the Writers Digest Review of “The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.”

    “This book is exemplary in its voice and writing style. It has a unique voice, and the writing style is consistent throughout. The style and tone are also consistent with or will appeal to readers of a variety of genres. Because this is a collection of different voices, the styles and rhythms are unique to each author. Yet they all flow beautifully, conveying their message succinctly and engagingly.”

    Note from Marlene: Why yes, I do find prompts in unusual and intriguing places!

  • Liminal . . . Prompt #667

    “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  Viktor Frankl

    Prompt: Write about the space between stimulus and response.

    Write about a time you recognized it – or you didn’t – and how that impacted your life.

    OR:  Explore the word or the concept of liminal:

    Liminal specifically means relating to the point (or threshold) beyond which a sensation becomes too faint to be experienced.

    Liminal: Related to or situated at a sensory threshold; barely perceptible or capable of eliciting a response, things that exist at the threshold (or border) between one thing and another.

    Examples of liminal:

    The liminal stage is the middle stage, the in-between period during which a person has not yet fully reached their new status in whatever rite of passage they are going through.

    ~ Being “the new kid” at school before being fully incorporated into a new group of friends.

    ~ After graduation, before being fully established in a workplace.

    ~ After retirement . . .

    To be in a liminal space means to be on the precipice of something new but not quite there yet. You can be in a liminal space physically, emotionally, or metaphorically.

    A liminal state of mind

    A period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed — a situation which can lead to new perspectives.

    Prompt: Write about a liminal space.

    “Burgeoning” by Su Shafer shows a unique spin using this prompt.

  • Burgeoning

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Burgeoning

    By Su Shafer

    How many petals are in a peony?

    There’s no way to tell from the bud – a closed hand

              holding more than you can imagine.

    They unfold slowly, the way a smile spreads

              before a secret is told.

    Each petal

              a curled finger uncurling

              an alluring promise of beauty to come

              a whisper – just wait, just wait…

    And then suddenly

    It blooms

    Su Shafer is a creative crafter, fabricating bits of writing in poetry and short stories, and generating characters that appear in paintings and sit on various bookshelves and coffee tables.

  • Off Assignment

    Off Assignment is a literary magazine with a penchant for journeys and a fascination with strangers, looking for writers who travel, poets who wander, essayists with a sense of place, reporters with swollen notebooks, and gourmands with street cart taste.

    “We’re not here to guide vacations. We don’t cover spas or centennials. We have a taste for offbeat places. We care about voice and story. We want the writer on the page—sweating, tripping, and telling a tale.”

    Off Assignment Submission Guidelines