The Write Spot Blog by Marlene Cullen

Tag: Elizabeth Beechwood

  • Winter Sunrises

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

    Winter Sunrises

    By Elizabeth Beechwood

    On the darkest days

    The glorious sunrise shouts

    And still we persist!

    Winter solstice marks the beginning of our journey around The Wheel together. It’s a mysterious dark time here in the Northern Hemisphere, when Nature challenges us to turn inward. Inward to our homes, inward to our bodies, inward to our minds and thoughts.

    In my part of the Pacific Northwest, winter is marked by long stretches of blustery rain punctuated with cold, clear breaks in the weather. Many people find comfort in starry winter skies, chunky knitted blankets, and twinkling lights. But it’s during these breaks that I find comfort in something different: the winter sunrise. The sunrise is especially glorious on these mornings; the sky is banded with robin’s egg blue, house finch blush, and warbler yellows and greens. The bare branches of the birches outside my window are strikingly dark against the fleeting colors in the sky.

    What is it that makes sunrise so special at this time of year? Besides the fact that more of us are awake to witness it? It has a magical quality not matched during the summer. The bright colors sweep steadily through the cold air. The chickadee’s morning greetings ring out like bells through this liminal moment. Our spirits are lifted as we witness Nature and all her features persisting, doing what they know to do during this cold time.
     
    As we head into this darkest turn of The Wheel, look for those glorious winter sunrises and remember to persist in all that is important to you. 

    Elizabeth Beechwood:

    When I write, I start with regular people with regular lives … but then something strange happens. Whether it’s fiction, fantasy, magical realism or genre-bending, you can count on something just a little peculiar from my stories. I’m also a certified Oregon Naturalist, so the natural world and its many aspects pop up in my writing frequently. Please join me on The Wheel, a quarterly newsletter, as we take another spin around the sun and explore the seasons. You can sign up on my website: elizabethbeechwood.com.

  • Guest Blogger Elizabeth Beechwood – Write From An Animal’s Perspective

    Elizabeth Beechwood shows how to create animal characters on her Blog, “When I write, strange things happen.”

    Here’s an excerpt:

    Anyone who knows me knows that I love animals. When I was a kid, I was always bringing home stray dogs and baby birds. After I got married, my husband had to deal with opossums in the backyard, baby goats running through the kitchen, and let’s not forget the epic night he came home to find a loon in the bathtub!

    It seemed natural, then, that when I began to write, I included animal characters in my stories. I quickly realized, however, that writing from an animal’s perspective had its own particular challenges, whether my characters were cats or pigeons or griffins or giant moths. I discovered that, by focusing on four main elements, I could portray all sorts of animals – from the realistic wolf surviving in the cold north to the fantastic mouse going on a quest. If you imagine these four elements on a sliding scale with ‘realistic’ to the far left and ‘fantastical’ to the far right, where you, the writer, place these elements determines the type of animal character you will create.

    These elements are:

    • POV
    • Senses, including intelligence and emotional range
    • Behavior
    • The Wilding

    To find out more about creating animal characters, please go to Elizabeth’s blog.

    Elizabeth Beechwood writes about herself:

    I wrote and self-published my first novel “The Brown-Eyed Trio” when I was nine years old. Unfortunately, the only copy was lost so you’ll have to take my word when I say it had a killer plot and tons of adjectives. It also featured a nine-year old girl, a dog, and a horse. Now, years later, I continue to write novels and short stories, striving for killer plots and as few adjectives as possible. Animals figure prominently in most of my work.

    I’ve lived all over the United States, including Alaska, but presently make my home in the Pacific Northwest. I’m pursuing my MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program. My work has been featured in Every Day Fiction and Beyond Boundaries.

    Chickens