River Walk

  • River Walk

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

    River Walk

    By Cheryl Moore

    As its tides ebb and flow

    following the moon’s journey

    across the sky—egrets, herons, sand pipers

    wade in the shallows on muddy banks

    mallards, coots, grebes

    paddle in the river flow,

    a night heron rousts

    on a birch tree branch.

     

    In the distance fog slowly evaporates

    revealing the huge hump of Sonoma Mt

    its golden slopes

    patterned with dark green trees.

     

    To and from my river walk I meet and greet

    dog walkers at Wickersham Park

    I pause to watch a dog sprinting

    after a ball his human has thrown

    he leaps in the air—a spirit of joy.

     

    The park’s stately trees seem to smile

    to see such active exuberance.

     

    Cheryl Moore grew up in the mid-west, went to college in San Francisco, then lived in foreign lands before returning to settle in Sonoma County.

    She enjoys her garden where deer nibble on roses, raccoons dine on fallen figs, and the bird feeders are busy.

    A nearby river offers opportunities to observe waterfowl.

    Seeing and writing about these miracles of nature are adventures in living.

    Cheryl enjoys writing about nature: September Light

    Marlene C

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  • Cavorting With Words

    Guest Blogger Grant Faulkner:

    Since it’s National Novel Writing Month, I wanted to share my thoughts on the creative process that is at its core: writing with abandon. This is a reprint of an essay that originally appeared in Poets & Writers.

    A few years ago I grappled with a simple question I had never before bothered to ask myself: Did I decide on my writing process, or did it decide on me?

    Despite an adult lifetime of reading innumerable author interviews, biographies of artists, and essays on creativity, I realized I’d basically approached writing the same way for years. And I didn’t remember ever consciously choosing my process, let alone experimenting with it in any meaningful way.

    My approach formed itself around what I’ll call “ponderous preciousness.” I’d conceive of an idea for a story and then burrow into it deliberately. I’d write methodically, ploddingly, letting thoughts percolate, then marinate—refining and refining—sometimes over the course of years. It was as if I held a very tiny chisel and carefully maneuvered it again and again through the practically microscopic contours of my story world.

    I distrusted the idea that anything of quality could be written quickly. A story, a novel, or even one of my pieces of flash fiction had to be as finely aged as a good bottle of wine in order for all of the nuanced tannins and rich aromas to fully develop. My writing moved slowly from one sentence, one paragraph, to the next, and I often looped back again and again with the idea that I needed to achieve a certain perfection before I could move forward.

    But as I hit middle age, the golden age of reckoning with all things, I decided I needed to shake things up, just for the sake of shaking them up. If I viewed myself as a creator, I needed to approach my own creative process with a sense of experimentation and outright dare.

    And, truth be told, my writing had veered toward being as much of a job as my day job. My publishing goals had stifled any sense of playfulness. My stories hewed to narrative rules as if I was trying to be a good citizen in a suburban neighborhood where I felt like an outsider.

    I thought back to the reason I became a writer in the first place: that ineffable impulse to explore matters of the soul, the need to put words to the hidden spaces of life, the desire to probe life’s mysteries. I concluded that my labored approach had smothered my verve. I wanted to cavort through words again, to invite the dervishes of rollicking recklessness back into creation.

    Cavorting with words

    Around this time a friend invited me to join him in National Novel Writing Month: the annual challenge to write a fifty-thousand-word novel during November. I knew about the event, but had never thought it was for me. The object was to write faster than I was accustomed to—to produce approximately seventeen hundred words per day for thirty days straight, a word count at least double what I was used to.

    I feared writing a novel littered with unconsidered words and loose connections. I feared writing something flimsy.

    Note from Marlene: You can read the rest of this article, posted 11/5/23, originally titled “Writing With Abandon,” at Grant’s Substack: Intimations: A Writer’s Discourse.

    Grant Faulkner:

    As a boy, I spent my allowance on all sorts of pens and paper, so there was never much question I would become a writer. I received my B.A. from Grinnell College in English and my M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

    It seems like I should have other degrees, such as an MFA in Novels about People Doing Nothing But Walking Around, a PhD in Collages and Doodles and Stick Drawings of Fruitless Pursuits, or a Knighthood in Insomniac Studies, but I don’t.

    I have published in many publications. My stories have been nominated for the Pushcart prize and included in such collections as W.W. Norton’s New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and Best Small Fictions 2016.

    By day, I’m the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month, Co-founder of the lit journal 100 Word Story, Co-founder of the Flash Fiction Collective, a member of the National Writing Project Writers Council, a member of Lit Camp’s Advisory Council, and a member of the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Words’ Creative Council. I also co-host the Write-minded podcast.

    Grant Faulkner Bookshop

    Marlene C

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  • What makes you anxious? . . . Prompt #763

    What makes you anxious?

    What do you want to do about that?

    What can you do about that?

    #justwrite #iamwriting #iamawriter

    Marlene C

  • Enduring Awe

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

    Enduring Awe

    By Karen FitzGerald

    What brings me joy?

    Riding my bike brings me joy.

    The wind in my face on a warm day, sailing through traffic jams piled up at those long, stop lighted intersections like Farmer’s Lane and Highway 12.

    I love it.

    I always feel child-like when I’m riding my bike.

    Recently, I’ve taken to singing while I cruise. Not too loud, but loud enough to feel the vibration of my voice ripple through my body, from throat to sternum to stomach and right on down my legs to my ankles as I pump my way up the Chanate hill.

    I especially love going off trail. That is, I am not a mountain biker. Oh no. Too hard on the back.

    In fact, any more I’m thinking mountain biking people are not fundamentally joyful people. They are like as bumpy and unpredictable as the trails they navigate. Nope.

    Give me a long shot on a nice, gentle ocean-side stretch where cows graze on green velvet hills to my right, and the ocean’s horizon beckons to me on my left.

    Oh gosh – this is more than joy-provocative. This puts me in a frame of mind and feeling that might be understood as spiritual: me, pedaling along on a quiet, deserted west side road flanked by grass-tufted sand dunes, the smell of tide on the ebb, and a never-ending, razor-sharp horizon stretching north to south; and there, flanking my eastern side—rock outcroppings peppering hills being kissed by cobalt blue skies.

    Such a ride brings me inexplicable joy, a feeling of wordless, radical awe – enduring awe—until I come across the inevitable roadkill.
     
    Karen FitzGerald is a genre fluid writer, known by some as an “emerging writer.”

    She has been emerging for 50 years.

    Her most recent work is found in e-zines such as Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, and The Ekphrastic Review. (Scroll down for Karen’s writing, “Manuela’s First Baby.” )

    Karen’s major works can be found in slush piles all across America.

    Marlene C

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  • Creativity Is A Practice

    Suzanne Murray writes about the rewards of engaging our creativity.

    There is a growing awareness that creativity is a capacity that everyone has, though they may not understand what is involved in accessing it.

    One of the main things that gets in the way of people embracing their creative gifts is a belief that creativity should be easy; that it should just flow out.

    They think they should be good at it immediately. If they are not and it’s not easy, there is a tendency to think there is something wrong with them and it’s never going to work.

    Yet creativity in whatever form you choose to pursue is a complex process that actually asks a lot of us.

    This is why is feels so good to engage since it helps us discover that we are capable of more than we thought possible, including working from expanded abilities. It is a muscle that we need to work with to develop, just like if we decided to run a marathon, we would understand the need to run daily for shorter periods to build up to the full distance.

    Creativity is a practice that you have to stay with even when doubts arise.

    It tends to progress in a stair step fashion. We spend time showing up to the work each day for weeks, maybe months and we don’t seem to be getting any better. Then one day we have crossed a threshold to a new level where we can do things we have been unable to. We will need to work on that plateau for a while before being boosted to the next level.

    Being creative also involves studying our chosen form of expression.

    Long before I wrote my first personal essay, the writing form that almost seemed to choose me, every time I went into a bookstore, I was drawn to the essay section. Those were the only books I read. I was learning to write in that form by reading it.

    So, when I started to write, my creative mind already had a sense of what to do. Sort of.

    I then had to practice, writing pages and pages that never went anywhere but taught me a lot. I learned to trust that things were cooking on the level of my subconscious and super conscious minds.

    The more I showed up to practice, the more I had a sense of what to do and how to work with the material on a conscious level. The more I stayed with it, the more the wonderful, magical state of flow would occur where I was definitely operating in an expanded state.

    Being creative feels like a beautiful dance. Engaging in the process feels good, so I never really thought about all the time and work I had to put in to become an accomplished writer. For me the act of creativity has always been its own reward. That has allowed me to stay with it through the doubts and slow going.
    Now more than ever we need to resist the distractions like social media and the internet that give us a sense of instant gratification, making it more difficult to go the distance with our creativity.

    Keep in mind that you can make great progress with small steps taken day after day.

    Try this: Pick a creative project. Then show up ten minutes a day to play with it.

    I did this recently in a form new to me, nature collage.

    I asked a painter friend about the best materials to use. Then with acrylic paint, glue and objects from nature, I let myself be intuitively guided in what to do. It took a bit before any of them turned out in a way pleasing to me. Yet each one taught me something.

    As you play with your project, resist the urge to judge. Put it away and look at a few days later when the critic has quieted down.

    Keep showing up, ten minutes day after day and see if you don’t feel the deep satisfaction that comes with opening to your creativity.

    Wishing you the deep satisfaction of being creative, Suzanne Murray.

    Suzanne’s website: Creativity Goes Wild

    Suzanne Murray is a gifted creativity and writing coach, soul-based life coach, writer, poet, EFT practitioner and intuitive healer committed to empowering others to find the freedom to ignite their creative fire, unleash their imagination and engage their creative expression in every area of their lives.

    Other posts by Suzanne on The Write Spot Blog:

    Guest Blogger Suzanne Murray and the power of commitment.

    Suzanne Murray: Using imagination for creativity

    Calm Your Brain

    Note from Marlene:  Just Write!

    Marlene C

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  • Favorite thing to do . . . Prompt #760

    Write about your favorite thing to do . . . now . . . or in the past.

    #justwrite #iamwriting #iamawriter

    Marlene C

  • Halloween Special

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

    Halloween Special

    By Graham Chalk

    I am posting this for the edification and diversion of fellow travelers. I wish for no observations regarding my syntax or your tin tacks. I do not wish to hear about your grammar or my grandpa. I thank you.

    Halloween Special

    I have not written this story down before, although I have told it before.

    Told it as if I were at confession and the listener was a priest.

    But there will, I believe, be no absolution.

    How much of this story is true?

    I will let the reader decide.

    Schools are scary places.

    And when they are empty?

    Then they are very scary places indeed. Full of dead echoes.

    Generations of ghostly, silent feet disturbing the sleeping dust of generations

    My very first ever job was working as a lab technician in a vast and ancient school.

    It’s all gone now. All that time and all those buildings have crumbled into brickdust and orphaned memories.

    I just checked the internet for traces of that school. I found something.

    There exist very few staff group photographs from that hallowed institution. But I wasn’t in those pictures. None of the other half-dozen lab technicians were. Nor were the gardeners, cleaners, or dinner ladies. We didn’t even exist in those old and faded images.

    We have all faded into ghosts.

    Anyway, where was I? Oh yes: the school holidays.

    All the pupils went home, while I, and a few others, remained within that maze of dark and creaky corridors. It gave us some time to do the essential chores that we couldn’t perform when the school kids were about. You know, like playing cards and flirting.

    They didn’t have Facebook back then or we’d definitely be on that all day, so we had to make do with re-reading last week’s newspapers.

    I’ve never really fitted in anywhere but there was one guy who really didn’t fit in with us.

    It gave me such a warm glow of satisfaction to find someone who had less social skills than I had. He was the handyman. His name was Jack.

    In conversation, Jack had the unnerving habit of unpicking glue (I seem to remember that it was wood glue) from his fingers and flicking it everywhere. You could tell where he had been by a little pile of dried-up adhesive..

    I’m not sure why he did that.

    Oh, and he lurked in the shadows, He was only about four foot tall so he was easy to miss, but he just crept about in a creepy sort of way. You’d be having a conversation about something with someone, and you’d turn around and Jack was right there. Listening. He was always where you didn’t want him to be, which was anywhere at all, really.

    There would be an early warning system of his approach. He wore heavy safety boots and the metal studs on the soles would click, click, click along the polished floors. You’d always know he was there. That he was coming.

    School holidays gave us plenty of time to explore the place: There are a lot of dark hidden corners to these vast old buildings. They were made to look grand and the concepts of grand and small couldn’t co-exist, so they built big back then. Really big. So the school had a faded palatial aspect to it. Gravitas. They even put concrete owls on the roof to inspire wisdom in the crowds beneath them. Not sure if that bit worked, This was in Sunderland, after all.

    On one of my foraging expeditions into the forbidden corners, I came across a room I had not seen before. The door was unlocked, so after switching on the light, I proceeded inside.

    “Hello, what’s this?” I asked myself in an amateur theatrical manner.

    Lots of shelves and lots of boxes. Acres of dress-up clothing. It must have been where they kept the costumes for amateur theatricals.

    I went back to the prep’ room where all the other technicians hung out and as they were all dreadfully bored we all set off on an adventure to investigate my discovery.

    I still have a photograph that records our rummaging that day. Even before digital cameras I always had some little camera or other about my person. Ah, the pre-digital days: You’d wait forever for a bunch of expensive prints only to find you left the lens cap on the camera and everything was blank. But not today.

    So we had fun dressing up. All of us, the whole team. Well, almost the whole team. We forgot to ask Jack. Oh well.

    I dug deep into one of the boxes.

    Hey, what have we here in this tea chest? An entire black morning suit: the sort of thing a nineteenth-century gentleman would wear when horse riding. Complete with tails and everything. Even a top hat. I had never seen an outfit like this apart from old black-and-white movies on TV on a wet Sunday afternoon.

    I tried it on and it was a perfect fit. Remarkable.

    And that’s when the wicked plan occurred to me.

    I didn’t work alone, I mean I’m not John Wick or anything. We all hatched a plan. My workmates and I. I would dress in my morning coat, creep up, through a dark and spooky corridor, and shock and surprise the terribly creepy Jack.

    Serve him right, after all.

    For not fitting in and everything.

    And for his anti-social behaviour.

    The following day: It was a late winter’s afternoon, the sun was almost gone and the vast building began to be swallowed into dusk. Soon the real ghosts would arrive.

    We found out where Jack was working. You could hear him. Down those long corridors, echoing. Even in the semi-darkness, You could hear him working. When everyone had already stopped for the day he was still working. Hammering, chiseling, sawing away like a magical little elf. You know: like the ones that fixed those shoes in the story.

    So I quietly tip-toed towards him. He was hunched over his work, oblivious to the world. I stopped and cleared my throat. He turned around and looked at me. Blinked and tried to focus on me through his monstrously thick bifocals.

    “Oh, hello….what?…why are you…dressed like that?”

    I pulled myself up to my full height, looked down at him, and in my best Count Dracula voice I replied “I always dress….for dinner”.

    I turned away from him and casually walked back to the others. They should have been witnessing the whole Academy Award performance but it turned out they had scattered when I approached him. Abandoned by my public, Hah

    The next day came and it was lunchtime before someone asked the question: “Where’s Jack?”

    We all looked at each other and said a collective “Oh” and then we went back to reading the funny papers.

    A week went by and there was still no sign of him.

    On the seventh morning, I went to work to find that the atmosphere was a little different. It was very quiet and people were unusually.. busy.

    “What’s up?” I asked

    “He’s dead” came the reply

    I stared. I hesitated, then, haltingly I slowly muttered

    “Who… is dead?”

    “Jack” came the reply “Jack is dead. He went home. He went home, he made himself a cup of tea, sat down had a heart attack, and died.

    I sat down,

    I thought for a moment.

    This was silly really.

    It wasn’t as if I could have been the cause of that.

    It could have been caused by anything.

    But nobody looked at me all day long. And nobody looked at me much after that.

    The corridors fell silent. No clicking of Jack’s heavy workboots in the dark to announce his presence.,

    People didn’t seem to joke and carry on as much.

    I left that job soon after. It didn’t feel right anymore.

    Things moved on. I’m glad I left or I might have shriveled up and died there. All the rest of them probably did.

    Life opened up for me after that and it was a remarkably rewarding life, all told.

    Sometimes though, after all that time and all those faces have faded, when it’s all quiet when there’s no one else about and I’m going about my life and there’s nobody with me…

    I swear I hear it,

    I swear I hear him.

    I live by the sea now, but even when I’m walking by the sea. Even when I’m walking on the sand where I walk with silent footsteps, even when the waves are crashing and the seagulls are calling.

    I hear something. Behind me. Always behind me.

    click…click…click

    Graham Chalk

    A little about me:

    When I told my wife I was going to write this she laughed.

    That was because, she said, that if I were to attempt to summarise my life I would need an awful lot of paper.

    Things happen to me. I can’t help that.

    I have retired from working in mental health. Done with it.

    And yet….

    I go for a walk with my dog under a viaduct on a sunny afternoon and a body falls to earth just behind me. Whoosh! Thump!

    It’s like that, you see: the harder you run from something the closer it gets.

    The jumper from the bridge was, I think, amongst other things, a message to me.

    I have known far too many people who have ended themselves and the guilt that you feel is horrible. It’s rarely your fault but that doesn’t take away the feeling.

     That “what if” feeling.

    It never goes away.

    The jumper from the bridge lived, you see.  He still breathed.

    It was an awfully long way down but he survived.

    He shouldn’t have lived but he lived anyway.

    So then I had to do something.

    When the ambulance (eventually) arrived and took away his broken body I was pretty sure he wouldn’t live. Then I got a phone call.

    It was from his father.

    His boy lived. He was critically ill but alive. The doctors at the hospital had known many people who jumped from that bridge but none had survived.

    None.

    His father said that I had “saved his life” but I didn’t think that.

    The doctors, nurses, and ambulance personnel did that. They saved his life.

    They did that. I just hoped that now he really wanted to live.

    Then I heard nothing more. I was convinced that he had died, the jumper. Then, months later his father sent me a text. His son was learning to walk again.

    I don’t know if I believe in God but I do believe in something. A balance.

    So. My life is a bit like that.

    The harder I run from something, the closer it gets.

    I now write as therapy. I once wrote for money.

    I wrote for little magazines and they paid me.

    One of my interests is motorcycles and motorbike rags are the magazines I wrote for. Unfortunately, these little publications have now vanished, but I do remember how much of a buzz it was to actually get paid for writing.

    I liked to be paid.

    And I liked to write stuff that made people giggle. It’s so much of a closed shop now: any kind of journalism. It’s a pity.

    These days being paid isn’t as important to me. The internet is great though.

    When I wrote for money there was no internet.

    Now you can get published really easily. You just type away and press send.

    My dad wrote stuff. He’s dead now. He was a railwayman but he wanted to be a writer, so after work, he’d clack clack, clack at his typewriter. He never got published.

    He kept all his rejection letters. I read them after he died. It was sad. I never got on with him, but it was sad.

    My real back-burner project is currently looking for an agent but is a little too controversial for the current market.

    It consists mainly of interviews with crazy people.

    Of which I am one, of course.

    Marlene C

  • Changing Seasons

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

    Changing Seasons

    By Julie Sherman

    My garden is feeing anxious. The hydrangeas are protesting with powdery mildew on her large leaves. The yellow stargazers are shrinking back into themselves refusing to open. The last of the white roses are reluctantly peeling back one petal at a time, objecting to the assault of cold temperatures after having owned a sunny resort for the past 4 months. The plumbago has given up altogether, and the sweet peas are trying their best to climb the trellis. The last few pink ballerinas are hanging precariously to their brittle fuchsia branches before folding in their tutus, turning brown, and falling to the ground. Only the chrysanthemums are welcoming the morning chill and pale gray skies.

    The veteran plants know what’s coming and are bracing themselves, feeling tough enough to survive. They look to me for protection and comfort, knowing I will gently shroud them in netted mesh when it dips below 40.

    Some of my beauties will not last. The nasturtium and alyssum will die, but their seeds will stubbornly stay hidden below the rocks and dirt until spring, then surprise me by showing up in different corners around my house. I never know where those flowery renegades will appear, but they always do.

    The hummers, so brazen and audacious, are beginning to retreat. The six feeders filled every Sunday due to the hummers’ gluttony have been full for the last 10 days, only an occasional daring flutterer visiting while the others huddle together for warmth in the tree across the street.

    Fall. My favorite time, my garden’s fearful time. We shift the balance and she tries to hang on another day, waiting for warmth and light to come, only to concede and brace for months of brisk, biting temperatures and darkness to come three full hours sooner than just a month ago.

    I move my sleeveless cotton tops to the back of the closet pulling forward my sweatshirts, long-sleeved tops and jeans. Like my garden, I pull in, nestle, protect, and try to keep my tutu from falling to the ground.

    Julie Sherman is a native San Franciscan and long-time resident of Petaluma, California.  Raised in a family of readers, writers, performers, musicians and political activists, Julie followed her dream of singing professionally.

    While working on “The Love Boat” for Princess Cruises, she met her husband, bassist Jeff Sherman. After a 20-year career as a professional singer, Julie worked in education and technology.

    Now retired, Julie enjoys writing, baking, gardening and worldwide travel, most recently having visited Viet Nam, Ireland, and Thailand. She is the mother of twin girls, opera singer Camille Sherman and music producer Emily Sherman. Julie resides in a little house with her husband, a dog and two cats while enjoying reading, writing, eating well, and tending to her garden.

    Marlene C

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  • Seasonal Considerations in 14 Stanzas

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

    Seasonal Considerations in 14 Stanzas

    By Christine Renaudin

    Yesterday’s rain was announced,
    yet came as a surprise,
    we’ve grown so used to dreading drought and fire.

    Yesterday’s rain was a gift
    early for the wet season,
    tardy for the thirsty and parched.

    Yesterday’s rain relieved anxieties,
    expectations, released myriads of winged
    insects dancing in today’s afternoon sunlight.

    Some are termites, I think, roused by the premature sprinkle.
    They flutter aimlessly as if lost in the midst of dream.
    In two hours, I hear, their wings will fall and drop them home to thrive or die.

    Yesterday’s rain took us inside
    trading shade for shelter
    to share a Sunday lunch with friends.

    Today the sun glistens over puddles,
    the air feels clean, cobwebs glitter,
    alive with earthy fragrances.

    Breath deepens, heart quickens,
    there is a bounce in the season:
    I want to catch its tune.

    Soon the grass will grow green again
    before the first frosty mornings,
    as usual I wish for a drizzle on my birthday.

    Inside, a child wonders,
    tracing California with a finger on a blue rug:
    “the world does not fit on a rug.

    Too many maps crowding Wikipedia
    telling stories of migrations
    —atoms, animals, tectonic plates, people—

    Over centuries and beyond
    six thousand years old for some,
    several billion years for many, many, most others.

    The world is worth a million maps before one rug is born
    out of the weaver’s hand or the machine that replaced it,”
    the child pursues aloud within mother’s earshot.

    My child has grown, she thinks,
    like grass on October Sundays
    between new and full moon.

    I see the fruit of the buckeye dangling like tiny lanterns in the dusky sky;
    soon persimmons will hang round and orange in naked branches,
    like ornaments out of season glowing through morning fog or against bright blue skies.

    Christine Renaudin’s writing has been featured in several of The Write Spot’s Sparks, as well as in The Write Spot anthologies:  “Discoveries,” and “Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year,”  available at your local bookseller and on Amazon (print and as an e-reader).

    Christine lives, writes, and paints in Petaluma, CA. She is also a dancer. Her most recent performances in 2022 include Sunset in Spring (Fort Bragg, May 2022), The Slow Show (San Francisco, September 2022), Run, Or Don’t (San Francisco, April 2023).An avid practitioner of Contact Improvisation, she facilitates the monthly West Marin Contact Improvisation Jam at The Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station. She loves to see these various practices interact and inform her art-making process.

    Marlene C

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  • Favorite Job . . . Prompt #759

    Write about your favorite job.

    #justwrite #iamwriting #iamawriter

    Marlene C