Hello everyone! The semester is coming to a close so I wont be posting any more assignments. I imagine I’ll still add a post every once and a while but it wont be nearly as often as the past semester’s posts.
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So long for now!
Dawn the Daisies Fair: Creative Writing Final Project
About the Author:
Hi everyone, I’m Eliza Harpy and today’s blog post is my final project for Creative Writing. Before I took this class I had already established my style of writing; it was almost exclusively free verse poetry. I shied away from other forms of writing and even other forms of poetry with their rules and restrictions. But over the course of this semester I have experienced writing narratives and novels, scripts and sonnets. I’ve found that my writing was not stifled by the boundaries of these different mediums, but elevated by the new perspectives they created.
The poem I’m sharing with you today is an abecedarian. It consists of 26 lines in which the first letters of each line coincides with a letter of the alphabet. It was originally just a warm up activity but I have grown to love this poem for it’s simplistic beauty.
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“Dawn the Daisies Fair”
Angelic
Bride so
Certain you are
Drowned in chains of daisies the
Entanglement is
Filling up the
Grave in which you lay.
Horrified
I call to you: my sweet my
Jewel my key. The
Key that clamors
Loudly on the
Morn that
None are free.
Open up the glorious
Palace on this
Quest to
Rest your
Soul, for
Tranquility is
Universal and
Vitality is
Worthless, if you
X-ray all the world and find
You’re naught but skin and bones my dear; so release with
Zeal your certainty and dawn the daisies fair.
Lighted Darkness, Darkness Bright
I everyone, today’s blog post is actually a collaboration with my friend over at Just Another Random Space. We each wrote a cinquain or five lined poem. Furthermore, we both had separate themes in mind when we wrote our poems. I wrote with the concept of darkness in mind and followed the rhyme scheme of AAAAA; while she wrote about rainbows and wrote a BBBBB rhyme scheme. Then, we reassembled our poems, mix and matching the lines till we had two cinquains which followed the rhyme scheme of BABBA ABABB.
I have always loved writing poems and lyrics. It has been great returning to poetry for this assignment. Furthermore, it has been a great experience for me to collaborate with someone who also has a passion for creative writing. So, without further ado,here is our poem: Lighted Darkness, Darkness Bright.
Rainbow mountains line
the blackest of sheep
which is a sign
it plays for keeps
the village weeps.
The night time seeps
a never ending sigh
of what despair reaps
that no one will wine
when worlds combine.
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If you enjoyed this poem make sure to check out Just Another Random Space!
An Ode to the Glasses I Broke this December
This morning my glasses said “Hey!”
“Today just is not a good day.”
“You know what we’ll do?”
“We’ll break into two!”
“So now you’re as blind as a cray.”
Nanowrimo Excerpt
Hi everyone! I haven’t posted much lately because I was participating in the Nanowrimo challenge. The novel I wrote for this challenge is called “Thoughts Like Clouds.” Here is an excerpt from it– enjoy!
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~New Things~
Today is Sally’s turn. It is the first when I let Sally be in charge for twenty-four hours. Before, Sally could only go a little while by herself before I had to help her, but now we think she is strong enough.
We stare at the clock. Earlier we decided that we will change at exactly midnight tonight and we’ll switch back at exactly midnight to tomorrow.
The clock goes on tick tick ticking its way towards Sally’s turn.
11:57, 11:58, 11:59, and finally, 12:00.
We switch, I push myself way back into the smallest part of our brain. Sally pushes herself way up into the front of our brain. There is a long pause as Sally settles down comfortably into our mind. Then another pause as she slowly finds each muscle, testing them gently so that she knows they will work when she asks them to. Then we stand up.
We are so excited! Sally is moving a hundred percent by herself! Sally does a little wiggly-happy-dance, but it doesn’t quite work and we fall down onto the floor. We giggle. We do not mind the fall, or sitting on the floor, even though it is a cold hard place to sit in the middle of the night. We are too busy being excited.
I offer to help sally get back up. She says that she does not want any muscle help, but if I can talk from the back of our mind and help remind her how to move to stand back up after falling she would be much obliged.
I takes us a little while to get back to our feet. It is hard to remember how to stand up after falling. When I have our body I don’t need to think much about how to stand. I just stand, but we figure it out.
Soon enough we are standing in the middle of the room wondering what to do next. Neither of us wants to sleep.
We decide to go and see Mama. Maybe we will ask Mama to read us a bedtime story, and Sally can practice using our voice.
We totter into Mama’s room. Mama is awake and reading from her favorite book. She looks up. She seems surprised to see the other Sally walking around. Mama hasn’t seen Sally move much. I am so proud of Sally.
When we get to mama Sally stops and prepares to speak. Half way between our brain and our mouth Sally’s question changes.
“Mama, do you love us?”
I don’t know why Sally asks this instead of asking about bedtime stories but I don’t mind the change, today is Sally’s day, she can ask whatever she wants.
Mama doesn’t answer. Instead, she fills the room with a long pause, and fills our eyes with her flickering gaze. It almost looks like our Mama has another Mama inside of her and the other Mama is searching for the right muscles to make the words come out.
The pause stretches out, bigger and bigger, until it fills us up, and we are trembling under the weight of all of this silence.
When we cannot stand mothers sad, empty eyes a moment longer Sally runs from the room. Her movements are awkward and stumbling, but we do not fall, not until we reach our bed and collapse down on top of it.
Sally, Sally it’s not your fault! I plea, Mama was probably just tired. She was just sitting there sleeping with her eyes open. She does love us. She just wasn’t awake, that’s all, she just wasn’t awake.
All night we lay in bed and think about Mama’s heavy silence. We try to convince ourselves that Mama truly was asleep. By morning, we almost believe it. Sally makes me take back our body, even though this was supposed to be her special twenty-four hour day. Sally says that she is tired, and moving is too hard right now.
We move quietly around Mama. We are afraid that if we stay with Mama too long, the horrible dark silence will surround us again, and we will drown in Mama’s staring eyes.
~Excerpts from a Mother’s Mind: The Other Sally~
Sally came into my room earlier, but she wasn’t my Sally. She was that other thing. That other self.
The other Sally moves differently, in a disjointed fashion. One moment it scurries at frantic speeds; the next it crawls along delicately, moving each limb as though it is afraid of its limbs shattering on impact with the floor.
It came up to me, this tumorous mockery of my little girl, head cocked viciously to the side, eyes staring with an penetrating, unblinking gaze. Its eyes bore through me. Finally it blinked, long and hard, as though only just remembering how; as though that drawn out blink of an eye was its sole purpose in entering my room.
Eyes still closed, the other Sally asked in a tremorous, rasp of a voice.
“Mama, do you love us?”
I shuddered. The thing’s eyes flared back open, pupils contracting into pin pricks as it searched my face for an answer.
My breath quickened, its hard stare so strikingly resembles her fathers that I flinch, expecting the swinging fist or the kick of a boot.
Yes, of course I love you Sally. That is what I wanted to say. What I tried desperately to say. That is what you say to your daughter when she comes to you in the middle of the night and asks you to comfort her, but all I could think of is the deep stare of the other Sally, and the years of being beaten by Andrew.
My thoughts were so full of how I want this thing– this other Sally, who has corrupted my relationship with my Sally– out of my daughter, out of my life, out of this home, out of this world that I could not respond. I just returned the other Sally’s cold searching gaze.
NaNoWriMo
Hi everyone, this year I am participating in the NaNoWriMo’s (National Novel Writing Month) Young Writers Program. This means that my posts for the month of November will be oriented towards updates on how my novel is coming along as apposed to sharing new pieces of writing.
The idea for my novel is based on a poem I wrote a while ago. It’s the story of a girl who is possessed by a ghost. She literally faces her demons and finds that instead of being terrified, she befriends her possessor and they must figure out how to function with their dual personalities.
Interested in participating in NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program? Click here to sign up.
Flash Fiction
I was about to leave when he called out, “You know, the only reason this world is so finite is the fact that you are unable to imagine infinity.” Then he vanished into this air.
Stories for a Weary World
Before you read click here to listen to the song that inspired this story.
INT: CHILD’S BEDROOM – LATE NIGHT
A father cradles a crying baby boy in his arms. The father makes small shushing noises as he bounces the baby. The father is in his thirties and wearing black glasses. The boy has startling blue eyes. A small lamp sits on a bedside table casting warm light onto the room. The room is sparsely furnished with a cradle, rocking chair, and a small throw rug, all in different shades of blue.
FATHER (to baby)
Hush my child. Hush now and I will tell you a story.
FATHER
This is the story of the very first rainbow
As the father says this the scene dissolves into gray mist, when the camera comes back into focus the father and son are part of a world of sculpted clouds.
ANIMATION SEQUENCE: STOP-MOTION/CLAYMATION
The world is full of clouds in numerous shades of pastel pink and blue. Two pure white clouds one with distinctive black glasses, the other with brilliant blue eyes are floating close together. The blue eyed cloud stops crying suddenly and giggles as he squishes a nearby cloud, one marbled with shades of lavender. The only other cloud with any distinction is small and gray, with mournful black eyes.
FATHER
Once upon a time there was a little cloud. This cloud was very sad. So sad that he cried and cried and cried unto the world below.
As the father speaks, the gray cloud sniffles, and then wails as rain falls out of him.
FATHER
And as is the way of the cloud children, once one starts to cry, the others are sure to follow.
Sure enough, the other clouds slowly shift colors changing to gray before growing big sad cartoon eyes and joining in a cacophony of tears.
The baby boy cloud babbles a little before joining the other clouds in their rainstorm.
FATHER
Ah yes, all the little clouds cried and cried together till the world below was was flooded with the little cloud’s despair.
The father gathers the blue eyed cloud close to him. The father cloud changes his forms to mimic how he held the child in the real world.
FATHER
Once the sun saw what was happening she could not bear to see the cloud children’s sorrow. So she thought and thought and thought some more, until she came up with a beautiful plan.
The sun emerges from behind a cloud. Her broad face falls when she sees all the anguished cloud children. She is a collage of orange and gold and yellow all swirled together in tight curls and braids in a sophisticated pattern, contrasting greatly with the simpler design of the weeping clouds.
FATHER
The sun decided to give the cloud children a gift to brighten their day. She sent forth a sunbeam to shine through the rain drops and become a lovely ribbon of color for the cloud children to play with.
A coil of the sun unfurls and stretches downwards till it collides with a water droplet and refracts into a shimmering rainbow. The cloud child who instigated the weeping suddenly stops crying and stares in awe at the rainbow, hiccuping occasionally. The other clouds fade back to their original pastel colors. The rain ceases. The blue eyed cloud giggles as he waves a cloud limb through the rainbow. Then, yawning, he snuggles into his father’s lap and falls asleep as the scene swirls into rainbow mist.
INT: BEDROOM – SAME NIGHT
The father kisses the top of the baby boy’s head and lays him tenderly back into bed.
FATHER (whispering)
Goodnight my sweet child.
END SCENE
Excerpts From a Book of Poems
A few days ago I was cleaning my room and I found a sketchbook. It was full of poems that I had written and illustrated. I decided to share one of the poems with you. Let me know if you like this and I’ll upload some more in the future.
Symbiosis
I am one among many. The trees stand tall, solemn companions. There is a path. It runs deep through the forest, worn brown by the countless wanderers who came before me. The trees are old here, a canopy of limbs intertwining as they race to taste the sky. High above me a bird caws as it soars into the sky, its cry cutting through the still morning. It circles higher and higher, wingtips slicing through rays of mist and sunlight. It fades into a sapphire sky. The silent serenity of the forest deepens. I step off the path heading towards an oak. Its numerous leaves refract the sky into shades of gold and emerald. I lean against the tree, bark rough against my back. I breathe slowly, in and out, in and out. A singular leaf, marbled red and orange by the fast approaching autumn, flutters to the ground beside me. I close my eyes and smile.
The girl walks among Us. She is small, a droplet of youth in an ocean of ancient wisdom. She wanders, the path beneath her a long jagged scar through the heart of the wilderness. We are Ancient. Our roots stretch and tangled until We are One. A hive of trees: a forest colony: a united entanglement. We cradle a bird in Our limbs. It takes to the air; the draft of its wings causes Our leaves to flutter. As it disappears into the sky, a deep stillness settles over Us. The girl is now Our only point of motion. We have no eyes with which to see the girl, instead We feel her. In the tingling of roots as she steps off the path; in her warmth as she rests against The Old Oak; in the air as she breathes. In and out. Her breath, absorbed through Our leaves, becomes part of Us. In and out. We let one of Our leaves unfurl and drift to the ground. It is the closest We can get to communication. It is the closest We can get to saying hello.
our life as birds 