I'm Obsessed with Poetry Jams

I have an intense love of poetry jams. Spoken word poetry is all about mixing theater with the art of wordplay and those are things I adore. I have never forgotten the first time I saw spoken word poetry. I was fourteen and watching SNL. Usually after that, I tolerated Midnight at the Apollo, because I knew that once that was over, I was gonna get to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was my favorite thing ever. But this night, between the R&B songs and comedians on Midnight at the Apollo, there was a young, white guy. I don't remember his name but I remember him; white t-shirt, scrawny body, carrying nothing to the stage but a piece of paper. And he began to speak and what came out was a bombastic, brilliant, funny poem about himself and the world around him. The audience (mostly black folks who raised some serious eyebrows at him when he took he stage) stood up and cheered and hollered and let him know that he was a bad-ass writer and performer.

I became obsessed. I pulled back my frizzy hair and sat down to write my first spoken word poem. It was about being biracial and it was called, "The Other" because when I took tests at school, I always had to check the other box, for my race and it always bothered me, being not enough of any one thing. I wrote it. I was so proud of it and it was terrible. If I have learned one thing over the years, it's that I'm a prose girl all the way. Pentameter scatters before me. Rhythm and cadence disappear.  But back then, I performed them with zeal. I was a biracial Eminem, all broad hand gestures and pseudo-urban affectation. My town didn't even have paved roads but I wrote like I was Tupac in the ghetto.

I gave up poetry when I discovered how much better I was at prose, but my love of theatrical poetry continues. Thanks to YouTube, I spend a lot of time having communion with writers. People like Taylor Mali Sarah Kaye make my heart happy and poetry jams fill me with child-like joy.Watching spoken word is like going to church. My sad little heathen heart loves having someone standing at the pulpit, up on the stage, making broad hand gestures and preaching  about love and sexuality and faith and technology. I have always connected to my fellow human through words and in this way, it becomes a kind of communion, a supping of the wine. They give the body and the blood and I consume in order to share their humanity. 



I want to share with you this little gem that I found on YouTube. This young man is Marshall Davis Jones. His piece of brilliant but it's a little too theatrical. I think if he toned it down a bit at the end, it would shine even more.  But here it is, beautifully imperfect and so full of wordplay and pathos and... truthiness that I needed to share it with you.

 
I am aware of the irony of posting this on my blog, but... I'm doing it anyway.

Get outside sometime. Enjoy the sunshine, the moon shine (or the moonshine), the hustle and bustle of your fellow people and remember that touch is best experienced with someone or something that can touch you back.


 

When the outside gets to be blinding and all the touching gets to be too much, check out some more fantastic spoken word poetry. 

 

 Worst Poetry by Sarah Kay

What Teachers Make by Taylor Mali  

New Insults by Kait Rokowski 

 Social Anxiety at 130 BPM by Aaron Burnstein

The Impotence of Proofreading by Taylor Mali 

 When Love Arrives by Sarah Kay & Phil Kaye

 This is one of my all time favorites. Note to Self by Ebony Stewart. When I love the way love, I love on purpose.

IWSG: Let Yourself Be Terrible

1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. Wherein I post about the difficulties and joys of writing.


This is an embarrassing post.

I was a very smart kid. I had a high IQ and they put me in the gifted program in school. I never had to work hard to be smarter than other kids, so I didn't bother working hard. I was a mental sloth. But a time came when I wasn't precocious anymore and by then, most of my peers had bypassed me because they had been paying attention and working hard and I had been coasting along with a big vocabulary and a poor work ethic.

It turned out that you can absolutely get by in this world with very little knowledge of things like grammar, punctuation, science and algebra. I have been to plenty of job interviews and never once have I had to solve a quadratic equation to get hired.Take that, seventh grade math teacher!

What I lacked in knowledge, I made up for by trying to be charming. Charm does a pretty good job of masking ignorance at a job interview or a party, but on the written page, charm is useless. My ignorance gave me away every time.

When I wrote the first draft of my work-in-progress in 2009, it was awful. Despite being an avid reader, I knew next to nothing about writing dialogue. All my previous stories were first person and in the head of the main character with no dialogue at all. I didn't know when to use commas, what an adjective was or even basic things like when to make a paragraph break. I'm actually still not sure when to use a semi-colon. My manuscripts tenses shifted with the wind and my main character drifted from first person to third with startling frequency. It was largely unreadable.

But I was proud of my ugly baby and too ignorant to know how bad it was. I gave the first couple of chapters to my friend and fellow blogger Jeannie. A week later, she brought it back to me with a wild look in her eyes and said, "I can't read this, it's making me nuts. You have to put paragraph breaks in it."

I knew so little about the craft of writing that I couldn't figure out where the breaks should go, so I went into the file and chose random places to hit enter. Yup. I had always been a very good report writer but I couldn't put together the concept of paragraph breaks in a story being the same as it is in an essay. When I got back my next draft from Jeannie, she was as patient as one could be when dealing with someone with so little basic knowledge.

Four years, several grammar books and one awesome writing group later, I am a much better writer then I was. I still struggle with adverb-itis and misuse of semi-colons but I can write dialogue like it's no ones business and I'm learning to edit myself in a constructive way.

 Last week, I wrote a new chapter and I shared it with my hubs. After reading it, he told me that it was the by far, the best thing I've written and that it's amazing how much I've improved. It was the best compliment ever. I am still warm and glow-y from it.

Why did I tell you all this? To tell you that it's okay to be a dumb-ass artistically. It's okay to not know how to do it and to do it anyway. Because the thing that will make you less of a dumb-ass, is practice. It's persistence. And it's a good friend who will patiently explain what the difference between tense and perspective. Thanks for that Jeannie.

We all want to be perfect writers and we want to sell novels and be validated. But you won't get good if you wait until you know it all. You won't miraculously become a Hemingay or an Austen by sitting on your ass. You've got to work. You've got to let yourself suck. Make bad choices, poor plot structure, one dimensional characters, boring sex scenes. Do it all. Be brave and foolish. Name a character something ludicrous. Change your tense halfway through the story. Have muddy themes. Don't be afraid to be terrible, because if you let yourself be terrible, while striving to be better, someday someone will tell you how awesome you have become.

Go write the best shit you know how to write. And then learn to write better. Perfection is unattainable. Learning to be less terrible is a lot closer to your grasp. 

Perfectly Positive Monday #3

Whoohoo Monday! Get ready for a shitstorm* of positivity and exclamation points!!!

*I am so classy.

Writing:

·         Made some headway on Chapter 10 of my damnable work-in-progress. I'm finally at the point where I'm writing from scratch which is actually an improvement over laboring on the 22nd revision of my first eight chapters.

·         My husband earned himself a foot rub because he read the last completed chapter of my novel and told me, "Seriously, this is the best chapter you've written. You're getting so good!" I'm so proud of myself because it really is the sharpest, funniest thing I've written. I have always loved writing but if I'm gonna be honest, four years ago when I started writing seriously, I sucked at it. Now I can honestly say I suck much less. There's at least a fifty percent reduction in suckage. Feel free to add your own suckage reduction/marriage joke here.

·         Because I can't wait to get started with my next novel, I spent a lot of some time on Pinterest searching for character inspiration. My next novel is about a female rock star and her face hasn't come to me yet. The first thing I do is focus on coloring and go from there, so I'm still unsure if she'll be a blonde, brunette or redhead? My inclination is to write a redhead because I am obsessed with gingers and secretly dream of being one. But my husband picked out this itty bitty tattooed blonde on Pinterest and said, "That's your character."  Hmm.

Other Parts of Life:

·         Saw Avenged Sevenfold and Halestorm last Friday and it was so rad! Halestorm was surprisingly good and A7X can truly do no wrong in my eyes. Mostly because my eyes are busy ogling M. Shadows' arms.

·         Got to eat at Cops and Doughnuts in Clare, MI which is always the best thing ever. They have this doughnut called the Bacon Squealer and it's a long john with maple icing on top and two strips of bacon. It's the best doughnut I've ever had and it tastes like pancakes! Don't judge me. They make everything with love there and everyone knows that things made with love don't have calories.

·         My hubs found a job! This comes after a miserable year of searching, applying and rejections. He started today and said he already loves his coworkers which is usually a good sign. Better to work a job you don't like with people you do, than to work a job you love with people you can't stand. I've done it both ways. I'll take the sucky job with awesome coworkers every time.

·         My Mother-in-Law made some seriously delicious Lasagna last night. When I say it's delicious you can bet on it, because (with the exception of Raman and Mac n' Cheese) I hate all forms of pasta. I know, I'm a weirdo.

·         My best friend (who lives in Mexico) is staying in Michigan for the summer. Yay!

And now it is time again for...

Stuff That Makes Me Cheerful!



Maple Bacon Squealers from Cops & Doughnuts.



Avenged Sevenfold's new single, Hail to the King.

Because seriously, SHARKNADO.

What brings you joy on this fine Monday?

Perfectly Positive Monday #2

It's another marvelous Monday and it's time for some damn positivity!

While my new chapter did not magically appear like I'd hoped, I managed some spectacularly fun ways to avoid writing that accidentally resulted in productivity. How'd I do that?

• Revised two chapters.
• Named my character's bridal shop and made a logo for it because I'm a 12th level dork.*
• Finished the photo collage for my novel.
• Made individual character collages.
• Cleaned up my OneNote notebook on my novel.
• In OneNote made individual character bios with the collages.
• Sussed out my characters heights, weights, birthdays and astrological signs.
• Did some brainstorming with my friend Meika in regard to my novel's title.
• Made a mock up of the cover of my novel.

So while not much writing happened other then the revisions, I'm happy to say I have a better handle on the characters and the story.

In things not related to my novel, I finally roped my hubs into sitting down and watching Veronica Mars. He liked it. I am prepping him for the upcoming MOVIE, Squeeeeee! Also, I've never seen season three so we are going to rent it this weekend if they have it at our local video store.

Now onto things that make me smile:

 The first time Logan Echolls and Veronica Mars kissed:

Actually anything that has to do with Logan and Veronica,especially fan videos about their relationship set to angsty music:

Actually anything Logan Echolls related (much like Veronica, this girl loves her bad boys):

 

What you want something not related to my never-ending love of Veronica Mars? You are no fun.

Fiiiiine. 

Avenged Sevenfold's new album will be available in August! And they released a single today!  Woot!

Mmmm, bad boys

What makes you joyful on this fine Monday?

*If you got the "12th level dork" reference, congrats, you love Veronica Mars and you are indeed a 12th level dork as well.

Perfectly Positive Monday #1

I feel that if you only know me through this blog, that it looks like I never make progress with my novel and that I'm a big, insecure whiner. But a blog post is like a photograph, you only see that one moment, but there are lots of other moments (some better, some worse) that never get captured.

So in the spirit of positivity, I will TRY (and sometimes fail) to post something positive and true on Mondays. Because Monday is the day you need positive thinking the most.

Three weeks ago, I wrote a new end to my last chapter and wrote two new chapters for my novel! Yay me!  It turns out that over the next few weeks I'm going to be doing a lot of new writing. I changed the timeline of my story which means I have a week with my characters that is not written yet (originally they only spend a day and a half together). It's gonna work a lot better and I'm actually excited to start working on it.

When I told my husband that I was worried about what my characters will do for this unwritten week, we ended up brainstorming for half an hour and he came up with some really good ideas. That's one of the many things I adore about him. He's not a writer but he's endlessly supportive of me and the best person to brainstorm with.

 So yeah. Positive.

Now, some things that make me feel cheerful and grateful to be alive:

Pictures of dogs:

















Grilled Cinnamon Rolls from Sparty's in Lansing, MI:

















David Tennant's smile:

What is something that makes you happy on this fine Monday?

IWSG: The Indecision Tango



1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. Wherein I post about the difficulties and joys of writing. 

My writing is going fairly well. The rewrite is moving at a decent clip. Not as fast as it should be, but that's okay, I forgive me. However, I recently discovered two things about myself:

1. I can't make decisions

2. I'm terrible at naming things.

 

This is a bad combo. Whether it comes to character names, novel titles, or the simple name of a restaurant, I suck. I come up with long lists of terrible ideas and then I can't narrow them down. So I find myself reaching for a lot of outside help which in turn makes me feel like a talentless hack. Aren't writers supposed to be creative? You may be thinking, "Oh Mencara, you can't be that bad, can you?"

I named one of my characters Tiramisu. I'll let that sink in.... 

Obviously I woke from my fugue state and changed it. But it took weeks of deliberation, discussion on Facebook because wanted her name to be Anika but I was worried people wouldn't pronounce it right. They wouldn't pronounce her name right in their head while they read the book and this was unacceptable to me. Basically, I'm a wackjob.

Finally I settled on a name, but then I had to change her surname because it no longer worked.  That took a week of searching and pairing names together and requesting that my friends participate while I figured out the best one. Then I couldn't figure out what to name a restaurant in my novel, so I turned to my creative friend, Jeannie, who came up with one for me. Then this past week, I've struggled and failed to come up with a name for my character's bridal shop.

Then yesterday, it occurred to me that I wrote the rough draft of my W.I.P. back in 2009 and never titled it. Imagine having a four year old child that you never bothered naming. I'm becoming Holly Golightly now. So I tried to come up with a book title and each one has been worse than the last.  I'm back to taking suggestions for the name of a novel that no one has read fully but me. See what I mean? I'm a hack. I wondering if I have to give my Facebook friends credit when the book gets published, since they're making all my decisions asI run to them for input.

Also it took me an hour to choose the image on the right ---->

Am I just a needy writer? Indecisive? Perhaps it's a bad case of Atelophobia? You decide in the comments below!*

*See what I did there? I'm hilarious.

Writer Worries: when your fictional business name turns out to be a real one



"Blushing In Pink" dress by Ouma



A character in my novel is a fashion designer starting an urban, alternative bridal boutique. She upcycles old dresses into couture gowns that people can actually afford. My character's business deserves a cool name.  I have spent the last week making up every cool name I could think of, just to Google and find out it already exists.

Now I know if I were actually starting a business, my business name is  only held in the state where I copyrighted it. But for the purposes of a novel, can I use the name of a business that already exists? I googled and didn't really find an answer.

I have a huge list of buzzwords that I have been putting together and tearing apart like refrigerator magnet poetry  and I'm getting frustrated. I need a name that is romantic and edgy and urban. One that declares that this is a bridal shop but not that kind of bridal shop. You aren't going to get white blindness from staring at generic gowns in this boutique. You won't find $10 worth of gauze sold as veils for $70. Instead it's a place where the prices are reasonable, the veils are birdcage-y and the dresses are made with love and color. It's the kind of shop where chick flick moments are optional but feeling like a badass is not.



Wow I think I just wrote the commercial for it :)

Anyhow, these are the names I made up that turned out to be real bridal shops:



Claire Pettibone Gown



She Said Yes

Something Old, Something New

Committed

All Frocked Up

Frocked Up

Unbridled

Unveiled

Swoon

I also have a list of ones that I googled that didn't come up as being shops but I'm not sure if I like those as well as the others:

Unlaced

Unruffled

Aisle Less Traveled

Rock the Frock

Vixen

Scandalize

Lovesick

Gorgeous But Deadly

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?