Verbal Snapshots #1

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what kind of picture can I paint in 140 characters or less?

Sometimes there's no time to snap a picture. Sometimes the scope of what you want to capture is too big, too small, or too fleeting for any camera. I wrote my first Verbal Snapshot on Twitter a year ago when I saw an elderly man in a suit riding a red and silver bicycle. I didn't get a photo of him, but I wanted to capture the image, so I described it and called it a Verbal Snapshot.

Verbal Snapshots are the word equivalents of Instagram and all those photo we take with our phones on the go. Recently I've made a practice of describing the moments in time that catch my eye, my heart, or my fancy. Language is how I make sense of the world, and so much of what I write blooms from simple moments of beauty, joy, wonder, or oddity. These little "Language-grams" are my reminders to pay attention to the world around me and to look for the stories waiting to be told.

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook to see these snippets as I publish them, or come back here to the blog where I'll collect the newest together every few weeks. (See other posts in this series.)

A perfect circle of honey-colored tea fills a white porcelain teacup sitting upon a caramel-brown tabletop. (3/23/13)

Two trains on parallel tracks pass each other in opposite directions. For a split second, the engines look ready to kiss. (3/21/13)

Wall-mounted clothes dryers sit empty and dark in the laundromat, like quiet portals to another place. (3/20/13)

Family of 5 out for a cold, spring day walk. Light mist falls. Mom, dad, boy, & dog stroll. Younger boy sleeps in stroller. (3/16/13)

Days in March: White-grey sky. Bare tree twigs with barely-plump buds. Last year's leaves matted into winter grass. (3/12/13)

Candlelight glow through white paper wrapper. Empty mason jar. Broken grey seashell. Small black stone with white stripe. (3/1/13)

A blue and white pillow supports a baggie of ice beneath a foot in a mauve knee-sock.
 (2/24/13)

A grey cat stares out the window at falling snow, his fur ruffling in the breeze from the heat vent beneath his feet. (2/20/13)

A toddler stands in a front yard that's now more green than white; she towers over the smallest snowman I've ever seen. (2/16/13)

A woman with long dark hair in a white coat outside a mansion-turned-funeral-home while snow filigrees bare tree branches. (2/15/13)

Vintage cherry-red Volkswagen Beetle trundling along with a dark green Christmas tree strapped to the roof. (12/24/12)

Grey-haired gent in tan sport coat and slacks, riding a shiny red & silver bicycle past the post office on Good Friday. (4/6/12)

Loquacious: "Bird" by Karen Dietrich

Loquacious: full of excessive talk : wordy (www.m-w.com)

Loquacious is a "wordy" series that revels in language. Read more essays in the series here.

Today's guest essay was written by Karen Dietrich, a real, live writer who lives right here in my town! Until recently I've had very little local creative community, but that is slowly changing thanks to another local writer (who you'll meet in a future Loquacious column) who introduced me to Karen. In addition to being a poet, writer, and professor, Karen is also one-half of the music group Essential Machine. And in a werid twist of local connection, we discovered that she worked with my husband at Blockbuster Video about 15 years ago. I'm glad that our paths have crossed again, and I'm pleased to bring you this engaging and vivid essay about her run-in with "bird."

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Bird

By Karen Dietrich

I still remember the tape recorder – it was silver and black, and from the Sears Catalog my sister Linda and I prized. Sprawled on the shag carpet, we routinely circled our desires on those four-color glossy pages. The tape recorder had been a gift for Linda on her eighth birthday. I was five years old, a smaller shadow following longer shadows around the neighborhood.

One afternoon, while Linda was in school, I stole the tape recorder from its hiding place under her bed and ran to the basement, where everything was amber with paneled walls and mounted deer heads. Into the pinprick holes of the recorder's microphone, I played Olivia Newton-John's Greatest Hits from the turntable, announced each song like a DJ, the plastic buttons smooth on my fingertips as I hit record, stop, rewind.

The problem was the playback, the sound of another girl in the room. Surely it wasn't me. I ran upstairs to my mother, played the evidence for her, certain the machine was defective – a loose component, a malfunctioning red and black wire deep inside. My mother laughed, then gave me a pat on the head, my dark hair parted taut down the middle, two identical braids dangling below each shoulder.

"That's not me!" I told her. "That's not my voice."

"But it is you, of course," she said. "You just can’t say words with er sounds."

"Yes, I can. Test me," I said. I was a diligent student, a lover of assignments and tests. Memorization thrilled me, and I had a knack for it. Mind like a steel trap, my father said.

"Say bird into the tape recorder and play it back. You'll see what I mean," my mother said, and went back to her housecleaning, her hands forever hidden in buckets of soapy wash water.

I locked myself in my pink bedroom and recited the blackbird verse I remembered from a book of nursery rhymes:

Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,

Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened the birds began to sing,

Wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?

When I played it back, I realized my mother was right. I couldn't say bird. My version sounded more like board. I said bird over and over into the silver and black tape recorder, hoping that eventually the playback would match what I thought I was saying.

I began avoiding the words I couldn't say correctly, and for the most part it was a success. Bird was the only difficult one. Although I now hated the word, I loved the creatures intensely. I loved watching robins gather in our yard. I loved watching sparrows assemble nests in the porch roof gutters, their small tufts of grass and twig peeking from the eaves. The previous spring, a bird had made a low nest in our dogwood tree. Three speckled eggs had hatched into small alien-like babies, necks stretching to reach the fresh worms their mother dangled above them. I promised myself to never speak of birds until I fixed my speech problem.

And with that promise, birds were suddenly everywhere. There were Cardinals in coloring books, and black crows on Saturday morning cartoons. There were blue jays on the hidden picture page of Highlights Magazine, sweet birds sleeping in the hem of a boy's pant leg.

One year of speech therapy eventually cured me. My therapist's name was Karen, too. She gave me stickers for progress – metallic, puffy, or scratch-and-sniff. I pressed them inside the front cover of my workbook, a softbound edition of speech exercises. Karen had discovered the source of the problem. It was my tongue – it didn't know to anchor itself to my top molars while making the er sound. In the evenings, I practiced speaking into my pink Holly Hobby hand mirror, watching my lips and tongue, saying bird over and over into the air, letting my sound take flight.

Bird reminds me of hate and love and the desire to make something beautiful. Bird reminds me of language and emotion and how they swirl into memory, a seemingly endless spiral. Today, when I say the word, it's always like singing, like birdsong.

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Karen Dietrich is the author of a memoir, The Girl Factory, forthcoming in October 2013. Her poems and essays have appeared in Pittsburgh City Paper, The Bellingham Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and elsewhere. She lives in Greensburg, PA. Find Karen online at KarenDietrich.net.

For You: Writing Apprenticeships & Mini-mentoring Sessions

Several years ago I reached a plateau in my writing life. I knew I needed some new tools and techniques if I wanted to grow as a writer, but I didn't know where to turn for those things. I wasn't even sure what kind of support I needed. I eventually found my way into a writing program that used a mentorship model, and it turned out to be a pivotal experience in my writing life.

I've taken what I've learned from that experience and created The Word Cellar Writing Guild.

I've bundled my feedback, editing, and coaching services to offer three-month writing apprenticeships to help you grow in every aspect of your writing life.

As part of the Writing Guild, you'll embrace your writing dreams, set monthly writing goals, and write your way into the heart of them.

You'll learn to read like a writer (which, in turn, will make you a better writer).

You'll receive constructive, kind, and useful feedback on your work, along with personalized support through ongoing conversations and email.

As your mentor, I offer you the best of what I've learned from years of wanting to write, years of creative writing, years of studying writing, years of working as a freelance writer, and years of being a mentor, coach, and editor to other writers.

Here's what you get when you join the Writing Guild: Each month you'll receive in-depth editorial feedback on your writing, two phone (or Skype) conversations with me, weekly email support (to cheer you on, to commiserate with you, to hold your hand, to kick your butt -- or whatever it is you need to keep writing!), and a personalized reading plan to help you discover and learn from other writers.

There are three levels of apprenticeships in the Writing Guild, based on how much you want to write each month:

• Introductory (5-10 pages/month)
• Intermediate (10-20 pages/month)
• Intensive (20-30 pages/month)

Full details about all apprenticeship levels are over here on The Word Cellar Writing Guild page.

And waaay down at the bottom of that page (kind of buried right now, as in this blog post), is a note about mini-mentoring sessions.

Mini-mentoring sessions are individual sessions for those of you who need a single shot of creative help.

A single mini-mentoring session can take the form of one of these:

• One-hour mentoring call (to discuss any aspect of the writing life or your writing projects)
• Written feedback on up to 2,500 words (about 5 pages)
• Written review of your blog (you identify 3-5 blog posts for me to review)

Again, details are over here (scroll down for the single session info).

If you have any questions about how the apprenticeships or mini-mentoring sessions work, please leave a comment below or contact me. I'd love to talk with you about what kind of writing support you need.

Wherever You Go (an Everyday Essay)

This post is part of the "Everyday Essays" series. See below for a description of the series, and read others essays here.

I don't know why I was sitting alone in that small-town McDonalds 18 years ago, but I do remember that I sat in the corner by the window. In my memory of this scene, I can sense that I felt sad and alone, but I don't remember why. (This was some time during my college years, so feeling sad and alone wasn't exactly unusual then.) As I stared out the window at cars driving by, I listened to the inner monologue chattering away in my own head. Call it an inner monologue, thoughts, or prayer, I was reaching out to something inside of me and greater than me, seeking connection and a sense of meaning and love in it all. And then, in-between bites of french fries, an epiphany of the obvious materialized from thin air and hovered between me and the Formica tabletop: You are never really alone. No matter where you are or how alone you feel, no one can take away the thoughts in your head, the love in your heart, the knowledge in your spirit.

Wherever you go, there you are.

My dad likes that saying. He's also fond of: If you lived here, you'd be home by now.

On the surface, these are silly little truisms. But like most clichés, there's a deeper meaning wrapped up in them.

When I lived in England for a year after college, I learned to do all sorts of things by myself (first because I didn't know anyone, and then when everyone else was busy). I went sightseeing alone. I learned to navigate public transportation on my own. I ate out by myself. I went to movies and plays without a date. I visited museums and attended concerts solo. I didn't always feel at ease with being alone in public, but I was determined to not let that stop me from making the most of that year.

Wherever I go, there I am.

My friend Liz has a beautiful mirror meditation practice that she uses to feel less alone, to feel seen, and to bear witness to the truth of her life and her self. Sometimes she documents the moment through photography, and sometimes she just spends a moment looking herself in the eye. (She's exploring and sharing this practice in Water Your Soul next month.) Again and again, she meets herself in the mirror.

Wherever she goes, there she is.

Earlier this month I went to The Moth StorySlam in Pittsburgh, prepared to get up on stage and tell a story should my name be pulled out of the hat. (Alas, it was not, but more about that experience in a later post.) I've been dreaming of telling stories on stage for a long time, and I was finally ready to take that leap. My husband (my biggest supporter and the one who keeps me grounded) was supposed to go with me, but things changed at the last minute and he couldn't go. I went by myself, but I wasn't alone. I took my friends with me: I wore my "Just Be True" shirt from Jen, my misfit bauble necklace from Kelly, my wedding and engagement rings from James, the fingerless gloves that I wore when Viv took this photo of me (one of my favorites), this Anna Joyce hoodie that Liz had turned me on to via Pinterest, and some Texture posh pants that I'd bought when I was with Liz in Seattle a few years ago. Pretty much everything on my body (minus my shoes, socks, and underwear) was conceived of, handmade by, bought for me as a gift by, or somehow connected to people who know and love and support me. These physical items are talismans, reminders of rootedness and connection.

Wherever we go, there we are.

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About Everyday Essays: At least a few times a week I jot down notes about something -- usually a small moment, detail, or thought -- that I want to write about. Most of those ideas stay frozen as notes and never bloom into essays. Everyday Essays is my writing practice to allow some of those notes to move beyond infancy. I've decided to share some of them with you here, even if they're still half-naked or half-baked. The word "essay" (as is almost always noted when the form is discussed) comes from the French verb essayer, which means to try. The essay is a reckoning, a rambling, an exploration, an attempt. Think of these Everyday Essays as freewriting exercises, rough drafts, or the jumbled, interconnected contents of my mind, which may or may not take root and grow into longer (deeper) essays.

The Golden Buzz of Things to Come

Buzz buzz buzz.

That's how it feels inside my head right now. Lots of things on my "Ta Da!" list (which is so much nicer and more exciting than a "To Do" list, don't you think?). Lots of new projects to map out, and some old projects to revamp. Stories to tell (on the page and on the stage). A website redesign to ponder. A photograph+words art project to inhabit and bring to light. Ebooks to create. The whispers of a new indie print publication to sort out. Things to read, emails to reply to, priorities to set. The buzz is good, invigorating even. But the buzz can also be a bit unsettling -- like too much humming inside the honeycomb of my mind.

For the next few days I'll be settling into home again after spending five days in New York City. (There's a lot of humming, thrumming, and buzz in NYC, to be sure.) I was there to participate in the grand finale of Golden Ticket, a 12-week course, led by Michelle Ward and Tanya Geisler, to help women entrepreneurs love what they do and how they do it. I plan to share more about the program and my experience with it in the coming weeks, but right now I'll just say that I've been clarifying my vision for my creative work, and I'm excited about what's to come. Buzz Buzz!

I know this all sounds like cryptic hype (buzz?) right now. Really, I just wanted to pop in here and say "hello" since I've been quiet for awhile and let you know that good stuff is on its way. No promises yet regarding timetables and all of those logistical tidbits, but stay tuned: It's going to be golden.