what's in a year...

by Karen Dums


The Third Story Writers Guild website and blog is celebrating its first anniversary. As stated in my "myriad musing" on the website, it's been a year of discoveries. Some pleasant. Some not so much.
But I look at it this way. We've had a great year as a group, and it is hoped, as individual writers.
One thing this writer has discovered? Having a presence in the virtual world is hard work -- time consuming and plain, flat out hard work. If a site is going to be good it needs to be kept up. Hope we're doing well in that department since the musings, the wramblings, the book recommendations, all come from within. There is no "passing the buck."

Not that it's all been pure drudgery, we've had a lot of fun in the past year too. Kourtney Heintz came to visit with us last year about this time. We'd all just met, yet now many of us are fast friends with this Connecticut native, hard-working, giving, wonderful woman, who will be back with us again in little more than a week. So willing to share insights and advice. Amazing.

Jerry Apps and his wife Ruth joined us for a program in October 2013. He spoke with our group in private, and gave a wonderful, well attended public presentation. We now count him as friend, giver of advice and insight. This man who has nearly single-handedly saved the "little histories" of rural life in Wisconsin is our friend! Amazing.

During the winter months we held write-ins. What a fun thing, to be able to stay in our beautiful public library after hours and just write. Unbelievable how much work gets done in a few hours when there is no phone, no television, no dishes in the sink to call one's name and become a distraction from concentrating on the written word.

Four of us made a trip up to Northland College in Ashland to hear an author speak. It was a great little road trip. Interesting to see "how other folks do it."

We did an open read at Chequamegon Canoe Club. We are always well received there, and we have an absolute blast every time.

June brought us the long-awaited gift of Michael Perry's presence. What a humble, sharing, down-to-earth, hard-working, multi-talented man! Again, amazing!

On a personal level some of us were "accepted," some of us "rejected." That is each individual's story to tell and I will not put it here, but we soldier on.

We are a little writing community. Please let us know what you think.

                   



                  

just do it

by Anna Maria Hansen

I've been struggling to write. More than I'd like to admit.

It feels like my initiative to put words on paper is sapped. Completely gone. It's been months since I've written a poem that I liked. Even longer for a short story. While I clicked open my unfinished, in-desperate-need-of-editing novel about once a week, I just re-read it and occasionally changed a sentence or two.

 

Last week, it got to the point where I began to question my ability to write. Wondering if it was really gone, and if I would get it back. For the third time that week, I had set aside time to write and was simply sitting at the computer, chin cupped in my hands. Blankly staring at a blank text document flashing palely on the screen. Fingers tentatively pecking, I'd punched in two stanzas of a poem that I already hated.

 

It was corny. Like a cheesy, dime-a-dozen Hallmark card. It positively oozed amateur writer.

 

Moody, sullen in my lack of success to have the perfect words snap electricity from my brain to fingertips, I nearly hit the power button to black out my inability to write.

 

No.

Only a day ago I'd said, if you want to be a writer you must write.

 

Okay, prove it. Walk the talk. Write.

I drew a line under those two saccharine stanzas and started again.

write! Please, words, please!

Let me write you!

write! Pencil, do my bidding

I can't fight you.

Write! I can't stand the silence of wordlessness,

wasted on air-conditioned eight-hour days.

I can't stand the silence in my head, restlessness

the laziness that plagues me, endless delays.

Write! I can, I may, I must!

I can't stand this waiting,

this gathering dust.

Write! Fingers, obey!

Move like you used to

fill pages and pages

slashes of ink

that clear my head

to let me think.

Write!

Write!

I can, I know I can.

I may, find the way.

I must, this I trust.

Write!

Write!

Frustration confuses the electricity

between brain and fingers

they falter, they fail, they slow

the thought stays and lingers.

Anger mars the flow of pure creation

scarring each sentence with bitterness

each paragraph crippled with stumbles

each word burned in a mental furnace

Loneliness clutters thoughts with vacancy

paradox and contradictions everywhere

denial blurs borders until I can't tell

fiction from a truth hard to bear.

So write!

Write it out and burn it up!

Tear it, scatter the pieces to the wind!

Don't go away, don't give up.

Write!

Write, please write.

Write, just write.

You know it, you're choking on the dust

you scream I can, I might, I must!

I can write storms and life and wars

heal wounds and scars and death

with the tap of fingers shatter doors

 

So write!

Write away the rust!

You think you can,

you know you must.

I'll write myself a pair of wings

and go flying

I'll write myself a shovel

and start trying

to dig the wealth of words

I'll write myself a map

and do it right away

I'll write myself a lamp

so I can see the way

Write

in words are all things

Write

in words are the wings

Write

in words are the things

that make me

Write

Apart from deleting a couple extra stanzas and lines where I continued to ferociously and persistently order myself to pick up the pen, this is the original. I'm not proud of it and there is no use for it...

Oh yeah, there was. It got me writing. Even if it was just ridiculous word and cadence games, I was writing. I firmly believe that to be a good writer you must write – the good, the bad, the unquestionably terrible – but most of all, the truth. Call it whatever you want, allowing some of the words to run out clears my mind.

I didn't close the computer then.

I started a new text document and wrote a poem that was next to halfway decent. Today, I will write another one, and keep writing until I can write... for writing truly does make me right.