I think I'll just post quotes on Mondays from now on...

Creative Writing Club: Alphabet Poem

Hi, welcome (or welcome back) to Creative Writing Club! This series details the activities we have done at my school's Creative Writing Club and gives them to you to serve as inspiration. Feel free to participate and to post what you've written.

This week Creative Writing Club is coming at you on Wednesday. Sorry about that, but I don't think you can complain too much because 1) nobody actually participates and 2) at least I'm posting! Yeah.

Anyway, this week we worked on a super cool prompt!

Prompt: Create a short story that’s 26 sentences long with each sentence starting with the next letter of the alphabet so that you have A, B, C, D, etc. Also include a one word sentence, a metaphor, a simile, a quote/paraphrase, a question, and a rhyme. If you want an added challenge, write a poem with all of the same requirements.

After today, I am so done. Before, I was content. Content! Dreadful circumstances have now brought me down to size and the world is full of elephants. Elephants the size of my mind and the heights and depths of my love. Floundering, like a fish, I am in this evaporating well of good emotions. Gorging your lumpy stomachs and greedy black eyes on me, are you? How it hurts me. Ice is growing from my fingers up my arms and down to my soul. Just wait and see how bitter I can be. Kites fly high and so once did I. Lacking love and patience though murders the soul. Murder is what this is. Night after night, I wake and can’t breathe for even my dreams of this suffocate me. Obliterate me and be done or let me be! Pray I only that you do one quick. Quick as a viper’s poison may kill one of those elephants. Rain down your poison on me and finish. Slither away then and smother someone else. Then I can live in my blissful state. Usually I love you so much, but lately.… Victim is how I feel. Wow. X-ray my chest now and you will find it still. Years from now maybe my chest will beat its own drum again, free. Zipperless and cageless and just free, free, free.

I had a lot of fun getting some emotions out and working on this prompt so you know, you should try this, too! Maybe you could even post what you write! Just maybe.

Rain

Imagination

Who You Are

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. 

-Dr. Seuss

Photo from unknown location

This is my favorite quote. In tenth grade, it gave me confidence in myself when I felt like dirt. (I'm sure that story will come later.) So find your confidence today. 

Love, Bria (who will be posting regularly once again. My apologies for a month of inactivity.) 

The Greatest Accomplishment

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is your greatest accomplishment.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo from unknown location

Creative Writing Club: Living Life Backwards

Hi, welcome (or welcome back) to Creative Writing Club! This series details the activities we have done at my school's Creative Writing Club and gives them to you to serve as inspiration. Feel free to participate and to post what you've written.

Yesterday, I gave you all the first part of this week’s Creative Writing Club. Today, I give you the second part:

Write something happening backwards. For instance, a city being unbuilt, a volcano unerupting, or weather erecting a city.

This is what I wrote:

The man slumps out of his grave, unkempt, memoryless. He slips, like a salmon, into the stream of his life, bouncing off of rocks he should’ve seen coming. His scar unwinds and oozes blood anew until he never hit his head on the rock in the first place. He sees his wife grow shallow, distant, until they get married and until they start dating and he never sees her again. But she was from his hometown, wasn’t she? So all  through his youth, he searches for the straight, long--was it long when she was young?--hair of his wife. But, didn’t she straighten her hair? Then or now? He searches until he loses control of his own ability, until he cannot keep his eyes open, until he erases back into his mother’s womb.

So I tried to play on the concepts of undeath, unlife, unbirth.

Now, it’s your turn! If you write something, feel free to post it.

Creative Writing Club: A Character in Action

Hi, welcome (or welcome back) to Creative Writing Club! This series details the activities we have done at my school's Creative Writing Club and gives them to you to serve as inspiration. Feel free to participate and to post what you've written.

Our prompt for Creative Writing Club was to write a story (either about a character or about ourselves) in which he/she was running, swimming, flying, strolling, etc. Basically, we had to write about a character in the middle of some kind of action. Rather than starting a new piece, I decided to write on my Work-In-Progress (WIP).

This is what I've got so far:

London at night had always been beautiful. This night, the stormy clouds swam across the skies and dove into the depths of the horizon. They swamped the Moon and the stars, and the only light emanated from the street lamps, the cars, and the offices open late. The lights reflected off of the roiling clouds so that no light from London stretched into the Heavens and no light from the Heavens touched the humanity of London.

Through the layers of clouds, Mara soared with white, angel wings. Her wings pumped the cool air into her face, brushing the hair away from her eyes, like the soft touch of a loved one. She tucked her wings close to her body and popped through a temporary gap in the clouds. The headlights of a car on a hill blinded her for a second as she descended towards London.

She flew to her house, through the open window and unto her mattress, which sped along the floor with the force of her landing. It hit the wall and Mara’s shoulder embraced the rough edge of a brick. She began to bleed.

Mara left her wound to bleed and sat on the edge of her mattress, tracing her skin with her fingers, feeling its soft, pure, whiteness end in a searing pattern of scars. She traced them as they marched up her skin. They hopscotched up her right arm, around and around, like an entangling serpent. They met her shoulder and danced across her chest, around her breasts in a parade of emotions, sliding their way to her stomach and down, down. They fled, like tears streaming, down both legs and to the tips of her pinkie toe. Across her left arm, too, they skipped.

Her back was almost unmarked. One x-shaped scar split her perfection. This scar split her heart, breaking it into fragmented pieces, slices stitched together with the scars. This scar split her heart, slid in between her ribs, and came out the other side. It was x among the o’s.

She remembered each scar and she wept. Her tears flowed from darkness, the heavy bags under her eyes, and into the light, as the shadows roved around the room, shifting with the wind’s movement of the lights in the room.

The lights in the room acted as spotlights. As they blew, they highlighted the crying Mara and then highlighted, one by one, the pictures covering much of the wall space in the room.

There was a time in her life when Mara could tell the story of each and every picture hanging--the picture of Shakespeare and Anne, of Mary and Joseph, of Mark Antony and Cleopatra--but as time unraveled, her matchings became clumsy and her arrows sometimes missed, and Mara no longer knew who all was on her walls. The two men in front of the altar--had she shot them? King Henry and his one, two, three, four--fourth wife, it was--kissing beside the guillotine. Had she done that? Had she betrayed the name of Love in that way? She couldn’t remember. Perhaps she had. Or perhaps, while she had been languishing in her self-pity, the world had escaped her grasp. Perhaps she was no longer the Cupid of the heavens and the earth. Perhaps the humans were damned to make their curses and graced to make their own blessings. Or perhaps it had always been her doing. Perhaps she was the Medusa and also the Hercules of Love.

Either way, Love was her domain, and no one--not Venus, not the Erotes, not humanity--was going to take her passion from her.

Mara stood, walked to her table, and began to sharpen both her golden and iron arrows. She dipped her golden arrows in Love and climbed the stairs. She perched behind the curtain of her window and waited.

That's all I have right now. The idea for this story didn't come from the writing prompt above, but from the music video below: Ed Sheeran's Give Me Love. So feel free to write using either one of these for inspiration. If you participate, post what you wrote. Pretty please.

God's Voice vs. Satan's Voice

God is all that is good.

Therefore, God's voice:    Whereas Satan's voice:

Stills you Rushes you

Leads you Pushes you

Reassures you Frightens you

Enlightens you Confuses you

Encourages you Discourages you

Comforts you Worries you

Calms you Obsesses you

Convicts you Condemns you

Until recently, I was letting Satan push, worry, and confuse me. He was telling me that I was being unreasonable and hateful, while I was trying to follow what God said. I struggled until we read this in my Bible Study:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.

-Ephesians 6:10-18

Listen only to God; His voice is the only One that matters.

Creative Writing Club: Clock Taboo

Yesterday, I introduced to you a new series: Creative Writing Club! This series outlines the activities that my high school Creative Writing Club does in order to get inspired.

Yesterday, I shared the first activity that we did in this week's meeting. Today, I will share the second (and final) activity that we did in our meeting for this week.

To start, our club listed several specific topics we could hypothetically write about. These topics included clocks, Stonehenge, Jerry Seinfeld, etc. We chose one topic as a group and then brainstormed a series of words commonly associated with the first word. Our teacher challenged us to write about the first topic without using any of the words we listed.

So we had to write about a clock without using any of the following words: clock, tick-tock, hand, minute, hour, time, second, face, number, pendulum, antique. Basically, this was like the game taboo.

I wrote this:

Running around, stuck in the eternity that ends only when midnight is struck. There's no need for me to carve hash marks into the walls of my prison, as this round cage already contains them. These hash marks dictate my life. Each hash mark passed is life lost, and every 360 marks, an infernal dinging rings inside my head. Those outside this dome jump with fright at every ding, but I envy them: they are free.

Now, I'm challenging you to write anything about a clock without mentioning the taboo words (clock, tick-tock, hand, etc. as listed above).

If you participate, feel free to post below!

Creative Writing Club: I'm Sorry But...

Hello, random Internet dweller who has stumbled onto my modest and long-abandoned blog! It's been almost a year since I actively blogged, but now I've decided to return to my blogging days, so here I am!

In my nearly-year-long absence, I helped to create a Creative Writing Club at my high school, which is, unfortunately, named Creative Writing Club still (feel free to throw some ideas out there for a new name!). We meet every Tuesday as a club so I've decided that I will post the club activities to serve as inspiration for anyone who may be reading this.

This week, we read a poem:

This is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Our teacher then challenged us to mimic Williams in both his style and tone. The resulting poems were hilarious and also slightly morbid. I wrote this:

I'm Sorry But...
by Bria

I didn't see
you there
on the sidewalk
in the midday sun

I'm sure
you were happy
dreaming of
anthills

You know
until I squashed you
and you lay
crumpled

Now I challenge anyone reading this to write a quick William Carlos Williams-ish poem, like his "This is Just to Say." Don't shy away if you're not a poet or if you "don't have time." This activity is really quick (it took me five minutes) and really easy even for those who are not particularly skilled in poetry.

So have fun and if you participate, feel free to post your poem!

Dear Voices in My Head

March 22, 2014

Dear Voices in My Head,

It was as if I hadn’t thought or spoken in my own voice for a really long time. It was like you and your multitude of voices slowly invaded my headspace and merged into my thoughts and made me Bria plus Voices.

For a while there, I was slugging it out, dueling you word for word, but you were so many and I was so few; you trampled my voice and mimicked my voice and all but became my voice. You left my voice struggling for breath, whimpering in the sewers of filth and trash in this world. My voice was often silent then, because it couldn’t remember if it was the real me or a copy of a copy of a mimic.

See, I let too many of you in. I let too many voices get inside my head and tell me what and what not to think. All I could hear were your voices, for you yelled at me to let you have your turns to speak and then you never shut up; you never relinquished control.

I had unlocked the door to sheep, but you proved to be wolves. You devoured my voice and murdered my ideas. You scarfed down even my meek protests. You said I was wrong, hateful, ignorant, prideful, judgmental, stupid.

And I believed you. My voice was drowning in your sludge.

From https://fashionedwithpurpose.wordpress.com 

But that’s not how it is anymore. I was rescued. I was rescued by the One you fear above all else, for even the demons shudder at the name of my Savior, Jesus Christ.

He washed your dirt off of my body and made me clean. He reminded me that He is strength and truth and that I can do all things through Him.

So now it’s my turn to speak.

It’s not my time to cower or to sneak or to behave or to apologize or to listen or to nod in what seems like agreement or to diffuse my anger and not let you have it for once or to let my concerns go while I stay mute and silent in your filthy ideas.

No, it’s my time to kick you all out of my headspace. I’ve heard what you have to say. I’ve heard you yell, scream, cry, whine, seduce, persuade, moan, howl. I’ve heard it all. Now, it’s my turn to say that I respectfully disagree. For me and my house will serve the Lord alone.

There is a time for everything and so now it is time for me to be me again. Not you. Me.

My voice is arising from the ashes and it will conquer with the tongues of fire as Christ lights up my life again.

You will hear my voice and it will speak the truth, for I am armed with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, and my feet are fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

Sincerely,

Bria, 

the one and only