Tag: poem

Motorcycle Betrayal Poems

Published on by diannePLeave a comment

When I was in school studying writing, I had some just lovely, encouraging professors. One of them was Christopher Buckley.

Chris was always telling me other poets I reminded him of. One of those was Charles Simic, and another was Diane Wakowski. Chris was so wonderful, in fact, that he had studied with Diane, and he helped me organize for her to come and do a reading on campus, from Michigan to West Chester, Pennsylvania. It was a little bit strange, meeting Diane, because I had imagined her to be like if Twiggy and Patti Smith were merged into a single person who wrote kick-ass poetry. In reality she was a tiny thing, and a little prickly around the edges. I was star-struck and shy. I had read (lord knows how, as we didn’t have the internet, maybe in one of her poems) that she was a huge fan of freshwater pearls, and I bought a necklace and bracelet to give to her. She didn’t open the gift in my presence, and I never heard from her to hear if she liked them. But, in my very young mind, I thought she was everything I wanted to be: full-time professor, writing poetry all the time, and just generally badass, which, I guess, included being a little prickly and unfriendly. As introverted as I am, I am also a people-pleaser, so though I don’t want to talk in situations where I don’t know everyone, I do talk, because I am worried about not being nice enough to everyone else. And then I am exhausted after. Maybe Diane had already learned the art of taking care of herself. She was born the year after my dad, so she was well into middle-age when I met her.

The book I have pictured at the start of this post is the one that made me love her: The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems. I mean, she got on motorcycles. My sister (younger than me by 8 years) once had a motorcycle boyfriend, in fact he was a sweet guy, and we’re all still friends with him, and he once let me climb on behind him so that he could drive me around Sea Isle City on his motorcycle. But, to stay on behind a rider, you have to hold on to the rider’s body, and Reuel (the boyfriend) was incredibly fit and hot, like Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise hot. I felt so afraid of falling off and dying and so wrong for gripping onto his body for dear life that I cut the ride short. Diane would not have cut the ride short even if it was with her sister’s hot boyfriend. Diane has always seemed to me like a woman who knows who she is and what she wants, and gets what she wants. She might have been the Taylor Swift of the 1970s, because to date her, and to break up with her, was to have a vicious poem written about you.

Dedication in the original The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems

At that point in my life I thought I had all possibilities ahead of me, as young optimistic people do. I thought I could become a thin woman who rode on the back of motorcycles and penned vicious poems about love. Diane also seemed… horny, which, raised by a very Methodist mother who got pregnant as a teenager, I was not allowed to be, so that seemed very flash and exciting to me too.

Honestly, you may think it silly yo say, because poetry is just poems, no big deal, but being a poet was such a monumental thing to me that I’m still trying to give myself permission to do it. Permission Diane never seemed to need, but Dianne definitely needs, to this very day.

If Diane was a sort of a hero, but not the warmest or nicest hero, why bring her up to you? Why not just let her, and her work, slide into obscurity?

I think because she is an unapologetic woman; she is who she is, lusty, strong, angry, successful (even if success did mean getting stuck in Michigan!), and felt no need to be mushy with a grad student who idolized her. No grad students have idolized me, but I expect it could be annoying as well as nice.

I told my sister last week that we’ve lost two Diane’s this year, Keaton and Ladd, both single Ns, unlike my double. Wakowski is up there, and also a single N. I don’t know if I can lose another one this year, so I hope she’s not on a motorcycle these days. And, then again, I kinda hope she is.

“She digs her teeth into the slaveries of woman, she cries them aloud with such fulminating energy that the chains begin to melt of themselves. Reaching into the hive of her angers, she plucks out images of fear and delight that are transparent yet loaded with the darknesses of life. Diane Wakoski is an important and moving poet.”–The New York Times

In 1971, Diane Wakoski published The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems to tremendous acclaim. Relevant, moving–at times shocking–it is Wakoski’s honesty and bravery as an artist that continues to astonish, delight, inspire, and liberate readers.

Wakoski responds to betrayal in a variety of ways including fantasies such as drilling bullet holes into the bodies of unfaithful lovers. But even her anger can be winking, as in the book’s sly dedication to “all those men who betrayed me at one time or another, in hopes they will fall off their motorcycles and break their necks.”

“The Bouquet”

“I Have Had to Learn to Live with My Face”

Have you heard of Diane Wakowski? What do you think of her? If you found any links to video of her, send it this way!

Words with Dual Meanings: A Writer’s Playground

Published on by Nadja MarilLeave a comment

by Nadja Maril

Words. They fascinate me, the way some words like dust can have two very different meanings. You dust the house, removing small particles of dirt and cobwebs. You dust the cake with confectioner’s sugar making it sweet.

The word weather has two opposite meanings as a verb. The new wood shingles on the house will look better when they weather and turn a soft natural gray. Or used differently you could write, When the next hurricane arrives, I’m not sure if we can weather the storm. As a noun, the meaning of weather is constant. The noun describes meteorological conditions.  Nice fall weather we’re having.

Applying Word Meanings to Getting Published

Every Monday when I read the updated lists of publishing opportunities in literary magazines, I read theme call-outs that generally consist of one word. Write to the theme, they ask, but sometimes that word can be open to wide interpretation.  However, that’s the job of a creative writer; to put our own perspective into our poems and stories.

Photo by Gaurav Ranjitkar on Pexels.com

I read the word dirt and I might picture a pile of soil or imagine filth within a house or think instead of scandalous information about a crooked politician. Playing in the dirt making mudpies can be a joyful experience for a child whereas cleaning away mounds of accumulated filth a tedious chore. The diverse interpretations of how we interpret words can be what makes a collection of writing interesting.

The diverse interpretations of how we interpret words can be what makes a collection of writing interesting.

So, I was surprised when a friend told me their spouse had purchased my new book (Recipes From My Garden; herb and memoir short prose and poetry) and with the cold weather coming, they were planning on trying out some of my recipes.

i’d written a book of prose poems and memoir and my friend thought I’d just published a cookbook!

How Word Choice for Your Title Affects Marketing

Recipes. Yes, the word can mean instructions on food preparation, ie try my recipe for chicken soup, but it can also mean a way or approach to doing things. You might say I’ve got the recipe for a successful children’s birthday party, one adult for every child. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, you might hear about a class trip to the amusement park with no parent chaperones and say, That’s a recipe for disaster.

I thought I was being clever when I chose the title to my little chapbook. I imagined that readers seeing the words memoir, prose, and poetry would understand the book’s double meaning. It does contain a few actual recipes and many references to food and kitchen gardens, but primarily I was thinking of the word recipe as a way or approach of doing things. As memoir, the usage becomes personal. As a poet, I’m sharing how I see the world, starting specifically with what is accessible to me: the sunflowers, tomatoes, a walk on the beach.

The good news for me is  if there is any doubt, the silver lining is people do talk about what they read and like. But if you are new to thie site and you are just reading about my chapbook for the very first time, I also have a book trailer. My talented publishers were able to use some of the video my husband took of our giant sunflowers along with old family photographs and more recent ones to create a wonderful book trailer. You can watch by clicking on the link: https://youtu.be/HxmwOx3-_QY

And going with the theme of the multiple meanings of words, here is a word WRITING PROMPT

To get you started I have chosen a few ambiguous words: long, cleave, bar, and duck. Select a word, choose a meaning, and start writing a scene. Take the word and use it with an alternate meaning. How many different ways can you use the same word and shade the meaning in different ways? Try using the word in a poem and play with the multiple meanings.  Have fun.

Thank You for reading! To read more of my work sign up for FREE to follow me on WordPress, Substack or Medium and visit my website at www.Nadjamaril.com.

Don’r forget to follow Old Scratch Press on Facebook and on WordPress.

Published by Nadja Maril

Nadja Maril’s prose and poetry has been published in literary magazines that include Change Seven, Lunch Ticket, Thin Air, and The Compressed Journal of Creative Arts. She is the author of Recipes From My Garden, a chapbook published by Old Scratch Press that includes both poetry and creative nonfiction prose. Author of two children’s books illustrated with paintings by her father Herman Maril, as well as Who IS Santa? for which she did her own illustrations, Nadja is also the author of two reference books on antique American Lighting, published by Schiffer. A former journalist and magazine editor, Nadja has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. To read more of her work and follow her weekly blog posts, visit Nadjamaril.com https://nadjamaril.com/ View more posts

LAST CHANCE!

Published on by dianneP1 Comment

Last Chance to get published this year!
SUBMISSIONS FOR 2025 ARE OPEN THROUGH 11.02.25.

The Old Scratch Press team asks that all fiction/non-fiction pieces adhere to a word count of 500 words or less.

Topics/themes for 2025

GRAVY is our 2025 winter holiday theme. Give us your best holiday gravy fails, mishaps, ridiculous gravy encounters (any December holiday, from Hanukkah, to Solstice, to NYE, etc.) or your best funny work about gravy, in general. The point of the end-of-year issue is to be light-hearted to downright silly.

Submissions close NOVEMBER 2, 2025; the issue will publish DECEMBER 1, 2025.

SUBMIT!

You know you want to!

When the Veil Thins, Tune In: The Lost Art of Intuition

Published on by Ellis ElliottLeave a comment

In a world overflowing with information, it can feel almost impossible to hear the quiet murmur of our own inner voice. From the moment we wake, we are bombarded: endless news updates, social media scrolls, texts, and the constant hum of opinions vying for our attention. All of it fills the space where intuition—the whispering language of the subconscious—once thrived.

Yet, as writers, intuition is one of our greatest tools. It’s what allows us to leap into a story we don’t fully understand yet, to follow a surprising character down an unplanned path, or to trust an image or phrase that arrives out of nowhere. Without it, we risk writing only what we already know, instead of what wants to reveal itself.

Fall: The Season of Listening

October, with its crisp air and longer nights, brings a natural invitation to slow down and listen. Folklore tells us that in autumn, as the veil thins between the seen and unseen, intuition becomes easier to access. Shadows stretch differently, the wind carries voices, and we sense the tug of what lies just beyond.

This is the perfect time of year to tune in. The season itself seems to whisper: pay attention, the unseen is speaking.

Why We Lose Touch with Intuition

Intuition is quiet, subtle, and often inconvenient. It rarely announces itself in bold type. Instead, it flickers in images, hunches, gut feelings, or sudden questions that surface in stillness. When we drown our senses in constant input, we crowd out those fleeting signals. It’s like trying to hear an owl’s call on a windy night—you know it’s there, but the noise drowns it out.

Our culture rewards speed, productivity, and certainty. Intuition asks for slowness, stillness, and trust. It feels risky to follow because it rarely comes with a guarantee, but instead with a nudge: “this way, try this, pay attention.”

Reclaiming the Lost Art

The good news is intuition can be reawakened. Like any art, it thrives with practice:

  • Silence the noise. Even a few minutes of quiet each day—no phone, no media, just breath—can make space for inner knowing to rise.
  • Notice the body. Intuition often lives in the gut, the chest, the skin prickling on your arms. Writing down where and how you feel things can help you recognize its signals.
  • Follow the odd image. When a strange metaphor or unexpected detail shows up in your writing, resist the urge to explain it away. Let it lead you.
  • Trust the detours. If you sit down to write one thing but another insists on being written, follow that tug. Intuition often works sideways.

One of my favorite ways to access this hidden reservoir is through freewriting. When we put pen to paper without censoring, judging, or editing, we bypass the noisy critic in our head. Freewriting allows the subconscious to slip through, offering images, insights, and connections that often surprise us. It is a way of honoring the intuition that we so often ignore. In the flow of words that tumble out, we begin to recognize patterns, truths, and directions that were there all along, waiting to be heard.

Tuning in to our intuition is not about achieving perfection or following rules. It is about reclaiming an ancient art: the art of listening inwardly. As the veil thins, perhaps it is time to sit with the page, quiet the outside world, and let your own inner compass

Intuition as a Writer’s Compass

The deepest writing often doesn’t come from logic or planning alone—it comes from the subterranean river of memory, dream, and imagination. Intuition is the compass that guides us into that underground place. When we let it lead, we discover connections we couldn’t have forced, truths we didn’t know we were carrying, and stories that surprise even us.

This October, let the season itself be your reminder. As the veil thins and the shadows lengthen, practice listening for what arises in the quiet. Intuition is not a luxury—it is the thread that ties us to the mystery of creativity itself. To follow it is to reclaim a lost art, both in writing and in life.

(And if you are interested in learning about intuitively understanding your surroundings check out the books by writer Tristan Gooley, like The Nature Instinct or The Natural Navigator.)

Thank you for reading this post and visiting the Old Scratch Press Blog. Next Saturday October 25th at 5:00 p.m., three members of the Old Scratch Press Team are participating in a special online reading from their newly published books. FREE. Read more about it here. And follow us on Facebook.

Ellis Elliott, Founding Member, Old Scratch Press Collective, Author: Break in the Field and A Witch Awakens: A Fire Circle Mystery available on Amazon. Bewilderness Writing : http://bewildernesswriting.com/

Welcome Beatriz Fernandez: Newest Member of Old Scratch Press

Published on by Nadja Maril2 Comments

Old Scratch Press Short Form and Poetry Collective is pleased to announce that Beatriz Fernandez has recently become our newest member.  “I am thrilled and honored, “she says, “to join an online community of fellow writers from around the globe who support each other’s work, provide feedback and share our various skills and strengths.”

Although she didn’t try to get published until she was in her late forties, Beatriz has been writing all her life. 

“I write in both form and free verse, both mainstream and genre, and have recently begun to write flash and short fiction. In poetry, I favor historical persona poems written in the voices of women, whether historical, mythological, or fictional figures. I also write speculative poetry and short fiction. I try to include my love of robots, androids, or time travel in most of my stories.” 

Over the past ten years, Beatriz Fernandez’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart prize four times, and has been published in anthologies and journals as various as Label Me Latina/o, Prime Number Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Whale Road Review.  She’s authored three poetry chapbooks: the most recent, Simultaneous States, (Bainbridge Island Press, 2025) included some poetry set in Puerto Rico and some speculative poems.  Her eco-science fiction flash fiction piece, “Flow Time” was published this summer in a special Florida themed anthology by Gaslamp Pulp, a division of Nat 1 Publishing.  That publisher also just accepted her Puerto Rican Frog Prince adaptation titled “The Coquí Captain” for a children’s anthology of reimagined fairy tales.

Beatriz grew up in Philadelphia, Spain, and mostly Puerto Rico and then came to Florida to attend college.  During her junior year she established her Florida residency, met her husband, and began working in libraries.  “I fell in love with all three,” she says, “and subsequently found no reason to leave any of them!”

Describing herself as a late bloomer in both her library and writing careers; she became a professional librarian in her mid 30s.  On the way, she obtained an M.A. in English literature but found herself to be too much of a generalist to focus on a dissertation topic. 

“During this time,” she says, “I seemed to be under the impression I was a budding novelist while the reality was that I was writing more poetry than anything else.  My lightbulb moment came when I won a Writer’s Digest poetry contest that I entered on the very last day.  That stroke of luck seemed to finally put me on the right road and actively seeking to improve my poetry style.  I embarked on a long-distance phone tutorial with poet Andrea Hollander, who is a brilliant teacher and mentor, for several years; she helped me find my true voice. “

“Many writing classes, confabs and workshops later,” she says, “I’ve published almost every poem I’ve ever written! Now I feel I have come full circle—after starting out my writing career with long-distance tutorials, I’ve joined an online community of fellow writers.”

To learn more about Beatriz and to hear her radio interview on “Here and Now,” you can visit her website here

Thank you for reading this post and visiting the Old Scratch Press Blog. Next Saturday October 25th at 5:00 p.m., three members of the Old Scratch Press Team are participating in a special online reading from their newly published books. FREE. Read more about it here. And follow us on Facebook.

Steps Toward Your First Acceptance in a Literary Journal

Published on by virginiawatts2 Comments

Steps Toward Your First Acceptance in a Literary Journal

To my fellow writers out there, I began submitting prose and eventually poetry to literary magazines in 2014. Since that time, I have been published over a hundred times. How did I do it? I learned the ropes and never gave up. More importantly, I never wrote for the purpose of being published. It’s an honor, a wonderful feeling, to have a piece accepted, but in the end of the day, the real joy for me as it is for most writers, is the creative process. Publishing is a very small piece of this magical puzzle. Even so, as writers, most of us would like our work to be read so here are some tips I learned along the way.

  1. Present your best work always. If you have written something, set it aside for some time and return to it later for perspective. ALWAYS have feedback through a professional writing group. One or two friends reading your work will not do. You need professional critique and then you must listen and learn to edit accordingly. None of us can judge our own writing. We simply cannot. Don’t let your ego get in the way of your success.
  2. Prepare a third-person biography. Include information like your location, your publications if you have some, your social media handles and website. If you have not been published, simply say nothing about that or mention that this would be a debut publication. Don’t try to be funny or clever. Be professional.
  3. Prepare a cover letter and keep it simple and professional as well. Address the editor by name if you can. Start with something like: I appreciate the opportunity to submit my fiction story titled “Wind Warp” of 4900 words. Follow with your biography. End by thanking the editor for considering your work. That’s it.
  4. Make a list of journals where your work appears to be a fit as you prepare to submit your work. This will mean reading some of the work the journals have accepted in the past. Lucky for us, many journals are online now or have some excerpts online. Consult resources by Erika Krouse or Clifford Garstang for a ranking of literary journals. 
  5. At first, I tried to select mostly smaller, well-respected journals for the bulk of my submissions. Once I got some traction, I aimed higher. If you can find a local journal that limits submissions to local writers, even better.  One example of this is Philadelphia Stories, a journal that only publishes writers who are living in or originally from Pennsylvania, Delaware or New Jersey. A smaller pool helps your odds. There is nothing wrong with submitting to a new journal either. In fact, I recommend it. New journals need our support.
  6. I would send a piece to at least twenty journals to start with and see how it goes. 
  7. Use standard manuscript format 12-point font Times New Roman. Double Space prose. Single Space poetry. And don’t forget page numbers. 
  8. Be encouraged if editors write you a personal note about enjoying your work even though it was not accepted or asking you to submit more work in the future or telling you that you made it to the final cut. All of these are a very big deal so be happy!
  9. You will receive a lot of rejections. I submitted for about a year and a half before I received my first acceptance. Since then, I have had times where I have been “hot” and times of drought. Don’t give up and don’t get discouraged. There are many reasons a piece is not chosen that have nothing to do with the quality of the writing. You get used to the rejections. Promise me. The way I look at it is this writing that I am submitting is what I have to offer. I’ve got nothing else! This is me. I write what comes to me and what I want to write about. Above all, I just hope to tell a good story. I give every poem or story my all. There have been stories that I never placed, and I am okay with that. Some of these did get out in the world in later collections of mine alongside published stories. Be true to yourself and what your heart wants to write about and you will be fine.
  10. Do not follow up with inquiries about your work after it is submitted. If you don’t hear anything for a year, consider the piece unaccepted and move on.
  11. Make sure you keep a list of all the places you submit a piece so when you do have an acceptance, you can quickly withdraw it from other journals considering your piece.  
  12. Remember too that when submitting to always follow the guidelines such as whether the journal wants to read blind or not. 
  13. Set up a Submittable account because most journals use that now for submissions although some still have their own Submission System or they accept submissions via email only.
  14. Another good idea is to go out for dinner and some glasses of wine with fellow writers submitting their work to share your experiences. Laughter is the best medicine, and you can learn from each other. 
  15. I wish all of you the very best in your writing journey!

Virginia Watts is the author of poetry and stories found in The MacGuffin, Epiphany, CRAFT, The Florida Review, Reed Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Eclectica Magazine among others. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut short story collection Echoes from the Hocker House was short listed for 2024 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, selected as one of the Best Indie Books of 2023 by Kirkus Book Reviews, and won third place in the 2024 Feathered Quill Book Awards. Please visit her.

Virginia’s new book is now available from Old Scratch Press:

Her prior poetry chapbooks Shot Full of Holes and The Werewolves of Elk Creek 

 are available from Moonstone Press. And her debut short story collection Echoes from the Hocker House is not to be missed!

In October OSP will present a live reading with Virginia, Anthony Doyle, and Alan Bern. Find more information here.

And it’s not too late to get into the last Instant Noodles issue for 2025!

Dreams of the Return

Published on by DPPLeave a comment
dreams of the return

Alan Bern is more than just the author of DREAMS OF THE RETURN—he’s also one of the founding voices of Old Scratch Press, a collective born from a group of terrific writers with a deep love of traditional and hybrid poetry, prose, and art. As a retired children’s librarian and cofounder (with Robert Woods) of the fine-press publisher Lines & Faces, Alan has long pursued the merging of word, image, and place.

In DREAMS OF THE RETURN, he turns his lens to Italy—in particular the South—bringing to life landscapes both storied and luminous through his own photographs and through classic Italian poetry, delivered both in its original form and in his own translations. The journey is lyrical, immersive: it’s not merely a travel guide, but a portrait of longing, place, memory, and beauty.

And that’s something Alan does beautifully—his artistry weaves together what he’s done throughout his life: poetry, prose, photography, memoir, all fueled by a love for Italy. Within the OSP community, he is known for “photo-poems,” a daily practice in which images and language overlap, inviting the reader to travel with him across geographies and inward, into self.

In addition to poems and photographs, DREAMS OF THE RETURN also includes intimate personal essays that layer history, memory, and lived experience. In “The Good One,” for example, Alan recounts a walk through Naples’ Quartieri Spagnoli with his friend Marco. What begins as a conversation about Jewish philosopher Don Isaac Abravanel and the sacred geography of southern Italy turns into a heartbreaking encounter with a community altar for “o’ Bono”—a young man accidentally killed during a New Year’s Eve celebration. Through this story, Alan reveals how place, tragedy, resilience, and human connection are intertwined in ways both profound and ordinary.

A true perfectionist, Alan (pictured left) worked closely with his good friend, Peter Truskier, to ensure that the photos selected would sparkle in the book just like the locations did in real life.

DREAMS OF THE RETURN is, in effect, another way Alan invites us to travel: through light and verse, through time and place. It’s a book to savor—start with a wind-soft sun, ruins, olive trees and history; consume it slowly with pizza margherita and red wine; linger into the evening with the sweetness of roccoco napoletani and an espresso kissed with Sambuca. You can order a copy of your own here:

order dreams of the return

Compiling My Collection

Published on by dianneP4 Comments

Clearly the owner of that journal is not doing a good job of compiling her collection because on her journal is a slice of orange she is attempting to dry out, three crystals, and a paintbrush. The book is open and written in with a pencil, not good for preserving writing as (being a teacher for one-zillions years I can tell you) pencil smudges overtime to become indecipherable. She’s also got a pile of vintage mail (definitely older and already been mailed to her, to someone), which is deliciously tantalizing, and reading is much easier and more fun than writing.

Who is this mess of a woman? That’s a stock photo, but it could easily be my desk, with a few dozen highlighters and yesterday’s coffee added to the milieu.

It’s difficult for me to have a clean desk, no lie there. It’s difficult for me to spend time cleaning my desk, and not because I am not a neat person, but because I push my own things back. In fact, though I think of myself as a generally nice and “in a good mood” sort of person, I can get snappy when I feel tooo squeezed out.

I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.

JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)

What a great bit of writing that is!

So I have made the bold assertion that I will publish my collection of poetry through Old Scratch Press in 2026. There. I said it to the group, and now I said it to you. I swear I’m gonna do it. I am going to occasionally clean my desk, and push in some room to get my collection together by pushing other things back (other things probably being sleep! Ha!). I just took on a new tutoring student, a few pro bono editing projects (my daughter’s school has a non-profit component to it, and I donated some editing to the auction, and it got bought!), a half dozen or so sample edits, in addition to the regular amount of edits, which is many hundreds of pages per month, and I signed up for a singing course with a friend, have a relative needing assistance for cancer treatments, a teen in need of a lot of “staying on track” help with school work and she is also involved in some theater projects her dad or I need to be the transportation for (and, in general, making sure she eats, remembers her glasses, etc.), and a business to run and a home and family, in addition to trying to squeeze in a daily run. I would love to run well enough to participate in a 5K, and I have been thinking of joining a thing in my neighborhood where I could get a running trainer. Of all of those things I am doing there is nothing I do not want to be doing, except for wishing my relative didn’t have cancer, of course. One friend had told me recently she was stepping back from a project, and I had anticipated it about four months earlier, actually, and I completely get it. My relative, who is staying with me this week and last for her treatments, woke up today and told me she is spending the last few days she needs to be local for her tests at a friend’s because she needs a change of scenery. I had expected that too, and I had prepared a to-go coffee for her before she woke up. However I have a HS friend on FB who is every bit as engaged in politics as I am, and worried about the general state of what we see as the slide into authoritarianism, and another HS classmate said to him, “We liked it better when you just wrote about your kids and scouting. You don’t have a lot of chapters (she actually wrote chapters!) left; don’t waste them on this.” and I could not agree less. Age, chapter of life, has nothing to do with wanting to accomplish things and caring about things outside of ourselves, so, no, I do not think he should stop fighting the good fight. Yet I feel that I do have an understanding that we literally cannot do it all, and don’t want to, and I respect it, and think it is a good thing, and I flatter myself that I am especially good at reading the room, and can see when change is coming. But, I’m not good at, “No.” I’m not good at giving up on something I’ve begun, even if it does not realize my own dream. It’s an obstacle because in order to publish one of my many projects, I assumed I would have to come up with a good, firm, “No.” And I simply can’t. So I have decided instead to come up with a good, slightly quavering, “Yes.” I’m outing myself that I am going to put my damn book out. I am saying it, and affirming it, and treating it, as much as possible, as a done deal. I think if I normalize it, the way I normalize all the other things, I will simply do it because it has a due-date, or a do-date. Both!

And so, here is my question to you:

If you have been writing short stories, short non-fiction, flash, poetry, for some time now (I’m not going to say I’ve been writing for decades, but at least since the synth-pop craze and the resurgence of skinny ties (the best kind of ties)), how do you choose what to include, and what to leave behind, resting, forever lost in a permanent dream state in the “my writing” file on your desktop? Though the synth-pop craze wasn’t what I would describe as a serious time in the world, I was a serious writer; I took myself very seriously, and I think that “me” has somehow stuck around, and I judge that writing to be more profound, when in reality for pretty much all of us our early writing is awful. I remember writing a poem laden with love and portent that was about a page long and contained only the word “baby” written over and over again in different combinations with possessive pronouns and a few sappy adjectives. Songs, when sung, can add meaning through cadence, tone, etc., but, with that “baby” experiment I learned that mere words on a page cannot do that. It was a piece of absolute dreck. I do not regret deleting it!

So, those old pieces hold special meaning for me, but most are not very good (I confess I still think some of them are genius!), and almost all are not even remotely relevant to who I am now. Though I am still a whiny liberal with a moral bent, and that still is there, even in the new pieces.

And this is it, my one chance to publish my poetry, to put it out there in the world. When I was in my MA and MFA programs I knew who the “it” poets were in the world of poets who published, and I wanted to join them, to earn their respect. And as I tried I very much felt borne farther away from them. Primarily by life circumstances and that inability to say no, that pushing back of my own things, more than anything else. And that very much was a tell (an inadvertent behavior or mannerism that betrays) that I didn’t belong among them. Writers who are successful (and success looks different for a poet than a novelist, or self-help book author, etc.) almost all have a modicum of selfishness that allows them to push things away that don’t serve them, and also leads them to self-preserve. They’re not going to be dumb enough to share their “baby” poem with their thesis advisor. Selfishness belongs on the seven deadly sins list, IMHO. But success almost needs it, like a plant needs water, to survive.

So, for better or for worse, committing a deadly sin or not, I am going to get this thing done as if it is not even my thing, so I will not be being selfish; I will simply be doing another job on the list.

But, again, I have this question: if you could put together a collection of your writing (or publish one of your novels, if you write long-form) how do you choose? How do you group? How do you look back over your body of work and say, “This goes; this doesn’t?” And if you could have your book published next year, what would you want on your cover, and why? While working with OSP one thing that has continually surprised me is that the authors seem to know what the cover needs to be. How in the heck….?

So, what about you? Would you know? I’m super curious to hear! Drop me a comment below!

🙂 Dianne

The Art of Storytelling: New Perspectives on Old Fairy Tales

Published on by Nadja MarilLeave a comment

By Nadja Maril

Perhaps it was the illustrations that captivated me when I’d pour through the fairytale books, the dragons and the princesses with long gowns and tresses, but of all the picture books in my room when I was a young child, I liked the fairytales the best.

I can still remember many of those books, the way they looked with their ornate borders and their detailed portraits of the handsome Puss N’ Boots or the angry face of Rumpelstiltskin as he stamps hard enough to crash through a floor and into oblivion. Styles evolve and change, and the animated images of the Walt Disney studios who’ve popularized many fairy tales by converting them into cartoon movies, don’t have the same depth of detail as those old illustrations. I love the old woodcut and color plate illustrations, but many contemporary artists add new magic and perspective to an old story.  When you read a fairytale or any story for that matter, the possibilities for elaboration are endless.

“Happily Ever After” isn’t always the case in some of the Hans Christian Anderson Tales, such as “The Red Shoes” and “The Little Mermaid.”  But as fairy tales have been told and retold so many times, multiple versions circulate. Children today probably have no idea that the original “Little Mermaid” is a tragic story of desire and loss. The little mermaid was unable to permanently become a human. Her attempts at transformation cause her to lose her life as a mermaid. What remains, is her hope that one day she’ll become part of the eternal universe.

In the hands of the Disney writing team, however, “The Little Mermaid,” became a story about family conflict, friendship, love, and fulfillment. The result is a story with a happy ending.

What story would you like to write?

But that’s okay, because fairy tales are part of our oral tradition and why not use the familiar tropes from our childhood as building blocks to create new stories or retell old ones. I think it is important to remember and learn from what went before. However, the stories of our lives keep evolving. So, what story would you like to tell?

To get you started, I’m sharing the work of several writers who were and still are inspired by fairy tales.

Many poetry enthusiasts will probably be familiar with the poem “Goblin Market “by Victorian era British poet Christina Rossetti(1830-1894). It utilizes the folklore of goblins to set the scene with lines like these:

"Pricking up her golden head:
"We must not look at goblin men
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”
“Come buy,” call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen."

To read the entire poem and learn more about Christina Rossetti, click here.

Another writer, Anne Sexton (1928-1974) took fairy tales as a launching point to reimagine social norms.

American poet Anne Sexton is considered a pivotal figure in the confessional poetry movement that emerged in the mid-20th century. Her work holds nothing back as it shares her personal struggles. Themes she explores include: mental illness, sexuality, and the complexities of womanhood. Her poetry collection Transformations contains seventeen poems inspired by Grimm Fairy Tales, that include Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and CInderella, that challenged the prevailing norms of her times. I highly recommend adding this volume of poetry, the contents of which are unavailable online, to your library.

“The Cinder Girl Burns Brightly” by Theodora Goss is a different take on the Cinderella fairytale, told in poetry. Hungarian American author Theodora Goss (1968–) is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poetry and essays, and more of her work can be accessed at this link.

And finally I share a short story by American writer Michael Cunningham, famous for his novel The Hours, this little story, Wild Swan is inspired by the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale “The Wild Swans.” Brilliantly he takes the premise of the original story and creates an alternate re-telling set in modern times that focuses on one of the enchanted princes.

Need a writing prompt? Just read a favorite fairytale and think about how you’d like to retell it differently or take just one character or element and spin it into a poem or story.

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Nadja Maril is an award winning writer and poet who has been published in dozens of online and print literary journals and anthologies including: Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, Invisible City Literary Review, Instant Noodles and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. She is the author of Recipes From My Garden, published by Old Scratch Press (September 2024), a Midwest Review California Book Watch Reviewer's Choice. An Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She has an MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast at USM.