Wednesday, August 8

"I find [The Fray] incredibly intimate. I feel uncomfortable listening to them with somebody else in the room," Michelle had told me a few weeks ago while we were flipping through a US magazine. They were on the radio this morning as I drove to work this morning and I found my previously un-discovered movedness with this song. I was, thankfully, alone at the time.

October 31, 2004
Dear Elizabeth,
Before I began writing in our writer's journal this evening, I took a run through my St Paul neighborhood just south of Grand Avenue. Large victorian restored homes- each with a porch that expands the width of the home. I haven't run in forever and was suprised at how anxious my body suddenly propelled itself forward. It wanted and needed to run. I left the walkman at home which caused me to think. think. think. I was inspired by every detail of a brisk pre-Halloween night. I started thinking about what I would put in this journal- what I wanted it to mean and be. And suddenly I was thinking about where I want to go with my writing. What do I want to capture in my story telling? It is often a very specific feeling and moment that launches me into a story. How do we write- put into words- these tiny, overwhelming elements and incorporate them into fiction? The feeling, sensory, smell, perception, memory, vision of
*a brown chevy truck pre-1985 parked on the side of the road in a cozy neighborhood. Dried yellow leaves are gathering beneath the tires, in the bed, and collecting in the nearby gutters.
*An old green hooded sweatshirt worn under a hunter green vest.
* The tweed interior of the old brown chevy truck contrasted to a sky blue sequined tank top.
*Sense of snow nearing- anticipation of holiday sadness and unknown emptiness that somehow snow seems to fill (only momentarily). An image of Alaska and snow angels.


"And I would have stayed up with you all night Had I known how to save a life." -The Fray

posted by Jenny Wednesday, August 08, 2007

0 comments