Coffee Novelist

writing without a hook

Coffee Novelist

August 30, 2022

A Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation

Writing a book without a hook

I have always viewed my writing as a vital part of my self-care practice. The three most important, ongoing parts are my yoga and exercise practice, my mediation practice and my writing practice. I have found that the three working together can create a calm, intentional person who is grateful for all that he has been given. Over the years though, my writing practice and my meditation practice have become more alike.

No, I do not write while sitting in diamond throne position. I mean that the sense of energized calm, and mental clarity I experience after both is remarkably similar. Maybe that energized calm has always been there. Or maybe the experiencing of that state of mind, is the reward of the practices themselves.

I wonder if the fish are biting?

I recently found a book on meditation that views meditation in a way similar to how I view writing/meditation practice and explains and clarifies my own thoughts back to me.

In the book, A Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation, the author tells the story of a Zen master who fished without a hook. It struck me then and there that that is what I do when I write! I go fishing without a hook.

You need one to open your book, but not to write it.

There is no goal in sight, nothing to catch, no best seller, no Oprah book club to cap it all off. That is finite, closed, heading the wrong direction. I see it as a place where you will find a hooked fish on the shore, gasping and dying.

Whereas the journey inward is infinite, never ending, renewed every day with every breath. In the book the author relates that we can find “a sense of expansion, a sense of opening up, rather than narrowing down’ of the mind as we deepen our meditations.” He is describing mediation here, but that is how I feel when I write. Yes, I am writing a book with pages and chapters and characters. That is what my eyes, fingers and five senses are doing when I flip open my laptop- cast my fishing line that has no hook.

As I write and rewrite, I head into my mind, not into the finite laptop screen. That is just where I leave the mile markers on the journey. Where the line without the hook hits the water is where the real writing is, the part where my mind expands, moves in the water, unbothered by the fish.

Does that makes sense? I’m not saying my books are stream of consciousness or experimental in the way that William S. Burroughs cut-up method was. I am not saying this is even a viable method or technique for writing a book as such. I’m talking something downstream from that (staying with fishing metaphors). This is more about creating a mind that can sustain a projects like writing a novel.

I have slept a few times since writing this post, as I always do. That allowed me the distance to see the post from a different viewpoint. I read it as saying that the end product, the actual book is not important to me.

But It is. I want the book (insert current project here) itself to be well written, fun to read and I hope it sells a bit. This is just putting it all in context. It’s why I like blogging, there is time and space to do that.

I would rather sit peacefully on the banks of a quiet lake at dawn, than spend the morning casting, reeling, baiting the hook, moving from spot to spot, and ultimately allowing a fish to decide whether I used my time wisely or not.

It also helps to simplify my life to view writing as a meditation almost entirely. I still practice meditation separately of course. In fact, I just bought a meditation cushion. I’m getting a little old to sit on the diamond throne without one.

And, of course, I will write. I’m writing now. But the Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation has clarified my perspective and helped me view writing and meditation as a more unified practice. Now, I have one less thing to do in this world, which is always good. Still cant’ remember when I last had the time to go fishing though, with or without a hook.

DISCLAIMER ALERT- Something fishy about this post? No. This post has nothing to do with my YA fish story novella, Ironjaws, which is still due out by year’s end.

10 words I liked

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August 3, 2022

More than ten words on Dan Yack

I found these words in a book entitled Dan Yack, by Blaise Cendrars. The novel was published in 1927 and has been around the house for years. It is 144 pages and I picked it up for it’s length. I wanted a quick read over the weekend.

It was. I was quickly pulled into Dan Yack’s world. And some of that was accomplished via the words on the list below. I hope you like them.

As for the book itself, it would be dismissed by a lot folks today as it is not politically correct. Not even close. While there may be something to that, I found that the book was written without affectation or even a thought of having to defend it to anyone. Cendrars put something into every word in the novel and it is still there 100 years later. The world he builds is not one that is believable but he believes in every bit of it. That is all I, for one, am going to ask of any author.

The ten words

dottle – the plug of half smoked tobacco at the bottom of a pipe
flense – the strip the blubber or skin from a whale
ventricose – swollen, especially on one side
gimbal – a contrivance consisting of a base that allows something to tilt freely, such as a ship’s compass
arrack – distilled spirits from fermented palm sap
friable – easily crumbled or reduced to powder
scurf – the scales or small shreds of skin that are continually exfoliated from the skin
heteroclite – irregular or abnormal
automata – plural of automaton
matutinal – pertaining to or occurring early in the morning

“This novel is not a work of intelligence, or even of the sensibilities, but one of brute instinct”- B.C from the dedication

Active cruelty

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July 6, 2022

I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect…

The excerpt above comes from “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” I read the book several years ago. For the record, I liked it as more detective, who done it book, as opposed to a scary movie. Of course, books are books and movies are movies. I feel that comparing books to movies is a waste of time. It is like comparing lunch to dinner.

That expert made its way back to me several times recently in way that classic fiction will do. But you have to be paying attention. I was, but took my time in writing about it. In the end, I had to because it would not leave me alone. And because I was not happy with what it was trying to tell me.

The excerpt is so powerful, especially the last five words. They may capture so simply why so many people suffer in this world and have way before 1886 when Hyde was published. And continue to suffer today.

Someone called the police after seeing the "Homeless Jesus" statue outside a Cleveland-area church. Father Alex Martin hopes the statue will inspire people to talk about the issue.

I know and care deeply for someone who works with and for unhoused human beings. I have learned a good deal about the unhoused human beings when she and talk over the phone. They are called clients by the organization she works for. It surprised me to learn, though I don’t know why, that a great deal of the unhoused population suffers from mental illness.

I had just come across the above quote a few days before I got a call from my close friend who works with the unhoused. She was quite upset. I am close enough to this person that when I hear in her voice that she is hurting, it affects me. Over the course of our call, she told me that the day before, while not at work, she had witnessed something upsetting. That was what I could hear in her voice. As she told me what she had seen, she began to cry. That, in turn, upset me.

The day before, she had seen her client from across the street. The client is prone to talk loud to herself when at the shelter where my friend works. She also asks for pieces of paper and will spend hours scribbling things of them. The client in an older woman who no one knows much about. My friend has patiently tried to find out from the scribbling and talking anything she can about this older woman. There is not much to go on. No family. No way for sure to even identity who she is.

The reason my friend was so upset was that the day before she had seen her client being filmed with a camera phone by several young men who were laughing and pointing at her. I immediately though of the above quote. But with a small change. With device in hand, we can now practice the active cruelty of neglect.

While that is something to consider, it is not where this post ends.

As my dear friend gave the details of this display of active cruelty, my blood began to boil. My friend was hurting. In turn I was hurting. I then wanted to go get revenge on the perpetrators of the active cruelty. I would seek them out, find them and smash their phones. Or worse, I would get revenge, even if it meant inflicting physical pain on them.

I didn’t though. My friend and I talked a bit more that day and I stayed where I was.

As I said, it has been a while since this happened. I could leave the post now and still feel reasonably good about myself. The intention for writing this would be partly fulfilled in that it would possibly do a bit of good in world.

But I think the real lesson for me is in the rest of the except-

“At the very moment of that vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most dreadful shuddering…I looked down…I was once more Edward Hyde.”

That second part of the expert is what caused the delay in posting about the incident. It turned the whole thing back onto me. What good would another Hyde do in this world? I do accept some solace for recognizing the Hyde in me. It is not easy.

I would much rather turn the camera around and film myself, laugh, and walk away, forgetting and ignoring what I don’t like about myself. Which is what the guys were really doing that day. Sadly, that act of active cruelty is one they most likely will never chose to do anything about.

The 1941 movie version stars Spencer Tracy.

Ten more leave ins for the mind

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June 28, 2022

Ten More Leave-ins for the mind

I haven’t left you. I’m trying to get Ironjaws out by Labor Day. I will leave these ten leave-ins for the mind with you though.

Write your novels, prose and poetry like you don’t them back.
Leave your writing in the present, and your books in the future.
It’s the feeling put into the words that count, not the word count.
When writing try not to chase, nor attempt to catch, other people’s short attention spans.
The only real value in writing, the lasting payback to yourself, is that it can help you understand who you are. From there, you can do the most good in this world.
There are so many books, blogs, webinars, classes and articles on how to write that it seems everyone knows how to do it but me.
Write when you have filled the pen with marrow of your bones. But be sure to edit later.
Write what you have to write in the way you have to write it
The rules of writing are just another collection of exceptions.

Easier posted than done. I should know.

Doing the work to get the work done

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June 8, 2022

I try to start to work

I just wanted to get up on this Saturday morning and do some writing. The specific writing was my pre-Starbucks coffee house comedic novel, Altonstreet and Philpatrick.

I had spent all Memorial Day refining my YA basketball fishing novella, Ironjaws. This was mainly grunt work. But damn if it wasn’t rewarding. At the end of those four days, I felt like Ironjaws was ready to be published. However, I have learned over the years that a novel is never done, completed or finished. You just have to be ready willing and able to let it go.

I did the work

I had that Friday off and spent all four mornings with my laptop out on my front porch of coffee by my side. My time was spent on dialogue tags, cutting down exclamation points and decided to save my semi-colon for another novel.

My porch faces east. I am such and early riser that by the time the sun had risen high enough to shine in my eyes, I had put two hours work in. And had a good couple cups of java. The productive mind work prepared me to experience those weekend days content and attachment free. You see, the benefit for me in working the mind out in the morning via writing is that it changes the way I experience that coming day. And for the better. It is an exercise in release, a way to have achieved purpose in the time at the laptop that allows me to let the rest of the day be what it is going to be. My life works.

It didn’t work

But it takes work to make my life work. Which is bad news for the instant gratification folks. Everything worth anything in this life takes work. The grunt work. The dirty work. The work you don’t want to do. You can’t just download the right app and your pickles will sell. Sorry, people.

Got off track for a moment. So, when this weekend arrived, I was ready to recreate the productive work process that helped me gut out the tedious work on Ironjaws. But, my coffee maker was limed up this morning. Here in the Midwest, there is limestone all over and a bit of it is in the water. The heat of the brewer attracts the particles and clogs up the works. I knew it needed to delimed with vinegar and water yesterday morning before work, when it was already brewing slowly. It was a difficult 12 hour work day which followed that realization. That 12 hour day also took any energy out of me doing anything about it last night. I went to be bed hoping the coffee make would “fix itself.”

Free Vector | Flat person sleeping in bed | Motion graphics inspiration, Character flat design, Character design animation

It didn’t. As you know, things don’t fix themselves. My espresso maker doesn’t fill its’ reservoir overnight either. It started choking itself halfway into brewing my doppio. The doppio I had to have because my drip brewer was not brewing. It sat there next to my espresso machine just making a weird chugging noise, confirming that it hadn’t fixed itself.

I stepped to quickly to fridge to grab my Brita filter to add water to empty reservoir and felt a jab of pain in my knee. It had been bothering me all week. Damn. I managed to fill the reservoir, while asking myself if there were any Tylenol in the house. Yes, but it was in my work bag on the back porch, halfway across the planet from my train wreck of a coffee brewing station. I’d grab some later, after coffee.

Working on it

Another thing I noticed the night before while I was upstairs was that I had no TP downstairs. I meant to bring it downstairs this morning. By now I was brewing my doppio, crema forming slowly. It would salvage my morning to have my doppio on my front porch. Damn the drip brewer. Now, though, I had to at some point go back upstairs to grab the TP. I had to dash up a flight of stairs on my achy ass knee. I think you all understand why I couldn’t put this off.

My doppio in hand, I get my Tylenol, run upstairs to get the TP, feeling the pain of every step. I can’t spill my doppio, my lifeblood, my hope for a productive morning of writing. But the pain in my knee is throwing off my balance and my steps are uneven. I keep spilling it. I am halfway up the staircase before I ask myself why I brought the damn doppio with me in the first place.

Still working on it

But I make to the TP stash in the upstairs bathroom. It takes dirty work. I can’t download an app for this, I tell myself. We can fade out here for a moment.

TP roll a little used now, I make it my porch. I am at last ready to journal a bit. The warmup exercise of my mind work routine. The morning journaling on my porch chair does for my mind what my doppio does for my colon. It frees junk from my mental system and makes room for more useful material. I take journal and pen in hand.

I look up to notice that my porch plants are dry as hell. Friday was a long day at work but so was the rest of the week. It was hot too. I am ready to give up for the day. The work it takes for me to put my mind in a productive writing place is proving to much for me today. Maybe I will look for an app for this instead.

No. I committed to doing some writing to start my day and thus create a better day ahead. I am frustrated enough now that I give up on Altonstreet and Philpatrick. But I feel like I have to write something new, to create something that will calm but energize my mind.

What will work?

I think of other mental exercises I could do. I have to begin to market Ironjaws. Not the right kind of mind work. I have two blurbs already. I can scour the internet for possible leads for another. Naw. I can work on the front matter. The backmatter? Not feeling it. Wait. I have been working on Ironjaws so much recently that I haven’t’ been able to write a blog post.

That may work.

Punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks in North America.

My dream team

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May 20, 2022

Allie

The alarm rings. 4:45 a.m. I wake up way too early for another morning and more writing.

I stagger downstairs and head to the coffee maker. Once in the kitchen, Allie, my motivation coordinator, hands me today’s coffee already poured into my favorite pre-warmed mug. She tells me what I want to know: today’s brew is Costa Rica La Minita Finca Verde y Grande. I don’t like surprises first thing in the morning and make it clear to Allie in our preproduction meetings that in order to keep my mind free for the important writing that I’m about ready to sit down and do, that she must brew only single-origin varietal coffees. I can’t be left wondering.

Allie came to work for me after I had to fire her predecessor, who I will not name here. I came downstairs one morning to him having brewed me a cheap off brand coffee which I tasted and immediately knew it was part Robusta. It’s high acidity and nerve-jangling caffeine content proceeded to spoil my writing mind for the entire morning. I had to fire him on the spot, telling him to take his Robusta coffee and go to work for James Patterson.

I nod to Allie a job well done and take a seat at the kitchen table.

Priya

I sit down with Priya, and we quickly go over my 5-minute morning yoga practice I will do just before I begin to write. I usually approve the asanas she had laid out for me. These too are covered in our weekly production meetings. However, Priya must be able to adjust on the fly depending on what I need to bring to my writing that day: Energized calm? Gratitude? Third Chakra Spiritual willpower? If I don’t already have it, she must find the asanas to get me there.

This morning, Priya thought Pigeon would be good. My mind needed to release some pent-up frustrations I encountered while writing yesterday’s scene in which my main character discovers she has unwittingly staffed her newly opened, post-divorce dream coffee house with preternatural creatures.

“I was fooled.” Angellique Basque mused, sipping her now cold latte, “They all interviewed so welI.” I agreed with Priya this morning.

That done I roll up my mat for Priya to clean and store and I am ready to write.

Dan

I leave the sacred space where I do my yoga, step to my writing table and greet Dan, my IT support. By now DAN is almost finished cleaning my laptop screen. Dan, like Allie and Priya arrive to my house by 4:30 every morning. Dan checks the laptop and printer, wi-fi connection and feeds the cat. At times the cat distracts me at this peak time of productivity, and I can’t have that.

Nikos

I almost forgot Nikos. He goes thru my G-mail and cleans up anything I need to respond to. Nikos drafts my blog posts, creates and schedules my social media, and scripts my You Tube and Tik Tok spots. He is also in charge of developing all my Web 3.0 platforms. He works remotely but I am grateful for him, nonetheless.

I am lucky to have my dream team show up every morning to encourage me to grind away morning after morning, half an hour at time. Or some mornings one paragraph at time. And maybe rework that same paragraph the next day. I am lucky to have the support to keep me going even as my first novel sells at a snail’s pace.

I am lucky to have my dream team cheering me on to push through all the challenges and setbacks encountered in trying to get a second, and even third and fourth book out. They energize me so I can keep the blog going and rewrite what I once thought was 75,000 words of perfection. My team knows that I love to write and yet, at times, don’t want to do it at all. My dream team is here for me when no one else is, empowering me.

You were dreaming.

The alarm clock rings for real. I wake from the dream recounted above. I stagger downstairs, make my own coffee, delay any yoga, flip on my own dirty screened laptop and check my Gmail. Then I can greet my real-life support team, pictured below:

THE REAL TEAM

Hey, I ain’t complaining. It’s part of the deal.

Gone fishing

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May 4, 2022

See the source image

Hello from Rainbow Lake!

I’m not really at a lake fishing. I haven’t been posting much because I am getting closer to publishing my YA fishing basketball novella, Ironjaws. Yes, it is a novella that combines basketball and fishing. Can’t be too many of those out there.

But the world at large doesn’t seem to be waiting around for me to publish this novella. It is keeping me busy without extending the length of any given day. I am still working, paying bills, buying groceries, cleaning the house and all that jazz. Yet, I feel compelled to check in to let you know I haven’t forgotten about you.

So, I will resort to the time-honored bullet point format for now. Then it’s back to work.

I have just received the final pass from the wonderful editor from the Lafeyette Writer’s Studio. The only thing I feel like I need to do is add chapters with titles.
I am saying that because I think a map at the front of the book will both help and appeal to the YA readers of Ironjaws.
To that end, the map artist and I have begun visualizing said map of Rainbow Lake
I have been fishing for blurbs for the cover and may have caught one already.
The cover is underway. I kept the info for the photographer who did my head shot for Tripio and he has agreed to discuss the concept shot later this week. By the way, I strongly recommend using a professional photographer for a head shot. It adds a lot of credibility to your back cover and can be used over and over.
I am also ruminating a name change. I like the idea of a pen name. Sure, I think my last name is little confusing. However, I like the artistic freedom that I think it would give me.

That is all for now. I will be back soon with more. I hope I caught you at a good time!

Did you catch the two bad fishing puns? Wait, was that another?

Finding your best voice

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April 20, 2022

A man singing into a microphone Stock Vector Image & Art - Alamy

Your story matters, so sing it. Or write it.

Finding a book

No, I have not chucked writing for singing. You may not think much of my writing but take a moment right now to count your blessings that you have never heard me sing.

Nonetheless, I have found a book which has confirmed that I do have a writing voice. It has come to me when I needed it. When I noticed it, when I was able to see it, when I was paying attention. But I will leave the sometimes inscrutably self-indulgent metaphysics behind for the rest of the post.

I was on lunch break at work, eating a cold cut sandwich and some chips and listening to Joanna Penn’s podcast, the Creative Penn. She was interviewing Nikesh Shukla about his new book, Your Story Matters. Five minutes or even less into the interview I knew this was the book I had to read as soon as possible. I had no idea who Nikesh Shukla was.

Finding my voice

I felt so much weight coming off the writer in me as Nikesh told his story. I kept exclaiming back to him, “You are so right!” or “Hell yes!” Everything he said struck me as familiar truths I have experienced along the way as a writer. And he confirmed a lot of what I suspected regarding the environment of the writing world. Nikesh, in so many words, said that so much of it is best left ignored. It was such a relief.

Image result for Potato Chips Clip Art

I felt immediately grateful to Nikesh for taking so much weight off of me. I felt lighter and freer to let the writer in me just be who I am, without looking over my shoulder. I heard that I didn’t need a massive social media presence or a degree in Creative Writing for me to matter. If I were able to I would have given Nikesh some of my chips. But I couldn’t do that, so I bought the book as soon as I could. My break ended before I could, or I would have bought it then and there, even though I had not read anything Nikesh had written.

Buying my voice

That was a couple weeks ago. I have the book next to me now. I’ve read some of the words. I was so excited that I bought the book hardcover from Waterstones in England. It took a while to arrive. This morning, I found the bit that I already knew was there:

“This isn’t even really a book about making your work publishable. This is about getting you writing and helping you get the best out of your voice.

All that other stuff: getting published, getting rave reviews, prizes and so on is great-if that’s what you’re after-but it that’s the case, I recommend some other books.”

“We have to trust our storytelling instincts first and foremost. Before anything else.”

Hearing my own voice

I write to get the best out of my voice. Boom. I wanted to hear that, knew it was there in the book. That is why I write. To get the best out of my voice. But I will walk back my intention to a place even before that, I write to get to a place in which I am able to get the best out of my voice. Meaning that my mind, body, and spirit are in a place from where I can generate my best voice. That place is a calmed, energized mind placed firmly in the present moment and with the writing in front of me. From there, I write, and it doesn’t matter all that much, by comparison and to me at least, what happens to that writing.

I don’t mean that my best voice writes only about lambs singing and dancing on a field of daisies. But an inclusive and expansive mind that has room for all things-the good, bad, happy and sad. But not judgement, doubt and fear. That comes later. But I can’t just drop my mind at the laptop and tell it to write. I can’t command my writer’s mind to write and tell it “Don’t forget that part about the best of my voice.‘

My mind is attached to my body. I hit this so often in my posts but I’ll repeat it: What we do to the mind, we do to the body. So I take care of both, sometimes separately, sometimes together but always with the intention of uniting them so that I will be able to access my best voice later at the laptop. I do this via yoga, mediation, journaling and other practices I have done over the years.

Try selling this

I felt like all that I do to access my best voice was validated by Nikesh. I told a bit of my story just now. It felt good. I matter to so many people! People who want to see me in the place where my best voice can come from. In fact, I am headed to Bloomington later this weekend because my son texted and wants to shoot hoops and play pickleball with me. I matter to him. Yes, I matter. And I count. Indeed, I mean something to lots of people, whether my books sell or not. I mean a tiny, tiny bit to you. And so, you mean something to me! That feels good doesn’t it? Such a good feeling, such a relief.

Sure, I hope someday that my books produce a secondary revenue stream, or even occasional drip. Hell, if they sell enough, I can share my sandwich and chips with Nikesh at some grand literary affair. “Want a chip, Nikesh?”

For now, though, I’ll be happy finding my best voice. because that’s the one I want you to hear. Read, I mean, which is definitely best case for both of us.

Try it from the top one more time…

Is this fiction?

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April 13, 2022

Is this fiction?

“Is this fiction?” But he wasn’t asking me. The young man checking me out at Von’s on the campus of Purdue University had asked his colleague if my purchase, Don Quixote, was fiction. With the category clarified, he returned to face me with an apology along the lines that he “should know”. Being who I am, I began a lengthy response intended to soothe the young man’s emotional state. I began with a rambling explanation of why I had decided to buy Don Quixote downstairs in the wonderful, cramped, used book section, which is the basement of Von’s, and ended with me apologizing to him for my ever learning to read in the first place.

I stepped outside intending meet my son and his friend, who were finding food somewhere nearby, the used copy of Don Quixote in hand. I didn’t buy it for this year as I have other books to read yet, porch reading weather permitting. I will read Don Quixote as part of next summer’s porch reading. It has become a tradition for me to let a “classic” or two come to me and then read them outside on my front porch where my ability to concentrate seems easier to access than indoors. Don will have to wait his turn.

Is this reading?

My mind and my feet then headed for the venerable Rice Cafe for the rendezvous. About a half block out of Von’s, my feet and mind went their separate ways, as is the norm. My mind took me back to this summer’s reading. It has included lots of Oscar Wilde, Hamlet. The Shakespeare Requirement, some H.E. Bates, the Bhagavad-Gita and The Longest Road by Philip Caputo. I had taken The Longest Road and Tristam Shandy with me on my annual vacation trip to the Ohio River. This is a highlight week of the summer reading campaign. I was encamped in my delightful reading space on the deck facing the Ohio River on an almost too warm summer afternoon. The deck is raised two stories off the ground in case the Ohio River chooses to flood. I can reach out and touch branches and leaves while the river flows by me, powerfully indifferent. It is a wonderful spot to place the mind on a book.

Raindrops falling on my book

That afternoon some clouds formed rather quickly. This happens almost daily on the river. Since the deck space has a roof covering half of it so I did not stop reading The Longest Trip. My mind on the book, on the deck on the river, I did not, at first, notice that it did start to rain this time. I heard a “smack!” about two feet in front of me at eye level. I looked up from my book. A large leaf was still shaking and a few tiny drops of water were dripping of it. A drop of rain had hit the leaf. The sound was so clear and close that it caught my attention. The leaf waved gently up and down a few times in confirmation of what I heard. A few scattered small drops of water clung to the leaf. “That” I thought, “Is what reading is.”

Is Don Quixote fiction? Hamlet? The Gita? The Longest Trip? It don’t matter. Categories are created to help us find books in book stores. The “Best of” and “Must read” books lists can be useful. However, it strikes me that reading what is prescribed implies that it is your fault that you are sick.

This is reading

At the core, reading a book is simply energy meeting energy. Like a drop of rain hitting a leaf.

Picasso Don Quixote Windmill

That moment of the raindrop falling from the sky among uncountable others on its never before falling path, hitting one leaf from uncountable others from a tree on its own slower, steadier, original to it, path was, for me, my mind colliding with my book. Not just The Longest Trip, but Tristam Shandy, Hamlet, all of my summer reading, in fact all the books I have ever read.

It makes perfect sense to me. If only perhaps, because I have written a novel and am rewriting another, do I come to this conclusion. The mind is constantly moving. Easy enough to see. Yet, I think, so is a novel, or any book for that matter. I put mental energy into Tripio. It is held there on the page and in between the covers for the reader to take that energy into their own mind. When they meet, a unique combination of energy is created. The raindrop and leaf replicated.

Back to my feet

Where does that leave me? Still looking for the Rice Cafe. I got a little lost. I hadn’t been on Purdue’s campus for a couple years. As for Don, he will have to wait his turn. I wanted to go back to Von’s and tell the young man who checked me out that Don Quixote should be filed under “mental energy’ or “leaf meets raindrop.’ But , luckily for him, after a couple more blocks, I stumbled upon the Rice Cafe.

A repost from about a year ago. I feel even more strongly about this today.

My Writing Prompt

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March 30, 2022

Image result for Juan Valdez Coffee. Size: 183 x 170. Source: dailycoffeenews.com

Describe the scene outside your window.

I bailed out on my writer’s group prompt last Friday. It was a long workday on a Friday and that was before the two-hour skull session, which concluded with a 30-minute prompt. I will be revisiting the writer’s group a good deal in future blogs. For now, I wanted to send a gratitude to A Writer’s Path blog post entitled “The Benefits of Joining a Writer’s Group“, from a month or so ago. I read it and took courage from it. Who knows? I may not have attended that group for the first time ever, if I had not read her blog. Thanks! And the best part is that the group is letting me come back.

My writing prompt is brewed

As I said, I did have to leave before the last half hour writing prompt. I felt a bit bad at leaving early as I was the “new guy”. However, on the way out, I said, “I know I will do my writing tomorrow morning.” Why? How could I be so sure? Write without a prompt? Have you taken leave of your senses, new guy?

I have never been a big practitioner of writing prompts. I took part in one a couple years ago in a class on blogging. Maybe it wasn’t a good fit for the intent of the class. But it didn’t change my overall ambivalence toward writing prompts as a whole. I haven’t used one since.

I think the main reason for that, and why I knew I would write the morning after writer’s group is that I drink my writing prompts. That is, my prompt is whatever type of coffee is in the cup that is always, always and always within reach when I write. I have previously addressed this in my own post, Coffee and Writing. Not all traditional writing prompts are the same. Neither are the liquid ones.

This week’s drinkable prompt has sparked a lot of creativity and imagination in yours truly. It is the fairly humble Kroger Private Selection Sumatran Mandheling. It is so humble I think they used Sumatran incorrectly.

You say Sumatran, I say Sumatra…

I have only seen it as Sumatra Mandheling and I’ve been consuming coffee before they even knew there was coffee outside Juan Valdez’s back yard. But it is every bit as earthy and full bodied as Sumatra(n)s costing way more. As a varietal, Sumatra’s strength is it’s early body and smooth full mouthfeel. A fine coffee for drinking while contemplating what your novel’s protagonist is going to do after escaping narco-terrorists during a breathtaking chase through the corridors of a random east Asian palace.

The above novel will need a base, a backbone a solid foundation. So do all the blends we know and love. Sumatra’s body and earthiness make it a great base for any and many espresso blends out there. It is also my educated guess that Sumatra is included in the house blend your local bearded roast master has going right now.

So, if you need a prompt for your writing and can’t get to, or don’t yet have a writer’s group to get to, try the Kroger Private Selection Sumatra or Sumatran. Either one will prompt those words. Happy brewing and writing!