Write On!

Tuesday I started another Writing Workshop put on by Write Around Portland called "Write On". It's for continuing writers who have done at least 2 Write Around Workshops before. It's a 10 week workshop. They had limited space so they used a lottery format to select the participants this time. I was one of the lucky ones chosen!

I really enjoy and look forward to these workshops. They give me an appt. and a time and place to write. Writing allows me to take my fears and insecurities and anxieties and put them down on paper, to get them out of my head. To give cancer, which I cannot see, a face and place to battle it on paper.

The following are the two pieces from the first workshop on 2/10/09.

1. Writing prompt given: Describe your morning in the 3rd person. (5 minute write)

The alarm went off at 5am and she awoke with a start and nudged her husband to turn it off. She didn't have to get up for at least 2 more hours. Then she drifted back to sleep, only to be awakened again 3o minutes later. She nudged her slumbering husband again, a little harder this time. He rolled over and reset the alarm. She asked him "don't you have to get up?" and he answers "I don't have to get up until late today, the early morning session isn't going". The half asleep woman, who had just been pulled out of her dreams twice now for no good reason, snapped back "then why does the alarm keep going off?" The husband mumbles "sorry" as he rolls over and easily drifts back to sleep as always and the woman lays there wide awake."

2. You awaken with amnesia in what appears to be an igloo. You have $4 and a rock in one pocket and a toothbrush in the other. Someone is staring at you. Write this scene. (10 minute write).

I chose to not use the prompt and use something that I had been pondering in my head since my support group started the discussion on "Living in Limbo."

The Ledge
by Shauna Berglund Immel

I'm on a ledge. Scaling the side of a cliff.
Like a tight rope.
It's a long way down.
So far down I'm afraid to look.
I'm afraid of heights
But I can't help but sneak a glance.
Darkness as far as my eye can see.

Above me, out of my reach, is flat ground.
And light.
The summit.
But between me and the summit
lies a vertical wall of sheer jagged rock.
And I must scale the face of this mountain to reach it.
Without the safety of climbing equiptment.
With just my bare hands.

It's a long ways up.
I've climbed this mountain before. I know this path well.
I've almost made it to the summit on several occasions.
Where one feels safe, warm, secure and protected.
But I lost hold and slid back down to this ledge.
Where I have been clinging to with all that I have ever since.

My hands, covered in callouses, are tiring from gripping so hard.
My fingers ache, exhausted from the brute strength it takes.
My nails are bleeding from clawing my way up the steep bluff.
It's getting harder and harder to pull myself up and onto this ledge.
This place, this limbo, that hovers between life and death.
Where I sit and try to regain my strength to attempt another climb.
Wondering if it would just be easier to throw myself off of the cliff
Into the dark abyss.

Thanks for reading.
xoxoxo
Shauna