I am writing my first story, a contemplative non fiction prose/poetry hybrid lyric essay, for the fun challenge of trying
to get published in an internet journal.
It is absorbing, frustrating, time consuming and hard work once you realize what is required.
Hemingway said the first draft is garbage.
I cut, cut, cut my beautiful sentences because they do not say what I mean,
are not needed and the bigger issue is they are explanatory when you need to show what is happening not tell it.
Strip your story down to the bones. That is a hard skill to master.
If I have peaked interest, here is my fox section.
I am in nature contemplating then meet a fox. The total concentration needed in the confrontation
triggers me into a transcendent state of seeing things deeply and clearly.
Silence means the absence of mental chatter in my essay.
Emerald shards cut through the hedgerow.
Silence falls—
A fox is stiffening; our eyes lock,
There is me.
The fox. Stillness.
Vertical pupils—dark blades slashing through green ice—
darts aimed at mine.
If. It. Leaps.
freeze?
fight?
run?
climb?
It blinks, then blinks again.
The gaze breaks.
I exhale, eyes wide.
The fox trots away with an indifferent lope.
It looks back—darts retracted.
The harvest moon,
a bell now struck—
its saffron
pouring silence—
The moment the eye sees the tree—
the perfect mallet meeting the perfect bell.
Each leaf a ringing of the bell.
Its veins—
rivers
dividing into rivers
dividing into rivers.
Rivers becoming rivers
all the way down.
There is me.
The tree.
Silence.
to get published in an internet journal.
It is absorbing, frustrating, time consuming and hard work once you realize what is required.
Hemingway said the first draft is garbage.
I cut, cut, cut my beautiful sentences because they do not say what I mean,
are not needed and the bigger issue is they are explanatory when you need to show what is happening not tell it.
Strip your story down to the bones. That is a hard skill to master.
If I have peaked interest, here is my fox section.
I am in nature contemplating then meet a fox. The total concentration needed in the confrontation
triggers me into a transcendent state of seeing things deeply and clearly.
Silence means the absence of mental chatter in my essay.
Emerald shards cut through the hedgerow.
Silence falls—
A fox is stiffening; our eyes lock,
There is me.
The fox. Stillness.
Vertical pupils—dark blades slashing through green ice—
darts aimed at mine.
If. It. Leaps.
freeze?
fight?
run?
climb?
It blinks, then blinks again.
The gaze breaks.
I exhale, eyes wide.
The fox trots away with an indifferent lope.
It looks back—darts retracted.
The harvest moon,
a bell now struck—
its saffron
pouring silence—
The moment the eye sees the tree—
the perfect mallet meeting the perfect bell.
Each leaf a ringing of the bell.
Its veins—
rivers
dividing into rivers
dividing into rivers.
Rivers becoming rivers
all the way down.
There is me.
The tree.
Silence.
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