Songwriting Without Boundaries (22 page)

Gaze
indicts:
As he tiptoes in the back door at 5 a.m., her stern gaze indicts him, sentencing him to a long dawn of arguing.

Clock ticks by the stove, she paces the linoleum floor, nerves jangle like wind chimes, she hears his car in the distance, tires turning on gravel, he cuts the headlights, hoping their lighted eyes won’t gaze in through the curtained windows.

Another transitive verb. Both Bonnie and Susan use a pronoun as a direct object. The collision is between the subject and the verb. The direct object comes along for the ride.

Your turn.

_____________Paddles

BONNIE HAYES

Moon
paddles:
The moon paddles in a river of clouds streaming across the sky, bubbling up around it.

The stars are already underwater, drowning in the sudden flood of darkness, rising out of nowhere and obscuring the possibility of clarity on this night.

CHANELLE DAVIS

Fire
paddles:
The fire paddles its way across the ground, waves of heat and embers are splashed amongst the native bush.

Moves quickly, helicopters buzzing with water buckets trying to stop the fire racing like a team of rowers, leaves a trail of smoky mist, coughing, burnt orange sky, flames drown the houses, flood the trees …

Aha! An intransitive verb. No direct object necessary, but you’ll probably use a prepositional phrase like Bonnie and Chanelle did: “paddles
in
a river of clouds” and “fire paddles …
across
.”

Both use the water imagery that
paddles
suggests and apply it to the nouns’ families with startling results.

Now, you try.

_____________Operates

SUSAN CATTANEO

Spider
operates:
The spider operates on its delicate web, threading the silk and stitching together nature’s lace.

Monkeys chatter in trees, a mango yellow snake coils around a tree branch, footsteps crash in the undergrowth, a pioneer cuts boot prints in mud, rifle glinting in the blade of sun coming through the canopy of leaves.

ANN HALVERSON

Rumor
operates:
Rumor operates as if it has its own army.

Its marching orders move the troops to every venue, battle ready, weapons sharpened for maximum result, responses set to engage and surprise and destroy. Sneaking into darkest spaces, leaving land mines of doubt behind them … the damage whispers in ears across barbed wire.

Hot spots: “rifle glinting in the blade of sun,” “leaving land mines of doubt behind them.”

Now, your turn.

_____________ soars

BONNIE HAYES

Party
soars:
The party soared around my ears, boosted by the wild energy of a full moon and kamikazes.

I could almost feel it in my hair, like wind, in the tingling of my fingertips like adrenaline. I let it lift me up and floated ever higher, with a kind of internal silence the way it might feel to be high high in the sky …

CHANELLE DAVIS

Wasabi
soars:
The wasabi soars through my nose and into my brain, flapping around, trying to escape through the top of my scalp.

Scraping inside of my head, intense burning, pulsing shock waves, pecking my nose, scrunch up my face and hit my forehead with my fist trying to shake it out, watery eyes.

Soar,
like
operate
, is intransitive. You understand the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, right? Right.

Now, do your own.

You use lots of nouns and verbs in your writing. As in music, surprise at the right time matters. Find opportunities, when you have your noun, to audition a whole chorus line of verbs until you find an exciting collision. And conversely. It’ll keep your writing fresh and interesting. You know how that is. You just did it for two days.

DAY #7

EXPRESSED IDENTITY:
NOUN-NOUN COLLISIONS

Something new today. You’ll work with expressed identity: noun colliding with noun. Remember the three forms of expressed identity:

In your collisions today, try some of these constructions and see how they fit. Here are your nouns:

For each noun/noun combination, write a sentence or short paragraph. Then do your ninety seconds.

A wince is a cargo ship

SUSAN CATTANEO:
She stubbed her bruised toe on the chair leg, and her wince was a cargo ship, holding a ten-ton pile of pain.

Ache radiating in waves, cutting through all other thoughts. Eyes dripping salty tears, she casts around her mind looking for a really good swearword to use …

KRISTIN CIFELLI:
Her wince was a cargo ship that hauled along emotions from years past. The sudden reaction, though quick and sharp, was also heavy with fear.

Trudging along through the dirty waters of your past, a slow reaction to fear, a wince, though quick and reactive, slows you down, full of heavy boxes of emotion, packed and stacked neatly inside your head …

Note the water language in Susan’s, drawn from the family of
cargo ship.
Kristin loads the ship with stacking boxes, cruising dirty waters. Note that Kristin’s “the dirty waters of your past” is also an expressed identity is the second form, “the y of x,” “your past is dirty waters.”