Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Re-write a Piece from a Different Point of View

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

NOTE: Originally written in first person, the following is a re-write playing with the immediacy of the second person perspective.

NaPali Coast

 

You begin regularly hiking a remote trail that leads eleven miles down a distant coastline. There, you sleep under a canopy of sky. You record the sounds of a few musicians that spend time there. Bamboo flutes lilt above the swoosh of wind over rocks. Songs are sung, as water ripples through ginger-laden stream beds.

One of the musicians on that coast, is Rex. Tall, blond, and blue-eyed, he says he’s on his way to New York City, where he plans to pursue his music more seriously. His songs are about living in nature, and his love for being free and true. You offer to record his music in the coastal haven, one last session before he heads to a concrete jungle.

On the first night camping, you both stay up, star-gazing, naming the shapes of the clouds that pass above in the moonlight. If you see a dragon shape forming out of cotton billows, he sees it too. You feel a familiar connection with Rex, like a big exhaling sigh. It’s surprising, exhilarating, and calming, all at once, though it’s not necessarily romantic. In fact, you’re not sure you even have a physical attraction to him. But the link between you both is strong. You never go to sleep that night.

Somewhere around 2am, the breezes cool. Your bodies are outstretched on a bluff beneath the cumulus, and he offers to pull you closer, moving one arm, carefully, around you. With the contact, an instant reverberation floods every particle of your being. A clear voice from within, rings deeply through your body.

“This is the father of your child.”

You lie still, allowing his arm to warm you, not daring to speak of the words that are flooding your senses. Your mind cannot comprehend what is vibrating through you. You continue watching and naming clouds, sweeping the message to the periphery. You stay up until the sun rises, and as the sky turns pink with morning hues, Rex announces to the ether, “That was the best night of my life.”

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 3 Comments

Re-write An Existing Piece

courtesy of Hubble ESA
courtesy of Hubble ESA

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

PROMPT INSTRUCTIONS: Re-write a piece that needs clearer purpose. Identify in one sentence the goal of the essay, then advance that purpose.

 

One sentence: Convey the sense of abandonment felt during a child-birth experience and the subsequent feelings of failure and self-doubt that arise as a result. (Note: Sally is the midwife)

 

Sally moves her face back to mine with a look that solemnly conveys, either get this child out, right now at home, or we’re going to the hospital.

I am not religious, but I believe myself to be spiritual. In this moment, however, the delineation between the two is meaningless. Religious or spiritual, it matters not. Life and death weigh upon me, and I call upon every deity, avatar and saint that I can conjure: God, Goddess, All that Is, Jesus, Buddha, Mother Mary, Meher Baba, Mary Magdalene, Infinity…please help me birth this baby. Please offer up your divine powers to help me get this child out.

There has never been a moment when my prayers have mattered more. Yet, as I hear my inner pleas to every figurehead I can imagine, all requests fall flat. It’s as though my words are rote recitations, no substance. I flail to feel some kind of connection to these supreme beings. In the flickers of candlelight, the thumb-tacked, wise-eyed photos of a few, gaze upon me from a nearby wall. All seems a mockery, two-dimensional, paper-thin. I fumble at the door of distant acquaintances, wondering if they ever really lived there.

I am stunned to silence, falling. Fast and certainly, I am encompassed by a void of black nothingness, infinite in its depth, indifferent to my plight. There is no ground in this abyss. Any thought, any semblance of a foothold to secure me, quickly evaporates into empty space. At the time when I need Grace most, I am free-falling into darkness.

If God exists, but is not here with me, than I must be doing something fundamentally wrong. Sally says I’m not pushing correctly, and it seems even my prayers are failing. My utter inability could mean death. I flounder in defeat as the next contraction builds.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Write About A Story Your Parents Told You When You Were Growing Up

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

PREFACE: Since all experiences in life come through our own personal filters, so it is when we hear stories, as well. Every tale we’re told comes through this same filtration, as we take in the details of our choosing. Mom, I hope you don’t mind me sharing this story of yours so publicly, and I hope I’ve at least conveyed the gist of such a transcendent, personal experience. It’s interesting for me to consider that perhaps this is my version, not my mom’s story at all, as it’s the one I’ve created over the years, based on what I remember of her telling.

Childhood with my mother was sweet like the juice she’d squeeze, fresh from the trees, in the orange grove where we lived. She was beautiful in her two long braids, tied with leather cord and turquoise, looking at least ten years younger than her age. Perpetually positive, she’d crank John Denver while doing the dishes, then swoop over to hug one of her three children with soapy hands. I never doubted my mother loved me, and it seemed as though my siblings and I were, absolutely, one of the best things in her life.

But the story goes that it wasn’t always that way. It was hard in the early years, with kids close in age, and each of us in some form of diapers. Dad was working ranching hours- gone early, home late. When he was with us, he wasn’t always present. Unhappy and struggling, Mom thought she was sick, and went to an MD for diagnosis. He gave her a clean bill of health, but saw pain in her soul. His suggested remedy, a book by Billy Graham, “How to Be Born Again.”

For a series of days, Mom set up childcare, while she parked our station wagon in a quiet, shady spot behind the citrus packinghouse. She read the book in detail, finally coming to Graham’s instructions on how to ask Jesus into her life.

Over the years, she would recount to us her supernatural experience, there in the car that day. How she made her request, and the undeniable, loving presence that responded. The voice from within that she vividly heard: Go home and love your children to the best of your ability. Her perspective was completely altered, returning home to us, seeing nothing but absolute perfection.

In a bubble of deep love, she joyfully floated. For days, weeks…years to come.

 

courtesy of Tom Hilton
courtesy of Tom Hilton