Nov 2

Nov 2 EDITOR'S DESK by Cheryl McGuire

I’d like to share a writing prompt with a quote from Carl Jung: “What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits.”

The quote reminded me of one of my favorite places on earth: my grandmother’s Inglewood backyard. Beyond the swing and grass, past the banana tree and bamboo fence, lived the chickens, the Eucalyptus trees, and the incinerator where I spent hours sifting ash, socializing with the cackling flock, crushing Eucalyptus leaves between my fingers for the fragrance, and daydreaming. Heaven.

A miracle of activity, my grandmother grew vegetables, used her chickens for eggs, Sunday supper, and feather down for her beds; she baked bread, sewed the family’s clothes, made wedding dresses for a wedding shop, upholstered her furniture, painted and wallpapered her walls, populated her rooms with carnations and roses from her garden, and painted her own car. She played the piano and sang. Dramatic and full of beans, she possessed a wicked wit and produced three boys (an actor, a preacher, and a farmer) and one girl (my mother).

My skill set doesn’t reach my grandmother’s ankle bone, but in her kitchen sixty years ago I learned how to blend hard butter into flour with a fork. It took time to get the feel, but I use this skill every day to blend manure into hard soil with a rake to form soft bedding for my horses (evidently, I haven’t moved much beyond dirt—proving Jung’s premise).

We writers never know where memories will haul us. Remember, while mining recollections for yarns, focus on the most important act of writing: editing—where voice is elevated. Seek objective distance on a project: put it in a drawer for a month, untouched (as Kipling did)—faults emerge. Join a keen-eyed, skilled writers’ group and develop the skin for constructive criticism.

Language sings when authors rise above the bland. Don’t settle. Cull the useless and burrow deeply. Weave senses into textures. Exhale scents of emotion. Find the music and share the vivid.

Then flap your wings and cock-a-doodle-doo.

Cheryl McGuire

Cheryl McGuire has a BA in Communications and Journalism, a BA in Political Science, and a Master’s in Humanities-Film Noir. She has worked as a photojournalist, feature writer, and editor. She taught theatre, has performed on stage, and directs. For thirty years she trained dogs as companion animals and for competition. Now she trains and rides her own horses. She has been an instructor at College of the Desert since 1989. She began writing at twelve with a travelogue and moved onto poetry, essay, feature articles, screenplays, and short story. She obsessively enrolls in UCLA’s writing classes.