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Tag Archives: creative writing

Today

Posted on June 14, 2017 by caverns of my mind

I’m not really feeling IT today, whatever IT is. Creativity alludes me, but I promised myself I’d write something today, because I actually have a tiny porthole type window of time to do so today. It’s just a little round window that doesn’t even open to let in any fresh air. Maybe that’s why my creativity is stifled.

creepy road

Nevertheless, I was just able to work in the word nevertheless, so I guess I’m not completely mind numb today.

I had big plans. There were two ideas in my head fighting each other for my attention all day. Now that I’m spending time with my personal laptop, the ideas have vanished. Ok, not completely. I remember the concepts but not the wonderful way I was going to string my words together to make my points poignant. And really, if I cannot write either of these ideas to the best of my ability, I refuse to do it at all! Sometimes it’s ok to write fluff just to be writing; other times your topics require your utmost affections in molding them with your words. Masterpieces require love, time, and inspiration (just as lists require an Oxford comma).

It appears my ideas must wait for a better opportunity. Today is not the day.

 

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Guilt

Posted on February 18, 2015 by caverns of my mind
Just a little something that was in my head. Write whenever you can, even if it’s just a little thing. It might become part of a big thing.
I was always the bad girl. My friends all took their cues from me, so I guess I decided to help them cover their biggest mistake out of guilt. Guilt, and the possibility that because of my past history, I would probably get accused for their crime anyway. The only problem was…I never killed anybody, and it’s a little harder to cover up a mess like that.

 

All rights reserved

Terri Klaes Harper 2015

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TBT: The Ocean 9-18-97

Posted on October 23, 2014 by caverns of my mind

I found some old scraps of writing and journal writing from my past as I sorted through a cluttered cabinet in the office desk the other day.

When I lived in Virginia Beach and attended Old Dominion University…

nature.desktopnexus.com

nature.desktopnexus.com

It would be hard not to fall in love with the ocean: the soft, salty air, the sound of the lapping waves, and the beauty.

I sit here, watching it in the dark. It gets closer with each wave, each inky, black wave. And the orange moon just shines down in one zig-zagging stripe that seems to leap off the edge of the horizon.

This is my dream…writing on the beach. I never thought it would happen so soon. It’s not quite how I expected it to be, but I’m loving it anyway.

If everything else in my life seems difficult now, at least I have this. The beach is my sanctuary. It doesn’t love or hate. The ocean just breathes. With each breath is takes, it heaves another wave…and each wave is perfect. I am lost in this wondrous creation’s ferociousness, yet awed by its sparkling charm.

 

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Ain’t too Proud to Beg Book Blog Tour STOP FOUR

Posted on June 4, 2014 by caverns of my mind

Many thanks to Jennifer Pickrell, a former creative writing classmate from our high school days, for hosting me for day four.  Check out today’s post and explore the rest of her blog.

http://jenniferpickrell.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/giveaway-excerpt-of-memoirs-of-an-ordinary-girl-fresh-meat-year-by-terri-klaes-harper/

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Sequel Excerpt of the Talent Show

Posted on February 21, 2014 by caverns of my mind

A little sample of Drew’s progress in her freshman year, an excerpt of the sequel to Memoirs of an Ordinary Girl: The Middle-ish Ages.

Florntayor’s Got Talent…Sort of

If nothing else, working as part of the backstage crew at the school’s talent show gave me something to do on a Friday night, and though there were no judges or winners, I was feeling quite judgmental, and I really questioned a few of the acts and outfits that strutted across the stage.  Make-out girl from my neighboring locker did some sort of gymnastics meets dance routine while wearing nothing more than a flesh colored body suit and a smile.  Little was left to the imagination, and a flashback montage of all her tonsil-tickler partners and Valentine hearts played in my head, which I shook quietly to myself in the dark behind the stage.

Lance, the mouth breather, performed a magic routine, but everything he attempted failed, and he shuffled off the stage with his left wrist handcuffed to his right ankle and feathers coming out of his pants.  A brother and sister combination played “Dueling Banjos,” and that disturbed me but seemed fitting for Florntayor. Mona performed a baton routine that I guess she used for her beauty pageants.  I secretly hoped she’d hit herself in the head, but she only dropped the baton once, albeit, it landed at the feet of a couple in the front row, which made me smile a little. For the rest of the night some poetry was recited by a mousy junior girl and Bryan Adam’s “Everything I Do” was sung a cappella, and badly, by a senior who was using it as a means to ask a girl to prom.  She said yes and with tears in her eyes, which were obviously there for different reasons than the tears I had in my eyes after the performance.

And then Vile Contagion took the stage and took it with force.

Terri Klaes Harper 2014

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My 100th Post Celebration

Posted on August 26, 2013 by caverns of my mind

100 posts

Almost two years ago, I decided to begin a blog and I immediately declared it would be a random assemblage of whatever I felt like writing about when I felt like writing.  The result?  A random blog with a small following.  What happens is that I’ll pick up followers who think my blog is about…whatever, but then I write about somethingelse two days later. Weeks could go by before I even mention whatever again, or I might just move on to thatotherthing. I understand this is frustrating to people searching a specific theme, but my theme is following my whim of what to write about, so loyalty is harder to come by.  Honestly, I know if I focused on one thing I’d gain a larger following, but I wouldn’t have nearly as much fun as I do just being myself, which is really the whole reason I started doing this anyway.

I just glanced over my posts from the beginning and am proud of my well-roundedness.  I began with my reasons for not having children and moved into my support of adoption and my loathing of human trafficking;  I admitted my inability to ever be perfect, voiced my frustration of being a teacher, reflected on two mission trips, and wrote a week-long series about my dogs;  I posted odds and ends of stories and poems (old and new), including book teasers, and shared my reactions to 9/11, the Sandy Hook shooting, and the Boston Marathon bombing; and I more recently shared my deepest feelings in moving on from the teaching profession.  So there is no theme.  The theme is a chronicle of my life as only I can tell it.  I enjoy my blog in a way no one else ever will, and that’s ok, because I write it mostly for myself.  I love it when people stop in to read, but I’ll keep on writing it just the same even if nobody else ever takes another glimpse.  It is my therapy.

Now, just as Pinocchio dreamed of being a real boy, my book Memoirs of an Ordinary Girl: The Middle-ish Ages is now a real book.  I couldn’t think of anything better to help celebrate my 100th blog post.  It’s still an ebook on Amazon, but now it’s also available in print through CreateSpace and Amazon.  I will be able to hold my baby as soon as it arrives in the mail.

If you think you might also want to hold my baby, but you’re just not sure of the risk in paying for it, check it out for free on kindle this Labor Day weekend at this kindle site.

If you do read it, let me know what you think.  I’m working on the sequel now.

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My Sestina Masterpiece

Posted on July 8, 2013 by caverns of my mind

Once upon a time I took a creative writing class in high school.  Our most difficult assignment (for me anyway) was writing a sestina.  This is a type of poem with a very particular set of rules, including reusing the same six words in a certain order throughout.  I haven’t really done much poetry writing since my angsty teen years, but this one was a true feat to write, and after the darkness comes a glimmer of light, so I decided to share (did you catch my internal rhyme back there?).

fading memory

Faded memory

Much lost time had elapsed since this woman

Could bear the abuse of her forgotten

Past.  Now she’s silent and sadly withered,

As she is paralyzed, feeble, and old.

It is not her fault that she is so sad

And alone.  She just remembers the rain.

Many things had happened in this dark rain

That could not be put aside.  This woman

Had to block out the memories of sadness

And pain, which still linger on forgotten

Bruises and scars.  Searching through her dark old

Eyes, are few memories but of old withered

Roses she had no time for, which withered

And died from lack of soft fallen rain.

Then she viewed the garden with roses old

And dead,  A death this mistreated woman

Could not understand or ever forget

In her future, now present.  And how sad

It is.  Now time slips by in a sad

Way.  When she was a young girl, her withered

Aunt would say, “You’ll, too, be forgotten

And ugly soon.”  And on the window, rain

Would pelt to enforce the words this woman

Said.  The girl trembled from these awful old

Words, then joined by those of the other old

Ladies who would tell her that she was sad

And worthless.  Feeling as if the woman

Had stabbed her and made her become withered

In pain and grief.  All this time the hard rain

Would beat in the poor girl’s mind.  Forgotten

As she has, the abuse, she can’t forget

A sharp pain buried in her loving old

Heart.  She looks back at all the times it rained,

And does not know what she feels, but a sad

Memory she can’t find in her withered

Mind.  She is a loving, simple woman

The rain now can’t touch.  Forgotten and sad

She is not, nor too old and withered.

Forgiveness makes her a happy woman.

–Terree L. Klaes–  1995

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Why Buy the Cow if You Can Get the Milk for Free?

Posted on November 16, 2012 by caverns of my mind

Or why buy a book when you can get it for free? Ok, so it isn’t really the same thing, but now that I’ve got your attention I want to share the limited time free promotion for my book.  For a few days only Memoirs of an Ordinary Girl: the Middle-ish Ages will be available through Amazon’s Kindle… for absolutely nothing.

Why am I doing this?  I don’t know.  I guess with the holiday coming up next Thursday, I’m just feeling thankful and like giving.

Of course, you can always wait until the promotion is over and actually buy the book in order to show your thankfulness for my awesome writing talent.  It’s up to you.  Either way, I just want people reading it.

You can check out a few excerpts in some of my previous blog posts.  It’s a quick and humorous read, I promise.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008TT8Z6K

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The Book

Posted on September 27, 2012 by caverns of my mind

What  a profound title… or not.  This has always been my favorite of my poems.  Although vague, it has always been very personal to me.  But then again, most poets have those special selections, right?  It just so happens that other people have always liked this poem as well.  I’m not saying this to brag- just making a statement.  Of course, I’ve always felt nobody really got it.  That’s the thing about poetry: no matter how much one analyzes and dissects the poor creature, nobody will ever really know what the poem is unless the reader can go back in time to the moment of the poem’s conception and get inside the head and heart of the artist.  Since, to my knowledge, that remains impossible, our poems remain always a bit of a secret.  I like that.

The Book

Should my heart be an open book,

for everyone to see?

My chapters are long,

and hard to read.

My pages barely touched,

yet yellowed and delicate,

tattered and torn.

If walls could talk,

what would my heart chambers speak?

Read my forgotten book.

These walls and barriers do fall down…

one

by

one.

It is purely a mental game,

in which my feelings play.

The book is open,

but not plain to read.

To see me, one must

read between the lines.

I swear I am there,

deep

down… somewhere.

Read me.  Find me.

Join the story.

Become a part of me.

If you do, it will be seen,

somewhere in this book.

The book…

It is me.

–Terree L. Klaes—

1997

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We Need to Talk

Posted on September 22, 2012 by caverns of my mind

Here’s a piece of something.  I don’t know what:

Angie rolled her eyes at her mother, not so much in the directly disrespectful manner of an average fifteen-year-old girl as out of expectation of what was to come.  Another lecture of how life and kids were back when she was Angie’s age.

“But Mom, when you were my age, I bet you were already about 40,” she said, punctuating her sentence with a laugh.

Not that her mother would ever really tell her about her childhood.  Vague lessons in life and generalities about time spent on a farm, in “the city,” and in an RV bumping around the U.S. were all Angie ever heard of.  Somehow her mother always managed to avoid giving specifics by adding more generalities on top of the others, until she had built an entirely empty empire.  When Angie was little she never questioned anything her mother said, but she wasn’t so easily fooled any longer and she wanted real answers before her mother passed away.  After all, once the cancer defeated her mother, Angie didn’t want to be an orphan.  There had to be some family somewhere.  Somebody had to have driven that RV, right?

Her mother took Angie’s hand between her two frail ones and held it to her lips, pressing them gently to the back of Angie’s hand, as soft and yet strong as a hummingbird flutter.  “I know what you’re thinking, Angie, and you’re right.  We need to talk.”

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