Growth Spurt

Growth Spurt

Lizzie Rose

Growth SpurtLizzie Rose

Cover Photo Courtesy of Samantha Didyoung

Table of Contents

Author’s Foreword

PoetryFree Verse

“Easy as Pie”“Sunshine”“I Remember”“Please”

Formal Poetry“Chameleon” (Conceit)“Close My Eyes” (Cinquain)“Migrating South” (Haiku Story)“Tap Dancing” (Triolet)

FictionMicro Fiction

“The Box” (MicroFic)Five Twitter Fiction

Short Story“Afternoon Tea”

Non-Fiction“A Thicker Skin”

Author’s Note: The Original Drafts“Excuse Me”“Chameleon”“Easy as Pie”

“The Box”“Afternoon Tea”

Foreword

I entered this Creative Writing class with a bad case of Writers’ Block. It was torturous. Night after

night, I would stare at a blank Word document until I saw spots. Nothing came. When I did have an only okay

idea, I would write a little and then become convinced that it was garbage and delete it all. It was a vicious

cycle, until I was smacked with my first due date for a Nonfiction piece, then I really had to throw it into high

gear and just write something. Then, something happened. I sat myself down with a due date lurking in the

back of my mind, and I wrote. And I actually liked what I wrote. Whaddya know?

In the last few months, we have learned how to apply many different writing techniques and styles in

our writing. Everyone prefered a different style, depending on what kind of writer they are. For example,

poetry and its ____ was much debated. Since I had never really spread my wings farther than free verse poetry

and fiction, I was excited to explore the other different branches of writing. There were three strategies and

techniques that stuck out to me. When these techniques were taught, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy writing them.

However, I enjoyed the challenges that these styles posed. I always did love a good puzzle.

1. Nonfiction

I was not expecting to enjoy writing Nonfiction. I only saw it as a hurdle I had to jump before getting

to the good stuff (Poetry! Fiction!). I’ve never liked reading Nonfiction, I found those kinds of books

downright dull. What I realised after the unit began, what I had been looking at the wrong kind of Nonfiction.

When I thought Nonfiction, my mind immediately went straight to manuals, books about nature, self-help

books, stuff like that. The thought never entered my mind that Nonfiction could be entertaining. I don’t know

why this is. I’ve read Bill Bryson’s (hilarious) books and Anne Frank’s diary. I guess that those books never

checked themselves into the part of my brain where the boring bird books and Eleanor Roosevelt biographies

live. When we did start writing Nonfiction, though, I really liked it. I liked writing about one snowy afternoon

that I spent with my cousin and a lesson that I learned. In this compilation of works that I produced this

semester, my one Nonfiction piece is called A Thicker Skin, where I tell the story of how I learned one

particular lesson (a little too late in life). These stories used techniques that I also used in Fiction, only using

real life scenes and experiences. Nonfiction is very truthful, in my opinion, which was very refreshing.

2. Form Poetry

I’ve written poetry ever since I picked up Shakespeare’s sonnets for the first time when I was the

tender age of five or six. However, the difference between Shakespeare’s poetry and mine is that mine is what

would be considered free verse, and bad. As I grew older and discovered Hughes, Neruda, Browning,

Dickinson, the Bronte sisters, and some of my other favorite poets, I grew in my poetry. However, I never

strayed from free verse poetry. Form poetry was so intimidating and strict when my thoughts just needed to

flow freely in their angsty way that my middle school poetry does. Whenever I tried to branch out and try

writing a sonnet, it never worked.

During the poetry unit, the form poetry loomed over me like a cloud. I had gotten to the point where I

was dreading the thought of straying from the comfort of free verse. When the free verse lesson ended, I felt

like a baby bird that was being pushed out of the nest. But when I was assigned the first form poem, a funny

thing happened. Something clicked, all of a sudden the looming doom dissipated and I felt like I knew what I

was doing. I was enjoying it, too, and liking what I was producing. Sometimes, when the idea was right and

paired with the form that it was supposed to be paired with, the poem fell into place. Most of the time, I had to

work and rework the idea that I had until it finally fit into the form. Form poetry is almost like a puzzle. You

have to make all of the pieces fit perfectly together, make the right lines rhyme and have the right meter and

number of syllables (depending on what form you’re using). That takes time. There is no wiggle room, no

grey area. Haiku must have a 5-7-5 syllable pattern.A Cinquain poem must have a ABABB rhyming pattern.

Etcetera, etcetera. The fact that it takes so much time and effort writing and editing these poems is what I

liked most about them. It was so rewarding to have a finished product that I knew I spent an awful lot of time

of. My poem “Tap Dancing” is a perfect example of this. As I explain later on in my Author’s Note, it was a

very, very challenging poem to piece together. An idea that I had written down quickly into a free verse poem

was whittled down into a triolet, and I could not be more pleased with it. It is my favorite poem that I have

written this semester, because of the time spent on it and how crisply the pieces fell together when it was just

right.

3. Micro Fiction

This style was by far the most challenging for me. Ranging from a few words to a thousand, there is

little to no wiggle room for someone who loves to write details. Micro fiction had me stumped. How could I

portray a story that was so cut and dry, with nearly no details? It wasn’t easy. How could I tell a story in under

250 words? In my MicroFic The Box, I did it in 161 words, but it was not very good. The edited version is a

little better, but it was a challenge. One of the key elements in Micro fiction is insinuating what you mean.

Don’t patronize the reader, they’re smart enough to figure it out by themselves. That is something that even

novelists forget. The writer has to be able to tell a story through a few short sentences and strategically worded

details. And then there’s Twitter Fiction, where you have to do all that, in one sentence.

Being forced to use these different strategies, techniques, and styles in my writing this semester has

definitely pushed me to grow as a writer. Being stuck with a deadline really puts a fire under your butt to

produce something. You might not produce a masterpiece, but at least you tried something new and expanded

your repertoire. This “Final Portfolio” is no exception. It forced me to look back at things I wrote months ago

and edit them with the newer knowledge that I’ve accumulated. It’s also made me look back and see how

much I’ve grown since January.

Poetry

Easy As Pie(Free Verse)

My grandmother

hunched over the counter

in the kitchen,

folding over the doughy crust.

Kneading, kneading, kneading.

She smiles to herself,

a look of peace spread on her face.

She uses quick motions.

Flip the dough,

stir the cherry filling.

Spread the mixture smooth,

flipping, stirring, spreading.

Seasoned with years of practice,

My grandmother could do this blindfolded.

Open the oven,

a blast of heat

bumped closed with her hip.

The timer dings,

a golden pie, placed on the table

on the quilted oven mitt.

The divine smells danced in the air.

Hungry souls,

with growling stomachs,

gather from all corners of the house

following their noses.

Sunshine(Free Verse)

That should be her name

she shines

pure rays of light

Merry and exuberant

bursting with innocent love

that radiates on everyone

even those who don't deserve her light

a joyful luminescence

sunny and flitting

childhood that illuminates everything that is good

I Remember(Free Verse)

I remember

My first memory

My cousins crowded around looking down at me

Curiosity of new life in their eyes

I remember

being very little

Falling asleep in the car and waking up in my father's arms

Being carried up the stairs to my room

I remember

that everything seemed so big so full of wonder

and now those same things seem so small

I remember running around my backyard fleeing from imaginary villains

Finding shelter in my evergreen fortress

I remember

Swinging in my backyard singing along as loud as I possibly could to Martina McBride

I remember entering Elementary school

Discovering books and making friends with the characters

And escaping to their worlds

At least for a little while

I remember middle school

And how the experience was similar to when you jump into freezing water on a hot summer day

I remember

how with every year

I would rejoice at how much closer I was to being "all grown up"

Without being thankful for the remaining years of childhood I had left

Now I'm in high school

And those years of running away from my demons are long gone

Now look at me finally an adult

Now is the time for responsibility

And pushing those childish ways aside and each day gets a little more complicated

This is what I wanted

Isn't it?

"All grown up"

So why do I wish I could go back

Live childhood without taking it for granted

But now there are new memories of my three year old cousin

Doing the same things I once did

With me as her sidekick

I'm happy to live those adventures again

This time watching her grow

Using my memories

Old, new

And the experiences that I haven't lived through yet

To help her though

And be there for her in the future

Because I remember

Please(Free Verse)

I’ve loved with my whole heart and soul

And not been loved back

Every unspoken word

A regret hollow inside me

Please, don’t forget me

I’ve moved on, let myself love

And trust again

Only to have my heart

Tossed aside

broken at my feet

Please, don’t break me

I’ve been betrayed, stabbed in the back

By people I've trusted

Those scars remain

Please, don't hurt me

I’ve been abandoned and taken for granted

Forgotten.

I know what that feels like

Please, don't underestimate me

It’s because of these

That I've built these walls

Afraid to love,

To trust,

To forgive

And forget

Please, try to understand

Chameleon(Conceit)

You are a chameleon.

Changing for others,

losing yourself in the process.

This is your camouflage,

a way to disguise yourself to hide your scars.

Changing your colors to blend in,

moving to the next

When the colors wear off.

Because it's easier to forget

than it is to stay.

Close My Eyes

(Cinquain)

Long sleeves, cold hands gripped

dragging feet, scraping along rough pavement. Snow

swirls, getting caught by outreaching fingers and eyelashes. Stripped

of anxieties, I enjoy the serene, cold quiet as gravity slows.

I close my eyes, letting go.

Migrating South

(Haiku story)

Today is the day

moving their home downward south

Their yearly journey

They flit, branch to branch

Harried mamas rouse their young

Their feathers ruffle

Forming into lines

They take flight, saying goodbye

Some will not return

birds are migrating

Rising up, out of the trees

Clouds of feathers flock

Birds wings carve the sky

Sculpting around the white clouds

Around the steeple

Tap Dancing

(Triolet)

Excuse me, but you're tap dancing on my last nerve

So kindly step off, if you please

You vex me with every word you say, as I'm sure you've observed


It's like you're Fred Astaire, with fancy footwork you reserve

Just for me, I'd like give your neck a squeeze


So kindly step off, if you please.

Fiction

The Box

(Micro Fiction)

The doorbell rang. The woman opened the door to find a FedEx delivery man standing on her doorstep. She never got

packages. She could barely hold her excitement as she scribbled her signature for the man and hurried the cardboard box to her

kitchen table. She found an X-acto knife in the junk drawer, and slit open the packing tape. She flipped open the flaps of the

cardboard box and froze. It held something that she hadn't seen in a very, very long time. Tears dripped down her nose and

cheeks as she pulled a small wooden box out. She opened it, and a tune played, a little mechanical ballerina spun to the music.

There was a faded picture inside, two faces from long ago. Herself and a small child. She remembered as she flipped the

picture over. On the back, in her handwriting, was "I'm sorry."

Five Twitter Fiction

The apartment complex across the street was like having fifty television sets looking into fifty people's lives. It was great, until she saw a

flailing hand streak blood on the window through her binoculars.

The old man opened the door to find a baby on his doorstep. The daughter he had deserted years earlier watched her son.

The woman suffered from a disease. It tore her apart. The dreaded writer's block!

A dancer, a singer, a scholar. These are the things you could have been. Now you're an angel.

Day by day, night by night, it was all the same. The woman took her future in her own hands, and her problems went away.

Afternoon Tea

(Short Story)

There is a long list of ridiculous and pretentious things on this earth. Sunday’s afternoon tea being one of them. Every

Sunday, my parents put together a spread of stupid finger sandwiches and sickly sweet tea, like we’re British or something. My

mother even sticks up her pinky when she sips her tea, and installed the same mannerism into my being after years and years of

her forcing my finger up when I tried to take a sip of anything. God forbid I make the grave mistake of forgetting to lift my

pinky.

Every Sunday, ever since my birth, it has been this way. Every Sunday after church, the family gathers in the parlor

and sticks their pinkies up together. Not much has changed over the years, except the people. My grandfather passed away

when I was fourteen, and my brothers have since gotten married and left the nest, leaving me behind. Now, it’s just my father,

my mother, and my batty grandmother who is not nearly as sharp as she once was. Sundays now consist of my father’s stony

silence, my mother’s constant nagging (“Stand up straight!” “Don’t slouch!” “Don’t! It’s rude!”) and Grandmama’s loony

mutterings that make absolutely no sense at all. We’re all stuck in this restrictive state. Even though I’ve never been in one, I

imagine that this is what being strapped into a straight jacket must be like. Freedom seems so close and so simple, but it’s out

of reach. The muscles beg to breathe, to flex free.

This is how I feel every day, but I felt especially stifled this afternoon. I stared out the window at the sunshine

beaming down on the green grass. The outside shone so brightly I had to squint. When I looked away, I saw spots flicker

around my mother’s head as she handed me my teacup and saucer. I sat confined on the plush antique armchair, the light

heating the side of my face.

Father entered the room and smiled a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes when he kissed my mother and took his tea

cup.

The both sat down primly and neatly. My mother sat up rigidly straight, being careful of her posture and her pristine

Chanel suit. She smoothed over nonexistent flyaway hairs as she set her teacup down on the claw foot coffee table.

“Where is your mother?” She asks. I have come to understand through observation of friends families that their

parents treated their inlaws like their own parents. Not in this house. There had always been an icy understanding between my

mother and my grandmother. It only got worse when Grandmama went crackers and lost all tactful abilities. Whatever she

thinks, she says. Loudly.

Today is a good example.

“Leave me alone! Leggo of me!” I hear her yelp as she makes her way down the grand hall, whacking the walls with

her cane. I see my mother flinch in the corner of my eye. She’s probably totaling up the repair costs to fix the scuffs on her

precious walls.

Grandmama’s waving cane comes to view in the doorway before she does, along with the harried butler who looks to

be at his wits’ end.

“I can go from here! Shoo! Shoo!” She shouts as if she’s hurrying along a stray cat.

“GOODmorning! Beeeyouutiful day, isn’t it!” She exclaims joyfully as she hobbles her way to her arm chair, her

cane flying around her head. My mother is crouched in a protective position, ready and willing to take the old bat down if she

takes a swing at the priceless Royal Doulton and her silver teapot.

But Grandmama sits down peacefully after hanging the cane on the back of her chair.

Mother grimaces as she places a teacup in front of Grandmama, as if she’s already seeing it in shards on the carpet.

Father breaks the ice, asking me, “How was your drive? Are your classes going well?” He doesn’t really seem to care

for an answer, but hearing me drone on about Med school is better than silence.

I fake a smile, “It was fine. Classes are going well.” I lie. It was my first year of premed, and classes were awful.

My father nods, “Good, good...” Then lets the conversation drop. Silence once again.

“So, Tara, how long ago did you send out your book? Have you heard from any of your publishers yet?” My mother

asks, her tone meaning to be nonchalant but ending up hurtful. “No magical acceptance letters? None at all?” She pushes as I

stay quiet. I don’t know what to say, but her words sting. She’s rubbing salt into a very fresh wound. She knows very well the

kind of answers I was getting, since they all come to the house. I had gotten another rejection the previous Sunday.

“Dear Miss Humphries, though your story does have potential, it is not what we’re looking for at the moment…” and

so on.

Mother knows she’s got me now, she sinks her French manicured talons into me even farther, “How glad are you now

that you decided to earn your medical degree.”

I had to stifle a laugh at the irony that she’s under the impression that I was the one who decided to go to Harvard

medical. Lets just say Med school is yet another example of my parents and their obsession with keeping up appearances. I

wanted to be a writer. I begged them to send me to school in New York City to study creative writing, but they would not have

it. They demanded that I “be practical,” which is parent speak for “not embarrassing.”

I even wrote a book. I spent years and years writing, pouring my whole heart and soul to it before I dedicated my life

to science. I even sent it out to a few publishers, my last ditch attempt at freedom that turned into a box of rejection letters. My

parents only allowed me to send out the manuscripts so that I would “get it out of my system.” I only had a couple more

publishers to hear from yet, if they bothered to send an answer at all.

Mother and father are laughing a little, smiling at me. So proud that their little girl finally left childish things behind

and decided to follow in her brothers’ footsteps and become a doctor. However, unlike my brothers, I’m not nearly as gifted in

the sciences. God help the poor sap who ends up on my operating table.

A hot, angry fire flashes into my cheeks and stomach, but It’s not worth the fight. “Yes, yes it is.”

Grandmama pipes up, her voice ringing in a high decibel, “My husband was a doctor!” She exclaims. We all nod. We

know, we know, we say. My grandfather’s profession is what made this fancy lifestyle that my family leads possible.

Grandmama looks at me with an intelligence in her eyes that I haven’t seen in years, “And you know what? He was

downright miserable!” She nods and wags her finger at us, continuing, “And so was I! I wanted adventure, but he wouldn’t

have it! Said he needed a proper wife, not an explorer. I regretted it for the rest of my life, and so did he. So boring! Boring!

Boring!” She yells exasperatedly. It scares me how animated she is, all this emotion erupting out like lava out of a long

dormant volcano. She whirls around to me and wags her finger some more, “You take your youth while you have it! Don’t

accept the regrets of the future if you can change them now!”

My mother jumped up. Enough was enough. She clapped for the butler and the nurse to take Grandmama back up to

her room. She reached over and slipped something into my hand before they lifted her up and out of her chair. When they took

her away and her cane clattered on the walls leading up to her room, my parents discussed her declining condition.

“It’s just getting worse and worse. Such jibber jabber!”

“Have you ever heard such nonsense?”

They marveled together, but I stared down at the crumpled letter that Grandmama had slipped me.

It was from the last publishing house that I had sent my manuscript to. They wanted my book.

Author's Note

Excuse Me

Excuse me,

But you're Tap dancingon my last nerve

It's like you're fred AstaireMaking me angry, like a pro

Toeing the lineSpinning my head

So kindlyStep off, if you please

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

As mentioned before in the Foreword, this poem was written for a structured poem assignment, specifically cinquains

and triolets. While I was thinking about what to write, I was also thinking about a fight my friend and I had gotten into that

morning. A picture of a little tap dancer tap dancing on my last nerve, and the idea for a poem sprung into my mind. I just wrote

down the poem in free verse-style. I didn’t like the poem in it’s original form, but I just couldn’t let go of the picture of my

little tap dancer. I decided to try to rearrange it into a form poem for my assignment. First, I tried making it into a cinquain, but

it just wasn’t working. Then, I tried the triolet. With the addition of few extra lines that I had omitted from the original poem,

the poem fell into place perfectly as a triolet. I’m very happy with the result, and I think that it may be my favorite poem that I

wrote this semester.

The rhyme scheme for a triolet is AbaAabAB, a far cry from free verse. It took an awful lot of working and reworking

the words to get the pattern just right.

Chameleon

You are a chameleon

changing for others

losing yourself in the process

this is your camouflage

a way to disguise yourself to hide your scars

Changing your colors to blend in

Moving to the next

When the colors wear off

Because it's easier to forget

than it is to stay

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

What I changed in this free verse poem called “Chameleon” was the addition of punctuation. Though it may seem like

I added a few insignificant commas and periods, I think that the punctuation gives the poem a different tone. As we learned in

Creative Writing class, punctuation makes the reader pause, if only for a second, and think a little more about the poem and its

message. The original poem was like a run on sentence, broken up into lines, leaving much to be desired. The revised version

has a much better flow and is more comprehensive, not just one long stream of consciousness.

Easy as Pie

My grandmother

is hunched over the counter

in the kitchen

folding over the doughy crust

kneading kneading kneading

She smiles to herself

a look of peace spread on her face

She uses quick motions

flip the dough

stir the cherry filling

spread the mixture smooth

flipping stirring spreading

Seasoned with years of practice

My grandmother could do this blindfolded

Open the oven

a blast of heat

bumped closed with her hip

The timer dings

a golden pie is placed on the table

on the quilted oven mitt

The decadent smells danced in the air

Hungry souls

With growling stomachs

Gather from all corners of the house

following their noses

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

This was the poem that I workshopped in the first free verse poetry workshop. Almost all of the members of my group

mentioned that the poem would greatly benefit from the addition of punctuation. One group member suggested putting commas

in between “kneading kneading kneading” to emphasize the kneading of the dough. Much like my poem “Chameleon,” the

addition of the punctuation helped organise the thoughts in the poem. Since there were plenty of “natural pauses” in the poem

already, the punctuation only emphasized those spots, making the reader pause. One line in particular, “a golden pie is placed

on the table,” I deleted “is” and put a comma after “golden pie,” which made the tone of the line and that stanza completely

different. Also, the”is” in the second line of the first paragraph was dropped, and “decadent” in the first line of the last stanza

was changed to “divine,” since it was pointed out to me that “decadent” may have a negative connotation.

The Box

When the doorbell rang, the woman hopped up from the couch and paused the video she was watching. She opened

the door to find a FedEx delivery man standing on her doorstep. She never got packages. She could barely hold her excitement

as she scribbled her signature for the man and hurried the cardboard box to her kitchen table. She found an X-acto knife in the

junk drawer, and slit open the packing tape. She flipped open the flaps of the cardboard box and froze. It held something that

she hadn't seen in a very, very long time. Tears dripped down her nose and cheeks as she unloaded the contents of the box onto

the table. It was a small wooden box, when she opened it, a tune played, one that she had blocked from her mind. There was a

faded picture inside, two smiling faces from long ago. She remembered as she flipped the picture over. It said, "I'm sorry."

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Micro fiction was one of the things that I found most challenging in this unit. Since I’ve always been one for

description, it was hard for me to shorten my lengthier passages. This story included. In the original micro fiction, I had

intended to make the reader make their own conclusions as to who the two people in the picture and why it had “I’m sorry” on

the back. I did this because I wasn’t sure myself as to the circumstances of the package and why the woman was so upset. No

one else was sure either, and the other members in my workshop group were all very confused. Who is the woman? Who’s in

the picture? Etcetera. When I revised this micro fiction, I tore it apart. I deleted the first sentence, which was merely fluff. I

described what the people in the picture looked like. “Herself and a small child.” I also added that the “I’m sorry” was in her

handwriting, thus hinting that she was the one who had sent this package to someone else a long time ago. The small child in

the picture. The woman abandoned her baby, and later on, she felt sorry and sent her child a family heirloom with a picture of

the two of them. The child, now probably full grown, sent the package back.

Afternoon Tea

(Original Beginning)

It had been a long day, which may explain why I broke down, on the job, in front of a complete stranger. I had been serving coffee all day to some of the rudest people on the planet, and now, at ten o’clock at night, my no good very bad day finally caught up to me.

The day hadn’t started out very well, my mother had called and nagged me about how our “deal” was almost up. The deal was that I would spend a year in New York, living out my dream as a freelance writer for a year. If I was successful, I could stay, if I wasn’t, I had to return to New England and attend Harvard and earn a degree in pre-med.

Story of my life, what i want takes a back seat to what's "practical", which is parent speak for not embarrassing. Apparently, being a writer is embarrassing. Or, it is when the writer is completely unsuccessful in selling her works.

Here she was again, sinking her french manicured talons deeper and deeper into me as she kept picking and picking, rubbing salt in the freshest of wounds.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

In the beginning, my idea for my short story was drastically different than the revised version is. The original piece

was based on an idea I had had for a long time, which was a young girl in New York trying to make it as a freelance writer, but

failing miserably. How could I make that work? I added an uptight mother and a deadline to make things a little more

interesting, but it still wasn’t enough. After the first couple of paragraphs, it dawned on me that that wasn’t enough. Then I

added a job. But then after writing that in it just seemed like fluff. Then a wise old guy at the diner that she worked at was

added. I felt like I had written myself into a corner. To make the original story work, it had snowballed into something much

more complicated and long than it needed to be.

I decided to focus on the relationship between Tara and her family, specifically her mother. How did they feel towards

each other? The dialogue and the backstory came together quickly. The setting soon followed suit. Taking the place of a wise

customer was a batty old grandmother who knew more about what was around her than her family knew. I wanted the

relationships in the family, the mother and the father, the mother and her mother in law, the mother and her daughter, to

illustrate the family’s “keeping up appearances” attitude when everything is really falling apart.

Documents

Growth Spurt