Day: October 15, 2010

{i wouldn’t change her story}

by

October 15, 2010

2:24 am

10 Comments on {i wouldn’t change her story}

Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Uncategorized

The Problem of Fiction

by Marie Ponsot

She always writes poems. This summer
she’s starting a novel. It’s in trouble already.
The characters are easy—a girl
and her friend who is a girl
and the boy down the block with his first car,
an older boy, sixteen, who sometimes
these warm evenings leaves his house to go dancing
in dressy clothes though it’s still light out.
The girl has a brother who has lots of friends,
is good in math, and just plain good which
doesn’t help the story. The story
should have rescues & escapes in it
which means who’s the bad guy; he couldn’t be
the brother or the grandpa or the father either,
or even the boy down the block with his first car.
People in novels have to need something,
she thinks, that it takes about
two hundred pages to get.

Read the rest of this poem here. There’s biting in it.

As a girl who bit (accidentally. Oh, come on. Honest. I didn’t mean to… much) the first boy I really, really liked, this one resonates for me.

Around Glasgow 019

Don’t these girls look like they’re characters in a story? I had so many questions as I passed. I wonder what happened next.

It’s just that time of year, where I am writing like mad, and reading like mad, and trying to make it all balance out. I love taking part in the Kidlitosphere, and being part of the Cybils community is important to me, but every year I think, “Can I do this again?” and I get just the tiniest bit frantic as I try to make it all pan out. But I’m in it – and I’m reading – and I’m writing like crazy. We’ll see what happens.

Poetry Friday today is brought to you by CAKE, polka dots, and the letter three, and can be found at Liz in Ink.