Hello Write Queeners, 

How many times have you misheard the lyrics to a song? 

I know that this happens to me at least once a day. I think that this brilliant line that I play over and over again is real until I want to post part of the lyrics on Facebook. Being lazy and hating dictation at times, I search for them online so I can copy and paste. When I find the song on some lyric site, that's when I find out the horrible truth: That one line, that one word, sometimes that one syllable that made the song amazing is NOT a part of the song! 

After learning what's really there, I do hear it. But my mind always wants to go back to my original assumption. It's never the same though and you will always be fighting a battle between what you hear and what you want to hear (as with many aspects of our lives!).

We don't have to let those great lines go to waste though. Back in my undergrad years in one of my creative writing courses, I was told that when this happens to us, that we can use that line in our writing. Since it isn't a part of the song we were listening to, we have originally created that line. Now it is ours to use in our poems, prose, for titles, for anything!

I have two examples of this concept for us to marvel in:

Example #1:

Jon Secada - If I Never Knew You from Disney's Pocahontas

A timeless classic from my childhood, I thought this song was all types of amazing (still do!) The line that made me feel like my world was falling apart into sweet ecstasy was this (in bold):

Beautiful, isn't it? Such sadness, such beauty...and it was absolutely the wrong lyric. The correct lyrics are:

Still nice, but for me, it wasn't the same. There was no devastating beauty in it. No power! I was crushed when I realized what it really was. I have never been able to listen to the song the same way again. My brain is always struggling to bring back that line. SIGH!!!

Example #2:

Here is something a little more contemporary for my pop music lovers. 

Justin Timberlake - Strawberry Bubblegum

I am in love with Justin's new album The 20/20 Experience! One of my tracks is Strawberry Bubblegum. Ironically, I experienced another misheard mishap while I was formulating this post. Here's what I heard:

Hot line, isn't it? Don't ever change your faith cause I love the taste. That is a mind explosion! But of course, I knew that couldn't be right. So off to find the correct lyrics and look, I was wrong: 

Makes more sense huh?

These mishaps actually have a name. It is called Mondegreen, as define by its definition on Wikipedia:

Giving a name to this makes me feel less crazy. It also gives me an opportunity to come up with a challenge for my readers. 

Write Queeners, I want you to find your mondegreen and write a mondegreen poem! It can be any length. Here's a draft of one I wrote using (surprise, surprise) one of the examples of a mondegreen that I showed you earlier:

Knees bruised from 
worshiping you 
from thigh to waist.
Don't ever change 
your faith 
cause I love the taste.
Tilt back on 
your palms while I pray
that my thirst will be 
quenched
without delay.

Eh, I haven't written a poem in a while so excuse that draft! But you guys get the idea. Share your mondegreen poems with me in the comments section (or leave a link to where I can find it!).

There are many writers and artists that I admire. Each one inspires me to be bigger and better One of my all-time favorite writers who I would love to be when I grow up (in a writer's sense of course) is Miss Erica "RivaFlowz" Buddington. Her writing knocks the wind out of your heart. It's that powerful. Every time she posts a link from rivaflowz.com on my Facebook wall, I know I'm in for a good read. 

Through her blog posts, Riva has helped me see what it really means to be a writer in their 20's, typing away at a keyboard to get to their dreams. Now she needs some help. Riva has the opportunity to go to Callaloo Writing Workshop AND get her book edited by a great editor. She is currently fundraising at Indiegogo. Whether it's by spreading the word or contributing to her fund, I am asking my readers (I know you guys are out there somewhere!) to help out. I'm already doing both because I believe in her dream as much as I believe in my own. If I can't take my opportunities yet, I want to help someone else take theirs. So without further ado, here are the links that will help her get closer to her dream:

Share on it Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, whatever you may have. If you have a blog, do a write up about it. Share this blog post if you want. Just SPREAD THE WORD pretty please, my Write Queeners. If you can contribute, even better. 

As she always does, Riva has opened up my eyes to something else: Indiegogo. I think I will be looking into starting my own fundraiser for my projects ;)

Have a great Sunday Write Queeners!


And Riva - I hope this helps!

I published my first piece of writing in 2005. I was 19 and I had a hunger inside.
 
It was only an English 2 assignment. It wasn’t the start of a great novel nor was it under the realization that I ultimately wanted to be a writer. It was just an assignment that I was seriously stuck on until the Saturday before it was due. I had to write a memoir piece about myself. After an incident two years before involving my writing being discovered by my mother, I was a little shy about writing, especially about myself. The past is not pleasant and my mother does not like dirty laundry being aired out. But I couldn’t help it. I had to write. It was a release that was better than all of the bad things a young adult could get themselves into. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t hesitant when this assignment came up.

For those who don’t know which piece I’m talking about, it’s in the prose and publications sections of my portfolio called “Photo Album”. As I said before, I was stuck. I didn’t know how to write about myself, especially in a form other than poetry. I was sitting around in my room when I looked over at the dresser and saw pictures of myself. It stuck me right there and then: What if I wrote my memoir as if you were looking at a photo album? Would I be able to pull it off?

It took a couple of hours, but I did. For some unknown miracle, it worked. I was even able to pull off a smooth transition from third person to first person throughout the piece (though I had no clue I was doing something so impressive until my professor told me so). When my professor offered to help me published it in one of the college's publications, I was absolutely stunned. I had hoped he would like it because I wanted an A, but to have it published meant that my writing had real potential.  

Potential...I still feel like I am in the potential stage.

Forget about what I've published through my journalism classes. Most were good, solid stories that were important enough not be discarded as just an assignment and were runned. But that's all staged for the degree.

Don't point out the literary publications through college publications. While some hold merit because it went through a submissions process, others were a part of a collective that probably would have published you no matter what.

The ones outside of school are the dearest to me. Sending your stuff out to the literary world is scary. Most publications that you admire will reject you. A few will take a chance on you...which I am so happy that they have.

Then what is the problem? Where am I going with this?

Let's go back to my first sentence: I published my first piece of writing in 2005. I was 19 and I had a hunger inside.

I was 19 and I had a hunger inside.

Currently I am 26. I've been writing poetry since I was 13. At some point, I kept count of how much I have written. The number was over 500 pieces. I discovered this around 19, 20 years old. I wouldn't be able to give you a number now.

Now I have a number that haunts me. 32. That is the number of poems in my chapbook manuscript that I am about to shop around. These are 32 poems that hopefully will touch a small press publisher who will be willing to take a chance on my writing and help represent it. I want this more than anything in the world.

But the hunger is not the same. Though I think the concept of hunger isn't right...

I am afraid. The fear is taking over...that's it! The fear...

I was fearless at 19.

Fearless and inexperienced. All I knew was that I was writing. Technique wasn't important. Content less so at times. I just wrote. I wrote so much that I'm suprised that I had time for anything else. When I asked myself would I be able to pull this off, there really wasn't answer. It was just done. I had my reservations, from what I was writing about to if it would be good. But I didn't dwell. I wrote. I wrote and I wrote and in between, I got published.

I don't think publication had the same meaning at 19 than it does now at 26. I wrote without thoughts of publication at 19. At 26, I write a haiku and I think: What if I sent this out? Would it get published? Would someone be impressed? 

Having that mentality contributes to not taking a lot of opportunties and risks. I don't even blog the way I used to. I could blame it on the fact that I am choosing to settle down in a job that is not in my career path so I can take care of members in my family and so I can make and save money to gain independence and to fund many of the projects I have started and not been able to finish. I really could.

But after I settle into the routine of having a permanent job and making an annual salary, if I haven't been writing, especially because I am afraid that I am not writing publishable pieces, who do I really have to blame?

I can't blame my job. I'm not there 24/7. I can't blame publications, when I do send out work, when they reject me. I haven't been keeping up to the practice of writing. I'm letting the sillest fear get in the way of what I am really meant to do: write!

I have to write. I have to have that hunger that I had when I was 19. I have to be fearless and dump a little bit of the knowledge I have in my head. I need to write without worrying about this and that mistake. Experience may be a teacher, but does it prevent us from taking risks?

This is something I need to work out while I hunt for a publisher. After someone takes a chance on my baby...I need to follow up eventually. And there will be no book two if I let the well run dry.

There won't be growth either. So for the rest of this year and the next, my goal is to find the hunger again with reckless abandon.

Cheers to taking chances.