[writing] NaPoWriMo Day 2: Lover's Chain, Couplet

Still following Seanan McGuire's Lover's Chain tutorial. The second step is the couplet, two lines of rhymed poetry. As Seanan suggests, I'm trying to avoid more standard rhymes, such as love and dove, eye and die and lie, etc.

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm writing my Lover's Chain to horror stories, or more particularly, as I decided last night, watching clouds over the moon, to a monstrous final girl.

With that in mind, I still want to avoid what I think are more common rhymes along this theme, so I don't want to end a line on moon or sky. This may prove difficult, considering the imagery and tone I started with in the compliment focuses on the moon: The moon rises, bright and full, and with it comes peace. This feels like an end to a final girl's story, and if that's where I'm beginning this courtship with her, I'll need to go back and capture some of the more complicated concepts of her story. Later steps in the Lover's Chain use more complicated poetry forms. Both of these thoughts are things I'm keeping in mind as I work on the couplet.

Based on Seanan's example, the couplet is a great place to expand upon the imagery that will be threaded throughout the rest of the poems. Brainstorming final girl words include blood, fight, death, monster, transformation.

First attempt:

Blood-soaked, broken, you escaped your death;
come with me, darling, rest, catch your breath.

I like pieces of this, but not the pacing itself. Plus I want the tone to better capture the awe I feel for the final girl. She's amazing. She's strong. She's won, but at what cost?

Second attempt:

Bloody, bruised, you escape death;
Come, darling, rest, catch your breath.

I like this better. It's tighter, flows better, and better captures that sheer shock and awe of her survival. This final girl will show you something new.

Lover's Chain

The moon rises, bright and full, and with it comes peace.

Bloody, bruised, you escape death;
Come, darling, rest, catch your breath.

[life] Teaching and Twitter

Last night I ended up teaching a class about Twitter use with no more than five minutes notice. There's a local nonprofit computer group that meets each month, mostly seniors, and Jake usually teaches a short lesson on some sort of tech issue after their business meetings. This month, they requested a class on Twitter, but he doesn't use it. I freaking love Twitter, and that's how I ended up giving a lesson to a bunch of delightful, if super politically conservative, seniors using my 100% liberal twitter account. It was awesome.

The best part was bonding with them over pro wrestling. After we went through the technical part of setting up an account, fixing privacy settings, and starting to tweet, we talked about Twitter's appeal, and one of my examples was how it allowed me to connect with other people watching and loving the same thing I am. I used last weekend's Wrestlemania hashtag as an example, because locally, I don't know anyone who loves wrestling (and Jake and Nephew love to mock me about it), but I can watch live and interact with thousands of people all over the world. The class loved that concept in general (I also talked about how when I'm housebound due to illness, it helps stay connected, how news, local, national and international, breaks on Twitter before more traditional media, etc.), but all these little old ladies also started talking about their memories of watching wrestling as children, with their grandfathers and fathers, and how much they loved it. When I first mentioned pro wrestling as the example, Jake laughed. I don't think he expected it to go the way it did.

Basically, it was an awesome class, I loved it, and I can't wait to go back next month to teach one on Facebook.