Twenty-nine years ago when I was a young adult in Aspen, Colorado, a one-man show came to town. A talented, but fairly unknown actor (not Hal Holbrook) had memorized almost every line and moment of Mark Twain’s life — my favorite author at the time. The actor even had the look, gestures, and witticism of Samuel Langhorne Clemens down to an art.

I sat mesmerized by the performer, enthralled to see Mark Twain come alive before my very eyes. Every wave of the cigar, each dancing smile of self-satisfaction at a joke well received, and the playful Southern accent drew me into the act.

Toward the end of an fun evening of entertaining, the actor said he would answer any questions from the audience. The Aspen crowd was quick to ask Mark Twain about his take on current politics and trends. The actor enjoyed adding Twain’s satire to his answers and obviously had fun with the give and take.

Finally, I raised my hand. Sweeping across the room, expecting another barbed questioned, he drew near and asked, “And what would your question be little lady?”

I replied, “I want to be a writer. What do I do to become a better writer?”

Suddenly the room fell silent. The actor and audience looked into my earnest face, and they realized I wanted Mark Twain, not the actor, to answer my question.

The man’s face softened, his mind switched gears, and he drew even closer, as if Mark Twain and this young woman were to have a private conversation. Everyone leaned forward to listen.

Mark Twain looked me in the eye and said, “Experience of life — not of books — is the only capital usable in writing well, and one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is new.”*

Quite frankly, I don’t remember the words exactly, I just remember he talked about living life more fully so you can write more deeply and richly.

In that one, stellar moment, my writing hero came down from on high and touched me with his words. As I looked into those Mark Twain eyes, I did hear that old father of American literature answer my question, and it changed my life. In those eyes, I felt Mark Twain bless my journey as a writer, a journey I’m still taking.

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Thank you for visiting,
Lori Hoeck

—-

The Light

The darkness called;
I followed, falling,
down into the underneath,
and lay ripped, shredded, torn.
In pain wracked, I reeked,
oozing bile-filled blood.
The darkness played music,
of fear and self-hatred,
until I danced ugly to the tune.
I heard my voice screaming,
“Give me one, not-dark thing!”
And there it was.
A pen-thin beam of sunlight,
stabbing the darkness.
Its smallness did not matter,
because its strength was in its source.
I followed the beam, eyes only for it,
until the darkness fell behind,
Soon came the sun, healing and warm.
I sat down and cried, releasing it all.

—

“If you can’t find the light, may it find you.”

Thank you for visiting,
Lori Hoeck

Well, I’m back in the saddle again looking to wrangle some words together. I place all the blame at the feet of both Sean Platt and David Wright, the collaborative geniuses behind Collective Inkwell. Their recent writing contest fired up the fiction writer in me again. Try as I may to fight it, one of their two story prompts kept haunting me to finish it. Here is the pesky, little rascal: “Well, this is odd, he thought to himself.”

I have no idea how many stories lines welled up inside me like a geyser because of those #@%! eight words. One involved blood spatters, one a goofy ninja story, and one a science fiction tale that changed its plot flow every time I sat down to write.

To make matters worse, the science fiction tale wanted to turn itself into a novel. I’m not a short story writer. I’m trained as a journalist to write news that fits in newspaper columns, and I like to write sweeping adventure stories. My draft for a future best-selling novel (prayers appreciated) is at 84,000 words now, but I expect to write another 30,000 words to finish it.

The contest’s suggested maximum length was 2,000 words, and it took a lot of hair pulling to keep it near 3,000.  You can read the full story over at the  Collective Inkwell contest post. Scroll down to the comments section if you want to read it, and I know you will because here is the tasty first paragraph:

“Well, this is odd, he thought to himself. Time travel shouldn’t be this easy, should it? In less time than it took him to nervously swallow hard, Marco and his friend Baktu jumped 10 years into the past. One moment they stood on an alien planet, and now they found themselves in the cargo hold of the Union of Stars, flagship of the first emperor’s space fleet. They were here to stop an assassination and alter the course of human history.”

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Sean and David have attracted some great writers for this contest, so grab a cup of coffee and take in some fun and even some scary fiction over in the comment section of their contest post.

As for this blog, I will post an assortment of poetry and prose both old and new. Let’s see where it will lead, shall we?

Thank you for visiting,
Lori Hoeck