Howl's Moving Castle: A Tribute Poem

This is a poem that I wrote, based on a book that I love. This is a tribute poem to Diana Wynne Jones, author of Howl's Moving Castle. I hope anyone who reads this, if they haven't read the book yet, shall be so inspired to do so. Enjoy!

Howl's Moving Castle

A Poem Told In 458 Words.

Sophie was the eldest.

Sophie was depressed.

While Sophie Hatter talked to hats her

mettle was suppressed.

A Witch lived in the Waste, and

this Witch came in to buy.

Her rudeness woke up Sophie’s tongue,

and caused her to reply.

Sophie lost her temper.

Sophie got a curse.

From young to old she swiftly went,

and life got quickly worse.

Sophie sought her fortune,

Talking as she went.

She found a stick and made it live

by saying what she meant.

Sophie found a scarecrow,

Brought it quite to life,

Freed a dog and fled the scene,

complaining ‘bout her strife.

Sophie sought a castle

Coal-black as a frown,

Owned by Wizard Howl, and

allowed to roam the town.

Sophie took up residence,

Brandishing a towel.

She found a star named Calcifer was

bound to Wizard Howl.

Sophie met young Michael.

Earnestly, he charmed.

Sophie met the Wizard Howl and

Promptly was alarmed.

Sophie made a bargain,

Calcifer, a clue,

Sophie tried to clean Howl’s room but

didn’t manage to.

Sophie scrubbed the bathroom,

Sophie washed the sink.

Sophie mixed up Howl’s fine soaps, and

turned his hair quite pink.

Howl had quite a tantrum,

and Howl sank in gloom,

Then Howl’s dreadful tantrum oozed green

slime throughout the room.

Sophie cleaned the tantrum.

She tried then to depart.

But Scarecrow had been following, and

startled Sophie’s heart.

Howl shook off the scarecrow,

Mended Sophie’s scare.

Sophie stole his seven-league boots and

went to take the air.

Michael mixed a spell up,

didn’t get too far,

Went out roaming on the moors, and

tried to catch a star.

Waste Witch reappeared then,

to make threats on the King.

Howl was called upon to help, but

Howl, well, had this thing…

Howl, he made a perfect plan,

because he had an aim,

Sophie played his Mother, for to

blacken Howl’s name.

Sophie made a blunder,

and Howl’s aid seemed fated…

Howl went out to get a drink, and

got inebriated.

Howl caught a head cold;

complained quite shockingly.

The Witch killed Mrs. Pentsemmon and

Howl, he went to see.

Howl, he fought a battle

Of witchery and wit,

The Witch was made to run away: It

Mattered not a bit.

For Howl, he was in danger,

But Howl just wouldn’t say.

The Witch’s demon sought his heart, so

Howl moved quite away.

Scarecrow made reentry,

A skull’s head clamor caused.

The Witch’s demon tricked them all,

But Sophie hardly paused!

Sophie lost her temper,

The demon kept its head,

Howl’s heart was in its hand, but

Sophie, she saw red.

The Witch was blown to powder,

The demon fell apart.

And Sophie freed up Calcifer,

And mended Howl’s heart.

All went back to normal,

Sophie wasn’t old.

Howl’s heart was back in place:

This story’s finally told.

Finding Words In Woodstacks

So, my family and I spent an hour of the morning stacking wood. It's not my idea of the best time I could ever have, but it's vigourous and splintery, and a good workout.

As I was tossing pieces of wood to my younger sister (not really tossing, just occasionally chucking a piece to check her reflexes), I thought that writing was rather similar to harvesting wood for the winter.

See, you start with a tree, which is like a wonderful glorious story idea in your mind. Then you cut the tree down, to see how it looks from a different angle, much as you plot up different story scenarios to figure how best the story would flow. Then you cut the tree into lengths, like you cut up the storyline into different chapters, to get an idea as to how much story is hiding in those lengths.

Next, once you've loaded the "chapters" onto your truck and brought them home, you split them into logs, opening them up to see how fruitful the ideas are. Then, you throw all the wood into a pile and let it age, like a good idea has to be mulled over a little bit in order for it to work.

Then comes the stacking. You go through the pile of wood, your ideas, good and bad, that are all thrown together. Gnarly, knotty pieces of wood, or splinters, or bark bits, all the pieces of wood that are impossible to stack, you lay aside for later. Smooth, square bits, perfect stacking wood, you lay neatly in rows on the deck. The neat rows are your sentences. The occasional odd piece of wood that is perhaps slightly too long or slightly too short are your plot changes. The odd gnarled bits that you plop on top of all the good rows are your climaxes and twists of plot.

In the end, they all create one thing: a wonderful roaring fire of a story that you can enjoy every evening during winter...and hopefully with a story, every evening of the summer, as well.

Give Yourself Permission

This was a brilliant post, simply because I have a hard time really giving myself the permission I know I need as a writer.

Associate Editor Molly O'Neil, funny, witty, and concise blogger at WriteOnCon, had this to say on the subject.

First, being a writer is a solitary act of the will. Where your writing goes, or doesn't go, depends solely on you. If you become a writer, a really fabulous selling author, it's because you willed yourself to keep going on the journey even when the journey felt impossible. If you are a writer who has remained in the same rut year after year after year with no intention of ever struggling free, it's because you allowed yourself to give up, to stop running after that dream of really becoming the writer that's sleeping inside you.

There are a list of permissions that Molly O'Neil gave us. I encourage all serious writers to take this list and pin it somewhere in your home, or in your head, or on your desktop. It's gold.

Permission to call yourself a writer. (I do)
Permission to collect sparks of inspiration from even the unlikeliest of encounters. (Definitely do!)
Permission to wander your way into telling stories completely unlike those you perhaps once thought you would write. (All the time!)
Permission to start writing something new—totally, gloriously new—even if the thought terrifies you. Especially if the thought terrifies you. (I'm still scared.)
Permission to admit that a story you’ve been trying to write isn’t working, or isn’t actually something that you love writing anymore, and to liberate yourself from it. And then, to start something new. (See above!)
Permission to stray from your outline. (ALL the time.)
Permission to keep writing, even if it feels like you may never “get there.”(**sigh** I do. It's hard.)
Permission to steal the parts of a story that ARE working out of a story that mostly isn’t, and to use those parts to make something fresh. (Working on this one.)
Permission to change your manuscript from first-person to third (and possibly back again). Or to change tenses, or settings, or main characters, or any other part of your story, once you see a way to make it better.
Permission to let a character become someone totally different than you originally expected him/her to be. (Characters have a disconcerting habit to become real people, and abandoning the characters I've written for them.)
Permission to kill a character. (And to cry a little when you do so.) (I've killed them. I've cried.)
Permission to hire a babysitter, or to blow off some homework, or to order dinner in, or whatever it takes, to give yourself a little more space in your life for writing.
Permission to write a scene or story that might make certain people who love you shocked and surprised. (Still scared about this one. :-)
Permission to submit something. (Done. But ooh, it's scary!)
Permission to fail, maybe more than once. (Because you can’t fail unless you’ve tried.) (Feels like I fail all the time. **sigh** I give myself permission to accept it.)
Permission to feel things deeply as a writer—disappointment, grief, doubt, jealousy. But then to balance those negative emotions with more positive ones: ambition, determination, persistence, hope. (WIP)
Permission to be where you are in your path as a writer. Right now. Even if you think you should be farther along.
Permission to write in the oddest of places—on the back of kleenex boxes and receipts; at ballet lessons or soccer practice or with a car full of groceries going warm; on napkins in restaurants; in the bathroom of a friend or relative’s house when you’ve gone to visit—in order to capture an idea, or images, or words that flash into your mind, already strung perfectly together. (On a post-it in between visual fields. :-)
Permission to ignore all the conflicting pieces of advice, and simply to write the story within you that wants to be told. (Yay!)
Permission to step away from measuring yourself against other writers.
Permission to be inspired by EVERYTHING. (Always!)
Permission to be uninspired…but to try to write through it anyway. (SO HARD!)
Permission to mess up. Possibly many times. Every day. (Thank you. I have.)
Permission to do what you need to protect yourself as a writer—to turn off the internet, or to stop reading blogs for awhile, or to avoid Twitter—and enable yourself to do that thing which writers must do—TO WRITE. (Yes. Very hard to do, too.)
Permission to think of your characters as real people (and to perhaps actually like them better than some real-life people you know). (You mean they're NOT real? Confession: I really do like most of them better than real people, too.)
Permission to delete. (Hard, hard, hard. But I do.)
Permission to write things that perhaps no one but you will ever see. (All the time.)
Permission to write things that perhaps many people will see. (Scary.)
Permission to…Write On! (Insert cheer.)

Molly O’Neill is an Associate Editor at Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsChildren’s Books
Read her blog at: http://10blockwalk.blogspot.com, and follow her on Twitter @molly_oneill.