Sandra Rose Hughes

I am infinitely proud to announce that I completed my Nanowrimo novel! 50,000 words of novelly goodness now rests in my computer. I had WAY more fun than I thought I would and I love my first draft of Song of Three Sisters .

Treasure in the Belly of the Beast             The Knight-Eater crouched in our garage. In a fit of creativity and whimsy, my parents had painted a tall metal cabinet canary yellow. Then they added on a cartoony orange dragon tail with a suspicious bulge in the middle that wrapped around the cabinet. Thus, the "Knight-Eater" was born.             The Knight-Eater held the keys to an entire world of creativity and fantasy for my brother, sister, and me. Inside its belly, we kept brushes, paints, Plaster of Paris, dowels, yarn, and other remnants of old crafts my mother had attempted. But most importantly, the Knight-Eater held an old, scratched-up boxed set of books. Their worn pages were turned down at the corners where my mother had marked the pages repeatedly and the edges were frayed.             Every winter, my m...

  I am participating in the "Resurrection Blogfest" today. I heard about it from David over at Brits in the UK .   Should I be writing my Nanowrimo novel instead?  Heck yes.  Am I? Clearly not at the moment, but I will later...really I will! In any case, the blogfest is all about resurrecting an old blog post from your first year of blogging that you thought was pretty good but has since lain in your old list of postings growing mold and being generally unappreciated by the community of ppl we call the internet. So here is an old, moldering post which I wrote long ago in those sad, sad days when I was still a high school teacher.  PUTTING ON A HIGH SCHOOL PLAY Putting on a high school play has many unique blessings and challenges. As far as blessings go, the students are usually very enthusiastic about the show. They are willing to put in long hours after school and on weekends. They are full of inspiring creativity and energy and are o...

They suctioned you out with a hoover and gutted me like a fish Like a cored apple or the yolk of a hard boiled egg. Pushmepullme, pushmepullme. Push was me, pulled was you. And after an hour and half of empty-husk progress promises I clung to like a life-raft, And a burst of fuschial, nuchal color, I saw you sail by, grey and splotchy and strangely long, The unidentified flying baby, Unmoving, uncrying, unconscious baby. Not pink, not screaming. Your father spoke to you and something deep inside you recognized his voice And you cried and I breathed again. Hands carried you to me for inspection like a factory shirt they put those stickers on, “Inspected by #9.” And I looked into the sapphire dragon’s jewels you had for eyes and you looked back and I sang to you.

They say the journey of 1,000 miles starts with one step. Well, today I started a journey of 50,000 words by taking the step of signing up for Nanowrimo 2012. You may have heard of it. If not, here is a link . I was just sort of thinking about writing today and remembered an acquaintance who had done the Nanowrimo writing challenge a few years ago. I thought I might look into it. I went to the website and was dismayed to see that the challenge is in November every year. I believed I would have to wait until next year...until I remembered tha t it is still October ! I don't know why I keep thinking we're already in November, because we're not, so the challenge actually begins in about a week. I took the plunge and signed up. It's free (hooray!) and it sounds really fun. Here goes nothing! Also, my very pregnant amazing twin sister who is also a writer sent me this poem the other day about her pregnancy feelings. It made me laugh, so I asked her if I could post it ...

I am constantly struggling with meter in my rhyming poems. I was relatively pleased with the outcome of this poem, but it’s not quite there yet. I seem to always end up writing about cats... The Ballad of Mr. Snowy Rivers Out there, they went, out into the night, To fight for their brother, to fight for the right. In their white gleaming four-door the two sped away, With wives praying, fretting, until the new day. And over they drove, through the pass and the hills On the old jet-black highway, through October chills. As they drove through the desert to that dusty dark city, Both speculated with thoughts that weren’t pretty. Their children were snuggled in bed in their homes, the mothers kept vigil alone by the phones. Out there they were, they drove through the night, To go save their brother, to go pick a fight. In their white gleaming four-door the two had arrived, Where their angular brother and his three cats survived. ...

Sometimes writing is like turning a faucet, releasing words in spurts and streams moving so quickly that your fingers can hardly keep up with the flow. And when it's like that, transforming the words from the flow of your brain into words on a page is a blessed release. But other times, it's like slogging through mud. Every step is awkward and the results are dismal.

As I lay here in your arms in the smooth velvet darkness,  with our baby son asleep next to us,  I feel that my heart is so full that if you could see inside my chest,  it would be glowing from within,  the way the moon glows from the sunlight streaming behind it.  My love would radiate from behind my heart and it would throb and glow from too, too much joy and so much fulness that it would flow out my fingertips,  my mouth, my eyes.  How can the room be dark when so much light glows from our love?  And how is it possible for two mortals to find heaven on this earth?

So I’ve been researching poetry workshops. As I stated in a previous blog, I would like to take one before the end of the year. I know it would greatly enhance my work, open my mind to new possibilities, yada yada. But I’m still terrified. I have stumbled onto some truly awesome poetry workshops in my searches and they sound so extremely wonderful that I can’t really believe that they were meant for someone like me.   Like the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference: http://www.middlebury.edu/blwc Apparently Robert Frost (aka- one of the best poets ever) was inspired by this conference. Now there is no way I could actually go to this conference- it’s in a completely different part of the country and I have a baby to take care of and we really don’t have the money. I really just want one workshop anyway, not a whole conference. But just browsing the website and hearing author’s names like Robert Frost makes me want to shut down the laptop, and throw it into the pool along with a...

You've heard the song. "Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end, we sang and danced forever and a day..." etc . Catchy tune, catchy rhythm, mesmerizing lyrics. My mother took my sister and I to see "Shout: The Mod Musical" at Stars Dinner Theater in Bakersfield last weekend. They sang that song. Everyone sang along happily and some people in the audience even stood up and danced. But I sat there wincing. I hate that song . Every time I hear it, I vacillate between wanting to sing along and wanting to somehow turn it off (a difficult thing to do when you're watching musical theater.)  It's a song of loss...a song of time passing and moments that can't be recaptured. We all have a love/hate relationship with the passage of time. On one clock hand, it can be good that time passes- we don't want to be stuck forever in hard times, or painful times, or dull times. Time heals wounds, time gets us through labor pains an...

                The dog ran limping through the woods, panting. His instincts did not let him rest, despite the ache in his paw and his exhaustion. He was not a dog who was used to physical exertion. In fact, if you had seen him earlier that morning, you would have seen a complacently fat, contented (not despite the fat, but because of it) beagle living in the lap of luxury.                 But now here he was- a hunted thing, desperate to escape the mountain lion running behind him. If the lion had not been wounded, she would surely have caught up to the beagle by then, but, luckily for Casey the beagle, this mountain lion had been wounded back in town where the chase had begun.                 Casey had been enjoying his morning. The sun was shining, his ...

                I had that dream again last night. The situation changes, the faces change, but there is always the hidden room. Through a small door, through a small tunnel, through a narrow tall hallway so tight you have to hold your breath to squeeze through. The way is always dark and hard to find, with many ways to get lost in the darkness.   At the end of your journey, which is sometimes long and sometimes short, depending on the dream, there is a room. The room changes. Sometimes there are people holding secret meetings, sometimes there’s treasure, sometimes there are just lost and forgotten boxes. The worst thing about the room is the knowledge that you have to come back out the way you came in and sometimes you have to go alone.                 I have dreamt about this room for years, I realized this morning when I wok...

Every year my family sits down together to write out their resolutions. One person with nice handwriting (not me) writes them down for all of us and then gives us all photocopies to post on our refrigerators. I had a few resolutions this year: 1. Have a healthy baby. Check. 2. Put on a successful musical production of "The Secret Garden" as HS drama teacher. Check. 3. Put out a successful yearbook as HS yearbook advisor. Check. 4. Quit my job as a successful high school teacher to spend all day with my darling new baby (see #1). Check. 5. Move into my new house....not so much, because it is not done yet. When will it be? When will I move out of my parent's house? That is the question everyone has...but I do not have an answer. Maybe Christmas? 6. Take a writing workshop...Nope. It turns out that having a baby is a huge amount of work. It is a good day if I get dressed and brush my teeth. However, the year is not over and now that the little one is finally sle...

It's been a while since I updated this blog. In that time, I quit my job as a high school teacher, moved in with my parents, and gave birth to my firstborn son, who I've been learning to care for and breastfeed. As far as writing goes, I've written 2 half short stories and 3 poems, most of which I never finished or wasn't totally happy with. I've also tried on several occasions to write my birth story, but haven't been successful at that either, I think because I am still coming to terms with everything that happened. One of the wonderful things about writing is that it is very therapeutic. It helps me deal with life. Just putting certain things into words helps me lay them to rest. The 48 hours of labor were difficult, going to the hospital when I had planned on a home birth was difficult, but those things don't bother me- they were what needed to happen. There was only one thing that still bothers me and this poem attempts to deal with it. How can ...