Today my guest is Heidi Dru Kortman, a CWG Apprentice graduate and Word Weaver member who has published devotionals, poetry, a short story, and flash fiction in various newsletters, small magazines, a collected volume of devotionals, and a website. She is applying herself to the task of writing smoothly polished fiction.

You’re invited to visit Heidi at heididrukortman.com.

Heidi has written a poem, which I applaud, as the only kind of poetry I can do is bad limericks, not something that flows and has meaning.

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME

Don’t try this at home.

Don’t see a person in your mind’s eye.

What ever you do, don’t listen to him talk,

You’ll be trapped, compelled

To scribble his tale, trace his adventures in the real world, just to be accurate,

Which everyone knows is better than mere plausibility.

 

Don’t try this at home.

Especially if there are other people in the house,

They all have their own agendas for you.

Cook this, dust that, “Her birthday is next week, are the presents wrapped?”

Balance the checkbook, make the bed….

While the man in your mind demands to leave the locale of the last scene you wrote.

He’s bored. What right has he to do that?

What he ought to do is pay the rent.

Rent on a mansion, where you could have some peace and quiet.

After all, he has lived in the mazes of your mind long enough.

 

You should not have tried this at home.

Now he and his friends have full lives, in a sequel, which is still unfinished

Because…You need query letters and social media followers bolstering the proposal to nab an agent, and a sprightly synopsis to snare an editor.

Four hundred pages boiled down to one…it is insanity,

And yet, being trapped in this character’s world liberates.

Don’t just try this at home. Do it. His imagined world is all that keeps you sane,

though you steal sleep from interrupted nights, for the sake of a scene.