Chicago,+the+Laundry+Bag,+the+Poem+Prompt

// Image 1: A fishing pole. //
 * The City of Chicago, the Laundry Bag, the Poem **

Step 1: Give your reader precise visual description. Let’s see it in motion, in action. Use the specific “you” for your point of view.
When you cast the line from the end of the grey pier, when you feel the steady vibrations of the lure twirling in the cold water, there is little that can pull you away from it all: the junipers on the distant shore, the mist rising from a soaked branch of oak, the troubles you left in Chicago the evening before.

The reel spins its electric blue line at a wobbly tilt, pumping back and forth like the pulse of the northern pike lurking beneath the cover of milfoil somewhere off shore. You turn its black handle. It rotates in a regular rhythm like waves lapping the grass at the right hand corner of the beach right now where the turtles laid their eggs last year.

Step 2: Describe yourself in the setting in a way that reveals your age at the time. Continue to use the specific “you”. Bring in others who are also in the setting. Give us unique details and/or one times just like Naomi does.

With the sun up, it’s warmer now, and you pull off the jacket your brother gave you with the letters of his high school sewn on in orange in black above the left pocket. You think it’s too big for your slim body, anyway. From the upper deck of the lake house behind you, the clanking of your grandmother’s dishes draws your mother’s voice from her perch at the end of the two story deck, crossword in hand. “Here, mom. Let me help you.”

“Oh?” grandma replies, and you imagine her eyebrow arching upward, twitching, like when she drives and talks to herself—//uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh—//tapping the wheel with her thumbs as she steers. Your dad is on the deck, too, fumbling with a half-eaten donut and a cup of coffee. John is with Grandpa in the old garage out back tinkering with the lawnmower and wiping oil from his hands. You think about the old tank of kerosene in the back corner of the garage and wonder if the pile of wood beneath it is full of mice.

Step 3: Back to the object & setting description. Incorporate more specific actions, gestures, objects, etc. Start with a sound or action in the setting to shift our focus.

The trees sigh overhead and a light breeze etches dark ripples into the surface of the water in front of you. You cast once more, aiming for the edge of a patch of cattails bordering the girl scout camp to your left. A few more turns of the handle bring a slight tug and you yank bank, hoping to set the hook. With a splash, the silver lure pops up over the surface, and you reel in the slack on the line.

Step 4: Flash forward a few minutes and change the scene. What’s happening now? What is the main character’s concern here? This is where you can begin to bring in the conflict and/or central focus. Tip: I’m going to be working toward a conflict where one neighbor slips and breaks his back trying to move a boat. I’m not revealing the conflict quite yet, but am headed in that direction by introducing who this neighbor is…

At dinner, your grandfather is telling you stories of the neighbors down the way, the Chaukees, from Rockford, how they take flashlights and huge poles down to the girl scout camp late at night to pull Northerns from the dark waters. //This big!// he grins out, chin shiny with the butter from his sweet corn, and spreads his hairy arms in the air for emphasis. //Biggest fish in the lake! And only at night!//

“Can we go and watch them?” you say. “Can we stay up and watch them tonight?”

Your mom answers from the kitchen sink. “No, no, honey—it’ll be too late for that.” She gazes through the window and out across the darkening lake. “Besides, it looks like it's going to storm.”

Step 5: Let’s go back to the object or an object/action related to it. I plan on creating a short scene where I’m downstairs later in the evening studying all of the different types of fishing poles lined up on the walls.

Now you're standing in the basement hallway next to the bathroom, examining the fishing poles lined up like the skinny slats on the wire fence in the back yard. There are dozens of them: open reel trolling rods, spincast combos, fly rods with their funny fluorescent lines that float, and even the yellow and white Snoopy pole you got for your fifth birthday. You pick this one up, feeling the balance of its weight against your palm.

The wind picks up again outside, sending dry oak leaves