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Chipmonk Chatter!
Logo by "Chipmonk" and "gold-soldered" by WebArt by Zentao.

Inspirational Messages from the Heart & Soul of a Living Muse

Founder's Note:

Chipmonk has been writing inspirational columns for our newsletter almost from the start. I find her words to be of such value that I simply cannot allow them to disappear forever with the emailed newsletters for which they were written. So here they are, and here they shall stay for as long as this site and the WWW continue.

P.S.: For those who don't know, Chipmonk is an award-winning author and artist of merit. To me, she is one of the best things that has ever come into my life, and I think she would find a place of equal value in yours were you to know her.

 


From Zentao 7's MidWeek ZZZ's of June 18th, 1998
You have all heard the advice, "write what you know." A woman I know, Amy Garza, had not considered writing what she knew, the family stories she grew up hearing.  In fact, she was somewhat embarrassed by her roots.  She grew up poor in the backwoods of Appalachia.  But at the age of forty, this woman who had never written before, was haunted by the memories of her family and their stories and felt compelled to write them down.  The initial result was a book called "Retter" by Violet Ammons Garza, which chronicled the life of her grandmother, who was guided by the spirit of her own grandfather, a Cherokee shaman.  Amy had difficulty publishing her first novel and, in the end, had to partially subsidize the first printing and do most of the promotion herself.  She has since gone on to write several other books about her family and other stories of the North Carolina mountains.  She isn't famous and doesn't make a lot of money, but she has learned to love her heritage and the strength of the people whose stories she tells.  Writing these books though, has led her to an even greater accomplishment.  She has returned to the mountains of her childhood to teach writing to the children whose lives are not much different than the life she lived some fifty-odd years ago.  Through her role as Writer-in-Residence and as Director of the arts center she founded, Catch the Spirit of Appalachia, she has helped these children to appreciate the beauty of the mountains and the people who call them home.  Each year the children produce a literary journal showcasing their writing and their artwork and show off their story telling for a live audience.  From what Amy tells me the school system has noted a remarkable rise in the grades and test scores of the children who participate in this program, but what she is most inspired by is the pride in accomplishment and heritage these children and their parents now feel and express.  Our role as writers, artists or musicians does not end when we communicate our feelings and experiences to others, but when we teach others to communicate their feelings and experiences for themselves.  

. - . - . - .

All the Best.

Chipmonk, Rodent-In-Residence

 

 


From Zentao 7's MidWeek ZZZ's of June 25th, 1998
I remember the beginnings of the space program.  We sat in school completely enraptured as we watched, Mercury, then Gemini rockets launched from Cape Canaveral.  The whole country watched one giant step for mankind.  It was astounding to watch back then, the wonders of this new aerospace technology.  But in spite of the grandeur of it all, what I wanted to know back then, was how astronauts went to the bathroom.  I still am fascinated by those little common tasks, like eating and bathing, and sleeping that we all do.  In the midst of the amazing,  the little thing help us to connect and make it all more real.  The same is true in fiction.  Didn't you ever wonder about the bathrooms on the Enterprise?  In our stories we may have our heroines flying, transporting through space, fighting off evil invaders; we may write about strange beings from other dimensions; or wizards who wield awesome power.  All of them still need to eat, sleep, wash, eliminate waste and reproduce.  They may also have to earn a living, buy supplies and pay for them, or heal their wounds after a battle.  (I've always hated those characters who get their faces bashed in and their arms ripped off and are up and about the next day, fighting again when we all know it doesn't work that way.)  And who in your world grows the food, makes the clothes, and Cleans the out house, hmmm?  These details may not move the plot, but they help to make the characters more real to the reader.  It is work to plan out a world or an alien body or society.  But, as the NASA engineers who were given the task to design a zero gravity toilet knew, the little things do matter.

. - . - . - .

All the Best.

Chipmonk, Rodent-In-Residence

 

 

Founder's Note:

Occasionally, someone will read Chipmonk's column and respond. An Australian gentleman and writer of no little skill and much humor did so which resulted in the following.

P.S.: For those who are unfamiliar with "wwombat," he is a special friend and correspondent of mine. Of anyone, he can make me laugh until I'm giddy; of anyone he alone keeps up with my insane alien imagination.

 


From Zentao 7's MidWeek ZZZ's of July 3th, 1998
inspiration response:  In this column I have attempted to inspire all of you to write from your hearts and to keep on writing when the rejections slips threaten to bury your muse.  I have attempted to inspire you to greater heights of literary excellence.  I know not whether this has been of any benefit to any of you since no one has commented.  Each week, I strain my rodent brain to  eloquence.  Nothing.  THEN, the one time I lower myself to mention boddily functions and the receptacles for their containment and disposal and somebody sits up and takes note!  Well, what do you expect from a marsupial!  Here then, is Womack the Wwombat's response to last weeks inspiration:

Fellow furry friend

Your wonder about 'where they do it' on Star Trek is very futuristic. The truth is, there are some who don't do it. I have searched many English Castles, with massive stone halls and turrets and embrasures for fighting and defending the local lord. They even have spouts for pouring boiling oil over unwanted guests. But no where to pour the.... Your more modern establishments, open to the gaping unwashed public, have modern 'facilities blocks'. I presume the Royals use these, -- after hours, of course.

I grew up near Pevensy, a Norman Keep, where I spent many a happy hour chasing the sheep who grazed around and in its walls. This fine pile, I can assure you, had no where to ..... There are rumours that this deficiency was overcome in the natural way of things, and that the frequent secretive trips to the nearest outside wall with a convenient archers slit, eventually resulted in the moat that, as we now know, surrounds all ancient defensive establishments. Maybe it was not planned that way, but inevitably happened.

There are many turrets in castles. Maybe the Lord moved from one to the other, depending upon the direction of the wind and the prevailing smells.

However, as you suggest, dear furry friend, we must let our imagination run full gamut. I look forward to your next piece, when you describe in delicate detail all the bodily functions and daily trivia of your hero, as an extra burden as he fights and defeats the BEMs from the end of the Universe.

Wwombat

. - . - . - .

All the Best.

Chipmonk, Rodent-In-Residence

 

 

Founder's Note:

This particular piece came in response to an individual's concern that perhaps fiction writers who were also journalists would not be welcomed in Zentao 7 ... perhaps because this person had suffered such bias in other writing groups? Happily, from this correspondence we gained a wonderful, extraorinarily talented and motivated new member as well as Chipmonk's thoughts to the question of ... JOURNALISTS AS WRITERS

 


From Zentao 7's MidWeek ZZZ's of July 9th, 1998
Someone once suggested that fiction writers do not have much respect for journalists and consider them the "bottom of the Barrel" of writers.  (Something like the game Barrel of Monkeys, I think, only crazier.)  I beg to differ.  Many of the fiction writers I know either are journalists or have been in the past.  They have done everything from columns on cooking to writing the high school sports news.  Some of them do it because it puts food on the table while they write "The Great American Novel".  Others are serious news hounds.  I've never done any news writing myself, but I have noticed something about the journalists I know who also write fiction.  They know how to write everyday and keep to a schedule.  Faced with the limited space of a new story, they know how to get the most effective meaning from every word.  They have learned the importance of understanding the facts of the matter.  They know what it means to "write tight."  In other words, the journalists among us have usually learned to have what many of us more "literary" types often lack -- discipline.

  Note: Earnest Hemingway was a journalist, as was Mark Twain.

. - . - . - .

All the Best.

Chipmonk, Rodent-In-Residence

 

 

 


From Zentao 7's MidWeek ZZZ's of July 16th, 1998
Guess what they are making me do at work? I have to go to computer classes! I know what you're thinking! 'It's about time! Maybe you'll learn how to right-click!' Besides that, it got me started thinking about email and chat and the like. We do it all the time, but how much computer usage gets in our stories? I'm not talking about Computers going haywire and taking over the world. I mean, how often do characters send email instead of a letter? Share a file electronically instead of a report on paper? I was watching Babylon 5 the other night and someone said they were buried in paperwork. How do you get buried in paperwork unless your talking about real paper? In chat, Zen said, "put text to screen." How many writers, even those using a computer, would have said, "put pen to paper?" How long does it take for language to catch up with behavior?

Are times and technology changing too fast? Do we escape to fiction that reflects a nostalgic longing for the past whether it's our own childhood or the tenth century? Even in science fiction we see societies that resemble Medieval Europe more than they do some real, not too distant future? Are those of us who are supposedly writing our vision of the future merely projecting into it our remembered past? I don't know the answer, just thought it might be interesting to ponder. (Of course being a monastic rodent who lived in Medieval Europe, I have an excuse.)

A productive week of writing, composing, drawing or what have you to you all!

. - . - . - .

All the Best.

Chipmonk, Rodent-In-Residence

 

 

 


From Zentao 7's MidWeek ZZZ's of July 23th, 1998
"Suffer for your art" and "Write what you know" are two axioms I heard at an early age when anyone brought up writing or painting. It always brought to mind images of starving in a garret in Greenwich Village or dying of consumption on the Left Bank in Paris, or cutting off your ears. Either that, or writing sappy, sentimental stories about walking twenty miles to and from school, up hill both ways, and saying good-night to your sixteen brothers and sisters, and how you had to shoot your dog.

Perhaps those are extremes, but the advice holds true. It does take some living and suffering to capture universal emotion: love won and lost, tragedy and triumph, fear and anger. Until we know those emotions from our own experience, how can we accurately communicate the emotions through our characters, paintings or music. But we are speculative creators. We don't write or paint or compose music only about what we know or what we suffer, unless we really are vampires bemoaning our immortal ennui, or victims of hideous monsters ripping our internal organs from our abdomens, or aliens undergoing some weird metamorphosis, or space travelers dying in zero-g's, or telepaths suffering empathic psychological pain. None of us has suffered or lived these experiences, so how is it possible to express them with any sincerity and make the audience experience them as real?

Well, the audience hasn't experienced those emotions either. They are imagining along with us as we transmute our own smaller fears and pains into the stuff of nightmares and glory. Through our art we help the reader, listener or viewer transcend their emotions and experiences, by transcending our own. Somehow in that mythical, mystical dimension we know as imagination, the truth of our lives touches something larger, more universal, and, like a tuning fork, we vibrate with the recognition of thought and feeling in pure form and transmit what we have recognized to the world.

Reality may state the facts, but fiction tells the truth.

. - . - . - .

All the Best.

Chipmonk, Rodent-In-Residence

 

 


From Zentao 7's MidWeek ZZZ's of July 31st, 1998
I was Scampering about at the gas station the other day, looking for free goodies like spilled popcorn and the like, when I spied a new candy display.  This one had a huge alien head.  You know the kind, big reflective eyes, typical Roswell type.  Only, judging from the wrinkles on this one's forehead, it was either a very worried alien or one of its parents had a thing with a Klingon.  But there it was hawking candy spaceships like it was perfectly normal to have aliens in the gas station and that got my little rodent brain to pondering. 

  They are everywhere, these grays!  Candy, books, posters, wallpaper, sunglasses, key chains, gag gifts.  I have even seen them on panty hose!  Why?  Is it just marketing, or is there something deeper going on, hmmmm?  Is this some clever attempt to get us accustomed to their presence?  So perhaps eventually, I might scamper into the gas station to beg treats and think there is nothing bazarre going on if I should see a real alien selling candy and cigarettes and lottery tickets?  Think about it, two-leggeds!  Are they here to take your jobs?  Hmmm, nooo, probably not.   

Is someone using their image?  Are they getting a percentage?  Or are all these companies setting themselves up to be sued by grays for using their pictures without a release?  Or could they be sued for ethnic stereotyping a la Aunt Jemima, or the Mafia or Mr... Ed?  Then again, are they perhaps being used against their will, or in their ignorance, to lure small children to buy products that are hazardous to their health like Joe Camel was?  Poor Joe, he was only trying to support his family back in South Yemen and now he'll never work in show business again!   

Or is it something more devious as I suspect?  Who is profiting from these candy sales?  Could it be that these aliens themselves are profiting from the ingestion of refined sugar and artificial color?  What's in those artificial colors and flavors anyway?  I delved further into this conspiracy on your behalf, my human friends.  Who makes this candy?  I climbed into the display case at great peril to myself and discovered, aha!  They are imported by The Foreign Candy Company!  Don't you see!?  Foreign, alien!  And where is this alien confection manufactured?  I perused the fine print.  Belgium!  That cinches it!  Is that not the location of the first big ufo flap involving triangular UFOs?  And what form does this candy take?  UFOs!  True, they're not triangular, but that's just to put you humans off guard.  I am warning you, two-leggeds!  It is a conspiracy.  Watch out for these short little creatures with high pitched voices and big dark eyes.  They're taking over the world!  I for one, am heading back to my Burrow!  

Good Writing behind locked Doors!    

  PS   While I was spell checking this missive, the computer asked to replace Klingon with Clinton?  What is it trying to tell me?!

. - . - . - .

All the Best.

Chipmonk, Rodent-In-Residence

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