Saturday Spotlight for February 1st, 2014

Daily Literature Deviations is proud to feature this special recognition article!
You can show your support by ing this News Article. We hope this gives you some insight into the person behind the art. Please comment and the features and congratulate the artist!


Artists will be featured in a special news article every Saturday. Major points to SilverInkblot, betwixtthepages and LionesseRampant for doing the hard work and research that goes into these articles!  

Today's featured deviant is:
forestmeetwildfire!




1. Tell us a little about your writing process?
I'll usually frame the poem around one line that I will have most likely heard or seen somewhere throughout my day and go from there. The process involves lots of thesaurus.com and various other resources such as searching up words because I want to use them but I'm not actually quite sure what they mean  There's a reason I'm not an English/lit major. And then I'll submit it right away and never look back.

2. How do you feel about dA as a lit community?
I've been to a couple other literature sites and they all pale in comparison to dA in terms of the quality of feedback, community, support between writers, you name it. I could also say the same when comparing the lit community to other art communities here at dA. The sense of community and level of support both from other members and from groups has always amazed me. I know that some people believe that it's difficult to get into the hub of the lit community (and it is true), but I think that everyone, especially the CVs and senior members, are extremely welcoming and helpful.

3. Where do your best ideas come from? Is it mostly internal, or do you prefer to pull from your environment?
I should have read all the questions first. Awkward. To elaborate on the first question, I rely heavily on my environment when I write. It's not very likely that I come up with an idea on my own. It'll be a conversation with someone, an advertisement, a book, a teacher (surprisingly often, in fact) that will give me just one phrase that completely inspires me. I guess you could say it's the first domino in my writing process. People and places are the most inspiring - I think that's why I prefer to be out of the house, even if it's just to sit at the library.

4. Do you ever re-write your pieces, or do you let them come as they will? How long do you have to work on a piece before you can consider it "finished?"
I'm one of those people who will write something in one sitting and never go back to it - unless it's truly horrid, in which case I will fix it up, as I have on rare occasion completely rewritten an entire poem. In general though, if I ever do make any edits it's probably something to do with punctuation or changing a single word. In terms of how long I work on it... honestly, I've written many poems in under ten minutes, but the concluding lines will always set me back a while. It's the hardest part to writing a poem, in my opinion, and requires the most attention.

5. What advice would you give to a beginning writer?
Read everything and comment as much as you can. Join a few select groups that you think you would actively participate in. Don't feel pressured to always write your absolute best, or to write what you think your watchers want to read. On that note, don't feel like you need to post everything you write. Try to define your own style. Ignore anyone that says they hate a certain word or style that you like to use. Learn to accept constructive criticism for what it is, and to apply it to your writing, especially if you had asked for it. Don't let the dA trolls get to you, and don't make it your goal to get a DD - it will come to you.

Poetry

VOGUEshe sits
heaving on the bathroom
floor on sunday nights like
it's in style to have rotten teeth
and bloodshot eyes
and all 206 bones on display like
a natural history exhibit
(in fifty years they will line
 up before your corpse to see
 the girl who had to ring
 Death's doorbell exactly seven
 times before he opened the door)
trees shiver in winter
until all the snow scatters
to the ground and they are left
bare and naked like skinny
children left on the side of the road.
snow crystallizes in my hair until
it is stiff and white. i miss the days
when the sky was black at night
instead of faded grey and when
i didn't face nightmares of
carving your sarcophagus.
"VOGUE" by forestmeetwildfire


LabyrinthAriadne's string
was made from the same twine
Dad uses to keep the plants
in the yard from drooping to their
knees, but still
I gripped it with two firm hands
and prayed it would not unravel
like the fine threads that
used to make up my mind.
I am driven to insanity
by the heavy thump of
Minotaur's hooves on the
sandy floor, cursed to the
darkest corner of Tartarus
for daring to look over
my shoulder.
 
The ceiling curves downward
until it meets the floor. Where
is the bottle labeled
'Drink me'?
Daedalus
must have made this maze
for mice (and
Icarus
was just
some punk on Red Bull)
"Labyrinth" by forestmeetwildfire

Prose

tucked between pageshe liked to spend his evenings in bars and nightclubs, always with a tall, leggy blonde attached to him by the lips. he always said this is living. i'm not going to sit around and wait for something to happen. i'm going to go out and have fun. i'm living. and you're just jealous.
how i wished you were right. that you would be the one satisfied down the road with what you did with your life. how you'd sit in that hospital bed with tired eyes and say you know what, julia, i had a damn good time.
because we can't just spend our life going to school so that we can learn how to learn. take that discipline and get a job and a family, produce a bunch of kids cute as buttons, then die. that's just the path we were expected to take. and i didn't. and call me arrogant but i think i was happier than you.
he was wrong. and i wanted to explain it to him but i knew he wouldn't understand how my life is a book and all the moments that make it special are simply tucked between the pages, pressed in li
"tucked between pages" by forestmeetwildfire


The PoetYears ago, the contortionist was taught never to play with his words before he spoke. His mother, strict, stiff and chaste, enforced many rules upon her son simply because she could. Rules for speaking, bathing, reading, sitting, walking. She felt, with a great sense of pride, that she was educating her son with proper manners in order for him to one day become a true gentleman. While she instructed her son, her older children ran about the house, tracking in dirt from the compost in the yard, arguing like yipping dogs.
Tell a child not to do something and he will practice it for the rest of his life. Every night under the sanctuary of muffling quilts, the boy murmured feverishly to his stuffed dog until his body betrayed him and he fell asleep. When the smell of fried eggs awoke him the next morning, he'd find words balanced on the tip of his tongue as if waiting patiently to be let out, or else banging on his teeth with little fists, vociferous as his older brothers.
As he grew older
"The Poet" by forestmeetwildfire




For more information, including how to suggest a Deviation to be featured, please visit us at DailyLitDeviations.

Thanks so much for supporting the lit community and this special feature project!

~ The DailyLitDeviations Team ~


_{Prepared by:  betwixtthepages}