Track 1: "The Graveyard"

• IDEA:  While writing the first book, lotsssss of ruminating on the past was involved (I mean, well… clearly). But I wanted to write something that summed up the (admittedly, at times, very morbid) feelings I had towards my younger days as a whole. So I started tossing a few words around my brain, trying to find an answer to one question in particular: “If I could sum up allllllll of those emotions—all the things I used to feel, all the things I thought I’d lost and never get back (at the ripe old age of 13, for crying out loud—a flare for the dramatic, no?) in one word/phrase, what would it be?” 

And then the phrase rose to the surface of my thoughts and stuck out to me with stark clarity (again, a bit morbid-sounding 🥴)—“the graveyard.”

• WRITING PROCESS: 

here's two different processes that can occur when I’m writing: I’ll get a line that causes a ripple effect outward, or I’ll get a line that causes a domino effect forward.

• the ripple: the line is somewhere in the middle of the poem/story (I know it’s in the middle based on instinct—idk if that’s a common writer thing, but ik it’s definitely a me thing lol I just know when/where the words need to happen. also whether they go in whatever’s currently manifesting itself on my laptop or in my notebook in front of me at that moment, or if I stow them away for later. maybe it’s nudges from “the muses,” as Jessa Hastings says… but that’s a rambling for another day). anyway—line’s somewhere in the middle and my brain works outward to construct the rest of the words. say, it’s a story—I’ll get that one ‘random’ middle sentence first, and then the paragraph that’s supposed to go before it will immediately come to my mind after. 

• the domino: the line’s at the beginning, and the rest of the words kind of just… unfold? kind of like a carpet rolling out in my head.

For The Graveyard, the process was the domino. As soon as I got the phrase, “the graveyard,” I got the first line in the poem: “The past was a haunted cemetery.” And after the first line, the words ran far, far ahead of me (like they often tend to do), and I had the rest written in maybe five minutes. How it’s written in the book is pretty much exactly how it came out of my brain and went into my notebook, hardly any edits or anything. I took out one line and changed maybe three other words.

• MY FAVORITE LINES: 

All of them 😂. But these are great contenders, if I ever had to choose:

“Lyrics that dripped Death,

 notes that weren’t afraid to knock on its door.”

“I watched their final tears roll from their stilling eyelids 

(sad streams with lost direction)… 

(Failed. I had failed to find the tears their compass.)

• AFTERMATH: How I felt after writing it? Same way I feel now—that if someone asked me, “What’s your favorite thing you’ve ever written?”, this would probably be the first option that popped into my head. Now, I would never truly pick favorites with anything I write (feels too much like picking a favorite child, my writer heart can’t take that lol)—but if I were put on the spot, I’d probably say this one. Or “If Only You Knew.” (more on that one next week 😌)

Well, that concludes our Track 1 …and today also concludes my first official day as a Criminal Justice major 📚; I believe both occasions are deserving of 

✨🎉 confetti 🎉✨

Track 2’s this Thursday—“Missed Opportunities.” 

“If three words, eight letters…,” this should be fun 😅.

See ya soon. xx

IG: @joyyy_reads ✨