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Kari Trenten

Sources of Inspiration: Perimenopause

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Right now, I’m terrified of my own body.  I don’t know when it’s going to hurt, when I’m going to boil inside my own skin, or freeze. My mood swings with savage intensity the likes of which I haven’t felt since adolescence. My body is part of me, yet I feel like it’s fighting me.  In a way, my body has always fought me. I grew up with balance problems, making climbing over rocks, hillsides, or even jungle gyms terrifying. Directions, obvious to most people, are often enigmatic to me, seeing as I lack anything like a sense of direction.  … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Rituals

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Clasping my hands together. Muttering words filled with meaning I don’t consider, as I chant them as fast as an army recruit doing push-ups. Walking in a circle, my hands linked with others as we move together. Singing the same words I chanted in a chamber, where they echo, looking up at art, meant to express the divine. Offering any number of things on an altar as an act of sacrifice.  These are just a number of things which can be part of a ritual.  Rituals offer insight into a person, a place, or a culture. Rituals re-imagined can develop … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Double Meanings

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Double meanings can make for hilarious story. I remember in one of my favorite movies, the boy next door met the vampire next door. The boy had done all he could to keep the vampire out of his house, only to find his mother had invited that vampire over for a drink. One of the most hilarious scenes I’d ever beheld, yet filled with menace and genuine fear on the part of the boy unfolded, when the vampire with great charm said he’d never come over if not invited, however, he would now be dropping over whenever he wished.  Can … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Nature

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Sometimes, when I’m trying to create a creature, a culture, or just searching for idea of where to begin, I look to nature itself. Terrifying matriarches exist among insects. The birds and the bees can be quite fierce, and the variety of plant life is downright fascinating. Trees have life spans, which we are like our beloved pets by comparison.  Doing research on anything in nature, just observing nature can uncover a wealth of inspiration.  I make my way outside amidst pine cone debris dropped by squirrels, a mess rivaling that humans make during their wilder parties. I’ve seen pine … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Company

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There’s nothing quite like company that encourages me, sees something special in my writing. Sometimes an appreciative reader spots something I’m completely unaware of, or helps me develop ideas by their own response to a character. Sometimes my companions give me space, time to write, gifts I cannot appreciate enough. Sometimes they’re artists themselves, offering up ideas, a spark of insight, which becomes a story, a poem, or a line of dialogue. Our best moments are when we inspire each other, bouncing ideas off each other, trying to catch them and transform them into something which grows and grows beyond … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Grief

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This is one of those subjects so hard to write about directly, a Writer’s Block as thick as a tumor feels like it lodges its way between me and my writing tools, clogging the words to express such feelings inside me, choking me.  Once I can get myself going, it’s like vomiting. I’m sick with grief, until I start to puke out the words with such force, I cannot stop. The words pour out in a deluge of pain.  I struggle to articulate this. Grief isn’t always articulate, but it is recognizable.  Why write about something, which is so sad, … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Impressions of Time

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As time slips away, leaving me increasingly unable to recall certain events, I become more fascinated by it. What was happening during a particular year? What was I doing, or not doing? Whom or what were the major influences in my life? Whom or what was I obsessed with? Certain events remain painfully, exquisitely dear. The summer of 1989; where I discovered Anne Rice, Caravaggio, Sheridan Le Fanu, and many other things in a group of like-minded young people interested in many a fascinating topic. This was the same year I visited Tokyo, Singapore, and Bangkok.  2005, the year immediately … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Noise

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I’ve always been sensitive to noise. Surround me with too much noise and I cannot hear you. Blare your phone and you physically torture me, especially if your phone makes a high-pitched, whining sound…something about the electrical tone is agonizing. More than one meal out has been ruined by other customers, not bothering with ear buds or anything else which keeps the noise private.  On the flip side, I can really enjoy music and songs on a visceral level. Certain pieces uplift me to an almost orgasmic ecstacy, hearing the pulse of their beat within my ear drums.  Pleasurable sounds … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Pain and Pleasure

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Go where the pain is. Transform your pain into prose, into poetry. Do something creative with your suffering. Make a work of art of your pain.  How often have I heard that advice in one form or another. There’s just one problem; I don’t want to go there. I don’t like dwelling upon my pain, the human monsters of this world whom take the forms of politicians, enforces, or part of corporation; all intent upon dehumanizing people to spread hate and satisfy their greed.  Thinking of such monsters sends me into a spiral of despair, which feels as if I’m … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Gifts

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Gifts are on my mind constantly right now, as I shop for family and friends, aware that they are shopping for me as well.  A gift can be a treasure, an offering of love (or hate), a blessing, a curse, a joy, or a nuisance. It all depends upon the gift and the giver.  The right (or wrong) gift can spark a story into action, changing a character’s life.  How often has a sword (or lightsaber), a ring, or a rose been handed over in a book or a movie, changing a character’s destiny, altering the choices they make?  How … Read more