(01-18-2025, 11:25 AM)HaarFager Wrote: For The One In Wales (Ode To A Lady)


My sister –
you walked on this stone by yourself;
felt the pain of a whole world
and dared to make it a better place.
I compare you to a rose
late in the fall of the year
whose petals, though losing the will to live,
still reach for the gift the suns’ arms offer.
The memory of your untiring compassion
will not long be forgotten,
nor will we soon comprehend
the grief we feel for you.
I never knew you, but, like you,
I cried at the tragedies that were inflicted
upon this irreplaceable home to us all.
You did make a difference,
one that will not soon be forgotten;
if not in our minds and our memories,
then deep in our hearts.
In my heart, I will keep a small corner
a shrine to your ideals;
perpetuating a hope for us all
of a better earth and home
with a single red rose in mourning.


(Dedicated to the memory of Diana, Princess of Wales.)


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I wrote this on August 31st, 1997, when she was killed in an automobile accident.  Even though I am an American, I liked and respected her.  We were born a scant few months apart.

(01-22-2025, 08:23 PM)FlickerOfLight Wrote: I wondered if this was the same for most writers. In your process you don't know the whole story until your writing it, right? You can see the story in its entirety until you're finished with it?

I had heard of people not knowing how they're story is going to end as they're writing it. That always seemed so nerve wrenching to me. Having built up this long tale and tapestry of words and ideas, and yet have no clue where you're going with it.

(01-23-2025, 01:58 PM)HaarFager Wrote:

(01-22-2025, 08:23 PM)FlickerOfLight Wrote: I wondered if this was the same for most writers. In your process you don't know the whole story until your writing it, right? You can see the story in its entirety until you're finished with it?

I had heard of people not knowing how they're story is going to end as they're writing it. That always seemed so nerve wrenching to me. Having built up this long tale and tapestry of words and ideas, and yet have no clue where you're going with it.

I've written several novels and, usually the way I do it is to have the idea of what it will be in my head, then I find a place to start it.  As I start writing it, one things leads to another naturally, and I can picture it in my mind.  Almost like a movie I'm watching in my head.  For me, it's as simple as one character says or does something and then that just gets a natural and normal response from the other characters, and this seems like the way normal life happens.  Then I just keep responding and keep the book going, or in the case of action, letting one event follow another in a natural, motion picture-type process.  It's so easy to do it that way for me because it just seems like it's writing itself.

Sometimes it surprises me when something happens in one of my books.  It seems like it's the kind of thing that would naturally happen, but I just didn't see it coming.  It's almost like free association.

I've heard that a lot of writers have to diagram each chapter so that they know exactly what's going to happen, and when it's going to take place, in the course of their story.  Me, I just have a general idea for the book and the rest just happens when it happens.  I never know how I'm going to get to the end, I just happen to get there at the appropriate time.  (Luckily enough for me!)

Thanks for reading my poem!