Smashing Watermelons

Greetings Inkpot readers, today we have a blog post from MFAC alum(January 2015) Leah Hilsabeck-Lowrey.  In this true story, Leah shares the dangers of "holding your tongue" and how keeping things bottled up can affect your productivity and well being.


I see a cranial sacral specialist for my shoulders. That’s what I tell people, anyway. In truth, I see Wendy because I leave feeling lighter and more at peace than I do leaving a $200 therapy session. The pain relief is just a side benefit.

“Your jaw is tight.” Wendy’s English accent somehow always makes her words seem that much wiser. “You’ve been holding your tongue.” I didn’t pay her much mind. My jaw hadn’t been bothering me, and besides, I was there for my shoulders.

A month later found me at my dentist with complaints of shooting pains through my teeth every time I took a drink or bit in to something juicy. “Your jaw is tight. You’ve been grinding your teeth.”

I should have known better than to doubt Wendy.

“It’s what happens to us good girls. There are certain things good girls just aren’t supposed to say. We keep our mouths shut.”

This was not a problem I was familiar with. Maybe back in middle school, before my debate coach taught me to verbally obliterate any schmuck who stood in my way. Maybe before that. But holding my tongue? Now? It seemed unlikely.

That night I sat in front of my computer, new mouth guard in place, staring at the manuscript I had been too paralyzed to touch for four months. I had not been holding my tongue.

I bought the biggest, roundest, greenest watermelon ten dollars could buy, and at six o’clock in the morning, my husband met me outside with his sledgehammer.

With the first swing, I smashed the boy who compared me to Stephanie Meyer. With the second, every person who ever told me my master’s was “nice”. With the third, the voice that still reminded me I could have gone to law school. And finally, over and over again, the demon that wouldn’t let me write a word. That told me, over and over again, none of them were good enough.

I handed my husband the sledgehammer and left the pulp for the birds. We had a five hour drive to make. The whole way there, I wrote.

I no longer wear my mouth guard.

Macabre Writing Prompts From My Backyard

This week Ellen Kazimer, MFAC alum of 2014, shares a few creepy stories and free write exercises based on true events.  Read on, if you dare...


When the call came out for Halloween inspired postings, I didn’t wander past the woods behind my house to dig up a few writing prompts. This time of year, globe spiders spin webs across my windows, bats perform aerial acrobatics at dusk, and toads cover my front walk. 

Halloween decorating? I’ve got that covered. So for your writing amusement, I present three “true life” vignettes from my woods, each with two writing prompts. Hope they inspire your monster muse.

Vignette I 

There are ten unmarked graves behind my house and possibly more. A dismembered arm indicates there is still another body to be found. Three dead baby dolls and seven dead Barbie’s is a case for the Behavior Analysis Unit on Criminal Minds. I suspect that in yards across America, you will find a buried doll or two, but ten? What twisted mind would do that? (I tried reviving the dolls, but they were too far gone. Tiny insects had crawled into their heads through their hair follicles.) 

A. Write a picture book, middle grade, or young adult scary story where your protagonist either buries or unearths dolls in their backyard.  Would you choose gothic, noir, supernatural, or psychological? Picture book noir, anyone? 

B. The last Barbie I found had hair so full of leaves and mud, that her hair was stuck in place as if it were styled that way on purpose. Perhaps I had a woodland fairy instead of a zombie. Are the dolls changelings? Write a story using the buried dolls as fantasy elements. 


Vignette II 

Last winter, in the middle of a snowstorm, I spotted a piebald deer. I'd never seen one before, and we are replete with deer. A few days later, a neighbor found a tree stand in the woods and deer entrails strewn into the creek. (Deer hunting is illegal in our woods.) The kill was fresh. Turkey vultures had not found the entrails yet. That piebald deer never appeared again. Who killed and gutted the poor piebald deer and why? 

A. Write a story where your protagonist discovers the entrails using one of the three types of terror defined by Stephen King, the Gross Out, the Horror, or the Terror. 

B. Write a story where this unusual deer is a magical beast loose in the suburbs. Perhaps go back to the ancient legends of the mythical white stag. 


Vignette III

I have a trail camera takes six rapid photos when it detects motion. Most of the time it catches deer, foxes, squirrels, or me walking the dog. One night the camera went off, and there was nothing in the pictures except an “orb.” If you are a fan of shows like Ghost Hunters, then you know this could be a spirit orb. (Or it could be an insect or pollen, but let's stick with a spirit orb.) 

A: Write a story where a spirit orb or ghostly apparition haunts your protagonist by appearing their trail camera. 

B: Write a story where the orb is a “will ‘o the wisp” leading your protagonist to another world. Hope you found some spooky inspiration for your stories of mayhem, horror, and the supernatural. I’m off for a walk in the woods.


Thanks for answering the Halloween call, Ellen!  Hopefully these spooky true-life events will give you some great starting points for you own seasonal scares.


*Ellen Kazimer is a 2014 graduate of Hamline MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. When she’s not sweeping spider webs off her windows, she writes picture books, nonfiction, and middle grades novels. Her bio can be found on her website and blog where she shares “Odd Bits of Research that Washed Ashore.”  Learn more about her work on her author website or visit her blog.

Shudder Shriek Scream

October is the month of mischief, fun, and sometimes frights. MFAC faculty member Ron Koertge* kicks off the season with his own Halloween story.

As some of you know, I live in the Halloween House. One of the local sites for John Carpenter’s Halloween. The first one. The iconic one. Everybody’s favorite.

If you watch the first 12 minutes or so of the movie, there’s the house on Oxley Street and the avocado tree. The latter is bigger and the house is pretty much the same. Which is part of the appeal.

For sure now in October, but really off and on all year, we get visitors. Pilgrims is more like it, because they come from everywhere. All over the U.S., Mexico, Germany, Japan, Australia, China, Israel, and Norway.

Vagabonds. Supplicants. Votaries.

Mostly they just wander around, take pictures, use the plastic pumpkins my wife provides. They sit where Jamie Lee Curtis sat. They walk where she walked.

A few turn up in costumes, and Michael Myers - the madman with the knife - wins hands down. I don’t know how many times I’ve come home from the race track and there are two or three people in coveralls and masks holding a pumpkin hostage and waving a knife around.

When I get out of the car, the conversations go like this:

Fan: “Do you live here? Holy crap! What’s that like? Are you scared”

Me: “Nope. It’s a friendly house.”

Fan: So cool you let people use your pumpkins and stuff.”

Me: “Sure. Have a good time.”

Fan: What’d you do, like for a living?”

Me: “Well, I, uh, write poetry and - ”

Fan: “No, man. What do you do?”

Me: “Oh, okay. How about mortician.”

Fan: “No way!”

What seems remarkable to me is the good will these folks bring. They’re thrilled to be here. Grateful to be able to take pictures. Anxious to share minutiae. Ready? The original title was not Halloween but The Babysitter Murders,” Jamie Lee Curtis bought her own costume and spent under a hundred dollars, and in the credits Michael Myers is called “The Shape.”

We’ve lived here more than twenty-five years and never an ounce of trouble. Nobody steals a pumpkin, nobody sprays their names, every now and then someone leaves a Thank You note and a dollar or two.

Just the other day I was outside staring at the dying lawn when a guy pulled up with a woman who, from a distance, looked a little like Jamie Lee Curtis. “I swing by here on my honeymoon,” he confided. “This is my fifth trip.”

Thanks Ron for sharing the true-life tale of your Halloween House.  We're glad that it's got a happy ending.  So, readers, do any of you have a Halloween story to top Ron's?  If you do, share it in the comments below!

*Ron Koertge is a faculty member at Hamline's MFAC program.  He writes poetry for everyone, fiction for young adults, and most recently co-authored a young reader series (Backyard Witch) with Hamline alum Chris Heppermann. Book # 1 of that series -Backyard Witch: Sadie’s Story - is out now (read the publication interview). His latest work also includes The Ogre’s Wife, Coaltown Jesus, and the unforgettable Sex World - some of the fastest flash fiction in the world.

You can learn more about Ron's work by visiting his website or visit his faculty page to learn about him as a professor at Hamline University.