POST CARDS FROM THE MUSE

Love Is A Rose

By Nandy Ekle

My favorite writing tool is the metaphor. This is the comparative device that shows, not tells. So here are some metaphors I’ve used, and I would love to hear about some you may have used, or seen someone else use.

Liquid mercury. Remember the old-fashioned thermometers you had to hold under your tongue, or in your armpit, or . . . somewhere else? Those little tubes contained a silvery ball of mercury that would rise when heated by your body to a line on a graph that showed what your temperature was. If one of those little glass tubes broke, the mercury fell on the floor like liquid beads, except you couldn’t pick it up. If you tried, it would change shape and roll away. This always reminds me of something that might be hard to grasp, sort of like an idea . . .

Love of books. Reading books is as much a need for me as breathing air. I need that quiet time to myself to let my imagination out to play. As a kid, my imagination ran full speed all the time and I had to learn to put it in a box during the times I was expected to pay attention to the real world. But as a writer, my imagination is a very important thing. However, it tends to shrivel up if it’s not used. And that’s what books do for me. So to illustrate this, I thought about a character from a book that falls in love with his reader. Not only does this show how much I need books in my life, it also shows that books need readers.

Spiders. I am proud to admit that I am a confirmed arachnophobe. To me, spiders are the absolute worst nightmare that ever crept on the face of the earth. While this irrational fear can be paralyzing in some situations (depending on the size of the monster), it has also given me some excellent stories. After all, who can write about that kind of fear better than someone who experiences it? So it’s in this vein I use it as a metaphor to illustrate things that are paralyzingly scary, such as a character who has an arrogant attitude and must learn to put his ego aside to save his family from a devious creature that has invaded his home to terrorize his children. The spider actually represents his fear of inability to protect the home.

So, go ahead and tell me about some of your favorite metaphors. Just post a comment down below, and don’t worry about being long-winded or short winded. I love to hear from my readers.

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