After somewhat of a lull, I’m writing (more) poetry again. I’ve written three poems in the last ten days, two of them rhymed.
Yeah, I’ve quit fighting it — that irresistible urge to rhyme. I know, it’s unfashionable, but when ya gotta, ya gotta.
Sometimes things stop working and then mysteriously start again, like my coffee maker and my car keys.
Well, actually I do know why my coffee maker stopped — it was because the coffee overflowed and flooded the counter and itself; by the next morning it had dried out and recovered. What I still haven’t figured out is the car key. Last night the remote lock/unlock didn’t work, this morning it did.
Maybe it was just tired. Like me.
I’ve finally gotten back to working on my children’s chapter book, working title “The Ugly Little Boy” again, thanks to an online editing/revising class I’m taking. The class is great and I’m making real progress in TUGLB since I’m using it for the class homework. I’m trying to work on a chapter a day. The end result with be significantly different than the previous revisions.
Yup, time to sign up for the 2008 Muse Online Writer’s Conference. It’s free, and you can attend the whole thing wearing your jammies and sitting at your desk at home. Follow the link below to sign up.
Deadline for sign up for this year’s conference is September 1.
http://www.themuseonlinewritersconference.com/
I’ve finally started revising my kids chapter book, thanks in part to an online class I’m taking in editing and revising. I’ve cut out the first three chapters and started with the fourth. Lots of stuff about the hero’s life before the “incident” are left on the figurative cutting room floor — and that’s even after the stuff I cut out already from those same three opening chapter.
Oh, well, it’s backstory and it’s good that I know it.
It’s been a few days since I checked the comments flagged as SPAM for this site, so I was up to 110.
Yup, that’s right, I generally look over the spam comments to see if any were flagged wrongly. And how often has that happened, you ask? Once or twice since I set up the site.
Yes, I also often check my regular email spam, and the “wrong hit” rate is far higher. I have a separate email account for my writing partly for this reason — it’s not on the same scores (probably) of lists my personal account is, so I get virtually no spam — and I still get “real” mail in my bulk mail folder on my writing email account.
Oy!
I just realized this morning how much I dislike long paragraphs in email. It must be a visual thing, because the words would be the same regardless of how many extra paragraph breaks there are, but it seems I’m inclined to skip any non-essential email containing, say, an entire page of long paragraphs.
It’s something to consider in my story writing.
I’ve been making an effort recently to read more poetry, and it’s got me thinking about what draws me to a poem and what causes me to say, “Um, that’s just okay.”
Language and humor are, I think, near the top of my list. I’m also drawn to quirky ways of looking at the world and a certain surreality.
When I figure out more, I’ll let y’all know.
The weather continues to be very, very hot around here, to the point where we’ve been running our air conditioning far more often than most. The problem is, we have central air in our so-called “primary residence,” which means that when I’m there alone, as happens fairly frequently during the week in the summer, I won’t run it.
We do have a room above the garage with a window air conditioner, a fact which usually escapes me when I’m getting ready for bed …
A couple of days ago I wrote a poem that feels right. Today I wrote one that doesn’t. I haven’t yet found the right way to approach what I’m trying to say, and I may not for a while. This feels like one of those where I end up writing and rewriting until finally I’ll find a whole new way of looking at it that works.
At least I hope I do.
