What Barnum Said. Or Maybe He Didn't ...

The old saying, "There's a sucker born every minute" has for a long time been attributed to P. T. Barnum. I actually thought it was W. C. Fields, or maybe it was W. C. Fields in the role of P. T. Barnum, but it turns out I was wrong too. The line was actually delivered by David Hannum, a rival of Barnum's. He tried to scam the public with a fake archeological artifact, only to be upstaged by Barnum, which prompted the famous line.

Now, what this has to do with me is this: I'd been chatting with a friend of mine and she suggested I should start submitting my poetry because there are all kinds of markets out there and I have rather a lot of poetry. So I was looking through some of the many sites I have bookmarked and one of them was having a contest for a poetry form called the Etheree. This just happens to be a form I've never tried before, but I figured what have I got to lose? And who knows, I might even become $100.00 richer for it.

Only you have to join their community to access their contests. So for the sake of the contest I did. And then once I signed my life away I discovered that I had to upgrade to a paid membership before I could enter their contest. Which I didn't. I guess I'm not that big a sucker after all.

But still, it wasn't a totally bad experience. I discovered a new poetry form and I wrote my first poem of the new year. :-)

The Etheree poetry form is a great form for beginners or people who don't like to rhyme. The basic form is ten lines long. The first line is one syllable, the second line is two syllables, and so forth until the tenth line of ten syllables. Once you get the hang of it you also try doing it in reverse, going from ten syllables to one, or get all fancy and do the first verse going one to ten, and a second verse going from ten back down to one. You could actually have a lot of fun with it.

Ice
blankets
the trees and
grass, creating
a winter landscape
that glistens in the sun.
Listen, do you hear the chimes
from the sinuous breeze winding
its way between shards of crystal?
Winter has never sounded so lovely.

A faint but steady dripping sound instead
of crystal chimes is heard as winter
with great reluctance bows before
the advancement of the sun -
like it or like it not,
spring is on its way
and cannot be
halted for
any
one.

Write On!

So last week, on my other blog, I made some sort of rash promise that I'd start blogging more often. Specifically, that I'd blog here try to blog here once at least once a week. Obviously I'm not off to a great start, but in my defense, I was still recovering from my life de-railment courtesy of the holidays. You can read about it HERE.

Anyway, I'm finally getting back on track - a whole new track, but a track nonetheless - and this morning I was looking for something to read online while I ate my oatmeal (breakfast of champions when it's snowing outside) and I started going through my bookmarks on my laptop.

I have this bad habit of seeing something interesting and then just bookmarking it for later instead of reading it as I see it, which leads to a plethora of bookmarks. I try to have at least a semblance of order to them, so I save them to folders with names like Recipes, Crafts, Cool Stuff, Useful Stuff, Interesting Stuff ... In the Miscellaneous folder, which is a sub-folder to the Writing folder, I found a fun little link that analyzes your writing to see who you write like. Naturally, I had to try it out.

I write like
Rudyard Kipling

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

I have to confess though, the first passage I tried it told me I write like Stephanie Meyers. Really?? Good thing I was still editing that piece. Although I wouldn't mind her kind of popularity. Of course I'd take the longevity of Rudyard Kipling over the popularity of Stephanie Meyers any day.

So then I tried it a third time and got this:

I write like
Oscar Wilde

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

If you haven't tried it yourself, give it a try. And let me know who you write like. I'll even make it easy for you. Here's the link HERE