Cheating at Poetry

It’s been a busy week. And as you’re reading this I’m away at the Kingston Writersfest, immersing myself in writerly things.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted anything on a Saturday, and I didn’t want another week to go by without something new here, but I also didn’t have time to work on a prompt story. Then I thought, it's been a long while since I've posted any poetry...

I was going to post something old, but I was trying out prompt generators I listed in last week’s post, and started to have a lot of fun with the Poem Generator option from The Plot Generator.

In fact, it was so much fun I cheated on my “poemwork” for my poetry group, which was to write a Cinquain, and used the generator to produce two of them. Then I went on to generate a Tanka and a Sonnet.

The group enjoyed them when I read them aloud . . . until I fessed up about the poetry generator. At that point they seemed pretty divided: a couple thought it was fun (taking it in the spirit in which it was intended), a couple were pretty put out by the idea, most were more or less indifferent.

Que sera, sera.

In any case, I thought I’d share them here and you can decide for yourself – good fun, or an abomination?


Cinquain

Love by C. R. Ward

Love
Dark, delightful
Adoring, caring, conquering
It put hunger at rest
Romance


Summer by C. R. Ward

Summer
End, hot
Falling, being, sounding
I was surprised
Summertime

Tanka

Book by C. R. Ward

I so love my book
It is warm and powerful.
It has wild humors
Playful personalities
When it stings I feel happy

Sonnet

Ode to the Ghost by C. R. Ward

My evil ghost, you inspire me to write.
I love the way you cuddle, look and skip,
Invading my mind day and through the night,
Always dreaming about the scholarship.

Let me compare you to a nonmember?
You are more playful, shrieval and sunny.
Big fogs hide the oceans of November,
And autumntime has the easy money.

How do I love you? Let me count the ways.
I love your drastic elbows, feet and lip.
Thinking of your plastic feet fills my days.
My love for you is the benign blue chip.

Now I must away with a divine heart,
Remember my kind words whilst we're apart.

Routinely Yours

In my quest for a workable routine I came across a piece of advice that said when you’re setting a daily goal aim low. Start with one sentence a day, make it a good one, and go from there. It reminded me of a little notebook I have that I created for just such a purpose. I even found notebooks like it to give to a few other writer friends.

Inside the front cover of the notebook I printed out the following:
The purpose of this little journal is a challenge of sorts. The idea is to write a single sentence every day for five years. Just random sentences so that you get into the habit of writing every day.

To be honest, I also questioned the point of just one sentence a day, and that five years was a pretty long time to commit to something like that. I even suggested keeping it going for a single year or until I filled the notebook.

So . . . how did I do? I started on June 6, 2014 and it’s now over five years later. I am less than a quarter of the way through the notebook, probably closer to an eighth of the way through. I reached sentence 42 on November 9, 2014 and skipped to October of 2015 for sentences 50, 51, and 52 – I have no idea what happened to sentences 43 through 49. Sentence 53 has no date, sentence 54 was written in November, 2015.

There is only one sentence written for all of 2016, at which point I decided not to number them anymore. There are three sentences for 2017, and only one in 2018. In 2019 I stopped dating them as well, and I have 14 of them so far.

I fully admit to slacking off in the writing department on my quest for a workable routine, but I’m thinking the one sentence a day would be an easy habit to pick up. I read over the sentences I’ve written and there are some interesting images – some could be developed into a story, some could be used in a poem. And if I added that one sentence to a WIP – well, even one sentence a day will start adding up.

So . . . until I get my wordage and timing worked out, I’ll aim for one sentence a day and hope for more.

Prompt of the Week

As you may have noticed, I haven’t exactly been doing much with the prompts lately. So instead of picking one to work on this week, I’m just going to list the generators and let you pick your own. And if I happen to be inspired by a prompt as well, I’ll post it on Saturday. But don’t hold your breath, I have a busy week ahead.

The Story Shack
The Plot Generator
Writing Exercises and Prompts
Springhole
Seventh Sanctum
RanGen

It’s a Hard Knock Life

As you may recall, I promised to do better writing-wise last week. Well, I kind of broke that promise.

I was full of optimism, thinking I’d jot a little something for both prompts, and I started with the prompt about the lonely wizard. Only I started getting bogged down in riddles (because he had to solve three of them) and then I realized this was not going to be a short story – there was too much going on. I may, or may not, write this story some time when I have more time, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

So I turned to the second prompt – dinosaur versus the monster under the bed – and I just wasn’t feeling it.

Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. I was definitely the bug last week. And, to be honest, I’ve been the bug on the windshield for a while now. I’m in a bona fide writing slump.

So I spent a bunch of time reading blogs of other authors, and was happy to see I’m not alone in my slump. Call it a sign of the times, but there are a lot of unmotivated writers out there. Some of them even big name authors. Kind of makes me feel a little better.

But I need to shake it off. I’ve got too much writing to do; I’ve no time to hunker down in the bottom of the abyss. Winter is coming, and if things are bad now they’re nothing compared to what they’ll be later on.

Time to set up a routine, and if that doesn’t work I need to find another one, and another, until I find something that does work. Writing needs to be distilled into a habit – and I’ve gotten out of the habit over the last couple of years.

So for the rest of the week I’m going to be trying out various times/places for writing and see which one feels right. I think the fact that I’m so determined is a point in my favour (although the fact that this post is so late takes that point right away again).

At any rate, I’ve been doing some research online to help me get started/motivated into my new routine, and I’ve found these articles particularly helpful:

Developing the Writing Habit
How to Create the Habit of Writing
Form a Daily Writing Habit
Writing Routine

You aren't the only ones curious to see how this will turn out.

Prompts of the Week

I think I need to find some new prompt generators because it took awhile to come up with something that was workable. This one came from good ole Springhole, and once again I chose Creepypasta & Horror Creep Generator.

It looks like a police officer with an emaciated body and a misshapen torso. It has been observed in the forest. It's said that it can pass through solid objects.

With Halloween just around the corner this should be a snap, right? Why don't you give it a try too?

Theoretically Speaking

Let’s recap last week for a minute. It was my last week of babysitting, plus it was a short week – holiday Monday, plus a free day on Thursday. Theoretically I should have been able to get all kinds of writing done, right?

I can see you know me well enough by now not to have such high expectations. LOL

Here’s the sad truth. Tuesday I had my yearly (because I’m diabetic) eye exam. Later (much later) that night I had a bad reaction to what I suspect were the combination of drops used in my eyes. So when I wasn’t babysitting I pretty much spent the rest of the week curled up on the couch watching TV.

I was starting to feel better on Sunday, but then I accidentally shattered the chimney from the floor lamp in my office over my head. Who knew those things were so fragile? Anyway, that’s my sad little story. I’m thinking things can only get better. Right? (knock on wood)

It’s been so long since I’ve worked on Wandering Wizards I’ve kind of lost track of where they are. And, if I’m perfectly honest, I’ve kind of lost interest in the whole thing too. I need to re-read and maybe edit a little to catch up/regenerate my mojo.

What’s that, you say? Why didn’t I catch up/regenerate yesterday, which was my first full day of non-babysitting? Well, uh, I got busy taking pictures of butterflies, looking for a replacement chimney for my lamp, and catching up on my journal. Don’t judge.

I’ll do better today – promise!

Prompts of the Week

I went through a whole bunch of prompts (another time waster) and generators before settling on these two from Springhole. This site has a whole lot of options and if you don’t like the prompt it generates just click it again. Maybe I’ll just go straight here next week.

First I clicked on the Fairytale Plot Generator, which gave me this:

The story is about a lonely wizard who must outwit a faerie, defeat a giant, and find a magic mirror to solve three riddles. Assistance comes in the form of a magic ring.

Then as a bonus prompt I clicked on the Really Random Plot-o-tron, which gave me this one:

An ordinary dinosaur gains control of a monster from under the bed and discovers the princess.

Go ahead, play along with me. Or go to Springhole and generate a prompt of your own.

You know you want to…

Ghosts & Friends

Originally I’d planned to do a short bit for each of this week’s prompts – I thought they’d be quick and easy. But the first one ran so long (and I was already a day late) that I figured one was plenty.

To refresh your memory, the prompt was: One day in an abandoned factory haunted by a restless spirit, a lost girl summons a restless spirit.

“She’s one of the lost ones, Talla,” Jem said, placing a hand on her sister’s arm. “Everyone knows you can’t trust a lost one.”

Talla jerked her arm free. “Then don’t come with me.”

Jem watched her sister head towards the abandoned factory, biting her lip in indecision. The building had a reputation for being haunted, but of course that was why Talla was so interested in it. She had a soft spot for ghosts. Jem sighed and hurried to catch up.

Talla was waiting just inside the factory and gave her sister a small smile before leading the way to where the lost girl promised to meet them. The factory was dark and damp, smelling of mould and dust. It was sectioned off into empty rooms, all of them stripped of anything valuable by scavengers long ago.

The lost girl waited for them in the central most chamber, sitting on an empty crate. She was small and thin and dirty, dressed in raggedy black clothing. Her eyes seemed to glow in the dark.

“I am here, as promised,” she said to Talla. “What would you have of me?”

“There’s a ghost haunting this place,” Talla said without preamble.

“Yes, I can feel it.”

“I want to help it – I’m told you can do this.”

“Who says it wants or needs your help?”

“I…” For once Talla seemed to be at a loss for words. “I don’t know. I just get this overwhelming sense of sadness when I’m in here. This ghost has been here a long time, I think it needs help moving on.”

The girl cocked her head and studied her for a moment. “All right,” she said at last. “But I do this my way.”

“But what—” Jem started to ask before Talla elbowed her into silence.

The lost girl stood up from the crate and reseated herself on the floor, sitting cross-legged. After a second of hesitation, the others joined her.

“What do we do?” Jem asked.

“Be quiet,” the lost girl replied.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Closing her eyes she rested her hands on knees and began to chant. The chanting rose and fell with musical cadence, although she never actually sang.

Jem gasped as the ghost began to manifest above them, but Talla just looked up in wonder. It was a smoke-like wisp, a ragged remnant floating gently in the air above them. It dipped and bobbed and turned as though dancing. Still the lost girl chanted.

A second wisp appeared in a corner and moved slowly forward. The first one stopped its dance and waited. The girls watched in wonder as the second wisp drifted towards the first. The two entities circled each other, seemed to acknowledge each other’s presence, and moved in tandem in a lazy circle. They continued the dance the first one had started before flowing upwards and out of sight.

“What do you sense now?” the lost girl asked. The others hadn’t even been aware the chanting had stopped.

Tally looked surprised. “Peace and happiness.”

The lost girl nodded and climbed to her feet.

“I don’t understand!” Jem said. “I thought—”

“You thought I would banish the spirit.”

Jem nodded.

“The spirit was unhappy, lonely. All it needed was a friend.”

“So you summoned it one.”

“I said I would do it my way.” The lost girl shrugged. “It seemed a better choice than banishment.”

“Everyone needs a friend,” Talla said with a smile at the lost girl.

The lost girl smiled back.

Summer’s End

Can you believe that summer’s over? Okay, maybe not literally, fall doesn’t officially start until September 23, but everybody knows Labour Day marks the end of the summer season.

For my part last week was a flurry of activity, and while I managed to squeeze in time for reading, I didn’t do so well with the writing. I don’t know if it’s so much a dry spell, it’s more like an energy slump. It’s been a tiring time

But whatever it is, I need to get over it. Next week the grandbaby starts Junior Kindergarten, which is now full time and full weeks. Which means no more babysitting. I’m not sure how I feel about this.

On the one hand it’ll be nice to have that three or four hour chunk out of the middle of my day back, but on the other hand I’m going to miss the little rug rat. She’s an amazing kid (and I’m not just saying that as a doting grandmother, everyone who meets her says the same thing). She’s sweet, and kind, and stubborn (no idea who she gets that from), and artistic, and has an incredibly vivid imagination. I’m really going to miss reading to her, and playing with her, and doing arts and crafts with her.

Surprisingly I get some of my best writing done while we’re together. After lunch she likes to have quiet time, where she expects me to write while she plays quietly close by. This is where my Neo comes in handy. And if she wants to have a turn I just open a fresh document and then print out what she types when I get home. It’s a great way to teach a pre-schooler her letters.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised when I admit that while the quiet time writing works when I’m with the grandbaby, I have a problem replicating it at home. Sort of like trying to do NaNo at any time other than November. I had a four day weekend and not once did I get any quiet time writing in. Another reason I’ll miss our time together.

So . . . fun times for grandbaby, sucky time for Grammy ahead. LOL

Prompts of the Week

I have to keep reminding myself that these prompts are not meant to be time consuming, they’re just for a bit of fun. Last week’s three word prompt was more like what I had in mind here, and although three words didn’t seem like a lot at the time, once I got working with them it went fairly quickly. And the bonus is I now have a character who needs his story told (some time in the future).

Being the contrary person I am, I decided to try a different prompt generator for this week’s prompt. Actually, I picked two prompts from Springhole.

First I picked a Creepypasta & Supernatural Horror Story Prompt, which gave me this:
One day in an abandoned factory haunted by a restless spirit, a lost girl summons a restless spirit.

And just to hedge my bets, I also clicked on Really Random Plot-o-Tron and was presented with this gem:
A lost fungus invokes the wrath of the planet by finding a primitive country.

It’s anyone’s guess which one will make it onto the blog on Saturday.