The Future Is . . .

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
― Eleanor Roosevelt

You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.
― Chuck Palahniuk

The future depends on what you do today.
― Mahatma Gandhi

The future is out there.

The future is coming.

The future is now.

As you might have surmised, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future lately. Specifically, my future as it pertains to my writing.

Fifteen years ago I was working on three novels at the same time and making good progress on all of them. I didn’t have a blog schedule, per se, but I was posting more often (although they were shorter posts) and I wasn’t struggling to write them.

It was actually a little depressing really to read those early posts. There I was, doing all that writing, and I still didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. I was writing more in one day than I’m writing now in my Sunday posts (my longest one). My future was no more defined then than it is now. And that’s just sad.

But it got me thinking about being a writer and where I’m going with this.

I first dreamed of being a writer back in high school. I had all these stories in my head and I was going to write them all down and publish them. I was going to be the youngest writer to have a story published in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Swords and Sorceress series.

Vera Nazarian beat me to that, but I couldn’t even bring myself to hate her for it because she’s a wonderful writer. She’s written (and sold) many short stories since then, wrote a bunch of books, had life throw her some curve balls, and kept going.

And that, my friends, is the big difference. She kept going. She finished what she started. She persisted in following her dream. She didn’t make excuses, she just wrote. I’m sure she has a whole crap ton of books in her future, just waiting to be written.

Now don’t start thinking I’m comparing myself to Vera, I’m not. I’m just admiring her work ethic, something I’m sorely lacking. I’ve been paying a lot of lip service about writing every day, and getting organized, and the list goes on, when what I really need to do is stop talking about it and start doing it.

The reason I’m writing hasn’t changed over the years – I still have stories to tell and I’m the only one who can tell them. And every once in a while I’ll do a post like this where I get all angsty and whiny and point out that I need to do better, and sometimes I even do for a while, but it doesn’t take long to slide back into my old habits.

I don’t want another 15 years to go by and look back and see my lack of progress. I can only blame my dysthymia for so much, the rest is on me. If I want to get to that future and look back with pride then I have to be willing to change my ways. Time to start making progress instead of excuses.

Otherwise, why am I even doing this?

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

I have a confession to make. Early in the week I downloaded a hidden objects game. And then I started playing it. A lot.

I was having one of those weeks, I guess because when it got annoying that I’d have to stop when I ran out of gaming energy, I downloaded another. Then a third.

The turning point for me was when I ended up with a pinched nerve from spending such long stretches in my recliner doing nothing but playing those games. I smartened up, deleted the games, and went on to do other things.

Of course it was too late to salvage productivity for the week, but at least I didn’t fall behind on my blogging.

NEW WORDS:
2235+394+353+601=3,583
UP – 191 words from last week

Goals For Next Week:
Get some words written besides my blog posts.

EDITING:
0 pages
I guess the miracle of starting work on Elemental Spirit didn’t happen last week, maybe it’ll happen this week. *sigh*

You know, it’s not like I don’t have other stuff I could be working on instead. Maybe I should start looking at my backlog of novels and stories. This is starting to feel like Magical Mayhem all over again – look at how long it took me to finish it.

Goal For Next Week:
Start work on An Elemental Spirit or something else.

TECH & TRAINING:
Okay, this isn’t exactly computer or writing related, but it is using technology, so I’m counting it.

As you’ll know if you’re a Netflix user, they changed their policy recently. This means I can no longer share my daughter’s account. So, I had to get my own Netflix account, and since I already had my credit card handy, I got Paramount + as well.

Signing up was the easy part. Accessing them on my laptop – no problem. Trying to watch them on television . . .not so easy. Well, Netflix was fine, I just accessed it the same way I did before only I used my own password.

Turns out my smart TV isn’t much smarter than I am. It did not offer the Paramount + app in its app store, so I had to go through the Roku. I was able to add Paramount +, but when I tried to sign in I kept getting a message telling me my login or password was incorrect. After many fruitless attempts to sign in, I went to the Paramount site to trouble shoot.

The first suggestion was to reset the Roku itself. Which I did – I still couldn’t log in. Then it suggested I reset my password, which was a little more complicated than I expected. But when I did, suddenly I could log in.

Whew! Crises averted

Goal For Next Week:
Learn to use Dropbox properly so I can backup my files.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
Last week wasn’t nearly as exciting as far as poetry went. I found a new form, one with plenty of information available about it for a change, and actually enjoyed wading through it all. I was fairly pleased with my example, too.

And when looking for my weekly form I found a bunch more forms I haven’t tried yet. With any luck, it’ll be months before I have to resort to the coded Welsh forms. :-)

Goal For Next Week:
Find another new poetry form to share.

CRAFTING:
The craft migration is done. All I need is a table to craft on and all will be right with my crafting world. However, I got no work done on the afghan. Not a stitch.

But when I was grocery shopping I noticed some plain dresses in the children’s section that looked similar to the one I embroidered for the granddaughter last year for Easter. I bought one in blue (blue being her favorite colour) with the intention of stitching on it for this Easter.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on the afghan. Figure out what to embroider on the dress.

WHAT I’M READING:
I re-read Sanctuary by Nora Roberts, and that was it. Just goes to show how focused I was on those stupid hidden object games.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up my good reading habits.

GOAL REVIEW:

Well, in some respects it was a good week – I had no trouble at all with my blog posts – but in other respects it wasn’t so great. I got no other writing done and I started to slide into my bad gaming habits again.

I did start thinking about what I’d be working on after Elemental Spirit. Single book or series? And then I realized I only have two “almost finished” books that aren’t part of a series, and both have the potential for a sequel.

The rest of my unfinished books all begin multi-book series. So looks like once I’m done with the elementals I be looking at another series. Unless, of course, I come up with a whole new book.

You’ll notice marketing is missing. Yeah, it’s been so long since I’ve even made an attempt at marketing that I figured it was time to let it go. And I know it was a stretch for tech, but televisions are technology too.

Crafting was pretty much non-existent last week, but for all intents and purposes my crafting migration is done at least. Will this make a difference? Only time will tell.

The big surprise last week was the reading. One book. Guess I spent a lot more time on those hidden object games than I realized.

Maybe without the distraction of gaming and excessive reading, I’ll actually get something accomplished besides blog posts this week

The Pond - Part 27

There was a room off the kitchen that Izolda had taken as her workroom. This room was off-limits to the rest of the household. It was where she made her tinctures and potions, consulted the bones and cast her spells. It was also where she kept her spellbook, locked in her trunk.

The room had a small fireplace with a rocking chair beside it, and a work table pushed against the wall, shelves above it. There were no windows, but there was a braided rug in front of the fireplace that she'd made herself. This is where Izolda came to think.

Since her arrival in America, Izolda’s life had been almost idyllic. She had embraced her role of wife, helpmate, and mother so absolutely that her life before was all but forgotten. Her real life began with her marriage to Nikolai, anything that came before was of no consequence.

But now she could think of little else but the past. She may not be proud of some of the things she had done, but neither did she regret them. Her ambitions had brought her to where she was today. Had she been a different person, things may not have worked out for her as well.

The entity in the pond was connected to her past in some way, but who, or how?

“You know who I am,” the voice had told her.

She paced the room while she thought.

Someone from her past, that was obvious, and the past was her old village.

The old village had been flooded, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t survived. The negative feelings she’d been experiencing began with the birth of Mikhail, and word of the flood didn’t reach them until after the birth of Dmitri. Could the feelings have been a foretelling?

But that didn’t make sense. She had been gone from the village for three years before the birth of Mikhail. She couldn’t possibly be held responsible for the flood. And surely any survivors would have been mentioned before this.

She had been very careful in keeping her abilities to herself. Even if someone had found the cave, there was nothing to connect it to her, she’d left no trace of herself behind. In truth, only two people had an inkling of how powerful she was – Varnya, and her mother. Both dead by her own hand, and both with enough power to return from the spirit world. Both spirits would have reason to seek revenge.

Of the two, the spirit of Varnya was the more plausible. Her mother had been a kind-hearted soul, she would not have harmed others in her quest for vengeance. Although she would have wagered that Varnya, too, would take the more direct approach. But if not one of these two, then who?

The dreams and negative feelings, were they premonitions, or a warning sent by the entity? The sightings, the near misses . . . they spoke more of a building up of power than of something with unlimited resources.

It was cowardly, this entity. It chose to hide itself, playing pranks and stirring up trouble, then becoming more aggressive. It was toying with her, she realized. It wasn’t just seeking revenge for some slight, it wanted to torment her.

Izolda unlocked the trunk and pulled out her spell book. Taking it over to the rocking chair, she sat down and opened the book. First, she needed to find a way to force the entity to reveal itself. Then, she would banish it.

Bob and Wheel

I found this form on the Writer’s Digest’s poetry site, where Robert Lee Brewer offered it as a stand alone quintain poem. I figured if it was good enough for Mr. Brewer, it was good enough for me. :-D

edited to add: I don't want to imply Mr. Brewer was giving us incorrect or misleading information about the bob and wheel, he just wanted to show it as a form in its own right.

This form actually surprised me. First of all, I thought it was a modern, invented form. And second, I thought it would be hard to find information about it. I was wrong on both counts.

Technically, the bob and wheel isn’t form on its own, but a device used in a longer poem. It’s usually found in Middle English and Middle Scots poetry, appearing at the end of a stanza. The “bob” is a short line that marks a transition between the rest of the poem and the “wheel.”

The most famous example of the bob and wheel is the epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I actually looked it up, and sure enough you’ll find it used at the end of every stanza throughout the poem. If you care to check for yourself, you can find an excellent translation HERE

For our purposes, it is a five-line stanza (quintain) or poem with a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b-a. The first line (the bob) has two or three syllables, while lines two through five (the wheel) have five or six syllables. If you check out Sir Gawain, you’ll see that sometimes the wheel alternates five and six syllable lines, and sometimes they’re longer.

Using an even six-syllable line, for the wheel, the schematic would look something like this:

xa (bob)
xxxxxb (wheel)
xxxxxa
xxxxxb
xxxxxa

Easy peasy, right? And just to make it more fun, I did three verses in this style.


Kittens

They sleep
and wake to scurry
about the house, and leap
always in a hurry,
and often they will creep

and stalk
their prey – my stocking feet
or maybe they will walk
with faces oh, so sweet
then hop, as though in shock

and leap
and race around some more –
in anger, tails will sweep,
they wrestle on the floor
and then, they fall asleep.

When in Doubt . .

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
― Robert Hughes

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.
― Suzy Kassem

I don't believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work and myself and what tortures of self-doubting the doubt of others has always given me.
― Tennessee Williams

Wow. I wasn’t so sure of my post topic (ha! self-doubt at its finest), but when I started searching for quotes I was amazed at how many there were, and by a lot famous authors, too! It’s kind of comforting to know I’m not alone.

Early in the week I started going through my poetry to ferret out poems for a poetry reading I was to participate in on Thursday night. I read poem after poem and I hated them all. They were too amateurish, or depressing, or cliché, or just plain sucked. I had no business subjecting an unwitting audience to such drivel.

They weren’t really as bad as I thought, of course, it was just that niggling voice of self-doubt chipping away at my self-esteem. I read through them again, copy/pasted about 50 of the most promising ones into a folder, read them again and again, weeding some out each time. By the time I had it down to ten poems, I had started to like what I was reading again.

Self-doubt can arise from a fear, low self-esteem, a lack of confidence, or a combination of these things. It takes the form of a voice inside you that tells you aren’t good enough, you’ll never be published. Self-doubt can be an impediment to creativity and lead to writer’s block, and/or feelings of unworthiness.

But the thing is, almost every author suffers from self-doubt at one time or another, even famous ones:

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
― William Shakespeare

I'm afraid of failing at whatever story I'm writing—that it won't come up for me, or that I won't be able to finish it.
—Stephen King

Each day is like an enormous rock that I'm trying to push up this hill. I get it up a fair distance, it rolls back a little bit, and I keep pushing it, hoping I'll get it to the top of the hill and that it will go on its own momentum. I'm very deeply inculcated with a sense of failure for some reason. And I'm drawn to failure. I often write about it, and I'm sympathetic with it I think, because I feel I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.
—Joyce Carol Oates

Sometimes it’s external forces that promote self-doubt, like rejections. It doesn’t take many to make you start feeling like you don’t have what it takes, you’ll never make it as an author. But consider the rejections of these authors:

Louis L’Amour had 200 rejections before Bantam Books took a chance on him. Dick Wimmer’s Irish Wine received 162 rejections. The best-selling Chicken Soup For the Soul, by Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen was rejected 144 times. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenace, by Robert Pirsig, received 121 rejections.

Murphy, by Samuel Beckett, was rejected 40 times. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind received 38 rejections. James Patterson received 31 rejections for The Thomas Berryman Number. Carrie, by Stephen King, was rejected 30 times. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

But notice they persisted, and did not let self-doubt keep them from getting published.

Sylvia Plath was right when she said: The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. So how do we overcome this? First, take comfort in knowing that you’re not alone and that most other writers feel this way too. But the self-doubt isn’t going to magically go away, so feel it, face it head on, and keep writing anyway.

Use your self-doubt as a challenge to get yourself out of your comfort zone and improve your writing. Focus on your strengths instead of your weaknesses. Look at how far you’ve already come! Celebrate your achievements, no matter how small.

Give yourself permission to write badly. Words can be erased or deleted, but every time you put words on paper, it’s a victory over self-doubt. And if you keep going, you’ll start to improve, even if you begin by writing crap.

Have faith. Believe in yourself. Remind yourself of why you started writing in the first place. There’s going to come a moment where you write something and you just know it’s good writing. You are a writer, and you will keep getting better.

Above all, never compare yourselves to others. Sure their work may be amazing, but thinking that you are inadequate when compared to other authors doesn’t make it true. You have your own story to tell and your own way to tell it. Part of conquering self-doubt is about taking pride in your own work and knowing that you have something unique to offer the world.

Fortunately for me, this is one lesson I learned a long time ago. Everyone has their own voice and to compare myself to another writer is like comparing apples and oranges. I may wish for their kind of success, but I would want it for the kind of writing I do, not for the kind they do.

Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it.
—William Goldman

This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.
— Neil Gaiman

So kick that self-doubt to the curb, and get writing.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

Well, here we are again. Another week filled with good intentions and not much else. The cluster headaches persisted through the first part of the week, and then they vanished as mysteriously as they appeared. Such is the way with cluster headaches.

My focus was on poetry last week. I participated in a reading Thursday night and spent a good portion of the week going through my poems and picking out ones to read. I’ve got a lot of poems. And I didn’t like any of them. It didn’t help that I’d be reading in the company of “real” poets.

Eventually I narrowed it down to a handful, printed them off, weeded out a couple that were better on paper, read them aloud, weeded out a couple more, and ended up with about 20-25 minutes worth of poetry to share. And you know what? I decided I liked these poems just fine.

Surprisingly, so did my audience. :-)

NEW WORDS:
1862+682+290+558=3392
UP – 47 words from last week

Goals For Next Week:
Get some words written besides my blog posts.

EDITING:
0 pages
Oh, yeah. That’s what I should have been doing with my extra time last week, not playing the hidden objects game that I “accidentally” downloaded. Oops! I may have to get tough with myself and delete it again.

But seriously, I really do want to get Elemental Spirit done so I can move on to other things. Maybe this week will be the week. You know, miracles do happen . . .

Goal For Next Week:
Start work on An Elemental Spirit.

MARKETING:
Yeah, nothing new here.

Goal For Next Week:
At the very least, I need to update my book page.

TECH & TRAINING:
Nope, nothing here, either. But thanks to the changes in Netflix I’m going to have learn how to delete the account my daughter was sharing with us and set up one of our own. Does that count?

Goal For Next Week:
Learn to use Dropbox properly so I can backup my files.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
Once again, my poetry post was done and scheduled early. And further more, I kind of like the poem I came up with too. I thought about including it in my reading, but it reads better on paper than it does out loud, so I didn’t.

But going through all those poems made want to revisit the idea of a poetry book. I mean, what’s the point of all those poems if I don’t do anything with them. The problem is, I just write willy-nilly. Other than the fact 90% are written from forms, there’s not much connecting them. So I’m going to have to think on it some more.

Goal For Next Week:
Find another new poetry form to share.

CRAFTING:
This is getting ridiculous. I went ahead and bought a couple of under-the-bed bins for my unfinished yarn projects, and even went so far as to drag the big bin out of the closet to divide the projects between them. At the same time, I figured I’d go through the bags of unfinished projects the father-in-law had given me – yowsa, what a mess! It was a little sad to see these barely started baby sweaters, with no pattern to be able to finish them. And there were five knitted slippers, each one a different size.

There was also a big tangle of yarn – several different colours. I did untangle this one yarn that was a beautiful shade of turquoise. It took me a couple of hours, but there’s enough of it there that I think I can use it to make a big shawl with a lacy black edging. So, worth the effort.

Then I carted the bins with the unfinished projects upstairs and . . . they wouldn’t fit under the bed! They were just slightly too high. So, I’m going to have to swap them out for the ones I’ve got some summer clothes stored in that I know will fit under the bed. I was just too frustrated to do it at the time.

I had a stitchery group meeting on Tuesday, so I got several more rows done on the afghan. I’m at the halfway point now so the end is in sight.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on the afghan. Finish craft migration.

WHAT I’M READING:
Can you believe it? I did not read any Nora Roberts last week. But I did finish The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai. I can’t say I enjoyed it because enjoy just isn’t the right word. But it was a very poignant book.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up my good reading habits.

GOAL REVIEW:

I must be doing something right. All the posts were up on time and I didn’t even have to stay up late to write them. Go me!

I might have actually gotten around to writing other things, but I lost half a day to the stitchery meeting, almost a whole day going through the bins and bags of unfinished projects. And I also spent considerable time reading and re-reading poems.

Believe it or not, I’ve been thinking a lot about those exercises Stuart Ross gave us to do during his seminar. I’d really like to give them a try, but I’ll have to find the USB stick with my stories on it first.

Even if I’m not writing anything new, I really could be editing something. Maybe I should start keeping track of what I’m doing during the day and when I realize how much time I’m wasting I’ll stop wasting it and be more productive. Kind of like the way a food diary helps you see how much food you’re eating.

As for marketing . . . that’s never going to be my long suit. I think I’m going to just take that off the table for now until I actually start doing some marketing. Ha! Maybe I can take an on-line class about marketing, and that would also contribute to the tech/learning.

Poetry was the shining star last week, and giving the reading had me re-visiting poems I’d forgotten I’d written. I just wish I’d kept up with keeping them organized. I really should think about an anthology though, maybe one using traditional forms.

Got some work done on the afghan, finally, but I still have a ways to go. And now I’ve got all these other unfinished projects dogging my heels too. LOL And the craft migration is almost finished, but that’ll be a post on the other blog.

I read in little bits and pieces last week. Shyam’s book was not one to rush through, although I did stay up late Friday night reading it. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up the nice, slow pace with the next book I pick up.

The weather has been a roller-coaster of wind, rain, warmth, snow, ice, and a whole lot of greyness, which is really not conducive to getting anything done.

But while it wasn’t a bad week last week, I’m sure I can do better.

The Pond - Part 26

The deaths of the three youths hit the community hard. They had been well-liked with bright futures ahead of them. Many looked to Nikolai for blame, for it was he who tested the ice just two days before.

“I tell you, the ice was solid. Ask Yuri or Stefan – they accompanied me. Our families were going to be on the ice as well. We would not take any risks with our own blood.”

But neither Yuri nor Stefan could remember if they’d actually tested the center of the pond, where the ice broke. The edges, yes, but it had been very cold that day and they’d been in a hurry to return to the warmth of their homes.

Izolda felt a chill go through her that had nothing to do with the temperature outside. Something wasn’t right, she could feel it. The first chance she had, she wrapped her heavy, woolen shawl around herself and went to the pond.

“I do not know who or what you are, but I will find out, mark my words.”

In response, the ice in the middle of the pond cracked with a sound like a rifle shot, startling her. Izolda’s lips tightened in anger as a woman’s laughter drifted over her like an errant breeze.

“Do not underestimate me,” she said. “I have power you can only dream of. And I will use everything at my disposal to end you.”

A spiderweb of cracks appeared in the center of pond, spreading outwards. Izolda stood her ground as a column of water speared upwards. It spun furiously and took the vague shape of a woman.

“You will not prevail,” the entity whispered. “I will see you and all you love in your graves.”

“Who are you!” Izolda shouted.

“You know who I am,” the voice whispered.

The column of water collapsed, the wave flowing towards the edge where Izolda stood. She refused to be intimidated and did not move, but she was more shaken than she would have been willing to admit to anyone.

“We need to put a fence around the pond,” Izolda said to Nikolai that night.

“A fence? Around the pond? What nonsense is filling your head,” Nikolai said.

“It is too dangerous, I do not wish to see anyone else hurt.”

“Bah, you make too much of a few accidents. If you must worry, worry for our business.”

“Our business? What is happening with our business?” Izolda asked, a little alarmed.

Nikolai sighed. “The river has never fully recovered from the drought. The water level is lower and it does not flow as fast. We are losing business to the steam powered mills.”

Izolda thought for a moment. “What can we do about this?”

“There is nothing be done,” Nikolai said with a shrug. “At first we thought perhaps someone had built a dam to control the flow, but we have traced the river to its source and there is nothing to account for the lower level. If there is a dam, it is invisible.”

Something unseen, Izolda thought. Like a water spirit in a pond.

The Grayette Verse Form

Okay, I’m going to be honest here. I originally picked this form because it’s only 12 lines, and many of those lines looked really short. However, the joke’s on me. It’s got one of those up and down syllable counts, and some of those lines rhyme. *sigh*

The Grayette was invented by an American named James Gray, not to be confused with the James Gray from Scotland who was a friend of Robert Burns. There’s not much to be said about this form, other than the syllable count is: 2-4-8-8-4-2-2-4-8-8-4-2. Lines 1, 5, 7, and 11 do not rhyme. The remaining lines are rhymed thusly: 2-a, 3-b, 4-a, 6-b, 8-c, 9-d, 10-c, 12-d.

Here’s the schematic (lines ending in x are the non-rhyming lines):

x x
x x x a
x x x x x x x b
x x x x x x x a
x x x x
x b
x x
x x x c
x x x x x x x d
x x x x x x x c
x x x x
x d

I’m thinking that if you wanted to get all fancy, you could center this and turn it into a shape poem. But I’m not going to do this here. ;-)


After The Fall

After
the fall from grace
everything changed for mankind;
no longer did we know our place –
we were as lost
and blind
grieving
for what had been,
regretting the choice that was made,
creating original sin,
and leaving us
afraid.

On Different Note . . .

Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself.
— Henry Ward Beecher

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.
— Plato

Words make you think. Music makes you feel. A song makes you feel a thought.
— Yip Harburg

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.
― Robert G. Ingersoll

Do you write to a play list, or do you prefer the silence?

I’ve read several books where the author has included a play list of the music they wrote their book to. Even my favorite author, Charles de Lint, has acknowledged the music his novels have been written under the influence of.

The last few years, especially since the pandemic started, I find I often prefer the silence. Not just when I’m writing, but in my daily life. And I’m not quite sure how it happened.

Maybe it’s because the world has become such a busy, noisy place. After I’ve had to deal with it I crave the silence for a time. And after I’ve had to deal with a lot of people, I find the silence is very soothing.

That being said, I like to listen to music in the car. Usually it’s just the radio set to a classic rock station, but sometimes I’ll remember to bring a CD or two with me. The hubby made me a driving CD one time – a mixed CD of songs about driving with songs like “Highway to Hell”, “I Don’t Drive 55”, that sort of thing. :-)

But back to the writing. Like I said, the last few years I’ve mostly been writing in silence, but it wasn’t always that way. I have a large CD collection and used to have a kickass little stereo in my office. The radio was crap, but the speakers for playing CDs were great.

Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, especially electronics, and the stereo died. It was replaced with a boom box that does not boast great speakers, so the sound for the CDs isn’t all that great but they work really well for the radio, which also works great.

The problem is when I’m writing I prefer my music to be instrumental music. If it’s got lyrics then I find it too distracting – I’ll spend more time listening to the lyrics or singing along than I do writing.

So . . . what kind of music do I listen to when writing, if any? For my Moonstone Chronicles I listened to a lot of Celtic music. It’s lively and put me in mind of Ireland (or what I imagine Ireland to be like, seeing as I’ve never been) which was the inspiration for the magical realm. And the lyrics are in Gaelic, as a rule, so they’re not distracting.

Two Steps From Hell is great to listen to while writing. Some of it is really inspiring for fight scenes, and some of it is just plain inspiring. I listen to a fair amount of Audiomachine too, and soundtracks are always a good bet.

The rest of my music collection is pretty eclectic. The hubby is a diehard classic rock aficionado, and when the daughter was a teenager she used to find some of the weirdest music (she still does) ever. They can both be a bit snobbish when it comes to music, but think I’m more open minded.

For me, music is like art. I either like the painting, or I don’t. I don’t care how famous the person is who painted it. With music it’s either pleasing to the ear, or it isn’t. But I’ll at least give it a try before I pass judgement.

So, while you won’t ever see me doing a playlist of popular music to write to, I’m not opposed to writing to instrumental music. Sometimes, the silence can be a little too quiet.

Maybe that’s what my writing needs – a return to music.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

The best thing I can say about this past week is that all of my posts were up on time, and I didn’t have to stay up late to do them. In fact, a couple of the posts were started a couple of days in advance.

I updated my writing journal finally, and while I was at it included a few lines for potential poems. They may not have been story idea, but I’ll take them anyway.

I might have accomplished more writing, but I got hit by a series of cluster headaches. You can’t really ignore them and there’s really not much you can do about them, just put up with them. But it does make it a little hard to focus sometimes.

NEW WORDS:
1609+638+558+540=3,345
UP – 45 words from last week

Goals For Next Week:
Get some words written besides my blog posts.

EDITING:
0 pages
I’m still trying to work up some enthusiasm for Elemental Spirit. I’m actually thinking about skipping the beginning (that needs a total rewrite) and ignoring the historical records that are supposed to head each chapter, and just go straight to editing the rest of it. There’s no law that says I have to do it in the proper order, and I’m thinking once I have the body of it done, that’ll give me the incentive to do the rest of it.

Goal For Next Week:
Start work on An Elemental Spirit.

MARKETING:
Yeah, nothing new here.

Goal For Next Week:
Set up author page on Amazon; update book page on blog.

TECH & TRAINING:
Nope, I got nothing but thoughts about doing something.

Goal For Next Week:
Learn to use Dropbox properly so I can backup my files.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
I got the informational part of my form done early, which was a good thing because the poem was a long one. I actually enjoyed the Trenta-Sei verse form, despite its length. I think I’d like to work on my example poem a bit more though – it ends a little abruptly and I’m not altogether happy with that.

It’s getting harder to find new forms to share, but if push comes to shove, I can fall back on the coded Welsh forms – there’s twenty-four of them but they’re all really hard.

Goal For Next Week:
Find another new poetry form to share.

CRAFTING:
Well. The two bins I’d picked up for my fabric were just a little bit bigger than would fit comfortably into the closet of my new craft room, so I ended up having to buy some new ones. Three of them as a matter of fact. I divided the fabric from the giant bin in my old craft closet into them (and yes, it did take all three) and they fit nicely in their allotted space.

I used the old, opaque bin to hold donations for the thrift store and took a load up on Thursday. There is still a bin in the old craft closet that needs to be dealt with – it’s holding various knitting and crocheting projects I have on the go. I don’t have enough room in the new craft room for the bin, but I’m thinking I could use a couple of under-the-bed storage bins for them. Maybe one for knitting projects and one for crocheting. I just have to buy them first. :-)

Didn’t work on the afghan, but then that’s a project I usually do in front of the TV, and I didn’t watch much TV that was good for crafting to last week.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on the afghan. Finish craft migration.

WHAT I’M READING:
Read Midnight Bayou, and Public Secrets by Nora Roberts.

Still reading The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai, who ran the “Writing Vivid Characters” workshop at the fall Writersfest. It’s good, but it’s not a book I want to rush.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up my good reading habits.

GOAL REVIEW:

As I said above, I got all my posts done on time, and I didn’t even have to stay up late to do them. And I had half of my poetry post done on Monday, which was really handy when I ended up spending my allotted poetry time at a three-hour lunch on Tuesday.

No editing and no marketing, but lots of thinking about both. Now, if I can just move from the thinking stage to the doing stage I’d be cooking with gas.

I really do want to learn the ins and outs of Dropbox this week so I can back my stuff up to it. I’m getting paranoid with this computer – just this week it emptied my recycle bin without being asked to. Who knows what else it’ll do on its own?

This may not seem like a big deal, but I had a lot of stuff in my recycle bin (I have lots of space on my computer). Occasionally I’ll be looking for something from a while back and a couple of times I’d find what I was looking for in my recycle bin. It’s like getting rid of stuff out of your closet and then realizing you had a use for it after all.

I actually did my poetry post early, and I confess, while I didn’t stay up late Tuesday night, I only had three quarters of my poem done when I went to bed but managed to finish it before breakfast on Wednesday.

No work done on the afghan, but I am a step closer to finishing the craft migration. Two more bins and a work table and I should be able to call it done.

My reading is still being reasonable. Still not able to let go of Nora, but I’m not reading to the exclusion of all else, so that’s a step in the right direction.

I did not get back to my lists. Actually, I kind of forgot about them. But I looked at my day planner and didn’t like all the white space I was seeing – I’ve been using it to jot point form notes about my day for updating my journal. So I’ve been making an effort to do more with my days. If not writing, then at least something else.

So while I’ve been thinking a lot about writing, and some of the things I could be writing, the cluster headaches have been an impediment to that. If I can just get rid of them while I’m still feeling ambitious, I’ll be cooking with gas.

The Pond - Part 25

Time passed and things quieted down again. The heat of summer drove more people to the pond to cool off, but that same heat was causing the pond to shrink in size as the water evaporated faster than it could be replenished.

Izolda did not trust the quiet. Still, the miasma of corruption overshadowing the pond lessened, and the weight of the knowledge something was not right eased.

But the pond was not the only body of water affected by the drought. The water level in the river began to go down as well, until it was at the point where it hampered the working of the sawmill. Nikolai, however, was resourceful. The sawmill was not the only way to split wood.

He and his brother went to the city and returned with wedges to be used to split the logs into timber as they’d done in the old country. While split timber was much stronger than sawn timber, it also tended to be warped or crooked because it followed the grain of the wood instead of cutting across it. So they also brought back the large, two-handed saws to be used in pit-sawing.

The work was harder and the days longer, but no one complained and no one starved as they did in other communities. But then one day a body was discovered in one of the trenches that had been dug for the pit sawing. It was Sasha, Nikolai’s oldest brother. It was believed that he fell into the pit and hit his head on a rock, but no one could explain why there was water in his lungs.

A month later, when the community had barely recovered from Sasha's loss, the body of Nikolai’s foreman was found floating face down in what was left of the river. Obviously, he had tripped and fallen into the water as he was trying to cross. But no one had any idea why he’d felt the need to cross, and why he’d drowned when he was a strong swimmer and the water was not deep. Clearly, he must have hit his head, although there was no mark to show it.

Finally, the rains came and life returned to normal. The pits were filled in and the two-handed saws put away. The pond also returned to it’s normal size, but with the cooler weather few ventured near it.

The seasons changed and a layer of ice covered the pond. An ice skating party was planned as part of the Christmas celebrations. The day was crisp and cold. Laughter rang out over the pond as couples glided over the smooth surface while children darted in and out among them.

Suddenly there was an ominous cracking noise, and the ice in the center of the pond gave way. Screams replaced the laughter. Sixteen people ended up in the frigid water, but only three didn't make it out alive. The boy, Ned, who had narrowly escaped drowning the summer before, and though he’d vowed never to swim in the pond again he’d been talking into skating, and the two friends who’d saved him.

Trenta-Sei Verse Form

This rather interesting form was created by John Anthony Ciardi (1916-1986), an American poet, translator, and etymologist.

This thirty-six line poem (trenta-sei is Italian for the number 36) is divided into six, six-line verses, or sestets. The rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-c-c and there does not appear to be a specific syllable count, but I would think you should keep it consistent between verses.

Now, here comes the interesting part. Each line in the first verse becomes the first line in its corresponding verse. So line one in verse one stays the same, but line two in verse one becomes line one in verse two. Line three in verse one becomes line one in verse three. And so on, and so on. It’s kind of like a cross between a sestina and a cascade poem.

Because of the lack of a set syllable count, there’s not really a schematic to show, but I can show you how the repetition works:

Verse 1
Line 1 rhyme a
Line 2 rhyme b
Line 3 rhyme a
Line 4 rhyme b
Line 5 rhyme c
Line 6 rhyme c

Verse 2
starts with line 2 from first verse
Verse 3
starts with line 3 from first verse
Verse 4
starts with line 4 from first verse
Verse 5
starts with line 5 from first verse
Verse 6
starts with line 6 from first verse

The challenge with this form is to have a strong enough first verse to carry through the remaining poem. My lines are octosyllabic, meaning they have eight syllables each. This wasn’t a conscious decision, that’s just the way they worked out.


Time

Time after time, and time again . . .
often, I’ve found time is twisting,
it makes time tricky to maintain
time will be always persisting –
time is bending, time will scurry
time is slowing, time will hurry.

Often, I’ve found time is twisting,
past and present perform a dance –
sometimes you’ll find time resisting
it slows right down, and then advance.
Time turns, it spirals, then flows straight
but time does not accumulate.

It makes time tricky to maintain –
you cannot grasp it in your hand
it’s nothing that you can sustain
and yet we bow to time’s demand.
We worship time and yet we still
cannot contort time to our will.

Time will always be persisting –
it cannot be halted in its tracks,
there really is no sense resisting
for time will always wan and wax.
Sometimes it flows, much like a tide
and sometimes it races, magnified.

Time is bending, time will scurry,
time will follow its very own path –
passing time will make things blurry,
regret will fill time’s aftermath.
Time will not ever wait for you
But wasted time will oft accrue.

Time is slowing, time will hurry
whenever we don’t want it to.
Look at time with passing fury,
it doesn’t care; we’ve paid its due.
Time’s something we cannot outrun –
and suddenly our time is done.

Procrastination

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.
– Steven Pressfield

Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.
— Adam Hochschild

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
― Pablo Picasso

Overcoming procrastination is not, I repeat, not about cramming additional work into your day … overcoming procrastination is about simplifying your life to make space for the activities that matter most.
– Richie Norton

Procrastination is defined as the voluntary and unnecessary postponement of important action. It may surprise you to learn that there are many valid reasons for procrastinating, including low self-esteem, lack of interest, feeling overwhelmed, and fear of failure. Distractions like phones and other digital devices are also common perpetrators of procrastination.

But even without distractions, procrastination is detrimental to productivity. The worst part about procrastination is the stress and anxiety it leads to. Especially when you procrastinate over something that has a time limit. It creates worry that whatever it is won’t get done on time, which can cause tension, headaches, and stomach pain.

Another downside to procrastination is that when you wait until the last second to do something, whatever it is will get a rush job. There just isn’t enough time to do it right, so you do a rush job that isn’t quite your best effort.

Unfortunately, procrastination is simply more enjoyable that getting the work done. While we may feel more relaxed while procrastinating, we just cannot work productively this way. What we’re doing is building up a bad, unproductive habit. Continually giving in to the urge to procrastinate makes it harder and harder for us to be highly productive again.

So what can we do to break the procrastination habit?

I’m sure you’ve heard this advice before, but one of the things that helps is to have a milestone, or small target to achieve. Smaller goals can motivate you more that a larger goal, so if you’re facing a large goal, break it down into smaller chunks.

Find a "work and break" rhythm. Set a specific amount of time to work, followed by a specific amount of time for a break. You might need some trial and error to find the rhythm that works for you, but doing so can build your productivity.

Make yourself a schedule to guide you so you know what you should be doing during a specific time in your day. Break your day into time frames to accomplish specific tasks so you know what you should be focusing on, and when.

Use the reward system. Instead of beating yourself up for what you didn’t get done, reward yourself for what you did accomplish. Having a reward to look forward to can help motivate you. On the other hand, if you’ve been unproductive, you can also punish yourself.

There’s also a case to be had for procrastination to be a good thing. When you’ve got a lot of tasks to be done, it can be good to put off some of them to be done later so you can spend more time on the most important one. Sometimes putting off a task gives you more time to think about it and strategize. The increased pressure might create an impetus and create the motivation needed to start working.

Procrastinating can give you more time to think about the task. It gives you the time to seek out other opinions on what you’re doing. It can enhance your creativity – it gives you a breather so you can step back from whatever you’ve been struggling with.

But good or bad, procrastination is one of life’s challenges that we all must face at some time or other.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

The Kingston Writersfest is having what they call a Winter Writer’s Retreat. It’s in March, which I think of as spring, not winter, but who cares, it’s another chance to get away to do writerly things. I first heard about it just after Christmas and I’ve been checking their site once a week for details ever since.

Finally, the information on the masterclasses went up this week. Yes! And there are some really interesting workshops being offered. There are a couple focusing on poetry, one on writing dialogue, one on writing rom-coms, just to name a few. So I whipped out my credit card and paid for my four-day pass.

Ironically, the retreat is being held at the hotel I ended up staying at for the fall Writersfest. This time I wasn’t taking any chances and I booked my room right away so that I didn’t miss out on the festival discount. All total, the whole thing cost a little less than just my hotel bill for the fall Writersfest.

Now I can’t wait for March!

NEW WORDS:
1444+814+329+713=3,300
UP – 207 words from last week

Goals For Next Week:
Get all of my blog post up on time.

EDITING:
0 pages
I cannot tell a lie. I didn’t even so much as crack the file open on Elemental Spirit. Or any other file that needs editing.

Goal For Next Week:
Start work on An Elemental Spirit.

MARKETING:
Yeah, nothing new here.

Goal For Next Week:
Set up author page on Amazon; update book page on blog

TECH & TRAINING:
Nothing new here, unless you count fixing the wifi – again! I left the hubby in charge of the granddaughter (who had a P.A. day) and the kittens while I did a couple of errands, and when I came home again there was no internet connection. Even the phone was out. But I retained just enough knowledge from when I used to work tech support to get us back on line again.

Goal For Next Week:
Find external DVD drive so I can use it to install the printer software.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
I did get a new form and example done last week, but I’m not altogether happy with the poem I wrote as an example. The final verse in particular needs work.

Ironically, I chose that particular form because I thought it would be easy to write the poem for an example because of the repetition. It was not. If anything, it made it a little harder because of the second repetition at the beginning of the last line of each verse.

Goal For Next Week:
Find another new poetry form to share.

CRAFTING:
I fully intended to finish up the craft migration this weekend, but see the above post about procrastination and distraction. With one thing and another, it just didn’t happen.

No work on the afghan, but I did get some sewing done. This was one of those jobs I’ve been putting off for a while – hemming for the father-in-law. Some time before Christmas he sent over four pairs of pajama pants that needed hemming, and then a pair of dress pants he’d been given for Christmas. At least that monkey’s off my back now.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on the afghan – the person it’s for has a birthday coming up. Finish craft migration.

WHAT I’M READING:
Read Carnal Innocence by Nora Roberts. Then took a bit of a break for most of the week in an attempt to make myself do something besides read. Instead, I played more mindless games.

So then I started reading The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai, who ran the “Writing Vivid Characters” workshop at the fall Writersfest.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up my good writing habits.

GOAL REVIEW:

I almost skipped the Monday post on my other blog because once again there wasn’t much interesting going on. But then I figured even miscellaneous type post would be better than nothing, and then I hit on the idea to share my misadventure making Guinness stew. So a failed experiment saved my bacon (so to speak).

Once again, I did no editing, no marketing. But I still say fixing the wifi counts as something techy. :-)

I did manage to do a new poetry form, even if I’m not completely happy with the poem I created for my example.

While I didn’t get any work done on the afghan, I am a step closer to finishing the craft migration, and I got the bag of hemming finished for the father-in-law. Big “Whew!” on that.

My reading slowed down last week, and I actually picked up something other than Nora Roberts, which is good because I have a whole stack of books in my to-be-read bookcase that were not written by her (and four books that were). And yes, I don’t have a to-be-read stack of books, I have a whole bookcase full. ;-)

I didn’t get back to my lists. Well, I made one list, but it kind of got buried under a pile of stuff and I forgot all about it. This week I’d like to make a new list and actually cross a few things off of it.

Mentally I’m in a better headspace than I’ve been lately, so let’s hope this translates into a more productive week.

The Pond - Part 24

Twice Izolda visited the pond in secret, but no matter what spells she used, she could not undercover the source of the disturbance. There was something there, something unnatural, but the what of it eluded her.

“I know you’re here,” she shouted in frustration. “Show yourself!”

Her only answer was the wind, a wind that could almost be mistaken for a woman’s laughter.

Things quieted down for a time. If there were any more sightings of bodies or strange beings, no one was reporting it. Summer slid into autumn and then the winter passed. Izolda was delivered of another child, this time a daughter whom they named Pavlina.

Any joy Izolda felt for her children was overshadowed by the knowledge that there was something not right in her world. The mysterious entity that attached itself to the pond was only part of it.

For one thing, none of her children showed even the smallest sign that they’d inherited any of her magic. It sometimes happened in families that one, maybe even two children were born null, but for all three? She’d never heard of that before. Was it because Nikolai himself had no magic?

And her own magic appeared to be . . . waning. Casting her mind back she realized that ever since she’d set foot on this land there had been an almost infinitesimal drain on her power. She scoured her books for a possible source of the drainage, and more importantly, for a way to block it from happening still.

Blocking it proved to be easier than discovering the source of the drainage. She infused a blood red ruby with a powerful spell of protection, and wore it suspended from a leather cord around her neck. But there was no way of regaining the power she had lost, and this was of great concern to her. It was possible to renew her power naturally, but without the aid of the magic in the land itself, it would take much time.

She thought back to when Varnya had first arrived in the cave near her village. Could there be another witch trying to encroach on her territory? But no, the energy did not feel the same. The source was magical though, of that she was sure. But there was no way of sharing this knowledge without exposing her for what she was.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

During the deepest heat of the summer, a party youths were cooling off in the pond when one of them began to shriek.

“Help! She’s got me!”

His head disappeared under the water. The water churned as he flailed his way to the surface again.

“Help me!”

After a stunned moment of inaction, two of his friends splashed their way over to him. They grasped his arms and pulled. It was obvious something held his legs, but whatever it was, it wasn’t a match for two young men filled with adrenaline. They pulled him free and made their way back to the shore where the others waited.

“What happened?” one of the girls asked.

“There’s something in there,” he said, gasping for air. “Some thing. I could feel its hands on my ankles, pulling me under.”

The others looked at each other, then at their friend, who lay on his back on the bank, still trying to catch his breath.

“You don’t believe me,” he said flatly.

“I’m sure your feet were trapped by something,” the oldest of the boys said carefully. “But could you not have just dived down a little too deeply and got your feet trapped in some roots. There are all manner of things beneath the water.”

“No! I—” He broke off and looked at the sympathetic faces around him. “I guess that must be what happened. I just panicked when I couldn’t get free.”

He said this, but he didn’t believe it for a minute. He saw the ghostly face just under the water, he felt her hands wrapped around his ankles. There was something evil in that pond. Even if no one believed him, he knew it to be the truth. He never set foot near the pond again.

Orvillette Verse Form

The Orvillette is an invented verse form created by Virginia Noble. It’s written in four quatrains (four line verses), making it a poem of sixteen lines. The rhyme scheme is abab, acac, adad, aeae.

Written in iambic tetrameter, meaning eight syllable lines, it also has a rentrament, which is the repetition of part of one line as a line elsewhere in the poem. In this case, the first line of the first verse repeats as the first line in the rest of the verses. Just to make it more interesting, the first three syllables of the last line of the first verse are repeated at the beginning of the last line in the other three verses.

Maybe it would be a little easier with a schematic (I used z to stand for the repeated syllables):

xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxa
zzzxxxxb

repeat of line 1
xxxxxxxc
xxxxxxxa
zzzxxxxc

repeat of line 1
xxxxxxxd
xxxxxxxa
zzzxxxxd

repeat of line 1
xxxxxxxe
xxxxxxxa
zzzxxxxe

Or maybe not. :-D But hopefully you can follow along with my example.


First Line

The first line is the hardest one
when I’m writing a brand new verse,
often the words are left undone
I struggle and make it all worse

The first line is the hardest one
no matter how often I try
to change a word or make a pun –
I struggle, the words go awry.

The first line is the hardest one
whether I write verse or write prose.
Oft it ends before its begun –
I struggle, but just can’t compose.

The first line is the hardest one
when you’re writing to save your life.
Once written words can’t be undone –
I struggle, words cut like a knife.