Writing Through the “I”

Poetry empowers the simplest of lives to confront the most extreme sorrows with courage, and motivates the mightiest of offices to humbly heed lessons in compassion.
― Aberjhani

...when a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also are inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was...this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art.
― Orhan Pamuk

Writing poetry is a passion, ignited by thoughts, fueled by ink. A way to travel through another mind, where souvenirs of tears are tucked away inside your soul. Or leave you with smiles for miles, depending on which route you go.
― Renee Dixon

This was the 8th Masterclass at Writersfest, presented by Nancy Jo Cullen, a Canadian poet and short story writer.

The blurb for this claimed we would explore how to transform personal experience into poetry. To my mind, all poetry is personal, whether you’re sharing an experience or not, but still, I thought it would be interesting.

We began with a discussion of fiction and poetry and I didn’t take many notes, other than writing down a cool idea for a collection of verse.

According to Ms. Cullen, poetry is a vehicle to express feelings, thoughts, and ideas. Poetry using the “I” exposes you as a poet. There should always be some kind of arc in a poem.

Think of the poem as having a speaker – ultimately, it should be a performance. Although it takes direction from emotion, you need to distance yourself from that emotion. Instead, look for vivid things to share.

For our first exercise, we were to write five sentences to create a narrative of home, expressed as a poem:

It stands halfway down a hill
beside a busy road
inside is love and comfort
shiny wooden floors
and a kitchen smelling of bread.

Our second exercise was to write about the same home again, but using different images and words:

Use the side door, the front is only for company
The living room, with its huge fireplace, is seldom used for living
Needlepoint covers the seats of the dining room chairs.
There are faces in the wallpaper of the guest room –
A blonde man with a beard, hiding amongst the roses.

We did this again for our third exercise, but expanding the images:

Cleaning is done by invisible elves, but only when we’re not there to see it
Picnic lunches on the sunken, flagstone patio
Climbing the hill through the woods to reach heaven
Sweet peas, rioting along the road and in the fields
Carefree summer days followed by slumbrous nights.

For our final exercise, we were to write a sonnet using the images from the above three exercises:

When I think of home, I see
halfway down a busy hill
the house tucked ‘neath the walnut tree
with flowers on its window sill.

Enter through the kitchen door,
The kitchen smells of bread and spice
All the treats that we adore;
The wooden floors are smooth as ice.

My aunt was never seen to clean
We thought it done by phantom elves
Who trod the flagstone paths unseen
Through blooming sweet peas in the dells.

Home was love and open arms
A haven safe from all the harms.

Okay, so maybe it’s not the best sonnet I ever wrote, but it’s not bad for the limited we had to write in.

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WORDAGE REPORT

This week I seemed to maintain a steady pace, although I didn’t pull ahead, as I’d hoped to be able to do. I had a couple of social obligations that, while pleasant, were a little time consuming. Actually, now that I think of it, every day except Friday had something else going on. Naturally, the kittens are still proving to be a bit of a distraction.

The hubby was not very receptive to the idea of putting up shelves above the medium sized bookcase I have beside my desk so I can get my plants off the window ledge, so I solved the problem by buying a taller bookcase to replace it. I figured the top two shelves would work great for plants.

The kittens and I had fun putting it together, but they were no help at all when it came to helping me figure out where to put the bookcase it was replacing. I didn’t like it behind my desk, and the only other place it might work meant blocking the window slightly, plus I’d have to unload it to be able to move it.

But then I discovered the new bookcase was not as wide as I thought it was, and the two bookcases just fit side by side against the wall beside my desk. Woot! However, I still didn’t get any extra writing done in my office because now I need to re-arrange bookshelves. LOL

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 2,455+462+298+1,024=4,239
Extra poem – 97 words
Total Words: 4,336 

UP 624 words from last week

Goals For Next Week:
Get my blog posts done on time and stay on track with NaNo.

NANO
Yes, I know NaNo doesn’t start until Tuesday, but I’m adding this category now as part of the NaNo prep.

No words yet, of course, but I have ideas. Lots of ideas. If anyone is my buddy on the NaNo site, you’ll have noticed I broke with tradition and declared my project last week, including putting up a cover. Normally I wait until November first, which is usually when I make up my mind.

And true to form, as soon as I put up the cover, a completely different idea popped into my head and I think it has even more potential – if I can figure out how it ends. It needs a little plotting and I don’t know if I’ll have time for that. If I start it as is, I can probably complete the story but it won’t be pretty.

AND THEN I considered doing another 30 days of flash stories. I had such great success with them last year. And I already have an idea for the first one that I really like. If I’d thought of this idea sooner, I could write more in this vein, but it’ll take some research.

So at this point, what I do for NaNo is anybody’s guess. Including mine. ;-)

EDITING:
16 pages
Finally, I got some serious editing done. But it was for someone else. LOL I had the pleasure of working on the final story in Alex Westhaven’s Death by Veggies series which is due to be released on Halloween.

If you can’t wait that long for your thrills and chills, you can download her story Jack from Amazon for free.

Goal For Next Week:
No promises on the editing – we’ll see how it goes with NaNo first.

MARKETING:
Okay, I think I’m going to suspend the whole marketing thing until the new year. It’s been months since I submitted anything, it just hasn’t been a priority. And with NaNo starting in a couple of days, and then Christmas right after that . . . Yeah, the new year it is.

TECH & TRAINING:
I’d still like to figure out Dropbox. At the very least I want to be able to backup to it automatically like I did before Staples got a hold of my laptop. And for extra back up protection, I’d like to unbox my external hard drive and start backing up to it as well.

Goal For Next Week:
Figure out how to set up the automatic back up for Dropbox. Set up external hard drive.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
Last week’s form was a little more complicated than the one from the week before, but it had eight syllable lines, and I like eight syllable lines. :-)

I also wrote a very sad little poem for my poetry group, which met Wednesday night. It was only 97 words, but it still counts.

Goal For Next Week:
Share a new poetry form.

CRAFTING:
I crocheted a dozen bookworms in a variety of colours for the craft sale my stitchery group is taking part of in December. We had a meeting Tuesday morning, and this week I’ll be meeting with the others on the craft sale organizing committee.

I’m not sure how much crafting I’m going to be doing during NaNo, but hopefully I’ll be able to carve out a little time.

Goal For Next Week:
Figure out dragon pillow for granddaughter.

WHAT I’M READING:
Reading? Who has time for reading?

Okay, I did treat myself to a new book when I grocery shopped - The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris, by Daisy Wood, but I’ve only read about half a dozen pages in it. It looks pretty interesting, so hopefully I’ll be able to make time to read more this week.

Goal For Next Week:
Spend a little time each day reading.

GOAL REVIEW:

It was a busy week, I tell you what. But despite that, I still got my blog posts up, and on time, too. And my serial installment actually ran a little long. I had a great time editing that story for Alex Westhaven – she just gets better and better, leaving me with less and less work to do. If only I could have that much enthusiasm for my own editing. LOL

I already mentioned that I’m putting the marketing on hold until the new year, and I’ll probably do the same with tech and training once I get Dropbox set up properly. I’m seriously considering recycling old post for my poetry Wednesdays for the duration of NaNo. Some days the poetry can take a lot of time and I don’t know that I’ll have it to spare.

While I did get my bookworms made, it was a near thing. November would be an optimal time to do Christmas crafts but, you know, NaNo. I can’t believe I did so little reading last week! I think I need to make time for it in the week ahead, because it’s a great way to relax the mind.

It was a busy week, but a good one, and looking back I may not have done any words beyond my blog posts, but I still felt pretty productive.

Here’s to the week ahead!

Poetry Month

When a reader enters the pages of a book of poetry, he or she enters a world where dreams transform the past into knowledge made applicable to the present, and where visions shape the present into extraordinary possibilities for the future.
― Aberjhani

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
— Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
— Carl Sandburg

A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms to be struck by lightning 5 or 6 times.
— Randall Jarrell

As some of you may already know, April is Poetry Month, and once again Writer’s Digest is running their annual PAD Challenge (poem a day). They provide a new poetry prompt every day for your writing pleasure. If you’d like to participate, or just learn more, go HERE

I did the PAD challenge in 2006 and had a lot of fun. This is where I was introduced to the Sestina, which set me on my path of exploration of poetry forms. One of the things I liked best about the challenge is the fact that like NaNo, there’s nothing official. So if you fall behind and have to catch up, nobody really cares.

I’ve found in the past that when I’m in a writing slump writing poetry helps pull me out again. I guess part of this is because my first serious writing was poetry. In junior high, my language arts teacher designated Fridays as “Anthology Day,” where we’d be given a prompt (a picture, a short film, an idea) and would write about it in our anthology, a special notebook designated for that alone.

The thing was, we could write whatever we wanted. It could be fiction, non-fiction, a poem, or a excerpt from someone else’s work. I only once used someone else’s work (a rather gross poem about a fly that I chose for its shock value), and once I wrote a short story. But usually I could be depended on to turn in an original poem. My teacher loved me. ;-)

Some of those poems survive to this day. Even back then I had a strong sense of rhyme and rhythm – I don’t know where I learned that from, but it was pretty much hardwired into me. I also learned to never abandon sense for rhyme, and was introduced to the wonders of the thesaurus.

Even when I began writing more prose (mostly short stories), I still wrote poetry. I wrote my first parody in high school. The assignment was to write three verses in the style of one of the masters whose work had a strong rhythm to it. I chose Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Cremation of Sam McGee and instead of three verses I rewrote the entire thing as The Refrigeration of Sam McGee.

In any case, like I said, when I’m in a writing slump I often turn to poetry to pull myself out again. So I figured I have nothing to lose and I decided to give the PAD challenge a try. I joined up a little late, but I’m only a couple of poems behind.

They’re not great poems, but they’re good enough to warrant their own category in the wordage report. AND I figure I can post a selection (or maybe all of them because they’re really short) on Wednesdays.

Look at me go – new words and a Wednesday post. It can only get better from here, right?

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WORDAGE REPORT

Well, would you look at that. Not only did I get my blog pos back, I managed to get some poetry done. It might not be great poetry, but it’s something.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1326+726+816=2,882
Poetry - 72+40+49+55+43+65+47=375
Total words: 3,257 words

Three minute words – 93+112+92+94+114+91+88=684

Goals For Next Week:
More poetry, and maybe something else as well.

EDITING:
I’ve been working on Magickal Mayhem, bit by bit, and making steady progress. Maybe next week I’ll remember to keep track

Goal For Next Week:
Keep editing Magickal Mayhem – and anything else that happens to come my way. Hint, hint, Jamie :-).

MARKETING MONDAY:
*sigh* Nope, didn’t happen last week.

And I still haven’t heard back about anything I’ve submitted so far, not even the Toronto Star Contest. They’re supposed to make their decision by now, but I’m not finding anything on a Google search either.

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two flash stories and one poem.

TECHNO TUESDAY:
For cryin’ out loud. Seriously, I do not know what is up with me as far as the Paperwhite goes. Maybe I could start by charging the damn thing up. And just because I get the books uploaded to it doesn’t mean I have to get it all organized. Who says I have to organize it at all? I can just delete as I finish a book. I’ve got so many books in my cloud I’ll never have the time to re-read any of them. And just because I delete them off the Paperwhite doesn’t mean they’re deleted out of the cloud – unless I really want to permanently delete something. In which case I’ll just cross that bridge when I come to it.

Goal For Next Week:
Set up Paperwhite

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
By the end of the month I’m going to have 30 new poems. Wednesday seems like the perfect day to showcase some of them.

Goal For Next Week:
Catch up on the PAD challenge

CRAFTING:
Yikes! I’m behind in my crafting.

I finally have the design set for the embroidery on the granddaughter’s dress. This entailed tracing the designs onto tracing paper, and then tracing them from the back to create my own transfers. It really shouldn’t have taken this long, but I wanted to be really, really sure so I didn’t screw anything up.

Goal For Next Week:
Embroider the granddaughter’s dress – it’s supposed to be for Easter

WHAT I’M READING:
Thank goodness this slowed down a bit. I finished Key of Valour by Nora Roberts, and then read Stars of Fortune, and Bay of Sighs, and I’m almost finished Island of Glass. The good news is I have a couple of books on tap that are not Nora Roberts.

The bad news is, I ordered the next four books in the Freakin’ series by Eve Langlais, and three other kind of random paperbacks that were on a points sale with Indigo. And they’re supposed to be here by Wednesday.

Goal For Next Week:
Make an effort to keep my reading under control

GOAL REVIEW:
Well . . . some good and some bad, I guess. The new words got a boost from the poetry, so that’s a win. And I’ve been continuing my slow but steady work on Magickal Misfire as far as editing goes.

The marketing was a bust, as was Techno Tuesday. At least Poetry Wednesday is looking promising.

The crafting was a dismal failure, which is really putting me behind the eight ball for this week. And my goal to not order any more Eve Langlais books lasted a whole day. *sigh*

But if there’s an up side to not meeting my goals, it’s that it gives me something to strive for in the week ahead.

Happy writing.

Fear of Finishing

It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.
— J.R.R. Tolkien

Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started.
— David Allen

Hello, my name is Carol and I have a problem finishing things.

I thought this was limited to finishing writing things – stories, poems, novels – but last week I found out differently. It was a dark and dismal day. My eyes were bugging me too much to spend it reading (like I normally would) and the writing wasn’t going well, so I decided to clean out my craft closet.

Trust me, this was not a project to be undertaken lightly, it’s a huge closet. One of the things I discovered (besides the fact that no matter how much stuff I get rid of it’s still a squeeze to put the rest back) was a bunch of unfinished craft projects. Stitchery, sewing, knitting, crocheting – dating back to anywhere from recent to before the dawn of time.

This is when the light bulb suddenly went off. Not finishing things is a more serious problem than I realized. Which begs the question, where does this fear of finishing come from?

On a whim, I did a Google search on “fear of finishing” and I was surprised to discover it really is a thing.

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged… I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.
— Erica Jong.

In extreme cases, fear of finishing is called atychiphobia, which is a fear of failure. I’m not quite that bad, I’ve finished six books, a handful of stories, and many craft projects. But I found it interesting to learn that the fear of finishing is linked to anxiety and depression, which I do suffer from. It’s a type of loss, leaving something you’ve become attached to once you’re finished it. You own it while you’re doing it, but once it’s done it’s . . . done.

Fear of finishing manifests itself in self-doubt, procrastination, and perfectionism. I have to admit this applies to me in both the writing and the crafting. But the good news is these are things that can be overcome.

If you have a fear of finishing like me, here are some things you can try:
Make a list of projects and pick only one or two. The rest go on a “to do later” list.
Plan for finishing (but also plan for setbacks).
Break a project down into easy to reach stages.
Enlist a friend to help you with accountability – tell them about what you’re working on and have them bug you until you finish.

Despite it being a rather dark and dismal week weather-wise, I actually got some work done – be still my heart. Granted the new words were mostly on the blogs, but I did get all my posts done on time, and I did a short prompt story.

I’m about halfway through The Dressmakers of Auschwitz by Lucy Adlington. I was right about it being fascinating reading – it should be required reading in history classes of the holocaust. I’m also about halfway through another anthology by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Teeth, which as you might guess is a collection of vampire stories.

The Week Ahead . . .

This week’s spice is allspice, which is not a blend as I’ve always assumed. You’ll have to check it out Wednesday to see what it is.

Well la di da! I took my own advice and went to town on Magical Mayhem, and edited 131 pages last week. That’s a third of the way done. Woot! Let’s see how I do this week.

I didn’t get a poem done for the poetry group meeting last week, but it was a zoom meeting anyway and I don’t zoom. I’m just not feeling the poetry but I’d better suck it up because Friday is the first Friday of the month, which means I need to do a poetry post.

I was going to say that I didn’t write every day but I did do something creative, but that’s not exactly true. There were times during the editing process where I had to re-write a passage, so I think that counts as writing every day. Goal met!

Let’s see how I do this week.