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My thoughts on writing and other random things as they come up. |
| This is a blog where I keep my thoughts and daily comments about writing and WDC. |
I'm a bit behind. I owe myself 5 poems. Yikes. I had better get busy! I hope your poem a day challenge is going much better! Best wishes from underneath the anvil, Sil |
I'm having a great day working a conference! It's a much larger one (100+) and it's in my home town, so that helps. I got up at 4:30 instead of 4:00 AM! The people here are very friendly. But - I'm so glad it's Friday. We've got ball games all day tomorrow, and Sunday is Easter, so time is limited once again. One of the ladies at the conference is the wife of the school librarian, and he's a published author.  . Was kind of fun to visit with her.I need to write a poem today. Hope your April poems for National Poem Month are going well! Please feel free to share links to yours in comments here! Best wishes, Sil |
Contests were the hot topic in chat today at lunch, and out of curiosity I checked and saw the WDC contest for April was Journey through the Genres. The Genre is Non-Fiction. The topic is Parenting. Oh wow. My copyright your underwear story would have been great for this one! Now I'll have to come up with something else. So much material - so little time. Where to start? Probably with the manger story. That one has to be a classic. Are you participating? If so - what will you write about? Best wishes! Sil |
I rode Bob (Big Orange Bus) over to Tulsa this morning for day two of my American Studies conference. It was still dark when we pulled in to the city. The high rises lit up the sky, and Tulsa was all set out before me like a picture or a painting. I felt the sense of awe that only a country girl in the city can feel. I've never really understood why people build high rises. Why put so many people in one small footprint? From a visual preference - I'd chose mountains over city vistas any day. But the sight of a skyscraper can still take my breath away. Sometimes when I stand next to one and look up, I can feel the weight of all the people inside, stacked up on top of me. I wonder how many people are in there, what they are doing, thinking. Does the proximity of so many people ever make them feel compressed? How ...could you be creative? Is there enough room? I wonder what it would be like to work in one of those buildings every day. Best wishes on a Tuesday - Sil |
Happy April 1st! Today is the first day of our poem a day project. I'm rather excited about it. I'm headed to Savage Park at Tulsa for a full day of softball. My journal is going with me! How do you plan to spend the first day of April? Best wishes, Sil |
There is a lot of hype going on about the lottery. My office has entered as a pool. I hope we win something. It's fun to spend time dreaming about what you would do if you won. What would you do if you won say, 35 million dollars? I think I would see to it my family would be financially secure, take a trip or two, buy a house, and spend oodles of time reading and writing. What a book that would make! Wish me luck! Have you entered the lottery? Best wishes and happy Friday! Sil |
| April is Poetry Month! . I plan on participating in the Poem a day venture and national poem in your pocket day. Interested in participating with prompts? Check out Writer's Digest venture here. .I plan on writing 30 poems in 30 days. I'm in a challenge with a friend. For our venture, the goal is to get 30 rough draft new poems written and ready by May 1st, perhaps not a poem a day, perhaps two or three on some days, perhaps zero on others! I had great plans to storehouse information - ideas for poems and snippets of things, but that fell by the wayside. I have two major conferences to do for work the first week in April and they are taking their toll. I did go buy a couple of new journals this morning, and some new pens. I just love the smell of new paper! Best wishes and get your POEM ON! Most importantly - ENJOY! Sil |
| Recently I’ve heard and read a lot about ambiguity in writing. My tutor said “pop music” is so popular because of its ambiguity. “Any” situation or circumstance can be read into the music. It makes it globally appealing, and why it is so popular (and I might add, extremely profitable). She went on to explain that ambiguity is not what poetry is about. In my mind, many times poetry is not accessible because it isn’t written to relate or connect people. I don’t want poetry that plays games. I just want to share the joy of beautiful words and connected experiences with others. And if my writing uses ambiguous words that connect people. So be it. Let’s just hope it’s profitable as well! Happy Wednesday. |
I submitted (4) poems to Poetry Breakfast, and on Saturday I received the nicest rejection! It was great to have such an encouraging yet positive response. I'd recommend submitting there: http://poetrybreakfast.wordpress.com/ Sil |
My 19 year old daughter, Jess, was cat-sitting for some friends this week. Our friends had recently moved to a new neighborhood, and then left for spring break. Jess had just started feeding the cats when she heard this strange noise, "ding dong." It took her a minute to figure out it was the doorbell. (We are country folks and don't have a doorbell, the only time she had heard doorbells previously was from the other side, trick or treating). She answered the door, and the lady at the door started right in, welcoming her to the neighborhood. The "welcome wagon" lady rushed through a speech and handed her a tin of cinnamon rolls. "But, I don't live here, I'm just cat sitting." The lady asked her to leave the cinnamon rolls for the new neighbors, and left. Jessie called our friends, who told her to take the cinnamon rolls home with her. They weren't going to be home for another week, and wouldn't eat cinnamon rolls anyway (they are health conscious folks). Jess finished her pet sitting tasks, and started out the door with the cinnamon rolls. Somewhere in the process of locking the door, she realized it would look bad if the welcome wagon lady saw her leaving the house with the cinnamon rolls. So, she went to the car, got her Vera Bradley gym bag, went back in to the house and smuggled out the cinnamon rolls. We all got tickled when she told this story at dinner. The sweet things that amuse country folks. Happy Friday! |
| The President arrived in Oklahoma last night, and you'd think Stillwater and the surrounding area had never had a presidential visit before. We have, President Bush spoke here at graduation in 2006. One of the weird things about it is the main reason for his visit is just a couple miles from my house - a big pipe storage area in a field. Now, country miles are different from city miles. A couple miles in the country is considered practically next door. Because it is so 'close' in psychological terms - my family has been joking about the Secret Service watching us from the trees. We decided we'd better be decent when we let the dogs out, just in case. All the drapes have gone down as well. (We don't usually use drapes, no one can see our house). Today my kids plan to sit on the porch and watch the helicopters flying overhead. The pipe yard the President is visiting is pretty ugly. Miles of big pipes stacked on top of each other, inside of a muddy yard. The town he is flying into (Cushing) to drive to the pipe yard is a horribly depressed community. It's ugly, dirty, and sad. But it's the "oil crossroads" of the U.S. When we heard he was visiting - it sure struck us as odd. Both the community and the yard are not how we would like the President to think of Oklahoma. I've decided I should write a story or poem about a secret service man's perspective. I wonder what that might be like? Happy Thursday. Sil |
| I had thought I was ready to fall out of love... with Billy Collins. But, then I read "Aimless Love", and fell back in again. There's a poem in there somewhere. Sil Aimless Love is from: Nine Horses, by Billy Collins |
As I walked across the parking lot from my car to my office in the rain, a gust of wind blew the lid off my cup of ice water, and it bounced across the asphalt. I don't litter, so I had to put down my umbrella, poetry bag, purse, and lunch box inside the back hatch of my car. I then chased down the errant lid and put it in the trash. I returned to the car, picked up my bags, and hop scotched around puddles. By the time I got inside the building, my legs were spotted with rain and mud. I should have worn rain boots instead of heels. By the time I got to the front door of the office suite, everything had shifted around and the bags were tangled up around my arm. I angled my wrist and poked the key into the keyhole, turned the lock, and realized that I had wedged my third finger completely through the keyring. I was stuck. I started laughing, and I was really glad that no one was around to see me. I looked like a bag lady caught with her hand in the candy jar. I was being held hostage by a tiny keyring. I finally gyrated around enough to get myself unstuck. And all I could think was - It's going to be one of those days. How many clues do you need girlfriend! Best wishes, Sil |
| Recently, I submitted Grief to Shadow Express , and was very happy to be hear that my poem was accepted. It's going to be included in the March issue. I have to say, the contributor's copy looked amazing. Mystic has outdone herself. It was my very first time to submit anything, and the editors at Shadow made it a wonderful experience. It gave me a little bit of courage, and as a result, today I submitted something else to an online publication. I know that I still have a long way to go, so I don't expect too much, but it was fun to put myself out there. I'm hopeful that I might get some feedback. I hope you are submitting on a regular basis! :) At work - it's really quiet - it's spring break. I got the first draft of the red wheelbarrow poem done. At home, it's thundering like crazy! Bring on the rain. Best wishes, Sil |
My poetry assignment for this week (from my tutor) is to write a poem using lines of 10 syllables. I'm really disappointed in myself. I need to write something creative every day. But I haven't been. I've played at revising, and I've done some reviewing, but I haven't written anything new. I've identified another journal I'd really like to submit to - but one must write something to submit! I feel the need to challenge myself. So - I'll put this out there. Anyone feel like a a mini poem challenge? Maybe for 3 days, starting Monday? Say a poem Mon, Wed & Fri? I think I'll start with something simple maybe - a poem that has lines of ten syllables (to get my homework out of the way). No line number or stanza requirements. For Monday - how about this for a topic - Use this poem for inspiration: "The Red Wheelbarrow" . Or use whatever you want! It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be new. Share it with me if you would like. I'd like to get myself in shape to do the poem a day challenge in April. Maybe by posting this publicly it will spur me on! Best wishes, Sil |
I battled my way to the poetry reading last night. It was a battle because I had to circumvent several obstacles to get there. First, my personal feeling that I don't really belong there, and second my guilt over spending a little time on myself. The third obstacles was the fact that they closed the library at 6 (it's the Friday that starts spring break), and the meeting was at 7. Luckily, I caught up with some of the group outside the library and they moved the reading to one of the classrooms in another building. Next, we waited about ten minutes for everyone to catch up and find the room. The entire time I sat there feeling distinctly out of place. It never got any better. There were two poetry readers and one fiction reader. The poetry readers were more relaxed - I could hear everything they said. At the conference they went to fast, here it was fine. I just didn't understand much of it. The fiction reading was easier to relate to. I was also glad to see that there was one person in the graduate program that was my age or older. Sent off my registration (and mom's) for the OWFI conference in May. I'm thinking about going to the local writer's meeting today. Less academic group. Will see what happens. Sil |
| I'm fussing over a couple things that are sort of clogging up the chute. One is a ...memorial essay I guess. The other is a poem that came out of my response to the "Who cares" tutoring lesson. At least I think it's a poem. I'm not sure. It reminds me of something else I have written that I'm not sure about - "Invalid Item" .I'm going to another reading tonight. The English Graduate Student Association has a creative writing student group, and I'm looking forward to going. That is - If I can stay awake - insomnia is giving me fits again this week. I think I slept about 4 hours last night. Mostly thinking about Active Writers and poetry. Maybe I'll nap on my lunch hour! Edited to add: My friend Asymmetrical turned me on to GoodReads . They sent out a March newsletter that had a fun quote I had to share:“I do things like get in a taxi and say, 'The library, and step on it.'” —David Foster Wallace Best wishes, Sil |
Oh I HAVE to submit to this journal! I love it! They have a great sense of humor.Take me straight to submissions .I can't wait! :) XOXOX Sil |
As you might know, I have thought for some time that studying poetry was something I needed to do. I had some idea that it might help me become a better fiction writer. Recently, I heard another (much more experienced writer) say the same thing. I see the results in some of my own stories. But I'm wondering what about poetry makes that happen? Is it just the intense study of language? Is it the emphasis that is put on every word? What part of it? Why? So many questions for a Thursday! Best wishes, Sil |
I haven't written a thing (creatively) in like a week and a half. My poetry homework is due Friday. Oops. |
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