Never Say Never

Mar14

Honestly this isn’t bad advice for life, but I think it is even more appropriate for artists of all kinds. Never say you will never try out a different form of your art.

In 2011, I wrote a piece I called “Swing Set Sonnet”. I loved the title then and still do now. I will freely admit I’m addicted to alliteration. It happens without me even thinking about it. (I even promise my admission was not alliterated on purpose!) But I forced the image I had to work within the constraints of a sonnet – something it firmly did not want to do – all because I loved my title. This was an awful idea. Instead of letting my poem find the form it needed, I bullied it into being something that could never work. Continue reading →

Refueling Creativity

Mar7

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing. It has nothing to do with time or my day job or family and household responsibilities (though those things do stand in my way more often than I should allow). It has everything to do with my creative well running dry.

When my creative well starts pulling up more sand than water, no amount of dedicated butt-in-chair writing time will fix it. The creative fuel I burn when writing is generated almost solely by other creative pursuits. Continue reading →

Sometimes the Words Aren’t There

Feb6

I’ve been having trouble writing. No difficulties with ideas as it seems there are dozens of things that grab me and hold me in the moment, making me think, “Ah, yes, I want to paint this in words.” But the moment I sit down to do something with an idea it either remains frustratingly close at hand, bowling me over with emotion, yet granting me not even the plainest of words to preserve it, or it flutters away entirely.

This may be even more frustrating than lacking ideas. I’m toppling over with things to say, and the outlet I use to say them is broken.

Erin Coughlin Hollowell wrote a post on this a few weeks ago, or at least about her own version of this feeling. She mentioned something that rings very true for me as well when she said “I need to be able to drop into that deep quiet where my poems come from. That deep quiet has been very elusive.”

That quiet has found its own island away from me and forgot to leave behind a plane ticket so I could follow. There’s been so much going on the last couple of months that even though I have wanted to write, sometimes even desperately, I just haven’t been able to put anything worthwhile to page. My head has been wrapped up in car troubles and financial troubles and job troubles and health troubles and very not in tune with pretty words. Unfortunately.

What is fortunate is the fact that many of those things seem to have either straightened themselves out or are well on their way toward doing so. I’ll keep trying to write and maybe I’ll find my words again soon.

Erin also linked to another post within her blog, a recent one by poet Ada Limón, and I think it is a fantastic read for any writer, but especially poets. It is worth a few minutes of your day to look it over. For now though, there is one particular quote I want to share from that post, and these are the words I will leave you with for today:

“I suddenly feel like there should be a permission slip for writers. Something you can sign for someone that says, “You don’t always have to write. You have permission to just be in the world and grieve and laugh and live and do your damn laundry.”

Creative Balance & the Message in a Bottle

Jan25

Happy New Year! I assume by now everyone’s parties are over and day-to-day life is meandering along again as per usual (now that we’re nearly to the end of January). I’ve finally managed to stop writing 2015 on everything, but now I find myself writing 2017 or 2019 instead. No, I haven’t the slightest clue why I’ve skipped to those years.

Did you make any resolutions? I stopped making resolutions a few years ago when I realized I was turning them into a source of stress, worry, and yet another reason to feel not good enough when I fail. Now I write a pie-in-the-sky list of everything I’d like to accomplish. Each individual item is something that can be completed by year’s end, but the entire list as a unit, realistically, cannot.

Surprisingly this does not set me up for failure. Instead it ensures that I don’t forget about any of my projects unless I willfully choose to give up on them. It’s a focus list to keep me moving in the direction I want. If I reach the end of the year with a shorter list than I began it has been a productive year. I focus on ending each year productive in general rather than qualifying how productive it may have been.

There are several things I am focusing on this year, but perhaps the most important to me is what I am calling “creative balance”. Continue reading →

Becoming a Published Poet – The Evolution of a Writer: The Middle Years

Jan19

Today I have a long post on the Rabid Rainbow Ferret Society blog. I’m the middle post in a series known as “The Middle Years,” and I hope you’ll check out my post as well as the other ones already up. Stay tuned for two more weeks and we’ll finish out the series!

The Rabid Rainbow Ferret Society

In my early years I was a novelist. That’s exactly how confused I was. To think I dreamed of banging out 100,000 words on the keyboard when today a solid piece of work might not even break the 100 mark.

(I still have ideas. Notions. Inklings… maybe one day I’ll return to playing with the “big stories”.)

The Evolution of Becoming a Writer 3

Noveling actually taught me, by accident, that I was a poet.

My early years as a poet consisted of a few key points:

Entering every contest I could find that I thought I could “win big” at and preferably cost less than $30 to enter
Thinking up all of the amazing titles I could use for future poetry collections (I have whole lists in some of my poetry journals)
Writing only when the mood, the air, the sunlight, the whatever seemed conducive for poetry
Figuring out what exactly qualifies as “real poetry” (Hint…

View original post 1,349 more words

Sometimes We All Need to Run Away, Part 3

Dec12

(Originally posted January/February 2014 on my previous blog, Quid for Quill.)

At long last… the final part of my trip in December! If you haven’t read them yet, you can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Once back in our hotel after the concert, Tameri and I promptly passed out in our beds. (Despite the fact that we did not order pillows from our very special ‘pillow menu’, the beds were incredibly fluffy and comfortable and everything you could hope for when it comes to melting into a warm cloud.)

The next morning we wandered down to the Fountain Coffee Room for breakfast. It might not be the meal of the day you’d think about caviar for, but when offered we couldn’t turn it down. Why not? We were in Beverly Hills! It was a must to test out. Alas… far too salty and I think Tameri was probably right when she suggested that caviar probably does not get better tasting as it goes up in price.

Not your average breakfast

(It was an easy decision between us in finding our pancakes and waffles more appetizing than the sour cream and caviar omelette. But what’s life if you don’t step out of your box?) Continue reading →

Sometimes We All Need to Run Away, Part 2

Dec10

(Originally posted January/February 2014 on my previous blog, Quid for Quill.)

If you haven’t read the first part of this trip, you can read it here.

Part of the excitement of our tickets for the VAMPS show was that after more than an hour of trying for them on release day, I scored us two VIP tickets. The VIP bonus for the Los Angeles show was a meet ‘n greet.

Everything on the House of Blues website had mentioned this would be after the show. I am so happy I called the HoB before we had lunch to find out more information however, because it had been moved to an hour BEFORE the doors opened for the show. Apparently some people did actually miss the pre-show event and I felt bad for them. HoB did a poor job with that one.

Knowing we needed to be at the venue by about 5:30 we wasted no time heading to our room once it was ready for us after lunch. Continue reading →

Sometimes We All Need to Run Away, Part 1

Dec8

(Originally posted January/February 2014 on my previous blog, Quid for Quill.)

I suppose it is about time I get around to posting the long-promised account of my epic December adventure. . .

Picture-heavy post ahead, but hopefully you will enjoy! I’ve split this into 3 parts because this is simply too long for a single post.

Let me preface this with saying sleep is a good thing. Sleep is a great thing even. And 30 minutes of it the night before a big trip is… probably a poor idea. Then again sometimes I make really dumb decisions. By the time I was getting on the plane to leave Tulsa at nearly 6 AM I had only had 30 minutes of sleep since roughly 7 AM the previous day.

Waiting for takeoff from Tulsa

Honestly at this point I figured I already had enough adrenaline going and would probably acquire plenty more along the way to keep me awake for the day. The first step of all of this though? Getting TO California. Continue reading →

Where Planes May Lead

Dec6

I am a planner. I like having a plan. My brain loves lists and schedules and goals and plans. But every time I see a plane rising into the sky, a part of me soars with it. I wonder who’s on board. I wonder where they are going. I wonder if they realize the adventure at hand, simply by traveling to a new place.

While I have a spontaneous heart, my brain allows for little that doesn’t come with a plan that has been gone over dozens of times (and often considering a rash of horrific and unlikely possibilities). And yet… I watch the planes.

There has been one time in my life that spontaneity won. It forever changed me.

In December 2013 I did something that is all too easy to say and very difficult to do: “drop everything and run”. There was some basic planning involved, but only the bare bones needed. Instead of trying to fit a getaway into my life, I made my life rearrange itself to allow for me to get away.

Now, two years later, I am planning for a trip that actually requires a great deal of planning, but will hopefully allow for plenty of spontaneity in the moment. And while I’m looking ahead to that trip, I’m remembering this one. It’s why I watch the planes.

Over the next week I’ll be reposting my account of that spontaneous adventure. It was originally published on my previous blog nearly two years ago, but with it so firmly on my thoughts now I wanted to share here, on this blog, with new and old readers alike.

*Image taken from Pixabay, creative commons license, user skeeze

Why I Don’t Publish My Poetry on My Blog

Dec3

This is something I have been asked many times in person, even if so far it has not yet come up on the blog itself.

“Why don’t you publish your work on your blog? Don’t you want people to read it?”

Of course I want people to read it. I want that very, very much. But there is the very sticky issue of “previously published work” to deal with.

Right now I am working to find a place for my poetry in literary journals, both online and in print. Later, I hope to work toward a chapbook or a full-length collection. Publishers of books often don’t mind terribly if some of the poems they are publishing in a book first appeared in journals. It’s a combination of having a resume of your work as well as knowing that the readers of those journals have already seen your name, which might help in marketing. But publishers of journals, in most cases, want to be the first to show off your work. Many journals pride themselves on providing content never-before-seen. If a reader could go online to a blog or read a social media post and get the same content, why would they read or subscribe to a literary journal?

So unfortunately you will not see my work published here. This blog is for my musings on the process of writing and the process of publication, as well as other things that catch my fancy, both literary-related and not.

If at any time you would like to see where you can find my work, the Publications page will always be kept updated. For print journals and anthologies it will link you to a location to purchase that particular edition. For online journals and anthologies, you will find a link directly to my work or to the home page for that issue.

I hope this clears up for anyone wondering why I never post poetry. With any luck, the Publications page on this blog will continue to grow and you can find me there!