Category Archives: writing

By hook or by crook, I’ll create a chapbook

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My dear blogging friend, Mike Allegra, made a particularly interesting comment after reading one of my blog posts.  I had published a poem that day and he recommended that I get working on a chapbook.  I was humbled by his comment and embarrassed that I had never heard of a chapbook.  (Thank you to the kind people at Google for making me slightly more knowledgeable!)

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I rolled the thought around in my head for a while and then that thought, like all the other unrecorded ideas, escaped the confines of my brain.  Much to my delight, the idea had not completely exited my cranium.  The word chapbook popped up again on my radar and made me ponder the thought once again.

I began to go back through my previous posts to reacquaint myself with my poetic entries on this blog.  I was actually surprised at how many poems I have published and I enjoyed reading some of the poems I had completely forgotten.

When I began my writing journey I was a slightly awkward sixth-grader who really knew nothing about stanzas or rhymes.  Words just seemed to come from somewhere and I gravitated more to poetry than I did to storytelling.  Thankfully I have since embraced both but there is always a draw to poetry when I feel the need to express more emotion.

Poetry allows me to tell tales of love and loss.   It gives me permission to dream.  It lets me hope that the world will be a better place.  And it lets me believe in my desires.   By clicking on those links, you’ll see how much I enjoy poetic expression.

I think a chapbook is just the project I need to begin 2016 on the right foot.  Any thoughts or advice in the comments section would be very welcome.

Happy New Year to all and may 2016 bring you all the things you desire!

 

The Christmas Poem – 2015 Edition

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Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the blogs
Edward Hotspur had his bacon, Angie’s Grapevine had her dogs.
The synonyms were used by Idioglossia with care,
And Conscious Cacophony, her feelings she would share.

Short Stories was nestled, all snug amongst his words,
While Susie Lindau had artistic visions taking pictures of the birds.
Graceful Press was getting poetic, authoring memorable scenes,
And Drinking Tips was creating while snacking on Poutine.

JannaTWrites newest blog had created such a clatter,
And Carrie Rubin’s comments only added to the chatter.
Away to the keyboard YeahWrite flew on its quest,
Tore open the gates of creativity posting its newest contest.

The Modern Philosopher, his brilliance did show,
And masterful words from Dianne Gray, were shared from below. (well, Down Under, but it didn’t rhyme)
When, what to YarnSpinner’s eyes should appear,
Ned’s Blog, in all its glory, showing no WordPress fear.

With a well-versed writer, so lively in blog,
I knew in a moment it must be Trudging Through Fog.
More majestic than eagles the stanzas were put,
And I knew in a heartbeat, Campari & Sofa was afoot.

“Now Grammar Ghoul! now Wordy! now Moi and Leigh!
On, Margie! On, Harlon! On, Bad Guy! on, Wine and Cheese!
To the top of the Fresh Press! to the top of the wall!
Now write away! Write away! Write away all!”

As Rarasaur roars before the wild hurricanes fly,
When they meet with Two Sentences, and mount to the sky.
So up to the Matticus Kingdom they flew,
With Yadadarcyyada and a Writer Fellow too.

I didn’t have my glasses on but I thought I still had heard,
Nicole Marie and Candice Curry happily sharing their words.
As I closed my keyboard, and was winding it down,
The Silver Leaf Journal was making a sound.

Jill Weatherholt spoke with a great deal of fervor,
And words were carefully crafted by The Mercenary Researcher.
A bundle of phrases HastyWords took from her stack,
And Shouts from the Abyss, the words he attacked.

With their keyboards they created with zest and with zeal,
They wrote just as passionately as brunch for every meal!
It was Apoplectic Apostrophes, the words she did reap,
And, in between writing, they read shrinksarentcheap.

They wrote from their hearts, like it was their favorite job,
And inside of them all lurked a Geeky Book Snob.
The Cutter rambled and wrote to make you think,
While a little Fish of Gold was readied with paper and ink.

On The Homefront took a few precious moments to reflect,
While somewhere during Red’s Rants and Raves their writing they did perfect!
JoeTwo spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
Blending a symphony of phrases, responsibilities they did shirk.

The Lonely Author pounded endlessly on the keys,
While Scraps of Paper were tossed at the typewriter with ease.
 You’ve been Hooked had amused us, EagleAye surely did see,
And we quickly lost H.E. Ellis to the feeling of writer’s glee.

Inspiration sprang to its feet, to its words gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like a high powered missile.
But I heard it exclaim, as our brains turned to fog,
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good blog!”

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(image credit: lhj.com)

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Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays.  All of the links should take you to a large number of the blogs I follow, so if you are looking for new things to read, they are just a click of a mouse away!!

In the wee small hours

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With no curtains for protection, the jagged streaks of moonlight spilled through the bedroom window across my duvet.  I had awoken only moments before, trying desperately to talk my body into falling back to sleep before my brain woke up but it was too late.  In the same time it took me to blink twice, my brain had formulated twelve simultaneous problems that it was determined to solve before I was allowed to return to slumber.  And, as an afterthought, those cranial neurons began formulating ideas for new blog posts and I was scrambling to record them before they evaporated into dream dust.

I have lost count of the number of times I have awoken from a deep sleep with a great idea for a post.  But between the darkness on moonless or cloud-covered nights and my inability to locate my phone to document them, those potentially great ideas vanished into thin air.

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There must be a gigantic vault of lost ideas – a safe so large it contains all of the great writing ideas that were unable to come to fruition because they were never forced from our subconscious onto our keyboards.  It hides in the vacuous space of our imagination and traps wandering thoughts as they escape during those wee hours in the morning.  If only I knew how to break into that vault.

As my late-night Kathleen Turner voice gurgled out incomprehensible syllables I tried my best to recall and record the latest gem last night but, as I replayed the audible gibberish this morning, I couldn’t really comprehend where my thought process was taking me.

One day I’m going to crack that safe and I’m going to need a lot of Red Bull to keep me up long enough to record the wealth of ideas that is trapped in its metal casing.

 

I already went through this once…

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“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~ E.E. Cummings

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It is a rite of passage and a fact of nature that, when we grow from a child to an adult, our voices change.   Perhaps I hadn’t realized when I began my blogging journey that I was a child of writing.  I was a mere toddler grabbing at words like they were all mine but contrary to a toddler’s way of thinking I wanted nothing more than to share those words.

Recently, I have been going back through the moments of my childhood.  I have not been pouring over photographs in family albums but I have been going back through the early stages of my blogging days and I am amazed at how dissimilar my writing voice is from then to now.  The nuance of my phrasing is a far cry from what it once was and my voice has changed to signify the growth in my writing.

Contrary to going through that awkward teenage phase in life, my progress as a writer has been uncomplicated and relatively steady.  I feel comfortable in my writing skin and I walk down the hallways of the writing school in my mind with great confidence.  There are no cliques to contend with, no teachers to please and the only club I wish to join already has my name on the roster of its members.

I want to write, plain and simple.  I want my voice to continue to develop and be able to show the experience I gain each day by simply writing more words on a page.  I want my voice to whisper.  I want my voice to sing.  And I want my voice to yell at the top of its lungs when it has something to say, anything to say.

Maybe this is the puberty stage in my writing.  And just maybe I have reached the cusp of adulthood and I can finally embrace the voice that will truly represent who I am as a writer.  There may a be a few breaks in the inflection and the tone but I think this voice is here to stay.

 

 

 

Excuse me while I expose myself

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The title of this post conjures up several images.  Some of those images are quite flattering and sexy and others are the images that I wish I could wipe from my memory.   Spoiler alert – this post has nothing to do with anything remotely related to nudity, apart from the flagrant display of flashing in the image below. (sorry)

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When we are authentically naked, when we truly bare ourselves, we are baring our souls, not our bodies.   We let others into our hearts, our minds and our dreams.  All of the hypocrisy is stripped away and we are left naked with no false fronts to hide behind.   We bare ourselves here on our blog sites, with our words, and we run naked through the blogosphere.  We put more honesty and integrity into our words because, here,  we feel comfortable in our skin.  Here, we feel like we are representing our true selves.  Here, we feel a kinship with like-minds and we feel a comfort level that truly allows us to just be who we are, stripped of any preconceived notions.

Our thoughts and prose give us permission to expose ourselves.  The only shroud we hide behind is the blanket of our truth and our musings.  We leave the most important part of ourselves open for all to read and, in that part, we find the inner strength to continue our journey.  Our inhibitions are no longer stifling us from exposing our innermost thoughts and feelings.  We feel accepted in our natural state.

We do ourselves a grave injustice and we add nothing to this world if we cloak ourselves in any cloth that hides who we truly are.   To be completely ourselves, to be truly naked, we need to trust in the path we follow.  We need to believe that the people who are near and dear to us know the true essence of what we represent, and we need to feel that the people meeting us here for the first time understand the inner workings of our brains.

Be honest in your writing, let it reflect who you are, and don’t deny your readers the opportunity to see you as you truly want to be seen.  Let them into your mind.  Let them see you naked.

The more things change, the more they are different

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Blogging is a fickle mistress.  Back when I started this journey I had no followers and no clue what I was doing.  I just wanted to write.

With much persistence and an avid desire to keep writing, I did just that.  Along the way, people began to read what I had to say and, not only that, took the time to make comments and leave their two cents about the words I had spent so many hours crafting into submission.  Those were blissful times in my life and, as the momentum continued, I gained new followers and new friends throughout the process.

But as with all things that change, and contrary to the subjective saying, nothing every really stays the same.  Life gets in the way and those little joys that were once so ingrained in our daily lives are shelved to make room for reality.  During the last three summers, work has taken a front seat while my creativity has been stored in a tool box in the trunk of my life.

Every autumn, I find the key, open that trunk and hope my creativity has maintained some of its shape during the bumpy rides it has been made to withstand.  Although the integrity of my imagination seems somewhat intact, the struggle to achieve the same level of contact with readers and followers seems to wane.  It is the fault of no single circumstance and it simply means I have to delve back into the vigor of writing that I had when I began this wonderful pilgrimage through written expression.

I have sworn to be diligent, not only in my writing but, in my covenant to be a good follower of all the blogs I have chosen to support with my likes and comments.  I have been inattentive, through no fault of my own, and have made a pact with myself to make up for my negligence and become more of a presence in this world of words, especially with those who have stuck by me on this ride.

Relationships of every kind take effort.  I look forward to challenging myself to put forth my best effort to post things of meaning and to post them often.  I look forward to mending fences, creating new connections and having my little typewriter appear in many areas of this blogosphere and throughout the other worlds of people who love to read.

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Sometimes it feels like only your keyboard will listen to you, but if you keep at it your audience will grow and you will find your true voice.  ~ SN

 

 

Putting the focus back on me

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“Always remember, your focus determines your reality.” ~ George Lucas

I have been neglecting myself lately.  And my 24-hour period of sleep last week was a glaring reminder that I must slow down and begin to put my needs ahead of everyone else’s needs.  I am still fending off the same cold that knocked me down last week and I am hoping after two consecutive days off that my body will begin to heal itself.

My physical condition withstanding, I have also realized how many things I have put on the back burner over the last few months.  My blog posts  have been suffering.  My blog reading has been non-existent.  And the things I love doing, like making soup or reading a book, have been put on a shelf and left to collect dust.

But today, that momentum has shifted.  I am making myself a “vision board” so I can focus on the things I want to do for myself.  I have sketched and decided on a design that I am going to have tattooed on my wrist.  I have been thinking about it for a while but have finally given myself permission to take that leap.

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The infinity symbol is a message of empowerment – anything is possible.  Carpe Diem is, not only my email address but, my mantra – seize the day, something I have been failing to do recently.  The butterfly represents my mother and the owl represents my father.  It is a perfect blend of all the things that have the most power over the person I am each day and the person I want to continue being.

On day one of my two days off, I currently have two different pots of soup simmering on the stove, the ingredients for a killer Chili in the fridge and my fingers are flying over the keyboard as I type this post.  I feel like I am finding myself again.  I feel happy knowing I have begun to assimilate to the creature I enjoy being.  And I feel the most elation by knowing that I have retrained my focus and begun to put myself first.

I should have paid more attention to my Physics teacher

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It never ceases to amaze me – the amount of hours one works in the real world is directly proportionate to the eradication of the creative mind in the artistic world, especially following a long season of working in the hospitality business.

I remember my Physics teacher in Grade 11 throwing around words like ‘inertia’ and ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’ but I don’t remember studying the direct correlation of physical exhaustion to prolific brain death.  Sure, the basic functions in my body still happen – I breathe in and out, I walk and talk, but the rest of me seems to be on autopilot – like that object in motion that tends to stay in motion.

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I want to be an object at rest and I want to remain at rest for at least 48 hours.  I want to have my brain back – the brain that wakes me up at night, swirling words around in circles until I can grab them all from those cartoon word clouds above my head.  I want the ability to form those words into whimsical, thoughtful or romantic lines and be able to feel that creative flow coursing through my veins.

I wonder what Newton’s theory would be on my chances of winning the lottery and being able to spend my precious moments writing a best-seller?  Time + creativity = true bliss.  Until that moment, I shall struggle through the hours required at my job and hope my brain can keep up the frantic pace until Thanksgiving comes and goes.  Then, and only then, will I finally be able to strip myself of my frenzied schedule and bathe myself in lethargy.

 

 

The prodigious exultation of being a word-nerd

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Blogging has allowed me to become a true, and very contented, word snob.  I have always loved words.  As a teenager, I kept a duo-tang (who remembers those?) filled with lined paper and would make note of all the unfamiliar words I came across while devouring all the books I used to read.  Those words that eluded my pubescent mind became a staple of my vocabulary once I had defined them and cemented them into the library of my brain.  They circled my imagination and urged my cerebrum to come out to play.  They tickled my tongue and they began to flow like blood in my veins.

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(look at how lovely my penmanship was in high school)

I assiduously began to incorporate those words into as many scenarios as I could.  My teachers were duly impressed.  My fellow students merely looked at me like I had three heads.  My flamboyant wordiness was an ephemeral fantasy and I had to tone down my elevated rhetoric to become a conventional high-school student filled with angst rather than synonyms.

Today I still continue to incorporate those words into my daily conversations, not to sound more intelligent but, because I enjoy the way those words sound when I say them aloud.  I relish being able to use the phrase ‘alarmingly verbose’ instead of just saying “he talked a lot”.  I enjoy describing winter as arduous and not just “shitty”, although shitty can truly encapsulate the past winter months and potentially the ones to come.  And I will forever want to be mystified by language and not speak simply to communicate.  I want to thrive in my love for words.

My enthusiasm for articulate phrases has never waned.  It has followed me throughout my journey.  It has haunted my sleep and clandestinely pursued me during my conscious hours.  May those words forever churn in the maelstrom of my imagination and may I always be able to maintain my romance with the language of expression.