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Tag: poetry

Forty-eight

Age is just a number. You’re as old as you feel. I’m going to be forty-eight years old on March 27th. Two years shy of fifty; two years before I am a half a century old. In all honesty, I’m not really sure how I feel about that. I don’t really feel almost a half century, although I do have my share of health challenges. But I do notice a difference from when I was twenty and now. I was recently waiting to speak to one of my doctors, one who is still doing telehealth, in fact — and it’s a video call. So while in the “waiting room,” I could see a small video window of myself. And wow. Boy, did I see a difference. I did see many years on my face. It helped that I had a picture of myself at nineteen (one of those Glamour ShotsTM, if you remember them from the 90s) right in front of me on my husband’s dresser. The differences were remarkable. I don’t have a lot of wrinkles, thanks to my family’s slow aging. But I could see a bit of a difference in my face and eyes. I looked, well, older. Of course, I’ve put on a bit of weight, too, as most of us do. (Also? Around that time I was actually underweight due to illness, if you can believe that one!) so my face and body are a bit more filled out. My hair is a bit thinner,…

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Journaling for Self-Love

So, one of my goals for 2024 was to cultivate more self-love/self-care for myself. And I had a brilliant idea one day in the shower (as one does). I decided to pull a Tarot card each day and think about what good quality I had that matched it — and journal a bit about it. For example, if I got The Chariot…the Chariot is about victory, attaining your goals, taking steps to move forward…I’d write about how I’m driven to succeed, I’m a go-getter, and how I’ve accomplished many of my goals because of this. And so on. And then I thought, hey, it’d be cool to decorate this journal a bit, kinda like a scrapbook, make it kinda fun and pretty. I’m not the best scrapbooker, to be honest. I used to scrap back in the day, with my sister and a mutual friend (we even did those 12-hour events which were a blast) and I did okay, but my pages were never gorgeous. But they were decent. My sister brought me supplies in boxes for this project and one of them was mine. I saw some of my old stuff, and I was a bit taken aback because…wow…twenty-some-odd years ago…I didn’t even remember creating those pages…and they were of things I’d done with my ex-husband…but they weren’t bad. Not at all. The journal is for me only, so I am not about making it perfect. Just fun and pretty. I want to add pictures and poetry and collage-type…

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2024 is Coming

To piggyback off Kit’s post (because I have no creativity whatsoever this week), I’ve been doing some noodling about 2024 and what I want to accomplish. This year has been a bit of a mixed bag writing-wise, some good, some not-so-good, and I’d like to ramp it up a bit, assuming there are no horrific crises or emergencies or general ongoing unpleasantness that makes things, well, unpleasant. So let’s talk about how things went this year first, shall we? I had a few goals. They were: To publish an erotic contemporary romance novella on Radish (similar to Kindle Vella), which was a pivot/experiment to see how readers would respond to my writing in a different genre. Result: The novella, BAV, as I am calling it, is about 1/3rd done. It’s on hold a bit while I figure some stuff out. It ended up being a bit deeper than I’d intended, delving into subjects like parental control, religious cults, and BDSM. Sooo I am deciding if I want to go all in, or if I want to rein it in some. To finish my anthology story. Result: I rewrote it twice, and started yet another rewrite which I believe will be the last. It just wasn’t working the first two times. It’s about 5,000 words now. Again, on hold, but I have full intentions of finishing. This antho has had a floating deadline, so I’ve been sort of waiting for the muse to get back on board with this one. To…

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The Nano That Wasn’t

So last month, I talked about participating in NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with two books, alternating or working on whatever book I felt like working on. And at the time, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable, doable plan. Especially since I wasn’t planning on trying to make the usual 50,000-word goal. And then November actually hit. For the first half of the month, I had a lot going on with work, which is fine — I never complain about money coming in — and I figured, okay, this first half is a wash. Maybe I can just do Nano for the second half then. I’m chuckling to myself because it’s the 21st, 9 days from the end of the month, and I have yet to write a single word. I haven’t even written a poem. Nada. Nothing. So what the heck happened? Life happened. Life. Life stress. Health stress — nothing serious, but just enough to cause some…fun motivation issues. Chronic extreme fatigue being one. I’m still battling that. The holidays are approaching, which are their own unique brand of stress. Things are imploding. The thought is there, but every time I think about actually, you know, actually writing, my muse side-eyes me and says, Seriously? In the middle of this freaking mess? Have you lost it? And I sigh and set the thought aside yet again. It’s pretty awful, because my main way of dealing with stress is…you guessed it…writing. And I haven’t consistently written for years now.…

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To Nano or Not to Nano, That is the Question

It’s seven days till the big day — the first day of National Novel Writing Month, which is basically Christmas for a lot of us writers who love to participate every year (like me), and I am wibbling on what to do, like my fellow Turtleducker Kit Campbell talked about in her blog recently. Normally, because of work, I’d say no way, or sign up and attempt it and maybe write a few hundred or thousand words and call it “a valiant effort,” and feel like I tried, but damn, the experience was lost, again, because I couldn’t fully participate like I wanted to. It’s been this way for a long time. I can tell you already that I have an editing job hitting at the end of November. Not too bad, but…I have an ongoing job that got put off a bit due to some extenuating circumstances that needs to get done, preferably before this one hits. I have assorted author assistant things happening that are the usual things, but they take time too. It’s all part of my work, which I love, so this isn’t a complaint by any stretch. It’s just…I’m still trying to carve out the time to write more consistently. I can’t seem to manage it. I am hoping I hit upon the sweet spot, that method that’s been eluding me for literal years since I started my business…so I can maybe do something this Nano. It won’t be 50k like it used to be…

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Another Update on the Bad Poetry Project

I didn’t want to update on this so soon, but I just have to give you all my news…. I have FOUR poems accepted for publication. Three for Naked Cat Literary and one for Free Verse Revolution. I am very, very honored, proud, and excited. I knew that someday I’d get there, but the question was when…and lo and behold, both acceptances came in my email the same day. How’s that for wild? I’m still on Cloud Nine. Today I just submitted another poem to Naked Cat Literary (love that name!), the one that accepted the three poems. Interesting story about this acceptance. I sent my poems in. I didn’t hear anything, and they had mentioned in their Twitter (X?) feed that they were starting to send replies, but didn’t indicate that they’d sent all of them yet. So I sat tight, waiting, on pins and needles. During this time, I had a weird prescient feeling that they would be the first ones to accept my poetry. Why, I couldn’t tell you. It just was. So then a week or so later, they tweeted that they were working on their next publication. And I wondered, were they done sending replies? And I hadn’t gotten anything? Not even in my spam mail? Hmmm. Time to politely — very politely — nudge. So I did that, via Twitter, and overnight they’d tweeted me back that they’d look into it (they were very apologetic, which I appreciate) and when I got up the…

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So…how’s the Bad Poetry Project Going, Erin?

Well, I am glad you asked! Seems like a good time to give you all an update. But first, do you know that I started the Bad Poetry Project three years ago? Mama mia, where did the time go? I have been writing poetry like a mad thing. Yes. More than fiction, to be honest. (I’m up to 11,000 words of fiction this year, which isn’t too bad considering everything, but I was hoping for more. So I’ll be working on that, too.) Poetry is easier because it’s quick, it’s efficient, and there’s a set beginning and ending. Plus, I can sit here and pound out a poem while doing my work. So it lends itself to being squeezed into pockets of time better than fiction. Not that I like it better, per se. Just that it’s been easier as of late. So, yeah. More poems. I’ve also been using Instagram prompts, which have been so useful, because sometimes I’ll start with a nebulous idea of…something, but I’ll have no idea where or how to start. So I’ll just be like…spinning my wheels. Prompts give me a place to start it ….a leaping off point. I collect them every month from poets who regularly post them, then mine them for inspiration later. It’s very effective. I’m still writing in Esperanto, also, which has been a blast. But …drum roll please…I’ve started submitting my poems to literary magazines! Yes! I’ve taken the plunge! I haven’t done this in over twenty years,…

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The Hailey Chronicles: Saying Goodbye

Get ready to cry, y’all, because this story is a sad one. 🙁 (TW: pet death) One week ago, we had to say goodbye to our sweet furbaby Hailey. I’ve talked about her before. She had kidney disease. We were taking her to the vet three times a week for fluids and had her on a regimen of medication to keep her comfortable and functioning well, as she was nearing nineteen and a half. We knew her time was coming to an end — but by the beginning of this year, she was still mostly stable. Her bloodwork looked okay — not fantastic, because kidney disease, but not horrendous, either — and she still had fight in her. She’d still play, get on my mother’s lap, eat, drink, get on our kitchen table when we cooked to try to get scraps (or, spend time with her favorite humans), and hung out with me when I worked at night, often battling me to be allowed to walk on my keyboard. Damn, she loved it. It’s backlit in a rainbow of colors, which I think was the attraction. I have several Google Sheets that she’d completely bork if she did her little stroll across it, so there was always this panicked, “No, Hailey, no!” thing with me grabbing her gently and placing her next to my computer, encouraging her to just sit there and let me pet her instead. Sometimes it worked, and I’d work one handed, petting her with my free…

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Why Perfectionism Sucks

About a week ago, I read an awesome poem on Instagram. I follow a lot of poets on there, and I collect prompts and post my own stuff and generally try to participate in the poetry community when I can. Anyway, this poem inspired me, and I commented to the poet that I “might write an after poem inspired by it.” (An “after poem” is basically that — a poem inspired by another poem, or a response to it). The poet was obviously excited and happy to read that because she said, “Please, please do!” So I did. The poem was on “All the Places I’ve Lost Myself.” But my version didn’t quite hit the mark; in fact, I believe I veered completely off course. As one does. Oops? I wasn’t happy with it. Well, it wasn’t bad per se. It just wasn’t what I was hoping for as an after poem. If you recall, these Instagram poems are part of my Bad Poetry Project, so they don’t have to be perfect. But all of a sudden, the perfectionism monster reared its ugly head. One revision, I told myself. Just to get it right. I had some better ideas. I was sure I could nail it. And…I almost did? But not quite. Not quite. Now, here’s the problem. I am a total perfectionist. I know this about myself. I’m not allowed to make mistakes, not allowed to be anything less than 100% perfect. Why? I suspect trauma — being bullied,…

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Timelines

by Siri Paulson I am increasingly convinced that we are living in the wrong timeline the one the time traveler is supposed to come back and fix she was supposed to win he was meant to live we should have learned our lesson from the pandemic that almost was from that time we all messed up, or the other time, or the other one but she has taken a wrong turn in the multiverse he is fighting the pterodactyls stuck in the far future with the giant crabs intubated in some locked-down ward the portal dark and idle the time machine hidden and locked up tight waiting for the one with the knowledge who will never come to release it from its long and lonely wait or maybe they know not to come here maybe these are the years they always skip in their tours through the past maybe this is how things have to be if we want the shiny future we were promised long ago maybe we’re waiting for a rescue that will never come there’s no-one but us to mend the timeline to put things right one butterfly at a time we are all time travelers one second per second, one way only one day we’ll live in the future how it looks is up to us

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