M.X. Reo Kelly
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Post-it-Note Poetry 2022: forbidden/desire and loving the monster...

1/25/2022

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It is almost time again for the yearly poetry group I participate in to once again begin posting our short poems to Facebook and/or Instagram (though I don't use Instagram anymore). 

Post-it Note Poetry's group of poets has been writing tiny poems on post-its for ten years now. Some of us has even published some of our poems from the exercise, but the goal is to write and post a poem every day, and to give ourselves the permission and self-love to write crappy poems, so long as we write something each day. 

Some years have been more successful for me than others. Some years I barely wrote five poems for the whole month. Other years were ink-fire! 2015 and 2021 were the best years for me. I wrote and posted a multimodal poem every day in the year 2015. In 2021, I went even further, writing mostly all Japanese short form poetry (haiku, senryu, tanka) and I wrote over 150 poems last year. I have not stopped either, although the flow has trickled somewhat. 

This year, since it is the poetry group's tenth anniversary, they decided to do a theme. I am not a big fan of themes, as I feel that they tend to stifle my poetic spontaneity, if I'm always trying to write about a certain subject instead of what is on my brain and heart and soul at the moment. Sometimes, I come 'round though. Sometimes I see the synchronicity; the destiny of things. The little nudging of the universe telling me "this was meant to be."

The theme they decided on was "forbidden / desire." At first, I thought "UGH..." I mean, I can write stuff like that, but not every day for 28 days. But then...

I have been researching for quite a while now some very interesting and bizarre topics for an upcoming story/novel thing: monsters, aliens/interdimensionals, cryptids, the winged humanoids and people who may or may not shapeshift into these beings. Everything being speculation for the sake of "what-if-it's true?" and openmindedness. Few of us are born with open minds, we have to develop them like any other talent. I developed mine through a childhood filled with the stories of weird stuff that happened to other people and then through a young adulthood and adult life full of its own weird crap. And the Woo is a gift that keeps on giving, yes indeed. That's sarcasm, folks. 

I have also been researching the people who love the monsters, and are obsessed with them and write about them or talk about them on podcasts or YouTubes. People kinda like me to a certain degree or beyond. People as strange as the monsters they seek...to the people who don't understand. They're not your average, cookie-cutter Joe's and Jane's. They're not those normy couch potato sorts who would never for a moment consider that there may be darker things than the shadows under the boughs of the trees, lurking in places deep inside those forests where they take the kids for camping and s'mores over the firepit. Darker things? Depends on your point of view. Definitely misunderstood things. And things that want nothing to do with the likes of the hairless beings who live in concrete and glass cages, with their nonstop destruction of the land, sea and sky.

Or do they?

What happens when we, the curious, want to know? Want to find out so badly what is in the deep dark places. What is the monster like? What does it love? What happens when this forbidden desire to know what lurks in the dark becomes an uncontrollable lust? What if "they" lust back? Are just as curious and thirsty for our mystery? And maybe more...

As I've been putting together the notes and research for my cryptid novel "So Lonesome I Could Cry" I had the wild idea about a month ago of writing poems about cryptids (not that it hasn't been done before). A whole book of poems devoted to a dark desire of giving oneself over to the call of the forest and the call of the forest-dwellers (that's probably been done, too, I don't know). At the start, I only had a title idea for the poetry book. I'd call it "cryptopoetica: love songs for unloved monsters." 

Then, they announced that theme and I wasn't happy about it at first. But then I thought... "Maybe I'll write that cryptid poetry thing sooner than I wanted to." 

I'm not even sure these poems I have in mind can be short enough for a post-it note, but since I do multimodal (pairing my words with images) I'm kind of a rebel there. I've got a busy editing schedule on my plate as well, so I'm not even sure I can write poems every day, but I'm going to give myself the freedom to "NOT" be perfect this year. In fact, there may be some days that I feel like writing a nature haiku again (I am planning a Florida nature haiku poetry book as well). But I do have some good ideas for some poems...ahem...love songs for monsters...already. 

What's more forbidden than loving a monster? Throwing ourselves into the arms of the creature pursuing us. What would we learn from it? Maybe that the monster that is lurking in the darkness is really...

...a reflection of ourselves. We don't so much need to love the monster as we need the monster to love us. The girl in the red cape who willingly beds the beast? She may be a beast herself. And it may be that the wolf is the one who should really be afraid. There have been a few great writers who have turned that story on its head.

The night is full of dark terrors and the forest is full of whispering shadows. Did you hear that? Was that... a baby? Was it...an owl...no..? That's...

Something out there is calling my name...and I must go to it. 

Oh, yes, indeed. 
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I will try making regular Progress Posts on this blog of my weekly poems as well as uploading some of them to my online chapbook little paper parasols when I have time. 
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2021 Accomplishments: Life, Research, Writing, Self-Publishing, Etcetera...

12/20/2021

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Sometimes, it doesn't feel like I've done all that much this year. But then I started making a list of all the things that I have done, all the little ups that countered the downs and made 2021 a pretty dog gone good year for me, all in all. 

Here's the best things that happened, or that I accomplished, this past year:

  1. Put together an e-book of twenty-four short speculative fiction stories and poems that I've had published in magazines and anthologies. The book will be titled Four and Twenty Blackbirds, which has to do with one of the stories in the book, as well as the number of tales and rhymes. 
  2. Wrote an amazing number of short poems in February of 2021 for the short poetry challenge that I participate in every year, the Post-It Note Poetry Challenge. I wrote well over 100 haiku, senryu, and tanka in February as well as other types of short poems, and I'm still writing them, though not quite at that pace. 2021 has been my best year for writing poetry so far. 
  3. In November, I put together another e-book containing many of the haiku, senryu, and other short poems that I wrote in February 2021 (and before and after) titled after my online poetry website little paper parasols. 
  4. I began planning three other e-books (not sure if all of these will play out, but hoping some do): 
    1. one of speculative stories and 
    2. one of speculative fiction poetry (both published and unpublished) and
    3. another of short poems only about Florida nature, tentatively titled "Florida Swamplillies: Haiku & Short Poetry About the Sunshine State" or "Lillies from the Swamp." Something like that. It will include some, but not all of the poems from the other previously mentioned short poetry e-book.
    4. I've got an idea for a 4th poetry book on dark poetry, but as of now it's just an idea...no poems written for it yet.
  5. I began planning my novel/novella about Sasquatch. Yes, I'm writing a book about Bigfoot. It's currently in the research/planning process. Parts of it will spill over into another fiction project I'm planning about aliens.
  6. I've lost a lot of weight this year. Over 30 pounds. Part of it is from hiking in the Florida woods as part of my research for So Lonesome I Could Cry (see above). Another part of it is from a diet pills and diet my nurse has me on. But it's working. 
  7. I managed to sell another story and poem or two, but I also started a blog to write about weird stuff and anime but I haven't been writing in it much due to all the research and planning and creating e-books. 
  8. I started an account on Stash and am managing to invest a little. It's up one day, down the next. That's the market right now, but Stash lets you do it a little at a time. I have a personal and retirement account that I handle, and a smart account that I throw some money into and Stash's people invest for me. I try not to invest in crappy companies that are bad for the environment or are shitty to indigenous peoples or their employees. 
  9. I've been saving money for two years now in my banking accounts and have a bit stacked up. I'm going to invest a little of it in 2022, but I'm also going to keep saving. Ever seen those memes about saving money by taking some out of your pay and doubling it every week? Well, I created a couple of those tailored for people like me who get paid bi-weekly. It's worked, like I've said. With me investing in Stash, I may do a lower amount  of bi-weekly deposits in 2022 than I did this year. 
  10. I've been taking real, honest to goodness vacations instead of stay-cations. Hiking and looking for the Big Guy, yes, and I've got two big trips planned with my partner in 2022. Myakka River State Park (squatching for three-four days) and Fanning Springs, the latter more for a weekend swimming getaway for Val and for us both to see the Suwannee River and a little bit of the Nature Coast State Trail. In 2021, we went to Lake Wales, saw some real Florida mountains (more like hills really, but pretty big ones!) and we went to Bok Tower. Someone saw some gnomes there in the fifties, but there doesn't seem to be any there now. (This is a real cryptid historical account of these gnomes in Eerie Florida by Mark Muncy). 
  11. A tiny flash story of mine was given an Honorable Mention award in a popular yearly fiction contest. I've been writing a 300-word story for Queer Sci-Fi's yearly anthology contest since I heard about it in 2018. In 2021 my story "To Have and to Hold and to Hold and to Hold" (a tiny tale that envisions the great great  great grand-relative of Cthulhu--xe was strictly a female but got a male mating organ surgically implanted so xe could reproduce--going to a dating convention to find xemself some wives) was given the accolade of Honorable Mention, along with a handful of other great stories. Perhaps someday, I'll win one of the big prizes in the contest. It's always a worthy challenge trying to write a 300 word story that makes sense to readers.
  12. My poem "Star Trip(tych)." was nominated for a Rhysling Award with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. It was originally published at the end of 2020 in Issue 2 of the magazine Speculative North. The poem was then reprinted in The 2021 Rhysling Award Anthology. Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. 

I haven't sold as many stories or poems this year. Mainly because I'm concentrating on planning and publishing longer works. I did sell a couple of small speculative poems in 2021 that will be published in 2022, in Scifaiku magazine, but that will be for me to write about in next year's post. I will probably make a goal of writing and submitting a few short stories and poems in 2022. Or not. I'm gonna play it as she lays, as they say. And 2022 will likely hold a crap ton of research for me. I'll be writing about that in my post on 2022 Reading Goals.

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Two New Poems to be Published in Scifaikufest & a Publication that Fell Through & a New Story in the Works

9/13/2021

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Whew! That's one helluva post title. Let's take it one step at a time...

I recently submitted about 5 new short poems to Scifaikufest. They've published some of my little bitty poems in the past. Out of the ones I sent, they accepted "ode to mars" and "future california; death comes to silicon valley" for publication in their November 2022 issue. That's generally how long it takes to see a your work published by them. It's a popular zine for short science fiction and fantasy poets, so they fill up issues quickly and move on to the next...and then the next...etc. 

"ode to mars" is a 7-7-7 poem, a poetry form I invented. "future california: death comes to silicon valley" is in another poetry form I invented, the octain. 

The 7-7-7 form came about when I was first trying to write haiku, a form that is strict in syllable count and topic. It's three lines, generally, with the syllable count for each line being 5-7-5. In the beginning, it would frustrate me to not be able to make those exact syllable counts, so I ended up with a lot of poems that were not perfect in form. I began to notice that a few of them had line counts of 7-7-7, or seven syllables each line. I thought instead of that being a bad thing, to turn it into a good thing, since seven is viewed as a lucky number by some folks. So, my 7-7-7 poetry form was born. I've since stopped giving so much of a shit about my syllable counts for haiku and senryu (haiku's little sister that's about human stuff instead of about nature stuff, like haiku are supposed to be). I now call my uneven haiku and senryu "rogues" and leave it at that. I've even written a "reverse" haiku or two, where the syllable counts are 7-5-7. Whatever. Poetry should be fun, Basho! 

The octain is a form I set out to create. I wanted to do something strict in syllable count, with a volta (a change in the tone of the poem around the middle of a poem), and one based on mathematics, sort of like the fibonacci poem. So you could say my octain form was born from the fibonacci. I decided the poem should be eight lines. The first line would be the subject of the poem and the last line would be the opposite of the subject. The mathematical syllabic scheme would be based in multiplication for the first 4 lines, then division for the last 4. Example. If the first line has two-syllables, the second line would have four, the third six, the fourth eight. Then around the fifth line is where the "volta" or change in tone should occur, leading the reader to the conclusion, the opposite of what we started with, and counting down in syllables again. The fifth line will repeat eight syllables, then the countdown to the final line which will have two syllables. So the syllablic scheme for a poem that starts with two syllables would be 2-4-6-8-8-6-4-2. I am very rigid in this form. This works best when you keep the first line syllable count to under 3. I've done 4, but it's hard. Very hard. See an example of one of my first octain's below, "the open and close."

That's my news on that. I'll publish the article I wrote on the octain in my upcoming poetry e-book. 

Now for the not-so good news. I blogged in December 2020 that I was going to have three poems published in March or so of 2021 with a Pakastani publisher Paper Djinn Press in an anthology called Lyric. Alas, March 2021 came and went. As did the following months until now. We got a email that they were behind, but then the information stopped. About a week ago, I got an email from the American editor who said he had lost touch with the publishers as well, and they might have gone belly up as they were having financial woes. Hey, it's happened to more than one good independent publisher in the wake of Covid. So, I will be trying to put my poems "Red," "under the robotic umbrella in the rain," and Musical Thought Drones Are Here to Assassinate You Again Today" back out on the market again soon. 

I also have a new short thing in the works. It's likely to be longer than a short story, but not quite a novel. It's a story about what happens to government workers when they've gone too far afoul of the company, and the gov just can't kill them (they may need information from them later). It's called "So Lonesome I Could Cry" and I'm digging into the research on it now, which involves watching a lot of weird TV shows made by a production company called Small Town Monsters and reading a lot of weird books and websites, and listening to a lot of podcasts involving high strangeness of all kinds, including the podcast by SMT.  So, needless to say, the "woo" in me is having a lot of fun! 

​Other than these things, I'm working on editing for others and myself. For myself, I'm working on finishing up my first collection of published speculative fiction and poetry, called Four & Twenty Blackbirds. I've also started to put together a collection of short poetry to publish in an e-book, I'll begin that project soon too.

Well, that's me all caught up now. 
the open and close (an octain)

begin 
a breath to start
a going forward stance
moment of something new and great
nevertheless succumbs to fate
missteps halting the dance
stopping the heart
ending

~m.x. kelly, 2018
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Planning a Poetry Book for November Scrivener Project

8/30/2021

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As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I was considering uploading another Scrivener e-book project for November to (half-ass) engage in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It's been a couple of years since I've done it and I miss the camaraderie. I want to connect with old friends there and cheer them on this year. 

I debated on uploading another speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) collection of published and unpublished stories and poems (one that collects mostly some of my very early stuff--and some newer stuff--from the days when I was a naive forty-year old writer who didn't know what a vanity press was). Despite this, I was proud of being newly published and these stories weren't that terrible at all, in fact, a few of them have been republished over the years, in more savory and paying markets. 

I also considered that my literary poetry doesn't get much attention at all, and I don't really try to publish it (I tried early on to get into literary magazines, and it's very competitive, so I never made very many waves there). I joined groups to get better at writing poetry, and one of them was Post-it-Note-Poetry group on Facebook, or PiNP for short. Each February for the past several years, we post our post it note poems...short poems in screen shots and encourage one another in our efforts to become better poets. This led to me searching Pixabay and Pexels for images to use with  my poetry...something I learned from my senior university professor, Dr. Trey Conner, is called multimodal poetry. I took his course in my last semester of my Bachelors of English program at University of South Florida-St. Petersburg and made that years' Post-it-Note-Poetry my first project where I used images consistently for every poem and wrote a poem every day. I posted them both to Facebook and our course Wiki page. Below is one of the poems from that year (2015), the first year I managed to write a PiNP every single day. I was as proud of that accomplishment as I was for graduating that spring Summa Cum Laude. Were they all good poems? Hell, no! Some were terrible. But I got over my fear of putting them out there for not one...but two...two audiences. Some of them, and some of my earlier and later multimodal poems are now out there for the world to see, with my online chapbook little paper parasols. 

What does all this PiNP shit have to do with NaNoWriMo? 

Patience, my young grasshoppers!

This past year, 2021's Post it Note Poetry was another gangbuster year for me. In fact, I blew 2015's year out of the damn water. I decided this year to focus on very short forms. Haiku, senryu (haiku that are not nature/season related), tanka, etc. I ended up writing over 130 poems in 28 days! 

Some of them are very good. Quite a few of them. And, unfortunately, not all of them could be made into multimodal poems for PiNP that year. So, they are just sitting in a Google Doc file. Getting added to, every now and then, because even though the flow of words has stemmed some, I still get a day or two once in awhile where something comes to me. The rush of words will hit me like a tsunami again and I have to write. And now, I'm trying to write a new poem every day. I don't know if I can...and I don't push it.  

So...after much thinking, I decided my NaNoWrimo project is going to be a book of recent short-form poetry...some of the PiNp stuff, and some of the stuff that never got a chance to be seen, and even some of the new stuff I've written since. I don't have a title for it yet, I don't know what poems I'm going to use for it, and I don't know how many... I have started a book project for it in Scrivener (novel writing application) and begun to arrange it a little bit. The only thing, I do know is that with the exception of some poems I wrote this past year called SHS (Short Horror Stories, actually poems that are horror poems--channeled a bit of EAP as well as William Carlos Williams this year) there won't be any other speculative poetry in it. 

Because this is all stuff that I have already written, it would not be fair of me to treat it as a regular NaNoWriMo, where I post daily or weekly word counts to the NaNo website in the competition (with others and one's self) to complete the month with a 50,000 word novel. I am going to sign up so I can be a cheerleader for any of my writer friends who are participating and so I can get some tips on advanced usage of the novel writing and book formatting (paperback and e-book, but mostly for e-book) software apps Scrivener and perhaps Vellum. Vellum is a very expensive but easy to use (so I've been told) book layout/publishing program. Considering that it may be worth my while to invest in it. Scrivener's "compile" feature to create e-books (I haven't yet used it to create a paperback book for Create Space or any other paperback publishing venue yet) is a right royal pain in the ass. But it is super for planning your books, laying them out, and even storing your research, and cover images. Not to mention writing the actual book, which is really what Scrivener is for. I also use Scrivener to write some longer short stories. 

So, now that I have that settled in my mind, I need to figure out which poems out of all my short ones I will publish in the book...then where I will place them. 

Working out the kinks will be the tricky part, but at least I've my mind made up and got a start on the project for my first e-book of literary short poetry. 

November, here I come!
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Do You penzu? I do...

8/28/2021

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I have about twenty or so of those paper journals, like the one shown above, lying about...some do get written in when I'm feeling like taking a pencil or pen up in my hands. 

But most of my journaling is done in the cloud these days. And creative writing note-taking...and story planning. And poetry writing. And private blogging/cathartic writing. 

I was doing a lot of it on Google Docs until I read that Google like probably can read everything I write and maybe share my shit against my will with people I don't want to read it. Not fucking cool, Google. 

So I searched on my Safari (totally safe Mac browser...as far as I know) for a private way to get my thoughts on the screen and into a space...before I share them in any other spaces (if I choose to do so). 

I found penzu...the totally private and secure online web journalling experience. 

The basic one journal with basic bells and whistles is free. But you can pay just a little bit more and get lots more features, including unlimited number of journals, covers and page and pad images you can change, extra cool fonts, etc. For me, it was worth it to pay for the PRO+ version, butt the free or regular PRO version will probably do for most. PRO+ wasn't that much more expensive than PRO and it has extra level encryption. (Even though I'm saving up for something else I might need later on that's kind of expensive but as a writer who wants to self publish, I will probably need eventually and I'm planning on taking my blogs to the pro level as well). 

​Below is a look at my Home screen with all my journals (so far)...

The penzu PRO+ Home screen layout

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The one I've worked most recently in, Writing Projects, is positioned top left and largest on the screen. The others are around in, clockwise rotation order according to when I last worked in them. I have used my own images for the covers of each. They look pretty cool don't they? 

I'm not suggesting you buy the PRO or PRO+ version. I happened to get it when it was on a deal where they threw in another year for half  off, so it was a good deal. You can add images and tags to your posts just like a blog and you can also privately share links to it with people...if you want to do that. 

I chose to do PRO because my first journal I made in there, 'wandering starseed,' is where I'm pre-writing some of the more sensitive personal posts of my dealings with weird phenomenon that I normally post on my other blog... "reo_k's weirdworldview" but these are really sensitive posts and will not get posted to the main blog, but to private content pages of that blog once I have that part of the blog up and running. For discreet and special eyes only.

The page layout is simple to use and you can also time-stamp your entries if you want to keep track of when you started writing them. That's helpful for me...lets me know when I'm taking too long on something and need to get my ass in gear. 

​Below is a view of the writing area layout:
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It looks pretty much like any other blogging app but there are some extra cool features. That light bulb in the upper right? If you are stuck for something to write, in total writer's block hell, you can click on that for prompts. How awesome is that? And everything is100% private, unless you choose to share it with someone. 
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penzu app for private journaling. Free, PRO for $19.99 per year and PRO+ for $49.99 per year. Sometimes they have sales for an extra year at half off. Worth checking out if you can afford it. See more at https://penzu.com .

File under..."Cool Tools for Writers, Bloggers, and Journal-Keepers". 
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What Will Be My NaNoWriMo Project?

8/27/2021

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I mean, if I even have time for it. 

I am really busy editing OWMs. Other Writer's Manuscripts. I have several projects in Scrivener—I've started to create books of some previously published short stories, flash fiction, micro fiction, drabbles, and poetry. I am working on getting my first one out the door and onto Amazon.com where I hope to make a little penny or two. 

Before I do, I need to completely overhaul (this) my author website. It's a total mess. I don't know what I was thinking putting that thing together the first time. It was basically the first time I'd messed with the Weebly website creator...and you can tell. It's ugly as hell. I don't even have my complete published work's on it. 

So I'll do that a little bit at a time while I contemplate what I'm working in for November...if I'm working on anything new or not. I have a novel I need to finish (The Strange Blue Days of Dr. Fountainbrew) and a new one I've started planning (​​​​​​​Zen and the Art of Alien Diplomacy). I am also planning a story or novella about Bigfoot (tentatively titled ​​​​​​​So Lonesome I Could Cry). I have a Penzu started on Lonesome with some clippings of research and ideas. I have most of my research going on for the new novel in Scrivener (which is where I do almost all novel work). 

If I do any uploading of published works to a new Scrivener e-book project (either short unpublished poetry or published speculative fiction/poetry, I haven't decided yet) I won't do a "typical" NaNo. I won't post Word Count updates and such. I mean...it's really not fair since I've already written all the stuff I'm loading into Scrivener, and NaNo is really for new words to count. I will log into it and and  wave my pompoms for my fellow writers on their projects and post my updates on Write Track (writetrack.davidsgale.com) and to SMS. 

I don't anticipate having much time to do anything more than planning for new stuff at the moment...so all of my new writing will take place after November. It can't be helped. I'm saving for my retirement, and I enjoy editing and will probably continue to do it, even when I retire...if I ever can retire. 

I'm more than likely just going to sign up for NaNo this year with a tentative cover for either my poetry book or my published fiction book and then cheer everyone else while I work on figuring out the kinks of getting Scrivener to compile a decent-looking .epub file for Amazon. It's really a brain-buster. I also need to sign up to be an Amazon author. That's an involved process as well. So my busy time will revolve around a lot of prep work and making the decision to either stick with Scrivener to compile/process my e-books for Amazon uploads, or invest in the pricey but easier-to-use with far more creative options book publishing software, Vellum. 

So lots to think about and lots to prepare. 

Haiku & short poems? Or another offering of previously published sci-fi, fantasy and horror? 

I have a little while yet to decide.
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Let's Write Some Stories, Shorties!--ShoStoWriMo: August 2019

7/29/2019

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I started and admin a small writing group on Facebook of nearly 40 writers that is geared toward taking one or two months out of the year to write nothing but short stories. In a fit of utter unoriginal creativity (joke—and apologies to Chris Baty) I decided to call it Short Story Writing Month. ShoStoWriMo for short, of course. 

    I started the group in 2014, in an attempt to get more short stories under my belt. Our first little but tight-knit group (about a dozen or so back then) could not decide which month to do it that year, as it was just after NaNoWriMo and those who participated in that were very tired. I had a lousy writing month in November that year and did not participate in NaNo, so I was anxious to do something, ANYTHING, to get going again. I think we eventually settled on doing it in the early part of the coming year. 

    We did it for a few years and then we kind of all stopped. Ya know, shit happens, the Muse and the Plot Bunneh team up and pull you away on other projects, or you just get sick or tired or overworked, or you get sick AND tired AND overworked (pointing at myself, here). Life throws you lemons and you hate lemonade. Stuff. 

    Well, I decided to try again this year, and I decided to try doing this soon. I have a major editing gig I'm doing at the moment that I will complete by the end of July. So I decided August would be a good month to go shorty and do ShoStoWriMo. I want to ask the publisher I edit for to give me a small job for August that will give me enough time in between to whittle out a new tale or two and finish some shorts that are on the back-burner. It may not be possible, but that is the plan. At any rate, I will be writing short stories for the month of August this year and I've invited my fellow shorties to join me on the ShoStoWriMo page. 

    Shorties, you say? What the hell, you say? Well, since novelists who participate in the NaNoWriMo craze (and you have to be a bit crazy to write a novel in a month) are called Wrimos, I thought it might be fun to call my comrades for Short Story Writing Month "shorties." Who knows, maybe this will become a craze too! I'd like to be known for one little positive influence on this dumpster fire of a planet before I shuffle off the mortal coil and exit stage left. 

    If you want to join us this August, feel free. If you want to join the official Facebook group, it can be found here: 
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    Let's write some shorties, Shorties!

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RESOLVED! 2 for 1/2! Plus Upgrades

1/2/2017

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It feels good to be off to a great start writing in the new year. 

And so far, two of my resolutions are checked off.

First, I wanted to write more blog posts, and although I did not specify and make any certain plans known in my original resoultion post, secretly I made a challenge to myself to write (and publish) a piece for three consecutive days. Today's post is the third. 

I'm not sure I'll be able to continue writing daily posts once I start working both jobs again (and, Goddess help me, I'm considering trying to start freelancing in editing and proofreading as a third job). But the challenge I have set for myself is at least one per week. 

The other resolved resolution was writing more creative fiction and poetry. My grandmother always said that whatever you do on New Year's Day, you will do for the rest of the year. So I worked on and completed a poem from my Priority WIP poem list (more on that in another post). I also started, but didn't finish, a new poem and some future blog posts. 

Today, I will begin fulfilling another of my goals for the year. I will choose a book on writing and editng craft from the five I picked out from my collection of books on craft that I was either given or bought, but haven't yet read. Everyday, I plan to read a chapter or two from each of the five books. Today, I have chosen to read the first chapter of a book that has been on my shelf since shortly after I moved into my current apartment four years ago. Revision and Self-Editing is written by James Scott Bell and published by Writer's Digest Press. I think I got it for some ridiculously low price when I subscribed to Writer's Digest.

There are also some upgrades to my resolutions. I intend to seek out opportunities for beginning my editing and proofreading career. I hope to save enough money to be able to have my first paying issue of The Were-Travler (information, here). I am hoping to soon sign on to a monthly membership of the gym at the high-rise office building where my new office at the public media company will be located. I want to keep losing weight and feel better. I plan on a long long overdue visit at the dentist (as soon as I get some decent dental insurance) and do something about these awful broken and painful teeth of mine. 

That's it, folks. Just a few excited lines of success in the first week of the new year. I am hoping to receive some long awaited news about some poetry and fiction submissions made in the past. A nice acceptance email would be a great harbinger of 2017. I would blog about that, for sure. 

I hope your pursuits will all be successful as well. 

Peace--
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J.K. Rowling: "The Fringe Benefits of Failure"

1/1/2017

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A shorter clip of this was posted on Facebook earlier in the year, and it resonated with me. So I decided to watch the longer version of the YouTube clip of a commencement speech given by J.K. Rowling on the subject of the unexpected benefits of failure. 

The beginning of the New Year is typically the time we begin to re-evaluate the past year and make up our minds to better ourselves in the future. But we often have difficulty admitting defeat, even to ourselves, because in our modern society failure carries a negative connotation rather than a positive one. But perhpas it should be different. It's normal to feel some negativity and self-loathing after failing, but that should not last long. It should be soon followed by positive re-focusing of one's energies to strive to be better next time. Joanne nails these points in her own brilliant way. 

It's a little longer than the clip posted on Facebook, but well worth watching. The author of the famous Harry Potter series talks about the most valuable lesson she ever learned in one of the best commencement speeches I've ever heard. 

I've been meaning to post this talk of Joanne's for awhile now, but today it hits home more, so I'm finishing this post and sharing it with the world. Because sometimes you need silver linings when the rainbow fades to pale. 

​May we shoulder onward through our defeats and come out victorious in the end!
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New Year's Ressies for 2017

12/31/2016

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Happy End of 2016! Sayonara, you crap excuse of a year!  Here’s my plan for the coming year:
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  1. I know I say this every damn year, but I really need to blog more. My last post was two months ago on October 3rd. That is unacceptable. I need to find things to say and freaking say them, on my web log. End of. This will be a priority. To blog weekly or every other week.
  2. Read more. I had a reading goal of 100 books on Goodreads in 2016 and I fell well short of that goal. I hang my head in sorrowful shame. There are a few books I am determined to read this coming year, books that will strengthen me as a writer/poet, editor, proofreader, and publisher. I want to read a chapter a day (or as much as I can daily) of each of the following books of the craft:
    1. The Editor’s Companion, by Steve Dunham
    2. The Subversive Copy Editor, by Carol Fisher Saller
    3. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, by Christopher Vogler
    4. Revision and Self-Editing, by James Scott Bell
    5. poemcrazy, by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge
      1. I will only schedule 5 craft-help books to read from daily, leaving the weekend free to pursue writing and reading fiction. I have some fiction reading goals as well: 
      2. Finish:
        1. Archivist Wasp, by Nicole Kornher-Stace, and;
        2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
        3. Read the following fiction books:
          1. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
          2. Collected Stories, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
          3. Best American Fantasy, ed. by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer
          4. The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, ed. by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer
  3. Live more, laugh more, worry less. Times will be difficult. We have an infantile idiot in charge of our country. We can protest, but we can also find joy in our every day experiences.
  4. I’m going to pursue freelance work with a passion, while I continue to work both of my other jobs.
  5. I’m going to write, write, write. I need to get some more fiction accomplished, so that I have something good to send grad schools.  
  6. Study for the GRE, take it, and pass the damn thing.
  7. Keep on breathing. Keep on, keepin’ on. Very important, this one. Because when we stop, we die.

My wishes for you for 2017:
  • May you find joy when you look for it. And here’s a bit of interesting news, if you dig thinking about the Chinese zodiac as I do. The Year of the Fire Monkey (2016) was pretty shitty. The Year of the Fire Rooster (2017) may not be that much better. In 2018, though, we begin a new element cycle, with the year of the Earth Dog, so things could start turning around then. I hope. I don’t believe in these things, really, but I love thinking about them. It’s the creative Wood Snake in me. ;)

This is it, really. Going to continue to pursue better health, but not listing that as a goal because I’m doing it already and I’m going to continue.

Heiwa! Peace!
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