sharing a poetic LIFELINE with the world

Archive for the ‘Creative Writing’ Category

Douglas Adams Was Right

dscn2333-copy-e1346813656376For the past several weeks, I’ve suffered computer meltdown — and I do mean I, personally, suffered from it. Seemed to do everything I could to not go with the flow (except bile, which ran freely through my system). Even my incredible Standard Poodle, Harlee, tuned in to my angst with a vengeance. By Saturday night, we were both howling at the moon most of the night.

What started as a bit of quirkiness grew into anarchy by my home devices. The iMac, recently upgraded to Mountain Lion, apparently decided it didn’t “do” wifi anymore, certainly not with the old D-Link router. If it stood its ground and absolutely refused to allow me internet access, or to network with the other computers in the house, I would have wrapped it up and taken it directly to the Computer Hospital.

It preferred to toy with me, like the cat it is. It would work “sometimes” for a few minutes; occasionally it did this when I first turned it on during the day. Then, obviously it was bored and checked out. The intermittent aspect drove me nuts. It loved to pretend we were buddies again, let me get into something important, and then — nothing. Pleading and threats were about as effective as you might expect.

The iMac also figured it had nothing in common with our five-year-old HP printer, either. Refused to acknowledge that a driver even existed that would allow them to work together. Nope. No way. I couldn’t check for updates, because — wait for it — guess who was not able to get online . . . ?

The Windows 7 laptop got in on the act. It, too, refused to communicate with the Mac. It did pretend it liked the printer, and spit out test page after test page when asked, but nothing else. So, if I needed eighteen original test pages, it would be happy to accommodate me.

As someone who straddles two worlds, Apple and Microsoft, I’m continuously pulled off balance. Documents created or updated on the Mac refuse to hold formatting when exported to Word. Spreadsheets designed for XLS will not open properly on the Mac unless uploaded or created on the laptop first, saved in DropBox, or (when it works) pulled from one to the other via the in-house network/wifi.

My husband’s old XP desktop was still functioning, probably best of anything, until we got our tech-person out; he fixed a lot, but put a password onto Len’s computer, which threw him out of whack.

It seems that my iMac has a faulty wifi card, which needs to be replaced — when I’ll have the “right time” to do it is a mystery. The D-Link fought a good fight, but had to be retired; failing eye-wire-circuit coordination gets to the best of them. The new router, a spiffy Air Express (I think) is sleek, and capable — but, in exquisite irony — can only function well right now to deal with wifi when it’s actually plugged in to the Mac. Um, a hard-wired wifi; I’m sure someone’s made a fortune on a joke about this already.

The laptop also seems to be answering to a higher authority than me — or Mr. Tech Man. He finally took it away with him to find out who’s the boss, telling it to ignore what it needs to do, and stop doing what it shouldn’t — like spitting out test pages.

Only the iPad behaved itself, relatively speaking, during this time. It opened most of the email (but not all of it); let me get into the internet much of the time, as the only sane device around here that at least thought it was supposed to be able to use the wifi system to do it. If only it could have accessed some of the material I desperately needed from the Mac. If it knew how to do that, it decided not to upset the Big Mac, so played dumb.

For the better part of these three weeks or so, I’ve tried all kinds of tricks to get into my documents to deal with crazy deadlines for the Muse Online Writers Conference next month, the next issue of Apollo’s Lyre, posts for this blog, and material pertaining to my car accident from almost two years ago. Time is running out on all of them. In order to use them, they have to be converted to Word or XLS, pulled into the laptop, and handled from there.

I’ve tried to see the humor in all of this, at least today, now that I’ve been able to get most of what I needed for the car accident paperwork at least. I can see a good country music song tangled in the lyrics, or the sixth volume in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy — imagine Arthur Dent, waking up one Thursday morning, knowing he hates Thursdays because everything goes wonky those days. Imagine he opens his front door and Deep Thought, the infamous computer, burps at him. Take it from there into absurdity.

avalanche-64-copy

So, Douglas Adams was right when he said, back around 1978, that the Earth is a giant computer, and white mice run experiments on humans all the time. If you don’t believe this, then give me a better explanation of the behavior exhibited around my house lately.  No prissy ideas about hardware and software. No, I want you to get to the heart of this thing.

And write about it in verse, any form you choose. (Hey, gang, what’s crazier than Limericks to deal with the absurd?)

 

 

Category:

Creative Writing, Creativity, Michele

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Sometimes We Stumble

It’s been almost a year since I wrote the following in response to a discussion question on Why do I Write? It spiraled further than I was expecting, and it’s something I keep circling back to.

As long as I can remember I’ve wanted to write. From my very first stories in first grade, and the encouraging words of my teacher, and my love of books. Even as my other interests varied, the desire to be an author when I grew up remained constant. Books were my escape (which being an introvert with eight siblings was much needed), and I wanted to create my own worlds, share that wonder with readers. Now writing has become an escape for me, much as reading has been.

Fantasy has always inspired me. Creating fantastical worlds, or bringing the fantastic into our own. In writing I try to capture that magic. And when it works, when I can read something I wrote and get carried away, and think “I actually wrote that!”, is a form of magic in itself. A huge sense of accomplishment. There really isn’t anything in life that affects me the same way.

In high school I finally started being serious about writing. Wrote and submitted poetry, even got a few published. Wrote short stories. Started plotting out my novel. But it wasn’t for another couple years that I really started writing that novel. Each new page, each chapter, excited me. I was finally going after my dream. And I had the wonderful support of one of my sisters who was also writing *her* first book. So we read and praised each others work, challenged each other to deadlines, and actually managed to finish the same month.

Having already experienced the challenges of getting published through my efforts with poetry and short stories, I knew enough to edit my book before sending it out. And while I edited, I researched publishing. Learned I wanted to target an agent before tackling the big publishers. So after a year of editing (with the feedback of a couple beta readers, and many drafts), I used QueryTracker to help me find agents for my genre and charged forward gungho. One year later, fifty queries behind me with only a sparse handful of requests and no serious feedback or bites… I figured something must be seriously wrong with my first novel and didn’t know how to fix it. So I benched it.

I had already started a couple of novels at this point, so the new goal was to finish a second book. That was two [now three] years ago. I’ve been struggling ever since. I love my stories, I’ve heard my writing has improved massively since my first book, and I can spend hours plotting, doing character work, research. But when it comes to the actual writing I tend to freeze up. I’ve tried many techniques, but the writing still comes in inconsistent spurts. So I write less often… and get even more out of the habit. But those story ideas are still pestering. And when I read what I *do* have, I know it needs work but that excitement and love is still there.

Maybe I am afraid. All that frustration trying to publish my first book, all those hours, a total of nine revisions, multiple query rewrites and all those rejections… Why would I want to put so much work into another project only to see it fail too? I read these wonderful books that I can’t put down, and feel I can’t compete, that no matter how much I write I’ll always fall short.

Back to the present: The only light in the tunnel was a few days after posting this, we heard word that Lifelines was to be published. That gave me focus for a while. But now I’m emotionally back to this same space. Any advice for a struggling writer?

mary-sig2

 

 

Category:

Creative Writing, Mary's Expression

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Make Visible: The Muse Online Writers Conference

write-picThe Muse Online Writers Conference

The next MuseCon will be held October 8-14,2012.

Although registration for this fabulous and free online writers conference isn’t open yet, it soon will be.

The Poetic Muselings will be hosting a poetry workshop at the 2012 Muse Online Writers Conference!!!

Hope to see you there!

Just read this Mission Statement! (from the website, home address is:  http://themuseonlinewritersconference.com/joom/)

 

Mission

 

Our Online Writers Conference is aimed to offer you, the writer, whatever resource we can to give you the opportunity to enhance and improve your craft, to offer the opportunity to make contacts to reach that next level all writers seek – publication!

Our vision for organizing this online and very FREE writers conference as an annual event is to bring the writing world a bit closer for you. I understand many writers out there do not have the monetary resources to attend face-to-face conferences, or perhaps they are situated far, and even some writers may be incapacitated making it difficult for them to travel.

Within the world of the Internet, everything is possible and with this in mind we offer you this chance to come out, chat with our Presenters, ask them questions and even attend a few of our FREE workshops to be held throughout the week.

And remember…this is a smoke-free environment.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at:

lea at themuseonlinewritersconference dot com

 

Writing

Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

 

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”~Robert Bresson, French Film Director

 

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Community, Creative Writing, Creativity, Make Visible, Poetry

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More on Limericks

Cover of "The Limerick"

Cover of The Limeric

I love rhyme. I love limericks, and I’ve written quite a few. Here, since I now have the perfect excuse,
are a few new ones.

Here’s one:

There once was a young lad from Kyoto
one evening while viewing a photo
saw a face so grotesque
it resembled a desk
and was sure he had seen Quasimodo.

and another:

One evening while cooking some rice,
a lass went to look for some ice.
When she failed to return,
the rice started to burn.
The poor lass had to cook her rice twice.

A note on meter in limerick:

The feet (metrical feet, not the things at the ends of your legs) for a limerick is typically an anapest
dum, dum, DUM or an amphibrach
dum DUM dum
with the first, third, and fifth lines consisting of three feet of three syllables each, and the third and fourth consisting of two metrical feet.

Edward Lear popularized the limerick,  but in contrast to modern limericks, they contain neither humor nor  a punch line, and the first and last lines were often the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lear

Although Mr. Lear wrote some limericks
I’m thinking they really are gimmericks,
First and last lines the same
make them seem pretty lame.
and of humor there’s nary a glimmerick.

And here’s one about Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick:

Expressing intention to pass
on a third term, the governor of Mass
saw his influence ebb.
It’s all over the web.
Is he planning to seek greener grass?

Category:

Creative Writing, Focus on Form, Margaret's Musing

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Limericks — How It All Started For Me

Power of the Pen – Limericks

St. Paddy’s Day weekend 2009, I read my poems publicly for the first time at an open mic event. Terrified at exposing my babies to the harsh elements of public view. Even more terrified at the form I chose — limericks.

The Poetic Muselings were experimenting with different forms, and this was a huge stretch, but what better way to go all the way out on the limb?  Here’s what gave me strength to lead us on our journey. If political satire (especially in an election year) upset you, perhaps you want to skip this musing.

Power of the Pen

We need a new four-letter word
To deny this is simply absurd.
To say what we mean
and not be obscene —

The best way for the herds to be heard

****************

Hooray for good old “uck”
One letter changes a duck
into something we find —
outrageous? sublime?

the epitome of our yucked-up old luck?

****************

Politicians are so damn perverse
Campaigning should all be in verse
let rapier wits
expose all the twits

Then watch them go lurch in reverse

***************

The elected have grandiose schemes
to fix economic machines
Trust us, they say
we work magic today

Naked Emperors with unraveled seams

***********

Don’t worry, my darling, my honey
They’re only just stealing our money
They really don’t care
that they trade in despair —

Now tell me how that can’t be funny.

*****

 

 

Category:

Michele, Poetry

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A Series of Limericks: tips included

Limericks are not my strength. Try as I might, I cannot spin them off the top of my head. It took me all day to get two decent ones. If you’re not familiar with the form, I found a good guide on About.com by Grace Fleming: How to Write a Limerick. Here are a few tricks I use to get through them:

  1. Do the first two lines (the setup) and the last line (the punchline) first. All these have the same rhyme, and gives you the frame to work with. Then fill in lines three and four (transition) which only have to rhyme with each other.
  2. Use a rhyming dictionary! I use The Scholastic Rhyming Dictionary. Helps for getting out of tight corners when you use a word with not very many rhymes.
  3. Along the last lines, sometimes you have this idea you want, but can’t find workable rhymes. Like in my second limerick below, I wanted to do “Sang for her supper” but could NOT get a decent follow up. Solution: find a synonym. A thesaurus is a handy tool for poets.
  4. If you still struggle coming up with something, give yourself a theme. Write about a friend, or a book character, or spin off a fairy tale. Have fun with it!

Without further ado, here are my two Limericks.

Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood (Photo credit: lllllT)

There once was a red-hooded girl
Who through the dark woods did twirl
‘Til a sound made her scream
And fall in a stream
Turned out it was only a squirrel

There once was a girl from Cancun
Who couldn’t carry a tune
Her song for a meal
Made a werewolf reel
And now she howls at the moon

Category:

Focus on Form, Poetry, Tools

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Make Visible: Focus on Form: Really Bad Limericks

I wrote these today.  I’m not one to write limericks.  I’m not real comfortable with the form.  The last one is for a special friend of mine.

Here goes nothing!

Presenting Really Bad Limericks:

 

Savannah

There was a girl from Savannah
Who had the most terrible manners
She never said please
And often would tease
Even those who tripped on peeled bananas.

Seattle

There was a man from Seattle
Who got in the rottenest battles
If he sat next to you at a bar
Best to take yourself very far
From his brass knuckles, used often on cattle.

 

Ocean Shores

There was a woman from Ocean Shores
Who only saw open doors
She was so positive
That God was the causative
With only good things in store.

 

Orlando

There was a lady from Orlando
Who was all about the Can-Do
Collages, poems and short stories
Productive, even with her health worries
Wish I had her ducks in a row.
“Savannah,” “Seattle,” “Ocean Shores,” and “Orlando” © Anne Westlund

 

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”~Robert Bresson, French Film Director

 

 

Category:

Creative Writing, Focus on Form, Make Visible, Uncategorized

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Focus on Form: Lip-Synch a Limerick

English: A pair of high heeled shoe with 12cm ...

Time for something fun, poetry fans. Put away that solemn face and let your Inner Child out to play by writing a limerick.

In its simplest form, the limerick has five lines. It is lighthearted,  sometimes naughty, witty and provokes a laugh. If you want to be a stickler for the form, Wiki says it is “anapestic or amphibrachic meter with a strict rhyme scheme (AABBA)”.  Follow that or do your own thing. like I did below.

A Sad Tale

by

Lin Neiswender

There was a young lad from ‘Bama
With a taste for glitter and glammah
His designer stiletto shoe
Too high for his hair doo
Made him spend the night in the slammah.

 

Category:

Creative Writing, Focus on Form, Lines by Lin, Poetry

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My Voice

I’ve been thinking about voice a lot lately. Voice, as in writer’s voice, what is it, where does it come from, what influences it. As a writer, I love words and word play, have a good knowledge of English grammar, can speak, read and write French well enough to carry on a conversation, read a book, and appreciate some of the differences in the grammars. I enjoy humor and like writing all kinds of humorous poetry.

Many things have influenced me as a writer, but one of the biggest was my father. An attorney who appeared twice before the Supreme Court, he love the English language and was adamant about correct usage. Every time my sister or I would make a mistake, he would repeat the whole rule and its explanation. Not simply the correction. The whole, blasted thing. He also refused, generally, to give us the meaning of a word; he made us look them up ourselves. At the time I found the whole thing beyond annoying. Now I view it as one of the biggest gifts he could have given me.

He also encouraged us to read widely. I recall reading Damon Runyon and O’Henry among others at about age twelve, and having to look up about one word in every sentence. Talk about vocabulary building! And I can still recall discussions about points of grammar around the dinner table.

The New York Times crossword puzzle was another big influence, in that it led to my developing my own algorithm for generating rhymes. I am an auditory learner, and one day while doing the puzzle, searching for a word where I had the first letter, I realized that there were a very limited selection of sounds that could follow:
Consonant plus L sound: for example C plus L as in clap
Consonant plus R sound: for example C plus L as in crap
For some, Consonant plus W sound:   C plus W sound would be cwap — nope, that one’s not a word.
For S, C, and T: consonant plus H
For letter q: KW is the sound
Special case : S : S plus most of the others: S plus C , S plus C plus L, S plus C plus R…

But NOTE well.  We’re talking about SOUNDS, not spelling. I use C for the K sound.
If you’re visual and this throws you off, this system might not work for you. fat frat flat

I’ve used this algorithm for years. I love to rhyme, and although I now occasionally look up the rhymes using rhymezone.com, I can go through my own algorithm pretty quickly. I do better that way, because it forces me to contemplate each word and whether or not it would fit in the poem.

Although I love music and play the flute and the piccolo, I don’t listen to music as I write, nor do I see images when I listen to music. When I listen to music, I listen to music. It evokes emotions, but I don’t see pictures unreeling in my brain. I know some writers are inspired by music, like to write to music, and the like. I don’t, not in the way most people mean. I do find music to be very freeing when I’m letting my mind wander, contemplate plot, character, or whatever.

I have written several poems that were music-inspired. In  the cases I can remember, I was in my car listening to the radio when a particular song — or songs — got me started on a poem. Here is one of them. The first part of the first stanza was what was happening when the Kenny Chesney song started to play on the radio. I did have to go search out the titles of some of his other songs in order to fill out my conception of the poem. I’m nobly resisting the urge to revise it. It was published in an ezine:

Crack Up

Swish through car-lit darkness
Past squares of light,
street signs sparkling green and white.
Roll down your window,
feel the lemon air
ruffle what’s left of your hair.
Kenny Chesney blaring on the radio
loud enough to silence the thoughts in your head
waiting to be drowned in a cold beer.

Your wheels slide through ghosts of clouds,
past skeleton trees waving bare arms,
past lighted windows with families eating
roast chicken, green beans, potatoes
while the letter from your daughter
crinkles in your back pocket,
your seat belt chafing as
Kenny croons Who you’d Be Today.

The smell of leaf smoke drifts
through the window
as you drive at twenty-five miles per hour
past the cop in the turn-out on your left,
as the rain starts dripping down your windshield
and your windshield wipers quit.
You reach for a beer
as Kenny starts singing Keg in the Closet

Your car drifts into the center of the road
as you drop the empty on the floor,
reach behind you for another,
one hand on the wheel.
The car skids on wet leaves
going around that curve in the road
you forgot was there
and Kenny sings Steamy Windows.

The sweat drips down your neck
as you wrestle with the steering wheel,
brake on the empties,
your seat belt unfastened.
Skid into the tree.
Glass arrows your cheek your eye.
You’re bleeding from your ear.
Somewhere Kenny’s singing How Forever Feels.

 

 

Category:

Creative Writing, Creativity, Margaret's Musing, Poetry

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True to My Nature

“Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature.” — Abraham Maslow

Art Supplies

A R T

I pull the cardboard box off the shelf
too long dusty
set it on the cleared table
trace my finger over the markered three letters
and open
creation in a box

I remove the items one by one
too long neglected
set them in their proper place
next to water, canvas, towel
and tally
creation in a box

I see pencils, paints, stencils,
too long idle
set by projects incomplete
search for a paint brush
and initiate
creation in a box

I wet the brush and moisten paints
too long dried out
set colors to a scantily clad canvas
bringing life to the scene
and treasure
creation in a box

Though I like to dabble in art, and do crafts with my son, I don’t consider myself much of an artist. That’s Lin‘s territory. I’m more comfortable with the written word. Over the years, I’ve learned that even when I am not writing, I still need to be creating to feel alive. Whether a poem, a story, a craft project, a dessert, or even a house in Sims 3. As Maslow says, I must be true to my nature. I must create.

We are all creators… not just of art, but relationships, homes, personal space, etc. What do you create? Why do you create?

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Creativity, Mary's Expression, Poetry

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