26 Wednesday Dec 2012
Living room glows by Christmas light
Tired young teens in pajama tights
Blankets of rain settling in furls
Confine the young giggling girls
Christmas bulb eyes stare up in vain
Yearning for the last candy cane
Cats chasing cats, circular swirls
Race around the giggling girls
Fresh ground coffee with spicy rum
Father’s work is finally done
Cursive writing fountain pen curls
Cannot describe giggling girls
02 Sunday Dec 2012
Posted in Literary, Religion, Uncategorized, Writing
This story bothers me, and I’m typing these words in exploration of my own feelings on the situation. In a nutshell”
– Buddy is upset at his treatment of a gay friend
– Decides to pose as a gay person for a year to live in their shoes
– Learns and experiences both what the gay community lives like, to a point
– Experiences what his evangelical community’s response is
– Writes a book and presumably sells a lot of copies
When you get right down to it, he lied. He lied to the gay community, to his lesbian friend whom he was sorry he hurt, to his family, and to his evangelical community.
The last I heard, Lying was considered a sin. He has hurt the gay community, he has hurt his family, and he has hurt his evangelical community.
Yes, there are swaths of prejudice against gays that need dismantling. He was wrong, his family was wrong, and his church as a whole was wrong. But you can’t fix wrongs with wrongs. Two wrongs don’t make a right is not a simple literary cliché. It is truth. In no way do I respect Buddy for lying to everybody.
For his next experiment, I suggest sitting alone on top of a mountain for fifty years.
01 Saturday Dec 2012
Third time a winner. Yeah.
Really, though, this is not a tough contest. 1667 words a day is nothing. I’ll do half that in this short blog. All you have to do to win this contest is write. Sit and write. You don’t even need to sit. Some of my friends use Dragon and speak. They can write their novel anywhere they can take their electronic devices. Wouldn’t it be interesting to hike to the top of a big hill and write while you walk, then while you sit and watch the view?
“They” say the medium matters, though. We write differently when we talk versus when we type, and we write differently still when we use a pen or pencil. I imagine eventually we’ll be able to think out novels onto a page. If we get to that point we won’t need to read them either, just walk by it. Imagine the development efforts to create mental blocking devices, to protect copyright of course. It will become a huge government conspiracy, I’m sure.
But I digress into novel-writing. It’s a habit now, especially the days following November. Every inconsequential act or event seems to trigger a run into the depths of creativity.
It’s time to pull back a bit. I need to get my resumé ready for distribution; I need to work on my personal network; I need to focus on some job skills; I have finances to take care of. Crap, I don’t have time to write.
But I can plan. I received some feedback from my local writer in residence on my 2011 novel. She included, hopefully, many comments throughout. I only let myself read her cover letter. She has issues with my voice, and I agree. My next major activity will be to review her notes and suggestions, and give this thing a good, thorough edit.
I need to read more. NaNo has killed my reading, and I plan on getting back into it. I have a book discussion on Wednesday, so I need to read nearly all of Middlesex by then. Good luck on that one John. I shouldn’t be blogging.
I found in the second half of NaNo my writing became very pedestrian. I lost my story and my voice. I’ve re-read scene #2 and plan on reading it this afternoon to my group. I liked the writing and the voice, but the second two-thirds of my story is very much he said, she said. Blah!
Voice, consistency, completeness … writing is easy. Making it all work is very hard.
I’ve decided I want to try project management. I have a lot of the skills, I understand projects, I like the new Agile way of doing projects – Kan Ban. The creative, process-oriented methods of managing projects make so much sense to me. The issue: finding progressive employers willing to take a chance on the old fart.
*sigh*
Might be easier to sell a novel to millions of readers.
Café Moi 