Deadlines and Freewrites

          It's a good time of year to be thankful, and I'm thankful today for deadlines. They make me work. There's the end of the month for NaNo, the end of the semester for college, and the end of this week for my creative writing group. I decided to submit a poem, rather than a short story, since I can write them in a shorter amount of time.

          With poems I usually start by free writing. I try a few different themes or descriptive phrases until they come to dead ends or I find one that yields to my shaping. Riding my bike to and from campus almost every day, I've gotten to see fall turning to winter step by step. From the leaves starting to turning red to them getting brown and curling, every change is beautiful, and beauty is the theme of my poem, "Maker." It is a spin off of a very strange, modern Gertrude Stein's prose poem called "Picasso," an excerpt of which you can read here.

To read "Maker" click here.

What are you thankful for today? 

This Time It's a No

     October is here! And the campus-wide literature conference is coming up, which means the deadline for the creative writing contest looms near. Why do I only have one new poem and a mini-story/scene? Not knowing what to write is part of it, but mostly I haven't had time. Really! I think of my homework as a train that picks me up on Monday and rockets through the week to Friday, letting me off at Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday just long enough to go to class and a couple of events like cultural coffeehouse and creative writing club. I could use a little bit less homework and a little more time management.

✥ four of my lovely birthday presents ✥

      In her book I Dare You: Embrace Life With Passion, Joyce Myer says that being busy isn't always the same as being productive. We have to learn to focus our energy on the things that really matter and learn to say no to the things that may be good in and of themselves but, with the time and resources that we have, will weigh us down.

An Arsenal of Good

Free image courtesy of  freedigitalphotos.net

     Future assignments, the approach of work later in the week, deadlines for homework, words or silence I wish I could take back...some days I feel like I'm buried in gray clouds. I get long-faced and glum, even though--despite the little bumps along the road--I have so many reasons to smile. I just forget about them. So I started a list of 14 good things I can remember and draw upon to help me "when the bee stings" or the "dog bites."

1-peaches so ripe the juice drips down my chin

2-shady spots on my walk home

3-blueberry muffin for breakfast

4-the bigness of the blue sky when I look at it lying on my back

5-anything delivered by snail mail

6-good dreams