Happy Poetry Day

It’s National Poetry Day here in NZ.

Celebrate! Write a poem. Read a poem by an NZ author. Read a poem by a non-NZ author. Just get into the poetry spirit because I think poetry doesn’t really get enough credit and is either considered to be teen expression of their emo-ness or haughty lit snobs who like to have noone understand them.

It’s not like that. Seriously. Poetry is simply language having a chance to be beautiful. Words are delicious and poetry lets them be so without getting caught up in all that prose baggage of plot and characterisation blahblahblah.

So, I’m gonna post the last poem I wrote here. I didn’t write it today; today is Hubby’s birthday so I’m not going to have time for writing, I have to go make a cheescake. I’ve never made a cheesecake before. Things could become disastrous in this household, or very messy anyway.

~

US

I lie here,
icicle stiff
until you slide in beside me
wrap your arms around me
melting, soothing,
until my knees bend
and back curls;
when you are
here beside me
anything is possible
and I can
become the S
in US

~

I never said it was a good poem

Things are Finally Clicking

First of all, a big thank you to all those who came by and read my blogfest entry. I didn’t get to read as many as I wanted but I thoroughly enjoyed those that I did. I still hope to read more.

My writing has moved in leaps and bounds. I think my muse has left me behind actually; I’m still trying to write scene one, while she’s exploring what happens around climax time. That’s cool. I don’t want to rock the boat on this one ’cause her loyalty is pretty shaky at the moment.

So, what am I working on? Things stalled pretty quick with Forbidden Knowledge. Still not sure why, but hey, we’ll come back to that one. In my efforts to procrastinate I opened Holly Lisle’s Create a Plot Clinic. I bought it years ago and I never really got into it. This time, however, things clicked. I realised why the piece I was working on last NaNo stalled, what it needs, and how to fulfill that need.

I’m not sure I’ve ever discussed this piece on my blog, so here’s a basic rundown. It’s literary fiction exploring truth, deceit and perceptions. My MC is Evie. She’s got a drug addict history that she’s trying to escape and hide from all her new acquaintances. Things surface (at a very inopportune time of course) and… I don’t know yet, but things will get messy, I am sure. The story is most likely going to be from a variety of POVs of other major characters.

This story is very much character driven. I have near 50k written, most of which is irrelevant now that I know what the point is, but these words helped me get to know my characters so it’s not a waste.

It’s great having this story back on track. I love working on it and my characters are just delicious. I’m still debating whether I should use first person or third person perspective. Most of what I have is in first, but I’m not convinced it’s right. But it’s a pretty minor issue for me, what matters is that my muse and I are on the same page now, and we’ll get this story finished (eventually).

So back to writing. I hope your writing’s going awesome too

“My Best Advice to New Writers” Blogfest: Punctuation

I’ve finally caved to the lure of the blogfest. I thought this one was a good place to start because I don’t have to put myself on the line really.

My Best Advice to New Writers Blogfest is run by Peevesh Penman. Pop on over and read other people’s posts.

So, advice to new writers, or all writers really, because I think it’s an important thing to remember.

Use your punctuation.

I had an amazing poetry lecturer, Bryan Walpert, who put it something like this: Writers have very little to work with. We have words, which come with their denotations and connotations. We have structure: how we choose to lay these words on the page. And we have punctuation.

Some people believe poetry is awesome because you don’t have to use punctuation. There was a girl in one of my classes that wrote a prose style poem with no capital letters despite there being sentences, names, etc that would ordinarily require them. Upon enquiry it turned out she didn’t do it for a purpose, she did it because she didn’t like capital letters. Needless to say, it was bloody hard to read.

This kind of mindset is detrimental to your craft, and not just for poetry. I was told by a different lecturer, about prose fiction, don’t use semi-colons, they draw attention to themselves. That’s just dumb. It’s punctuation; if it’s used right noone even notices it, and if you do notice every semi-colon I must assume it is because it’s unfamiliar punctuation to you.

So, my advice, get cosy with punctuation: get to know semi-colons and colons; become buddies with the dash, em-dash, ellipses, parentheses, square brackets; go for BFFs with full-stops (periods), commas and apostrophes.

Don’t be afraid of punctuation. Yes, it’s very powerful, but it also just wants to be your friend.

If you know when you should or could use punctuation then you can intentionally misuse it for effect. I’ve seen it well done, and have written an essay on Patricia Grace’s “Mirrors” in which I concluded (with evidence) that you could twist grammer rules to great effect if you knew what you were doing.

If you don’t know the rules, well… lets just say you are limiting your audience to those who also don’t know them.

Please don’t count the ways I’ve misused puncutation accidently in this post, I haven’t really proofed it. Ahh, the irony.

Preparation For The End Being Nigh

For those of you who don’t know, August is all about finishing. Over at KiwiWriters the End is Nigh challenge is to finish at least one thing during the month. Doesn’t sound particularly hard, right?

Well, I’ve never managed to win yet. I’m all for this year being the first but I’m trying not to put too much pressure on myself. I’m fairly sure the only reason I signed up is because I was having a moment of insanity.

I have an immense collection of things that need finishing, so I’ll have to pick one, get back in touch with it, and make a plan to take me through to the point where I can say it’s finished, and then actually finish it.

That is all. Did I make is sound easy? You should join the madness

Nothing Wrong With Genre Fiction

I’ve mentioned the writing paper I did and the issues it created several times before. One of the things drilled into us was that genre fiction (from speculative fiction through to romance and all genres in between) was, very basically, what inept writers write. I stopped dabbling with fantasy and a lot of my work got shelved as I started this new, ‘literary fiction’, trend.

While my SoCNoC attempt was more fantasy-ish, I couldn’t settle into it. I still don’t know what the wall I’ve hit is, but I’ll overcome it in time. It may just be where my head’s at.

I spent some time reading a YA fantasy novel by WritersBlockNZ and gave her a heap of feedback, and that made me think about my old friend, Forbidden Knowledge. I haven’t touched it in forever, or even thought about it really, but I opened it up today and read some of the first chapter.

It needs a lot of work, but it’s not complete rubbish and I feel more comfortable working on this. When I write fantasy I feel like I’m torn between what I want to write and what I should write. It’s taken me this long to face what I’ve really known all along, write what you like.

I’ve always read fantasy. I love it. I love YA fantasy and Sherryl Jordan is on my favourite authors list. Time to stop suppressing this desire to write fantasy, shelve the guilt I feel for doing so, and go back to Forbidden Knowledge to fill in the gaps, and get it to a point where I can say, “I’ve written a novel”. That’s more impressive than, “I’ve been writing some literary fiction”, which is generally responded with “oh, what’s literary fiction?”

Excuses?

It’s in our nature, I think, to make excuses. I could easily compile a list of why I haven’t been writing: I’ve been really busy; Jake absorbs so much of my time; I’ve got other pressing matters to attend to; I’m not in a good place at the moment. And they are all very real issues that provide a barrier between my writing and me. But the only person I’m really making excuses to is myself, they’re necessary to ease the guilt of not making time to sit and put words to paper.

At some point we have to stop making excuses. Writing is something I do purely for pleasure, and purely for myself. So I only have to ask myself one question: “Do I want to write?” The answer is “Yes!”. And the response to such an affirmative is: “Well, stop mucking around and sit and write.”

It’s simple. I’m a writer, so I’m going to go write.

Reassessing Goals

There was a time (year before last) that I could crank out several thousand words in a day. Winning NaNo and SoCNoC was an very achievable goal. Then ’09 hit, and since then things have been pretty awry in the world of my writing.

Due to the creative writing paper I did in semester 1 last year I am no longer able to just slap anything into the story with the knowledge that it can be edited out on the next pass. The class also destroyed any confidence I had as a writer. That’s been something I’ve been working on remedying ever since, but it’s a long slow process and most days I look at my writing and think it’s all just crap, why do I bother?

The mistake I made in that class is that I stopped writing for me. It stopped being about the sheer pleasure of crafting words into sentences, and sentences into a story with characters I love. What it comes down to is that while you can dedicate a story to someone else, the one person you have to write it for in the first place is yourself.

And this is why I think my poetry is now better than my prose. I’ve always written poetry for myself. I don’t care if others don’t get it, don’t read it or think once they have read it, ‘if this was on paper I would now burn it’. So I get more pleasure out of writing poetry now, which is odd, becauase a year ago I was still in the position of ‘I’m not a poet, I can’t write poetry, I’m not going to waste my time trying’.

I’m determined to get back to being able to write prose solely for my own pleasure. I’ve accepted that I won’t win HalfNoC again this year, I just don’t have the luxury of pouring everything I have into the story for the next week. Jake, afterall, does need feeding. But I am resetting my goal of writing 1k a day, so I will have 15k on Memoirs of an Assassin by the end of the month.

Then I can examine what I have and decide whether it’s novel material or novella, or whether I can compress it into a short story.

I have posted a few poems over on my new Words page. If you want the password just shoot me an email. redfox4239 at hotmail dot com. I hope to put an extract of my WIP up there in the next week as well, and maybe some short stories, although I’m not sure I have anything that I wouldn’t want to give a thorough edit first.

In homelife news, I’m pretty sure Dale has swine flu. He’s been really really crook, not just man flu crook, but neither Jake nor I have caught it. If it’s swine flu that makes sense because I got immunised while I was pregnant.

Quickie Post

Jake’s waking, so just a quick update.

Writing has stalled for now. Nothing yesterday and only a poem today with no more planned (even that wasn’t planned). It’s not the story that’s stalled, just no time to do it. I’m trying not to get frustrated. My MC has officially had a sex change it’s working heaps better with a male MC. I’m really enjoying toying with reality vs. perspective. It’s fun .

We spent the whole day out yesterday. We had our ante-natal class reunion. Of about 20 couples at the class only 4 couples turned up. But we should get a good mums group out of it . I planned to get some writing done last night but mother in law turned up. She’s coming over again today (they’re only in Chch every few weeks, so she doesn’t get to see Jake very often). It’s good though. We get along pretty well.

Right, off to feed my darling.

The ‘Why’ Behind the ‘What’

I got to a stopping point in the flash back scene I’ve been working on. It’s turned into a really long scene, and I think when I edit it will probably get its own chapter. It’s not quite finished, but I’m happy with it. There’s been twists and turns and an unexpected death which turns out is essential to the development of the story. It’s right on track to end where it needs to, I just had to stop for a bit.

Some aspects of the story weren’t quite fitting, but the thing that was really bugging me was that there was no real reason for the story. I had the story, but why did it need to be told?

I sat back and knitted for a while. I love knitting because you feel like you’re achieving something but you are free to think. Kinda like housework, but more meditative and satisfying, and it’s still done the next day (I’m knitting Cassie’s new baby a hat. It’s very exciting.)

And I got to thinking. Suddenly, I don’t even know what was going on in my brain, I think I was playing “what if?” for a bit, but suddenly my MC turned into a male and a million things clicked into place. Suddenly there was more emotion and complexity, and a reason to tell the story.

I can’t really explain the process, because I don’t understand it myself, but it worked, and I had a beginning for my story, and a working title: “Memoirs of an Assassin” or maybe “The Assassin’s Memoirs”. I’m not 100% sure, but it’s been a long day so I’m not sure on anything at this point. (Got up at 4am, it’s now 11pm. I’m not manic, just tired. I’ve analysed myself a bit to make sure, well, as sure as I can be. Hmm. I sense circles happening here. I really think it’s time for bed.)

I’m not sure I made a point let alone the point I wanted to make, but I’ll hit publish anyway.

So, I wrote heaps today. It was great. Even word warred, tho that was interrupted by crying baby. It’s really nice to be in the thick of it again. (Yes, that’s all this needed to say. I got there eventually.)

Priorities

My priorities list is a little askew at the moment, and I’m trying to get it straighted out. Writing has all but fallen off the bottom, which I’m not happy about. Jake’s needs, of course, will forever be at the top. But in middle there’s things that need rearranging, things that need removing (ie. playing Echo Bazaar, it’s just a time waster) and writing has to be nudged up so it comes before something like blogging . And maybe eating should go on the list.

I didn’t get any words on my HalfNoC written today, and only about 100 yesterday, so I’m about 2k behind, which is a lot out of 25k. I’ll try catch up, it’s too early in the month to give up, but I’m not going to get all worked up over it, I’ll just keep writing when I get time. At least the story is there in my mind, simmering away; another scene came to me today so there’s plenty to write.

It doesn’t help when Jake decides he’s not going to sleep well during the day. I’m just really glad that normally he sleeps well at night.

Tomorrow is another day, and hopefully one with time to write.