Real love I’m undeserving of
as torment and abuse
are all I’m able to offer
Such a sweet angelic soul
he was
I allowed fear and envy
to rule
Now standing at his final
resting place
pain, regret, tears fill my core
Darkness now my only
companion
life ever fleeting
death
can’t come soon enough
for this black-hearted bitch
Over at my other site, Only the Lonely Press, I started a new video series called, Dead Poets Society, where I will take a poem of a given poet (long since passed on) and create a video for it. This one above is one of my favorite Robert Frost’s poems.
Below is a bit of a morbid poem written by Emily Dickinson which I absolutely love.
I plan to create more videos for this particular series in the near future.
Do you have any (short) poems by your favorite poets to suggest? If I like it (a lot), I may just create a video for it!
October.
This means that fall’s foliage is at its’ peak, and the sugar beet harvest is in full swing up here in the Red River Valley of North Dakota.
I woke up this morning to the ground covered in a thin layer of frost. Even had to turn on the heat briefly. With the warm air blowing through the vents, I counted at least four of my ten indoor cats huddled on top of them.
Darn, should have snapped a pic.
Next time.
October is also the month to prepare for NaNoWriMo (aka National Novel Writing Month) so I’m taking a month-long course with Beth and Ezra Barany to help me plan a novel idea I have.
Like I said in a previous post, I have little problem with finishing short pieces, but a book-length? It IS like running a marathon (I’ve ran 5-ks in the past so I can only imagine what 20-plus miles would be like!) where I almost always fizzle out by the middle, and that’s it.
Finito.
I either lose interest, or life gets in the way, or writer’s block sets it.
Excuses…excuses.
Excuses won’t get the book written.
I need to really look at why I’m not finishing.
Am I meant to be just a short story writer?
A poet?
I’m unable to accept that.
I can’t.
I won’t.
I may never be a prolific novelist like Stephen King or Nora Roberts, and that’s okay. I just believe that I have at least one book in me that I must write. And this what’s been driving me to try again and again.
A quote by Maya Angelou keeps haunting me:
Now that I’m middle-aged, I have this growing fear of dying before I’m able to complete the kind of writing I was meant to do.
It’s a horrible feeling.
One that’s growing worse by the day.
The only one book-length manuscript I managed came during the 2008 NaNoWriMo, and that’s because of my curiosity to see if I could actually write at least 50,000 words.
Since then, all my attempts to write another book have failed.
I think it may be because those stories were not meaningful to me. They were just stories that I had a vague interest in, but as I laid down word after word, I lost interest.
I find that I can’t devote hours and days to something I have no real passion for. Life is just too short.
In my heart, I’ve always wanted to write a story that revolved around fatherhood and daughters. This desire…no, need have grown exponentially since my Daddy’s death in September 2014.
Three weeks ago, I saw a particular news article that gave birth to a story idea for such a book. In taking the above course, I’m working to develop this idea, flesh out the plot/subplots as well as create my two main characters. I plan to use NaNoWriMo as a jump-start to write as many words as I can, but the goal isn’t to win, but to ultimately have a finished first draft by the end of the year.
I believe I have found the reason and motivation to drive me to be successful this time.
Stay tuned for more later.
Click on the image to access this group’s official page
This month’s question: “Have you ever slipped any of your personal information into your characters, either by accident or on purpose?”
Hmm, an intriguing question posed by IWSG. “Personal” could mean just about anything in my mind so I’d have to answer this honestly with a YES.
Many of my main characters have pieces of me injected in them which make the stories I write personal and meaningful to me. They entice me to finish each story so not to leave them incomplete which borders tragic in my mind.
The characters may have some of my physical attributes, but mostly I inject events and emotions that I’ve experienced in hope to make the stories more dramatic and real to the reader.
Granted, majority of the stories I write are short so it’s relatively easy to finish. Writing a book-length story is a different matter in that I’ve yet to complete a full first draft since 2008 (my first and only full draft from NaNoWriMo which still sits on my hard-drive). However, this year I hope to change that. I will post more about this later this week.
What about you? How much of yourself do you include in your writing?
Click on image for original source
The other day I posted a poll that asked a question on whether you believed life imitated art, or art imitated life. If you like to voice your opinion, here’s the poll.
Oscar Wilde believed that-
But, I believe Fyodor Dostoevsky hit closer to the truth –
Here’s what Aristotle had to say about this:
What are your thoughts and opinion?
“The oceans” was the prompt for this week’s #StorySaturday (Twitter). I wrote this micro-story kind of as a memoir of my personal experiences with water, and how it impacted me.
Photo Credit: Stephanie Vincent Lawrence
I grew up around water
in the High Peaks of the Adirondacks
the river ran wild
its’ roars beat within me like a hammer
Then came the ocean of the Outer Banks
its rolling waves on the sandy shore
calm the racing of that heart
and created a sense of peace
I’ve never experienced
Now I live in the open expanse of the plains
where the ocean is only a memory
but a memory that I can revisit
for as long as this heart beats
Anger and pain
the norm in a young lifetime
Dreams and hopes
unattainable
due to unyielding sabotages
True love
fleeting
as there is no
happily ever after
So what’s the point
of fighting, persevering
when the darkness
is all that awaits?
“There is darkness inside all of us, though mine is more dangerous than most. Still, we all have it—that part of our soul that is irreparably damaged by the very trials and tribulations of life. We are what we are because of it, or perhaps in spite of it.” -Jenna Maclaine, Bound By Sin
Many writers feel that touching even one life is success. Not by how many books one published, or by how many awards one garnered; although these are VERY nice to have.
For some writers, writing goes much deeper than any physical items or accolades. It’s about using their gifts as storytellers, healers, change-makers for the sake of others.
Success is based on the number of lives impacted.
What about you? How do you view success as a writer?
Just returned from a 12-day trip to the East Coast. It was a whirlwind.
We drove from North Dakota to North Carolina in less than 30 hours (we did spend one night at a hotel near the border of West Virginia). We went on to spend three days with my mother (NC), and then three days with hubby’s aunt and uncle in MD (just outside of Annapolis), and then two days with hubby’s side of family in western New York before driving back home.
Home sweet home.
Will take today to recuperate before diving back into writing/blogging tomorrow. For now, here’s one of my favorite quotes by Hans Zimmer:
Can you help me with giving this poem a title? Place your suggestions in the comment section below. 😉
Photo Credit: Ben Heine
This haiku was prompted by the “elephants” theme over at @storysaturday on Twitter.
Click on the image to access this group’s official page
This month’s question: What if my writing isn’t good enough?
This group (also endearingly known as IWSG) is all about insecurities; and gosh, I have a boat-load of them!
Where even to begin?
I’ve battled with insecurities all my life, and they’ve filtered over in to my writing life.
You’ll never be good enough.
You’re worthless.
Don’t bother even trying.
There are so many ideas running through my head. And I have written many of them…but, they usually die (or get placed in the trash).
I have published several items (all short ones) so that is something, I suppose.
But…
I keep feeling like I’m missing something.
Or, there is a story somewhere within that needs to be written and then released to the world.
But…
In the past, in my previous work life, I had this nasty habit of self-sabotaging myself.
Not allowing myself to experience success of any kind.
And this is quite prevalent in my life as it is in my writing life.
It’s like I feel like I don’t deserve it.
You’ll never be good enough.
You’re worthless.
Don’t bother even trying.
A lot of this stem from childhood abuse. Others from a progressive disability.
Excuses, I suppose.
But they’re the Goliath in my life, and I’m the puny boy with no sling-shot or weapon of any kind.
Just a pen.
I’ve heard that a pen holds power. I just don’t have any faith in the holder of this particular pen.
Am I good enough?
Will I ever be?
Do I even bother trying?
(*YouTube Tuesday idea originally came from the Martians Attack blog)
Last week, our family went on an adventurous vacation. When I say “adventurous” I meant that practically everything was done on the fly. Such is our life with my former-Navy-officer hubby 🙂
Originally we were going to spend the entire time down in the Black Hills region (South Dakota); however, the place was too mad with tourists. We stopped very briefly at Mt. Rushmore, and then left. We drove most of the night through the remaining sixty-plus miles of South Dakota, and most of the width of Wyoming, arriving at a truck stop just south of Billings (Montana) around 3:45am. There, we slept for a few hours in the vehicle.
After a quick breakfast, we were back on the road heading north for Helena. We ended up settling in at a KOA twenty miles south of the city in a nice cabin nestled close to Canyon Lake. There we stayed for three days before heading out for Glacier National Park.
Glacier National Park is so huge, and incredibly beautiful! You could easily spend three or four days exploring and still not see everything. We were only there for a few hours; long enough to drive up a very scenic highway to Logan Pass which was where I took this amateurish video clip (using my Trio tablet).
I added music to it before uploading to YouTube.
Hope you enjoy 🙂
If you’d like to participate in YouTube Tuesday, post something from YouTube that you enjoyed and tell us a bit about it. Don’t forget to include the link to this post in yours so I can check it out. Also, if you’re on Twitter, tweet about it using the hashtag #YouTubeTuesday.
Bear River, Idaho
As she walks across the meadow she could almost hear the voices of past lives echoing through the sparsely forested terrain; with the breeze caressing her body, their faint howling cries icing her to the core with haunting images of despair and betrayal.
*Inspired by article, Site of Deadliest Native American Massacre Identified in Idaho
Photo Credit: Perth Now
The ocean water
oh so blue and clear…but
when she peers down into
the salty sea
the last thing she’d see
are those black, doll eyes
Over a month ago, I ran a contest at WritersCafe.org called, Your Life In Six Words. Here is the winning item by Akshatha Kamath:
What about you? If you could describe your life in six words, what would they be?
