I’ve been doing a lot of writing since the kidlets started school. Of course, not all of it is good (or even passable) writing.
If you’re a writer, you have probably heard the oft-repeated idea of getting your “shitty first draft” committed to paper (or tablet or phone or whatever means you use to write). There’s a lot of merit to that, as writing well, for most of us, requires quite a bit of mucking through the mental swamp-fog and pasting up more than a few cruddy turns of phrase, mixed metaphors, or inane plots.
So, in addition to being involved in the Great
SinusInfluColdergy of September 2015—a personal battle, to be sure—I have been producing some bad poetry and reading some much more interesting stuff. There again, I am hoping that mucky, funky poetry is the gateway to better (badder?) prose.
Although I am way behind in reading blogs, and I miss them “somethin tur’ble” as some of my relatives are ‘like’ to say, I also have had the great pleasure to beta-read a friend’s fantasy novel. I will be excited to unveil that, I’m hoping, in the next few months.
What about you? Would you like to share what you’ve been reading (or writing, for that matter)?
Lastly, in my readings whilst slumped in bed with a ton of tissues, I’ve also been dipping into literary short stories, in a collection called Contemporary West Coast [of the United States] Stories. I have to say, several are “razors pain you” good; in my estimation, those are at the forefront of the book, by Richard Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, Tobias Wolff, and Amy Tan. (You know, the usual suspects!) I’ve not read all the stories in this collection, but several of the others left me underwhelmed with their tepid endings.
Speaking of the opposite of winning, let’s round this out with some amateur poetry (#amwriting). After all, it’s a Tuesday. (And it’s five o’clock somewhere!)
Living in borrowed bones
Begrudge the birds
their unmarrowed bones,
unmoored, not holding onto
words—that way you insert ‘n’ in smattering—
or songs—“Reveries of a Girl”—
all that “in”-ness.
Lost to light, loft.
Moments grounded
then gone.
Perhaps we are not
so different.
Each in borrowed
body
Mortality ribbed
with tines:
Here is the church
Here is the steeple
Open up the doors
Here’re all the people.
Each heart, a hand:
a wing
unfolding.
Push through the bars
sealed by goodbyes,
slough off lacings
of regret and love.
Buoyed by light threads
lifting.
Leigh's Wordsmithery 