Creative Writing

Sammi’s Weekender #252 (purport)

Click the graphic to be portered to Sammi’s blog for more great poems and prose.

 

Adverbial Alliteration

Advisedly, we’re normally explanatorily told not to
write clichéd adverbial conquests, but to eschew such modifications
faithfully as frivolously fast fingers freely flow creatively composing
craftily constructed compositions, purportedly passing on poorly
penned prepositional phrases padded with mystery.

Reality rudely reeks seeking adjunct, conjunct, disjunct, or just plain junk.
To prepare perfectly pedestrian, speciously deceptive poems and prose,
paint in some opposition of affirmation.

Look both ways crossing artful Grammar Ave. Mind the gaps that set the traps.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Plan Reveal

A few years ago, I completed writing my fifty-thousand-word memoir during Nano. The unfinished manuscript haunts me. I want to finish it, get feedback, and maybe self-publish.

I also want to put some poetry book pages together, but that may have to wait until later in 2022. Maybe I’ll discuss poetry as I contemplate National Poetry Writing Month (April).

I’ve acquired a training course, and I have other books on writing memoirs. Writers Write suggests doing a few other things, such as completing their 127 free memoir prompts. Flash memoirs. Why not?

For Nano 2021, I intend to write about 400 words for each of the 127 prompts before November 30th. That would be five prompts per day, each about the length of this post, yielding almost 2,000 words daily. I’ll commit to 50,000 words for the month. I shall neither edit nor revise. That’s a Nano no-no.

It’s not as creative and crafty as a novel, but I am not in the novel or novella mood. I want to commit to my memoir by January of 2022. But I also want to do Nano.

Additionally, I’ll post two poems, one essay, and a flash fiction story each week.

My weekends may be busy. Sammi’s prompt requires fewer than 100 words. That is one poem. But I must wait for the prompt which pops up about 3:00 AM (US central time) each Saturday morning. My writer’s group, RRWG, zoom meeting is 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM on Saturdays. Maybe I’ll write more words on other days to reduce required weekend writing.

I post a 1000-ish-word essay for my Dispassionate Doubt blog each Friday. I’ll get a head start on those before Nano begins. I moved my midweek poem to Thursdays, and I want to continue that. Maybe I can get them drafted, if not written.

Moving my midweek poem is because I plan to continue with Friday Fictioneers (FF) prompts. At 100 words and technically three days to finish posting, writing FF is doable. The reading and commenting on others will take longer. But I can do it.

Many Nano participants work eight or more hours a day, have kids to deal with, and lives with less time available to them than I have. If they can find the time, so can I. We’ll find out.

Look both ways.
The reason to accept a challenge is to meet it.
Mind the gaps for wasted time (Facebook and rabbit holes).
Plan.

Monthly Report: July Poems

July was an interesting month, if a bit too hot. But, I can smell August. It ain’t pretty. July has a favorite holiday of many, a few cool birthdays, and it is fittingly mid-summer. It has long days, the baseball all-star break, Wimbledon Tennis, chiggers, maybe mosquitoes, the end of the feverish NBA forever season, and other cool stuff.

While writing a poem each day was no more difficult in July than any of the previous six months, it has become something I just do each day. Yesterday’s one became three. I’ve written at all hours: very early mornings (middle of the night), mid-everything, noon, dinner time, evening, late at night, and just before midnight. I have a small cache of ideas, although prompts are plentiful, and I am seldom wanting.

I polish and post some daily ditties. Most are first drafts that get no additional attention for months, if ever. Concurrently, I’m trying to cull out poems for a potential book I may self-publish. I hope I have been sufficiently vague. I don’t know how to get from here to there. Killing darlings has been a difficult task. It may take months for me to crop out a worthy collection.

Thus, I plan to reduce semiweekly postings on Our Literary Journey to weekly, and the same for Dispassionate Doubt, which has been mostly one post a week anyway. But who knows?

I filled one notebook with poems from January 1st through July 11th and started a new one. Here are the titles of July Poems:

  1. July (the month)
  2. The Jaded Eye
  3. Shamed Pride
  4. Drinkable Wine
  5. Today’s Poem
  6. Petrichor
  7. Enthrall*
  8. The Sun
  9. Hold My Karma and Watch This
  10. The Last Page
  11. Free to Let Go
  12. Grimace*
  13. Five Year Plan
  14. Impassible Sad
  15. Were Gods Somewhere
  16. Sensuous Perception
  17. Narcissus at the Gym
  18. The Creators (moms)
  19. The Ring (the hand kind, not the doorbell)
  20. Layers of Identity*
  21. In the Poet’s Hand
  22. Hushed Me Plumb Up
  23. Unthinkable
  24. Press Pause
  25. Something is Dead
  26. Green River
  27. I Think it was a Saturday
  28. The Long Gray Mullet
  29. Edible Confession
  30. Dog Poop
  31. Time is Coming Over

(* were written from prompts. 7, 12, and 26 were posted.)

Look both ways as you traverse nature’s toilet.
Some poopers don’t have owners to clean up after them.
Mind the gaps or press pause.