Return of the Light

I've noticed my writing follows patterns that follow the season. Winter is often a fallow period and if I do write poems they are full of ice and darkness and grumpiness at both. It's been a tough winter, twice the car's battery has drained and twice the electric car has been stuck on the driveway because it's not powerful enough to make it over the 4cm of ice. A pipe has burst in the shed and I have shovelled a mountain of snow, over and over. I hate winter at the best of times, but this one can seriously get tae as they say in Scotland, with a colourful flourish at the end. 

Proper spring is still a long way off. Finland is still buried under a blanket of snow and the temperature is currently -15C and these both show no sign of easing up. However, the light has returned. My poems are starting to show hints of hope, sun and an activity that they don't show during my winter hibernation. I'm hoping that I'll start writing more and this will help lift my mood. 

I joined Angela Carr's January online writing course and though I don't have a lot of time or energy in the week to write, I have been dipping into her prompts at the weekend. I'm also considering Wendy Pratt's What to Look for in Spring course. I often find this sort of prompt-based online course gives me a boost to get back into writing after a quieter period and I've done various courses with Wendy and Angela over the years with good results. 

I need to get outside more, but with all the ice, the world is a dangerous place. We've had teachers and students breaking and bumping themselves over the past few weeks as every path and surface is an ice rink. So I will just soak in the sun from my couch, wrapped in my fluffiest blanket with my matching fluffiest cat.

If you need me that's where I'll be today, writing. At least until the Scotland Six Nations game begins. 

I've also been listening to a reading of Ulysses by the Friends of Shakespeare and Company, the bookshop that originally published the book. It's amazing, Joyce was a poet, weaving beautiful and alive language. 

Enjoy.

  

Scattershot

I've been lucky enough to be asked by poet Paul Brooks to take part in his poet interview series on his blog site, Wombwell Rainbow. Check it out, he's putting up new interviews every day. He's also looking for poets to interview in the future, so contact him via the website if you're interested.

His questions about the inspiration and motivation behind my reading and writing really got me thinking and were strangely echoed in my Finnish language tutorial this week where I had to discuss why reading is important and how it inspires us. Trying to verbalise this in a second language was just marginally harder than for the interview. That's when you learn you don't know the Finnish for inspire, explore and adventure (inspiroi, tutkea ja mielikuvitus). But I didn't even know the Finnish for vocabulary - sanavarasto, a stock or warehouse of words, so I still have a long way to go.

I love breaking words apart, especially words in foreign languages, and learning their etymology and usage. The idea of having a word warehouse in my head feels like the perfect analogy, the words all stored in various boxes and filing cabinents. I'm sure the organisation is an absolute mess, like most of my real-life storage, items organised by need, use and more random connections rather than some systematic method. When I lived with my parents I kept my library card in a laundry basket in the basement. If someone moved it, I could never think where it should sensibly be, but I could always find it with my way. Our own systems work.

So when I look for the word 'door' in Finnish, I know I'd be shuffling through files of Scottish Gaelic to find it. I was just watching a video of the Scottish Poet Laureate/ Makar Jackie Kay reciting her poem 'Threshold' to the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 2016. She mentioned that in Gaelic they say 'dùin an doras' for 'shut the door' and that took me back to learning Gaelic in Glasgow, so many years ago. 'Open the door' was also one of the first phrases I learned in Finnish when my son shouted it over and over at nursery when it was time for me leave. These memories pile up on top of the word 'door' in a wonderful scrapbook.

It's also how my writing works, I start with a prompt, specific or more general and I just follow it where it leads me, jumping from one image or connection to the next. I might look at crafting a poem from the idea of shutting the door in several languages just from writing that paragraph. My poems have begun to cross over into Finnish and other languages more and more as I shuffle through the collected images and memories in my brain while I write. 

My brain is a bit scattershot today. It doesn't help that we're on the last week of our ten-week summer holidays and I'm tired of having the kids home, of having to organise things for them, they're tired of all their friends being away, of having so much unstructured free time. We're sick of each other's faces, but they also want me to be involved in everything. I can't sit and write for longer than 2 minutes without someone asking me how to pour melted white chocolate into a straw to make a fake pen or for money to buy a can of spray whipped cream for the waffles they must have for dinner even though it's lunch-time.

I know I'll regret losing this time when they go back to school and we have to wake up and go to sleep and do everything to a schedule. When I have to pull out my calendar to slot everything in, even time to write. So I'm trying to enjoy these last unstructured days with them and with my writing by starting another poem-a-day course for August on the theme of summer. 

Best wishes for your summer. 

Writing with Monkeys

It's the summer holidays here, kids everywhere and I don't know if I'm coming or going with my writing. We've all been sick with various bugs so I've been too tired or ill to focus much on the Wendy Pratt course I've joined though I'm enjoying the different focus of the prompts. I'm not able to write every day, but I'm trying to grab time here and there. I hate not being able to join in on the Facebook page as much as I would like, though we had a good online group chat last week. Wendy's releasing a new course soon, so keep an eye on her site for details. 

The current course is focussing on 'Writing with a Beginner's Mind,' offering techniques that help you lose that critical voice that often plagues writers, the worries that the work isn't good enough, the guilt that we never will be able to balance our lives and writing. I do struggle with the later most, trying to be a single parent and a writer and find a real job to support my family has more than its share of guilt. I need to try Wendy's meditation and focus excercises more, my monkey brain has monkey brain and I can never turn all the noise off. Even more so with four monkeys climbing around the house. 

One of my favourite prompts so far has been to think about the idea of 'banned words' in poetry, words that are too dated, over-used, purple. I went and found a list of archaic words and wrote a poem playing with them. I love dictionaries and thesaurus and using them to find new words and meanings. It makes you see language in a new light. What do you think, should words like shard and gossamer be banned from contemporary poetry?

My poem 'Dripping Winter' has appeared in Crossways Literary Magazine. I hope you take a wander over and check out the issue and maybe purchase a hard copy.

And finally, Happenstance Press is having an interesting challenge to write a rhyming poem on a wrapper. I'm not very good with rhymes, but thought I could try something short, maybe with some Finnish words. What rhymes with suklaa?

Writing as a Woman of a Certain Age

I finally get a quiet day to sit down and work. I'm aching and tired and just want to go back to bed. But there's only one week left of school and no summer camps booked this year, so I need to make use of this me-time while I have it. I'll soon need to balance it with entertaining four kids, mostly on my own. 

I've broken the 400-poem mark this week. I've written over 400 poems in my writing life, that just blows me away. This is only counting the proper, grown-up poems that I think are worthy to share and try and get published. Over half of them are published in my books or in journals. Over 150 of them have been written in the last two years. Just imagine how much I could have written if I could have figured out the secret of writing a poem daily earlier. I used to write every day pre-kids and even a bit after they were born, but I was slower at sculpting my poems and have spent a lot of the last decades writing novels that went nowhere.

I feel like I've found my stride in what most people would consider middle age, though I don't feel middle-aged. Or at least what I thought middle-aged meant before I got here. I just feel like me, maybe more tired and achey though. 

But then I looked at a list of competition calls yesterday and realised once again that I don't fit into so many boxes in publishing. Most of the competitions I couldn't even consider because of my age, I'm over 30 or 37 or whatever random cut-off they choose. I get it, publishers and grant bodies want to support young, struggling, up-and-coming writers. I also read recently that more poetry is being read by under 35s these days than any other age group, so they want to appeal to that audience. But what about us older, struggling writers, there must be a group of us searching for support and an audience ready to read us. 

I'm also the wrong nationality or live in the wrong place or have the wrong career or write the wrong genre. Does anyone have a call for poems from a 48-year-old white cis-women US poet living in Finland?

I worked at Chapman Publishing in Edinburgh for many years and while there we published a book of poems by Magi Gibson called Wild Women of a Certain Age. It was a brilliant, fierce and powerful book and I loved being involved with it. I was in my late 20s while my editor and Magi and some of the other women we worked with were almost a couple of decades older and though I loved the fire of their writing and intensity of how they approached the issue, I couldn't understand why this idea of fighting against the constraints of this 'certain age' was so important to them. I get it now. I need to find my own tribe of wild women soon.

Joining Twitter has opened my eyes to the new network of writers out there, I've discovered Maggie Smith recently through her empowering tweets. Her book Good Bones is the next book I plan to buy, her poem of the same name is a heart-shattering force, especially if you have young children. She's definitely a Wild Woman I'd invite. 

Good news for my old bones, two of my poems have been included in this online anthology from the course I did with poet Wendy Pratt. I really enjoyed all of her courses and it was nice to have this as the cherry on the cake at the end of this one from April. 

https://wendysaprilwriteathon.home.blog/2019/05/22/gerry-stewart/

Another Wild Woman, Wendy is running another course in June. I'm still debating whether to do it due to time and money constraints. And Jen Hadfield, another amazing poet and friend, is running a free 5-day online course with Arvon which even though it falls while I'm on holiday I am definitely doing as I've never had the pleasure of working with Jen and am really looking forward to it. I'm not sure if the Arvon course will have the sharing element that Wendy's course does, but I'm sure her prompts and ideas will be worth trying. 

So I'll keep writing daily and churning out my work in the hope that I will soon find my niche, my tribe, my audience. 

Keep going. 

My April GloPoWriMo Assessment

April is finished, thank goodness, it's been a tough month for a variety of reasons. Now I can do a review of my efforts over GloPoWriMo, the Global Poetry Writing Month - my attempts to write at least one, sometimes two poems a day for my two online courses. 

I wrote 22 poems that I consider done or almost done and 12 poems that still need a lot of work or will probably never make it past draft stage. There are also some drafts that I couldn't see going anywhere, so I haven't counted them. That's just over 30, so I'm very pleased with that. Some days I wrote nothing, some I wrote two, but I sat down regularly enough to have a poem-a-day for the month. 

Forcing myself to write a rough draft of a poem a day has pushed me to not avoid difficult subjects, to delve deeper into moments that have weight for me, but might not necessarily be an interesting telling on the face of it at first. I have pushed myself to write even when I'm not in the mood or don't like where my writing is going. Sometimes just ranting on the page or exploring those emotionally charged subjects helps me to deal with them in a healthier way than bottling them up and letting them fizz inside me until I explode over nothing. 

The online courses have also allowed me to join in a wider virtual community of writers, in the UK and Ireland. We support each other in the rough draft stages, but we also celebrate when we have poems published and do a bit of networking when opportunities come up. It's nice to see familiar names in journals and know that you will also be remembered when they scroll or flip past your work. Being so far away from my writing groups and publishing work in Scotland, from the collectives I spent so long finding my space in, it's reassuring to have that sense of community again but also to not just be a lone voice in the writing darkness. 

I've gone back to one of the online pages that the tutor has left open for former participants and will continue to try and write a daily poem draft there to keep up my momentum and to keep my mind focused. Writing daily has also meant I have more poems to submit, so am getting more work published and have a better chance of being seen by publishers. Just need to find one to take one of my collections. 

It reminds me a lot of my friend who decided to try running to lose weight. She didn't necessarily enjoy it, but after a few days she liked the idea of keeping track of how many days she had done in a row. It became an obsession with her, not to miss a day, even if that meant mostly walking or going on a treadmill, she did her run every day. Last I heard the number was in years rather than days. She's run a few marathons, lost tons of weight and now really enjoys it. Sometimes it's something as simple as watching the numbers that keep you going. I don't track every day I write, but I do track how many poems I write each year, how many I submit and how many get rejected or published. I enjoy seeing those numbers tick upwards as well as finishing a poem and knowing it works. 

I hope you find whatever works for you, to keep you writing. Keep on trucking. 

Writing Out of Your Comfort Zone

Last week I wrote about getting caught up in a theme or subject in your writing. This week I want to look at how to push yourself beyond your interests.

Wendy Pratt's new online course 'Poems to Save the World' is looking at subjects that are culturally and socially important, connected with news and current events. I'm finding it very difficult to approach and feel often that I'm taking a negative stance on issues. I don't get wrapped up emotionally in news stories, so it's hard to write about a physical reaction I've had to a news article, so I've written about my lack of response, the feeling that constant negative news is wearing down my emotional responses.

This course is pushing me, to examine my place in the world and how I react to it, my interest in it or lack there of. And of course, how I can write about it. Finding ways to respond to prompts that aren't the kind of subject I would ususally chose is a good challenge for me. How do you make the stark details of news articles poetic? How do you find the poetic in things you haven't experienced but only read about or seen on the television or social media? How does news reporting affect how we view information?

So far I've not liked any of the poems I've written, they don't seem like poetry, but more reportage, feeding information to the reader. I need to work on this. 

My poem 'Book Editor at GOMA' was published in Issue 18 of Riggwelter, a monthly online journal. Check it out.

More good news, I've had 3 acceptences from magazines since the year started, that's just over a month. I can't imagine I'll keep up this momentum, but even if I could just a little that would be great. 

Slow January

It's cold. Bitter blue skies, Finnish cold. I hate it, but it's a good excuse to sit under blankets with tea and write poetry. About hating the cold.

Not much else going on this week beyond the usual attempt at a poem a day and submissions. I've written around 12 poems out of the 21 prompts for Angela Carr's course so far. I've missed a few days due to lack of inspiration or lack of time, but I'm happy with my efforts. I've also signed up for Wendy Pratt's next online course which is called Poems to Save the World. It will have a more social-minded theme than I'm used to, but it could be a good challenge for me as I don't usually write that kind of poetry. 

I made it to my writing group on Friday after a few weeks away, it was full up with some new faces as well which is nice to see. Probably full of new year's resolutions to get back into writing. I hope they stick around. I got some good feedback on my poems. 

I've also sent some poems to Helena Nelson of HappenStance  Press as part of her reading window for subscribers where she will give feed back on 6 poems (3 if you're abroad). Her comments are always very helpful and insightful. The window is open twice a year and it's worth the small subscriber fee. Subscribers also get a discount on purchases from the press. 

I took advantage of my subscriber discount to buy Gerry Cambridge's The Dark Horse - The Making of a Little Magazine, about his work editing the Scottish/American literary magazine which has been around for almost 30 years. 

I worked briefly with Gerry when I was in Scottish publishing and it was lovely to read his memories of some of the writers I also had contact with during my time, Philip Hobsbaum, Edwin Morgan, Angus Calder. It was like being back. He also has great insight on the processes of running a magazine, right down to his thoughts behind his type-setting choices. It kind of made me miss the work, but I think it's probably rose-tinted on my part. Publishing not an easy job in any sense.

Hope you're warmer than I am.

An Impossible Task

The middle of January and it's been all go, submitting, writing, being accepted, being rejected, being published. I hope this continues to bode well for the rest of the year. Angela Carr's online course has pushed me on to eight new poems. I haven't been able to commit as much time to the Facebook posts as I'd like, but there's a good buzz there among the participants and I'm enjoying the prompts. 

I've had two poems from my previous online writing courses published in The Selkie's anthology. Based in Edinburgh, The Selkie is an online magazine mostly run by women which is refreshing. They also have a mentoring project New Voices which is worth looking into if you're a beginning writer. I've found working with a mentor very helpful and encouraging. 

I've submitted to 5 magazines and a have a list building up for more to go out, partially from Angela Carr's list of places to submit. I've already had one quick acceptance which helps with the new year, new start feeling. 

I haven't really come up with any resolutions, but to keep the momentum I've got going with writing and submitting. I'd like to get back to my fiction as well, but right now it doesn't feel like a good fit for my focus. Writing a poem a day makes it difficult to switch between fiction and poetry. 

Maybe that's a good focus for my theme for my writing prompt today 'an impossible task'. Can I be all things as a writer, a poet, a novelist, submitting tons of work and writing a poem a day, rewriting two novels? And lets not forget a mother, a partner, a social secretary and a chauffeur. There's also the thought that I should go back to work. I've been taking care of the kids for a long time now, but to be honest I like my life as it is right now and I'm scared to try and venture out into the working world again. 

On the writing side, it feels important to focus on the poetry, getting my collections finished and published, keep up my magazines submissions. On the personal side, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Hopefully that will become clear later this year.

Not in the Mood for Resolutions

I believe my in-laws have thrown out almost all the copies of my poetry book, link on the side. We had taken them down from our loft in Scotland and packed them up in boxes, but there was a delay in getting someone to bring them to Finland, so my other half's siblings helped seal up the boxes properly for collection. I guess the boxes were too heavy as when they arrived here, the books had been taken out. I assumed they would be stashed for us to sort later. 

My other half just returned from a trip to Scotland where he could find less than ten copies of my collection and none of another book that had some of my work that I had produced myself through my old publishing company. My sister-in-law said they had cleared out a lot at my father-in-law's house where the boxes had been stored, so I guess they decided to recycle them.

I'm gutted. Why would you do that? Throw out copies of someone's work. I understand the boxes were heavy and they wanted to clear my father-in-law's house out while he was in hospital. I had suggested they might want to take a few extra boxes to spread things out as we had packed them, but hadn't tried to move them afterwards. But just to decide that my books weren't worth saving is offensive. I don't even know how to bring it up with them. The distance makes it difficult but also the fact that they don't appreciate books of any sort really and don't understand the work, time and money that went into those books. 

So I have less than a dozen copies of my book. I had hoped to have a cheap sale of the books once they arrived, so spread them around before the hopeful publication of my next book. But they're pulp.

I was going to think about resolutions for the new year in this post, but I have lost any impetus for that now.

I'm still moving along with Angela Carr's January Write Off. You can still join in, but clicking on the link where she has posted her list of prompts and I think she's still accepting people on the Facebook page, you just jump in on whatever day it is. 

I've sent out my first submission and also received my first rejection from another magazine. 2019 is rolling apace, I guess.

Post-Course Slump

Once the prompts stop, there's this emptiness. What do you do in the morning if you're not trying to write to a prompt? How do I start a poem on my own again? 

Silliness, I know. I have a bunch of books to look up my own prompts from. I can still sit down every morning and write regardless. I have been trying to when schedule permits. But there is a sense of loss when a good course closes down. The pressure of deadlines, the camaraderie of the other students' responses, their own writing and the discussions of writing in general, the push to write.  

The community is what I miss most. Writing is a solitary pursuit a great deal of the time. Finding a good writing group or course, one that fits your needs, your schedule, your style can be difficult. Writing groups can go for years at a slow trot, but sometimes you get a really good mix of people who just click, who know how to respond and encourage you to improve your writing and it's like a burst of adrenaline. 

Once the course stops or the writing group ceases to be as useful, what is a writer to do? Find another course or group, continue to slog on until you can build up your own momentum. 

I've created writing groups from members of courses that have really worked well. In Scotland we had a good fiction group that was formed after a course. It lasted for several years until we moved abroad. We met once a month and shared full chapters. It was a really positive and creative atmosphere. It's been nice to see a couple of the members get worked published since then. 

I'm slogging on until February when the next course begins. I decided against the more intensive course in January because it is more structured, but starts with the basics. While it never hurts to go back and reexamine the fundamentals, it's not what I want to do right now. If you're interested in the course, check this link though be quick as it has limited places and a high interest from members of the previous courses.

I've written 22 poems from the 31 prompts from this last session. I may continue to revisit the ones I haven't completed yet over the next week or so, but I'm pretty happy with that number. I'll continue to tighten those poems up and send them out for submissions. I'm also still working on the my new collection. And still waiting on the old.

And I might even crack out a prompt or two of mine own, just to keep the juices flowing. 

Winding Up Autumn

I've managed to catch up a bit with my writing from a prompt a day, 17 out of 30, and I'm back to at least sketching out a poem every day if not writing a good first draft. So that's encouraging and many of us will continue to write once the group is finished, so the sharing of our efforts will continue for a bit on the Facebook page.

Many of the poems I've been writing have been working from the problems I had a few months ago that put me in such a dark place. It's cathartic to be able to work through some of those emotions and the fall out to what happened. There's still things I won't touch on, but the end of summer and autumn in full force seems to be a good metaphor for the time. I've been grouping these poems into a rough collection just now, though I'm not sure where they'll take me in the end. 

I'm struggling with the oncoming winter darkness. I work to my UV sunlamp most mornings, but I still want to curl up on the couch under a blanket and hibernate. I have no energy for fiction at all. I'm enjoying the burst I've been getting from these courses for my poetry, but untangling the mess my novels have become seems like too much work. The new novel has become too complicated, I can't figure out how to express all the character's motivation. It's never enough for my readers, they either want more dramatic complications or less. 

So I think I need a break from fiction. Wendy Pratt's next online course won't be until January and it's a more intense, limited numbers course. Then February will be back to the original set-up. I'm torn whether to do the January course. I like the daily prompts, but this will be two weekly assignments which will get some close reading from Wendy instead. I guess it won't hurt to try it and it will give me something to focus on until February. 

I've been working a bit on my Finnish poetry collection. I think I have all the poems, just trying to sort format and editing. I still haven't heard about my Scottish collection's fate at the publishers.

So I keep on moving on. 

October - Back to Poetry

Wendy Pratt's online course started yesterday and there's been a flurry of writing and reading poetry about autumn. It fits right in with the weather and mood here. I'm already enjoying her daily prompts and am writing about autumny things we did at the weekend; walking in the woods, open fires, harvesting apples and pumpkins. 

The switch back to poetry has been welcomed. I've been working on my Finnish poetry collection. I have it whittled down to 74 pages currently and am reading it through and editing, rearranging, thinking about themes. See this previous post for more ideas of how to prepare a collection. It's early days yet, I'll see what I write for this course before I'm ready to say it's totally done. 

I'm still waiting to hear from the publisher who has my Scottish collection. I'd like to say I don't think about it, but I give it a small thought every night as I'm trying to fall asleep. I want to hear, but I also don't want to know if the news is negative. It's been almost six months which isn't unusual, but if difficult after the excitment of finishing the collection and sending it off. I could send it to more than one publisher and I probably will after a while, but I wanted to try this publisher first as it really felt like a good fit from my research. 

October 4th is National Poetry Day in the UK. Check out this link for local events and also check out local libraries, community centres and bookshops. 

Enjoy.

Slow Week

I'm still here. 

I haven't written in days, things have been chaotic, my brain hasn't been able to stay focussed on anything. 

I've signed up for Wendy Pratt's new poetry course which should get me back on track in October. Autumn is my favourite season, so hopefully I will find some inspiration in her prompts again this time. 

In the meantime, I'm taking it slow. Working on my fiction for the writing group, submitting work to magazines.

Hopefully I can turn this down time around soon. 

In the meantime, here's a magazine that's included my work in their first issue, Nitrogen House.

Face the Darkness

It's starting to creep in, that darkness, sliding into my poems. It wants to be heard and as much as I don't want to allow it in, I'm opening myself up to it. It hurts, it's hurtful. I'm not sure if it's helping yet, but maybe it will in the long run. 

I know if I hold it in, try to resist it will build up and hurt more. It's a fine line to tread. I'm not sharing my work with those it affects, just the anonymous people on my online course. It feels a bit like letting go of a held breath, just a moment's release of tension.

My poetry course has finished and while I've found it hard to keep up with all that's going on, it has been good for me and for my writing. An external focus, a way to keep moving forward. I still have a few prompts I haven't written anything for, so I'll try and catch up with those over the next week or so. Or let them simmer in the background to see if anything comes of them in the future. Wendy Pratt is offering another course in October on autumn and aging, so I will probably sign up for that as well.

I do need to get back into my fiction. But to be honest I have no enthusiasm for it right now. I took the next section to my writing group and got decent feedback that gives me some direction with which to edit it, but I have set it aside. Usually I come back from the group and start working on it right away. I'll look at it again during the week when the house is quiet.

There's no rush and no need to beat myself up if I just want to leave it, do the bare minimum to keep taking chapters to my group, but to focus on poetry for the most part. Sometimes it's useful to have several projects on the go, if you go off the boil with one you can pick up another.

So I'm treading soft, allowing the writing to take me where I want to go. It's scary, but also feels very grown-up, trusting myself and my art.

Working Through It

Another tough week. I've tried to focus on the daily writing prompts as a way of getting through it. Some days it worked because the prompt clicked with me, other times I couldn't see past the fog to focus on the prompt or anything at all. But I'm trying to be present at my notebook and computer every day possible. Even if I scratch nothings before giving up. 

I haven't been able to write much about the things going on lately, even in my journal, but I see it sneaking into the poems I'm writing. I'll let it simmer, reach out tendrils when it needs to as I try to work my way through it, in my head and in my writing. 

I have written 20 new poems this year, 12 through this poetry course with another 7 still in progress. That's one more than last year already. So I'm considering the course a success. For a tenner, it's been totally worth it. I will probably take the next one in October which will possibly be about autumn and aging which feels appropriate for the turn in the weather and my emotional mood. I feel I've aged a lot this month. 

I need to get back into my fiction, however. All this focus on poetry has slowed down my work on my current novel. But my writing group is back to a quieter, more serious venue, so I hope to return to bringing my novel sections rather than poems which seemed more appropriate for a busy cafe. Unfortunately, most of us are working on novels or longer fiction, so getting through 4 or 5 longer pieces in a night is difficult. Poems are quicker to discuss and they're getting better at it as most of them are not comfortable with poetry. 

Poetic Migration

I went into Wendy Pratt's poetry inspired by nature course wanting to write poems about our recent trip to Scotland. I wrote one poem on that subject and then one on a biology teacher from 30 years ago, one of squirrels, one on a moose loose in Helsinki. An ancient olive tree, a university building, a beach and a house from my childhood. My poems travel from the US, Scotland, Norway, Iceland, Greece, Finland, just as I have. And now strangely enough the prompt for today is to write on migration and our connection to it.

My poems trace my travels, my settling in places, my growing and adapting to fit those new locations. Finding a creature that fits my migration pattern is impossible: US to Norway and back. To Scotland and then Greece back to Scotland and then Finland. An animal that starts off alone but creates a family along the way, who settles for long periods and then picks up again.

I've already written on the barnacle geese that migrate from Finland. I love monarchs and their mass migrations 'blackened embers weighing down branches' and as the prompt also wants a strong sensory feeling I love humpback whales for the iconic sounds and movements 'slip slow motion, booming and humming their song'. And the reindeer migrations also mean a lot to me. I don't know which way to go, maybe incorporate all of them.

I'm enjoying the process, how sometimes I really have to think and plan and other prompts just spark something within me right away and I can just scribble something down and it coalesces into a poem. I return to old memories and haunts, greet faces I haven't remembered in decades. I never know where I'm going to end up or find my inspiration from.

Back in the Groove with Poetry

Obviously what I've been needing to get my poetry writing going again is daily prompts and rough deadlines. One week into Wendy Pratt's online poetry course and I've written five poems. Almost a poem a day which is unhead of for me. They're coming together quickly and solidly. The prompts aren't earth-shatteringly complicated or different from ones I've done in the past. They're all focused around nature and our place within it and relationship to it. Some ask for a specific structure or form, others don't. There's no problem if you go off topic or don't follow the form. The main goal is to get us writing.

We can if we choose, post our poems on a secret Facebook page and the feedback is mostly positive with a bit of critical suggestions. The writers are all of varying level, so we're mostly trying to encourage. I'm missing more critical feedback, but that's what I thrive on. There's over 40 people on the course and you're lucky to get 5-7 comments, including Wendy's. I'd maybe like the opportunity to submit one poem for finer feedback from Wendy, but in reality she'd have to charge more than a tenner for that, just for the time it takes, time forty students. So for what it is, the course is good value for money. Some of these poems I wouldn't have written without the course, others I had in the back of my mind and I found a prompt to fit. All new writing is good.

Can I keep this up after this course finishes or should I sign up for Wendy's next course, which she's hinted will be on age/aging? I'm not sure. In theory, she's not offering anything I couldn't do myself. A daily prompt and some basic feedback. I can find a prompt from my books or my head, I can use my writing group more for poetry which I did do last week. But there's something different about someone else taking the lead, coming up with the prompts, setting a deadline, a group atmosphere even if it's unlikely that anyone would notice if I didn't post a poem. 

And it's obviously working for me. I'm enjoying the pressure and challenge and I even like some of my poems, others I will continue to work on.

The University of Iowa fiction course continues to flail. This week's section again has issues with the discussion questions. One question is pasted in 3 times. But I have enjoyed the most recent podcast I watched, the author actually had a bit of a screen presence and was discussing problems similar to what I'm having in my book. I've written that difficult scene and am now moving on to editing the following one, so that's a good thing. I'll keep pushing on.

My youngest went back to nursery on Monday so I've had a bit more time to work in the mornings, almost interruption free as the older kids either go out or disappear in the house with their books or toys. I'm trying to write my poem, do a chunk of the fiction course in the morning and then proof my and post my poem online in the evening and hope for feedback. 

Write on.

Prompted into Action

Just over a week until the kids go back to school and I have to say I'm looking forward to it. I've just started Wendy Pratt's The Wild Within course and that on top of the University of Iowa's is hard with the kids about. Neither are labour-intensive, but I need small pockets of time to focus on reading texts and to work on my own writing, but that's difficult with my 4 year old. 

We've taken today off after a hot day walking around an island yesterday, but I'm having to tell the little one, 'I just want to finish this reading' before I bake cupcakes or see whatever toy she has this morning. 

Wendy's course started today and it looks like it's going to be a good one for me. She's sending a weekly email, poems to read, ideas to think about and will also be sending out a daily writing prompt to get us started. There's no expectation to produce a poem every day, thank goodness, but just getting into the habit of doing a writing exercise daily will hopefully get me out of my poetry slump. 

I've scribbled four pages of notes on today's prompt, but I'm not focussed enough for a poem, I don't think, but it's nice to start the process again. I like the directions it is taking me, but I'm struggling because part of what I want to write about it in the past and my memory is so bad that I can't sort out details without my old journals, half of which are in a loft in Scotland. So I need to focus on the more recent details. 

I'm getting some work on my most recent novel done as well, connected with the Moving Margins course. I've been working on a section that's been eluding me for a while - the funeral scene of one of my favourite characters. It's been difficult to find a balance of how to describe it, but to also put some weight in it beyond just telling what's happened. I think I know which way to take it now.

To be honest, this week's course selection seems thrown together. The texts and questions and are about setting, but the video lectures are about character. The discussion questions are badly copied and pasted as two are the same and another a section repeated. Disappointing, but if I get this chapter written, I'll forgive them. 

It may seem a strange way to work I'm sure, two screens open - poetry and fiction - and my notebook. Reading stories and emails, watching video lectures while cupcakes go in the oven and Bolognese bubbles on the stove. Things get done, in drips and drabs. My technique won't change once the kids go to school, but there will be more time to focus rather than fitting around their needs. 

And tomorrow they'll need to get out of the house, so I'm trying to get as much done here as possible today. Of course as soon as I basically finished up for the day, my littlest was happy to play in the bath for an hour and then colour for an hour with little demands for me (except to see and comment on every picture she drew). That's the way things go some days. 

More on Creative Writing MOOCs

My first week's experience with the University of Iowa's MOOC (massive open online course) Moving the Margins has been an education in itself. I graduated with my final degree 20 years ago. I've attended a few evening courses at local universities and have even taken some simple online creative writing courses where the focus was on feedback for your writing. I'm used to online formats, but the Strathclyde courses I did were much smaller, no more than 12 students probably. Massive is in no way a misnomer here. I can't figure out how many students there are but there are hundreds from all over the world.

A large number of participants can be both a positive and a negative. I had 4 comments right away on my piece when I submitted it  2 days ago, though they are all pretty terse, but nothing since. Some people who submitted early had dozens of comments, but I think I'm late to the games. I've been making sure to respond to people who haven't gotten many comments themselves. No one should be left out. The teaching assistants are not commenting on anyone's submissions which is a shame as that's what a writer really needs when they're learning, feedback on their own work.

You read texts, watch video lectures, answer discussion questions relating to the stories and your own writing. Then you submit your own pieces. I haven't taken time to read everyone's answers to the study questions though I do read a few after I've answered just to see how others are taking to the texts. But there's no real feel of a discussion. A woman asked a question related to one of my comments, so I had a chance to explain myself, but then it was dropped. There's just too many people to really get a meaningful dialogue going.

It feels a bit odd, I have this expectation that because it's part of the University of Iowa's creative writing programme it should be an excellent course and I'll gain lots of insight. But so far, I'm not feeling it. The stories they've chosen to discuss are well-written and interesting in terms of examining for writing style and the theme, of course, but I feel distant, not getting the benefit of discussing it with the teacher or my other classmates. And ultimately to not have the teacher's feedback feels kind of pointless. It's like reading the crib sheets of the UofI course. So I'm not a fan of MOOCs at this stage anyway. 

I'm waiting to see how Wendy Pratt's course works out when it starts next week. There are over 30 participants so far, so will hopefully be more of an intimate, interactive course.

I've been mainly working on my first fiction piece for the UofI course, but I'm submitting a poem to my local writing group this week for feedback. We're meeting in a cafe which isn't as great for reading out our chapters, so I've chosen something short which should work better.

I'm still submitting constantly to magazines, I've had about 46 rejections and 4 accepts from various magazines this year which is about half-way to my goal of 100 rejections. Of course, I'd like to see more accepts. 

Enjoy your week.

Back to Business: Short Online Writing Courses

Two days back home and I have a major case of the 'post-holiday blues' going on and just a bit of jet lag, so I'm struggling to get back into routine. Our holiday was wonderful and I have lots of fodder for new work from it, but how to get started.

As my normal writing group is basically on hiatus over the summer, I have joined two online writing courses that will hopefully kick me back into writing mode, though I still have the kids at home for almost a month yet.

One through the University of Iowa's writing programme is called Moving the Margins: Fiction and Inclusion. It is free and part of their online writing resources and MOOCs (massive open online courses). There are hundreds of participants, so I'm not sure how inclusive it's going to be, but I figured it I would give it a go. I don't write short fiction, so am hoping to focus my writing assignments on new pieces for my novels. It's a shot in the dark, but it sounded interesting. And it had me up at 1am last night, scribbling down an idea I had for one of my novels. So not a bad thing.

I'm also joining a poetry writing course run by poet Wendy Pratt. Starting in August, it uses nature as inspiration and I'm hoping to work on some pieces inspired by our recent visit to the Highlands. She will send out daily writing prompts and five lesson plans, looking at established writers' work. The course only costs £10 which is a bargain considering how much most online courses cost and I'm sure it will be more personal than the UofI course.

And finally, I've also joined an online writing group started by a friend. There's only a few people in it so far and again, they're focusing on short fiction, but it will give me a more immediate reaction to the work I'm writing for the UofI course, so I'm sure it ill be helpful.

We're taking it easy for a few days while we get used to being back home, so I'm trying to squeeze in extra time writing while there's too much screen-time going on, but we'll see how things go when I'm on my own with the kids again.