Slowing Down into the Summer, Summer, Summertime

School is finally done and the sun is shining. The weather has been amazing, so hot and clear. Not great for the garden or the forests to go so long without rain, but the long days of light and heat are a relief. Beach weather, park weather, proper summer weather while we off to enjoy it. 

Appointments are winding down and most alarms are turned off. I'm trying to make the most of each day, doing a mix of things I want, things that need to be done and things I should do. So a little housework and repair, big cleaning, gardening and, of course, writing. I have a huge puzzle to finish from Christmas, a cardigan I started years ago, my genealogy research is never-ending. 

I had two weeks after school finished to do what I wanted, but now I have a visitor here and then summer school in Scotland to teach English for ten days. After that's done, I'll be able to focus on having a more relaxed summer. I'm not writing much while my guest is here, but I still get a few minutes here and there. 

I'm enjoying what I'm writing now. My style has changed a bit over the past year. My poetic style is always changing, but I sometimes get caught in a loop of subjects or styles, writing very similar poems for a period and when something comes along to shake me up, I find it refreshing. 

I use prompts to push me out of my rut. Writing from different points of view, occasionally trying a structured form (I'm currently trying to write a palindrome) and looking into unusual events for inspiration. I've even managed to put a bit of humour, sometimes black humour in my poems, playing with ideas that often aren't found together. 

I hope while I'm on my course I'll have time in the evenings to write and continue with this new mood. 

A wee book review of a new Scottish title: I recently read Angus Peter Campbell's Electricity. I'd heard a lot about it and had hoped to be blown away by it. But it's not that kind of book, it doesn't make you want to steam through it, to see how it ends. It's a slow read, a wander through a world that barely exists now and you don't want to rush through it. It sneaks up on you. 

It's a reminiscence of a grandmother, writing to her Australian grandchild about her Hebridean upbringing on an unnamed Scottish island. The people still speak Gaelic and cling to traditional ways in the wake of electricity and an airport coming to the island. 

It's not a novel, in a traditional sense. There are beautifully drawn characters, the speaker Annie, her family, a local shepherd who resists all change, her friends and neighbours. There's not much of a plot other than change is coming to the island. Annie writes what starts out as a letter, but it soon meanders beyond that, skipping through time and theme to draw a warm, comforting picture of a community steeped in traditions and memories. 

I don't believe the book is set on any particular island but seems to connect closest to North and South Uist and Benbecula with its tiny airport. It looks at subjects important to the history of the Hebrides; migration, language, the culture of ceilidhs and farming. Annie's parents and some of her neighbours cling to the traditions of paraffin lamps and peat fires as electricity tempts others with the simplicity of electric fires, refrigeration and lights. But we know how the story ends and from the beginning, there is a sense of loss that too much of this way of life has been lost. 

Campbell's Electricity does a beautiful job of capturing island life and Gaelic culture. It is a reminder to slow down and take note of what is going on around you, right now. 

Enjoy your summer. 

A Poetic Daunder - Stepping Away from the Familiar

My poems don't rhyme or at least I don't usually use end rhyme or repeating patterns. I find them difficult and forced to write, a straight jacket that doesn't allow me to say what I want. 

But, a teacher friend has gotten me into the Poetry Unbound podcast and this has set me off on a new tangent. I'm also not into audio stuff much. I have struggled to focus on online lectures, audio books, music, podcasts, becoming distracted, flipping away if it's on a screen. I listened to one PU podcast because my friend was raving about the title of the poem being a sign of a great poem, so I though I'd listen to the poem at least. 

The poem read on the podcast was Hanif Abdurraqib's 'When We Were 13, Jeff’s Father Left The Needle Down On A Journey Record Before Leaving The House One Morning And Never Coming Back' and my friend was right. The title is killer, the poem even more so. The presenter Pádraig Ó Tuama has an amazing voice for reading poetry and he brings his own gentle enthusiasm for the poems he shares. So I listened on. And again on the way home from school that afternoon. I continued to pick another episode and another and another, in the mornings before work and often on the way home. 

One day after a partially tough morning with the child I support at school, I brought my lunch up to the classroom, rather than sit amongst the noise of fourth graders in the cafeteria. I needed to calm down before the next class started, so I stuck on a random episode called 'A Poem for What You Learn Alone' which seemed to suit my mood. The poem was Brad Aaron's Modlin's poem 'What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade'. It is nothing about fourth grade and exactly what I needed. I think I've heard all three seasons now, but keep going back to favourites or finding one that I that I've forgotten. 

Back to rhyming poems, I listened recently to the episode about Natasha Trethewey's poem 'Miscegenation,' written in the Arabic poetic form  ghazal. I have been struggling with a poem that skirts several issues and when I took it to my writing group a couple of people said that the stanzas didn't seem connected. One of the conventions of a ghazal is that each stanza couple should be a small poem in its own right, somewhat unconnected from the next, but that the repeating phrase or word at the end of each couplet brings them back to the overall poetic themes. 

So for my sins, I tried turning my hodge-podge poem into a ghazal. It's hard work, everything I worry about with strict styles is hitting me. Am I forcing the line to fit to those last words? Am I saying this just because I need to get that word in? Can I fudge the rules of the form to make it flow more like me? 

I'm still working on it and at the moment sticking to the form as it's used in English though I'm open to colouring outside the lines if I feel it will help my poem. After a year of not writing much due to work, it feels good to force myself to stretch my poetic self and try a new style.

Writing prompt: take something different from your usual style whether it be in a different genre or just in structure or format and break it apart, figure out how it works, its rules and see if you can adapt it to your own writing. You can attempt the style wholesale or pick and choose the bits you like. Try a villanelle or a ghost story or a ghazal. Don't force it until it hurts, but push yourself to try something new in your writing. 

April is the . . . Month - #GloPoWriMo

It's Global Poetry Writing Month again and while I probably won't be able to write a poem a day this year, because of work, but I'm going to give it a try. I've only written a few new poems this year so far, though I have a huge pile of rough drafts from previous years I've been working on. I'll be happy with any new poems started. There's no pressure to be creative daily, so I'm going to see how each day goes. The snow melting and the air scenting of spring is enough to make me want to try.  

So here's a prompt for the week to begin with, inspired by Kelli Russell Agodon's (@KelliAgodon) tweet about T S Eliot's early drafts of The Waste Land. The final draft started his cycle with 'April is the cruelest month . . . ' but is it? 

Use this line as a jumping off point for a writing exercise. What does April mean to you? Is it the cruelest month or does some other emotion overrule April? What month is the cruelest, if not April? What do the months' names evoke to you, their etymology or just your personal relationship with them. Look at each month individually or just focus on just one. 

There are more prompts available on NaPoWriMo website. You can also use the online collection of the The Metropolitan Museum in New York as inspiration. Get scribbling. 

I'm also going to be doing more editing in April. I'm working with poet Willie Gowans on his new poetry collection Glimpses which includes evocative illustrations by Ann Terris. It's been nice getting back into book design and editing. Strange and fun also to be working with Zoom to go over corrections as Ann is in Scotland and Willie in England, but it's becoming kind of second nature now after a year of virtual lockdowns. Hopefully the bursting of spring will give me more energy to bring it to fruition. 

I also hope to get back to doing a few book reviews in the spring as well. The sun always fills me with high hopes. We'll see how it goes. Enjoy the brighter weather.  

Short, but Sweet Steps into Winter

With a snap of an icy finger, we have a sprinkling of snow which is enough to lift the mood by brightening the scene. The dark, rainy days of winter are always tough as we come to this end of the year. The sun has set in Northern Finland for the next five weeks or so and even down south we feel the oppressive weight of the days getting shorter and shorter. So as much as I hate snow and, yes, I realise I'm living in the wrong place for that attitude, it does help allieviate the darkness. So far we have enough for the kids to go sledging and it's melted off the paths and drive, so I don't have to shovel, so that's enough for me. 

What's that to do with poetry? It puts me in a more wintery mood, than the damp leafless scenes we've had the past few weeks. Wendy Pratt is running a one-week winter poetry course, if anyone is looking for a short, but sweet exploration of winter. And it costs only a tenner. I'd do it, but I'm behind with the previous course, so want to focus on that. Her daily prompts whether visual, other poet's work or just short suggestions and ideas are great jump starts for the poetic brain. 

And if you're looking for a wee Christmas gift, grab a copy of the Hedgehog Press' poetry calendar, including my poem 'The Last Drops of September'. Pre-orders being taken here and you can also take advantage of poetry bundles, the calendar with a selection of new pamphlets or collections from the press. The calendar is really lovely, a great mix of images and poetry, and I can't wait to see it for real. 

I doubt I'll get much poetry done today though. There's a wee hangover hanging over me from last night's St Andrew's Day Ceilidh. I'm happy just to chill and enjoy the sunshine with the cat, so this will also be short, but sweet. Enjoy. 

An Adventure Begins

I got my wish, even in the midst of a bumpy week with accident, injury, horrible language tests and difficult classes I've managed to get back into the swing of writing, by sticking to a rough routine. Not daily, but when I sit down something comes out. I'm not keeping up with my course's daily prompts, but I have managed most of them. 

We've turned our Halloween pumpkin into a bird feeder and the kids, cats and I are loving it. We've even had a woodpecker come to visit among the normal songbirds. It was cold and snowy for the first part of the week, just a dusting, too much for my liking. Now it's rainy, silver drops hanging off the rowan berries. More my idea of autumn. I'm glad to have a few mornings to scribble at my kitchen table and watch the birds with the cat trying to sleep on my computer. 

My publisher (how great is it to say that!!) Hedgehog Poetry Press sent out my Author's Pack this week to prepare for the publication of my chapbook. So now I'm equal measures terrified and excited to begin work. So much to do, finalising the collection, writing my blurbs and biography, even finding a photographer to take an author photo. We're looking at a summer publication date and I hope to get to the UK to do some readings, so that all needs to be sorted as well. I'm not even sure where to start, but will start whittling down the jobs one by one. 

And we're off.

Creeping into Winter

I have to admit that without the structure of a daily prompt I'm struggling to keep up any momentum with my writing. Even on days I have no outside work, I can't focus. I've been sending out submissions, but new poems haven't been happening and I've barely looked at the ones that need finalising.

I've started a new online daily prompt course this month, but so far the prompts haven't been able to kick me from this doldrum. I'm taking notes and trying to form ideas, but they just don't have any momentum or inspiration behind them. 

It doesn't help that the weather has turned here. The beautiful colours of autumn have been replaced by wet, brown mud and dark skies. We had a couple days of bright frost, but that just reminds me of what is coming. After ten years I still dread the coming cold darkness. It makes everything difficult. I'm at that stage of just wanting to wrap up in wool and hibernate for the next 4 months. So that's what I'm doing tonight, sketching notes on the couch with my cats and a blanket, chocolate and red wine, the rain blashing against the windows. 

I do believe that writing a poem draft a day is an exercise that you have to keep up or it does become a struggle to get back into the rhythm. I sit down currently and my writing feels stiff and lethargic, but I'm continuing to push myself, writing in small silences like this. Hopefully it will loosen up soon.

Juggling it All

Where has this week gone? After the interest I'd received last week in my job hunting, I was offered two days of substitute teaching early this week and it offered insight to what working full-time will do to my writing life. 

No slow starts with tea at the kitchen table, using social media to ease myself awake before writing and editing through the morning. Instead, it was snatching handfuls of time for first drafts in the staff break room or at 9pm after I finally got all the kids to bed. It was ignoring writing on my first day off so I could take my son to the doctor, make a proper dinner for that evening, do the shopping and the laundry, catch up on admin and things for the kids. 

It wasn't until Thursday I actually had a morning to write. It made the writing I accomplished that day a tiny bit sweeter. I had worked hard, earned a small pay check, earned the time to commit to my calling. Amidst the exhaustion, there was a sense of accomplishment, I can work and single parent and write. Maybe not to the extent I would prefer on all sides, but it is possible, messy, tiring, but possible.

Fittingly, there's been a trend on Twitter at the moment, maybe it circles around regularly, but I'm a newbie remember, of writers posting about procrastination, how they are not writing. Is it guilt that makes these writers post this type of self-depreciating post, to shame themselves into writing? Or is it to gain commiseration or likes because we all get distracted by research rabbit holes or social twitterings sometimes? Both probably.

It's good to know we all have moments like this, but I want to use this week as a warning to myself that I won't always have time to do everything else but writing. I won't feel guilt or punish myself for putting other things first; kids, work, daily life-upkeep will have to be sorted first most days, but I need to make the use of the time I do have and write when I can. 

My house is a state, but I've managed to start four poems, two I like, this week, so I think I'm winning. 

#amwriting

Back to Work and to Barnhill

I've started back into writing slowly after my long break. I'm not currently doing a poem-a-day prompt, but working everyday on older poems. I'm editing those started on my last two month-long courses, focussing the language and intent. A few are ready to submit to journals, along with the pile of rejections that came in while I was away. I've noticed most American magazines seem to be on hiatus, but the British ones are still working on backlogs. 

I'm also going through some of my old journals for details of poems I've had on the back burner because I couldn't remember what actually happened. It's lovely how they have jogged my memory and taken me back to those places and times. Little details I have forgotten or placed onto different scenes brought into firm focus. Unfortunately, I didn't write about everything. Moments that seem important now often didn't get mentioned in my journals at all, either because they didn't seem of consequence at the time or life just got in the way of writing. I've never been one for writing every day which would help to rebuild moments later. 

I'm starting new poems on specific subjects that I decided I wanted to write about when I was travelling. I will start a new poetry course in August, so this seems to be a good way to get back into that more intensive work.

I finished reading Norman Bissell's Barnhill and it was a surprise as I bought it mostly on the connection with the place, rather than anything to do with George Orwell. I thought it would be more of a biography, but it's a biographical novel based on George Orwell's later years, especially those in connection with Jura and Barnhill and the writing of 1984. Less dry quoting of dates and details and more trying to capture the writer and his obsessions with writing, Jura and creating a strong family for his son.

I knew very little of Orwell's life, so learning about his connection with the Spanish Civil War, his marital and other relations and his illness were all very intruiging. Bissell also included the point of view of Orwell's second wife Sonia Brownell whose voice unexpectantly pops up and gives the reader new insight. The book also illustrates how Orwell might have drawn details from his own experiences when writing 1984.

While Barnhill tries to stick strongly to the facts of Orwell's life and there is a list at the end of known details which contribute to the story, it's the scenes where Bissell allows himself to imagine Orwell that the man really comes alive for me, spending Hogmanay in Glasgow, his worries about finishing his book when he knows he's dying and the connections he had with his friends. 

Though Bissell is a poet and director of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics he doesn't get caught up in the romanticism of Jura and life alone there which must be difficult to do as I was overawed by the place when I visited. The attention to Orwell's physical life there, taking care of the garden and fixing machinery sometimes taken from entries in Orwell's journal feels very focussed and fits in with the George Orwell drawn in the novel. I could very well remember my journey down the 'Long Road' to get to Barnhill from Ardlussa as I read Bissell's description of cars and motorbikes breaking down while trying to get along it.

I could occasionally feel a modern voice of hindsight coming in which felt as if it wanted to make sure the reader could see how spot on George Orwell was in his predictions of Big Brother and his fears of government control. When they came from George's mouth they worked, felt in character, but sometimes the narrative pushed too much. But I have to admit with the way current media and politics is going, I would have found it hard to resist pointing out the connections as well. I recently reread 1984 and was gobsmacked about how much closer we were creeping towards Orwell's nightmare vision than when I first read it in 1984 in high school in America . 

Overall, I enjoyed the book, it was informative, but it created a rounded and interesting view of Orwell's character and the time he was living in. The novel manages to illustrate the complexities of a difficult man who allowed little of his personal life to be seen by adding a greater depth to his novel masterpiece.

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?

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. 

First Week GloPoWrMo 2019

I've started my double GloPoWriMo courses. I'm trying to write one poem in the morning and one in the afternoon, depending on time. Neither course has a theme, so I'm free to wander to whatever subject pops into my head. Again I'm not worried about finishing anything in a day, just to begin something, to shape it a little. I'm also not bothered if a theme doesn't grab me or if it's something like today when one of the prompts is 'your favourite colour' which I've covered in a couple of courses lately, so I'll just skip it.

I'm trying to work every day, but I'm surprised how missing one morning can throw me off. Not just because I'm a poem behind, but I can't focus as well if I try to fit it in between appointments and school runs. I like my slow start morning of reading the news, commenting on other pieces of writing in my courses and then posting my own work before starting a new poem. Anything else feels like I'm shoe-horning it in. As I've found with the kids, routines have their benefits to keep you focussed and on task. 

I was in Switzerland over the weekend, catching up with friends. I made sure I had some time just on my own to explore Luzern and to write. Spring is already well under way there, so it was lovely to just sit in the sun and soak up the city, scribbling whatever popped into my head. Primroses, wild garlic, violets were popping up in every sunny corner.  There's still snow in my back garden, though it's almost melted away. Even the birch trees in Switzerland were starting to affect my allergy, but it was worth it, just to get out for a bit. Chatting with friends and some new scenery has hopefully blown a fresh wind through my writing. 

I'm trying to do some rewrites after my mentoring session. It's going very slowly as I can't see a way to untangle one of the poems, full of Finnish terms. Again that problem of making sure they're understood in the poem without weighing the text down with explanations while also getting my idea across. I make a few small changes and then leave it to simmer. Hopefully it will all come together soon. 

Enjoy the sun wherever you are. 

A Voice Not Taken

Last week was our skiing or spring holiday for schools, so all the kids were home most of the time, often with extras. I tried to keep up with my daily prompts, but  I didn't get a chance to blog. And while my writing routine was sadly out of whack, I did manage to write all except one of my poems some time during the day. The one I didn't manage is because I haven't thought of an approach to the prompt and haven't had the time to just free-form write about it until I figure something out. 

I've gotten a few rejections over the past two weeks, but no acceptances. One magazine The Seventh Quarry published two of my poems in their latest edition. Nice to have that drop into my post box, I just need to find some time to peruse the work.

I workshopped some poems in my writing group on Friday and took a poem that I had a very specific question about. The prompt I wrote it for was to use a photograph taken in a war zone and write a poem where we use the voice of one of the people in the scene. I chose a photo from the 1960s in Northern Ireland from this collection, where the family are all dressed up walking past razor wire and a British soldier with his finger on his rifle's trigger. I chose the young girl's point of view. 

The poem I wrote was ok, but needed some tweaking, but that wasn't my main question to the group. I wondered whether it was appropriate to assume to understand that person's feelings, thoughts and motivations from a picture and to write a poem in her voice. I felt uncomfortable trying to imagine how she must have felt, having no connection with the Troubles or Northern Ireland. 

One person on the course suggested it was cultural appropriate to put on these 'voices' without a true understanding of the situation and the people we were depicting. And I kind of get where they were coming from. It didn't feel right to pretend to understand that girl. I had imagined she was scared and worried and just want to grow up in a non-threatening world and while I probably wasn't totally wrong, but at that time there was so much going on under the surface that I could never truly comprehend. Maybe she felt protected by the soldier rather than threatened, maybe she agreed with their presence, maybe he was just like a policeman on the beat to her.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get my writing group to really discuss this subject really due to lack of time. In the end, I think I've decided to put the poem aside. It doesn't feel right, I wouldn't feel comfortable sending to a publisher in Ireland or Northern Ireland where I send a lot of my work. So it'll go into hibernation. Maybe I'll see a way around my issues at a later time. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for imagining to be other characters or to use other voices in my writing and have used imaginary characters or people from my family's past before. But this issue is so layered and sensitive and volatile that I don't think I could write from their point of view, just as I couldn't imagine being a person of colour or to have a disability or major illness and do them justice by pretending to understand what they were going through. 

It's an interesting prompt to try and take on the voice of a character other than yourself for poetry. We do it all the time for fiction, but poetry seems to lean more towards the intensely personal for the author. I would avoid attempting it with this sort of subject matter, but taking a mythical, fictional or historical figure or a totally made up character can help push your awareness of this writing style. Give it a try. 

Winter Warmer

I've been busy on Wendy Pratt's new course, but am also dipping in and out of Angela Carr's challenge to continue writing for 100 days. She's given us a list of 100 verbs and we can try and use them to write a poem. So some days I'm sketching out two poems in the morning. 

I'm still finding the Poems to Save the World course difficult. I'm not good on writing a social commentary or on current events, but I've managed a few that I will continue to work on. But I have a pile that I've set aside as dross. Maybe I'll have another look at them once these courses stop. I really haven't had much time for editing. Wendy's suggested finding a strong metaphor to hang our discouse on, but I'm struggling with that and having it feel so unpoetic, but hopefully I'm hitting a few marks with my writing. 

But I have had another two magazines accept my work, one online and one in print. Unbelievable really to have so many this early in the year. I'm getting used to online magazines, but I still prefer print. The rejections are still coming in and I need to catch up with my new submissions. I've had one publisher reject my collection as well, but these smaller acceptances are keeping me going through this long winter. 

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. 

Writing Obsessions

What are your writing obsessions, topics, places, people you keep returning to? Do you relive the same moment over and over through your writing, do you revisit the same characters in different guises?

It's not unusual to use the same inspiration over and over in writing. Some fiction writers set their stories in the same area, the same universe if it's science fiction. Iain Banks has his Culture, Stephen King his Maine. It's comfortable, they know the confines and the environment, it sets a familiar tone for their writing. It can allow them to cross-over stories or characters, to build on what the reader already knows. 

Poets do the same thing, writing about a difficult situation from different angles, revisiting a place over and over, in different seasons, in different moods. Sometimes once is not enough to capture all the nuances of what we experienced. 

I spent a lot of time writing poems about Greece after I lived there for a year. This was years after I left, when I felt I had composted the experience enough to begin to really explore it. 

Working on these prompt-a day poems, I'm finding I'm returning to Scotland more and more, also my childhood in the Midwest and my year in Norway. Drifting back through faded moments, trying to piece them together again, to find what made them sparkle at the time or in hindsight. A few memories I had forgotten have popped back into my mind which have surprised me.

Usually I would say indulge your Muse and write what seems to be naturally coming out, but sometimes it might feel that your flogging a dead topic, rehashing things over and over until you can't see them clearly anymore. Then is a good time to force yourself to explore new subjects. Pick prompts that can't be twisted towards your subject, at least at the beginning. Work from pictures of something totally different.

You might find it still swerves towards that thing you are avoiding. Maybe you just haven't found the right way to approach it. After churning out dozens of poems on Greece over a couple of years, I haven't written another in a decade or two. I guess I said what I had to say on that subject and I seem to have run out of steam on this subject. Enjoy your obsessions, whatever they may be.

I hope your writing is going well. 

Ups and Downs

After feeling so positive and energised at last week's post, my mood and writing have taken a nose-dive this week. I haven't done any new writing or any daily prompts. I know it's a blip and I'll come out the other side, so I'm trying not to beat myself up over it. I've had a very productive year, so I'm not complaining at all. I can't wait to look over the numbers for the year in January. 

On a happier note, I did get an acceptance for 5 poems for an online magazine that I've been trying to get into for a while. I'll post a link when it's up. 

I also think I may have figured out a way to get around my problems with my novel, though I don't have any energy to actually do the rewriting. I've sketched out the idea in one of my notebooks, but I will have to go back to the beginning of the novel to make the changes. Hopefully in the new year I can start that and take the revised chapters to my writing group. 

The kids are off school at the end of the week, so I'll be taking some down-time anyway. I hope to do a bit of writing, but won't be able to commit much time. But now that they're older and can entertain themselves a bit more, I should be able to carve some writing space out. 

A Poem A Day and Blogging

If you had told me six months ago that I could write a decent draft of a poem a day, I would have said maybe as a fluke, but never regularly. I've always written very slowly, shaping and tinkering, but my recent online writing courses have taught me to trust my instinct and to just dive in to my writing.  Keeping writing practice as a daily activity helps to make it possible, like keeping the writing muscles limber. I've turned about 10 out of the 17 non-course prompts I've done into poems, some still pretty rough drafts, but some already submitted to magazines.

I'm finding my prompts from various places: newspaper articles and books I'm reading, places I'm at, websites that have daily prompts. I like to have someone else pick my prompts as otherwise I try to find ones that fit my preconceived ideas about what I should write about. I prefer when surprises appear in my writing. 

Reoccuring themes have been showing up, often to do with Scotland. I'm debating whether I want to add the poems I've written to my Scottish collection as they are part of the themes there, but while they're still being considered by publishers I'll just leave them. 

The poet Luisa A Igloria has been an inspiration in my daily writing. She has written and posted daily poems for over 8 years. She shares them on the Via Negativa blog which she shares with Dave Bonta who also writes daily. And while I'm sure she finds that not every one is good or worthy of publication, she has managed to produce four full length collection and 3 chapbooks and has won lots of awards in that time so it can be worth-while to write daily. I now have enough for at least one more collection after my Scottish and Finnish ones, but there's no obvious thematic flow so I'm not trying to put anything together right now.

Dave Bonta also does a weekly round-up of the Poet Bloggers Revival which I joined up. I'm not included in his round-up, but it's nice to read briefly what other bloggers are writing about and sometimes follow back to the original blog for more. It's interesting how he can often find themes stretching across the world to various poets. 

I'm quite chuffed that I've managed to keep up my weekly blogging this year. I might have missed one or two when on holiday, but otherwise, even when I was feeling quite low, I managed to write something. It gave me a goal to achieve, something to feel like I was still writing even when I couldn't produce a poem or a line of fiction. 

Less than two weeks before the kids finish for Christmas, so hopefully I can keep things going in that time and then ease down for the break. Take care.

What I'm Reading Now and Ticking Along

I'm still trying to do the daily prompt and one way I'm getting ideas is Karl Ove Knausgård's book Autumn, a collection of vignettes written to his unborn daughter about every day items. He writes about apples or jellyfish, badgers, plastic bags and labia among other things. It's a quiet, meditative book, nothing shocking or earth-shatteringly beautiful but it has a lovely reflective feel to it and sometimes the language is hauntingly beautiful and melancholic. I carry it about and read it in short bursts in waiting rooms. There's three more in the series that I might get, following the names of the seasons, but it really makes me want to read his My Struggle series which is also autobiographical.

Anyway, I'm occasionally taking the subject of one of his sections and using that as a prompt for my own writing. Sometimes I get a poem, other times I just spend the time writing with no final output. I like the fact that I'm keeping up with writing practices, not every day, but often enough that I don't feel like I'm wasting my writing time. The poems are still coming, not daily like with the course, but one or two a week which I'm happy with. 

Otherwise, it's just back to the normal writing, editing, submitting, attending my writing group. I'm only working on poetry though we had a craft week on Friday discussing dialogue. We did a short writing exercise and it reminded me why I'm not working on my novel right now. I just can't get a feel for it at the moment, the characters just feel so tangled up, I can't get a hold on them or their motivations. So I'm happy to continue on with my poetry until I see a way out. It's still percolating in the back of my head, but I'm not really giving it any paper time.  

Enjoy your week. 

Chasing My Tail

I don't know where the week has gone, but I know I haven't written much. I've spent the morning making cookies for my daughter's Christmas fund raiser, so that gives you an idea of the kind of things I've been up to. I don't think I've done a single prompt since I wrote my last post, until I managed one today while I waited for my son at the physio.

I'm missing the flow of the poetry writing course I've been doing, editing while waiting for the next prompt to appear in my inbox, writing on that and then reading the other poets' submissions before I post my own rough draft. I just haven't been able to get myself into a similar rhythm this last week on my own.

I did send my Scottish collection out to another publisher with a heavy heart because it feels like admitting that the other publisher probably won't take my collection. I know this is a possibility anyway because it's unlikely that I'll get an acceptance from my first submission, but I do like to cling on to a bit of hope. I like the look of this other publisher as well, so hopefully something will come from one of them soon.

I've been chasing up a few submissions the past few weeks, ones that were over six months or even a year with no response. One admitted it had been 'buried in our process' so they're hoping to get to it in the next few weeks and another that I've had to chase through social media is going back to check and see what's happened. Others haven't responded so I'm assuming that there's an issue with the address or they're too busy, so am submitting those poems elsewhere, if I haven't already.  It's amazing how much an up-to-date website can help writers submitting their work. A note saying you've fallen way behind in your reading or that if you haven't heard back from us in six months, feel free to submit your work to other journals, is so helpful when you're waiting for responses. 

I try to double check email addresses and such before sending queries as I have had times when they've changed procedures or closed the magazines after I've submitted and my poems have fallen into a limbo. It's a frustrating process. You don't want to annoy the editor with query letters too soon, but it's nice to not be wasting your time, tying up poems for six months or more if they've lost a submission or never received it.

I've had a few poems published in the short poem journal Shot Glass Journal. It's nice to see the magazine strives to have a mix of US and international poets. Enjoy.

Prompting Myself

Though a lot of my writing books are still annoyingly in a loft in Scotland I still have a few that have writing prompts and suggestions for writing exercises. This week I've been trying to pick one a day to do a writing practice with.

This week has been crazy with appointments for the kids so I haven't done one every day, but I have managed four and will hopefully do another today.

One issue I've discovered is I that I can't just pick a prompt that appeals to me, I need to just pick one at random or if it's in a book that has them daily, pick the one for that day. I was trying to find prompts with a subject I had in mind, forcing them too much to fit into my idea and it showed. I'm going to try and be more loose and open with my prompts in the future and hopefully this will take me to unexpected places with a lighter feel to the writing.

I'm still editing my Finnish collection, changing the order, reading it out-loud as I edit, adding poems. I've also started writing my blurb for it which I always find difficult. How to sell yourself without it feeling forced or cheesy or unnatural, without falling into tropes or cliches?

Besides the blurb, I love the work required to bring together a collection. Tinkering to improve poems that are already done. Trying to establish an arc between the poems, weeding out the ones that don't fit. Bringing it all together. I'll print it out soon and give it another look at ordering and read-through. It should be ready to send out in a week or two.

But then there's a question of what to do with it. My Scottish collection is still at my first choice publisher. I could send this one out to some of the other potential publishers, but it feels a bit wrong. Publishers usually want to publish your follow up books, so ideally it'll come out with the same publisher.

It is also in a sense chronological with my other books. My first book, already published covers years from 1988 to around 1994/5, the Scottish collection covers years 1993-2010 and the Finnish collection covers years 2010 to the present. It would feel off to me if the Finnish book was published before the Scottish one.

I'm crazy, I know. In reality, I'd be happy if either was accepted for publication, but I'd really like the Scottish one to be published first. I guess I'll finish the Finnish collection and go from there. Maybe it's time to send out my Scottish collection to some other publishers.