Haiku for Dummies

I have been seriously slacking on my poetry game. Besides the fact that I haven't really written in a month, I feel like my style has gotten more than a little stale. This month, I'm going to challenge myself by trying a few different poetic techniques. First haiku, then tankas :) Haven't written these since elementary school, at least, so I decided to google "haiku's for dummies"...and look what I found!!

From Dummies.com

Traditional Forms of Poetry: Tankas and Haiku
The Japanese tanka is a verse form from classical Japanese poetry. Even older than its better-known poetic cousin the haiku, the tanka is a quiet, meditative form that focuses on the natural world and the poet's emotions. A tanka is essentially a haiku (three lines consisting of 5, 7, and 5 syllables each), except it has two additional lines of 7 syllables each.

Traditionally, the tanka begins with an observation of a natural scene:

Invisible hands
caress my face; have I walked
through a spider's web
woven this morning to catch
flies writhing with my surprise

Many poets find that the tanka falls naturally into a haiku followed by a couplet. The haiku tends to focus more on observation, the couplet on reflection. But you don't have to observe this movement in your own writing. The tanka is a syllabic form, so just follow these simple rules:

•Avoid end-rhyming the lines.

•Vary the rhythms from line to line.

•Use enjambment to keep sentences and clauses twisting around the ends of the lines.

•Avoid ending too many lines in a row with a one-syllable word.

Not Really A Writer...Just Play One on TV

14 days into National Novel Writing Month, and I've totally hit a wall. Blah!!!!!!!!

Everything I write is crap. Honestly..It is really not good...but, instead of quitting (which I really really really want to do), I've decided to take a step back and put together an outline of my novel. I'm not sure if it's a violation of the NaNoWriMo rules or anything, but I simply can't write another word without figuring out where the heck this novel is going.


Anyone else having similar issues? I found a bunch websites with tips on how to outline chapters and plan out character bios. Hope this helps...:)

One

Two

Three

Happy noveling, my sweets!

Best. Quote. Ever! :)

"There are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid."

-Katherine Paterson

:)

Got this from the "Advice for Writers" Twitter account. If you're on Twitter and want some daily nuggets of awesome, follow him!!

Ever Hear of 2nd-Person Narrative?

...Neither had I before I read a short story written in that literary form. I mean...I'm sure that some teacher or someone in my life mentioned it at some time...maybe...?

2nd-person narrative is essentially when the author refers to one of the characters as "you", giving the reader the sense that he or she is a actually "in" the story.

Here's some more info about this form from the all-knowing Wiki.

Perhaps the most prominent example of this mode in contemporary literature is Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City. In this novel, the second-person point of view is intended to create an intense sense of intimacy between the narrator and the reader, causing the reader to feel implicit in and powerless against a plot that leads him, blindly, through his (the reader’s and the narrator’s) own destruction and redemption:

"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might become clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not. A small voice inside you insists that this epidemic lack of clarity is a result of too much of that already."

It's a pretty refreshing style. It's not very popular (probably because it's difficult to do in a compelling way), but it might be cool to explore in my own writing. It changes the reader from spectator to character, in a slightly unnerving way. You open a book, expecting to see someone else's life unfolding on the pages, but instead, that person is you... Love it!

I'm actually thinking about changing my novel to make it all 2nd person!

Thoughts?

Be Your Own Muse

Hello good people! Today, I realized that I have been a boring, boring, slacker writer for the past few weeks. Actually, I realized it about 2 years ago on a flight to New York when a wise woman sitting next to me schooled me on the fact of life and again six months ago, when I bought, started, and subsequently put down the Artists Way.

I didn't remember either of these, of course, and chose to point the finger elsewhere. I have blamed the past few months of creative famine, first on the absence of one ex, then work, then the emergence and sudden exit of another ex... but it was actually all me. I was looking for inspiration everywhere but within...

I've decided to be my own muse from now on. No more dating poets and musicians and academics to help me tap into my creative side. No longer settling for being someone else's muse. I will inspire my own darn self :) In fact, I think it will be my motto for the rest of 2010....#BeYourOwnMuse

anyway...

I found this totally kick butt list of ways to be your own inspiration online. It kind of rocks :) Reading it made me feel like I did when i took the picture above - liberated!!

enjoy!!

How to Be Your Own Best Muse:
101 Ways to Delight and Inspire Yourself

BY Molly J. Anderson-Childers

1. Blow bubbles in your backyard.

2. Lie back in the grass and watch the clouds roll past.

3. Roll down a hill, then do it again and again until you’re dizzy.

4. Draw silly pictures and print hopscotch grids and poems on the sidewalk with chalk all over your neighborhood.

5. Write a spontaneous haiku — just jot down the first seventeen syllables that pop into your mind.

6. Take a walk.

7. Make friends with someone new.

8. Call someone interesting and invite them out for coffee.

9. Go fly a kite.

10. Find a park or playground and play outside. How long has it been since you were on a slide? It’s fun, even if you feel a little silly and awkward at first.

11. Learn a new joke and tell it to three people, then write it down as part of a scene in a story.

12. Dance in the rain.

13. Go barefoot in the grass.

14. Try to go a whole day without talking. Instead, write down what you want to say.

15. Wander through your favorite gallery until inspiration finds you. When you see an interesting painting or sculpture, write a poem or story about it.

16. Go book-surfing at a library or bookstore. Write a question in your writer’s notebook. Hold the question in your mind, walking through the stacks, and then open a book at random. The first phrase your eye alights on is the answer. (I can spend hours doing this.)

17. Take a long nap.

18. Where are you when inspiration finds you? If you get your best ideas while driving, try taking a long scenic drive. Take along a mini-recorder, or call yourself and leave a voicemail if you get an idea along the way.

19. When all else fails, try a long, hot shower. It seems like I’m always in the shower when the Muses come calling. They have a funny sense of humor, and I’m sure it amuses them to see me scrambling to dry off and get to a notebook. Not being able to write an idea down because I have shampoo in my eyes is sure to spawn inspiration.

Happy National Punctuation Day!

Guess there's a day for everything now. lol.

Check out the official recipe for Punctuation Meat Loaf. I'm not a big red meat fan, but you gotta give these peeps an A for effort :) Note that you need a "punctuation mark-shaped tin." Man!! I would be so much cooler if I had one of these, but alas...I do not. ::sigh::

:)

2 pounds of ground chuck
1 cup water
1 or 2 eggs
1 box of Stove Top dressing: any flavor
Topping: 1/2 cup ketchup and 1/2 cup
brown sugar.
Take an ice cream scoop and scoop the ground beef mixture into punctuation
mark-shaped tins. Mix 1/2 cup ketchup together with 1/2 cup brown sugar for
topping. Top each filled tin with the topping mixture.
Bake at 350 degrees for 1/2 hour. A fist-size period makes one serving.

Writing Prompt from Rachel

I've been trying to be more disciplined in my writing, so I was more than eleated when I found Rachel Mckibbens' latest writing prompt!! You all know how much I ::heart:: this chica.

I'll try this out this week and let you know how it goes....eeek!

Writing Exercise #21
Ingredients:
1. Three "famous" physical characteristics of yours.
2. Describe the weather (past or present) inside your heart, using all five senses.
3. One place that is, for you, the epitome of "peace and quiet"

Confession Time

Ok friends...I must confess that, despite all of my excitement about NaNoWriMo, I just couldn't do it this year. If I had been writing diligently, like over achievers all over the world, I would have 25,000 words down by now. I would be half way to my very first novel. But, I chose to spend all of my free time prowling Facebook and reading other people's words (almost done with Unaccustomed Earth). Oops.

So, yeah. I was technically out of the race before it even got started, but I still get the most fabulous pep emails from the NaNoWriMo staff. Yay!! Decided to share one from the first week with you all today. This pep email literally made my day:-) Witty, informative, and motivational. What more could a gal ask for!!!?

In case I'm ever brave enough to actually attempt a novel, there are some great nuggets of awesome in this letter to keep my chugging through. If any of you out there actually took the challenge to heart and are not total and compete slackers like me, happy writing:-)

Enjoy!

Dear NaNoWriMo-ers,

I'm not even the tortoise of writing. I'm the slug. And you are more than hares, you're cheetahs — writing at seventy miles an hour. I have to fictionalize even to talk to you.

So it's October 31st. I’m back from trick or treating in a robot costume, worn to honor Isaac Asimov, who wrote or edited more than 500 books in his lifetime. After removing my tin head mask and my metallic gloves, I pig out on candy corn and think about today's accomplishments.

I dug a shallow grave in the backyard and buried my print thesaurus (starting tomorrow, the first word I think of is good enough, even if I use it seven times on every page), dictionary (who cares how ophthalmologist is spelled anyway?), usage books (I can figure out the difference between lie and lay later), encyclopedia, atlas, and my beloved books about writing. I taped blackout curtains over my windows. My techy friend spent hours tinkering with my computer. She's assured me that it will combust if I try to reestablish connections to the internet and email. The single thing I'm keeping is my cell phone in case I start to go into cardiac arrest, but the keys are smeared with battery acid, except the 9, the 1, and send. My family and friends and Meals-on-Wheels have sworn to deliver food to my door, which will be kept closed to protect the world from my intensifying body odor.

Now I tape my list of rules and advice (culled from friends, my mom, the buried writing books, and, mostly, my own hyped-up imagination) to the wall next to my desk.

Now I tape my list of rules and advice (culled from friends, my mom, the buried writing books, and, mostly, my own hyped-up imagination) to the wall next to my desk.

1. Sleep at least once a week.

2. Eat at least once a day, but not constantly. Don't forget the essential fatty acids (Mom).

3. If my fingers freeze from carpal tunnel syndrome, I have ten perfectly good toes, a nose, and quite a few teeth.

4. When I'm not happy with how things are going, turn off the screen and keep typing. Don't turn it back on until the crisis is over.

5. Don't check my word count more often than every fifteen minutes.

6. Dream sequences can eat up a lot of pages, and they shouldn't be logical.

7. Short words count just as much as long ones.

8. The perfect is the enemy of the fast. The good is the enemy of the fast. The halfway decent is the enemy of the fast.

More

Did you know November was NaNoWriMo?

Yes!! NaNoWriMo:-)

Also known as National Novel Writing Month. This month-long write-a-thon is described on the homepage as a "fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. All you have to do is write a 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time." That's ONLY 1,667 words a day! Sounds impossible, but I believe in you!!

The main site has lots of tips on how to get started, how to fight the evil dragons of procrastination, and how to donate to the efforts when you're a poor, struggling artist. You can even buy all kinds of bibliophile swag like the oh-so-adorable "I Eat Novels For Breakfast" shirt. Simply beautiful. They'll be tracking the number of words written all over the world throughout the month, so check out the site to register. Thanks to Ida for getting me hip to this. Happy writing lovelies!!

And just in case you're still wondering why you should hop on the NaNoWriMo band wagon...

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

How: Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Write a Poem About Monsters

Just stumbled upon Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz's hilarious poem about what she does when poetic inspiration comes at inopportune times. She emails notes to herself...which don't always make sense in the morning.

Enjoy:-)

Write a Poem About Monsters
BY Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

and this midnight note
"poem about monsters"
was written in the hope
that when morning broke across my desk
and coffee shook the rumpled bed of my brain,
I would find something profound in this obsession
but instead, I just found more nothing
another ghost of a poem
to throw into the grave with "neck-face"
another pen I swore I could move with only my brain
but couldn't

Writing Tips: From Anis

Hello World

I'm kind of on an Anis Mojgani kick these days, so I decided to highlgiht his advise in this week's "Writing Tips."

It's from an interview he did last year with Common-Line's Ananda Osel

Osel: What makes a good performance poem?

Mojgani: Respecting your audience. Don’t think that you as a poet are in a position to teach them anything or give them something they’ve never heard before. One of our most precious commodities is time. Don’t waste theirs by asking them to invest it into something that’s bullshit.

1. Having the courage to be vulnerable.
2. Having an honest and organic connection to your work.
3. Not forcing anything.
4. Make it interesting.

Poetry Tip of the Day

I must admit that, like most of you, I am often my harshest critic. I'm either so afraid to write crap that I forget to write at all or I'm too afraid to post what I've written - convinced that it's crap.

But, I've been inspired by poets who have recently taken up daily poem challenges. They have vowed to write everyday. This means that they will, from time to time, write things that are less than perfect...but at least they'll be flexing their creative muscles. Maybe you don't have time to commit to daily writing, but you could at least take the chance and write...even when it's not all the way perfect and you're not sure exactly where it will end up. It's better to write crap than to let the fear of writing badly paralyze you. It's usually better than you think.

Thanks my tip of the day. Take it for what it's worth.

:-)