Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Moment by moment

I am slowly making progress on this writing thing, despite that other thing called life.

I bought this book:
I have been researching my little heart out.

I also bought this book:Sage Cohen's Writing the Life Poetic. All I can say is OMG, this book is fun (did that make me sound like a valley girl?). I am enjoying it so much. It's all short chapters -- easy to slip into a few minutes in the morning before I go to work -- with a poetry subject, a poem for inspiration, and exercises to try yourself. Some sample chapters include: Tell Someone Else's Story, The Alchemy of Doing Nothing, Work the White Space: Shaping Poems with Line and Thirteen Ways of Looking (bonus points for anyone who gets the reference in that last chapter title). There are also chapters on submitting poems and even on blogging. Speaking of which, I could probably stand to skip ahead to those chapters!

I also finally dug out the tape recorder someone gave me for Christmas a year or two back. I am using it to record those random brilliant thoughts I always seem to have commuting to work when I'm doing 65 in traffic and can't possibly write anything down.

And most importantly of all? Yep, I'm writing. Getting up a little earlier, going into work a little laer, and carving out my space to write. Submitting is something I can work on while my husband and I hang out on the couch.

So in these little moments, I am making progress. Slowly, but... well, we all know where I'm going with this. I am making it happen, tortoise-style.

3 comments:

Stephanie Thornton said...

Ack! I haven't even looked for the 2010 Writer's Market! I have the 2008 version, all highlighted and marked up, but I plan to query for HATSHEPSUT in late-February so I need the new version.

I should have known it would be like cars- they'd be ready to sell the new model before the year is out.

And thanks for following my blog! It's nice to meet someone who has heard of Hatshepsut- so few people have!

Sage said...

You're writing! You're writing! Despite that thing called life...despite it all...I'm so thrilled to hear it. Wishing you all the best on your creative adventure!

Guinevere said...

Stephanie, I went to a museum exhibit all about Hatshepsut once as a kid... unfortunately, I don't remember where it was, but I'm sure it was outside the US! We traveled a lot, so it's sort of a blur. What I do remember is being impressed with her story, and intrigued by the fact that she had her father re-buried in her own pyramid (hopefully I remember that correctly).

Sage -- thanks for the well wishes! It's soo nice to see comments from y'all, I really appreciate it. :)