Category Archives: Writing

Nowing hour

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I woke up this morning to see a friend of mine make a reference to Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky. Naturally I reread the poem, and one thing led to another, whereupon I came across this website for archaic words. I started playing around, writing my own poem as a writing exercise. I’m not really a poet, and I’m not even sure this makes any sense, but if it doesn’t I’ll claim poetic license. Enjoy!

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Nowing hour

I began one stagnant eve
upon the threshold between yore and nowing hour
where I stood a waffling man
shifting amongst wants with mask aglower.
Inly I began to sweven
whenas slumber I forsook
the nowing hour nigh upon me come
wist ruth, desire aflamed in my coeur.

Afore decisions be made
a rede I hight hither now
of yore I shan’t return
of morrow erelong I must embrace.
Verily, the path long sought
peradventure must be trod
afore the threshold between yore and nowing hour
breaks, erelong shackled I be made.

My other short stories

Maybe I’m to blame….

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I find myself with plenty of free time to do some quality writing today. It’s sad that I don’t often have it, and when I do, I don’t always take advantage of it. I doubt I’m the only would-be novelist guilty of such a sin, but I can’t speak for the others. Today I confess my own failings as a writer.

Writing is such a chore, and because it is, I tend to put it off. You’ll rarely catch me writing in the morning, if ever. I do my best in the afternoon, or even later. When I get in my rhythm, it’s not unusual to be past midnight, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, holding exhaustion at bay.

My job does not give me a set schedule so that I can get into a routine. That’s what I need. We all love routines, though we may complain about it from time to time. Our bodies want to go to bed at a set time, get up at a set time, eat and conduct our lives at a set time. Granted, we don’t want to get into so set a routine that we fall into a rut. We demand routine and some flexibility to make life interesting.

So, I’m justifying my failure. It’s not my fault. The “Man” is keeping me from pursuing my dream. It’s better to blame my failure on someone else than to look in the mirror and realize it’s my own fault. Not going to happen. It’s the Man!

Excuses only absolve me so much, or maybe not at all. I’ve let myself get distracted by too many things. Success demands so much out of us, that most of us give up without realizing we have until it’s too late. Sometimes we never come to terms with the idea that we ceased pursuing our goals. “There’s always tomorrow, after all!”

Enough dawdling. I need to shut everything out for a while and let myself find my flow and let the words flow out of me. As Ernest Hemingway once said,

“There is nothing to writing.
All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.”

With all due respect to Mr. Hemingway, I’m all out of typewriters, so I hope my laptop will suffice. Also, while I’m thinking about it, I may need to contact the blood bank, you know, just in case. I’m O-Positive for future reference. Something tells me that I won’t need them.

I’m just a-plugging away

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It’s been a strange transition from writing three posts weekly to not writing at all. At some point in the distant future, I’ll start to post regularly again, but not yet. Right now, I’m letting go of the reason I began writing the blog in the first place, and I don’t miss the oppressive weight one bit. So long and farewell!

But I’ll admit that I do kind of miss forcing myself to write something, anything, regardless of how silly the subject might be. Having an outlet to express myself was healing, and it helped me figure things out. It made me confront uncomfortable truths about myself. Who am I kidding? I just bitched and whined a lot!

So have I given up writing? Um…NO! I’m stilling plugging away at my stories, trying to find that one that I will be able to publish. Maybe I’m being too picky, but I’d rather take my time to write a good novel, with a compelling story, than to rush whatever drivel that I may have ready to go.

I working on a story now, one that I’m very excited about. I really wish I could tell you about it, but this time I plan to keep quiet about it. Well, maybe a few tantalizing hints couldn’t hurt.

The book follows the a magazine writer as he searches for a story to report. His expertise is travel and adventure, but the story he finds is not one of thrills and excitement but rather a focus on one man’s life as told through a popular blog. Who is the stranger writing about the exploits of a wild youth? What skeletons are hidden in the closet? Are the stories of his varied sexual exploits fact or fiction?

I’m still in the beginning stages of this book. My main character still remains unnamed, and I’m 20 pages in! I have a vague idea of where I’m going with the narrative, and for the rest, I’m learning as I go, discovering the twist and turns as I go along. That’s what I love the most about writing!

I make no promises to have this one completed in a certain time frame, or even that I will find it good enough to publish, but I remain optimistic that this could be the one. As for the others? I haven’t given up on them either, but I’m in no hurry to rush them out for public consumption. This is a luxury that is afforded to the unpublished, and I’ll enjoy it a little longer before relinquishing my hold on them.

It’s now late. It’s after midnight, if you want the truth. I’m going to sit and write some more on my book before I turn in for the night. I wonder what I will discover tonight about my characters. Maybe I’ll find out what his name is. That would be cool.

 

Unable to eat diarrhea?

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Yesterday I had a friend tag me on the following picture on Facebook, saying that as a writer I would enjoy it:

I made one my usually snarky comments, that she only thought of me when she thought of diarrhea. This morning I woke up to find that she had deleted the whole post, no comment, no message, just vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. It struck me as funny because I thought the post was funny, and I would have thought she would be able to grasp my sarcastic sense of humor. 

This just goes to prove that I don’t understand women, but that really isn’t all that surprising. I bet I don’t hear from her again until late summer, early fall. Regardless, enjoy this funny photo and remember to use your commas. Diarrhea is no laughing matter.

I can’t sleep

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Insomnia’s a bitch, ain’t it? I’m here at four in the morning, desiring nothing more than to fall asleep, but instead I’m making use of this time to update my blog. It’s infuriating! Oh well, I need to type up a post because I haven’t done so in almost a week.

My book is going nowhere fast. It’s not for lack of ideas, it’s due to lack of taking the time to sit down and write it out. I’m to blame, well partly. I’ve been working late the past few weeks, getting off most days at midnight, then after the hour drive home, I’m not really in the mood to write.

Then there’s the fact that I’ve been talking to somebody. A human somebody. A female somebody. Yeah, I know I said I would never talk to a female somebody again, but I made myself a liar and proved everyone else right. Damn it! The new feeling won’t last, so I’ll get back to writings soon.

The female somebody, who made me promise never to write about her on my blog (sorry, but at least I’m not using your name) has given me a few ideas on my book. Gotta love creative people who can point out flaws in your logic. I think I’m on the right track as it relates to my plot, but I have to sit my butt down and actually write the freaking thing.

I’m working on creating my two main characters, who have not met yet. They have separate lives, one a priest, the other an escort, but whose lives will intersect at some point, and of course they will hit it off. I just need to make it seem real.

What holds me back is motivation. Why do they meet? Why does Giada seek Israel out? And why do they create and maintain a lasting relationship, one that threatens their lives, and his career in the church?

I have an idea to be sure, but it’s always difficult to translate the picture in my head into words that make sense. I’ll need to try, and then I’ll need to go back and edit it. What I need to do is set aside time to do it. Haven’t I made that observation before?

It’s probably due to exhaustion. It’s too early (late?) for me to be writing. I think I’ll shut my computer down and try to sleep. Fortunately for me, I go to work at three in the afternoon, so there’s no pressure to fall asleep right now, but I’ll try anyway. Maybe when I wake up, I’ll be able to write something that makes actual sense.