Poem "Like a Woman in Love" published

A few months ago I found myself wallowing in self-doubt after yet another magazine rejected my poetry submission. I really liked the five poems I'd submitted, but I began to wonder whether I might just be fooling myself.

As one does in this era, I turned to my Twitter friends for empathy and support, and one of those friends, Josh Hewitt, went so far as to offer to read the poems and give me his honest opinion. To my surprise and delight, he loved them. Said there wasn't anything wrong with the poems and encouraged me to keep submitting them until the right magazine for the poems snatched them up. Faith in self and poems restored. Thank you, Josh. But there was a catch! Josh said he'd be asking me for a favor in return one of these days.

A couple of months ago, Josh called in the favor. He told me he was going to publish a series on his blog called World's End and wanted me to write a poem for it. "Wait," I said. "You read my poems for me and restored my faith in myself, and the favor you want from me is to publish one of my poems?" "Yes," he said. Could I possibly have been more flattered? Not likely.

The basic premise of World's End: in two years, a rogue planet will smash into Earth and kill everyone. There's no escape, nothing anyone can do to change that fate.

"Like a Woman in Love" is the poem I wrote in response to that prompt. And tonight it went up on Josh's blog. I'm honored to be included in his series and excited to finally get to share this poem with you.

Click here to read "Like a Woman in Love" on Josh Hewitt's blog, A Beginning, An End, and All That Lies Inbetween.

Book recommendation, ROW80 check-in

Before I do anything else, I want to recommend the book Wedlocked by Jay Ponteri. In a nutshell, it's a memoir about a man who suffers from depression and feels a lack of connection both with himself and with his wife and ends up having emotional affairs with other women.  I finished reading it this week. It's incredibly sad, but also incredibly interesting and, in a way, hopeful. It offers a model for being truly honest with ourselves and others...which perhaps is a bit ironic, since the narrator admits to lying so much to himself and to his wife.

I will admit that I probably wouldn't even know about this book were it not for the fact that I used to work with Jay. Regardless, I maintain that it's an incredibly worthwhile read, especially for those who wish to write honestly and openly about their experiences as human beings, especially those experiences with which our culture is intensely uncomfortable to the point of deafening silence.

What I'm saying is that this book has inspired me to write creative non-fiction again and to be honest with myself and others about my feelings and experiences. There is no greater gift.

Okay. Now here's my progress on my ROW80 goals this week:

Robin Schauffleur interview published

Just a quick note to announce that my interview with Robin Schauffler is up today on the VoiceCatcher.org website.

Click here to read "Starting Conversations: An Interview with Robin Schauffler."

Beethoven vs. Mozart: "pantsing" vs "plotting"

At some point during my Master's program in English--it must have been in one of the courses where we were learning about composition theory--a professor told us that there are two main approaches to writing.

The first approach is like Mozart, who worked on a composition in his head, tweaking and fine-tuning it until he had it just how he wanted it, and only then did he put pen to paper and write it down.

The second approach is like Beethoven, who wrote out many drafts of a composition before settling on the version he liked. As my friend--a composer and a teacher of music--Nathaniel Tull Phillips says, "Beethoven was known to be obsessive about it. For...the famous da da da dum (of the 5th symphony), [which is] only 4 notes, [he] filled up a large page trying out over 20 combinations, searching them out, and the very last thing on the page is that famous motive!"

Are you a Beethoven or a Mozart?

Until the moment in my education when my professor suggested that there were two ways to approach composition, I had no idea that the process that I went through--my process of word-vomiting followed by rearranging and wordsmithing and cutting and adding more stuff and sneaking in transitions and deciding after all that what it was I'd actually been trying to say all along and finally writing the beginning--was a valid process. A process that successful people have used.

A slight change in direction

As followers of this blog will know, one of the goals I've recently set for myself is to "try to stop trying to do so much." Hah! Easier said than done. But dang it, I'm trying! And to prove it, I've made some changes to this site. Namely, I've removed references to the tutoring and consulting parts of my business.

Why? Two reasons. First, honestly, I have enough to do keeping up with my writing and the editing part of the business. And second, after getting some good constructive feedback on this website today from my fabulous business coach Jim Newcomer, I decided that I could stand to simplify.

So yes, my plan right now consists of growing the editing side of the business while keeping up with my writing projects. I do have some exciting ideas for this summer and fall that involve teaching classes or workshops and leading writing retreats, but I'm not quite ready to talk about them yet. Partly because they're still developing, partly because I don't want to jinx myself.

Settling for straightforward

Finally I realized that the reason I wasn't writing this post--the reason it's a day late--was because I wanted it to be brilliant and deep and intensely interesting to everyone. I wanted to find something to write about that would sing straight into your soul and change your life. No pressure, right?

Instead I'm settling for a very straightforward ROW80 update. Sorry.

1. Be a ROW80 sponsor.
(a) I checked in on my assigned participants on Monday and Thursday, left comments on their blogs, and even went back to see if they'd responded to my comments. (Most of them did.) Success!
(b) One of my sponsor duties is to write an inspirational blog post that Kait Nolan, our fearless leader, will post on the ROW80 blog sometime during this round. Post written and approved! Kait informed me it'll be posted May 3rd. Woot!

2. Write my chapter of the chain story I mentioned in this post.
N/A - story has not yet come to me (thank goodness). If my luck holds out, I won't have to turn my attention to this until May. Fingers crossed. And toes. And eyes. And cilia.

3. Do three public readings.

A fool in April

It's Day 1 of Round 2 of A Round of Words in 80 Days, and I'm already behind.

What were my goals again? Copied & pasted from my last post:

Goals for Round 2

1. Be a sponsor! =*D I mentioned this a couple weeks ago. Very excited.
2. Write my chapter of the chain story I mentioned in this post.
3. Do three public readings. Two are already scheduled. Third one will probably be an open mic.
4. Continue to try to get more involved in the local writing community: attend more readings, go down and check out The Attic Institute, participate in a writing group.
5. Continue to write monthly articles for VoiceCatcher.
6. Focus on my pseudonym's novel.
7. Try to stop trying to do too much. [Emphasis added.]

Oh, man. This is going to be a tough one. My to-do list for today had 19 items on it. I got nine of them done--10 counting this blog post--and a bunch of other stuff that wasn't even on the list. I seriously need to learn to prioritize.

And at the time I originally posted the above list, I'd forgotten about one more goal: apply for writing fellowships/grants as part of my strategy for making writing pay.

And it's a "secret" goal of mine to get back to those five short stories I was working on last round after I finish up my pseudonym's novel next month. "Secret" meaning I'm pretending it's not a goal, but it really is.

Try to do too much? Who, me? Naaaahhhh... o_O

Update at six minutes to midnight: 11 items on today's to-do list accomplished. Just finished checking in on my assigned ROW80 participants and commenting on their posts. Go, me! *weakly raises fist in air, then collapses into bed*