In Preparation for Centrum

I have spent a quiet morning without television reading poems for the workshop. I'm about half way through a 1 inch binder of poems. When I get tired of that, I read my own poems aloud to reacquaint myself with them and to remember that young woman who wrote them. They are all about women. I don't know how I could have cared so much. Now I'm looking for lost poems on among the files I found from my first computer, the old 286! So far I've found several that I haven't seen in many years:

Benediction

Blank Pages in a Letter of Regret

Four Lebel Interchange

We Will Give the Names New Gods

I've also found a letter from my brother when he started college!

I'm missing some poems too. News From A Board, and one about a homecoming queen. I guess I'll have to dig out hard copies.

These poems are about women for the most part and a little juvenile! I did find some fiction I liked.

I've been looking for good self publishing software for an online chapbook. I just downloaded and will try the new Thesis Theme for Wordpress.

While reading the poems in my red chair I fell asleep and dreamed the poems were read on a game show and we competed for something I can't remember now. Maybe that's the point!

Hello Again

I've been sucked into the immediate gratification of Facebook & Twitter. Is that good for me? I plan to return to blogging. Am preparing for Centrum Writer's Workshop with Mark Doty. I'm reading poems from my classmates and I never realized how many poems I'd be reading for this event! It's kinda fun but having no pometry background I don't know what to say about most of them!

Life's for Sharing

Saturday Chores

I spent all day in my office cleaning out the detritis of the dissertation.  There was also quite a bit of dust still remaining from the bathroom remodel.  I still have on my pajamas.  I cleaned all day in my pajamas.  One of my dissertation computers actually died today.  I scrubbed the dust off all the books I used for research and off the bookshelf itself.  I recycled all the extra drafts of the papers and quite a few articles I read to understand how to talk about discouse analysis.  I was a little sad to be out of academia but I work at a job that I love and that pays quite a bit better than university work would have.

I'm  free to start a new project now and thinking it might be some creative writing.  I've been collecting books about writing but a Walter Mosley interview on NPR told me to quit reading and start writing.  He says just write 600 words per day and I'll have my novel in a year.

Never one to settle for just one opinion, I've been reading The Passionate Accurate Story by Carol Bly.  She tells me to start out by writing a list of values and 10k word autobiography.  The values will help with the story later and the autobiography will help me avoid writing about myself.  I guess if I write a 50k autobiography, I'll have a book.

I'm going to combine the advice and write 600 words a day starting with the autobiography.