megwrites

Two things make a post because I damn well say so

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:38:32 GMT

1. DW/LJ-verse, let me pick your brains about long term writer's block and what it is and if anyone ever gets over it. Because right now, I'm in a bit of a panic that I will never write again. It's been weeks, maybe months, since I sat down and worked on a project. It's like the mere act of typing has gotten harder for me to do. The words don't flow from me anymore. Heck, they don't really even come when I try to grind them out word by word onto a page or a screen.

I'm blocked up. Well and truly and I don't know how to get out of it. Anyone else ever gone through this? How did you get out of it?

Because right now I really am afraid that I've lost the one ability that I've always valued in myself and that's scary.

2. Dog bless sara and the very first fontmas in which she explains how to use Google Web Fonts really easily in your DW layouts simply by pasting a url into a box. IT'S LIKE MAGIC, Y'ALL. Which solves my problem of finding a layout that I liked a lot but didn't care for Impact as a font. I really wish that they'd get a new default font for new layouts because the Summertime layouts are pretty. And the one I'm using actually has a nice color combo. But damn, Impact is one ugly damn font to use. It's like using popsicle sticks to frame the work of a great artist. It just sort of ruins the whole thing. But that's my opinion and I'm not a pro or even an amateur when it comes to designing things. I just play around on colourlovers a lot and pretend I know things.

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Wishlist Post

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 17:11:49 GMT

There's a wishlist post being run by marina, and I think it's awesome. I'm going to post this list here. I also got inspired by amadi's wish list.

First off, I don't expect anything. I'm not posting this and then glaring at everyone who doesn't fulfill my wishes as being a big, mean, nasty meanie-headed meanie or anything. I get it. Money is tight for a lot of people. It's just that it's kind of a meme going around and sometimes it's interesting just to see what other people wish for.

Second off, don't feel obligated.

Third off, feel free to post your own wish lists in comments if you want to!

( Stuff I'd like if anyone is feeling willing )

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I'm starting a meme, join in!

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:15:08 GMT

So, today I went to the library and found a really interesting book called Thanks, But This isn't For Us: A (Sort Of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing is Being Rejected.

I haven't read all of it, but I did find an interesting exercise that I'd love to see other people on my f-list try. Which is:

Come up with five opening lines for books you never intend to write. Use different techniques and try out different genres than you usually would. Just make them as interesting and compelling in one line as you can.

So my five were:

1. "Why won't you let me drive?" Allie asked on the way to their next murder.

"Because you're the only person under seventy I've ever seen leave their blinker on for five exits." (murder mystery)

2. When Sierra was ten she got her first job, kissed her first girl, and got in her first fight all in the space of three hours on the first day of school. (Romance)

3. His queen would be dead by noon if he didn't find a new, less worn out horse. (Historical romance)

4. The President's eyes seemed bright but rheumy that day as he leaned on the podium in the sweltering August heat of Washington. (Political thriller)

5. Hades laid his head down in the gloom and let the dead babble around him, then he raised his eyes to the black vaulted ceiling of the cave and suddenly, the dead went silent. (Mythological fantasy)

--

So, hopefully others will choose to play along. It's an interesting exercise in how to sculpt a first line and it actually got me thinking of new ideas. Let me know what you thought of my first five lines and feel free to leave your own first five (or try just one!) lines in comments if you want.

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In which I do not believe in the constructive nature of "Ha-ha!"

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 12:51:43 GMT

So, best of nanowrimo is a thing on Tumblr, and yanno what? It makes me more than a little queasy to have people's posts taken and reposted (probably without their knowledge or consent) just so that others can have laughs at their expense.

I'm not of the Nelson Muntz school of how to look at other people's failures. Especially when it comes to writing.

( Cut because I sort of rant about this and you may not think it's worth all that. )

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Day 30: The End of the Road

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:50:19 GMT

Day 30: Write a poem employing extended metaphor to illustrate the experience of the last 30 days as you were participating in the challenge.

Yet Another Prose Poem.

The last thirty days of my life have been like a very narrow road with pillows and marshmallows on each side and the simple rules that you don't know what the end will be like and you can only take one step each day. Which at first seems a terrible speed limit and you're on this road and you're screaming at the slowness of your pace and stamping your foot and going, "Come on, come on, come on" to some invisible force in front of you in the line, but then somewhere around the first or second turn it becomes "oh thank god, I only have to take one step at a time" because the marshmallows and pillows look awfully tempting and you know the fall wouldn't hurt anything but your ego, but you take that step and then the next and let tomorrow be tomorrow's problem and then it becomes second nature and then it ends and you miss it like you'd miss an old friend who's just left after an extended visit because while you adjusted around them, you think it'll be nice to adjust back to the way things were. It's a good road, but I wouldn't want to live there.

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Day 29: Posted late for reasons of feeling like crap yesterday

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:49:04 GMT

Day 29: Briefly research a poetic form of your choice and write a poem according to the rules of that particular form. It can be a received form or a nonce form.

A Sonnet to Writer's Block

To be a writer who cannot write
To have flesh strain, mind so weak
To be a flower that can't find light
To face a page so empty and bleak

To to have desire and not the skill
To make something of beauty and art
To have the willing but not the will
To have hands that work, but not a heart

Like a falling wall you have to build
By piling crumbling brick upon brick
You put one on one with each stone you wield
But it falls away, for the mortar won't stick

Still, I say push on and push through
For that's how this poem came to you

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Day 28: An object

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 20:57:24 GMT

Day 28: Visit a virtual museum gallery and take a look around until you find an object that intrigues you. Write a poem inspired by the artwork.

The Venus of Willendorf

I sometimes feel that I was born too early
or far too late in time
because I see the image of myself
called a Venus, and cut from stone and
in the shape of a body like mine, a
body wide and exuberant in it's space taking, a
body that strides the x and y axis
with joy, that spills flesh over all
the supposedly more pleasing
lines that other artists have drawn around my body
until they've shaved my "supposed to"
into a whittled stick

I see this object that must have taken
so long to make roundness
out of the hard and square stones
and I think, still a goddess is a goddess
Whether anyone continues to worship her
or not. Venus remains Venus
even if the temple is gone and the fires gone out.

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Day 26: Right on time this time!

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:46:07 GMT

Day 26: Gather some magazines/catalogs you don’t mind cutting up and spend 10 minutes flipping through the magazines/catalogs looking for words/sentences that spark your interest. Cut out the words as you go. When the 10 minutes are up, arrange the words to piece together a cut-up poem.

Light work for
the long stretch
only one could occupy the site in your mind
the design is executed for today's
flush work, it was built with
a line of striped banners
through an open window of wood
scorned as timber, beloved of the sky
spiraling upward to view
yet didactic wall panels are more insightful to us

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Day 25: A day late, but hopefully not any dollar amount short!

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:45:25 GMT

Day 25: Write a poem that includes all of the following words: pistachio, ink, pebble, weather, varnish.

The summer I met my stepfather I:

was just turned twenty

ate every pistachio in the house out of the
huge bags he bought from the commissary
like a foraging bear

became a pebble in everyone's shoe that
spilled ink and called it a life aspiration

was a slow hurricane that stripped the very varnish
off the furniture, by laying around, destroying everything

was a hell of a thing to weather

would be a bridesmaid in just two years

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Day 24: A short prose poem

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 21:49:12 GMT

Day 24: Write a poem that’s different in some way from anything you’ve ever written. Take a chance! Be wild!

A short prose poem.

The neighbor boy across the way threw his sister's barbie dolls onto the roof of their laundry shed. They're still there, naked and rotting in the sun day by day. I think there is a raccoon who comes to play with them at night before it gets into the garbage and scatters food bits in the yard. Because sometimes the barbies - they've moved, suddenly face up as if tanning their plastic bodies in the sun, sometimes face down as if they're misshapen, pale blondies baking in the sun. Even if someone did get a ladder and with a sigh, climb up and get the barbies, they're ruined, both of them. They'd be hideous and tangled and weathered. I think they might have even grown crows feet and flabby stomachs and unibrows and sagging melty butts while they were up there. They'll never be pristine, box-condition beautiful ever again. Frankly, I think the boy did his sister an unwitting favor.

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Day 23

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 18:30:38 GMT

Day 23: Write a seven line poem that begins with “it’s true that fresh air is good for the body” (from Frank O’Hara’s poem “Ave Maria”) and ends with “this is our body” (from Gary Snyder’s “The Bath”).

1 It's true that fresh air is good for the body
2 Even better is self-supremacy over it
3 With no other person gaining right of way
4 To live in one's own vessel, owning it as a greedy god
5 Or like a monarch, to look all others in the eye
6 And say, with all auto-regality:
7 "This is our body"

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Day 22: A kind of sad poem about a car. Yes, I can make a car poem sad. Behold my powers!

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:47:54 GMT

Day 22: What is the first car you bought/drove/remember? Write a poem about it.

I thanked you twice, you orange, boxy thing
You were the color of the 80's
Twenty-years out of fashion if you were ever in
You had a tricky spark plug
You turned less sleekly than most 18-wheelers

I thanked you when I got you, (I thanked everyone that Christmas)
For what opportunities you opened for me
A job, independence, friends

You took me everywhere and I was so cavalier
I was so fucking expert I could drive you
one handed, other on the radio dial
I could drive you so fast the gravel spun up
under your tires
I went everywhere around town with you
And sometimes even talked shit about you
because others had better things
One girl in class got a new car. A brand new car.
From that year.
(I hated her because she complained about the color,
thankless brat).

But then on a Sunday morning
I thanked you when I woke up
Amongst the shattered, scattered glass
With the jaws of life prying your frame apart
the steering wheel touched the ceiling
I laid slumped to the side
and a big fireman's face said, "Don't move, stay calm"
I thanked you then
Because after a 70 mile an hour crash
from a car bigger and bluer than you
you were totaled but I was not

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Day 21: The Remix

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:07:13 GMT

Day 21: Select one of the poems you’ve already written as part of this challenge and revise it by choosing all new verbs.

It was truly hard not to donate a fuck
I had attempted it just this week
And did not really have the best of luck
at discovering the indifference I looked for

The first problem was consequence
You could malinger around all day for a while
And hitch the dog out to the fence
But soon the dish and dishes begin to stack up

Then you can scream that bad words roll off your back
And that you were hardly there, not paying attention
But stinging still stings like a sledge hammer whack
And anger still taunts like a diamond's shining

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Day 20

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 21:01:30 GMT

Day 20: Write a narrative poem detailing a specific childhood memory.

The one and only time anyone got in trouble
for calling me a "fatso", it was third grade,
I had just begun to wear perpetual insecurity
like a winter coat, to understand that I took up
excessive and unwanted space with my body.
A blonde-blue eyed boy smirked,
said the word and then our teacher, our
thin and lovely teacher
took us into the hall, bent down to his level with
a soft frown, put a soft hand on his shoulder
and with a voice even soft said, "Why would you
say that? Megan thought you were friends."
Enemies that we were, we both exchanged
a mutual, momentary question in our eyes with
each other of, "Is she serious? Does she not know how this works?"
We weren't friends, never would be
Still, she looked at him so sweetly and said,
"Apologize and shake hands."
I looked up at her and suddenly a hundred mile distance
grew between me and my favorite teacher
because I didn't want an apology. Didn't even want revenge.
I wanted her to take away his power
to make that word hurt, and I realized that
she couldn't. She wouldn't.
I realized I'd be shaking hands with people
who hurled insults at me for the rest of my life.

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Day 19: Hopefully ars and not arse

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:01:13 GMT

Day 19: Imagine yourself performing any household task/chore, then write a poem using what you’ve imagined as an extended metaphor for writing: an Ars Poetica.

This sighing task at the sink's edge is not so
unlike the revising of a great project, editing
it's a slow, scrubbing battle and
a climb up Mount Dish, after a feast
of celebration, of the ecstasy of finishing work,
the finishing of long days.

What once filled you with warmth and savory good
and slid past your tongue sweet and smooth
now is crusted, cracked, soured, gone cold
stomach turning and making the waters
go from clear to bilge as you work, disgusted
hands wrinkling up and resenting each course

The joy is over now, the resting is over now.
Now it is time to scour
in just tolerable hot water with soup until you
have cleared away the mess to make
way for the next feast, the next finishing
now it's time to scrub 'til something shines.

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Day 18: It's a song. Just go with me on this.

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 20:57:31 GMT

Day 18: Write a poem without any end rhyme, only internal rhyme.

On your inside wrist I lick the salt
I put a kiss on your scabby fist
Darling, my good old rambler, my fighter
My midnight ambler, drinking down the dark

You howled for me like a lost wolf
Then 'til I set you free you whined and stamped
For now I'll hold the whiskey that's mine, and yours
For now I'll give you all the time, and all the sighs

Where from the money come, I don't wanna know
If I'm the only one, I don't wanna ask
I'll see your face, that's all I need to sure of
I've got a place, somewhere in your wandering heart

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Day 17

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:40:19 GMT

Day 17: Write a poem that employs a rhyme scheme. It can be a poem in verse or not. “Tell it slant” or not.

It's hard, truly, not to give a fuck
I've tried it just this week
And haven't really had the best of luck
at finding the indifference I seek

The first problem is consequence
You can lay around all day for a while
And tie the dog out to the fence
But soon the dust and dishes begin to pile

Then you can say bad words roll of your back
And that you're hardly over here, not listening
But hurting still hurts like a sledgehammer whack
And anger still tempts like a diamond's glistening

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Day 16: a subject I know a lot about...

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 18:06:31 GMT

Day 16 Write a response to Day #15's poem

It's easy enough to laugh at failure
when you've held success's arm
and dosi-do'ed with victory long enough
that you barely notice the switch off

it's harder when failure is the only one who comes to sit
with you on the back stairs
where you hug your knees and stare out
at a world of what you can't have, don't have
where the doors close and gates lock and
when success comes out to call your name
like a nurse at a crowded doctor's office
you almost can't get up because
you're too used to the empty place of "no" and "sorry, not this time".

I have failed so much that I have forgotten
the art of the good old cry
My eyes can water for pain, for anger
but never too long
Because the minute I feel the choking hand
like an asphyxiating lover,
I cry out the safe words, "Don't cry, you have no right"
All too soon.

I am used to failure
And it is not as educative or instructive
as all those pithy sayings would have you believe
failure, like falling, hurts
hits hard, hits with your entire self
It's pain
And there comes a time when pain teaches you
nothing except just don't move. Don't try.

Sometimes success is not winning, but simply trying again

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Day 14: In which I abuse rhyme and thank god for cheap wine

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 18:38:49 GMT

Day 14: Write a bad poem; make it as lousy as you can, do everything wrong. Let yourself be awful.

Sometimes you burst up hot like fire
and then you really raise my ire
I'd call you a bastard and a liar
I'd like to put my heart on a funeral pyre
Even though you're not my mom or sire
I love you even when it's dire
I love you even when I really tire
and it feels like my body is wrapped in wire
And my heart cries "ceasefire"
I don't know what next will transpire

Then you continue cold as ice
and I don't know whether to roll the dice
I don't know how to I should entice
I don't know whether I suffice
Or where I should go to get advice
On how you've broken my heart twice
No more than that, thrice and thrice
My pulled stitched heart turns hard like gneiss
For trying to be so sweet and nice
For trying to endure your cruel vice
Alas, I don't know your asking price

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Sat, 13 Oct 2012 22:23:05 GMT

Day 13: Write a short poem that a child would like.

As you grow up you will find
The time will fly within your mind
You'll be quite small at first, you see
But only just temporarily

At first you'll tie shoes after you put on socks
Next thing you know you'll leave the toy box
In a dusty corner for the next new thing
Like the key to a car on a car's keyring

Then school will be done, no homework now
You'll go into the world and you'll wonder how
To get along, to get all the things that you need
For there will be love to love and mouths to feed

And then all your time, well it really will race
The years will pace on at faster-than-light pace
But still though you may have grown oh-so-gray
You'll remember it all like yesterday

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Day 12. This one's a weird one and not my favorite

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 20:56:01 GMT

Day 12: Tell your life story in 6 words

I
wouldn't
want
to
bore
you

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Day 11

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 19:29:12 GMT

Day 11: Write a list poem.

You Should Say Thank You To:

1. Every other good driver on the road next to you, if you have a car or don't
2. Garbage collectors and anyone that keeps sewers operating and efficient
3. Your mom if she had a choice and kept you
3b. Your mom twice if she didn't
3c. Any caretakers or parents three times if they were good
3d. Your child self four times if they weren't, because you survived hell
4. The writer of your favorite book
5. The writer of your least favorite book: that hate probably taught you something
6. People at the post office who don't lose things
7. Your favorite teacher in your least favorite subject
8. The cool wind in summer, the warm sun in winter
9. Any dog that doesn't bite
10. Any cat that doesn't run away from you
11. Any wild animal that does
12. The people who pick produce and make things in factories and get too little, thank them with money and your careful attention to what they say and hygienic voting practices to keep more scum from growing in government than is already there
13. Trees and flowers, then bees and spiders
14. Your heart, physically and emotionally. Without both, you'd be lost.

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Day 10: In which the poem is totally WAAAAY happier, yeah

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:04:34 GMT

Day 10: Pick a one-line song lyric to serve as an epigraph to your poem. Then, write the poem to accompany it. The poem need not be directly related to the song.

"If you was a dog you would want to bite me"
- Nikki Lynette
"Crash & Burn"
Roses N' Guns 2: The Badder Assed mixtape

They say we are not the same, body -
you and I, they say that I am
an uncertain floating mass inside you
that you are merely my circumscription
They say that I have you, not the other way around
But I'm not so sure

I hate you at moments, body.
You off-kilter thing that feels so heavy
that I wish to be like water
and fall to the lowest level, to lay on the ground
'til gravity gives me a break
You have spikes in the brainpan on occasion
You have a hand somewhere I can't see
wringing my spine like a washcloth past dry

I love you at moments, body
I love the secret depth of your cunt
and how it sometimes, cometimes blossoms
and firecrackers light me up from head to toe
I love that you've taken hard hits
I love that you knot our scars up
and refuse to hide them into thin whiteness
You curl them up, bumpy as a topographic map
and say "here it is".

I love you and I hate you, body
I've wanted to cut you to shreds, have tried
I've wanted to take you burning down to nothing with me, have tried
And every once and a while
In the depths of warm water
or in a flash of silvery mirror reflections
I have smiled at you and loved you
Forgive me and love me back, body
Because we're all we've got until we tap out, until the whistle blows for good

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Day 9. Or: I will totally bum you out with this one

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 17:45:28 GMT

Day 9: Quickly jot down four verbs, four adjectives, and four nouns. Write a poem utilizing all 12 words.

Cry
Fly
Run
Punch

Savvy
Delicious
Seasoned
Light

Stone
Feet
Garland
Heart

It's not exactly that you run
But you can fly, numbed and sinking
away to another room
rather than break out into a punch
and send your fist soaring through
nothing but too cold air and flower petals

I had plans to be savvy on the occasion
To be the comforting one, not the comforted
I planned it with the assumption
One can ever be seasoned at these things
Like a soldier
That you can eat delicious crackers
- made delicious by grief hunger, grief weariness -
in the coffee break room
You can break up mourning
between jokes that keep things light

That you won't cry out the breaking of your heart
won't wobble on feet made more of clay than stone
When you see the silk pillow and the roses and pictures as his garland
And know you have to leave him alone in the dark 'til tomorrow
When you watch six men bear him to the ground
Six men you love, six men you may seen born away someday, too

You know the truth: death has a right hand of mercy
and a left hand of cruelty and it will
strike you with both equally, whether the sky is blue or gray that day

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Day 8, or start of week two of Operation: This-Can't-End-Well

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:14:03 GMT

Day 8: Write a Cinquain on a topic of your choice (1st line = 2 syllables, 2nd line = 4 syllables, 3rd line = 6 syllables, 4th line = 8 syllables, 5th (final line) = 2 syllables).

I have
written poems
for almost nearly all
my feelings. Still I can't keep up
with them.

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