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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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"

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

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.

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

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