It was a tie in the votes… this one and Burning the Candles at both ends.
I asked my boyfriend to choose… and his response gave me what I needed to choose.
He said that Burning is a darker one and this one was lighter. So I should choose based on the poems that I was planning on putting in it.
That is not how I write…
But it got me thinking about my own writing and the upcoming volume. Ok, I have Serena’s Gathered Bones that I can put the dark stuff in. And I am planning on using this one for the November Pad challenge as well as the stuff I write until then…. I am likely to be looking for a new one at the end of November….
So I chose the one that I liked better (and the one that my daughter had voted for) since the votes were equal for the two.
No matter how much I do. No matter what I list as my accomplishments.
I refuse to listen. So I have been in defiance doing art and writing.
Though I see it as flawed…my view of my art and writing always says that there is no reason why anyone would like it…
I have purposely not been allowing my inner voice the ability to take control.
It is an actual fight.
Tonight I am winning.
The art above was done tonight.
Echoes is now 65/70 poems
Serena’s Gathered Bones is at 13/70 poems
Kingdoms of sin got another 500 words tonight.
There is a story started for Fae Corps publishing’s Spring anthology.
And I did another digital landscape.
I have still got work that needs done. Things that are sitting on my desk with a needs attention tag on them…but tonight I was in the wrong headspace for editing and for making sure that things looked their best. Tonight I did my best to create.
Because when you are feeling like you are not enough – MAKE MORE! so I did.
And if it is flawed…well some of the best loved things are flawed. that does not make them loved any less.
So I have started working on Serena’s Gathered Bones.
I have also started working on her Heaven’s Forgotten Tales. Which is basically a gathering of stories and poetry from her that she has published in various places. Much as Apocalypse athenuem is.
I realized that I am writing more – both as Patricia and as Serena Mossgraves. That I am doing a lot more daily work than I used to. So I might actually go through the future volumes I have prepared covers for…
So I am considering doing some covers for the fun of doing the cover design. And I am wondering if I should plan a future volume for Serena as well as for me.
It ends up being a little bit of a question as to whether or not I have been playing with the poetry with her or if she should continue to write it.
So I spent Saturday posting 12 different poems from the half marathon
I purposely didn’t post the prompts for the poems. Also I don’t know if I did them in the order presented.
I feel like I don’t want to post more poems so soon.
I can. Serena finished with Midnight Verse.
So I have options. But I don’t want to.
Instead, I think that I want to tell you what the prompt was for the 12 poems – including the ones that I chose to do something else for. All of the prompts are from the poetry marathon
Hour 1 – Often when I read a poem, there will be a line (or 5) that sounds spectacular and presents a really interesting idea, but then doesn’t explore it.
One of these lines is from the poems Selkie Weaning Young (Redux) by Diana Khoi Nguyen. The line that particularly stands out to me as containing multitudes is: “This is how she found us/ the past draped about us like a cloak”
You can read the whole poem (it’s short!) to see if there is another jumping off point for you, but if you do end up using the line in your poem, make sure to say “after Diana Khoi Nguyen” in a right aligned line after the title. That way the original poet still receives credit for their idea.
Hour 2 – Write a poem about an experience, but from the perspective of another. For example you could write a poem about your wedding from the experience of your spouse, or you could write a poem about an argument with a stranger from the perspective of the stranger.
Hour 3 – I ignored this one entirely because the prompt was too complicated… so I am not going to even bother posting it here.
Hour 4 – Your challenge is to write a poem about the topic of marriage, without ever using the word marriage, and while also ideally avoiding the words spouse, husband, and wife.
Hour 5 – Write a mystery poem. The crime could be real or imagined. The poem could be clue based or narrative. The details are up to you.
Hour 6 – (I adjusted this slightly because I don’t at all want to be attached to flat earthers.) The earth is actually flat, you look over the edge and what do you see? Describe it. Disclaimer: I am in no way, shape, or form a flat-earther
Hour 7 – Redacting is the act of censoring or obscuring part of a text. Sometimes it is done by the author themselves, and more often it is done by someone else.
I want you to write a poem and then during or after writing the poem choose at least one, or ideally five or more words to redact from the poem. How is the poem changed by this simple act? This is not the same as a “black out” or erasure poem”. The words you are using are your own, and well over 50% of them should be visible.
When writing on physical paper, you can do this easily with a marker, ideally a black sharpie. If you are writing your poem in a Word document, you can use the highlight feature and set the highlight color to black, this creates a black box over the word or words. Or you can just write the word redacted in place of the word you wanted to use
Hour 8 – Every year I include a song prompt. The idea is that you start the song and write a poem while listening to it, starting the song over as needed (or not). There have been protests in the past when I include one with lyrics, so this year I’ve included one with lyrics that you can listen to here and one without, which you can listen to here. No titles or artists given to increase the element of surprise.(I only included the first link)
Hour 9 – Describe your profession through a funny/humorous poem.
Hour 10 – The first three words of your title should be “what is love”. That can be your whole title, in and of itself, probably followed by a question mark, or you can add more context onto the title before proceeding to the poem itself.
Hour 11 – Extraordinary in Ordinary”- pick an ordinary object and make it extraordinary. You can do it by giving it some special attributes or a different background and story. Contributed by Bhasha Dwivedi.
Hour 12 – Write a poem that is pretending to be something else, a set of instructions, a recipe, an letter, a news report, etc.
(Why yes, this prompt was inspired by This is Just to Say, which is a poem pretending to be an apology)
As you can see the prompts were not the only thing that inspired the poetry… but it did help.
Pattimouse 