Category: Writing

  • Amanda Gorman; Poet Hero!

    Wow! Just Wow!

    Amanda Gorman is my new hero. I didn’t know America had a National Youth Poet Laureate, but after yesterday, I am really glad that we do.

    It has been a long time, a very long time, since I heard a poem recited that brought me to tears, let alone captured everything that I have been feeling about America, our shared culture, and our shared purpose. That anyone, regardless of age, can craft the correct words, is just amazing, and so needed! I didn’t know I needed Amanda Gorman, but I now see that I needed Amanda Gorman.

    And last night, as she was interviewed on TV, I was again struck by how passionate she is about poetry and reading, and the power of words. She was inspiring, and her joy was infectious. I was also struck by the amount of research she put in; reading past inaugural poems, speeches and addresses. The way she talked about doing that work made me believe that she loved her process of creation.

    One last thing about her; I was captivated by her performance in reading her poem. The way she used her hands in conjunction with the inflection she put on her words. The rhythm of the poem, her posture, and the power in her voice, created a confluence of energy that electrified her performance.

    Just amazing.

  • Process: Talking About a Story

    I fully admit that I am a superstitious/neurotic writer, and it’s annoying to everybody, especially me. I follow silly rules that have no logical basis with the belief that somehow adhering to these guidelines will guarantee success.

    Such as; I can’t reuse a character’s first name, I can’t work on fiction until I journal first, and the big one, don’t talk about details of a story until it’s finished, because if I were, then the story will never get finished. The last rule has been tricky when it comes to this blog, which leaves some of my posts so vague that they are incomprehensible.

    Last night, I broke the no talking rule with my wife. (Yes, I don’t even tell my wife about my work until it’s done.) And it needed to happen.

    The context here is that I have been working, on and off, for about a year, on a story based upon a person I used to work with, and who my wife also knows. I have told no one about this story, obviously, and this co-worker came up in conversation last night. As in, “Whatever happened to what’s their name?” We talked about the possible fate of this person, and why they were such a challenge to work with.

    And that’s when I was like, I should share this idea, and why I am curious to attempt to write a story about them. Also, I wanted feedback if it was a good idea.

    The jury is still out, as the wife pointed out everything that I knew was problematic about the story… so it needs still more work if it is ever to see the light of day.

    The bigger point here is that I still have several self imposed barriers that I need to break through. The “talking” rule is bullshit as what really does is try to protect me from any criticism. If I never share, then I can never be wrong.

    I still got a long way to go, but working on it.

  • Learning to Read and Write

    I am not a fan of remote schooling, but I don’t know anyone who is. It is something that we are all putting up with. I have said this before, and that is that the remote teacher my daughter has is great. She is patient, and calm and very nurturing to all the kids. My daughter looks forward to seeing her teacher, and draws pictures for her. For this crappy situation, I feel very fortunate that she is our teacher.

    I am also aware of the short coming of remote learning. Mainly, it is difficult to consistently reinforce lessons in these spurts of learning. Even with parental support, which I know all of us parents do for the class, it is not reaping the same results as compared to the kids being in a classroom together.

    But there is one very wonderful thing that I do get to take part in; I get to help my kid learn to read and write. (The kid is an ace with math, which she totally gets from her mother.) I have made flashcards to go over sight words with her, and its fun watching her begin to recognize those sight words in the real world.

    “Hey, Dad! I can read that!” is a new fun phrase she likes to share with me. She is just beginning to unlock the world around her, and that feeling of the discovery beams off of her.

    And at the end of the day, the kid will sit in my lap and read one of her books to me. Slowly, sounding out words, connecting the thoughts in the words, and watching her confidence grow as the words are no longer a difficulty to her.

    With reading the books, she is now wanting to write her own books. We have bought her several notebooks to draw in, but now she wants to put words with her drawings. She labors over her desk, drawing images, and scenes for her stories. Then she starts the process of finding the right words to describe her pictures.

    It is pretty special that I get to play a part in my kid learning the basic building blocks of her education.

  • Outlining: New Possibilities?

    I am working at staying productive for this month. I was able to blog, journal, and even got in some sketching time with the kid yesterday. It was a very creative day, more than normal for me. On the fiction front, I was able to spend a little time working on an outline for a novel that I have been kicking around for about two years.

    And working on the outline was rewarding, on a level that I didn’t know existed in me. I was working on character development, and trying to figure out how to build a foundation that these characters that they would either fight against or learn to accept. And as I worked on these characters in an outline form, a narrative theme started to reveal itself to me. The story is about three guys who form a band, and I always thought the theme was about learning follow your ambitions, even through failure. As I worked on the characters, I started to see that the theme was actually about being open to possibilities.

    Most of my good friends are following their dream, and some of them have been chasing it for twenty years, and to be honest, very few have achieved that ambition that set them out so long ago. But very few of them are angry and bitter about it. (I have met my fair share of bitter actors, so don’t get me wrong, I know that chasing a dream doesn’t equal happiness.) But what keeps my friends going? What keeps me going? Is it staying curious, and being open to new ideas and possibilities?

    I don’t know, but I want to explore it.

  • Merry Christmas, Thank You, and 2020

    Say everybody, I’m going to take the next few days off for the Christmas Holiday, and won’t be consistently back at it till the start of the New Year. So, I wanted to wish everyone out there in the writing/blogging world a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and a general Happy Holidays.

    I also wanted to say thank you for following this little experiment of a blog. Since I started putting a forth a serious effort toward writing back at the end of July, I have doubled my followers, and grown in views, visitors and likes. Your support has been very encouraging, and reinforced that doing the work is worth it.

    As we all know, 2020 has been one of the strangest, most awful, and plain sad years ever. Since Thanksgiving, I have been trying hard to find some encouraging… anything to try and salvage my emotional well-being from the onslaught of this year. What I have come to see is that I should never take for granted my family, friends, and community I live in. How fragile this fabric is that connects us all together, yet how strong is our desire to be connected.

    Again, thank you readers, Happy Holidays, and if I don’t see you before, I’ll talk to you in 2021.