slowly, like the . . .

. . . last drop in a bottle, the writing is coming along for a project I've been thinking of for months. Perhaps longer. Time seems muddled when you hit thirty. It no longer runs linearly, but categorically. Anyway, the project has a name, is somewhere around 40% written, and contains a general concept of flow. I'm very excited about it. The neatest thing about writing is when you crest that hill from a mere inkling of thought to a viable entity. However, I am also sadly burdened with a terrible lack of commitment to finishing my fiction (doesn't everyone have three dozen starts for three dozen different novels?).

Loving the warm weather too. It seems to encourage writing with the windows open and the fans blowing.

Time to work on a table of contents. . .

parenting by poetry . . .

. . . is something I plan on doing. (Although this does sound like it would require some memorization on my part, and let's face it - you can only quote the red wheelbarrow to your child a few times before the mystique wears off.)

However, this handy little tome may provide other options: Shut Up You're Fine: Instructive Poetry for Very, Very Bad Children. I was delighted to find this title, and even more delighted to find the poems were, well, instructional (read: hysterical). Pick it up.

perfect . . .

packing has begun . . .

. . . in preparation for the move to the new house. This is very exciting. Mostly exciting in the way of dashing from room to room to deal with the baby's needs and the pets' needs while attempting to toss things in boxes in some sort of coherent fashion whereby aforementioned things do not break.

On another note: I have been reading the word "lighted" an awful lot lately. This word irritates me. As far as I know, the correct use of the word in the context I read it in, is "lit." As in, she lit the cigarette. She lighted the cigarette? Hmmmm. It sounds wrong. It sounds as though somewhere the grammar was lost. Not that I am an expert. But if anyone knows the correct way to use the past tense of light, please enlighten me. (Then would I be enlit?)

Two new links to report on, by fellow MFAers who are super talented and have books either on the shelf, or forthcoming. It is very encouraging to see folks from workshop publishing in the big po-world.

i have been . . .

. . . working on fiction. Short stories. By working on, I mean I have been writing voraciously inside my head and have yet to transfer that onto the page. There is a mental block with fiction writing for me that stems from my long affair with disliking revising my work. I would have to say that the one thing I pulled from my MFA experience is the embracing of revision. Poems no longer scare me. I can write a shitty poem and feel confident that I will be able to go back and make it less shitty. And then again. And again. Sometimes I even go back a version or two. Whatever. The point being, revision is that epoch of a piece of writing that pushes it over the edge. This can take time. I don't always see the revisions at first. I have a poem that I am in love with (always a dangerous prospect) and it has only seen one begrudging revision, and even that felt somehow dirty and cheap. (Why? Why did I force that one? The thesis, of course.)

With fiction, however, the concept of revising a story blocks me. Perhaps it is because there are so many more words, and the threads of events feel so much denser; mess with one early on and you pretty much kill where the story landed the first time. Perhaps this is really just me experiencing my usual procrastination. I don't know. What I do know is that inside my head, these stories are alive and vibrant, the characters vying for attention, the conversations taking off, the points of view establishing themselves, the tone and the pacing are practically dancing. . . and all I need to do is sit down and write them out.