This will just be a quick update, so first, a quick hello to the new followers – welcome! I got myself a shiny new theme just for you. Well, okay, maybe it was totally coincidental, but still, I’m glad you’re here to see it!
I don’t think I’ve ever been this consistent on the blogging front but I’m reaping the rewards, and having a great time in the process. I’ve mentioned previously how important it is to state your goals, not just to yourself but to others, and to keep track of your progress, so I’m happy to report that I more than met the 4000-word goal for this week.
I wrote a 2500-word non-fiction piece about dementia, essentially grappling with the question of what makes us human (you know, that old chestnut). Is it our memories? Our personality? Or is there a fundamental level of humanity, a well of emotion that remains regardless of what disease robs us of – be it memory, speech, or physical faculty.
It was eye-opening to even grapple with the question, honestly. I don’t have the requisite arrogance to claim I answered it – say instead that I explored it, as I’m sure I’ll be doing for the rest of my life. Even then, I doubt I’ll come to a satisfactory conclusion. Smarter, wiser, better men and women than I have tried before and failed. There is nonetheless a certain joy to be found just in the mechanics of thinking, of challenging your intellect.
Aside from that, I also revised and extended my post-apocalyptic, steampunk-y short story retelling of Red Riding Hood. That was an incredibly valuable experience on the whole; revision is everything to the successful writer, and as long as I’ve known that, I’ve also avoided that. How can I stay and work on and polish a world I’ve already created, a story already told, when there are hundreds more waiting to be born in fresh ink?
Unsurprisingly, I have a plethora of short stories with interesting concepts and half-baked execution. So it was great to finally sit down and fix a story draft (though it needs more work, honestly) and watch the world come into greater focus. That’s why you stick around on the already-done stories and make them shine, by the way. It’s like constantly watching a fuzzy TV when you could have high definition Blu-Ray quality.
I also worked on some poetry and some earlier blogs, which took my efforts this week to the 5000 mark and over. As far as the new year goes in terms of writing and productivity, I really can’t complain. I’m loving this.
Here’s hoping you’re doing all this & then some. I’ll leave you with this week’s Tweet Poems:
Left a candle
guttering in the wind
for 100 long years –
shielded by hands
aged with duty
it was undone
by a butterfly’s stray flight #poem
#
When it rains
the world becomes
a soft puddle to skip stones on
& false rainbows abound
& birds fly in Ys
& frogs philosophize #tweetpoem
Zero o’clock etched in moonlight;
the leaves a choreography of falling,
the night a fat song begging
for a throat to sing from. #micropoem
The false light of stars
brims over the limbs
of the freshly dead
& mangled roadkill alike
making of it a beautiful
wretchedness. #tweetpoem
