Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, editing, self-editing, writing copy on 16 Feb 2017| Leave a Comment »
Oops. Sorry.
By “writing to the market” I didn’t mean “gearing your work-in-progress to match current market trends” (which, I feel compelled to add, unless you are a spectacularly fast writer with a very good agent, is a fool’s game).
I mean “writing to the market’ as in writing copy for marketing. Which is what I’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks.
Posted in Creativity on 07 Feb 2017| 5 Comments »
“Why don’t you do something with your life?”
Such an awful question.
So packed with disdain and condescension.
So dismissive.
You can hear the curled lip in the words.
You can taste the bile.
“You had such potential.”
Sharp words.
Words designed to hurt, flay, maim.
Words heated in a smith’s forge, hammered into blades, honed to an edge, and thrown with piercing accuracy.
Useless words. Utterly useless. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged command, creative writing, Creativity, feminism, intention, modern poetry, vignettes, Writing on 25 Jan 2017| Leave a Comment »
—
I see a silver-lit night, full moon struggling to pierce slate-colored clouds. I see a ghostly crag, pale rocks rising above a dark, heathered moor. I see a woman in blue standing at its summit, bare feet on bare stone, hair loose, arms wide, waiting.
The clouds marshal their forces, focus their power. Winds rise, rumbling forward, and rain comes down in icy sheets. The storm builds, advancing on the crag.
She stands tall and closes her eyes, her nostrils scenting the moss and granite beneath her feet, and the wind-swept tang of a miles-off sea.
Glassy whips lash the sky. The storm clenches its fist. Heather bows beneath its blasted screams.
The woman turns, facing the storm as it thunders toward her on lightning limbs. She tilts back her head, bares her throat.
The wind belches a roaring laugh, sprinting toward its prey.
With a smile and fulsome intent she grabs the wind, bends its trajectory, twisting its path, coiling it around her summit. She reels it in, pulling it to her. She breathes it in, breathes in its power. Her eyes flash open and she sees the swirling clouds above, the vortex of her control. The wind is within her now, part of her. The wind’s laugh is now her laugh.
This is not a victory, the wind not a vanquished enemy. This is a joining, a strengthening, a fusion.
She and the storm are one.
Now, she is power. Now, she is strength.
Now, she is the storm.
—
Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged early Modern English, four-form system, language, negative questions, Sir Thomas More, the English Language, three-form system, Writing, yea and nay on 12 Jan 2017| 1 Comment »
I’ll update you on my cable-cutting process soon, but for this week, here’s a look into the things that keep me up at night. Literally. This is the type of shite that makes my brain whirl like a dervish when it wakes me up at 4AM.
There’s a language construct that has bothered me for a long time. It’s the “negative question.” It’s like the question in the title of this post or, as found in the large portion of my viewing and reading intake that includes British and “period” drama, it’s often tacked on to the end of a sentence, as in, “She is a handsome woman, wouldn’t you say?”
In general, I don’t have a problem with negative inquiries.
Unless, of course, I have to answer them. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged 2016, creative writing, New Year's Day, new year's eve, Poetry, vignettes on 30 Dec 2016| 5 Comments »
I did not wind the clocks this month. They tick down to silence, measuring out the year’s last hours with ponderous chimes.
This New Year’s Eve, the house will be quiet.
No television. No dropping ball. No music. No crowds.
No friends. No crackling fire. No pop of effervescent wine. No clink of crystal. Not even the ticking of a clock.
All will be silent, and I will sit on the stoop in the frost-rimed dark beneath the moonless sky and will wait.
Listening.
I want to hear it, you see, and want no other sound to interfere.
I want to hear this obscene alliance of Time and Death, this year that has gorged itself on family, friends, and icons, that has snuffed out lights of culture, killed dreams, thwarted hope, I want to hear it die.
As it lays before me, I will kneel at its side. I will lean into its abattoir scent, my ear close to its gasping mouth. I will hear as it exhales its final breath into the void.
And if it does not come, if at that silent stroke of twelve this baleful year somehow breathes on, then as I ring in the New Year, I shall wring out the old, my hands around its throat.
This year shall end, if I have to do it myself.
k
Posted in Books, Writing, tagged bang the drum slowly, book reviews, creative writing, mark harris, novel structure, voice in fiction on 20 Dec 2016| 4 Comments »
My life and my brain have calmed enough that, for the first time in a long time, I was able to finish reading a book. I’d picked up a dozen or so in the last year, but either they were uninteresting (a lot of titles about adolescent angst…what’s up with that?) or I found them annoying (like this one). After so many failed attempts among the offerings of current fiction, I decided to try something that wasn’t waiting in my TBR pile.
The question was: What?
Fate intervened, and tossed a title my way. Bang the Drum Slowly is a title I’d been aware of, but never read. I am not a big sports fan — oh, I watch the Seahawks and I enjoy a baseball game, but I don’t follow any of it — so Mark Harris’s book about a mediocre catcher who is diagnosed with Hodgkin’s during a pennant race wasn’t high on my list. But a stray mention of it as a prime example of mid-20th century fiction caught my eye, and I figured, what the hell, give it a chance. It couldn’t be worse than some of the others I’d started this year.
What I found was something I did not expect: a unique voice and structure. Well, unique in my reading experience, anyway.
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, inspiriational quotes, shannon hale, Writing, writing life on 01 Nov 2016| 4 Comments »
Four years ago my ninth novel, Beneath a Wounded Sky, hit the shelves. It was the final volume in my Fallen Cloud Saga, and it was a hard book to write for several reasons. The years since then haven’t been kind, and my writing was relegated not to the back seat, but to the way back (those of you who remember tumbling around in the back half of an old-style station wagon will understand).
My writing output for those years was, primarily, this blog and the poems, vignettes, essays, and short stories it contains. Larger projects have consistently fought my control and eluded my grasp. I’ve started one novel several times. I’ve outlined a screenplay. I did a full proposal for a sitcom, worked with the creative team on an indie film, and spent a month or so researching and outlining a biographical novel of a regional sculptor.
None of these attempts got any traction, though. Rather, they just sat in the muddy ditch and spun their wheels.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 