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Posts Tagged ‘creative writing’

Old Dog Meets New Trick

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , on 08 Jul 2014| 2 Comments »

Stack of Books

After successfully avoiding pen and paper during my recent vacation (Thank you, World Cup!) on Sunday I finally grabbed myself by the collar, sat myself down at the deck table, put a pen in my hand and paper before me, and started the short story that has been nipping at my heels like a poorly trained corgi for nearly a month.

I started writing at about 7AM Sunday and finished it at around 11PM. It clocked in at about 3000 words.

For me, that is fast writing. But that wasn’t the interesting bit.

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Resurfacing

Posted in Culture, Hi Tech, Low Tech, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 03 Jul 2014| 3 Comments »

 

Simple Living

One evening, when I was courting my wife-to-be, we were at my place when the phone rang. Since we were talking, I ignored the phone. “Aren’t you going to answer that?” Nope. If it was important, they’d call back (I didn’t have an answering machine). This was my relationship with technology in those days. Technology was my servant, not the reverse.

Well, sometime during the last three decades, that has changed, so I’m just now coming off a full week of an “internet fast.”

Overall, I am surprised at how easy it was. I stuck to my “going dark” guidelines so successfully that when I tried to go back online, I found that all my little electronic connectimoids needed to be charged up. The computer, the tablet, even the smartphone had gone almost entirely unused for a whole week.

What did I miss? What didn’t I miss?

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Writing Process Blog Tour – Station Four

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 24 Jun 2014| 6 Comments »

Writing with Pen and PaperWelcome one, welcome all, to the fourth stop on the Writing Process Blog Tour, one of those writerly process-ish bloggy tour-like things that we use as an excuse to talk about our passion: writing.

My name is Kurt, and I’ll be your host for as long as you keep reading.

Thanks to my predecessor, J.Z. Murdock, author of darkness, for the invitation to join the tour.

The premise is simple. At each stop along the tour, the author talks about his/her writing processes, and then hands you off to the next writer in line. (Todd…you ready?)

It’s just four simple questions:

  • What am I working on?
  • How does my work differ from others in its genre?
  • Why do I write what I do?
  • How does my writing process work?

Still here? Good.

Here we go…

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Change Is…

Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on 02 Jun 2014| 6 Comments »

The 53 StepsChange is not “good.” We just say that to put on a brave face. The fact is that change is neither inherently good or bad. Change, like the universe, is neutral.

Change just is.

There have been a lot of changes around my house in the last 24 months. In that time, my wife and I have lost three of our four parents. Big change. Also during this period my wife discovered Facebook and, as a result, our social circles have widened and multiplied. Change, also pretty big from my POV. And, for the past several months we’ve had a houseguest, a young person whose life blew up while visiting us, and whom we’re helping get reestablished. Epic change.

In other words, my home life, my level of social interaction, and my private world have all undergone dramatic and fundamental transformations. And it’s made me a bit stroppy.

Yes. Stroppy. Look it up. (more…)

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Reveal

Posted in Writing, tagged , , on 29 May 2014| Leave a Comment »

hands reveal
ash-streaked eyes
smudged and sullen
like an old cloth
worn thin
wiping up
sooty tears

bluE eye by StopPanicIsJustMe

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Black Earth, Grey Sky

Posted in Gardening, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on 06 May 2014| Leave a Comment »

Iris in RainI kneel in the dripping ivy. A trowel in one hand, my other is deep in the soil, searching for the dandelion’s root. The root twists and writhes beneath my fingers, wet and tough, unwilling.

The rain taps across my hat’s felted brim, caresses my steaming back with its cool touch. The spring day is cold, but my work keeps me warm.

The bite of woodsmoke reaches me. I lift my nose and scent the air. My breath comes out a mist.

I grimace as digits plunge farther down into the black loam. The earth envelopes my hand, its serenity infuses me, my worries leach away.

I am the root, now. I am the plant. I am the garden.

k

Pine Pollen

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Yeah, No, and the Death of Uptalk

Posted in Culture, tagged , , , , , , on 01 May 2014| 9 Comments »

Stack of BooksThere are some things that I really dislike. No. I mean really dislike.

Take crop pants.

Crop pants are, perhaps, the single silliest and most unflattering article of clothing ever contrived for the female form (and, yes, I include the entire decade of the 1920s in this assessment). I’m not talking about Capri pants or pedal-pushers, both of which are fine in small doses; I’m talking about crop pants: those pants where some designer decided to cut the trouser legs off mid-calf, use less material, and charge more for it.

Ladies, crop pants make you look like hobbits. They make you look short, and make your feet look big. They truncate the lines of your form and exaggerate the size of your rear end. They are singularly unsatisfactory; you’d do better to roll up your pant legs like a sock-hopper. Seriously. If you own a pair of crop pants, burn them. You can thank me later.

As you can see, I hate crop pants. I shall always hate crop pants. If the world were to be destroyed and built again, giving us all a second chance, if it has crop pants in it I shall consider the entire enterprise a failure and not worth the effort.

Same goes for uptalk.

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