Category: inspiration

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inspiration My San Francisco Chronicles reflection

Captivating Cards

Yesterday after work, I was over in Japantown looking at some advertisements, which then led me to the Kinokuniya Card Store, which then led me to these cards here: when I first saw the card on the right, I felt spellbound by it. The picture doesn’t do it much justice; the colors make the scene seem so much more surreal. I stood there in the store, staring at the card for a good 2-3 minutes until I snapped out of the trance.

I wasn’t going to buy the card, but then I found myself admiring the card on the left, designed by local San Franciscan artist Tomoko Maruyama. I first stumbled upon her work via Facebook and had since been trying to hunt down her cute, light designs in the city. Lo and behold, most of her work is featured in Japantown, so now I know. I picked up the Tomoko Maruyama card and then, thinking a bit, I went back and picked up the other card.

I’ve used the Tomoko Maruyama card already for a friend, but the other card, I think I shall keep. Strangely, it has a power over me; after buying the card, I felt a real sudden urge to just write. I decided to write a letter to an old friend after that, scribbling furiously into another card I had bought at the shop. After finishing the letter, I still wanted to write a lot more–how did such a simple card give me so much inspiration? Unfortunately, I had to suppress my urges to write more since I had to attend my Korean language class; after class, I didn’t feel that spark anymore.

I had the card displayed on my desk right now; perhaps I have found my muse for this next month.

Categories
inspiration poetry

Magnet Poetry

I’ve had these magnetic sets of words for probably over ten years now–only in the past year did I decide to finally break them out and use them on my refrigerator. I stuck some words together last year, thinking they sounded clever, and didn’t think much of them until last night, when a friend was reading over the “poems” and said, “Wow, how thought-provoking!”

The poem she was referring to:

Could Virtue Cry
Other Sublime Sight
Guarantee Moon Until Twilight
Whether Death Together

Another poem I read out loud and never realized it rhymed until last night:

Timbuktu Never Uptight
When Above Kalamazoo
Sing The Fight

And not to leave out anything from the picture above, the last poem featured in the bottom part of the picture:

Oh Bad Afternoon
Try By Desire
Art Kissed Time
Too Blue Smile

I’m sure there have been some pretty good poems constructed out of those magnetic sets; I just threw together some words that sounded okay together, not really thinking about any of it. Then again, I suppose that’s the best way to get inspired: just let the unconscious (subconscious?) open mind take over.

Categories
#amwriting change inspiration

Breaking Out.

Sometimes the same old thing really does become old and predictable. I look at my planner and I feel like “Oh, it’s time to do this or that.” And then I find myself grumbling and feeling like “Can’t I just not do it?”

There aren’t any real consequences when I break away from the mundane tasks of my weekends. Today, I went out and just walked around downtown, did some people-watching, and just reflected. I had a small notebook with me, and took down notes about anything that was flying around in my mind.

I found myself perching at different places of the city that I rarely visit. It’s good to get a fresh change of scenery, even if all I’m doing at these different places is walking or sitting, watching people and just thinking about life.

With events from this past week, I found myself inspired to write a small flash piece. It was only 938 words, but that’s just the first draft; I’m sure I can expand upon the piece when I go back and edit/rewrite.

Here’s to another day.

Categories
inspiration

Floating Words

There have been a few words in my mind lately; here’s a random list of them all:

  • gait
  • spindly
  • abrupt
  • forlorn
  • red
  • despite
  • ironic
  • perfect
  • spike
  • common

Perhaps a new story is brewing in the noggin.

Categories
goals inspiration Novel 1 Work in Progress

Goals Written from January

I was thumbing through some notes from one of my notepads last night and came across a list of goals I had written from early last month. To my relief, I found a couple of goals that made me change my mind about how I had been feeling about self-publishing:

– Self-publish short story collection by May 2009
– Publish Novel 1 via agent

Ah, so that was what I had originally intended, at least, early last month. So, that puts me a bit more at ease, although now that I realize I had wanted to find an agent, I’m going to need to move a little faster and efficiently on revising the manuscript. Deadline for the revision: June. I don’t know why I have been telling others that I will publish my novel by summertime; I probably got that mixed up with my short story collection.

I had to shake things up for myself today since I noticed that I had been stuck in a routine for the past month and a half; because of this change in routine, I got a few good sparks and have jotted down a few new notes in my to-go notebook. When I came back home from my brief outing, I was able to start some rewriting on Novel 1; hooray!

I’ve also been blogging like crazy, especially on my food blog, Cinnamon Juice. It’s getting a little more buzz these days, thanks to a couple blog rolls and Twitter. It’s good to see that people are interested in my thoughts about food and related topics.

Hoping for another productive day tomorrow.