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#amwriting challenge editing goals poetry

Craving spontaneity & Setting Goals

Today seems to be a day where routine is simply thrown out the window: I have a list of tasks that I’d like to complete for the day, but it seems I just don’t feel like doing it. During this whole past week, I’ve been feeling restless again and craving spontaneity.

I’ve also found myself crawling out of some dark mazes with renewed inspiration for writing ideas. Yesterday, while proctoring a test at work, I suddenly found a long-incubating idea sprout forth from my mind and furiously wrote down the whole thought. The incident made me realize that I should really bring a bigger notebook along with me from now on, for future moments like this one.

An hour ago, I caught up on this past week’s prompts from the Poem-A-Day Challenge. Poetry is one area of writing where I feel I may never truly excel in, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still write for the fun of it. Probably the whole point of the P-A-D Challenge is to hone my craft a little more, but I find that I’m just writing for the sake of writing. It’s that whole NaNoWriMo mindset–just get the words down. However, I have been posting my poems on each day’s thread at the challenge, so, unlike NaNoWriMo, I’m showing those rough drafts to the world. Raw, unfiltered poems: I suppose it’s my specialty.

Speaking of community challenges: I signed myself up for the 2nd annual Writo de Mayo over at the NaNoLJers community. What makes Writo de Mayo different from NaNoWriMo is that each participant sets his/her own goals for the month of May and strives to meet them for the month. I tried participating last year by attempting to finish Novel #2 that month; however, it was much harder for me to pull the motivation through the month since I didn’t have others posting their word counts, fueling me along. I still managed to make some progress on that novel, but not enough to finish it off that month. This year, I intend on completing Novel #4 in May and also pumping out 50 hours of rewriting for Novel #1 (which would have been an appropriate goal for last month, NaNoEdMo, had I not been so distracted by other things).

So there, I’ve set out my goals for all my blog visitors to read. Now I must follow through with these ambitions and put them into action in the coming weeks.

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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.

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Busride Observations homeless man My San Francisco Chronicles

Homeless man and his luggage.

While on the bus ride home today, a homeless man boarded the bus with several pieces of luggage. He had a band-aid across his nostrils and he kept getting in the way of others since his luggage was quite cumbersome. I was sitting in a window seat and trying to read to distract myself from his presence near me. I feared that the woman beside me would leave and then the man would sit down beside me since I was sitting in one of the “wider” seats, i.e., there was more space between my row and the row in front.

My fear came true as I watched my bus mate stand up and exit through the back door of the bus. The man took that opportunity to stake the claim on the seat (well, he asked others first if they wanted to sit); he proceeded to box me into my window seat with his luggage and then he sat down beside me. I scooted closer to the window and attempted to stay as far away from him as possible. I was feeling slightly paranoid since we had been talking at work about strange characters in the city, so I held my guard up in case the guy would try to swipe my belongings.

Around ten blocks before my stop, I stopped reading so I could focus on where I was; the guy noticed I was finished reading and assumed I was getting off soon. “Getting off?” he asked me. I shook my head “No” and he then said, “Oh okay, well let me know when you’re getting off so I can move my stuff; you don’t want me to fall asleep and leave you trapped!”

My guard was still up, but after a few seconds, I realized the guy was pretty harmless. He began to ask me about what book I was reading (Catch-22) and he mused, “It’s been awhile since I’ve read a book, but I used to love reading so much.” I relaxed and shook my head as he had a monologue (I think he got the hint that I was not overly interested in talking with him, sadly) about his past love for reading, and then talking about painkillers numbing him.

Once it was time for my stop, the man moved his belongings over to another seat so that I would have a clear path to get out of the bus. I had pulled out a small snack from my lunch bag, intending to give it to him, but since he moved to a row further up in the bus, the opportunity already seemed lost. When he settled into his new seat with his bags, he looked exhausted.

I boarded off the bus and felt a twinge of sadness as I watched him go on his way. I wonder where he was headed; towards the beach? Towards the far edge of Golden Gate Park? In many ways, he reminded me of my short story “Riches to Rags” and I wondered about his life story.

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#amwriting

Reflection upon writing

As I look around me, not only do the seasons change, but again, I find myself looking within and wondering where the time has gone.

I at least got some time in yesterday with the Poem-A-Day Challenge at Poetic Asides. It just feels nice to get some words down, even if they’re not the best. It’s a little nerve wracking having others read my work-in-progress poem, but it’s also humbling. I believe that oftentimes the best work may be created on a whim with only the thoughts of the moment; in other words, no real thinking. It may be a controversial view for me to express, but at least for myself I find this theory true. When I didn’t put much thought into writing for NaNoWriMo, I just found the words flying out with abandon and filling up the pages of my novel. Some parts I could have done without, but other parts surprised me with how they came about at the spur of the moment.

Living in the moment is the best, after all.

Categories
#amwriting poetry

Set aside; time for poetry (again)?

Halt.

Screeching.

The month of March is winding down in a couple of days, and April will then begin. This month has been quite a bit of coasting without writing. Then again, a lot of changes in my environment have been happening. It’s not an excuse; merely an observation.

Today I shuffled away my folder of short story drafts into my writing file; it was taking up space on my desk. I find it hard to focus when I have something in my presence (e.g., my writing on my desk) which my subconscious knows I should be progressing upon but I’m not; therefore, I just need it out of my sight for the time being. I’ve stopped penning in time for my rewrite the past couple of weeks; maybe I just need a refresher, some time away from all the writing. Well, at least, time away from the longer pieces.

I signed up for April’s Poem-A-Day Challenge on Facebook (via friend Robert Brewer); last year, I wrote a poem a day during the month of June, completely unaware that a challenge in April was available for me to participate in. These days, poetry is harder to write since I’m so used to writing longer passages. When I was younger, after I put my short story experiments away (perhaps it’s a cycle…), I dabbled in poetry for a couple years, writing up short books of poetry to print out and show to my family and friends. Then, that poetry phase went away as well…

We’ll see how the month of April pans out with this challenge. Sometimes I just need to have that feeling that others around the world are doing the same thing with me, that I can’t just put it off “for another day”. Here’s hoping for some sparks to come through.