The point of any kind of forced creativity experience or challenge is to simply do the creative thing you want to be doing but perhaps wouldn’t be doing otherwise. I am all for it. I’ve done more than a decade worth of a poem every day in April, I’ve participated in songwriting challenges that resultedContinue reading “NaNoWriMo 2024: Adjusting My Expectations”
Author Archives: michaeljarmer
It’s National Novel Writing Month!
Here we are on the precipice of another year of attempting to write 50,000 words in a single month for the ritual of NaNoWriMo. This will be my third effort. I go into it this year with a bit of trepidation. I worry that the politics of the nation will be too much of aContinue reading “It’s National Novel Writing Month!”
O, The Humanity: The 2024 Election
I’ve been dreaming about Kamala Harris. Seriously. I’ve watched her speak so many times that I can almost sing along. As a result of this repetition, I can tell you about her policy plans with some amount of detail and specificity. $6,000 child tax credit. $25,000 assistance for first-time home buyers. New affordable housing construction.Continue reading “O, The Humanity: The 2024 Election”
I’m Thinking About Giving Up on Writing Fiction on the Cusp of Another NANOWRIMO
In both Novembers of 2022 and 2023 I wrote 50,000 words for the National Novel Writing Month challenge. The results were two sloppy, hastily written rough drafts of novels. I would expect nothing less from such a challenge, the purpose of which is not to write a masterpiece, but to spill out as quickly asContinue reading “I’m Thinking About Giving Up on Writing Fiction on the Cusp of Another NANOWRIMO”
Gone So Long, I Been Gone So Long
Sorry about that. I mean, I realize no one has been holding their breath, so the apology is mostly self-talk, or self-writing, as I think I do this blogging activity more as a personal practice and discipline than anything else. I don’t mean to imply that I am not mightily grateful for the readers IContinue reading “Gone So Long, I Been Gone So Long”
#544: Dear America, Happy 4th of July
I have startedto despise Bill Maher, but when he sayshe’d rather vote for Biden’s head in a jar than seeTrump in the White House, I’m with himagain. I hate this place, where we are, with this choice, but I know at leastthat Biden is agood man and I am confident he’ssurrounded by menand women whoareContinue reading “#544: Dear America, Happy 4th of July”
#543: On Being Turned Away from the Doctor’s Office for My Blood Pressure Checkup and How That Ultimately Raised My Blood Pressure
I was 15 minutes late. Actually, the truth of the matteris that I was not 15 minutes early. So they turned me away. I knew the expectation. They only sent me three or four reminders, but when your appointmentis for 7:30 a.m.,and you’re supposed to show up at 7:15,when you’re retired, and you want toContinue reading “#543: On Being Turned Away from the Doctor’s Office for My Blood Pressure Checkup and How That Ultimately Raised My Blood Pressure”
#542: On the Note Wendell Hawken Wrote to Me, the One I’ve Been Using as a Bookmark in Her Book of Poems
The note she wrote to me almost a year ago, the one I’ve been using as a bookmark as I’m reading her poems, says: “Michael – thought I was out, but I found one.” Even though it doesn’t take me long to remember what she was trying to say, I love the ambiguity of itContinue reading “#542: On the Note Wendell Hawken Wrote to Me, the One I’ve Been Using as a Bookmark in Her Book of Poems”
#541: A Squirrel Bites My Dog
My little terrier, miniature greyhound mutt, had it coming. This rodent with a stump of a tail, running along the fence, decides to come down into the yard where I am napping on the hammock and my two dogs are likewise lounging. The small dog is onto the squirrel first while the larger shepherd-lab-husky muttContinue reading “#541: A Squirrel Bites My Dog”
#540: Masturbation Is Not A Thing
Here’s a poem I drafted quite a while ago, I think, while I was still teaching, that I was too hesitant about publishing, not necessarily because of the subject matter, but because this classroom inspired story was too recent, too close, and I might have been gun shy as the result of an earlier experienceContinue reading “#540: Masturbation Is Not A Thing”
