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”
Tag Archives: books
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”
#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”
#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”
#538: I Can’t Read
I can’t read shit anymore. David bowie I love to readbut I find lately that I can’t read shit, just like Bowie sangin that song by Tin Machine: it seems that “I can’t read shit anymore.”I blame the internet and stupid smart phonesfor turning myattention spaninto squirrel brain.Did you knowthat squirrels can’t remember where theyContinue reading “#538: I Can’t Read”
On the First Day of 2024: Meditation, Bicycling, Music, Reading and Writing
I tried as best as I could to have a great day, a day that included at least a sampling of all the things I love to do and all the things I’m committing to do more of in the new year. I’ll make a quick list here for your generous perusal. So that, inContinue reading “On the First Day of 2024: Meditation, Bicycling, Music, Reading and Writing”