A pile of hopes, socks just out of the dryer,
top a new year. That is fine, but everyone
wants you to be careful to match the socks.
I am not careful. I am tired of being careful.
I throw love at you, and it could hit you in the face.
It is tiring to be loved haphazardly, I know.
Someone will tell you things about your past,
about how you should feel about your past,
or about how to match the socks.
All I say is shapes and colors matter little.
Some of them have gone missing anyway.
Love with force. Match or don’t match. Just catch.
– Halsted M. Bernard
January 2, 2010 – 15:17
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She thought that it would be enough when they had to register as no-gods, when they divided the line between types of belief. She never thought it would come to enforced sterilization. What was once a practice they so readily embraced as “choice” was now a mandatory medical procedure for all no-gods at …
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November 12, 2009 – 00:26
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I hadn’t thought of you in a while, and
right when I saw the lanky brunette
swivel sideways in her plastic seat
to let someone out, I thought of you,
your skin and hair and bones,
so taut and shiny. You were the
epitome of “girl” in my world and if
I had a crush on you –
we all did …
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October 22, 2009 – 23:11
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These words are mercenaries.
They slouch outside the back door of this poem,
clouds of frosty air billowing around their heads,
belts and boots glinting in the flood lamp.
When it is time, these words slip inside,
carrying a box or a knife or an envelope.
The hallway is dim. The recipient waits.
A noise, half-sigh, half-groan, escapes.
Perhaps nothing happened. The …
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October 21, 2009 – 23:23
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He puts his head on his hand, elbow beside the yellow pages. He scans the names and numbers, pausing to smirk at a funny bunch of letters. Today the book is of Reno, Nevada. He has never been to Reno, but he pictures it like Orinda in July, only flatter. Once …
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Perhaps the most useful aspect of a workshop—more useful than the critiques, which are often all over the map—is the irreplaceable and salutary terror of public performance. Putting up a piece before a workshop is in effect publishing it, and the workshop offers many new writers their first exposure to the very best teaching tool, …
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September 15, 2009 – 12:28
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Daily Writing Tips is an outstanding blog for writers, providing concise posts about honing our skills.
This excellent reminder comes from the post “Critiquing” is not “Editing”:
Critiquing is not the same as editing. If the friend is “editing drastically,” the result is no longer a critique but a rewrite.
Sometimes we can forget this, eager as we …
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Where I Write is a collection of photographs of fantasy and science fiction authors’ “creative spaces”. I wish my creative space were as marvelous as some of these!
Where do you write? What do you like about it? What do you wish you could change?
(Thanks to my writing group leader David for the link.)
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My writer’s block-busting exercise becomes a block in itself when I want to write standard “hey this is what’s in my head” entries. So here goes with one of those, long overdue.
For the past few weeks, no small amount of my spare brain-cycles have been spent focusing on the question of what I do …
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July 19, 2009 – 23:50
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I apologize for the lack of posts this week. On Monday I had a king-sized headache, and on Tuesday I took photographs instead.
Back to our regularly-scheduled busting of writer’s block! This prose poem is courtesy of my spam folder.
“Too busy to go back to school?” she huffed, dangling the highball glass between thumb and …
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July 8, 2009 – 23:23
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