This morning’s photoshoot was fun and successful. For “startle” I thought about the way the body jerks when we’re startled, and played with camera motion with some bokeh of my neighbors’ lights across the lake. I love the color palette created by the security lights in the dark

November PAD Chapbook Challenge

Today is two for Tuesday. The prompts are: Write a ready poem and/or a not ready poem. Not ready fits well with my photo prompt “Startle.”

I’m Not Ready–Wait!

It’s not that you were unexpected
or unwelcome, or unwanted
It’s that I had a few more things to do

It’s not that those things can’t get done later
or tomorrow morning, or never
It’s that I had a plan, I had seen a picture of an order of events

It’s not that the picture of events can’t be altered
painted over, gesso-ed back to blank canvas
It’s that I wanted–needed more time

But, here you are as planned
interaction already began
the shifted space from one to two
What are we waiting for?

I also took a look at week 9 of ModPo this morning and was challenged to try my hand at a Mesostic Poem. Mesostic poems are a type of acrostic structure used by John Cage with the spine word (the name of the dedicatee) down the center. He would identify words from a source text then use chance operations based on the I Ching to select which words to use and the amount of text to use on either side of the spine word. Since I’m reading Criminal Investigations for my NaNoWriMo novel, I thought the chapter I’m reading, “The Crime Scene and Its Associated Procedures” would make a fun source text. I typed some of it into the Mesostic Poem Generator program, using my character’s name.

Writing Through Criminal Investigation
~after John Cage

    
                                        evideNce
                                     individuAl confesses to
                                           wrOng the contributions
                                       are diMinished
                                           prImarily by
                                  unwillingneSs or
                                        suspeCted of
                                             Having committed
                                improper concLusions from
                                             Its analysis also
                               evidence cannoT speak for
                                            iTself
                                         propEr value
                                     can alteRed incomplete
                              eyewitness or tHe innocent
                                          locAtion at 
                                      the seaRch
                                          of The crime

NaNoWriMo

How was your first day? I hope you had fun with your opening scene. I was not at the top of my game (bad tummy, distracted), but I still wrote 2,000 words. I think I’ll dive back into the scene today and add all that description and sensory information I said I was going to write, but didn’t. I want to create a visceral wrongness given off my this abandoned property, the moment my character gets there, from the moment she sees the turn onto the driveway. I think I’ll really dive into that this morning. I kind of skipped over it yesterday as I attempted to create a new journalist character and bring the assistant coroner into the opening scene as well. There’s a lot to set up in this opening scene. I did manage to get the deputy sheriff to state the theme (or something close, I haven’t quite worded it the way I want to yet) which felt good when it happened organically.

Happy Reading and Writing!