This morning I finally tied up the other mirror and turned the mirrorworld into a triangle. This created some nice borders to attempt some light icicles.

New Poems

Today is Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub. I think I’ll start exploring Rest, Sleep, and Hibernation as a poetry prompt for the Changing Focus December project. This image I made this morning “Freezing Mist” makes me think of REM sleep.

Making a Poetry Collection: November PAD Chapbook Challenge

I’ve started working on my chapbook and wanted to share my progress. As with my poem revision process, my creating a collection process is already changing. I had Step 2 as doing the poem reviews, but while doing my read through, I found selection and organization came first. I am really glad that Step 1 was copying the poems into Scrivener, because I am finding that Scrivener is a great tool for this process.

Step 2: Rate the poems as Yes, Maybe, No – In my Scrivener template, I set up three sections. When I copied the poems into Scrivener, I put all of the poems in Section 1. Then as I read through them, the Yes poems stayed in 1, the Maybes went to Section 2, and the Nos went to section 3.

Step 3: Read for themes – In a brainstorming section outside the manuscript, I created a blank sheet for themes and noted the themes that stood out as I read. I noticed that many of my poems had a counterpart or pair which I found exciting. These pairs had kind of a before and after feel.

Step 4: Preliminary order – After discovering my poem pairs, I started moving my yes poems around and found a preliminary order. Moving the poems around so easily was a great aspect of using Scrivener. After I had a preliminary order, I opened the General Meta-Data and assigned labels and status. For my labels I chose: First draft, Revising, and Final. For the status labels, I changed it to form and labeled my poems as free form, rhyming, or specific structure. I may change what I use that for later, but during review it’s an interesting key.

Step 5: Review

Here’s my revised review checklist from my post Revising Poetry-a Demonstration Part Two: The First Redraft. I turned this into a template page in Scrivener and use the split screen, so I can see the poem while I review. I can make my notes for revision in the Notes section under the meta-data.

• Identify POV, tense, form, voice
• setting, narrative
• themes, moods
• identify sensory details
• identify best lines
• mark weak verbs & nouns
• words to mind map
• mark areas to expand
• highlight cliche language
• make easy cuts
• choose what to edit to (theme, idea)
• brainstorm alternate titles
• make notes to guide re-write
• do mind maps
• free-write around best lines, character and narrative
• do research
• write a narrative poem

I’m making some progress with the review. Listing the sensory details is already pointing me toward some areas to explore. And choosing what to edit to is helping me focus on how I want the poems to work together as a whole. I’m also excited to start expanding the ideas through writing the narrative poems. This part of the process may take a few days.

If you’ve enjoyed the photographs I’ve been taking, I’ve added some to my RedBubble store and I’m excited about the new products. The abstract bokeh really lends itself to product design. So fun. While you’re looking, please click the hearts to like the images on the RedBubble site. It will help my work get attention. Thank you.

Happy Reading and Writing!