The Fifth Day of Enduring Shortness

This morning it stopped raining long enough to go outside to capture the shortness in endurance and the endurance in shortness. With endurance being the ability or strength to continue or last, and shortness being the quality of lasting a short amount of time, how could something be both at the same time?

I thought about the top I wrote about in my childhood toy poem, how it endured endless play (and abuse) through shortness of motion and attention. I made a bicone filter, cutting one half with jagged lines and the other with smooth. And this morning I created my blue depth effect without any mirrors!! Very exciting.

2023 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 5

Today’s prompt is to write a book-based poem. This morning, I read a passage on revision that really spoke to me, written by Robert Graham in The Road to Somewhere: A Creative Writing Companion Second Edition edited by Robert Graham, Heather Leach & Helen Newall (amazon assoc. link). It was presented as an exercise called “The Things You Make Them Carry.” He says, ” At the beginning f the story, the writer is giving the reader things. . . . as they climb the hill you are sending them up. You don’t want the reader getting to the top and being pissed off about the things you made them carry up the hill for no reason. . . . go to what amount to the top of the hill . . . search for and remove all the extraneous information you have burdened them with. . . .”

Only the Necessary Endured

Reaching the summit, so much left behind:
the over-burdened plan first to go;
fear of failure had to leave my mind;
shed heavy doubt fell below;
those regrets were a grind
wants and needs in tow.
Each dropped along
the way to
empty
me

Yesterday, I had a desk cat companion like the image above for most of my writing day. Sure, he didn’t come in and join me until after the thunder, but hey, he stayed and it was really nice. Hopefully the lights won’t have to be flickering and rain pelting the windows for it to happen again. I’m just happy the power stayed on.

How is everyone’s writing going? So far I’m reaching a little over 2,000 words each day. I tried my main character in first person yesterday and liked it, so I’m going to be writing this draft in first person with B-story chapters in third person. I’m glad I made this decision early and can easily make the changes.

Then, this morning, I was thinking: wouldn’t the immediacy of horror and terror be more acute in present tense? I took a look at the horror novels and stories I’m reading and they are just about half and half present and past tense, so for today’s warm-up I’m going to try re-writing my opening in present tense and see which I like better.

Happy Reading and Writing!