Flower Basket (2020) multi-media collage by Maria L. Berg
I did it! I made it through April with over thirty new poems posted, inspired by NaPoWriMo and the Poem-a-Day Challenge. Congratulations to everyone who met these challenges. It was very fun to see the winners posted for last November’s Poem-a-Day Chapbook challenge. Congratulations De Jackson!
At the A to Z Challenge there’s an after-challenge survey. I enjoyed using the challenge to explore Janus words and phrases in my poetry.
I also enjoyed discovering art, craft and design sites I hadn’t visited before along with other writing sites.
This challenge isn’t quite finished. There will be a reflections post sign-up on May 3 and a blog road trip starting May 10th.
It’s time to get back to revision. This week I’ll be posting about my poetry revision process. I hope you’ll join me and share your tips and tricks for poetry revision.
If we could see the virus one (2020) bokeh photography by Maria L. Berg
I woke up still angry at the guy that came to my door and rang and knocked and knocked until I went up and yelled, “who is it” and he said “pest control.” After yelling, “I don’t need your services,” through the door, I knew he would go next door, so I ran to my backyard and watched him. No gloves, no mask, banging on the door. I yelled, “they don’t want your services either,” and he had the gall to say, “when will they be home? So their on vacation?” What is wrong with people?
I tried to let it go, but I encountered two attempted murderers (in my neighborhood (including coffee nose guy) in under a week. I do feel for people who need to work, but knocking on doors right now to represent pest-control is not only ironic, it’s deadly.
It felt like time to create a virus bokeh filter. I looked at a microscopic photograph of the virus and attempted to get the outer shape, then added wire for those distinctive fuzzy triangles. The wire shifted in this photo, but I still think it’s an interesting first attempt. My idea is to do a series of images outside when the light is right on the water, with the idea of what would we do differently if we could see the virus.
During this pandemic,
with renewed interest in recording,
I have discovered
what was once the most expensive,
latest and greatest,exotic, must-have
spend-your-last-penny-on
equipment, is now forgotten tech
Things change so quickly
in this digital age
though analog is always
better in the ear
tech is a tool to make everything
easier and faster
but greed makes it useless in
under a year
This became clear two weeks ago
when I made Big Ben chime on watervases
I pulled out my M-Audio to record
my stunning accomplishment
to learn that there were no drivers made
since 2011 and those wouldn’t work with my system
Why, humans why? Monsters, why do you do this?
For three days, old chatrooms became home.
I conquered in the end
and believe me, my friend
I am the queen of my empty space
I can’t use Print Music
or my old video games
that I bought with good money
all those years ago
but I can record any noise that I want
and post it to SoundCloud or some other Spot
to give it away for free, I guess
because no one buys music anymore.
For today’s poem I used the Sasquatch magnetic poetry kit.
This ink blot shows the nice copper iridescent paint in the Golden acrylics I talked about in my Happy Accidents post. Poetry month starts a week from today. Are you getting excited? What are you doing to prepare for your daily poetry challenge?
Today’s innovations were inspired by a design challenge on Spoonflower. Spoonflower is a great website that lets you design your own fabric and start your own fabric store. I have a shop called Mber Creations with a few bokeh photography designs that I turned into repeating patterns for fabric. I really like the samples they sent me of the designs on spandex. I plan to use them in my fabricglass fabric art.
The challenge is to create a fabric design with paper cut outs. The example they gave is based on work by Henri Matisse that he did late in life. His cut-out designs were turned into stained glass (below right). For my innovation, I started by cutting a piece of paper into a similar-ish leaf shape and then splattering it and folding it.
I found I was very timid with the paint when the paper was already cut. Then I pulled out some of my “failures” from yesterday and cut them into Easter Eggs. I like them, after I added more paint. The small one top right opens to be a card. Kinda fun.
The most exciting innovation of the day, in my opinion, was using two folds to blot: vertical and horizontal, clipping on the horizontal after drying and using paper punch shapes.
I hope you’re finding lots of ways to have fun and stay happy.
I like this ink blot from the other day. I see two butterflies and an alligator. What do you see? For this poem I used the Genius magnetic poetry kit.
For today’s innovations in klecksography, I tried a bunch of new things:
I tried folding and blotting along the diagonal
I tried folding along many diagonals:
I even tried creating shapes with my splatters:
In the top half, I went for a circle and the bottom was an attempt at a triangle. Can you see it? Neither can I. 🙂
Overall, today’s ideas resulted in ugly messes, in my opinion, but I think with less dots from a larger brush, I might be onto something. At least I have a couple new avenues of exploration. I have heard that innovation comes from failing, trying again and failing better. So here’s to failing better tomorrow!
Sunday morning I was debating whether or not I should order a new little watercolor kit because the one I’ve been using is almost out of paint, but then I remembered an old Gallery art kit in my closet. I was excited to find a whole new palette of colors to play with.
Gallery separated the palettes into Primary Colors, Earth Tones, and Pastel Shades which makes for nice layers of tones.
The lesson I’ve learned from this discovery is an important lesson even if we weren’t in a pandemic: Look through your supplies before ordering more. You may already have what you need.
The poem
This morning, I took my trash out and went to check my mail. I’m not sure why it surprised me, but kids were playing in the park on the corner and people walked by walking their dogs. Life goes on in my neighborhood. More than normal, I guess, since the kids aren’t in school and people aren’t going to work.
I had to work at it, but I believe I wrote a positive poem for today which was my intention. I used the Sasquatch magnetic poetry kit.
You don’t have to have paint and brushes to create ink blots. You can use coffee, tea, even ketchup or mustard. Ran out of printer paper? Any old scrap paper will do.
To further my klecksography innovation, I started with the eye-dropper and let that layer dry. Then I tried different size brushes. Flat vs. round brushes didn’t make much difference, but I did notice a difference between the smallish round brush I used yesterday and a large round brush. The results were satisfying, so tomorrow, I’ll keep experimenting with different brushes.
Here is a list of links to explore as you get ready for National Poetry Month. I’ll be participating in all of these Challenges like I did last year. I like to combine the different prompts and for A to Z I usually explore new words (to me) that I then use in my poems, but I might do something different this year. Any ideas?
And don’t forget dVerse poets pub where every month is poetry month. It brings together a great community of poets that host prompts and an open link night.
Hi everyone! In preparation for poetry month in only two and a half weeks, I thought I would get in the mood by diving back into the joy of klecksography. If you haven’t read my previous posts on the matter and have no idea what I’m talking about, you might want to take a quick look at my post Gobolinks and Blottentots before reading on.
Like most creative endeavors, setting klecksography aside and coming back to it with fresh eyes led to new ideas. Today’s innovation was dripping the watercolor pain with an eye-dropper instead of a paint brush.
At first I was disappointed. There wasn’t enough color and there was too much water.
After those attempts dried, however, I put more drops of paint on them with a brush and really liked the results. So my ink blots will be a two-part process (until the next innovation): eye-dropper then brush.
I think I set aside klecksography for two reasons:
I couldn’t get myself to draw on my inkblots.
I didn’t want to mix my magnet kits.
Today, neither of those “problems” were an issue. I opened my Mustache Poetry Kit and found all the words I needed and the inkblot already illustrates it perfectly (if I do say so myself) without any drawing on it.
I hope to make these every day for a while. If I do want to draw on them, I’ll make a color copy, or scan them. As for mixing my magnets? I’m not sure yet. I got a bunch of colored whiteboard pens when I was doing this before, thinking I could color code the ones not from the main set and then wipe them off. However, using only the words provided in the kit creates interesting artistic parameters.
Photo by Maria L. Berg             Fall is the perfect time for photographing fairies
Happy National Novel Writing Month! How did your first day go? Unlike last year, I’m healthy, relaxed and in a quiet state for writing.
Until this morning, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do here at Experience Writing during this NaNoWriMo. I took a look back at what I’ve done over the years and realized that I want to follow my 2017 prompts. I did so much work and research to create all of those prompts, I figure I might as well benefit from it.
This year, I’ll be posting every day with my own responses and ideas inspired by 2017s daily prompts. And, of course all my new discoveries as I wander through my writing experience.
Since I didn’t do this yesterday and Saturday’s a good day for a double dose of prompts, let’s take a look at both Day 1 and Day 2. They also go together because they are about the characters’ ordinary world.
Day 1 prompts:
Opening Image/ theme: My prep really helped me with this. I had already filled out a save the cat beat sheet, so I had an image in my head of what my opening scene would look like and I had notes about who would state my theme. I hadn’t done this in my previous novels, but this one worked in the opening scene when my detective was speaking to the county sheriff.
Sensory information: I brought in some distinct smells and plan to have smell bring up a memory in today’s scene, but I think I’ll go back to my opening scene and bring in some textures. It will be more of an observed visual texture, instead of a feeling of texture. Oh, I could also bring in how a disgusting smell becomes a taste. Ick.
#vss (very short story):Â I looked at #vss365 lead this month by JD Stoxx @banjomediocrity on twitter. The prompt yesterday was fuse. My construction foreman in the first scene has a bit of a short fuse, I could emphasize that more.
Protagonist’s Ordinary World: Four of coins
What he loves about it: Four of swords
What he believes is lacking: Six of wands
My interpretation: This works for both the protagonist in my opening scene and the protagonist of the whole novel. He knows what it’s like to be poor both physically and emotionally and is holding on tight to what he feels he has earned through hard work. He likes that the battle is over and he can rest, but he feels that he is not given enough praise and appreciation for what he does.
Ask Your Character
These are great questions, but I worry answering them here, could give away something that becomes important later, so I’ll answer these in my notebook each day as part of my character’s backstory.
Word of the day:
The sheriff appeared to be an autodidact. Bill was finding him hard to respect.
8 Action Verbs:
Time accelerated. He wanted to hold onto the seconds, but they kept flying by.
Nothing felt balanced. Everything was off-kilter as if any moment something would fall and smash.
He consolidated everything in had left of his childhood in a small shoe-box that he had tucked in the back of his highest closet shelf. He looked up at the shelf. He couldn’t see the box. That was how he liked it.
They discovered the body on a Wednesday. The news had spread across the country by early Thursday.
A murder of crows had gathered on the rim of the huge, blue dumpster. They cawed angrily as he approached.
He didn’t need to be lectured about how bad this looked.
He presented himself to the county sheriff’s department as had been requested. They made him wait in a cold tiled lobby on a hard plastic chair.
He scheduled the earliest flight. He wanted to get to the site around dusk and no matter when he got in, traffic would be a nightmare.
Poetry Prompt:
I like that there are poem prompts and plan to write a poem each day, but because most literary magazines won’t take poems that have been published on a blog, and I can’t seem to write more than one poem a day, I’ll go ahead and write my poem in my notebook.
Awesome Sentence Challenge
My main character had a difficult childhood. His parents weren’t educated past high school and were crass and violent. So when he escaped and left his past behind, he wanted to disguise his upbringing. I think he over-compensates and tries to speak like he thinks really smart, wealthy people talk. But when he gets panicked or angry, he slips into crass, bullying language. He threatens and digs into others like the words in his head he can’t forget from his childhood.
Today’s Simple Task
I definitely described an important object in the opening scene, but maybe I can come up with another one or two. I forgot to bring in the press. I could have the news van drive up in the first scene and have that be why my character leaves.
Warm-up Exercise: My character wants to put his past behind him. The first thing he will do to get that is to ignore the news reports and pretend he is not connected to his old family home.
Day 2 prompts
The ordinary world for the antagonist: Though I am mostly focusing on my protagonist today, my antagonist is in his thoughts, so thinking about and making notes about the antagonist’s ordinary world is a good idea for today as well. My antagonist is unstable, living in his truck, but returning to his childhood home often, so his ordinary world is constantly in flux. It’s about daily survival. A reactionary existence.
“My definition of my own art is experience. I think the scariest thing for an artist to do is stare at a blank canvas and think about what they’re going to say in their work. ” – Alex Rubio
The #vss365 prompt for today is cuff. This is definitely my antagonist. For him, everything is off the cuff, and since he wears all of his dad’s old clothes and his dad was much bigger than him, he is always rolling cuffs on his sleeves and his pant legs.
My antagonist’s ordinary world: Page of coins
What he likes about his world: The Lovers
What he doesn’t like: Judgement
My interpretation: I’m not quite sure what I think of that yet. I get that he is always looking for ways to meet his human needs, and that he’s sick of earthly judgement and is focused on spiritual judgement, but I’m not sure how the Lovers card fits. I’ll have to think on that.
Word of the day:
Oren always seemed to be in the middle of an imbroglio. He kinda wished he knew why.
8 Action Verbs:
Kirk was an accomplished director, of pharmaceutical advertisements. Not exactly the glamorous life in pictures he had imagined, but it paid the bills.
He believed he was there to be briefed by the sheriff, but he ended up in an interrogation room with a female detective answering questions for hours.
The manufactured home had been poorly constructed to begin with, but he hadn’t expected so much deterioration.
They hadn’t even distributed missing person posters.
The find had generated a lot of interest in the property. Ghost hunters were flocking in from as far as Alaska.
The footpath led him behind the mobile home which on the far side looked like it had burned, and to an area of trees. He saw a fire pit and a torn sleeping bag. It looked like someone may have been sleeping here.
The way she presided over the questioning, he got the impression that she was really the person in charge.
She said they had thoroughly searched the property, but there was so much overgrowth, he doubted that was true.
Symbols:
The poetry prompt was about symbols. I need to think about symbols for each of my characters and how to use them.
Awesome Sentence Challenge:
Similes and Metaphors: I’m surprised I hadn’t really thought about this during my prep. I love good similes. This goes well with thinking about symbols. I’m definitely going to be using animals like rats, vultures, jackals and other animals that survive on death and carnage. I’ll also be thinking about the blind and naive, the symbols of a community that ignores the truth of what they let exist when they pretend they are too busy to see, like an ostrich with its head in the sand, like a horse with blinders on, like a person who can’t walk because he refuses to use a cane.
Today’s Simple Task:
I’ve been trying to figure out how to start today’s scene. I want my protagonist to be in mid-action when he gets the news. Maybe I can make it thrilling and scary. He is doing something dangerous and becomes distracted. This could still be so many things, but I have a better idea of how I want to introduce him.
Warm-up Exercise:
My protagonist wants with every bit of his being to not be who he was born. He wants to be the self that he created, but now his past has found him. He is choosing to continue as if nothing has happened as long as he can, but he has a couple of things he knows he has to do before they find him.
Scene Cards:
I have something to add that I didn’t have in 2017. I made scene cards for my editing process. This time I can fill out my scene cards as I write my draft. They will be ready for the editing process the moment I’m ready to start my re-write. I’m ready to fill out my first two scene cards, but I’m not sure how I want to color-code them. I have five colors. I have two or three POVs; I have two or three major settings; I don’t know. Any thoughts?
Read:
Something happened to me this year. I don’t know if it was all the journal reading for The Planner Project or all the rejections because of The Planner Project, but I haven’t been reading novels or any books like I usually do. It could also be that I don’t trust a book anymore because I overdosed on not-so-great novels and recommended novels. It could be that I’ve tried to learn from everything I read that makes it not fun anymore, but I don’t think so. My passion for writing came from the advice–Write the book that you want to read, but can’t find. That is what I do, but it also brings me back to my original dilemma of genre. I can’t find books in my genre that I want to emulate. Why? Because I want literary fiction with the fun characters and excitement of thrillers and mysteries. Will I finally get there? I can only hope.
Do you have suggestions that aren’t on the Best Thrillers/ Best Suspense lists?
frangible: adjective – readily or easily broken; brittle.
Believe Your Eyes
Still
Blending
Fiercely striking
Color and shape
The straight and rigid
Reject the curve
Fill
Bending
Coyly tricking
Hue and line
The playful illusion
In frangible balance
Will
Bedding
Madly mimicking
Base and fore
Hidden in mystery
Beyond awed eyes
Skill
Besting
Wildly beguiling
Depth and space
Endlessly dancing
Connections in the mind
Today’s NaPoWriMo theme was line-breaks and speaking of lines, specifically blurring them, have you seen Emma Hack‘s art? She does amazing body paint illusions. I found her images inspiring today. I especially like the Geometric collection. If you like visual illusions in art you may want to check out The Museum of Illusions: Optical Tricks in Art by Celine Delavaux.
by Celine Delavaux.
Experience Writing 