October 31st. All Hallow’s Eve. Halloween. Sawhain. Whatever you want to call it; it feels like a passing–a closure–to me. When I was working, I liked closure. Closure was getting a file off my desk, a claimant off the phone, a chance to get in the car and go home. But with writing, closure is tricky. I find with fiction and non-fiction the ending, the closure feels organic. But my main staple–my poetry–seems to have trouble finding an ending quite often.

Why is that? Is it because I am already thinking about tomorrow being November 1st and how that is the start of a new month? Tomorrow I will weigh and measure myself to see if I have made any progress in the last 30 days. Tomorrow I will start NaNoWriMo. Tomorrow I’ll pick my poems for the November 15th workshop submission. Tomorrow I’ll even start books for two of the January seminars, one of which I will be writing a paper on. Tomorrow is a firsts and beginnings. Beginning something is fresh, just enough of newness to be intriguing but not fearful. But closure?

Closure of a poem for me tends to fall into what I am terming lately “The Sonnet Fallacy.” Sonnets build up to a turn and then a nice couplet to wrap it all up. That is what I tend to do with my poetry. And incidentally, that is a tendency of American cinema as well–we want a nice tidy bow. As my workshop leader put it–It’s like learning to tell a good joke.

But wouldn’t it be boring if that was always the closure? **SPOILER** What if in the “Full Monty” they actually got to go through with the striptease? Would it be the same movie? Would it still resonate for us? Or what if Lee Smith’s “Black Mountain Breakdown” had its main character arise from her “coma” and live the expected life of a girl of her generation? Would we have been happy with that?

Question after question. I’m fighting with this and will be focusing on why I feel narrative and a closed endings are what a poem should be. My challenge for November will be to find the essense of my poem, let it speak even if its ending has the hero shot.

When I was an undergrad, I took an Intermediate Fiction Workshop during one of my last semesters in school. I was able to skip the Beginners class because I had already had the Beginners Poetry and Intermediate Poetry Workshops. Or, I think it was–I was fairly well liked in the Education Dept and they let me do it.

Problem was, I wasn’t really a good Fiction Writer. When I was in Creative Writing back in 9th grade I wrote mostly poetry because the few stories I tried to write were not well received by my teacher. I would write a story with hokey dialogue and my teacher would tell me to write what I know. Well, I was writing fictionalized accounts of real events in my life. Sometimes real life just doesn’t work as fiction.

With all that said, why am I writing fiction again? I think in part because I have finally mined most of my painful past. Once I got the majority of those feelings out on paper, I find myself hearing from my dreams again. There are characters lurking in my dreams and in my daydreams wanting to be written. Nope, not hallucinating just hearing lines in the same way I would “see” images in my mind that were needing to be put into a poem.

When I started back with fiction I went to my old saved files and pulled up all the short stories and fragments I had retained. There were a few that I just deleted out right. A few I saved the idea of the story but the actual original writing had nothig to offer. But there were some that seemed to have a bit of a spark. I did this several months ago and only recently have I started trying to mine these stories.

The first one I tackled was a strange almost magical-realism story I wrote in between classes when I was about fifteen. I went through and typed up the stronger lines but I really don’t think there is any meat to the story or characters. I might actually try to turn it into a poem.

After that I actually created a new story off an idea I had. I let it sit for about a week and when I went back to it I was surprised to find (despite tense shifts) it was a very simple story but it felt mostly complete. Is it publishable? I don’t know. There are no fancy tricks; It is just a story. I think it needs one more revision but I am going to work on that most likely next week.

Today was the surprise. I pulled an old Works file that must date back to college. I converted it to Word and printed it. The narrator of this story has a believable voice. What! Really? I was chuckling at myself and something I had written probably 10 years ago. I am pretty exciting about typing up my revisions and adding to it. I never thought I could write fiction but maybe I can now. Maybe a lot of what I lacked was life experience outside my insular dysfunctional family before I could create something new to me.

Gearing up to start NaNoWriMo on Thursday. I wish the National website wasn’t so slow!

I’ve finished up my reading and writing for the day. I could probably do one more chore, but since I thought I was going to Kung Fu I wasn’t in a hurry. I got a call from the school, however, and they are having a Halloween party so class is cancelled. I don’t want to be a bum so I’ll probably go to the mall and walk before picking up some dinner. Tonight is generally my hubby’s long night at his 2nd job. I could do more cleaning. I could work on the picture frames and the shadow box that need to be filled at some point but I think–just like with writing–sometimes you just have to be in the write mood to do certain activities.

So, I’ll leave shortly and walk and eat some dinner. Then I’ll come home and decide what it is I could possibly due with about 4 hours free that aren’t scheduled? Hmmmmmm

Fall is usually my favorite season. When I was a girl, it was mainly because I was enjoying the first months of school and looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even as an adult I enjoy Thanksgiving, alot and Christmas–some what. Christmas is for kids, so when I am around kids it is fun, but buying presents for a bunch of adults just doesn’t interest me.

This fall feels clogged so far. Maybe it is because I have been sick for a week. I thought it was a cold I picked up from my nephew two Saturday’s ago but now I think it is the change in weather. First we had days and days of rain and now it is getting cold. I might actually have to turn the heat on the house for the first time this Fall! I just feel blah. Like right now my throat is dry but my nose keeps wanting to run. I still feel tired, but I can’t just sit around and be morose.

I finished all my housework, my writing and my reading for the day. I still have a good 2 hours before Kung Fu so I think I’m going to catch up on some TV. I don’t feel like going to Kung Fu tonight but it has been a week since I went and since this blah feeling is not going away from my sinus’ I don’t think I can keep using them as an excuse. Besides, once I am there I enjoy it. It is like going to a party (only introverts will understand this) you dread the thought of going in the hours before the party starts and you need hours afterwards to recover but while you are ther with the right people you are happy.

This should be an interesting week. I received back my workshop leader critiques on October’s poems and on Thursday I’ll pick the last set of poems for this distance workshop as well as start my NaNoWriMo. One of the characters in my potential novel was actully keeping me up last night. I keep thinking of changing my topic because what I plan to write is pretty dark, but the characters are following me and for better or worse they are going to have to be written. Besides those two projects I still have all my other writing I am working on including 6 poems I want to go our on Friday.

Next big decision? In the next two weeks I think I’ll have a short story ready to send out but not sure where to send it? Any thoughts?

L8r G8r.

When I was driving back from the mall (sipping my celebratory large diet coke) I started thinking about my poem that will be published; I wondered how long it took.

“The Summer She Left” Originally written in October, 1998 (or the earliest printed version) but that was not the original title. This was about 6 months after I graduated with my BA and a few weeks before I was getting married. I sent the poem about in 1999 3 times before it was accepted for publication by a small press that apparently then folded. Starting in 2006 I began revising that poem and this was the third time I had sent it out before it was published. In the interim it was revised, workshopped and revised, but interestingly enough it wasn’t revised a lot from the version I turned into the workshop. So it took 9 years and 6 attempts. Interesting.

I thought while I had a few minutes I would check some other poems. “After Choir Practice”, which will be out with _Dead Mule_ next month was sent out in 2000, 2006 and 2007 for a total of 5 times before it was accepted. It was also workshopped before finally being accepted. Whereas “Marrow” (also coming out in _Dead Mule_) was only sent out twice but was drastically different then the poem I workshopped. Same kind of story for “Winter on the Coast.”

Two poems “October Cleaning” (pending with _Main Street Rag_) and “Fat Girl at the YMCA (November with _Dead Mule_) were never workshopped and were selected on their first submissions.

The three haikus that were printed recently are harder to guage. They were old poems that I had pared down into their essense which turned out to be haiku, but given how often I change titles (I have a hard time picking titles) I can’t really tell if they were ever sent out. They certainly weren’t sent out as haikus.

With all this said, there is no definitive pattern. What it says to me is that there are a few moments when I get a poem down pretty quickly as if my muse was whispering in my ear. Those poems come out vitually complete. Then there are the majority of poems, the ones I have to fight for. And finally, there are the huge number of poems still floating out there in the water of the submission pool just hoping they are pretty enough to be caught.

I received some good news today . One of my poems will be appearing in the inaugural issue of The Red Clay Review that is scheduled for Spring of 2008. It is an older poem that I really re-worked before and after I workshopped it back in March. I was very happy to update my submission list with a positive!

After the good news, I toasted myself by finishing off the rest of the decongestant. I don’t want to buy more, so hopefully tomorrow I’ll just magically feel better. Definitely want to be clearheaded enough to see the “The Darjeeling Limited” this weekend. I’m also watching, in fits and spurts, the 1988 movie “The Lady in White.” This was a slumber party favorite. It isn’t particularly scary anymore and is actually a little cheesy, but I am enjoying a walk down memory lane. I didn’t remember that the frame for the movie was that the young boy Lucas Haas plays grew up to be a writer. Mainly I remembered the parts that made me jump when I was about 12

It is still raining, raining, raining in Charlotte, NC. I slogged through the rain to send out more poems, buy groceries and to get lunch. I thought I felt up to par until I did those errands and they drained me. But watch me of the faulty short term memory–I’m going to go out again and get myself a nice fountain drink as a treat because I feel rested. That will last, I’m guessing, until I start to walk into the mall–then the regret will kick in.

Have a great weekend blogosphere. At least here it is dry!

Yucky. That is how I feel, yucky. Not that sick enough to lay in bed, but sick enough to feel drained just walking across the house.

Hubby and I went out last night to celebrate our 9th Wedding Anniversary. I didn’t feel too bad so I had high hopes for today. But, alas, I’m still under the weather. The Kung Fu instructor called me last night just as hubby and I were getting into the resturant, I couldn’t hear him to well but he was just checking in on me and confirming that I would be pretty sore. Yep. Nice of him to call though.

I actually feel bad about being sick because of the Kung Fu classes I am missing. I gave a lot of thought to actually taking the class tonight but I don’t think others in the class want to hear me coughing and running to the corner to blow my nose. No. That isn’t pretty. So I’m staying home, but since I feel guilty i called and left a message for the instructor telling him while I’ll be out for a bit and thanking him for calling me last night.

Is this all like some bad karma? Here I have been writing about how I’m worried I’ll quit and instead my body is rebelling? Is it telling me I was stupid to sign up for the classes? I think it is trying to rebel and be lazy but I’m not going to listen to it! I’m gonna drink lots of fluids and tell it to get better so I can get back to class

I do feel as if I am in a fog, however, so while I did get my writing done this morning as well as most of my chores I feel like sleeping. There is only one more book I need to read through today and then I might be tempted to nappy, nappy but I know if I do I won’t sleep tonight so I need to find something to do. Too bad it is finally raining (we need it but still) or I could go out and sit on the porch. Bleh.

Yesterday, I had that tickly feeling in the back of my throat that made me think I was sick getting sick. Since I quite work, however, I haven’t been sick. My husband was sick this week though so I should have known it would get to me.

So as I write this I have had two doses of off brand DayQuil and I still feel a bit yucky. My quads and abs are also still sore from Monday’s workout. I was still intending to take Kung Fu tonight, but today is my 9th wedding anniversarry and my husband wants to have something nice for dinner. Who am I to say no to that? I probably should have backed off from the idea of going to workout tonight anyway sore and sick is probably not a good combination in a class with quite a few pre-teens and teenagers.

Hopefully, this will have all cleared and tomorrow I can make it to class and not feel like a 75 year old woman just after falling on her hip.

On a good note though I did all my housework, reading and writing for the day even scribbling down the start of a new poem. Now maybe I’ll actually–gasp–watch TV!