Monthly Archives: July 2008

Highway to the Dangerous Thesis Zone

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Ah thesis, I’ve been working on you.  Not obsessively, but thoughtfully.  Most of the 48 or so poems that thought they would be in the thesis have been revised at least once since May, but not all.

I made the decision to get refocused on the project that is due in mid-October so for the end of this week I’m going through my folders and pulling newer poems that might work in the thesis and I’m starting to pull poems that just aren’t revising the way I want them to.  So far I have about 10 poems that are newer and might fit in the thesis but only one that I’ve pulled.  But I do still have one huge folder to go through so those numbers may change a good bit.

I feel like i need to pick up the pace a little.  I’d like to be sitting at the first of September with a good set of poems that I feel are revisable within only a few more drafts.  I don’t want to be sitting in the middle of October going Oh crap!

Funny even with this possible new structuring the title I think will fit (won’t say it to avoid reducing its future mojo :) and the same themes/obsessions are still there. LIkely the biggest change will be using some of the new work that might be a bit more surreal and I may actually go for sections instead of just a collection…decisions…decisions.

What to Say When You . . .

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are feeling lazy and you think you tweaked your knee yesterday while trying to do too much to stay active and generally be a healthy and productive member of society to make up for the fact that you spend money but yet haev no income and that you scribble little poems in between wishing youtube wouldn’t crash again or that the mail would come a little sooner and finally bring you something beyond coupons and the occassional rejection notice (ok not occassional, frequent but in a dry spell right now) but at least you can releish in avoiding as much punctuation you can when it is hot and you are feeling very very old…

Retiring Poems

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Sometime early in my writing education, someone said you never throw out any of your writing.

I don’t think I have ever really taken it to heart but there is a part of me that desires to keep everything I have written.  There is a part of me that hopes somewhere in that awful poem I wrote when I was 15 there is a gem that can be polished out.

But sometimes a pieces of dirt is just dirt.

I don’t have much of my writing from before I went off to college.  I know I had notebooks, everything was handwritten, but I am a lover of cleaning things out of “purging” so to speak (although I’ve never tried bulimia, I hate the actual physical act of a body throwing up) and most of what I have from college forward is from spells of when I would type up the poems (I always handwrite first) and then print them out, but I know there are probably old disks in some landfill somewhere of work I never printed out.

Yet, I don’t miss these poems. I have so many pieces of writing that may or may not ever turn out to be “good” and this morning I retired one of those.  It was in my “Fat Girl” chapbook series.  It isn’t in the current copies I have in circulation but was one that I had hoped to revise and include in later contest entries.  But the poem was just flat.  I could feel it but I know some people would say I should tuck it away somewhere. But I’m not going to.  It feels refreshing somehow to let it go.  That it is one less piece of writing I need to worry about in the future.

Any thoughts on that out there? Anyone else actually purge your words to the point where they no longer “exist”? 

Now if I could figure out what to do with the other hundreds of pieces I start….hmmmm

Why on Monday You Regret Blogging About Your Diet on Friday

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I hopped off “the wagon” over the weekend.

I was doing well. Then Saturday we went to see “Stepbrothers” (if you like movies such as SuperBad you will enjoy, if you don’t-don’t go and then complain about how stupid it is) which was funny and I had a small popcorn. 

No big deal right? Well for some reason I was just feeling out of sorts and doing what always causes me to fail–eating past the point where I’m full. So there was chinese food at the mall, then too many pretzels to snack on while out of town on Sunday and other various transgressions resulting in almost 3 pounds of weight gain.

There was also little of my regular during the week exercise.

So what did I decide to do?

I gave myself a break this morning and said I wasn’t going to worry about it. And at peace I had granola and milk for breakfast, a cobb salad (and they forgot my chicken and I wasn’t in the mood to ask for it) for lunch, I’m eating some trail mix now for a snack and I think dinner may actually be another salad because my taste buds do seem to enjoy them lately.  I did, however, go to the grocery store so I finally have food in the house. Oh thank you SuperTarget for opening so close to my house!

Oh yeah and I’ve already walked for 40 minutes besides the grocery shopping.

All in all. It is a good Monday :) warts and all.

Why on Friday Will I Talk about My Diet?

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Well, I will talk about my diet today because Friday is (or has been for me) a precursor to start “relaxing.”  Even though I don’t have a paying job, I do work a schedule of writing, cleaning, and exercising during the week and all week I’ve been eating salads.  Generally my breakfast is fruit and either cheese or nuts and then my lunch and dinner have both been salads with a good hefty serving of protein.  I do allow myself to eat any of the little tortilla strips and/or croutons that come with them so I’m not completely non processed food deprived (cause how could we live and not seem to have some processed food) but I’ve been very diligent about not snacking and sticking with this.

I think it is working.

I’m down to 191.  Still trying to break that 189 barrier and hopefully that will happen soon. 

The reason I went with salads is because I wanted to feel satisifed.  A nice big salad fills me up and is (for the most part) healthy.  I know I could do weight watchers type eating where I can have what I want as long as I watch the calories but I’d rather eat a yummy salad that keeps me full for at least 2-3 hours than a cheeseburger and fries and then be hungry in sometimes less than a half an hour once all the sugar in the bun has been processed in my system.

I’m also walking twice a day for at least 30 minutes each.  I might get back ot my wii fit but since I go out to get salad supplies it just makes sense to go walking at the malls while I’m out.

My goal is to see 189 on the scale and then I’ll give myself a day to eat something sugary and/or pasta/bread filled before focusing again and seeking the next 5 pounds.

Tiny rabbit steps.

Have a great weekend everyone! I’ll see you at the salad bar :)

Ah Used Bookstores

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What is it about used bookstores that just calm me?  Is it just the smell of books?  I mean you can get that in a library or a new store of books. So what is it?

For me I think it is 2 things–

1-We went to quite a few used bookstores when I was a kid.  I don’t even recall having ever entered a new bookstore until probably high school or later while on field/debate trips to bigger cities so there is a sense of memory.  I can clearly recall getting a Hong Kong Phooey book at a used book store in the VA Beach area with my mom.  I started my obsession with Stephen King at a used book store in Elizabeth City, NC for just a few.  We also went to the library but used bookstores were my first chance for me to pick out and own a book.

2-It is that picking out that stands out.  There is something about the hunt for books. I don’t spend as much time when I’m hunting as I used to because I often have stacks of books I haven’t read yet.  LIke today, I had a few books I knew I wasn’t going to keep so last night I went thru and picked out a few more I was ready to part with.  I drove over to Book Buyers in Charlotte (you should SO go) and my about 10 books allowed me to get 5 new ones.  There is always that thrill when you see something you had forgotten you wanted.  Going to a used bookstore is like going on a treasure hunt.

Ah, and there is the lovely smell of books as they age.  Just something you can’t get in a big box store (which I also still love! just in a different way)

Some of my finds today–a book of poetry by John Amen, The Mermaid Chair, Middlesex, Empire (by Orson Scott Card this was the Woooo I had been meaning to get that book).  The only thing I wanted to find but couldn’t was Christopher Moore. I’ve been wanting to read something by him but I never find it used and I always forget when I’m at the new store!

Vlogging About “Truth” in Poetry

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When I decided I would try making some vlogs (with my fabulous husbandly bought laptop) the first idea that came to me was to discuss this whole issue non-writers have with feeling that everything most writers create is somehow always auto-biographical.

Now, when I actually went to make the video (i didnt’ do yesterday because I had an especially bad hair day) I decided on a particular poem but for some reason I then found myself in vlog mode reading a completely different poem, but oh well both were from The Dead Mule in November 2007 and could both be used-to some degree-to discuss the issue with “true events” in poetry.

I guess subconsciously the poem I acutally read (“To the Fat Girl at the YMCA Pool”) also is part of one of the two chapbooks I’m shopping around and entering contests with so perhaps I had an ulterior motive?