Tag: novels

Button Sunday

Heed the crow, friends.

Today is Great Poetry Reading Day, and you can learn more about it at that link. As for me, as soon as I realized this, I went right to the Houndstooth library and took out this book. I don’t know why I thought to check, because I rarely do this anymore, but I looked inside the front page and I had, indeed, written my name and the date I got the book, which in this case was 1997. I wonder what prompted me to purchase it that year, whether I had a hunger to read more poetry or I was in a bookstore, saw it, and decided, I need that!

I paged through the book randomly, reading poems, and came to a section with work by the American poet Robinson Jeffers, who I’ve always read with pleasure. Full disclosure: In 1995, I bought the book Safe As Houses by Alex Jeffers and wondered if he was related to Robinson Jeffers, but these were the days before I had the entire world of information at my fingertips. I reminded myself that just because two people share a last name… Lucky for me, one of my literary icons, Edmund White, had blurbed the novel on the back cover, and he shared that Alex is Robinson Jeffers’s grandson. Curiosity satisfied. Since I’m off-track already, I want to reiterate that it’s among the highlights of my writing and editing career that I queried Alex about submitting a story to Timothy and me for Best Gay Romance 2014, and I was delighted with his submission, “Shep: A Dog,” and really excited to include it in the anthology. If you have interest in reading an excerpt, I provided one at this old post.

Today, I relished Robinson Jeffers’s poem “Love the Wild Swan,” because I really hungered for more of the validation I got last week that yes, I am a writer, and no, I’m not on the wrong path, I’m on my own path, a path where I can and do love the wild swan.

I even crafted a bit today to showcase Jeffers’s poem in between periods of writing, all while listening to music. If you can’t read the words on the photo below, I’ll add the poem at the end of this post. The swan outline came from ColoringAll.com, and I bought that floral paper (to the right) the swan is on at the bookstore where I was an assistant manager in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I met so many good people there, one of whom, of course, was another of our assistant managers, Steve R.

I didn’t forget for a minute that today is Steve’s birthday, and as I do every year, I whipped up something chocolate in his honor (we’ll be adding a dollop of ice cream to those brownies). We love you always, Steve.

Love the Wild Swan

“I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade’s curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings.”
–This wild swan of a world is no hunter’s game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast,
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your. . . self? At least
Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

Robinson Jeffers, 1935

Thank you, Taylor, for today’s creativity soundtrack. Your lyrics mean a lot to me and to some of my characters.

Fun fact: In An Aries Knows history, I launched Button Sundays on September 17, 2006.

Assorted Saturday thoughts

I had plans when I woke up today and they mostly included writing. I’ve been able to write in bits and pieces this week, but most days found me in a bit of a gray mood, including about writing. Then an old friend of mine who has a knack for getting in touch in the most timely (and usually amusing) of ways did so, and suddenly our conversation, as well as one it provoked me to continue with a cousin, turned things around and gave me the incentive I needed. (Also, it gave the friend and me reason to read an author I’ll discuss in a post next week sometime.)

I was looking forward to getting back to the saga because one of my favorite characters is in the chapter I’m writing now. She always makes me smile, and at this point in the timeline, I believe she’s four years old.

Regrettably, a terse email from a stranger that I read shortly after I woke up derailed my plans. I took care of her request, and then I decided I was overdue to make changes I’d long intended to make to this blog. No one will probably ever notice but me, but it took me eight hours to handle that project, and I wasn’t in any mood to stare at a monitor for the rest of my waking hours.

I did, however, color a wee fairy that I was able to download for free from this wonderful site, The Graphics Fairy, whose terms and conditions are more than fair, and I love her coloring pages. I colored this page in honor of my favorite fictional, magical four-year-old. My photo doesn’t do justice to all the sparkling fairy dust I added under the title or to the spots under her eyes that were on the original page.

Writing Wednesday

Kinsmart die cast model of the classic 1953 Cadillac Series 62.

I actually am not writing today, or haven’t so far. I’m mostly outlining on paper, and mentally, a bunch of possible scenes and plot points that will eventually bring the Neverending Saga to a close. And when I write those words–“to a close”–my brain can’t quite conceive of it. It isn’t that I want to drag this out forever, like a nighttime TV drama where characters go through more jobs and marriages and crises in seven seasons than most people will ever experience in their entire lives. (Or, for that matter, a daytime TV drama, where characters die and return to life on a consistent basis, and sometimes they look very different, and sometimes they’ll die again and return looking like their original version. Soap operas are a delight in that way, and I say that sincerely.)

I’ll be happy when all my deserving characters are happy and doing what they should be, and then I’ll leave them alone for a while. If I rewrite the second and third 1990s novels, many of these characters appear again in supporting roles. Plus I have three strong ideas for completely unrelated novels. I have much I can write, but I’m not anywhere near saying goodbye to this group yet.

I do reflect a lot on what I changed from the 1990s versions, and I’m happy with those choices. I provided backstories where there were none. I changed or let go of certain storylines that I never thought I would, but doing so opened up so many better possibilities. There were people who read those 1990s books and said they loved them, and I have no way of knowing if they would love these.

If I were to tell you some of the ways these seven manuscripts I’ve poured my time and heart and effort into for the last seven years have been a means for a few people to criticize, belittle, or disrespect me, you might wonder why I keep going. It’s okay. The books and I are still standing. The people who respect what I do or who love me are still supportive in a range of ways. The others are either no longer a part of my life or if they are, I mostly stopped talking about writing with them (sort of the way most of us avoided talking about politics, religion, or our problematic relatives before it became a thing to share all that over social media–with words and videos–and now we can’t avoid it by moving to the other side of the globe because our phones will deliver it all to us 24/365. My detractors are safe from this rambling commentary since they also don’t read this blog.).

I had a lovely period of time once when things I wrote were published. Maybe I’ll get to experience that again. Maybe not. Publishing didn’t bring me riches or acclaim or the security that I’d always have a writing career. It brought me happiness, a sense of fulfillment, and the understanding that I’m able to follow through and finish things.


Some day, I hope you’ll come along for the ride with the Neverending Saga.

And remember…

Tiny Tuesday!

I guess Tiny Tuesday is a good occasion to offer a decent goodbye to this pencil that’s becoming too short for me to scribble notes to myself without discomfort (arthritis in my fingers). So long, Peewee, and thanks for your service. Notice I’m replacing you with another of your kind because you Ticonderoga Noir No. 2 Pencils are the BEST.

Mood: Monday

Photo previously posted here was of the painting Books, palette knife and oil on canvas, date unknown, by Leonid Afremov.

Today is World Art Day. As mentioned on the linked site, art may be visual, written, spoken or musical.

My love of visual arts skews toward paintings more than sculpture, but that could be more of a lack of education and exposure than anything else. This blog makes it clear I’m a music lover. I’m also a fan of performing arts (movies, theater, dance), but of course, my own favorite art is written, whether as fiction or poetry, thus my choice of a painting spotlighting books.

Some of my characters in the Neverending Saga are big readers; others aren’t. But they all love stories–telling, hearing, imagining them. It only came to me slowly why these novels would likely never be commercial–there is plot, with some storylines resolved quickly and others spanning decades, but really, the novels are stories about people who love to share stories with one another.

Button Sunday

I haven’t done one of these for almost two years, and have only ever done three of them. NO, that is not the beginning of the story! Anyway, I’m not writing this story, you are. You don’t have to put it in my comments (though you certainly can, even just a teaser of it, so I can believe you might be having some fun with it). Write it in your journal, on the back of a piece of paper, in a sketchpad, anywhere you can find.

Below is the writing prompt from this wonderful book. If I were ever to teach a class for people motivated to write, this book would be one of my tools. I can barely flip through the pages without my imagination taking wing.

Try it! Here’s your prompt:

I have been haunting this museum for 39 years. I like to think my presence has helped to keep the place interesting to its clientele. The newspapers call me…..

Tiny Tuesday!

Share, 2007

Just a wee 4×6-inch canvas, painted in acrylics in 2007. I was looking to see if I’d ever done a painting in the One Word Art series with a particular title, and I haven’t. But in looking at all my photos of old paintings, I see a lot that became part of other works and then disappeared into the unknown. I hope some of them found homes where they were wanted.

Every time we share any part of ourselves, whether it’s been channeled into visual arts, words, performing arts, confidences to people we trust, we take a risk. Sometimes we find affirmation. Sometimes we don’t.

However you present yourself–your feelings, your thoughts, your creativity, your dreams–it takes courage. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. People who make you feel small or weak are not your people.