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Writing from the brain alone.

7/30/2013

There are wonderful advantages to joining poetry groups, which lend themselves to pier reviews, mutual support, and shared, evocative ideas, to name a few. I am thoroughly enjoying the online groups I've joined, where the learning curve is both challenging and exciting.

In a recent online group, someone asked a fascinating question: "Can a poet write using the brain alone?" Hmm ... Well, I was once dared to write a poem on the spot, without sufficient time to tune into my deeper muse. The idea was presented as "You should try to write a poem a day." Though intriguing as an experiment, the following poem was the result:

Coconuts

Fifteen thousand coconuts
Fell on a dead man's head
And why he lay there no one know
Till suddenly he said,
“Why pound me so with coconuts?
Just what do you expect?”
He then got up, wiped off his dirty
Arms and legs and left.

It is a curious poem, and not one that I readily own as representative of my work, but there it is. I have sometimes written impromptu pieces, but those spontaneous poems were generally driven but a sudden deep insight or an unavoidable reaction to some external stimuli. Such was the case with the following poem:

When None Command

By surging sea and force of wind
A tattered vessel floundered in
Where coral reef performed the rest
In ripping wide her wooden breast.
From timber scream to cracking mast
Her form dismembered to the last
And on the waves her pieces reached
An aftermath of slumber, beached.
She is a silent reprimand
To those who sail
When none command.

Though there are poets who can adhere to a schedule of writing a poem a day, or near to that, I cannot write merely to be writing. I must wait until the ideas, feeling, and all that goes into my poetry are ripe. That is when I begin to write its elements down, to toy with it, and to struggle with it until it is as it should be.

At the moment, I am struggling with a very challenging poem, and while I can fully see the image in my mind, I still cannot completely fathom it. I keep asking "What is it trying to say? Where is it going?" I have a strong suspicion that the poem has some profound point to make, which is still evolving, and that it is not yet ready to declare itself.

For the time being, I'll take whatever scraps come to me while I wait for the whole of it. To be true, I am a little jealous of those who can write on a whim, or compose on a daily basis. However, in answer to that wonderful question about writing from the brain alone, my answer is "Yes, if I have to, but otherwise, no."

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A new poem ...

7/24/2013

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Now that I am involved in online poetry chats and forms, I find that the ongoing discussions regarding rhyming verse vs prose sometimes chafe at my resolve to simply do what I do: I rhyme. It fascinates me that there is such resistance, among some, to the idea that poetry, as in verse, obeys rules. In reaction to one such forum discussion, I wrote the following poem:

Q & A on Rules

Q:
Oh, Classic Verse, it seems a curse
Has long consumed your heart
With rules on rhyme and time, and worse:
To confiscate your art.
Why bow you so to what you know
To be but a cheap device?
Let thoughts unfold, be uncontrolled,
And fluid form suffice.

A:
Ah, but you see, in verse I'm free
To work within the lines
Which censor ambiguity
And elevate my rhymes
To rhythmed regularity
In balanced, toned array
So I can treat upon the meat
Of what I want to say.

I find these online discussions helpful and encouraging, and I have grown in my appreciation of the other poets there, even as I agree to disagree with some that poetry need not follow any rules.

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Baby steps can seem painfully slow.

7/23/2013

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My recent posts have focused on the idea of "networking" as a way to distribute, and to draw attention to, one's work. There so many facets to this approach, and those that I've listed so far only just graze the surface, but they are a good start in this process of self-publishing.

Recently, I approached a local bookstore, Recycled Books, and asked the owner if he would take my books on consignment. He was happy to do so. Echoes is now nicely situated on a shelf just above Tolkien! I had previously been invited by the owner of the Discover San Jose shop to provide copies of Echoes, where it is available for sale as well.

With brick and mortar bookstores disappearing, at lease in my location, I am reaching out to any and all such shops who's doors remain open. Some will offer a great commission, some less so, and some will agree to carry your work only after collecting a small fee from you. It's all about exposure, and getting people to read your work.

Another tactic that can garner increased exposure of your book is to list digital copies of it for free, for a limited time, as I have done on Smashwords.com. The idea here is that once your work is out there, it will begin to circulate, unguided, in the eddies and currents of readership.

Once your book is available, and being read, reviews should begin to pop up here and there online. Positive reviews are essential to Indie authors and poets, and I have been privileged to earn some very helpful critiques of Echoes. I will soon be reviewing the self-published books of others, as well, as a fellow published writer.

So, the upshot at this point is: self-marketing requires that one be patient, resourceful, and ever mindful of new opportunities. It takes time, effort, and ingenuity to be noticed among so many other wonderful books. And, I am finding that this creative, and sometimes tempering, process is most enjoyable when one is willing to take it on one baby step at a time.

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Networking, part 2.

7/17/2013

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There was a time when an author or a poet would strive to be picked up by an agent or a publishing house, who would do all of the marketing legwork for them. So how, in the teeming maelstrom of published works, does a self-published poet get noticed? Answer: Networking.

In a recent post, I mentioned Sharon E. Carthcart, and her book, His Beloved Infidel ... and now I've done it again. Ms. Cathcart, in turn, let me know that she will be using my remarks elsewhere. She reviewed Echoes, and I will be reviewing her novel soon. Mutually citing and endorsing each other's work is, essentially, networking.

Over the past few months, I have joined writer's/poet's groups on Linkedin, on Goodreads, and Allpoetry.com, to name a few. I enter into the discussions there, and this helps me to become familiar with a lot of wonderful wordsmiths and their ideas on writing. I also mention Echoes, and this blog, when it feels appropriate to do so. Again, networking.

I am temporarily offering a digital book giveaway of Echoes on Smashwords.com in order to get it out into more hands, and to generate an interest in my work. Occasionally, I've given out a copy of Echoes in exchange for an online review. I've even traded my book towards goods in the Dealers Room at a convention, mainly because those individuals would not otherwise have made it to the author's tables to purchase it.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I normally don't give physical copies away for free, as that would devalue my work. However, when it comes to networking, a "free" copy is actually a device intended to elicit a review, and reviews are so important to a published writer.

Being a shameless self-promoter feels a bit weird, but it is also a huge advantage. I use every opportunity to hand out my business cards, to talk about my book, and to promote without pressuring anyone. Owing to conventions, conferences, and online writer's groups, I am now much more connected to many mutually supportive writers, which is golden. All in all, I am finding it a deliciously fun experience all round, and that, too, is golden.

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Networking, part 1.

7/15/2013

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I frequently see posts from poets who seek recommendations for agents, publishing houses, magazines, and etc. Having wracked up more than a few hundred miles pursuing traditional publishing outlets, to little effect, I went "Indie." I am more and more convinced that the best advice I can give to a poet is to do likewise.

At first take, self-publishing might appear to be a pretty daunting task, fraught with myriad obstacles, both real and imagined. A reasonable amount of skittishness is understandable when one is considering running counter to the established norm. Fortunately, a new alternative "norm" is available to us: it is called networking

As defined by dictionary.com: "Networking is a supportive system of sharing information and services among individuals and groups having a common interest."

To begin down this path, finding and joining at least one small contingent of fellow poets and authors is key. In California's Silicon Valley, tech jobs are very often acquired and enhanced through this important process, and success can come down to "who you know."

In my case I had the happy privilege of working on Echoes with Emily Thompson, author of Clockwork Twist.  I am also loosely involved with a wonderful group of writers who I met at the Clockwork Alchemy Convention. They have been warmly supportive of my efforts, as am I of theirs. To be in a group that reads and honestly reviews each other's work is incredibly reassuring.

Communing with other writers in blogs, in online groups, and at conventions and conferences is proving a huge advantage. Any poet who wishes to self-publish their work need not go it alone as networking, and self-publishing are coming into their own.

My poems are out there now, in paperback and in digital format, and are benefiting from this most advantageous and promising avenue well beyond my expectations. In my next post, I will be exploring this theme a bit further. A single post is not quite enough on this.

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Who is my muse?

7/11/2013

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Now and then I wonder about my muse, specifically "Is there really such a thing as a muse?" I'm not a particularly brilliant person, by any means, which leads me to ask, "Am I merely taking dictation?" when a poem works out really well, because my writing process feels distinctly like a collaborative effort at times.

The invisible lanes that my mind ambles along, which help to frame a piece, usually give no hint of where a poem is going next. Even when I am certain that a poem is going to end with such and such, I am often very surprised to discover that the line I would have ended in the poem with was actually meant to lie somewhere in the middle of the work.

Several years ago, it occurred to me to write a poem about a shipwreck. When I finished the poem, I titled it 1739, to give it's meaning more weight. Then, a few weeks ago, I received a wonderful review of Echoes on Goodreads by Sharon E. Cathcart, author of His Beloved Infidel. In her review, she cited my poem, 1739, as a depiction of the Rooswijk shipwreck, which occurred in 1739.

I was shocked and intrigued ... because I had never before heard of the Rooswijk, nor anything about a 1739 shipwreck! Amazingly, a quick googling of the "Rooswijk Shipwreck" brought up many pages referencing it. I found one particularly wonderful write-up at: http://sedwickcoins.com. I am posting that information, with grateful permission from Daniel Frank Sedwick LLC, here:

Rooswijk, sunk in 1739 off southeast England

Off the southeastern tip of England, just north of the Straits of Dover, the sea hides a most unusual feature known as the Goodwin Sands, where sandbanks appear and disappear unpredictably and move with the tides. Many ships over the centuries have sunk here and silted over, and occasionally one of the wrecks will surface and be discovered. Such is the case with the Rooswijk, a Dutch East Indiaman that foundered on the Goodwin Sands in a storm on December 19, 1739, with all hands and 30 chests of treasure, virtually gone without a trace.

By chance in December, 2004, the sands that had swallowed the wreck of the Rooswijk parted and allowed diver Ken Welling to retrieve two complete chests and hundreds of silver bars. Operating in secrecy, salvage continued in 2005 under the direction of Rex Cowan and in agreement with the Dutch and British governments and is ongoing today. So far, several hundred Mexican silver cobs of the 1720s and early 1730s and transitional “klippes” of 1733-1734, as well as many more hundreds of “pillar dollars” and a smattering of cobs from other mints, have hit the market from this wreck, mostly through auction.

So, having never encountered that information before, how did I get so close to depicting an historic event? Do this ever happen to other poets? I may never know, but I will always wonder whether my muse is privy to a secret encyclopedic cache, or if my poem was merely a casualty of coincidence. This poet is not making any claims to being clairvoyant, nor brilliant. I probably just got lucky...

If you have an interest in historic shipwreck artifacts, you may find them at: http://sedwickcoins.com

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A family feud: traditional poetry (verse) vs modern poetry (prose)?

7/7/2013

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The disunity I've been picking up over the years, between writers of traditional poetry and those who write modern poetry, feels a lot like a family feud. Hmm... Perhaps a brief look at both of these writing styles will shed some light on what this disharmony is about." A surface scan revealed the following:

Modern Poetry: written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure, rhyme or aesthetic embellishment, such as in newspaper articles, literature, and etc.

Traditional Poetry: literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm, with a focus on aesthetics. This is also referred to as "Verse."

To illustrate this further, here is an excerpt from Moliere's play, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, wherein Monsieur Jourdain asked for something to be written in neither verse nor prose. A philosophy master replied that "there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse," for the simple reason being that "everything that is not prose is verse, and everything that is not verse is prose."

In Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Third Populist Manifesto, Modern Poetry is Prose, (But it is Saying Plenty), he writes that most modern poetry is prose. What I want to emphasize here is a phase that I coined, and which I stand, by regarding modern poetry (Prose, Free Verse, Open Verse, etc.) and traditional poetry (rhyming, metered verse): "It is not a matter of merit, but one of preference."

During my highschool years, I happened upon a book on Method Acting by.Anton Chekhov in which he instructed the actor to think of someone they liked or thought they understood. They were to be that person by imitating every observable nuance characteristic of that person. He concluded that the actor would not only understand why they liked that person,but that they would like them even more after they performed the exercise. I tried it, and it worked.

Then Chekhov said to think of someone the actor didn't like or didn't understand, and to apply this exercise with that person as the subject   He said that this would illuminate not only why the actor didn't like the person, but promised that the actor would also realize a new affinity with, and understanding of, the subject. Wow! Point made.

Anton Chekhov was instrumental in opening my mind to giving prose a try.  I started with the works of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I studied his prose, imitated his focus and form, and pretended to be him for perhaps a month or so. I learned a great deal about prose in the process, and the apprehensions I had about prose slipped off like loosened shackles. Here is an early example of my pros from Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry:

Skyline

There is a pattern upon the land
Following no pattern at all.
Rubies, diamonds, emeralds and jade
Adorn every rhythm of man,
Showing a canopy of stars as pale
Above their silent brilliance.
Though clouds and fog may briefly
Obscure the witnessing of heavenly stars,
“Tis a vapor of many forms
Could put an end
To the lights of man.

An unexpected discovery that I made while "being Ferlinghetti" was the profound revelation that I am not a prose writer, anymore than I am that person I learned to like under Chekhov's tutelage all those years ago. Though I can play the part now and then, I am me, and my home base is firmly rooted in traditional poetry. My esteemed siblings write prose.

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My self-publishing journey, thus far.

7/3/2013

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I begin this post by affirming that the indie self-publishing avenue is a great medium for writers ... now. Until fairly recently, choosing to self-publish was a rather risky move, since it sent a message to readers, publishers, and agents alike that the work was not much good. Why else would one self-publish?

Today, however, publishing your own work is a brilliant opportunity for writers of novels and poems, thanks in huge measure to the current pervasive "indie" movement. It is also thanks to the fact that publishers could downsize your manuscript, print it on inferior paper, and put little energy into promoting it.

True, a good publisher or agent might do all the marketing legwork for you, and they might reach a wider audience, but there is no guarantee. I know authors who were exhilarated to be signed on by an agent, only to be blatantly ignored thereafter, as if they had become merely an item in their agent's collection.

The agent/publisher situation for poets is even more dubious. Finding an agent who will represent a poet is very difficult, and approaching a publisher without an agent is usually a futile endeavor. I did consider the agent/publisher route, until it became apparent that, as a poet, I would derive no benefit from either.

As a self-published writer, I am able to control the process, the product, and its distribution. I enjoy the freedom to price my work at a more reasonable rate in order to get it out there. I get to choose who edits my book, and I have a huge say in whether I will comply with what I may consider a bad edit.

Self publishing also requires that one do the legwork in marketing and distribution. With such a wealth of social media available, this is proving to be easier and easier to do. Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads are just a few of the resources that I use, as well as the personal "word of mouth" technique.

As I noted in an earlier post, Adventures in marketing, other self published authors and poets can be an invaluable help in promoting your book. I joined a Facebook group of authors who I met at the Clockwork Alchemy Convention. I can promote my book there, read their work, ask advice, and share in the wisdom that we are all gleaning.

The San Francisco Writer's Conferences is also a wonderful resource. It is well attended each year by representatives from all aspects of the writing world. I met Dan Pointer, who is considered by many to be the grandfather of self publishing, at that conference. He wasn't feeling well at the time, and yet he spent hours answering my questions and listening to my concerns about self publishing.

I have also received tremendous help from Emily Thompson. Her generous and time-consuming work on my book cover art and interior design, as well as her insistence that I publish my verses, are what brought Echoes into being. I literally could not have done this without her. Having recently self published her novel, Clockwork Twist, she was well versed in teaching me these new ropes and accomplishing such a wonderful volume. Thank you, Emily!

As for my first self published book, Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry, it is prominently on display in a local shop, listed in many online venues, and will soon to be available in yet another local shop. To date, it has been purchased in England, as well as here in the States, and gifted in Europe. So, there you go.

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Download a free copy of Echoes through July 31, 2013 at smashwords.com ... (and a brief on the book signing event.)

7/2/2013

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The book signing event is happily behind me. I hadn't realized that there would be little opportunity, amid the chaos of the grand opening of the Discover San Jose shop, to do more than introduce Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry to the massive crowd that attended the event. That evening, I started to lament ... and then it hit me: "Echoes is now prominently on display, available for sale, in a brick-n-mortar shop!"

Fortunate for my ego, I did manage to sign one copy to an attendee. Good enough for a first go. At the shop owner's request, I signed a few other copies in advance for anyone who will buy a copy of Echoes in my absence. I don't expect to make much in the way of income from Echoes. The important thing is to get it out there and into other hands.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I read my work publicly at the San Francisco Writer's Conference. I had read a third poem, and was walking back to my seat, when a woman gently took hold of my arm and whispered, "Thank you! I used to write like that, too!" I have witnessed this so often that it became an imperative that I publish Echoes.

There is a definite need of reinforcement for the rhyming poet of today. I have met a number of rhyming poets who allude to their style in decibels barely above a whisper. In a recent Goodreads post, someone was stymied about her rhyming craft, and asked others in the group if it's okay to rhyme. I wanted to shout, "O f course it is!!!

It is this, more than anything else, which is spurring me on to publish other volumes of my poetry as soon as I am able. I, too, have hidden in the shadows with my work, only rarely mentioning that I rhyme, and usually in an apologetic stance. I have been biding my time, waiting for that tiny fissure in the facade of Poetry to appear.

I took a leap of faith in April at the insistence of my supportive family, and loosed Echoes on the world. The hope is this: the more that other rhyming poets find rhyming verse in published books, the more heartened they will be to publish their own work. I'll write further about the self-published poet route in my next post.

As promised above, and for the entire month of July, I am offering free downloadable copies of Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry on smachwords.com. For those of you who have purchased a copy already, I thank you most earnestly for your wonderful support. You have truly and deeply helped this rhyming poet. Thank you!!!

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Writing from the brain alone.

A new poem ...

Baby steps can seem painfully slow.

Networking, part 2.

Networking, part 1.

Who is my muse?

A family feud: traditional poetry (verse) vs modern poetry (prose)?

My self-publishing journey, thus far.

Download a free copy of Echoes through July 31, 2013 at smashwords.com ... (and a brief on the book signing event.)

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