Titles are hard, I find, so here's my weekly update…

Most of my week has been spent getting back into the groove after my trip to Anchorage. Coming home always makes me want to relook at where I’m at, at my clutter, at my day to day events. I’m wanting to declutter and clean out my space again, although I haven’t felt as though I’ve made much progress with that in recent attempts.

Friday night, I gathered together with the Writing Gang and talked life and words. I got some good feedback on my most recently edited chapter/poem of the novel in poems.

Sunday my mom, sister, and I took a day trip up to Sacramento for a cousin’s baby shower. New family members, yay!

What I’m Reading

I’m a dozen pages in to The Reader by Bernhard Shlink and I’m rather bored. Neither the language, characters, or the story are grabbing me. I’ll give it a little more time, but I’m guessing this one is not going to work out for me.

However, I’m loving The 2013 Rhysling Anthology, which it’s only taken me two years to get around to reading.

Giveaway! Just a reminder that there is only a week left to sign up for my The Walls Around Us giveaway.

What I’m Writing

Most of my writing progress has been in the form of ongoing work on some collaborative poetry with Laura Madeline Wiseman, which has been an amazing experience so far. It’s been humbling and rewarding, as each of us has to learn to give up some control of how the poem will develop and turn out. Some of our darlings get killed along the way, only to be replaced by something different and darling in its own right. We’ve finished one poem so far and are toying with some sestinas. Such fun.

Getting ready for the Writing Gang meeting meant I had to whip together a new draft for chapter/poem three of the novel in poems — a good thing, since progress petered out on that one. I’ve also been making edits on a few other poems in the hopes of submitting them soon.

Goal(s) for this week: Finish and submit a selection of poem(s).

Linky Goodness

  • The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t by Steven Johnson – “The dystopian scenario, after all, isn’t about the death of the record business or Hollywood; it’s about the death of music or movies. As a society, what we most want to ensure is that the artists can prosper — not the record labels or studios or publishing conglomerates, but the writers, musicians, directors and actors themselves. Their financial fate turns out to be much harder to measure, but I endeavored to try.”
  • What is Literary Activism? by Amy King – “Part of working towards understanding and attempting more pluralistic or consciously inclusive approaches to such matters means I have for quite a while been working on recognizing my own privilege, and therefore have also become aware of my limited perspective and understanding. I realized I would never have to face some of the situations, microagressions, suppressions and oppressions other writers explicated in a poetics…”