writing

How to Enter a New Year & New Decade

Posted on by cjprinceauthor

flock of birds flying over islet
14 January 2020
Greetings, peeps, peoples, friends, neighbors, relatives and all who stumble upon my words,
A new year, a new decade, and endless stellar alignments guide me to contemplation. 
Thus, I think retreat, pull in my radar, retract tentacles, be a turtle. 
No social media.  No mail. No phone.  How delightful.  Off the grid, but never really out of sight.
An island might suffice.  Paddle a canoe into a lagoon, gather seashells and bathe in the rays of the sun.  Now, if you know me at all, you know that is ridiculous.  A classic fantasy.  When you have spotted, pink skin, you just don’t think like that. 
An island comes to mind as remote, isolated, disconnected from everything.
Not really a choice I yearn toward.
I consult the stars, throw the cards, swing the pendulum, toss the I Ching.  It’s quite obvious that an island experience will be a meditation, an enlightenment, a precursor, an exploration into the unknown.
I am my own gypsy fortune teller, an inner guru that chuckles and says, “why not?”  The angels are always with me.
Now, I am home after a fortnight of sizzling weather, steep hills and new night sounds.  Here, with the wood burning stove briskly flaming while snow falls, I must assess extremes.  The stillness at home will bring new haiku, in high contrast to what I wrote on an island.
What I want to say, if our paths crossed, if you listened to my poetry, if we visited on an airplane, if I didn’t know you at all and you’re a friend of a friend, and we connected on social media, any way,
there is a connection for which I am grateful.
The numbers change:  2020.  We all will expand, make choices and have the opportunity for laughter.  Even when there is sadness, there is laughter that fills our lungs and for that moment let’s us breathe.
Bright blessings in all you do.

How Long Does It Take to Create a Chapbook?

Posted on by cjprinceauthor

Not much of a title because there is no answer.  You just notice it is almost two years since your last chapbook.  Five ideas are buried on your laptop, five chapbooks waiting patiently for focus.  So, you decide to ignore them a bit longer.

No, I am not suffering from writer’s block–or chapbook completion.  OK, maybe a bit of the latter.  Some recent turn of the moon opened my eyes, or my mind.  A mini-chapbook.  Perfect summer project.  Have I mentioned my summer challenges lately?  It boils down to sun and heat.   I need to talk to my publisher.  That might be first.

Instead, I decide the cover art should be first.  (Wait until you see the awesome cover art for “Chaos & Peace”, coming soon after I complete this project.  “Soon” being one of those undefinable words that floats forward, allowing breathing time.)

The chapbook is “Blonde Noir”, a single poem I wrote in 2013 and have revised and performed and edited and played with.  More about the poem later.  My focus is on the cover art.  Here are some of the rejected pieces I’ve drawn lately.

thumbnailYes, she’s scared. 1940s-ish.  But she’s more complex than that.

thumbnail (2)

Perhaps she’s conning or cunning.  Breathless and afraid.

thumbnail (1)

She does wear pearls but she is not this self assured.

Stay tuned.  I may actually tell you how long a chapbook takes by summer’s end.

C.J. Prince

Resister or Resistor?

Posted on by cjprinceauthor

Words and spelling catch my eye.  What am I?  What words do I use to express current feelings and explorations?  I see the word “resistor” on social media and it looks wrong.  I went to several dictionaries.

resistor

[ri-zis-ter]
noun, Electricity.
1.  a device designed to introduce resistance into an electric circuit.

resister

listed as the noun for “resist.”
1. to strive to fend off or offset the actions, effects or force of
2.  to remain firm against the actions, effects of for of; withstand
3.  to keep keep from giving in to or enjoying; to offer resistance.  synonym:  oppose

 

What are you?

Soul of the Northwest

Posted on by cjprinceauthor

BigLeaf maple

 

Big leaf maple,  Acer macrophyllum,

leaves shine sugar coated.

Alive in a hundred shades of green,

I am the Northwest, soul of the planet.

Catch a raindrop.

Tip your chin up.

Drink sky water.

Splash into the lake.

Mystery lies in downward clouds.

Wait for the midnight owl.

C.J. Prince

Copyright 2016

 

Spin the Wheel

Posted on by cjprinceauthor

cross-quarter-days

 

Summer Sister dances,

a flighty faerie step, arms

outstretched to the universes.

She pulls down spiral threads

to honor Lugh’s mother,

connects webs from her fingertips

along the wheel of the year,

Lughnassahd to Equinox,

Samhain to Yule.

We are the amusement park

of watching stars.

C.J. Prince

©2016cross-quarter-days

POSTCARD POETRY FESTIVAL MONTH

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What entices your Muse?

I think of her constantly, sometimes with irritation, sometimes, pleading, most often accepting her wily ways and sense of timelessness.  She will wake me in the middle of the night with a string of words that will never be available again.  She lurks in writing groups, surprises when I’m driving.  She is ubiquitous, as fragrant as a stargazer lily and illusive as stars on a cloudy night.

I take every advantage to be alert to her omniscience.   It is I who am forgetful, ignore that little tug of an image, get monkey mind when all I should be is mindful.  So, the invitation to participate in Postcard Poetry Month in August reeled me in.  

For the seventh year poets have written a poem a day and sent it out to a list of 31 other Muse chasers.  As I pondered the delight of a postcard in my mailbox, I also realized that my quirky little off the cuff poem would have only one reader.

SO, I decided to share with you, that which flashes through on a poem that cannot be studied, revised, re-re-written and critiqued.  Write it.  Mail it.  So, here goes.

August 1st

 

 

The Words linger…

Posted on by cjprinceauthor

Words, odd combinations of letters, inviting the imagination, the connection between me and thee.  I lost them somewhere.

Image

They bury themselves in sand, tickle my bare feet as the tide washes out.  I miss them but the rain washes them all away.  I do not write for two weeks.

Wordless as I walk the shoreline, peer into tide pools, watch puffins settle on the great Mother Rock.  Seagulls swoop the gray skies.  At 8:36 PM, a shimmer of brightness just above the horizon, a splash of light touching clouds, a shimmer in the skim of water remaining as the tide recedes.

Like the turning of the moon, words return when I least expect them, crowd into dreamtime and waken me with the unexpected.  Starving for words, I drink them down in a scribble.

From this two projects erupt, not one but two, seeming appropriate in the Light of Gemini.

Today, an unexpected confirmation that perhaps other writers also covet but do not even know they wish.  A juxtaposition.  I walk into the dark Pickford Film Center to find my favorite middle seat.  A woman passes, turns and comes back.  “Are you the one who wrote the Noir Poem,” she asks.

“Yes.”  I am so surprised that I don’t even register what she’s saying.  But she liked it, has seen me read in several places.  I am delighted.  Not as an ego bump, but as recognition that my words have touched someone’s memory, that there was resonance and understanding.

I am glad the words have returned.  Now, those two projects call.

No thanks, no resolutions, please.

Posted on by cjprinceauthor

Observe.  Accept.  Those are the two words I gleaned from my years as a Buddhist.

Observe myself.  Ah, hah.  Therein lies the challenge.  I see the flaw of mirror, the patterns backward, playing my Fool with false promises.

I know better than to follow the cow trail and slap down some highfalutin resolutions that will take me right into the bog of failure.

Instead, I consider carefully my intentions.  Dare I commit (yes, please note the difference between “intend” and “commit”), to blog more.  (Oh, heavens, I have a vast array of untended blogs out there mumbling on their own.  I only maintain two.)  And if I do blog more, what time will shift on the scale of my day?  How much of it will fall into the well of self indulgence?

Write more poetry?  I open my heart to the Muse but I cannot force her.  Whenever she comes, I drink her tea and take rapid notes, losing sometimes the very essence of some glimmering wisdom.  To that, there is not intention or commitment or resolution.  To the Muse, I listen as I must breathe to live.

Finish my novel.  Yes.  Ever onward my character takes me on her unexpected journey.  I’d say we’re about 85,000 words at present.  Time to wrap it up, eh?  Not until she has her say.  Then will come the hard work of revision, of endless re-writes.  I get smarter with each writing but always there is work to be done.  This novel writing is essential, walks parallel to poetry, will take me away from a conversation, wlll insist I make a note while driving, knocks on my dreamtime.  This is not resolution or even intention.  This is essential.

So, I consider a blank calendar, a whole year of possibility ahead.  However, there are very few blank days already in January.  I celebrate the connection with you and the opportunities that will unravel this year.

Bright blessings in all ways to your greatest and highest good.

Khepera pushs up the Sun this morning,

Rolls it right over Stewart Mountain,
Banishs mists.
Light blasts into the new year.

Image

When Do You Write?

Posted on by cjprinceauthor

If I left it to whim–and I sometimes do–there would be long dry spells.  And sometimes there are.  I write when the Muse bonks me on the head.  She tells me to pay attention.  She insists that I grab a pencil, a pen a stick to imprint the earth or sand.  She doesn’t command me to write.  She puts words at the end of the pen.  I watch to see what they say.  Sometimes I am delighted, other times, dismayed.

When I was a kid, writing was a school activity plus homework.  I wrote my first novel in sixth grade.  Really.  How presumptuous.  I’d win at mumbly peg, shoot hard and  straight with a steelie and take all the marbles from the boys for my collection and I’d flop on the bed with Daisy my cat who wasn’t allowed in the house, and I’d write.

In college creativity and writing seem at distant ends of opposing universes.  Just meet the deadline.  I became quite good at that so it was natural to fall into newspaper writing. 

All of those years, whether creativity seemed engaged or not, I wrote as a matter of fact.  Of necessity.  Give me a deadline and I’m on it.  No prob.  No regrets.  In newspaper writing you can’t go back to correct a prepositional phrase.  Of course, if it is a factual error, there is no question about correction.  It will be corrected and so will you.

When I moved to the Northwest, I looked for a newspaper to write a weekly column.  It did not manifest.  And I had a couple of blogs by then anyway.  But a blog only has a self imposed deadline.  Five years ago I started writing with some friends from Tai Chi.  The Muse-icians.  We write every Monday morning at my kitchen table, practice writing. 

Words are like a good meal, they must be served when hot and savored for spice.  It is better than a deadline.

What keeps you writing when the Muse is on vacation?