Just a Note: January 6, 2014

Hello World!

Red leaf

Here I am with the first Just a Note of the New Year.

Just a note started popping up not from the beginning of my blogging career.  I don’t know when it first hapened…I’d have to go look it up…oh! it was April 9th!

Yesterday reading your comments I came across this fantastic comment by Barb Taub, on a poem I’d written about editing, the post was called “Unavoidable Pain“. So, here’s the poem:

Free Verse
Editing

here I sit…
back up straight…
choosing what should be edited
choosing what needs be chucked
and though it may all have seemed great
now I look over my year’s work
and I observe every mistake
not to speak of those
stilted rhymes
then I think
yes, this is it
the moment of
unavoidable
pain….

I often think that Barb knows more about what’s going inside me than I do…her comment has me reflecting…but here it is so you can read it too:

“There’s a world of difference between a blog post and a final product intended for publication. The former is the pure, ephemeral manifestation of creativity, while the latter is the formal application of editorial discipline. Both are equally important (unless you’re going for the Oscar Wilde approach — “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”― Oscar Wilde)

Frankly, I’m consistently lost in amazement at your creative volume. Sure, go back and edit the back end if you need to, but please make sure you don’t put your creative voice at risk on the front end.

We all need to hear your thoughts, your words, your voice!”

I think Oscar and I would have a lot in common as far as editing goes…well…not really.  Of 12 old haiku I printed yesterday to “edit” I rewrote all of them…sigh…

Dear readers…I think that I would like to publish something some day.  The problem is…I don’t think I’m a publishable writer.  That is I think that I’m better at blogging…getting the stuff out there and it gives me such great pleasure to see a story or a poem form itself under my fingers…but I’m afraid I’m not a writer … that is my stuff writes itself … I don’t write a piece then let it sit there for a week than re-write the piece then go over it again…and finally I’d have this lovely piece of story or poem or whatever.  It’d be perfect, someone would probably want to publish it…people would pay to read it.  Nope.  I’m not that kind of writer.

This summer, I tried to write that kind of story.  Or rather, I tried to write one of the little stories that I like very much based on this story: Short Story: The Train Chats – 1.

Note there is a one at the end of the title.  Well there was going to be a series.  Then, I wrote the second story…which only a few have read.  It went from one of the chatty little stories similar to this one to something I just didn’t recognize as my own.  Not only did I not recognize it, but it felt completely alien to me.  I edited the poor thing and edited it some more…and the more I edited it…the more someone else thought it needed editing.  Then there were the grammar errors…and then the syntax errors…in the end, I’ve got this story that someone said she knew where to find a home…but it just sits here.  And I think perhaps that’s probably just as well, because I don’t think I’d have the heart to say I wrote it.

So..I’ve gotten it into my head that it would be nice to put together some of my poems and publish them…or maybe some power shorts and sketches.  Thus the poem above…I’m looking for stuff I’d like to turn into an e-book. But…I probably won’t.  I don’t have the editorial discipline and know how…and I don’t think it’s something one learns at my age.

What I do have though…is the gift of the gab and written gab at that!

Will I ever publish…I wish I could say yes…but I won’t commit myself because I think not.  I just don’t have what it takes to get in out there and pull out a sellable product.

So…I’ll try to edit and maybe get a manuscript together…who knows maybe I’ll figure out how to make an e-book and maybe I’ll self publish…lots of maybes there.  Whatever, Barb, I won’t stop blogging.  In the end I create for number one and am happy when a few of you actually read my stuff and like it and it’s really a fantastic gratification when someone comments…like you do from time to time Barb dear. Sure, in my wildest fantasies I publish and all that jazz…

Have a great week folks…have fun doing whatever you do best…

Ciao Bastet!