Line a Day 2015 - The Final Word[s]

I've only recently realised that I didn't 'wrap up' my last 'year project', which was essentially writing a sentence a day. I called it 'Line a Day 2015', which soon became a bit of a joke because the sentences were often longer than a line, but I digress... I suppose the fact that there was no real impetus to blather on even more about this simple discipline is telling, i.e. there's no big story here. But at least that means there's not gonna be a shedload more rubbish to read for you, dear human.

So I wrote these three-hundred and sixty-five sentences throughout the year. Some were poetic and imagistic, some were merely straight diary-tic style. Sometimes I yearned to break lines like mad and make the form something special, whereas other times the content got the boring shape it deserved. Most of the time, I used punctuation like Scarface uses coke. A chaos of commas.

I don't know... It was fun-ish. Really I wanted to foster a sense of hygiene, summing up entire days in one 'breath' [again, not strictly true as it turns out, but I'm trying to be romantic], and basically training the eye and the mind to work more like a venus fly-trap - waiting long periods inactive before SNAPPING on something that sustains. And when I say 'inactive', I don't mean I wasn't doing anything else, I just mean in terms of my 'centring project', if I can be call it that. Either way, I failed. I didn't even hit on the rigid habit that I wanted. I had periods of a week and longer where I left my entries unfilled, and caused plenty of other headaches along the way, and to top it all, I don't believe I've enhanced my technical ability that much more. But hey, it was better than doing nothing.

I'm in the process of typing it all up now. I envisaged trying to get it published somewhere, the aim being to show a poet's year, unadulterated, in its naked journalic persona. Of course, there are temptations to edit on levels of lexis, sentence, form, structure [inter month, inter year etc], but that's not what happens with our diaries, is it? Anyways, watch this space if you got time to spare and an appetite for disappointment [in which I am a specialist :-) ].

By the way, and this'll be my only Blogtastic word on this until the end of the year [and maybe not even then...]; this year, I'll be doing a haiku diary. Not necessarily just one a day, but as many as I can, again with possibility to publish, but I'm not bothered. Will have to see what the quality and radicality is like. And no, before you ask, they won't necessarily be 5-7-5s. I want to do at least one of those a day, but in general I favour the Kerouacian 'pop', which lets the snapshotting mind breathe and dwell on the beauty of imagery more naturally. Form can be tinkered with and 'metre' can be negotiated, and that's always good.

Anyways, have a happy future full of peace, light and love,

M x

Back on the Wagon

The Creative Writing wagon that is!

Oh yes, we dropped off some of the grizzled, tobacco-spitting prospectors months ago, and brought in some fresh, energetic greenhorns. The wagons rolled through Scifi valley tonight, discussing The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. A surprisingly good book, an expectedly awesome discourse and the traveling companions were just the best (including the new driver).

It feels great to be back on the road. I promised myself to try harder than ever before on this final leg of my MA drive. I lost a wheel early on, but by God I can't (hopefully won't) let that screw things up. I may have had to stop to fix my vehicle, but now I'm back I'm going to spur on my horses 'til I get farther than I could ever have imagined possible.

Feeling the wind dry the sweat on your forehead is like an angel's kiss.

I am blessed.

Simple

All I want is to pass on an image, an image imparted to me by a dear aunt. Please forward all royalties and gratuities to her:

Football fans cheering because they've found a chunk of meat in their pie.

Thanks.