in progress

I have started a thing-a-day project, wherein I write a tetractys poem every day. I have monthly themes, which I selected in a suitably arcane fashion*, and I expect to do this all year. I started in March, so it hasn't been going on long. I am finding that it's good for me to pace myself like this. Today I wanted to write more, but I am saving all those ideas for later. Leaving myself wanting more, I hope, will help me sustain my enthusiasm. Simultaneously satisfying and belaying the instant gratification urge is fun too. I'm not going to be done until next year, but I still have little "yay, I'm done!" moments every day, since each poem is its own complete thought.

March's theme is "House." It's already taken me to stranger places than I expected.

What am I don't with these poems? I don't know. When I'm done it might be fun to sort them thematically or mix them up in a suitably arcane fashion and do some collages inspired by the results of that. I keep kicking around the idea of posting them online, maybe on Twitter since it's hard to break the 140 character barrier when you're only working with twenty syllables. I'm still leery of posting that much writing online. I should flip a coin or something.

Other writing projects, less complicated in execution, are puttering along. Two approaching first draft status (working titles "ghost cat" and "eye thing"--did I mention how awesome I am with titles?), one second draft ("Hair Wife"), and a few scattered "I don't know what these are, so let's play with them and see what happens" things. (More prose. It still feels weird to think of myself as being a poet these days. What makes a person a poet? Who decides?) I have many more ideas than I could ever complete. Gaz with have the dubious honor of inheriting many strange scraps of paper one day.

* I took out my Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (best book in the world), rolled 3D10 to determine page number**, then used a variation on the roll to find a word on the page, skipping "a" and "the." Closest noun or verb wins.

** Yes, that's 1D10 for each digit. I did that because of the number of pages in the book, feeling that percentile dice just wouldn't get me as much variety, or potential variety, as I wanted.***

*** I realize how nerdy and Rube Goldbergian this is.****

**** It was still fun.

Salsa y Catch Up

I decided to finally join the 90s and do me up an authory blog, and here it is. Pretty sparse right now, but I'll work on that. Now to catch up on my author-like activities.

Most recently, my short story "Playing Pox" was published in the premier issue of Three Crow Press. And just as fabulous, "Pox" was favorably reviewed by the equally fabulous KV Taylor. On the Internet no one can see you smile (unless you're one of those webcam fanatics), but I assure you, I am a smile machine, easily mistaken for a Bobby McFerrin song of yore.

Prior to that, I wrote the lyrics to the song "Nyarlathotep" from The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets's theme album The Shadow Out Of Tim. If you can't guess the theme from the title, you need to read more Lovecraft. This was the most fun, and probably the fastest I've ever worked. I had massive help with the translation from Inanna Gruner, who is completely not responsible for my horrible grammar. She did what she could, but I'm afraid I am an incurable Egyptological embarrassment. I strongly encourage everyone to support the Thickets. They're great guys and they've been making my life more wonderfully disturbed with their music for many years.

Now I'm working on some very unglamorous but paying freelance work (imagine my surprise, waking one day from anxious dreams to discover that I had changed into a journalist!), which interferes with my other writings, not to mention housework. Even now the dishes are plotting a coup.