Renee is Writing

I like to write short, but not because I am 4'11" tall. As a poet of course I love the intensity that appears in a few short lines of well chosen words and images. In fact haiku and its 3 line format and tanka with its 5 line format appeal to me quite nicely. All the poems I write tend to come out short and even when reading poems, now or as a child, I would pass by anything longer than two pages. I prefer the shorter forms as they tell such big stories and paint such huge pictures with only a few words. Though I love to read novels, when I write I love the succinctness of short stories and flash fiction. Yes, I know that part of the reason is that with a full time job my available time to write is brief and the thought of delving into novel writing is a scary plunge. I can see it taking years to finally finish a novel length story and revise it to the point where it can be published.  On the other hand, writing flash fiction of 1,000 words or less is quite attractive. Fo...

Living the life of a writer can be both wonderful and frustrating, especially if most of your day is taken by a full time job. When you add to that, family, friends, and a slew of other hobbies finding time to write can be a marathon strength challenge.  For me I wake at 4:15 in order to squeeze in twenty minutes of writing morning pages as per Julia Cameron's Artist's Way tools. It just three pages of rambling that occasionally results in a breakthrough for some indecision or a snag in a plot turn or poem idea. When I feel that morning pages are a waste of my precious time to write I will use those twenty minutes to create a new poem or two or perhaps outline a short story or map out a new chapter, depending on which of my many writing projects is occupying my mind at the moment. Getting home by 5:00 or later, working out, showering, having dinner, reading a little and then falling into bed exhausted keep me from the writing desk. But novels, memoir, short stories...

when e.e.cummings arrived on the poetry scene he gifted us with poems that were written with few upper case letters and very little punctuation. we were in awe of his originality: "there are so many tictoc clocks everywhere telling people what toctic time it is for tictic instance five toc minutes toc past six tic Spring is not regulated and does not get out of order nor do its hands a little jerking move over numbers slowly we do not wind it up it has no weights springs wheels inside of its slender self no indeed dear nothing of the kind. (So,when kiss Spring comes we’ll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss lips because tic clocks toc don’t make a toctic difference to kisskiss you and to kiss me)" e. e. cummings and though Edward Estlin Cummings is no longer with us, his poems remain an enigma. it dawned on me the other day, as i wrote one of my own poems, how cummings' legacy of lower case lettered poetry has grown in modern day. in th...